[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
beyond the tin moat of the city, cows chewed grass and pigs sat in warm ponds at
noon and dogs barked after white sheep on a hill.
Now, the dry smell of hay, the motion of the waters, made him think of sleeping in
fresh hay in a lonely barn away from the loud highways, behind a quiet farmhouse,
and under an ancient windmill that whirred like the sound of the passing years
overhead. He lay in the high barn loft all night, listening to distant animals and insects
and trees, the little motions and stirrings.
During the night, he thought, below the loft, he would hear a sound like feet moving,
perhaps. He would tense and sit up. The sound would move away, He would lie back
and look out of the loft window, very late in the night, and see the lights go out in the
farmhouse itself, until a very young and beautiful woman would sit in an unlit window,
braiding her hair. It would be hard to see her, but her face would be like the face of
the girl so long ago in his past now, so very long ago, the girl who had known the
weather and never been burned by the fire-flies, the girl who had known what
dandelions meant rubbed off on your chin. Then, she would be gone from the warm
window and appear again upstairs in her moon-whitened room. And then, to the
sound of death, the sound of the jets cutting the sky into two black pieces beyond the
horizon, he would lie in the loft, hidden and safe, watching those strange new stars
over the rim of the earth, fleeing from the soft colour of dawn.
In the morning he would not have needed sleep, for all the warm odours and sights of
a complete country night would have rested and slept him while his eyes were wide
and his mouth, when he thought to test it, was half a smile.
And there at the bottom of the hayloft stair, waiting for him, would be the incredible
thing. He would step carefully down, in the pink light of early morning, so fully aware
of the world that he would be afraid, and stand over the small miracle and at last
bend to touch it.
A cool glass of fresh milk, and a few apples and pears laid at the foot of the steps.
This was all he wanted now. Some sign that the immense world would accept him
and give him the long time needed to think all the things that must be thought.
A glass of milk, an apple, a pear.
He stepped from the river.
The land rushed at him, a tidal wave. He was crushed by darkness and the look of
the country and the million odours on a wind that iced his body. He fell back under
the breaking curve of darkness and sound and smell, his ears roaring. He whirled.
The stars poured over his sight like flaming meteors. He wanted to plunge in the river
again and let it idle him safely on down somewhere. This dark land rising was like
that day in his childhood, swimming, when from nowhere the largest wave in the
history of remembering slammed him down in salt mud and green darkness, water
burning mouth and nose, retching his stomach, screaming! Too much water!
Too much land!
Out of the black wall before him, a whisper. A shape. In the shape, two eyes. The
night looking at him. The forest, seeing him.
The Hound!
After all the running and rushing and sweating it out and half-drowning, to come this
far, work this hard, and think yourself safe and sigh with relief and come out on the
land at last only to find . . .
The Hound!
Montag gave one last agonized shout as if this were too much for any man.
The shape exploded away. The eyes vanished. The leafpiles flew up in a dry shower.
Montag was alone in the wilderness.
A deer. He smelled the heavy musk-like perfume mingled with blood and the
gummed exhalation of the animal's breath, all cardamon and moss and ragweed
odour in this huge night where the trees ran at him, pulled away, ran, pulled away, to
the pulse of the heart behind his eyes.
There must have been a billion leaves on the land; he waded in them, a dry river
smelling of hot cloves and warm dust. And the other smells! There was a smell like a
cut potato from all the land, raw and cold and white from having the moon on it most
of the night. There was a smell like pickles from a bottle and a smell like parsley on
the table at home. There was a faint yellow odour like mustard from a jar. There was
a smell like carnations from the yard next door. He put down his hand and felt a weed
rise up like a child brushing him. His fingers smelled of liquorice.
He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up
with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here
to fill him. There would always be more than enough.
He walked in the shallow tide of leaves, stumbling.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]