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Fluid eraser

From Fahrenheit 451, Part 1

The firemen arrive at a suspected house to burn it. Its owner is an old woman who refuses to leave.

	A fountain of books sprang down1 upon Montag as he climbed
	shuddering up the sheer stairwell2 How inconvenient! Always before it
	had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped
	the victim’s mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars3,
5	so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren’t hurting
	anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn’t be
	hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don’t scream or whimper4, as
	this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to
	tease5 your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial6
10	work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene!
	Who’s got a match!
	But now, tonight, someone had slipped. This woman was spoiling the
	ritual. The men were making too much noise, laughing, joking, to cover
	her terrible accusing silence below. She made the empty rooms roar with
15	accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt that was sucked in their
	nostrils as they plunged7 about. It was neither cricket nor correct.
	Montag felt an immense irritation. She shouldn’t be here, on top of
	everything!
	Books bombarded his shoulders, his arms, his up-turned face. A book lit,
20	almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering8. In
	the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather,
	the words delicately painted thereon. In all the rush and fervor, Montag
	had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed9 in his mind for the next
	minute as if stamped there with fiery steel. “Time has fallen asleep in the
25	afternoon sunshine.” He dropped the book. Immediately, another fell into
	his arms.
	“Montag, up here!”
	Montag’s hand closed like a mouth, crushed the book with wild devotion,
	with an insanity of mindlessness to his chest. The men above were
30	hurling shovelfuls10 of magazines into the dusty air. They fell like
	slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among
	the bodies.
	Montag had done nothing. His hand had done it all, his hand, with a
	brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling
35	finger, had turned thief. Now it plunged the book back under his arm,
	pressed it tight to sweating armpit11, rushed out empty, with a magician’s
	flourish! Look here! Innocent! Look!
	He gazed, shaken, at that white hand. He held it way out, as if he were
	farsighted12. He held it close, as if he were blind.
40	“Montag!”
	He jerked about13.
	“Don’t stand there, idiot!”
	The books lay like great mounds of fishes left to dry. The men danced and
	slipped and fell over them. Titles glittered their golden eyes, falling, gone.
45	“Kerosene!”
	They pumped the cold fluid from the numeraled 451 tanks strapped14 to
	their shoulders. They coated each book, they pumped rooms full of it.
	They hurried downstairs, Montag staggering15 after them in the kerosene
	fumes.
50	“Come on, woman!”
	The woman knelt among the books, touching the drenched16 leather and
	cardboard, reading the gilt titles with her fingers while her eyes accused
	Montag.
	“You can’t ever have my books,” she said.
55	“You know the law,” said Beatty. “Where’s your common sense? None of
	those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years
	with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those
	books never lived. Come on now!”
	She shook her head.
60	“The whole house is going up,” said Beatty.
	The men walked clumsily to the door. They glanced back at Montag, who
	stood near the woman.
	“You’re not leaving her here?” he protested.
	“She won’t come.”
65	“Force her, then!”
	Beatty raised his hand in which was concealed the igniter. “We’re due
	back at the House. Besides, these fanatics always try suicide; the pattern’s
	familiar.”
	Montag placed his hand on the woman’s elbow. “You can come with me.”
70	“No,” she said. “Thank you, anyway.”
	“I’m counting to ten,” said Beatty. “One. Two.”
	“Please,” said Montag.
	“Go on,” said the woman.
	“Three. Four.”
75	“Here.” Montag pulled at the woman.
	The woman replied quietly, “I want to stay here.”
	“Five. Six.”
	“You can stop counting,” she said. She opened the fingers of one hand
	slightly and in the palm of the hand was a single slender object.
80	An ordinary kitchen match.
	The sight of it rushed the men out and down away from the house.
	Captain Beatty, keeping his dignity, backed slowly through the front door,
	his pink face burnt and shiny from a thousand fires and night
	excitements. God, thought Montag, how true! Aways at night the alarm
85	comes. Never by day! Is it because fire is prettier by night? More
	spectacle, a better show? The pink face of Beatty now showed the faintest
	panic in the door. The woman’s hand twitched17 on the single matchstick.
	The fumes of kerosene bloomed18 up about her. Montag felt the hidden
	book pound like a heart against his chest.
90	“Go on,” said the woman, and Montag felt himself back away and away
	out the door, after Beatty, down the steps, across the lawn, where the
	path of kerosene lay like the track of some evil snail.
	On the front porch where she had come to weigh them quietly with her
	eyes, her quietness a condemnation, the woman stood motionless.

1. sprang down: Si abbattè

2. shuddering... stairwell: Fremendo su per la tromba perpendicolare delle scale

3. glittering beetle cars: Automobili tipo Maggiolino scintillanti

4. don’t scream or whimper.: Non urlano né frignano

5. to tease: A tormentare

6. Janitorial: Di portineria

7. dust... plunged: Polvere di colpa che veniva risucchiata nelle loro narici mentre si precipitavano

8. wings fluttering: Con le ali che sbattevano

9. it blazed: Fiammeggiò

10. were hurling shovelfuls: Scagliavano palate

11. pressed... armpit: Premuto contro l’ascella sudata

12. farsighted: Presbite

13. He jerked about: Si mosse a scatti

14. tanks strapped: Taniche appese

15. staggering: Barcollando

16. drenched: Imbevuto

17. twitched: Si contorse

18. bloomed: Si svilupparono