The Fountainhead (82 page)

Wynand had shrugged about it, contemptuously amused. His staff, he thought, was well trained: if this was the popular slang of the day, his boys assumed it automatically. It meant nothing at all. He kept it off the editorial page and the rest did not matter. It was no more than a fashion of the moment—and he had survived many changing fashions.

He felt no concern over the “We Don’t Read Wynand” campaign. He obtained one of their men’s-room stickers, pasted it on the windshield of his own Lincoln, added the words: “We don’t either,” and kept it there long enough to be discovered and snapped by a photographer from a neutral paper. In the course of his career he had been fought, damned, denounced by the greatest publishers of his time, by the shrewdest coalitions of financial power. He could not summon any apprehension over the activities of somebody named Gus Webb.

He knew that the
Banner
was losing some of its popularity. “A temporary fad,” he told Scarret, shrugging. He would run a limerick contest, or a series of coupons for victrola records, see a slight spurt of circulation and promptly forget the matter.

He could not rouse himself to full action. He had never felt a greater desire to work. He entered his office each morning with impatient eagerness. But within an hour he found himself studying the joints of the paneling on the walls and reciting nursery rhymes in his mind. It was not boredom, not the satisfaction of a yawn, but more like the gnawing pull of wishing to yawn and not quite making it. He could not say that he disliked his work. It had merely become distasteful; not enough to force a decision; not enough to make him clench his fists; just enough to contract his nostrils.

He thought dimly that the cause lay in that new trend of the public taste. He saw no reason why he should not follow it and play on it as expertly as he had played on all other fads. But he could not follow. He felt no moral scruples. It was not a positive stand rationally taken; not defiance in the name of a cause of importance; just a fastidious feeling, something pertaining almost to chastity: the hesitation one feels before putting one’s foot down into muck. He thought: It doesn’t matter—it will not last—I’ll be back when the wave swings on to another theme—I think I’d just rather sit this one out.

He could not say why the encounter with Alvah Scarret gave him a feeling of uneasiness, sharper than usual. He thought it was funny that Alvah should have switched to that line of tripe. But there had been something else; there had been a personal quality in Alvah’s exit; almost a declaration that he saw no necessity to consider the boss’s opinion any longer.

I ought to fire Alvah, he thought—and then laughed at himself, aghast: fire Alvah Scarret?—one might as well think of stopping the earth—or—of the unthinkable—of closing the
Banner.

But through the months of that summer and fall, there were days when he loved the
Banner.
Then he sat at his desk, with his hand on the pages spread before him, fresh ink smearing his palm, and he smiled as he saw the name of Howard Roark in the pages of the
Banner.

The word had come down from his office to every department concerned : Plug Howard Roark. In the art section, the real-estate section, the editorials, the columns, mentions of Roark and his buildings began to appear regularly. There were not many occasions when one could give publicity to an architect, and buildings had little news value, but the
Banner
managed to throw Roark’s name at the public under every kind of ingenious pretext. Wynand edited every word of it. The material was startling on the pages of the
Banner:
it was written in good taste. There were no sensational stories, no photographs of Roark at breakfast, no human interest, no attempt to sell a man; only a considered, gracious tribute to the greatness of an artist.

He never spoke of it to Roark, and Roark never mentioned it. They did not discuss the
Banner.

Coming home to his new house in the evening, Wynand saw the
Banner
on the living-room table every night. He had not allowed it in his home since his marriage. He smiled, when he saw it for the first time, and said nothing.

Then he spoke of it, one evening. He turned the pages until he came to an article on the general theme of summer resorts, most of which was a description of Monadnock Valley. He raised his head to glance at Dominique across the room; she sat on the floor by the fireplace. He said:

“Thank you, dear.”

“For what, Gail?”

“For understanding when I would be glad to see the
Banner
in my house.”

He walked to her and sat down on the floor beside her. He held her thin shoulders in the curve of his arm. He said:

“Think of all the politicians, movie stars, visiting grand dukes and sashweight murderers whom the
Banner
has trumpeted all these years. Think of my great crusades about streetcar companies, red-light districts and home-grown vegetables. For once, Dominique, I can say what I believe.”

“Yes, Gail ...”

“All this power I wanted, reached and never used ... Now they’ll see what I can do. I’ll force them to recognize him as he should be recognized. I’ll give him the fame he deserves. Public opinion? Public opinion is what I make it.”

“Do you think he wants this?”

“Probably not. I don’t care. He needs it and he’s going to get it. I want him to have it. As an architect, he’s public property. He can’t stop a newspaper from writing about him if it wants to.”

“All that copy on him—do you write it yourself?”

“Most of it.”

“Gail, what a great journalist you could have been.”

The campaign brought results, of a kind he had not expected. The general public remained blankly indifferent. But in the intellectual circles, in the art world, in the profession, people were laughing at Roark. Comments were reported to Wynand: “Roark? Oh yes, Wynand’s pet.” “The
Banner’s
glamour boy.” “The genius of the yellow press.” “The
Banner
is now selling art—send two box tops or a reasonable facsimile.” “Wouldn’t you know it? That’s what I’ve always thought of Roark—the kind of talent fit for the Wynand papers.”

“We’ll see,” said Wynand contemptuously—and continued his private crusade.

He gave Roark every commission of importance whose owners were open to pressure. Since spring, he had brought to Roark’s office the contracts for a yacht club on the Hudson, an office building, two private residences. “I’ll get you more than you can handle,” he said. “I’ll make you catch up with all the years they’ve made you waste.”

Austen Heller said to Roark one evening: “If I may be so presumptuous, I think you need advice, Howard. Yes, of course, I mean this preposterous business of Mr. Gail Wynand. You and he as inseparable friends upsets every rational concept I’ve ever held. After all, there are distinct classes of humanity—no, I’m not talking Toohey’s language—but there are certain boundary lines among men which cannot be crossed.”

“Yes, there are. But nobody has ever given the proper statement of where they must be drawn.”

‘Well, the friendship is your own business. But there’s one aspect of it that must be stopped—and you’re going to listen to me for once.”

“I’m listening.”

“I think it’s fine, all those commissions he’s dumping on you. I’m sure he’ll be rewarded for that and lifted several rungs in hell, where he’s certain to go. But he must stop that publicity he’s splashing you with in the
Banner.
You’ve got to make him stop. Don’t you know that the support of the Wynand papers is enough to discredit anyone?” Roark said nothing. “It’s hurting you professionally, Howard.”

“I know it is.”

“Are you going to make him stop?”

“No.”

“But why in blazes?”

“I said I’d listen, Austen. I didn’t say I’d speak about him.”

Late one afternoon in the fall Wynand came to Roark’s office, as he often did at the end of a day, and when they walked out together, he said: “It’s a nice evening. Let’s go for a walk, Howard. There’s a piece of property I want you to see.”

He led the way to Hell’s Kitchen. They walked around a great rectangle—two blocks between Ninth Avenue and Eleventh, five blocks from north to south. Roark saw a grimy desolation of tenements, sagging hulks of what had been red brick, crooked doorways, rotting boards, strings of gray underclothing in narrow air shafts, not as a sign of life, but as a malignant growth of decomposition.

“You own that?” Roark asked.

“All of it.”

“Why show it to me? Don’t you know that making an architect look at that is worse than showing him a field of unburied corpses?”

Wynand pointed to the white-tiled front of a new diner across the street: “Let’s go in there.”

They sat by the window, at a clean metal table, and Wynand ordered coffee. He seemed as graciously at home as in the best restaurants of the city; his elegance had an odd quality here—it did not insult the place, but seemed to transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes a palace of any house he enters. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, watching Roark through the steam of the coffee, his eyes narrowed, amused. He moved one finger to point across the street.

“That’s the first piece of property I ever bought, Howard. It was a long time ago. I haven’t touched it since.”

“What were you saving it for?”

“You.”

Roark raised the heavy white mug of coffee to his lips, his eyes holding Wynand’s, narrowed and mocking in answer. He knew that Wynand wanted eager questions and he waited patiently instead.

“You stubborn bastard,” Wynand chuckled, surrendering. “All right. Listen. This is where I was born. When I could begin to think of buying real estate, I bought this piece. House by house. Block by block. It took a long time. I could have bought better property and made money fast, as I did later, but I waited until I had this. Even though I knew I would make no use of it for years. You see, I had decided then that this is where the Wynand Building would stand some day.... All right, keep still all you want—I’ve seen what your face looked like just now.”

“Oh, God, Gail! ...”

“What’s the matter? Want to do it? Want it pretty badly?”

“I think I’d almost give my life for it—only then I couldn’t build it. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Something like that. I won’t demand your life. But it’s nice to shock the breath out of you for once. Thank you for being shocked. It means you understood what the Wynand Building implies. The highest structure in the city. And the greatest.”

“I know that’s what you’d want.”

“I won’t build it yet. But I’ve waited for it all these years. And now you’ll wait with me. Do you know that I really like to torture you, in a way? That I always want to?”

“I know.”

“I brought you here only to tell you that it will be yours when I build it. I have waited, because I felt I was not ready for it. Since I met you, I knew I was ready—and I don’t mean because you’re an architect. But we’ll have to wait a little longer, just another year or two, till the country gets back on its feet. This is the wrong time for building. Of course, everybody says that the day of the skyscraper is past. That it’s obsolete. I don’t give a damn about that. I’ll make it pay for itself. The Wynand Enterprises have offices scattered all over town. I want them all in one building. And I hold enough over the heads of enough important people to force them to rent all the rest of the space. Perhaps, it will be the last skyscraper built in New York. So much the better. The greatest and the last.”

Roark sat looking across the street, at the streaked ruins.

“To be torn down, Howard. All of it. Razed off. The place where I did not run things. To be supplanted by a park and the Wynand Building.... The best structures of New York are wasted because they can’t be seen, squeezed against one another in blocks. My building will be seen. It will reclaim the whole neighborhood. Let the others follow. Not the right location, they’ll say? Who makes right locations? They’ll see. This might become the new center of the city—when the city starts living again. I planned it when the
Banner
was nothing but a fourth-rate rag. I haven’t miscalculated, have I? I knew what I would become ... A monument to my life, Howard. Remember what you said when you came to my office for the first time? A statement of my life. There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain. After I am gone that building will be Gail Wynand.... I knew I’d find the right architect when the time came. I didn’t know he would be much more than just an architect I hired. I’m glad it happened this way. It’s a kind of reward. It’s as if I had been forgiven. My last and greatest achievement will also be your greatest. It will be not only my monument but the best gift I could offer to the man who means most to me on earth. Don’t frown, you know that’s what you are to me. Look at that horror across the street. I want to sit here and watch you looking at it. That’s what we’re going to destroy—you and I. That’s what it will rise from—the Wynand Building by Howard Roark. I’ve waited for it from the day I was born. From the day you were born, you’ve waited for your one great chance. There it is, Howard, across the street. Yours—from me.”

X

I
T HAD STOPPED RAINING, BUT PETER KEATING WISHED IT WOULD start again. The pavements glistened, there were dark blotches on the walls of buildings, and since it did not come from the sky, it looked as if the city were bathed in cold sweat. The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old age, and there were yellow puddles of light in windows. Keating had missed the rain, but he felt wet, from his bones out.

He had left his office early, and he walked home. The office seemed unreal to him, as it had for a long time. He could find reality only in the evenings, when he slipped furtively up to Roark’s apartment. He did not slip and it was not furtive, he told himself angrily—and knew that it was; even though he walked through the lobby of the Enright House and rode up in an elevator, like any man on a legitimate errand. It was the vague anxiety, the impulse to glance around at every face, the fear of being recognized; it was a load of anonymous guilt, not toward any person, but the more frightening sense of guilt without a victim.

He took from Roark rough sketches for every detail of Cortlandt—to have them translated into working drawings by his own staff. He listened to Roark’s instructions. He memorized arguments to offer his employers against every possible objection. He absorbed like a recording machine. Afterward, when he gave explanations to his draftsmen, his voice sounded like a disk being played. He did not mind. He questioned nothing.

Now he walked slowly, through the streets full of rain that would not come. He looked up and saw empty space where the towers of familiar buildings had been; it did not look like fog or clouds, but like a solid spread of gray sky that had worked a gigantic, soundless destruction. That sight of buildings vanishing through the sky had always made him uneasy. He walked on, looking down.

It was the shoes that he noticed first. He knew that he must have seen the woman’s face, that the instinct of self-preservation had jerked his glance away from it and let his conscious perception begin with the shoes. They were flat, brown oxfords, offensively competent, too well shined on the muddy pavement, contemptuous of rain and of beauty. His eyes went to the brown skirt, to the tailored jacket, costly and cold like a uniform, to the hand with a hole in the finger of an expensive glove, to the lapel that bore a preposterous ornament—a bow-legged Mexican with red-enameled pants—stuck there in a clumsy attempt at pertness; to the thin lips, to the glasses, to the eyes.

“Katie,” he said.

She stood by the window of a bookstore; her glance hesitated halfway between recognition and a book title she had been examining; then, with recognition evident in the beginning of a smile, the glance went back to the book title, to finish and make an efficient note of it. Then her eyes returned to Keating. Her smile was pleasant; not as an effort over bitterness, and not as welcome; just pleasant.

“Why, Peter Keating,” she said. “Hello, Peter.”

“Katie ...” He could not extend his hand or move closer to her.

“Yes, imagine running into you like this, why, New York is just like any small town, though I suppose without the better features.” There was no strain in her voice.

“What are you doing here? I thought ... I heard ...” He knew she had a good job in Washington and had moved there two years ago.

“Just a business trip. Have to dash right back tomorrow. Can’t say that I mind it, either. New York seems so dead, so
slow.”

“Well, I’m glad you like your job ... if you mean ... isn’t that what you mean?”

“Like my job? What a silly thing to say. Washington is the only grown-up place in the country. I don’t see how people can live anywhere else. What have you been doing, Peter? I saw your name in the paper the other day, it was something important.”

“I ... I’m working.... You haven’t changed much, Katie, not really, have you?—I mean, your face—you look like you used to—in a way ...”

“It’s the only face I’ve got. Why do people always have to talk about changes if they haven’t seen each other for a year or two? I ran into Grace Parker yesterday and she had to go into an inventory of my appearance. I could just hear every word before she said it—‘You look so nice—not a day older, really, Catherine.’ People are provincial.”

“But ... you do look nice.... It’s ... nice to see you ...”

“I’m glad to see you, too. How is the building industry?”

“I don’t know.... What you read about must have been Cortlandt ... I’m doing Cortlandt Homes, a housing ...”

“Yes, of course. That was it. I think it’s very good for you, Peter. To do a job, not just for private profit and a fat fee, but with a social purpose. I think architects should stop money grubbing and give a little time to government work and broader objectives.”

“Why, most of them would grab it if they could get it, it’s one of the hardest rackets to break into, it’s a closed ...”

“Yes, yes, I know. It’s simply impossible to make the laymen understand our methods of working, and that’s why all we hear are all those stupid, boring complaints. You mustn’t read the Wynand papers, Peter.”

“I never read the Wynand papers. What on earth has it got to do with ... Oh, I ... I don’t know what we’re talking about, Katie.”

He thought that she owed him nothing, or every kind of anger and scorn she could command; and yet there was a human obligation she still had toward him: she owed him an evidence of strain in this meeting. There was none.

“We really should have a great deal to talk about, Peter.” The words would have lifted him, had they not been pronounced so easily. “But we can’t stand here all day.” She glanced at her wrist watch. “I’ve got an hour or so, suppose you take me somewhere for a cup of tea, you could use some hot tea, you look frozen.”

That was her first comment on his appearance; that, and a glance without reaction. He thought, even Roark had been shocked, had acknowledged the change.

“Yes, Katie. That will be wonderful. I ...” He wished she had not been the one to suggest it; it was the right thing for them to do; he wished she had not been able to think of the right thing; not so quickly. “Let’s find a nice, quiet place....”

“We’ll go to Thorpe’s. There’s one around the corner. They have the nicest watercress sandwiches.”

It was she who took his arm to cross the street, and dropped it again on the other side. The gesture had been automatic. She had not noticed it.

There was a counter of pastry and candy inside the door of Thorpe’s. A large bowl of sugar-coated almonds, green and white, glared at Keating. The place smelled of orange icing. The lights were dim, a stuffy orange haze; the odor made the light seem sticky. The tables were too small, set close together.

He sat, looking down at a paper lace doily on a black glass table top. But when he lifted his eyes to Catherine, he knew that no caution was necessary: she did not react to his scrutiny; her expression remained the same, whether he studied her face or that of the woman at the next table; she seemed to have no consciousness of her own person.

It was her mouth that had changed most, he thought; the lips were drawn in, with only a pale edge of flesh left around the imperious line of their opening; a mouth to issue orders, he thought, but not big orders or cruel orders; just mean little ones—about plumbing and disinfectants. He saw the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes—a skin like paper that had been crumpled and then smoothed out.

She was telling him about her work in Washington, and he listened bleakly. He did not hear the words, only the tone of her voice, dry and crackling.

A waitress in a starched orchid uniform came to take their orders. Catherine snapped:

“The tea sandwiches special. Please.”

Keating said:

“A cup of coffee.” He saw Catherine’s eyes on him, and in a sudden panic of embarrassment, feeling he must not confess that he couldn’t swallow a bite of food now, feeling that the confession would anger her, he added: “A ham and swiss on rye, I guess.”

“Peter, what ghastly food habits! Wait a minute, waitress. You don’t want that, Peter. It’s very bad for you. You should have a fresh salad. And coffee is bad at this time of the day. Americans drink too much coffee.”

“All right,” said Keating.

“Tea and a combination salad, waitress.... And—oh, waitress!—no bread with the salad—you’re gaining weight, Peter—some diet crackers. Please.”

Keating waited until the orchid uniform had moved away, and then he said, hopefully:

“I have changed, haven’t I, Katie? I do look pretty awful?” Even a disparaging comment would be a personal link.

“What? Oh, I guess so. It isn’t healthy. But Americans know nothing whatever about the proper nutritional balance. Of course, men do make too much fuss over mere appearance. They’re much vainer than women. It’s really women who’re taking charge of all productive work now, and women will build a better world.”

“How does one build a better world, Katie?”

“Well, if you consider the determining factor, which is, of course, economic ...”

“No, I ... I didn’t ask it that way.... Katie, I’ve been very unhappy.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. One hears so many people say that nowadays. That’s because it’s a transition period and people feel rootless. But you’ve always had a bright disposition, Peter.”

“Do you ... do you remember what I was like?”

“Goodness, Peter, you talk as if it had been sixty-five years ago.”

“But so many things happened. I ...” He took the plunge; he had to take it; the crudest way seemed the easiest. “I was married. And divorced.”

“Yes, I read about that. I was glad when you were divorced.” She leaned forward. “If your wife was the kind of woman who could marry Gail Wynand, you were lucky to get rid of her.”

The tone of chronic impatience that ran words together had not altered to pronounce this. He had to believe it: this was all the subject meant to her.

“Katie, you’re very tactful and kind ... but drop the act,” he said, knowing in dread that it was not an act. “Drop it.... Tell me what you thought of me then.... Say everything.... I don’t mind.... I want to hear it.... Don’t you understand? I’ll feel better if I hear it.”

“Surely, Peter, you don’t want me to start some sort of recriminations ? I’d say it was conceited of you, if it weren’t so childish.”

“What did you feel—that day—when I didn’t come—and then you heard I was married?” He did not know what instinct drove him, through numbness, to be brutal as the only means left to him. “Katie, you suffered then?”

“Yes, of course I suffered. All young people do in such situations. It seems foolish afterward. I cried, and I screamed some dreadful things at Uncle Ellsworth, and he had to call a doctor to give me a sedative, and then weeks afterward I fainted on the street one day without any reason, which was really disgraceful. All the conventional things, I suppose, everybody goes through them, like measles. Why should I have expected to be exempt?—as Uncle Ellsworth said.” He thought that he had not known there was something worse than a living memory of pain: a dead one. “And of course we knew it was for the best. I can’t imagine myself married to you.”

“You can’t imagine it, Katie?”

“That is, nor to anyone else. It wouldn’t have worked, Peter. I’m temperamentally unsuited to domesticity. It’s too selfish and narrow. Of course, I understand what you feel just now and I appreciate it. It’s only human that you should feel something like remorse, since you did what is known as jilted me.” He winced. “You see how stupid those things sound. It’s natural for you to be a little contrite—a normal reflex—but we must look at it objectively, we’re grown-up, rational people, nothing is too serious, we can’t really help what we do, we’re conditioned that way, we just charge it off to experience and go on from there.”

“Katie! You’re not talking some fallen girl out of her problem. You’re speaking about yourself.”

“Is there any essential difference? Everybody’s problems are the same, just like everybody’s emotions.”

He saw her nibbling a thin strip of bread with a smear of green, and noticed that his order had been served. He moved his fork about in his salad bowl, and he made himself bite into a gray piece of diet cracker. Then he discovered how strange it was when one lost the knack of eating automatically and had to do it by full conscious effort; the cracker seemed inexhaustible; he could not finish the process of chewing ; he moved his jaws without reducing the amount of gritty pulp in his mouth.

“Katie ... for six years ... I thought of how I’d ask your forgiveness some day. And now I have the chance, but I won’t ask it. It seems ... it seems beside the point. I know it’s horrible to say that, but that’s how it seems to me. It was the worst thing I ever did in my life—but not because I hurt you. I did hurt you, Katie, and maybe more than you know yourself. But that’s not my worst guilt.... Katie, I wanted to marry you. It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven—that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain—and wasted pain.... Katie, why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things—they’re not even desires—they’re things people do to escape from desires—because it’s such a big responsibility, really to want something.”

“Peter, what you’re saying is very ugly and selfish.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve always had to tell you the truth. About everything. Even if you didn’t ask. I had to.”

“Yes. You did. It was a commendable trait. You were a charming boy, Peter.”

It was the bowl of sugar-coated almonds on the counter that hurt him, he thought in dull anger. The almonds were green and white; they had no business being green and white at this time of the year; the colors of St. Patrick’s Day—then there was always candy like that in all the store windows—and St. Patrick’s Day meant spring—no, better than spring, that moment of wonderful anticipation just before spring is to begin.