by Ayn Rand
"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."
"He telephoned half an hour ago. Mr. Gail Wynand."
II
A SIGN HUNG OVER THE ENTRANCE DOOR, A REPRODUCTION OF THE paper's masthead:
THE NEW YORK BANNER
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.
Wynand was not certain that he missed a moment, that he did not rise at once as courtesy demanded, but remained seated, looking at the man who entered; perhaps he had risen immediately and it only seemed to him that a long time preceded his movement. Roark was not certain that he stopped when he entered the office, that he did not walk forward, but stood looking at the man behind the desk; perhaps there had been no break in his steps and it only seemed to him that he had stopped. But there had been a moment when both forgot the terms of immediate reality, when Wynand forgot his purpose in summoning this man, when Roark forgot that this man was Dominique's husband, when no door, desk or stretch of carpet existed, only the total awareness, for each, of the man before him, only two thoughts meeting in the middle of the room--"This is Gail Wynand"--"This is Howard Roark."
Then Wynand rose, his hand motioned in simple invitation to the chair beside his desk, Roark approached and sat down, and they did not notice that they had not greeted each other.
Wynand smiled, and said what he had never intended to say. He said very simply:
"I don't think you'll want to work for me."
"I want to work for you," said Roark, who had come here prepared to refuse.
"Have you seen the kind of things I've built?"
"Yes."
Wynand smiled. "This is different. It's not for my public. It's for me."
"You've never built anything for yourself before?"
"No--if one doesn't count the cage I have up on a roof and this old printing factory here. Can you tell me why I've never built a structure of my own, with the means of erecting a city if I wished? I don't know. I think you'd know." He forgot that he did not allow men he hired the presumption of personal speculation upon him.
"Because you've been unhappy," said Roark.
He said it simply, without insolence; as if nothing but total honesty were possible to him here. This was not the beginning of an interview, but the middle; it was like a continuation of something begun long ago. Wynand said:
"Make that clear."
"I think you understand."
"I want to hear you explain it."
"Most people build as they live--as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If he doesn't build, when he has the means, it's because his life has not been what he wanted."
"You don't think it's preposterous to say that to me of all people?"
"No."
"I don't either." Roark smiled. "But you and I are the only two who'd say it. Either part of it: that I didn't have what I wanted or that I could be included among the few expected to understand any sort of great symbols. You don't want to retract that either?"
"No."
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-six."
"I owned most of the papers I have now--when I was thirty-six." He added: "I didn't mean that as any kind of a personal remark. I don't know why I said that. I just happened to think of it."
"What do you wish me to build for you?"
"My home."
Wynand felt that the two words had some impact on Roark apart from any normal meaning they could convey; he sensed it without reason; he wanted to ask: "What's the matter?" but couldn't, since Roark had really shown nothing.
"You were right in your diagnosis," said Wynand, "because you see, now I do want to build a house of my own. Now I'm not afraid of a visible shape for my life. If you want it said directly, as you did, now I'm happy."
"What kind of a house?"
"In the country. I've purchased the site. An estate in Connecticut, five hundred acres. What kind of a house? You'll decide that."
"Did Mrs. Wynand choose me for the job?"
"No. Mrs. Wynand knows nothing about this. It was I who wanted to move out of the city, and she agreed. I did ask her to select the architect -my wife is the former Dominique Francon; she was once a writer on architecture. But she preferred to leave the choice to me. You want to know why I picked you? I took a long time to decide. I felt rather lost, at first. I had never heard of you. I didn't know any architects at all. I mean this literally--and I'm not forgetting the years I've spent in real estate, the things I've built and the imbeciles who built them for me. This is not a Stoneridge, this is--what did you call it?--a statement of my life? Then I saw Monadnock. It was the first thing that made me remember your name. But I gave myself a long test. I went around the country, looking at homes, hotels, all sort of buildings. Every time I saw one I liked and asked who had designed it, the answer was always the same: Howard Roark. So I called you." He added: "Shall I tell you how much I admire your work?"
"Thank you," said Roark. He closed his eyes for an instant.
"You know, I didn't want to meet you."
"Why?"
"Have you heard about my art gallery?"
"Yes."
"I never meet the men whose work I love. The work means too much to me. I don't want the men to spoil it. They usually do. They're an anticlimax to their own talent. You're not. I don't mind talking to you. I told you this only because I want you to know that I respect very little in life, but I respect the things in my gallery, and your buildings, and m
an's capacity to produce work like that. Maybe it's the only religion I've ever had." He shrugged. "I think I've destroyed, perverted, corrupted just about everything that exists. But I've never touched that. Why are you looking at me like this?"
"I'm sorry. Please tell me about the house you want."
"I want it to be a palace--only I don't think palaces are very luxurious. They're so big, so promiscuously public. A small house is the true luxury. A residence for two people only--for my wife and me. It won't be necessary to allow for a family, we don't intend to have children. Nor for visitors, we don't intend to entertain. One guest room--in case we should need it--but not more than that. Living room, dining room, library, two studies, one bedroom. Servants' quarters, garage. That's the general idea. I'll give you the details later. The cost--whatever you need. The appearance--" he smiled, shrugging. "I've seen your buildings. The man who wants to tell you what a house should look like must either be able to design it better--or shut up. I'll say only that I want my house to have the Roark quality."
"What is that?"
"I think you understand."
"I want to hear you explain it."
"I think some buildings are cheap show-offs, all front, and some are cowards, apologizing for themselves in every brick, and some are the eternal unfit, botched, malicious and false. Your buildings have one sense above all--a sense of joy. Not a placid joy. A difficult, demanding kind of joy. The kind that makes one feel as if it were an achievement to experience it. One looks and thinks: I'm a better person if I can feel that."
Roark said slowly, not in the tone of an answer:
"I suppose it was inevitable."
"What?"
"That you would see that."
"Why do you say it as if you ... regretted my being able to see it?"
"I don't regret it."
"Listen, don't hold it against me--the things I've built before."
"I don't."
"It's all those Stoneridges and Noyes-Belmont Hotels--and Wynand papers--that made it possible for me to have a house by you. Isn't that a luxury worth achieving? Does it matter how? They were the means. You're the end."
"You don't have to justify yourself to me."
