The Fountainhead (94 page)

“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

“I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

“It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

“I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man’s creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who’re destroying the world.

“I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.

“I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give the ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.

“My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend—and to the battles he won. To every creator whose name is known—and to every creator who lived, struggled and perished unrecognized before he could achieve. To every creator who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To a man who doesn’t want to be named, but who is sitting in this courtroom and knows that I am speaking of him.”

Roark stood, his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted—as he stood in an unfinished building. Later, when he was seated again at the defense table, many men in the room felt as if they still saw him standing; one moment’s picture that would not be replaced.

The picture remained in their minds through the long legal discussions that followed. They heard the judge state to the prosecutor that the defendant had, in effect, changed his plea: he had admitted his act, but had not pleaded guilty of the crime; an issue of temporary legal insanity was raised; it was up to the jury to decide whether the defendant knew the nature and quality of his act, or, if he did, whether he knew that the act was wrong. The prosecutor raised no objection; there was an odd silence in the room; he felt certain that he had won his case already. He made his closing address. No one remembered what he said. The judge gave his instructions to the jury. The jury rose and left the courtroom.

People moved, preparing to depart, without haste, in expectation of many hours of waiting. Wynand, at the back of the room, and Dominique, in the front, sat without moving.

A bailiff stepped to Roark’s side to escort him out. Roark stood by the defense table. His eyes went to Dominique, then to Wynand. He turned and followed the bailiff.

He had reached the door when there was a sharp crack of sound, and a space of blank silence before people realized that it was a knock at the closed door of the jury room. The jury had reached a verdict.

Those who had been on their feet remained standing, frozen, until the judge returned to the bench. The jury filed into the courtroom.

“The prisoner will rise and face the jury,” said the clerk of the court.

Howard Roark stepped forward and stood facing the jury. At the back of the room, Gail Wynand got up and stood also.

“Mr. Foreman, have you reached a verdict?”

“We have.”

“What is your verdict?”

“Not guilty.”

The first movement of Roark’s head was not to look at the city in the window, at the judge or at Dominique. He looked at Wynand.

Wynand turned sharply and walked out. He was the first man to leave the courtroom.

XIX

R
OGER ENRIGHT BOUGHT THE SITE, THE PLANS AND THE RUINS OF Cortlandt from the government. He ordered every twisted remnant of foundations dug out to leave a clean hole in the earth. He hired Howard Roark to rebuild the project. Placing a single contractor in charge, observing the strict economy of the plans, Enright budgeted the undertaking to set low rentals with a comfortable margin of profit for himself. No questions were to be asked about the income, occupation, children or diet of the future tenants; the project was open to anyone who wished to move in and pay the rent, whether he could afford a more expensive apartment elsewhere or not.

Late in August Gail Wynand was granted his divorce. The suit was not contested and Dominique was not present at the brief hearing. Wynand stood like a man facing a court-martial and heard the cold obscenity of legal language describing the breakfast in a house of Monadnock Valley—Mrs. Gail Wynand—Howard Roark; branding his wife as officially dishonored, granting him lawful sympathy, the status of injured innocence, and a paper that was his passport to freedom for all the years before him, and for all the silent evenings of those years.

Ellsworth Toohey won his case before the labor board. Wynand was ordered to reinstate him in his job.

That afternoon Wynand’s secretary telephoned Toohey and told him that Mr. Wynand expected him back at work tonight, before nine o’clock. Toohey smiled, dropping the receiver.

Toohey smiled, entering the Banner Building that evening. He stopped in the city room. He waved to people, shook hands, made witty remarks about some current movies, and bore an air of guileless astonishment, as if he had been absent just since yesterday and could not understand why people greeted him in the manner of a triumphal homecoming.

Then he ambled on to his office. He stopped short. He knew, while stopping, that he must enter, must not show the jolt, and that he had shown it: Wynand stood in the open door of his office.

“Good evening, Mr. Toohey,” said Wynand softly. “Come in.”

“Hello, Mr. Wynand,” said Toohey, his voice pleasant, reassured by feeling his face muscles manage a smile and his legs walking on.

He entered and stopped uncertainly. It was his own office, unchanged, with his typewriter and a stack of fresh paper on the desk. But the door remained open and Wynand stood there silently, leaning against the jamb.

“Sit down at your desk, Mr. Toohey. Go to work. We must comply with the law.”

Toohey gave a gay little shrug of acquiescence, crossed the room and sat down. He put his hands on the desk surface, palms spread solidly, then dropped them to his lap. He reached for a pencil, examined its point and dropped it.

Wynand lifted one wrist slowly to the level of his chest and held it still, the apex of a triangle made by his forearm and the long, drooping fingers of his hand; he was looking down at his wrist watch. He said:

“It is ten minutes to nine. You are back on your job, Mr. Toohey.”

“And I’m happy as a kid to be back. Honestly, Mr. Wynand, I suppose I shouldn’t confess it, but I missed this place like all hell.”

Wynand made no movement to go. He stood, slouched as usual, his shoulder blades propped against the doorjamb, arms crossed on his chest, hands holding his elbows. A lamp with a square shade of green glass burned on the desk, but there was still daylight outside, streaks of tired brown on a lemon sky; the room held a dismal sense of evening in the illumination that seemed both premature and too feeble. The light made a puddle on the desk, but it could not shut out the brown, half-dissolved shapes of the street, and it could not reach the door to disarm Wynand’s presence.

The lamp shade rattled faintly and Toohey felt the rumble under his shoe soles: the presses were rolling. He realized that he had heard them for some time. It was a comforting sound, dependable and alive. The pulse beat of a newspaper—the newspaper that transmits to men the pulse beat of the world. A long, even flow of separate drops, like marbles rolling away in a straight line, like the sound of a man’s heart.

Toohey moved a pencil over a sheet of paper, until he realized that the sheet lay in the lamplight and Wynand could see the pencil making a water lily, a teapot and a bearded profile. He dropped the pencil and made a self-mocking sound with his lips. He opened a drawer and looked attentively at a pile of carbons and paper clips. He did not know what he could possibly be expected to do: one did not start writing a column just like that. He had wondered why he should be asked to resume his duties at nine o’clock in the evening, but he had supposed that it was Wynand’s manner of softening surrender by overdoing it, and he had felt he could afford not to argue the point.

The presses were rolling; a man’s heartbeats gathered and re-broadcast. He heard no other sound and he thought it was absurd to keep this up if Wynand had gone, but most inadvisable to look in his direction if he hadn’t.

After a while he looked up. Wynand was still there. The light picked out two white spots of his figure: the long fingers of one hand closed over an elbow, and the high forehead. It was the forehead that Toohey wanted to see; no, there were no slanting ridges over the eyebrows. The eyes made two solid white ovals, faintly discernible in the angular shadows of the face. The ovals were directed at Toohey. But there was nothing in the face; no indication of purpose.

After a while, Toohey said:

“Really, Mr. Wynand, there’s no reason why you and I can’t get together.”

Wynand did not answer.

Toohey picked up a sheet of paper and inserted it in the typewriter. He sat looking at the keys, holding his chin between two fingers, in the pose he knew he assumed when preparing to attack a paragraph. The rims of the keys glittered under the lamps, rings of bright nickel suspended in the dim room.

The presses stopped.

Toohey jerked back, automatically, before he knew why he had jerked: he was a newspaperman and it was a sound that did not stop like that.

Wynand looked at his wrist watch. He said:

“It’s nine o’clock. You’re out of a job, Mr. Toohey. The
Banner
has ceased to exist.”

The next incident of reality Toohey apprehended was his own hand dropping down on the typewriter keys: he heard the metal cough of the levers tangling and striking together, and the small jump of the carriage.

He did not speak, but he thought his face was naked because he heard Wynand answering him:

“Yes, you had worked here for thirteen years.... Yes, I bought them all out, Mitchell Layton included, two weeks ago....” The voice was indifferent. “No, the boys in the city room didn’t know it. Only the boys in the pressroom....”

Toohey turned away. He picked up a paper clip, held it on his palm, then turned his hand over and let the clip fall, observing with mild astonishment the finality of the law that had not permitted it to remain on his downturned palm.

He got up. He stood looking at Wynand, a stretch of gray carpet between them.

Wynand’s head moved, leaned slightly to one shoulder. Wynand’s face looked as if no barrier were necessary now, it looked simple, it held no anger, the closed lips were drawn in the hint of a smile of pain that was almost humble.

Wynand said:

“This was the end of the
Banner....
I think it’s proper that I should meet it with you.”

Many newspapers bid for the services of Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. He selected the
Courier,
a paper of well-bred prestige and gently uncertain policy.

In the evening of his first day on the new job Ellsworth Toohey sat on the edge of an associate editor’s desk and they talked about Mr. Talbot, the owner of the
Courier,
whom Toohey had met but a few times.

“But Mr. Talbot as a man?” asked Ellsworth Toohey. “What’s his particular god? What would he go to pieces without?”

In the radio room across the hall somebody was twisting a dial. “Time,” blared a solemn voice, “marches on!”

Roark sat at the drafting table in his office, working. The city beyond the glass walls seemed lustrous, the air washed by the first cold of October.

The telephone rang. He held his pencil suspended in a jerk of impatience; the telephone was never to ring when he was drawing. He walked to his desk and picked up the receiver.

“Mr. Roark,” said his secretary, the tense little note in her voice serving as apology for a broken order, “Mr. Gail Wynand wishes to know whether it would be convenient for you to come to his office at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”

She heard the faint buzz of silence in the receiver at her ear and counted many seconds.

“Is he on the wire?” asked Roark. She knew it was not the phone connection that made his voice sound like that.

“No, Mr. Roark. It’s Mr. Wynand’s secretary.”

“Yes. Yes. Tell her yes.”

He walked to the drafting table and looked down at the sketches; it was the first desertion he had ever been forced to commit: he knew he would not be able to work today. The weight of hope and relief together was too great.

When Roark approached the door of what had been the Banner Building, he saw that the sign, the
Banner’s
masthead, was gone. Nothing replaced it. A discolored rectangle was left over the door. He knew the building now contained the offices of the
Clarion
and floors of empty rooms. The
Clarion,
a third-rate afternoon tabloid, was the only representative of the Wynand chain in New York.

He walked to an elevator. He was glad to be the only passenger: he felt a sudden, violent possessiveness for the small cage of steel; it was his, found again, given back to him. The intensity of the relief told him the intensity of the pain it had ended; the special pain, like no other in his life.

When he entered Wynand’s office, he knew that he had to accept that pain and carry it forever, that there was to be no cure and no hope. Wynand sat behind his desk and rose when he entered, looking straight at him. Wynand’s face was more than the face of a stranger: a stranger’s face is an unapproached potentiality, to be opened if one makes the choice and effort; this was a face known, closed and never to be reached again. A face that held no pain of renunciation, but the stamp of the next step, when even pain is renounced. A face remote and quiet, with a dignity of its own, not a living attribute, but the dignity of a figure on a medieval tomb that speaks of past greatness and forbids a hand to reach out for the remains.

“Mr. Roark, this interview is necessary, but very difficult for me. Please act accordingly.”

Roark knew that the last act of kindness he could offer was to claim no bond. He knew he would break what was left of the man before him if he pronounced one word: Gail.

Roark answered:

“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”

Wynand picked up four typewritten sheets of paper and handed them across the desk:

“Please read this and sign it if it meets with your approval.”

“What is it?”

“Your contract to design the Wynand Building.”

Roark put the sheets down. He could not hold them. He could not look at them.

“Please listen carefully, Mr. Roark. This must be explained and understood. I wish to undertake the construction of the Wynand Building at once. I wish it to be the tallest structure of the city. Do not discuss with me the question of whether this is timely or economically advisable. I wish it built. It will be used—which is all that concerns you. It will house the
Clarion
and all the offices of the Wynand Enterprises now located in various parts of the city. The rest of the space will be rented. I have sufficient standing left to guarantee that. You need have no fear of erecting a useless structure. I shall send you a written statement on all details and requirements. The rest will be up to you. You will design the building as you wish. Your decisions will be final. They will not require my approval. You will have full charge and complete authority. This is stated in the contract. But I wish it understood that I shall not have to see you. There will be an agent to represent me in all technical and financial matters. You will deal with him. You will hold all further conferences with him. Let him know what contractors you prefer chosen for the job. If you find it necessary to communicate with me, you will do it through my agent. You are not to expect or attempt to see me. Should you do so, you will be refused admittance. I do not wish to speak to you. I do not wish ever to see you again. If you are prepared to comply with these conditions, please read the contract and sign it.”

Roark reached for a pen and signed without looking at the paper.

“You have not read it,” said Wynand.

Roark threw the paper across the desk.

“Please sign both copies.”

Roark obeyed.

“Thank you,” said Wynand, signed the sheets and handed one to Roark. “This is your copy.”

Roark slipped the paper into his pocket.

“I have not mentioned the financial part of the undertaking. It is an open secret that the so-called Wynand empire is dead. It is sound and doing as well as ever throughout the country, with the exception of New York City. It will last my lifetime. But it will end with me. I intend to liquidate a great part of it. You will, therefore, have no reason to limit yourself by any consideration of costs in your design of the building. You are free to make it cost whatever you find necessary. The building will remain long after the newsreels and tabloids are gone.”

“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”

“I presume you will want to make the structure efficiently economical in maintenance costs. But you do not have to consider the return of the original investment. There’s no one to whom it must return.”

“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”

“If you consider the behavior of the world at present and the disaster toward which it is moving you might find the undertaking preposterous. The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave. But you are not afraid of a gesture against the whole world. This will be the last skyscraper ever built in New York. It is proper that it should be so. The last achievement of man on earth before mankind destroys itself.”