The Fountainhead (28 page)

“Oh, yes!” said Keating crisply, a bright edge of irritation in the sound of his voice. “Yes, I did want to speak to you about that. Thanks for reminding me. Of course, you’d guess it, because you know that I’m not an ungrateful swine. I really came here to thank you, Howard. I haven’t forgotten that you had a share in that building, you did give me some advice on it. I’d be the first one to give you part of the credit.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Oh, it’s not that I’d mind, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to say anything about it. And I’m sure you don’t want to say anything yourself, because you know how it is, people are so funny, they misinterpret everything in such a stupid way.... But since I’m getting part of the award money, I thought it’s only fair to let you have some of it. I’m glad that it comes at a time when you need it so badly.”

He produced his billfold, pulled from it a check he had made out in advance and put it down on the desk. It read: “Pay to the order of Howard Roark—the sum of five hundred dollars.”

“Thank you, Peter,” said Roark, taking the check.

Then he turned it over, took his fountain pen, wrote on the back: “Pay to the order of Peter Keating,” signed and handed the check to Keating.

“And here’s my bribe to you, Peter,” he said. “For the same purpose. To keep your mouth shut.”

Keating stared at him blankly.

“That’s all I can offer you now,” said Roark. “You can’t extort anything from me at present, but later, when I’ll have money, I’d like to ask you please not to blackmail me. I’m telling you frankly that you could. Because I don’t want anyone to know that I had anything to do with that building.”

He laughed at the slow look of comprehension on Keating’s face.

“No?” said Roark. “You don’t want to blackmail me on that? ... Go home, Peter. You’re perfectly safe. I’ll never say a word about it. It’s yours, the building and every girder of it and every foot of plumbing and every picture of your face in the papers.”

Then Keating jumped to his feet. He was shaking.

“God damn you!” he screamed. “God damn you! Who do you think you are? Who told you that you could do this to people? So you’re too good for that building? You want to make me ashamed of it? You rotten, lousy, conceited bastard! Who are you? You don’t even have the wits to know that you’re a flop, an incompetent, a beggar, a failure, a failure, a failure! And you stand there pronouncing judgment! You, against the whole country! You against everybody! Why should I listen to you? You can’t frighten me. You can’t touch me. I have the whole world with me! ... Don’t stare at me like that! I’ve always hated you! You didn’t know that, did you? I’ve always hated you! I always will! I’ll break you some day, I swear I will, if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Peter,” said Roark, “why betray so much?”

Keating’s breath failed on a choked moan. He slumped down on a chair, he sat still, his hands clasping the sides of the seat under him.

After a while he raised his head. He asked woodenly:

“Oh God, Howard, what have I been saying?”

“Are you all right now? Can you go?”

“Howard, I’m sorry. I apologize, if you want me to.” His voice was raw and dull, without conviction. “I lost my head. Guess I’m just unstrung. I didn’t mean any of it. I don’t know why I said it. Honestly, I don’t.”

“Fix your collar. It’s unfastened.”

“I guess I was angry about what you did with that check. But I suppose you were insulted, too. I’m sorry. I’m stupid like that sometimes. I didn’t mean to offend you. We’ll just destroy the damn thing.”

He picked up the check, struck a match, cautiously watched the paper burn till he had to drop the last scrap.

“Howard, we’ll forget it?”

“Don’t you think you’d better go now?”

Keating rose heavily, his hands poked about in a few useless gestures, and he mumbled:

“Well ... well, goodnight, Howard. I ... I’ll see you soon.... It’s because so much’s happened to me lately.... Guess I need a rest.... So long, Howard....”

When he stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him, Keating felt an icy sense of relief. He felt heavy and very tired, but drearily sure of himself. He had acquired the knowledge of one thing: he hated Roark. It was not necessary to doubt and wonder and squirm in uneasiness any longer. It was simple. He hated Roark. The reasons? It was not necessary to wonder about the reasons. It was necessary only to hate, to hate blindly, to hate patiently, to hate without anger; only to hate, and let nothing intervene, and not let oneself forget, ever.

The telephone rang late on Monday afternoon.

“Mr. Roark?” said Weidler. “Can you come right over? I don’t want to say anything over the phone, but get here at once.” The voice sounded clear, gay, radiantly premonitory.

Roark looked at the window, at the clock on the distant tower. He sat laughing at that clock, as at a friendly old enemy; he would not need it any longer, he would have a watch of his own again. He threw his head back in defiance to that pale, gray dial hanging high over the city.

He rose and reached for his coat. He threw his shoulders back, slipping the coat on; he felt pleasure in the jolt of his muscles.

In the street outside, he took a taxi which he could not afford.

The chairman of the board was waiting for him in his office, with Weidler and with the vice-president of the Manhattan Bank Company. There was a long conference table in the room, and Roark’s drawings were spread upon it. Weidler rose when he entered and walked to meet him, his hand outstretched. It was in the air of the room, like an overture to the words Weidler uttered, and Roark was not certain of the moment when he heard them, because he thought he had heard them the instant he entered.

“Well, Mr. Roark, the commission’s yours,” said Weidler.

Roark bowed. It was best not to trust his voice for a few minutes.

The chairman smiled amiably, inviting him to sit down. Roark sat down by the side of the table that supported his drawings. His hand rested on the table. The polished mahogany felt warm and living under his fingers; it was almost as if he were pressing his hand against the foundations of his building; his greatest building, fifty stories to rise in the center of Manhattan.

“I must tell you,” the chairman was saying, “that we’ve had a hell of a fight over that building of yours. Thank God it’s over. Some of our members just couldn’t swallow your radical innovations. You know how stupidly conservative some people are. But we’ve found a way to please them, and we got their consent. Mr. Weidler here was really magnificently convincing on your behalf.”

A great deal more was said by the three men. Roark barely heard it. He was thinking of the first bite of machine into earth that begins an excavation. Then he heard the chairman saying: “... and so it’s yours, on one minor condition.” He heard that and looked at the chairman.

“It’s a small compromise, and when you agree to it we can sign the contract. It’s only an inconsequential matter of the building’s appearance. I understand that you modernists attach no great importance to a mere façade, it’s the plan that counts with you, quite rightly, and we wouldn’t think of altering your plan in any way, it’s the logic of the plan that sold us on the building. So I’m sure you won’t mind.”

“What do you want?”

“It’s only a matter of a slight alteration in the façade. I’ll show you. Our Mr. Parker’s son is studying architecture and we had him draw us up a sketch, just a rough sketch to illustrate what we had in mind and to show the members of the board, because they couldn’t have visualized the compromise we offered. Here it is.”

He pulled a sketch from under the drawings on the table and handed it to Roark.

It was Roark’s building on the sketch, very neatly drawn. It was his building, but it had a simplified Doric portico in front, a cornice on top, and his ornament was replaced by a stylized Greek ornament.

Roark got up. He had to stand. He concentrated on the effort of standing. It made the rest easier. He leaned on one straight arm, his hand closed over the edge of the table, the tendons showing under the skin of his wrist.

“You see the point?” said the chairman soothingly. “Our conservatives simply refused to accept a queer stark building like yours. And they claim that the public won’t accept it either. So we hit upon a middle course. In this way, though it’s not traditional architecture of course, it will give the public the
impression
of what they’re accustomed to. It adds a certain air of sound, stable dignity—and that’s what we want in a bank, isn’t it? It does seem to be an unwritten law that a bank must have a Classic portico—and a bank is not exactly the right institution to parade law-breaking and rebellion. Undermines that intangible feeling of confidence, you know. People don’t trust novelty. But this is the scheme that pleased everybody. Personally, I wouldn’t insist on it, but I really don’t see that it spoils anything. And that’s what the board has decided. Of course, we don’t mean that we want you to follow this sketch. But it gives you our general idea and you’ll work it out yourself, make your own adaptation of the Classic motive to the façade.”

Then Roark answered. The men could not classify the tone of his voice; they could not decide whether it was too great a calm or too great an emotion. They concluded that it was calm, because the voice moved forward evenly, without stress, without color, each syllable spaced as by a machine; only the air in the room was not the air that vibrates to a calm voice.

They concluded that there was nothing abnormal in the manner of the man who was speaking, except the fact that his right hand would not leave the edge of the table, and when he had to move the drawings, he did it with his left hand, like a man with one arm paralyzed.

He spoke for a long time. He explained why this structure could not have a Classic motive on its façade. He explained why an honest building, like an honest man, had to be of one piece and one faith; what constituted the life source, the idea in any existing thing or creature, and why—if one smallest part committed treason to that idea—the thing or the creature was dead; and why the good, the high and the noble on earth was only that which kept its integrity.

The chairman interrupted him:

“Mr. Roark, I agree with you. There’s no answer to what you’re saying. But unfortunately, in practical life, one can’t always be so flawlessly consistent. There’s always the incalculable human element of emotion. We can’t fight that with cold logic. This discussion is actually superfluous. I can agree with you, but I can’t help you. The matter is closed. It was the board’s final decision—after more than usually prolonged consideration, as you know.”

“Will you let me appear before the board and speak to them?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Roark, but the board will not re-open the question for further debate. It was final. I can only ask you to state whether you agree to accept the commission on our terms or not. I must admit that the board has considered the possibility of your refusal. In which case, the name of another architect, one Gordon L. Prescott, has been mentioned most favorably as an alternative. But I told the board that I felt certain you would accept.”

He waited. Roark said nothing.

“You understand the situation, Mr. Roark?”

“Yes,” said Roark. His eyes were lowered. He was looking down at the drawings.

“Well?”

Roark did not answer.

“Yes or no, Mr. Roark?”

Roark’s head leaned back. He closed his eyes.

“No,” said Roark.

After a while the chairman asked:

“Do you realize what you’re doing?”

“Quite,” said Roark.

“Good God!” Weidler cried suddenly. “Don’t you know how big a commission this is? You’re a young man, you won’t get another chance like this. And ... all right, damn it all, I’ll say it! You need this! I know how badly you need it!”

Roark gathered the drawings from the table, rolled them together and put them under his arm.

“It’s sheer insanity!” Weidler moaned. “I want you. We want your building. You need the commission. Do you have to be quite so fanatical and selfless about it?”

“What?” Roark asked incredulously.

“Fanatical and selfless.”

Roark smiled. He looked down at his drawings. His elbow moved a little, pressing them to his body. He said:

“That was the most selfish thing you’ve ever seen a man do.”

He walked back to his office. He gathered his drawing instruments and the few things he had there. It made one package and he carried it under his arm. He locked the door and gave the key to the rental agent. He told the agent that he was closing his office. He walked home and left the package there. Then he went to Mike Donnigan’s house.

“No?” Mike asked, after one look at him.

“No,” said Roark.

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you some other time.”

“The bastards!”

“Never mind that, Mike.”

“How about the office now?”

“I’ve closed the office.”

“For good?”

“For the time being.”

“God damn them all, Red! God damn them!”

“Shut up. I need a job, Mike. Can you help me?”

“Me?”

“I don’t know anyone in those trades here. Not anyone that would want me. You know them all.”

“In what trades? What are you talking about?”

“In the building trades. Structural work. As I’ve done before.”

“You mean—a plain workman’s job?”

“I mean a plain workman’s job.”

“You’re crazy, you God-damn fool!”

“Cut it, Mike. Will you get me a job?”

“But why in hell? You can get a decent job in an architect’s office. You know you can.”

“I won’t, Mike. Not ever again.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to help them do what they’re doing.”

“You can get a nice clean job in some other line.”

“I would have to think on a nice clean job. I don’t want to think. Not their way. It will have to be their way, no matter where I go. I want a job where I won’t have to think.”

“Architects don’t take workmen’s jobs.”

“That’s all this architect can do.”