The Fountainhead (74 page)

Wynand smiled and shook his head:

“No. There’s nothing I need to ask you. Except about the business arrangements.”

“I never make any conditions, except one: if you accept the preliminary drawings of the house, it is to be built as I designed it, without any alterations of any kind.”

“Certainly. That’s understood. I’ve heard you don’t work otherwise. But will you mind if I don’t give you any publicity on this house? I know it would help you professionally, but I want this building kept out of the newspapers.”

“I won’t mind that.”

“Will you promise not to release pictures of it for publication?”

“I promise.”

“Thank you. I’ll make up for it. You may consider the Wynand papers as your personal press service. I’ll give you all the plugging you wish on any other work of yours.”

“I don’t want any plugging.”

Wynand laughed aloud. “What a thing to say in what a place! I don’t think you have any idea how your fellow architects would have conducted this interview. I don’t believe you were actually conscious at any time that you were speaking to Gail Wynand.”

“I was,” said Roark.

“This was my way of thanking you. I don’t always like being Gail Wynand.”

“I know that.”

“I’m going to change my mind and ask you a personal question. You said you’d answer anything.”

“I will.”

“Have you always liked being Howard Roark?”

Roark smiled. The smile was amused, astonished, involuntarily contemptuous.

“You’ve answered,” said Wynand.

Then he rose and said: “Nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” extending his hand.

When Roark had gone, Wynand sat behind his desk, smiling. He moved his hand toward one of the plastic buttons—and stopped. He realized that he had to assume a different manner, his usual manner, that he could not speak as he had spoken in the last half-hour. Then he understood what had been strange about the interview: for the first time in his life he had spoken to a man without feeling the reluctance, the sense of pressure, the need of disguise he had always experienced when he spoke to people; there had been no strain and no need of strain; as if he had spoken to himself.

He pressed the button and said to his secretary:

“Tell the morgue to send me everything they have on Howard Roark.”

“Guess what,” said Alvah Scarret, his voice begging to be begged for his information.

Ellsworth Toohey waved a hand impatiently in a brushing-off motion, not raising his eyes from his desk.

“Go ’way, Alvah. I’m busy.”

“No, but this is interesting, Ellsworth. Really, it’s interesting. I know you’ll want to know.”

Toohey lifted his head and looked at him, the faint contraction of boredom in the corners of his eyes letting Scarret understand that this moment of attention was a favor; he drawled in a tone of emphasized patience:

“All right. What is it?”

Scarret saw nothing to resent in Toohey’s manner. Toohey had treated him like that for the last year or longer. Scarret had not noticed the transition in their relationship; by the time he noticed the change, it was too late to resent it—it had become normal to them both.

Scarret smiled like a bright pupil who expects the teacher to praise him for discovering an error in the teacher’s own textbook.

“Ellsworth, your private F.B.I. is slipping.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Bet you don’t know what Gail’s been doing—and you always make such a point of keeping yourself informed.”

“What don’t I know?”

“Guess who was in his office today.”

“My dear Alvah, I have no time for quiz games.”

“You wouldn’t guess in a thousand years.”

“Very well, since the only way to get rid of you is to play the vaudeville stooge, I shall ask the proper question: Who was in dear Gail’s office today?”

“Howard Roark.”

Toohey turned to him full face, forgetting to dole out his attention, and said incredulously:

“No!”

“Yes!” said Scarret, proud of the effect.

“Well!” said Toohey and burst out laughing.

Scarret half smiled tentatively, puzzled, anxious to join in, but not quite certain of the cause for amusement.

“Yes, it’s funny. But ... just exactly why, Ellsworth?”

“Oh, Alvah, it would take so long to tell you.”

“I had an idea it might ...”

“Haven’t you any sense of the spectacular, Alvah? Don’t you like fireworks? If you want to know what to expect, just think that the worst wars are religious wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the same race.”

“I don’t quite follow you.”

“Oh, dear, I have so many followers. I brush them out of my hair.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re so cheerful about it, but I thought it’s bad.”

“Of course it’s bad. But not for us.”

“But look: you know how we’ve gone out on a limb, you particularly, on how this Roark is just about the worst architect in town, and if now our own boss hires him—isn’t it going to be embarrassing?”

“Oh that? ... Oh, maybe ...”

“Well, I’m glad you take it that way.”

“What was he doing in Wynand’s office? Is it a commission?”

“That’s what I don’t know. Can’t find out. Nobody knows.”

“Have you heard of Mr. Wynand planning to build anything lately?”

“No. Have you?”

“No. I guess my F.B.I. is slipping. Oh, well, one does the best one can.”

“But you know, Ellsworth, I had an idea. I had an idea where this might be very helpful to us indeed.”

“What idea?” “Ellsworth, Gail’s been impossible lately.”

Scarret uttered it solemnly, with the air of imparting a discovery. Toohey sat half smiling.

“Well, of course, you predicted it, Ellsworth. You were right. You’re always right. I’ll be damned if I can figure out just what’s happening to him, whether it’s Dominique or some sort of a change of life or what, but something’s happening. Why does he get fits suddenly and start reading every damn line of every damn edition and raise hell for the silliest reasons? He’s killed three of my best editorials lately—and he’s never done that to me before. Never. You know what he said to me? He said: ‘Motherhood is wonderful, Alvah, but for God’s sake go easy on the bilge. There’s a limit even for intellectual depravity.’ What depravity? That was the sweetest Mother’s Day editorial I ever put together. Honest, I was touched myself. Since when has he learned to talk about depravity? The other day, he called Jules Fougler a bargain-basement mind, right to his face, and threw his Sunday piece into the wastebasket. A swell piece, too—on the Workers’ theater. Jules Fougler, our best writer! No wonder Gail hasn’t got a friend left in the place. If they hated his guts before, you ought to hear them now!”

“I’ve heard them.”

“He’s losing his grip, Ellsworth. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for you and the swell bunch of people you picked. They’re practically our whole actual working staff, those youngsters of yours, not our old sacred cows who’re writing themselves out anyway. Those bright kids will keep the
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going. But Gail ... Listen, last week he fired Dwight Carson. Now you know, I think that was significant. Of course Dwight was just a deadweight and a damn nuisance, but he was the first one of those special pets of Gail’s, the boys who sold their souls. So, in a way, you see, I liked having Dwight around, it was all right, it was healthy, it was a relic of Gail’s best days. I always said it was Gail’s safety valve. And when he suddenly let Carson go—I didn’t like it, Ellsworth. I didn’t like it at all.”

“What is this, Alvah? Are you telling me things I don’t know, or is this just in the nature of letting off steam—do forgive the mixed metaphor—on my shoulder?”

“I guess so. I don’t like to knock Gail, but I’ve been so damn mad for so long I’m fit to be tied. But here’s what I’m driving at: This Howard Roark, what does he make you think of?”

“I could write a volume on that, Alvah. This is hardly the time to launch into such an undertaking.”

“No, but I mean, what’s the one thing we know about him? That he’s a crank and a freak and a fool, all right, but what else? That he’s one of those fools you can’t budge with love or money or a sixteen-inch gun. He’s worse than Dwight Carson, worse than the whole lot of Gail’s pets put together. Well? Get my point? What’s Gail going to do when he comes up against that kind of a man?”

“One of several possible things.”

“One thing only, if I know Gail, and I know Gail. That’s why I feel kind of hopeful. This is what he’s needed for a long time. A swig of his old medicine. The safety valve. He’ll go out to break that guy’s spine—and it will be good for Gail. The best thing in the world. Bring him back to normal.... That was my idea, Ellsworth.” He waited, saw no complimentary enthusiasm on Toohey’s face and finished lamely: “Well, I might be wrong.... I don’t know.... It might mean nothing at all. ... I just thought that was psychology....”

“That’s what it was, Alvah.”

“Then you think it’ll work that way?”

“It might. Or it might be much worse than anything you imagine. But it’s of no importance to us any more. Because you see, Alvah, as far as the
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is concerned, if it came to a showdown between us and our boss, we don’t have to be afraid of Mr. Gail Wynand any longer.”

When the boy from the morgue entered, carrying a thick envelope of clippings, Wynand looked up from his desk and said:

“That much? I didn’t know he was so famous.”

“Well, it’s the Stoddard trial, Mr. Wynand.”

The boy stopped. There was nothing wrong—only the ridges on Wynand’s forehead, and he did not know Wynand well enough to know what these meant. He wondered what made him feel as if he should be afraid. After a moment, Wynand said:

“All right. Thank you.”

The boy deposited the envelope on the glass surface of the desk, and walked out.

Wynand sat looking at the bulging shape of yellow paper. He saw it reflected in the glass, as if the bulk had eaten through the surface and grown roots to his desk. He looked at the walls of his office and he wondered whether they contained a power which could save him from opening that envelope.

Then he pulled himself erect, he put both forearms in a straight line along the edge of the desk, his fingers stretched and meeting, he looked down, past his nostrils, at the surface of the desk, he sat for a moment, grave, proud, collected, like the angular mummy of a Pharaoh, then he moved one hand, pulled the envelope forward, opened it and began to read.

“Sacrilege” by Ellsworth M. Toohey—“The Churches of our Childhood” by Alvah Scarret—editorials, sermons, speeches, statements, letters to the editor, the
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unleashed full-blast, photographs, cartoons, interviews, resolutions of protest, letters to the editor.

He read every word, methodically, his hands on the edge of the desk, fingers meeting, not lifting the clippings, not touching them, reading them as they lay on top of the pile, moving a hand only to turn a clipping over and read the one beneath, moving the hand with a mechanical perfection of timing, the fingers rising as his eyes took the last word, not allowing the clipping to remain in sight a second longer than necessary. But he stopped for a long time to look at the photographs of the Stoddard Temple. He stopped longer to look at one of Roark’s pictures, the picture of exultation captioned “Are you happy, Mr. Superman?” He tore it from the story it illustrated, and slipped it into his desk drawer. Then he continued reading.

The trial—the testimony of Ellsworth M. Toohey—of Peter Keating -of Ralston Holcombe—of Gordon L. Prescott—no quotations from the testimony of Dominique Francon, only a brief report. “The defense rests.” A few mentions in “One Small Voice”—then a gap—the next clipping dated three years later—Monadnock Valley.

It was late when he finished reading. His secretaries had left. He felt the sense of empty rooms and halls around him. But he heard the sound of the presses: a low, rumbling vibration that went through every room. He had always liked that—the sound of the building’s heart, beating. He listened. They were running off tomorrow’s
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He sat without moving for a long time.

III

R
OARK AND WYNAND STOOD ON THE TOP OF A HILL, LOOKING OVER a spread of land that sloped away in a long gradual curve. Bare trees rose on the hilltop and descended to the shore of a lake, their branches geometrical compositions cut through the air. The color of the sky, a clear, fragile blue-green, made the air colder. The cold washed the colors of the earth, revealing that they were not colors but only the elements from which color was to come, the dead brown not a full brown but a future green, the tired purple an overture to flame, the gray a prelude to gold. The earth was like the outline of a great story, like the steel frame of a building—to be filled and finished, holding all the splendor of the future in naked simplification.

“Where do you think the house should stand?” asked Wynand.

“Here,” said Roark.

“I hoped you’d choose this.”

Wynand had driven his car from the city, and they had walked for two hours down the paths of his new estate, through deserted lanes, through a forest, past the lake, to the hill. Now Wynand waited, while Roark stood looking at the countryside spread under his feet. Wynand wondered what reins this man was gathering from all the points of the landscape into his hand.

When Roark turned to him, Wynand asked:

“May I speak to you now?”

“Of course.” Roark smiled, amused by the deference which he had not requested.

Wynand’s voice sounded clear and brittle, like the color of the sky above them, with the same quality of ice-green radiance:

“Why did you accept this commission?”

“Because I’m an architect for hire.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Don’t you hate my guts?”

“No. Why should I?”

“You want me to speak of it first?”

“Of what?”

“The Stoddard Temple.”

Roark smiled. “So you did check up on me since yesterday.”

“I read our clippings.” He waited, but Roark said nothing. “All of them.” His voice was harsh, half defiance, half plea. “Everything we said about you.” The calm of Roark’s face drove him to fury. He went on, giving slow, full value to each word: “We called you an incompetent fool, a tyro, a charlatan, a swindler, an egomaniac ...”

“Stop torturing yourself.”

Wynand closed his eyes, as if Roark had struck him. In a moment, he said:

“Mr. Roark, you don’t know me very well. You might as well learn this: I don’t apologize. I never apologize for any of my actions.”

“What made you think of apology? I haven’t asked for it.”

“I stand by every one of those descriptive terms. I stand by every word printed in the
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“I haven’t asked you to repudiate it.”

“I know what you think. You understood that I didn’t know about the Stoddard Temple yesterday. I had forgotten the name of the architect involved. You concluded it wasn’t I who led that campaign against you. You’re right, it wasn’t I, I was away at the time. But you don’t understand that the campaign was in the true and proper spirit of the
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It was in strict accordance with the
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function. No one is responsible for it but me. Alvah Scarret was doing only what I taught him. Had I been in town, I would have done the same.”

“That’s your privilege.”

“You don’t believe I would have done it?”

“No.”

“I haven’t asked you for compliments and I haven’t asked you for pity.”

“I can’t do what you’re asking for.”

“What do you think I’m asking?”

“That I slap your face.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I can’t pretend an anger I don’t feel,” said Roark. “It’s not pity. It’s much more cruel than anything I could do. Only I’m not doing it in order to be cruel. If I slapped your face, you’d forgive me for the Stoddard Temple.”

“Is it you who should seek forgiveness?”

“No. You wish I did. You know that there’s an act of forgiveness involved. You’re not clear about the actors. You wish I would forgive you—or demand payment, which is the same thing—and you believe that that would close the record. But, you see, I have nothing to do with it. I’m not one of the actors. It doesn’t matter what I do or feel about it now. You’re not thinking of me. I can’t help you. I’m not the person you’re afraid of just now.”

“Who is?”

“Yourself.”

“Who gave you the right to say all this?”

“You did.”

“Well, go on.”

“Do you wish the rest?”

“Go on.”

“I think it hurts you to know that you’ve made me suffer. You wish you hadn’t. And yet there’s something that frightens you more. The knowledge that I haven’t suffered at all.”

“Go on.”

“The knowledge that I’m neither kind nor generous now, but simply indifferent. It frightens you, because you know that things like the Stoddard Temple always require payment—and you see that I’m not paying for it. You were astonished that I accepted this commission. Do you think my acceptance required courage? You needed far greater courage to hire me. You see, this is what I think of the Stoddard Temple. I’m through with it. You’re not.”

Wynand let his fingers fall open, palms out. His shoulders sagged a little, relaxing. He said very simply:

“All right. It’s true. All of it.”

Then he stood straight, but with a kind of quiet resignation, as if his body were consciously made vulnerable.

“I hope you know you’ve given me a beating in your own way,” he said.

“Yes. And you’ve taken it. So you’ve accomplished what you wanted. Shall we say we’re even and forget the Stoddard Temple?”

“You’re very wise or I’ve been very obvious. Either is your achievement. Nobody’s ever caused me to become obvious before.”

“Shall I still do what you want?”

“What do you think I want now?”

“Personal recognition from me. It’s my turn to give in, isn’t it?”

“You’re appallingly honest, aren’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? I can’t give you the recognition of having made me suffer. But you’ll take the substitute of having given me pleasure, won’t you? All right, then. I’m glad you like me. I think you know this is as much an exception for me as your taking a beating. I don’t usually care whether I’m liked or not. I do care this time. I’m glad.”

Wynand laughed aloud. “You’re as innocent and presumptuous as an emperor. When you confer honors you merely exalt yourself. What in hell made you think I liked you?”

“Now you don’t want any explanations of that. You’ve reproached me once for causing you to be obvious.”

Wynand sat down on a fallen tree trunk. He said nothing; but his movement was an invitation and a demand. Roark sat down beside him; Roark’s face was sober, but the trace of a smile remained, amused and watchful, as if every word he heard were not a disclosure but a confirmation.

“You’ve come up from nothing, haven’t you?” Wynand asked. “You came from a poor family.”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“Just because it feels like a presumption—the thought of handing you anything: a compliment, an idea or a fortune. I started at the bottom, too. Who was your father?”

“A steel puddler.”

“Mine was a longshoreman. Did you hold all sorts of funny jobs when you were a child?”

“All sorts. Mostly in the building trades.”

“I did worse than that. I did just about everything. What job did you like best?”

“Catching rivets, on steel structures.”

“I liked being a bootblack on a Hudson ferry. I should have hated that, but I didn’t. I don’t remember the people at all. I remember the city. The city—always there, on the shore, spread out, waiting, as if I were tied to it by a rubber band. The band would stretch and carry me away, to the other shore, but it would always snap back and I would return. It gave me the feeling that I’d never escape from that city—and it would never escape from me.”

Roark knew that Wynand seldom spoke of his childhood, by the quality of his words: they were bright and hesitant, untarnished by usage, like coins that had not passed through many hands.

“Were you ever actually homeless and starving?” Wynand asked.

“A few times.”

“Did you mind that?”

“No.”

“I didn’t either. I minded something else. Did you want to scream, when you were a child, seeing nothing but fat ineptitude around you, knowing how many things could be done and done so well, but having no power to do them? Having no power to blast the empty skulls around you? Having to take orders—and that’s bad enough—but to take orders from your inferiors! Have you felt that?”

“Yes.”

“Did you drive the anger back inside of you, and store it, and decide to let yourself be torn to pieces if necessary, but reach the day when you’d rule those people and all people and everything around you?”

“No.”

“You didn’t? You let yourself forget?”

“No. I hate incompetence. I think it’s probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn’t make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary.”

“And you were?”

“No. Not in any way that counts.”

“You don’t mind looking back? At anything?”

“No.”

“I do. There was one night. I was beaten and I crawled to a door—I remember the pavement—it was right under my nostrils—I can still see it—there were veins in the stone and white spots—I had to make sure that that pavement moved—I couldn’t feel whether I was moving or not—but I could tell by the pavement—I had to see that those veins and spots changed—I had to reach the next pattern or the crack six inches away—it took a long time—and I knew it was blood under my stomach ...”

His voice had no tone of self-pity; it was simple, impersonal, with a faint sound of wonder.

Roark said: “I’d like to help you.”

Wynand smiled slowly, not gaily. “I believe you could. I even believe that it would be proper. Two days ago I would have murdered anyone who’d think of me as an object for help.... You know, of course, that that night’s not what I hate in my past. Not what I dread to look back on. It was only the least offensive to mention. The other things can’t be talked about.”

“I know. I meant the other things.”

“What are they? You name them.”

“The Stoddard Temple.”

“You want to help me with that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a damn fool. Don’t you realize ...”

“Don’t you realize I’m doing it already?”

“How?”

“By building this house for you.”

Roark saw the slanting ridges on Wynand’s forehead. Wynand’s eyes seemed whiter than usual, as if the blue had ebbed from the iris, two white ovals, luminous on his face. He said:

“And getting a fat commission check for it.”

He saw Roark’s smile, suppressed before it appeared fully. The smile would have said that this sudden insult was a declaration of surrender, more eloquent than the speeches of confidence; the suppression said that Roark would not help him over this particular moment.

“Why, of course,” said Roark calmly.

Wynand got up. “Let’s go. We’re wasting time. I have more important things to do at the office.”

They did not speak on their way back to the city. Wynand drove his car at ninety miles an hour. The speed made two solid walls of blurred motion on the sides of the road; as if they were flying down a long, closed, silent corridor.

He stopped at the entrance to the Cord Building and let Roark out. He said:

“You’re free to go back to that site as often as you wish, Mr. Roark. I don’t have to go with you. You can get the surveys and all the information you need from my office. Please do not call on me again until it is necessary. I shall be very busy. Let me know when the first drawings are ready.”

When the drawings were ready, Roark telephoned Wynand’s office. He had not spoken to Wynand for a month. “Please hold the wire, Mr. Roark,” said Wynand’s secretary. He waited. The secretary’s voice came back and informed him that Mr. Wynand wished the drawings brought to his office that afternoon; she gave the hour; Wynand would not answer in person.

When Roark entered the office, Wynand said: “How do you do, Mr. Roark,” his voice gracious and formal. No memory of intimacy remained on his blank, courteous face.

Roark handed him the plans of the house and a large perspective drawing. Wynand studied each sheet. He held the drawing for a long time. Then he looked up.

“I am very much impressed, Mr. Roark.” The voice was offensively correct. “I have been quite impressed by you from the first. I have thought it over and I want to make a special deal with you.”

His glance was directed at Roark with a soft emphasis, almost with tenderness; as if he were showing that he wished to treat Roark cautiously, to spare him intact for a purpose of his own.

He lifted the sketch and held it up between two fingers, letting the light hit it straight on; the white sheet glowed as a reflector for a moment, pushing the black pencil lines eloquently forward.

“You want to see this house erected?” Wynand asked softly. “You want it very much?”

“Yes,” said Roark.

Wynand did not move his hand, only parted his fingers and let the cardboard drop face down on the desk.

“It will be erected, Mr. Roark. Just as you designed it. Just as it stands on this sketch. On one condition.”

Roark sat leaning back, his hands in his pockets, attentive, waiting.

“You don’t want to ask me what condition, Mr. Roark? Very well, I’ll tell you. I shall accept this house on condition that you accept the deal I offer you. I wish to sign a contract whereby you will be sole architect for any building I undertake to erect in the future. As you realize, this would be quite an assignment. I venture to say I control more structural work than any other single person in the country. Every man in your profession has wanted to be known as my exclusive architect. I am offering it to you. In exchange, you will have to submit yourself to certain conditions. Before I name them, I’d like to point out some of the consequences, should you refuse. As you may have heard, I do not like to be refused. The power I hold can work two ways. It would be easy for me to arrange that no commission be available to you anywhere in this country. You have a small following of your own, but no prospective employer can withstand the kind of pressure I am in a position to exert. You have gone through wasted periods of your life before. They were nothing, compared to the blockade I can impose. You might have to go back to a granite quarry—oh yes, I know about that, summer of 1928, the Francon quarry in Connecticut—how?—private detectives, Mr. Roark—you might have to go back to a granite quarry, only I shall see to it that the quarries also will be closed to you. Now I’ll tell you what I want of you.”