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and said nothing of the bomb that was an inch, now a half-inch, now a quarter-inch
from the top of the hotel. Leaning into the wall as if all of the hunger of looking would
find the secret of her sleepless unease there. Mildred, leaning anxiously, nervously,
as if to plunge, drop, fall into that swarming immensity of colour to drown in its bright
happiness.
The first bomb struck.
"Mildred! "
Perhaps, who would ever know? Perhaps the great broadcasting stations with their
beams of colour and light and talk and chatter went first into oblivion.
Montag, falling flat, going down, saw or felt, or imagined he saw or felt the walls go
dark in Millie's face, heard her screaming, because in the millionth part of time left,
she saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was
such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and
eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own and looked quickly up at the
ceiling as it and the entire structure of the hotel blasted down upon her, carrying her
with a million pounds of brick, metal, plaster, and wood, to meet other people in the
hives below, all on their quick way down to the cellar where the explosion rid itself of
them in its own unreasonable way.
I remember. Montag clung to the earth. I remember. Chicago. Chicago, a long time
ago. Millie and I. That's where we met! I remember now. Chicago. A long time ago.
The concussion knocked the air across and down the river, turned the men over like
dominoes in a line, blew the water in lifting sprays, and blew the dust and made the
trees above them mourn with a great wind passing away south. Montag crushed
himself down, squeezing himself small, eyes tight. He blinked once. And in that
instant saw the city, instead of the bombs, in the air. They had displaced each other.
For another of those impossible instants the city stood, rebuilt and unrecognizable,
taller than it had ever hoped or strived to be, taller than man had built it, erected at
last in gouts of shattered concrete and sparkles of torn metal into a mural hung like a
reversed avalanche, a million colours, a million oddities, a door where a window
should be, a top for a bottom, a side for a back, and then the city rolled over and fell
down dead.
Montag, lying there, eyes gritted shut with dust, a fine wet cement of dust in his now
shut mouth, gasping and crying, now thought again, I remember, I remember, I
remember something else. What is it? Yes, yes, part of the Ecclesiastes and
Revelation. Part of that book, part of it, quick now, quick, before it gets away, before
the shock wears off, before the wind dies. Book of Ecclesiastes. Here. He said it over
to himself silently, lying flat to the trembling earth, he said the words of it many times
and they were perfect without trying and there was no Denham's Dentifrice
anywhere, it was just the Preacher by himself, standing there in his mind, looking at
him ....
"There," said a voice.
The men lay gasping like fish laid out on the grass. They held to the earth as children
hold to familiar things, no matter how cold or dead, no matter what has happened or
will happen, their fingers were clawed into the dirt, and they were all shouting to keep
their eardrums from bursting, to keep their sanity from bursting, mouths open,
Montag shouting with them, a protest against the wind that ripped their faces and tore
at their lips, making their noses bleed.
Montag watched the great dust settle and the great silence move down upon their
world. And lying there it seemed that he saw every single grain of dust and every
blade of grass and that he heard every cry and shout and whisper going up in the
world now. Silence fell down in the sifting dust, and all the leisure they might need to
look around, to gather the reality of this day into their senses.
Montag looked at the river. We'll go on the river. He looked at the old railroad tracks.
Or we'll go that way. Or we'll walk on the highways now, and we'll have time to put
things into ourselves. And some day, after it sets in us a long time, it'll come out of
our hands and our mouths. And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be
right. We'll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks
around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now. And while
none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll
be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me,
out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's
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