The Fountainhead (64 page)

He tried not to stare at the gracious elegance of Wynand’s figure across the table. He blessed Wynand for having chosen to give this dinner in a public place. People were gaping at Wynand—discreetly and with practiced camouflage, but gaping nevertheless—and their attention included the two guests at Wynand’s table.

Dominique sat between the two men. She wore a white silk dress with long sleeves and a cowl neck, a nun’s garment that acquired the startling effect of an evening gown only by being so flagrantly unsuited to that purpose. She wore no jewelry. Her gold hair looked like a hood. The dull white silk moved in angular planes with the movements of her body, revealing it in a manner of cold innocence, the body of a sacrificial object publicly offered, beyond the need of concealment or desire. Keating found it unattractive. He noticed that Wynand seemed to admire it.

Someone at a distant table stared in their direction insistently, someone tall and bulky. Then the big shape rose to its feet—and Keating recognized Ralston Holcombe hurrying toward them.

“Peter, my boy, so glad to see you,” boomed Holcombe, shaking his hand, bowing to Dominique, conspicuously ignoring Wynand. “Where have you been hiding? Why don’t we see you around any more?” They had had luncheon together three days ago.

Wynand had risen and stood leaning forward a little, courteously. Keating hesitated; then, with obvious reluctance, said:

“Mr. Wynand—Mr. Holcombe.”

“Not Mr. Gail Wynand?” said Holcombe, with splendid innocence.

“Mr. Holcombe, if you saw one of the cough-drop Smith brothers in real life, would you recognize him?” asked Wynand.

“Why—I guess so,” said Holcombe, blinking.

“My face, Mr. Holcombe, is just as much of a public bromide.”

Holcombe muttered a few benevolent generalities and escaped.

Wynand smiled affectionately. “You didn’t have to be afraid of introducing Mr. Holcombe to me, Mr. Keating, even though he is an architect.”

“Afraid, Mr. Wynand?”

“Unnecessarily, since it’s all settled. Hasn’t Mrs. Keating told you that Stoneridge is yours?”

“I ... no, she hasn’t told me ... I didn’t know....” Wynand was smiling, but the smile remained fixed, and Keating felt compelled to go on talking until some sign stopped him. “I hadn’t quite hoped ... not so soon ... of course, I thought this dinner might be a sign ... help you to decide ...” He blurted out involuntarily: “Do you always throw surprises like that—just like that?”

“Whenever I can,” said Wynand gravely.

“I shall do my best to deserve this honor and live up to your expectations, Mr. Wynand.”

“I have no doubt about that,” said Wynand.

He had said little to Dominique tonight. His full attention seemed centered on Keating.

“The public has been kind to my past endeavors,” said Keating, “but I shall make Stoneridge my best achievement.”

“That is quite a promise, considering the distinguished list of your works.”

“I had not hoped that my works were of sufficient importance to attract your attention, Mr. Wynand.”

“But I know them quite well. The Cosmo-Slotnick Building, which is pure Michelangelo.” Keating’s face spread in incredulous pleasure; he knew that Wynand was a great authority on art and would not make such comparisons lightly. “The Prudential Bank Building, which is genuine Palladio. The Slottern Department Store, which is snitched Christopher Wren.” Keating’s face had changed. “Look what an illustrious company I get for the price of one. Isn’t it quite a bargain?”

Keating smiled, his face tight, and said:

“I’ve heard about your brilliant sense of humor, Mr. Wynand.”

“Have you heard about my descriptive style?”

“What do you mean?”

Wynand half turned in his chair and looked at Dominique, as if he were inspecting an inanimate object.

“Your wife has a lovely body, Mr. Keating. Her shoulders are too thin, but admirably in scale with the rest of her. Her legs are too long, but that gives her the elegance of line you’ll find in a good yacht. Her breasts are beautiful, don’t you think?”

“Architecture is a crude profession, Mr. Wynand,” Keating tried to laugh. “It doesn’t prepare one for the superior sort of sophistication.”

“You don’t understand me, Mr. Keating?”

“If I didn’t know you were a perfect gentleman, I might misunderstand it, but you can’t fool me.”

“That is just what I am trying not to do.”

“I appreciate compliments, Mr. Wynand, but I’m not conceited enough to think that we must talk about my wife.”

“Why not, Mr. Keating? It is considered good form to talk of the things one has—or will have—in common.”

“Mr. Wynand, I ... I don’t understand.”

“Shall I be more explicit?”

“No, I...”

“No? Shall we drop the subject of Stoneridge?”

“Oh, let’s talk about Stoneridge! I ...”

“But we are, Mr. Keating.”

Keating looked at the room about them. He thought that things like this could not be done in such a place; the fastidious magnificence made it monstrous; he wished it were a dank cellar. He thought: blood on paving stones—all right, but not blood on a drawing-room rug....

“Now I know this is a joke, Mr. Wynand,” he said.

“It is my turn to admire your sense of humor, Mr. Keating.”

“Things like ... like this aren’t being done ...”

“That’s not what you mean at all, Mr. Keating. You mean, they’re being done all the time, but not talked about.”

“I didn’t think ...”

“You thought it before you came here. You didn’t mind. I grant you I’m behaving abominably. I’m breaking all the rules of charity. It’s extremely cruel to be honest.”

“Please, Mr. Wynand, let’s ... drop it. I don’t know what ... I’m supposed to do.”

“That’s simple. You’re supposed to slap my face.” Keating giggled. “You were supposed to do that several minutes ago.”

Keating noticed that his palms were wet and that he was trying to support his weight by holding on to the napkin on his lap. Wynand and Dominique were eating, slowly and graciously, as if they were at another table. Keating thought that they were not human bodies, either one of them; something had vanished; the light of the crystal fixtures in the room was the radiance of X-rays that ate through, not to the bones, but deeper; they were souls, he thought, sitting at a dinner table, souls held within evening clothes, lacking the intermediate shape of flesh, terrifying in naked revelation—terrifying, because he expected to see torturers, but saw a great innocence. He wondered what they saw, what his own clothes contained if his physical shape had gone.

“No?” said Wynand. “You don’t want to do that, Mr. Keating? But of course you don’t have to. Just say that you don’t want any of it. I won’t mind. There’s Mr. Ralston Holcombe across the room. He can build Stoneridge as well as you could.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Wynand,” whispered Keating. His eyes were fixed upon the tomato aspic on his salad plate; it was soft and shivering; it made him sick.

Wynand turned to Dominique.

“Do you remember our conversation about a certain quest, Mrs. Keating? I said it was a quest at which you would never succeed. Look at your husband. He’s an expert—without effort. That is the way to go about it. Match that, sometime. Don’t bother to tell me that you can’t. I know it. You’re an amateur, my dear.”

Keating thought that he must speak again, but he couldn’t, not as long as that salad was there before him. The terror came from that plate, not from the fastidious monster across the table; the rest of the room was warm and safe. He lurched forward and his elbow swept the plate off the table.

He made a kind of sound expressing regrets. Somebody’s shape came up, there were polite voices of apology, and the mess vanished from the carpet.

Keating heard a voice saying: “Why are you doing this?” saw two faces turned to him and knew that he had said it.

“Mr. Wynand is not doing it to torture you, Peter,” said Dominique calmly. “He’s doing it for me. To see how much I can take.”

“That’s true, Mrs. Keating,” said Wynand. “Partly true. The other part is: to justify myself.”

“In whose eyes?”

“Yours. And my own, perhaps.”

“Do you need to?”

“Sometimes. The
Banner
is a contemptible paper, isn’t it? Well, I have paid with my honor for the privilege of holding a position where I can amuse myself by observing how honor operates in other men.”

His own clothes, thought Keating, contained nothing now, because the two faces did not notice him any longer. He was safe; his place at that table was empty. He wondered, from a great, indifferent distance, why the two were looking at each other quietly, not like enemies, not like fellow executioners, but like comrades.

Two days before they were to sail, Wynand telephoned Dominique late in the evening.

“Could you come over right now?” he asked, and hearing a moment’s silence, added: “Oh, not what you’re thinking. I live up to my agreements. You’ll be quite safe. I just would like to see you tonight.”

“All right,” she said, and was astonished to hear a quiet: “Thank you.”

When the elevator door slid open in the private lobby of his penthouse, he was waiting there, but did not let her step out. He joined her in the elevator.

“I don’t want you to enter my house,” he said. “We’re going to the floor below.”

The elevator operator looked at him, amazed.

The car stopped and opened before a locked door. Wynand unlocked it and let her step out first, following her into the art gallery. She remembered that this was the place no outsider ever entered. She said nothing. He offered no explanation.

For hours she walked silently through the vast rooms, looking at the incredible treasures of beauty. There was a deep carpet and no sound of steps, no sounds from the city outside, no windows. He followed her, stopping when she stopped. His eyes went with hers from object to object. At times his glance moved to her face. She passed, without stopping, by the statue from the Stoddard Temple.

He did not urge her to stay nor to hurry, as if he had turned the place over to her. She decided when she wished to leave, and he followed her to the door. Then she asked:

“Why did you want me to see this? It won’t make me think better of you. Worse, perhaps.”

“Yes, I’d expect that,” he said quietly, “if I had thought of it that way. But I didn’t. I just wanted you to see it.”

IV

T
HE SUN HAD SET WHEN THEY STEPPED OUT OF THE CAR. IN THE spread of sky and sea, a green sky over a sheet of mercury, tracings of fire remained at the edges of the clouds and in the brass fittings of the yacht. The yacht was like a white streak of motion, a sensitive body strained against the curb of stillness.

Dominique looked at the gold letters—
I Do
—on the delicate white bow.

“What does that name mean?” she asked.

“It’s an answer,” said Wynand, “to people long since dead. Though perhaps they are the only immortal ones. You see, the sentence I heard most often in my childhood was ‘You don’t run things around here.’ ”

She remembered hearing that he had never answered this question before. He had answered her at once; he had not seemed conscious of making an exception. She felt a sense of calm in his manner, strange and new to him, an air of quiet finality.

When they went aboard, the yacht started moving, almost as if Wynand’s steps on deck had served as contact. He stood at the rail, not touching her, he looked at the long, brown shore that rose and fell against the sky, moving away from them. Then he turned to her. She saw no new recognition in his eyes, no beginning, but only the continuation of a glance—as if he had been looking at her all the time.

When they went below he walked with her into her cabin. He said: “Please let me know if there’s anything you wish,” and walked out through an inside door. She saw that it led to his bedroom. He closed the door and did not return.

She moved idly across the cabin. A smear of reflection followed her on the lustrous surfaces of the pale satinwood paneling. She stretched out in a low armchair, her ankles crossed, her arms thrown behind her head, and watched the porthole turning from green to a dark blue. She moved her hand, switched on a light; the blue vanished and became a glazed black circle.

The steward announced dinner. Wynand knocked at her door and accompanied her to the dining salon. His manner puzzled her: it was gay, but the sense of calm in the gaiety suggested a peculiar earnestness.

She asked, when they were seated at the table:

“Why did you leave me alone?”

“I thought you might want to be alone.”

“To get used to the idea?”

“If you wish to put it that way.”

“I was used to it before I came to your office.”

“Yes, of course. Forgive me for implying any weakness in you. I know better. By the way, you haven’t asked me where we’re going.”

“That, too, would be weakness.”

“True. I’m glad you don’t care. Because I never have any definite destination. This ship is not for going to places, but for getting away from them. When I stop at a port, it’s only for the sheer pleasure of leaving it. I always think: Here’s one more spot that can’t hold me.”

“I used to travel a great deal. I always felt just like that. I’ve been told it’s because I’m a hater of mankind.”

“You’re not foolish enough to believe that, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Surely you’ve seen through that particular stupidity. I mean the one that claims the pig is the symbol of love for humanity—the creature that accepts anything. As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.”

“You mean the person who says that there’s some good in the worst of us?”

“I mean the person who has the filthy insolence to claim that he loves equally the man who made that statue of you and the man who makes a Mickey Mouse balloon to sell on street corners. I mean the person who loves the men who prefer the Mickey Mouse to your statue—and there are many of that kind. I mean the person who loves Joan of Arc and the salesgirls in dress shops on Broadway—with an equal fervor. I mean the person who loves your beauty and the women he sees in a subway—the kind that can’t cross their knees and show flesh hanging publicly over their garters—with the same sense of exaltation. I mean the person who loves the clean, steady, unfrightened eyes of man looking through a telescope and the white stare of an imbecile—equally. I mean quite a large, generous, magnanimous company. Is it you who hate mankind, Mrs. Keating?”

“You’re saying all the things that—since I can remember—since I began to see and think—have been ...” She stopped.

“Have been torturing you. Of course. One can’t love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It’s one or the other. One doesn’t love God and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn’t know that sacrilege has been committed. Because one doesn’t know God.”

“What will you say if I give you the answer people usually give me—that love is forgiveness?”

“I’ll say it’s an indecency of which you’re not capable—even though you think you’re an expert in such matters.”

“Or that love is pity.”

“Oh, keep still. It’s bad enough to hear things like that. To hear them from you is revolting—even as a joke.”

“What’s your answer?”

“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it—the total passion for the total height—you’re incapable of anything less.”

“As—you and I—know it?”

“It’s what we feel when we look at a thing like your statue. There’s no forgiveness in that, and no pity. And I’d want to kill the man who claims that there should be. But, you see, when he looks at your statue—he feels nothing. That—or a dog with a broken paw—it’s all the same to him. He even feels that he’s done something nobler by bandaging the dog’s paw than by looking at your statue. So if you seek a glimpse of greatness, if you want exaltation, if you ask for God and refuse to accept the washing of wounds as substitute—you’re called a hater of humanity, Mrs. Keating, because you’ve committed the crime of knowing a love humanity has not learned to deserve.”

“Mr. Wynand, have you read what I got fired for?”

“No. I didn’t then. I don’t dare to now.”

“Why?”

He ignored the question. He said, smiling: “And so, you came to me and said ‘You’re the vilest person on earth—take me so that I’ll learn self-contempt. I lack that which most people live by. They find life endurable, while I can’t.’ Do you see now what you’ve shown?”

“I didn’t expect it to be seen.”

“No. Not by the publisher of the New York
Banner,
of course. That’s all right. I expected a beautiful slut who was a friend of Ellsworth Toohey.”

They laughed together. She thought it was strange that they could talk without strain—as if he had forgotten the purpose of this journey. His calm had become a contagious sense of peace between them.

She watched the unobtrusively gracious way their dinner was served, she looked at the white tablecloth against the deep red of the mahogany walls. Everything on the yacht had an air that made her think it was the first truly luxurious place she had ever entered: the luxury was secondary, a background so proper to him that it could be ignored. The man humbled his own wealth. She had seen people of wealth, stiff and awed before that which represented their ultimate goal. The splendor of this place was not the aim, not the final achievement of the man who leaned casually across the table. She wondered what his aim had been.

“This ship is becoming to you,” she said.

She saw a look of pleasure in his eyes—and of gratitude.

“Thank you.... Is the art gallery?”

“Yes. Only that’s less excusable.”

“I don’t want you to make excuses for me.” He said it simply, without reproach.

They had finished dinner. She waited for the inevitable invitation. It did not come. He sat smoking, talking about the yacht and the ocean.

Her hand came to rest accidentally on the tablecloth, close to his. She saw him looking at it. She wanted to jerk her hand away, but forced herself to let it lie still. Now, she thought.

He got up. “Let’s go on deck,” he said.

They stood at the rail and looked at a black void. Space was not to be seen, only felt by the quality of the air against their faces. A few stars gave reality to the empty sky. A few sparks of white fire in the water gave life to the ocean.

He stood, slouched carelessly, one arm raised, grasping a stanchion. She saw the sparks flowing, forming the edges of waves, framed by the curve of his body. That, too, was becoming to him.

She said:

“May I name another vicious bromide you’ve never felt?”

“Which one?”

“You’ve never felt how small you were when looking at the ocean.”

He laughed. “Never. Nor looking at the planets. Nor at mountain peaks. Nor at the Grand Canyon. Why should I? When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man. I think of man’s magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes.”

“Yes. And that particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in contemplating nature—I’ve never received it from nature, only from ...” She stopped.

“From what?”

“Buildings,” she whispered. “Skyscrapers.”

“Why didn’t you want to say that?”

“I ... don’t know.”

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window—no, I don’t feel how small I am—but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”

“Gail, I don’t know whether I’m listening to you or to myself.”

“Did you hear yourself just now?”

She smiled. “Actually not. But I won’t take it back, Gail.”

“Thank you—Dominique.” His voice was soft and amused. “But we weren’t talking about you or me. We were talking about other people.” He leaned with both forearms on the rail, he spoke watching the sparks in the water. “It’s interesting to speculate on the reasons that make men so anxious to debase themselves. As in that idea of feeling small before nature. It’s not a bromide, it’s practically an institution. Have you noticed how self-righteous a man sounds when he tells you about it? Look, he seems to say, I’m so glad to be a pigmy, that’s how virtuous I am. Have you heard with what delight people quote some great celebrity who’s proclaimed that he’s not so great when he looks at Niagara Falls? It’s as if they were smacking their lips in sheer glee that their best is dust before the brute force of an earthquake. As if they were sprawling on all fours, rubbing their foreheads in the mud to the majesty of a hurricane. But that’s not the spirit that leashed fire, steam, electricity, that crossed oceans in sailing sloops, that built airplanes and dams ... and skyscrapers. What is it they fear? What is it they hate so much, those who love to crawl? And why?”

“When I find the answer to that,” she said, “I’ll make my peace with the world.”

He went on talking—of his travels, of the continents beyond the darkness around them, the darkness that made of space a soft curtain pressed against their eyelids. She waited. She stopped answering. She gave him a chance to use the brief silences for ending this, for saying the words she expected. He would not say them.

“Are you tired, my dear?” he asked.

“No.”

“I’ll get you a deck chair, if you want to sit down.”

“No, I like standing here.”

“It’s a little cold. But by tomorrow we’ll be far south and then you’ll see the ocean on fire, at night. It’s very beautiful.”

He was silent. She heard the ship’s speed in the sound of the water, the rustling moan of protest against the thing that cut a long wound across the water’s surface.

“When are we going below?” she asked.

“We’re not going below.”

He had said it quietly, with an odd kind of simplicity, as if he were standing helpless before a fact he could not alter.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

She could not hide the shock; he had seen it in advance, he was smiling quietly, understanding.

“It would be best to say nothing else.” He spoke carefully. “But you prefer to hear it stated—because that kind of silence between us is more than I have a right to expect. You don’t want to tell me much, but I’ve spoken for you tonight, so let me speak for you again. You’ve chosen me as the symbol of your contempt for men. You don’t love me. You wish to grant me nothing. I’m only your tool of self-destruction. I know all that, I accept it and I want you to marry me. If you wish to commit an unspeakable act as your revenge against the world, such an act is not to sell yourself to your enemy, but to marry him. Not to match your worst against his worst, but your worst against his best. You’ve tried that once, but your victim wasn’t worthy of your purpose. You see, I’m pleading my case in your own terms. What mine are, what I want to find in that marriage is of no importance to you and I shall regard it in that manner. You don’t have to know about it. You don’t have to consider it. I exact no promises and impose no obligations on you. You’ll be free to leave me whenever you wish. Incidentally—since it is of no concern to you—I love you.”

She stood, one arm stretched behind her, finger tips pressed to the rail. She said:

“I did not want that.”

“I know. But if you’re curious about it, I’ll tell you that you’ve made a mistake. You let me see the cleanest person I’ve ever seen.”