The Fountainhead (93 page)

In October, early one morning, the door of Roark’s reception room flew open and Steven Mallory rushed in, making straight for Roark’s office. The secretary tried to stop him; Roark was working and no interruptions were allowed. But Mallory shoved her aside and tore into the office, slamming the door behind. She noticed that he held a newspaper in his hand.

Roark glanced up at him, from the drafting table, and dropped his pencil. He knew that this was the way Mallory’s face had looked when he shot at Ellsworth Toohey.

“Well, Howard? Do you want to know why you got Monadnock Valley?”

He threw the newspaper down on the table. Roark saw the heading of a story on the third page: “Caleb Bradley arrested.”

“It’s all there,” said Mallory. “Don’t read it. It will make you sick.”

“All right, Steve, what is it?”

“They sold two hundred percent of it.”

“Who did? Of what?”

“Bradley and his gang. Of Monadnock Valley.” Mallory spoke with a forced, vicious, self-torturing precision. “They thought it was worthless —from the first. They got the land practically for nothing—they thought it was no place for a resort at all—out of the way, with no bus lines or movie theaters around—they thought the time wasn’t right and the public wouldn’t go for it. They made a lot of noise and sold shares to a lot of wealthy suckers—it was just a huge fraud. They sold two hundred percent of the place. They got twice what it cost them to build it. They were certain it would fail. They wanted it to fail. They expected no profits to distribute. They had a nice scheme ready for how to get out of it when the place went bankrupt. They were prepared for anything—except for seeing it turn into the kind of success it is. And they couldn’t go on—because now they’d have to pay their backers twice the amount the place earned each year. And it’s earning plenty. And they thought they had arranged for certain failure. Howard, don’t you understand? They chose you as the worst architect they could find!”

Roark threw his head back and laughed.

“God damn you, Howard! It’s not funny!”

“Sit down, Steve. Stop shaking. You look as if you’d just seen a whole field of butchered bodies.”

“I have. I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen the root. I’ve seen what makes such fields possible. What do the damn fools think of as horror? Wars, murders, fires, earthquakes? To hell with that! This is horror—that story in the paper. That’s what men should dread and fight and scream about and call the worst shame on their record. Howard, I’m thinking of all the explanations of evil and all the remedies offered for it through the centuries. None of them worked. None of them explained or cured anything. But the root of evil—my drooling beast—it’s there, Howard, in that story. In that—and in the souls of the smug bastards who’ll read it and say: ‘Oh well, genius must always struggle, it’s good for ’em’—and then go and look for some village idiot to help, to teach him how to weave baskets. That’s the drooling beast in action. Howard, think of Monadnock. Close your eyes and see it. And then think that the men who ordered it, believed it was the worst thing they could build! Howard, there’s something wrong, something very terribly wrong in the world if you were given your greatest job—as a filthy joke!”

“When will you stop thinking about that? About the world and me? When will you learn to forget it? When will Dominique ...”

He stopped. They had not mentioned that name in each other’s presence for five years. He saw Mallory’s eyes, intent and shocked. Mallory realized that his words had hurt Roark, hurt him enough to force this admission. But Roark turned to him and said deliberately:

“Dominique used to think just as you do.”

Mallory had never spoken of what he guessed about Roark’s past. Their silence had always implied that Mallory understood, that Roark knew it, and that it was not to be discussed. But now Mallory asked:

“Are you still waiting for her to come back? Mrs. Gail Wynand—God damn her!”

Roark said without emphasis:

“Shut up, Steve.”

Mallory whispered: “I’m sorry.”

Roark walked to his table and said, his voice normal again:

“Go home, Steve, and forget about Bradley. They’ll all be suing one another now, but we won’t be dragged in and they won’t destroy Monadnock. Forget it, and get out, I have to work.”

He brushed the newspaper off the table, with his elbow, and bent over the sheets of drafting paper.

 

There was a scandal over the revelations of the financing methods behind Monadnock Valley, there was a trial, a few gentlemen sentenced to the penitentiary, and a new management taking Monadnock over for the shareholders. Roark was not involved. He was busy, and he forgot to read the accounts of the trial in the papers. Mr. Bradley admitted—in apology to his partners—that he would be damned if he could have expected a resort built on a crazy, unsociable plan ever to become successful. “I did all I could—I chose the worst fool I could find.”

Then Austen Heller wrote an article about Howard Roark and Monadnock Valley. He spoke of all the buildings Roark had designed, and he put into words the things Roark had said in structure. Only they were not Austen Heller’s usual quiet words—they were a ferocious cry of admiration and of anger. “And may we be damned if greatness must reach us through fraud!”

The article started a violent controversy in art circles.

“Howard,” Mallory said one day, some months later, “you’re famous.”

“Yes,” said Roark, “I suppose so.”

“Three-quarters of them don’t know what it’s all about, but they’ve heard the other one-quarter fighting over your name and so now they feel they must pronounce it with respect. Of the fighting quarter, four-tenths are those who hate you, three-tenths are those who feel they must express an opinion in any controversy, two-tenths are those who play safe and herald any ‘discovery,’ and one-tenth are those who understand. But they’ve all found out suddenly that there is a Howard Roark and that he’s an architect. The
A.G.A. Bulletin
refers to you as a great but unruly talent—and the Museum of the Future has hung up photographs of Monadnock, the Enright House, the Cord Building and the Aquitania, under beautiful glass—next to the room where they’ve got Gordon L. Prescott. And still—I’m glad.”

Kent Lansing said, one evening: “Heller did a grand job. Do you remember, Howard, what I told you once about the psychology of a pretzel? Don’t despise the middleman. He’s necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make every great career: the man who is great, and the man—almost rarer—who is great enough to see greatness and say so.”

Ellsworth Toohey wrote: “The paradox in all this preposterous noise is the fact that Mr. Caleb Bradley is the victim of a grave injustice. His ethics are open to censure, but his esthetics were unimpeachable. He exhibited sounder judgment in matters of architectural merit than Mr. Austen Heller, the outmoded reactionary who has suddenly turned art critic. Mr. Caleb Bradley was martyred by the bad taste of his tenants. In the opinion of this column his sentence should have been commuted in recognition of his artistic discrimination. Monadnock Valley is a fraud -but not merely a financial one.”

There was little response to Roark’s fame among the solid gentlemen of wealth who were the steadiest source of architectural commissions. The men who had said: “Roark? Never heard of him,” now said: “Roark? He’s too sensational.”

But there were men who were impressed by the simple fact that Roark had built a place which made money for owners who didn’t want to make money; this was more convincing than abstract artistic discussions. And there was the one-tenth who understood. In the year after Monadnock Valley Roark built two private homes in Connecticut, a movie theater in Chicago, a hotel in Philadelphia.

In the spring of 1936 a western city completed plans for a World’s Fair to be held next year, an international exposition to be known as “The March of the Centuries.” The committee of distinguished civic leaders in charge of the project chose a council of the country’s best architects to design the fair. The civic leaders wished to be conspicuously progressive. Howard Roark was one of the eight architects chosen.

When he received the invitation, Roark appeared before the committee and explained that he would be glad to design the fair—alone.

“But you can’t be serious, Mr. Roark,” the chairman declared. “After all, with a stupendous undertaking of this nature, we want the best that can be had. I mean, two heads are better than one, you know, and eight heads ... why, you can see for yourself—the best talents of the country, the brightest names—you know, friendly consultation, co-operation and collaboration—you know what makes great achievements.”

“I do.”

“Then you realize ...”

“If you want me, you’ll have to let me do it all, alone. I don’t work with councils.”

“You wish to reject an opportunity like this, a spot in history, a chance of world fame, practically a chance of immortality ...”

“I don’t work with collectives. I don’t consult, I don’t co-operate, I don’t collaborate.”

There was a great deal of angry comment on Roark’s refusal, in architectural circles. People said: “The conceited bastard!” The indignation was too sharp and raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any man living.

“The incident illustrates to perfection,” wrote Ellsworth Toohey, “the antisocial nature of Mr. Howard Roark’s egotism, the arrogance of the unbridled individualism which he has always personified.”

Among the eight chosen to design “The March of the Centuries” were Peter Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, Ralston Holcombe. “I won’t work with Howard Roark,” said Peter Keating, when he saw the list of the council, “you’ll have to choose. It’s he or I.” He was informed that Mr. Roark had declined. Keating assumed leadership over the council. The press stories about the progress of the fair’s construction referred to “Peter Keating and his associates.”

Keating had acquired a sharp, intractable manner in the last few years. He snapped orders and lost his patience before the smallest difficulty; when he lost his patience, he screamed at people; he had a vocabulary of insults that carried a caustic, insidious, almost feminine malice; his face was sullen.

In the fall of 1936 Roark moved his office to the top floor of the Cord Building. He had thought, when he designed that building, that it would be the place of his office some day. When he saw the inscription: “Howard Roark, Architect,” on his new door, he stopped for a moment; then he walked into the office. His own room, at the end of a long suite, had three walls of glass, high over the city. He stopped in the middle of the room. Through the broad panes, he could see the Fargo Store, the Enright House, the Aquitania Hotel. He walked to the windows facing south and stood there for a long time. At the tip of Manhattan, far in the distance, he could see the Dana Building by Henry Cameron.

On an afternoon of November, returning to his office after a visit to the site of a house under construction on Long Island, Roark entered the reception room, shaking his drenched raincoat, and saw a look of suppressed excitement on the face of his secretary; she had been waiting impatiently for his return.

“Mr. Roark, this is probably something very big,” she said. “I made an appointment for you for three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. At his office.”

“Whose office?”

“He telephoned half an hour ago. Mr. Gail Wynand.”

A
SIGN HUNG OVER THE ENTRANCE DOOR, A REPRODUCTION OF THE paper’s masthead:

The sign was small, a statement of fame and power that needed no emphasis; it was like a fine, mocking smile that justified the building’s bare ugliness; the building was a factory scornful of all ornament save the implications of that masthead.

The entrance lobby looked like the mouth of a furnace; elevators drew a stream of human fuel and spat it out. The men did not hurry, but they moved with subdued haste, the propulsion of purpose; nobody loitered in that lobby. The elevator doors clicked like valves, a pulsating rhythm in their sound. Drops of red and green light flashed on a wall board, signaling the progress of cars high in space.

It looked as if everything in that building were run by such control boards in the hands of an authority aware of every motion, as if the building were flowing with channeled energy, functioning smoothly, soundlessly, a magnificent machine that nothing could destroy. Nobody paid any attention to the redheaded man who stopped in the lobby for a moment.

Howard Roark looked up at the tiled vault. He had never hated anyone. Somewhere in this building was its owner, the man who had made him feel his nearest approach to hatred.

Gail Wynand glanced at the small clock on his desk. In a few minutes he had an appointment with an architect. The interview, he thought, would not be difficult; he had held many such interviews in his life; he merely had to speak, he knew what he wanted to say, and nothing was required of the architect except a few sounds signifying understanding.

His glance went from the clock back to the sheets of proofs on his desk. He read an editorial by Alvah Scarret on the public feeding of squirrels in Central Park, and a column by Ellsworth Toohey on the great merits of an exhibition of paintings done by the workers of the City Department of Sanitation. A buzzer rang on his desk, and his secretary’s voice said: “Mr. Howard Roark, Mr. Wynand.”

“Okay,” said Wynand, flicking the switch off. As his hand moved back, he noticed the row of buttons at the edge of his desk, bright little knobs with a color code of their own, each representing the end of a wire that stretched to some part of the building, each wire controlling some man, each man controlling many men under his orders, each group of men contributing to the final shape of words on paper to go into millions of homes, into millions of human brains—these little knobs of colored plastic, there under his fingers. But he had no time to let the thought amuse him, the door of his office was opening, he moved his hand away from the buttons.