The Fountainhead (96 page)

“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.”

In all the gossip about Gail Wynand, no one had ever mentioned the expression of his face as it was in this moment. The few men who had seen it did not talk about it. Of these men, Dwight Carson had been the first. Wynand’s lips were parted, his eyes brilliant. It was an expression of sensual pleasure derived from agony—the agony of his victim or his own, or both.

“I want you to design all my future commercial structures—as the public wishes commercial structures to be designed. You’ll build Colonial houses, Rococo hotels and semi-Grecian office buildings. You’ll exercise your matchless ingenuity within forms chosen by the taste of the people -and you’ll make money for me. You’ll take your spectacular talent and make it obedient. Originality and subservience together. They call it harmony. You’ll create in your sphere what the
Banner
is in mine. Do you think it took no talent to create the
Banner?
Such will be your future career. But the house you’ve designed for me shall be erected as you designed it. It will be the last Roark building to rise on earth. Nobody will have one after mine. You’ve read about ancient rulers who put to death the architect of their palace, that no others might equal the glory he had given them. They killed the architect or cut his eyes out. Modern methods are different. For the rest of your life you’ll obey the will of the majority. I shan’t attempt to offer you any arguments. I am merely stating an alternative. You’re the kind of man who can understand plain language. You have a simple choice: if you refuse, you’ll never build anything again; if you accept, you’ll build this house which you want so much to see erected, and a great many other houses which you won’t like, but which will make money for both of us. For the rest of your life you’ll design rental developments, such as Stoneridge. That is what I want.”

He leaned forward, waiting for one of the reactions he knew well and enjoyed: a look of anger, or indignation, or ferocious pride.

“Why, of course,” said Roark gaily. “I’ll be glad to do it. That’s easy.”

He reached over, took a pencil and the first piece of paper he saw on Wynand’s desk—a letter with an imposing letterhead. He drew rapidly on the back of the letter. The motion of his hand was smooth and confident. Wynand looked at his face bent over the paper; he saw the unwrinkled forehead, the straight line of the eyebrows, attentive, but untroubled by effort.

Roark raised his head and threw the paper to Wynand across the desk.

“Is this what you want?”

Wynand’s house stood drawn on the paper—with Colonial porches, a gambrel roof, two massive chimneys, a few little pilasters, a few porthole windows. It was not a parody, it was a serious job of adaptation in what any professor would have called excellent taste.

“Good God, no!” The gasp was instinctive and immediate.

“Then shut up,” said Roark, “and don’t ever let me hear any architectural suggestions.”