The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

  "I'll kick you upstairs after dinner and lock the door," said Wynand, "and leave you there to sleep twelve hours."

  "All right."

  "Want to get up early? Let's go for a swim before sunrise."

  "Mr. Roark is tired, Gail," said Dominique, her voice sharp.

  Roark raised himself on an elbow to look at her. She saw his eyes, direct, understanding.

  "You're acquiring the bad habits of all commuters, Gail," she said, "imposing your country hours on guests from the city who are not used to them." She thought: Let it be mine--that one moment when you were walking to the lake--don't let Gail take that also, like everything else. "You can't order Mr. Roark around as if he were an employee of the Banner."

  "I don't know anyone on earth I'd rather order around than Mr. Roark," said Wynand gaily, "whenever I can get away with it."

  "You're getting away with it."

  "I don't mind taking orders, Mrs. Wynand," said Roark. "Not from a man as capable as Gail."

  Let me win this time, she thought, please let me win this time--it means nothing to you--it's senseless and it means nothing at all--but refuse him, refuse him for the sake of the memory of a moment's pause that had not belonged to him.

  "I think you should rest, Mr. Roark. You should sleep late tomorrow. I'll tell the servants not to disturb you."

  "Why, no, thanks, I'll be all right in a few hours, Mrs. Wynand. I like to swim before breakfast. Knock at the door when you're ready, Gail, and we'll go down together."

  She looked over the spread of lake and hills, with not a sign of men, not another house anywhere, just water, trees and sun, a world of their own, and she thought he was right--they belonged together--the three of them.

  The drawings of Cortlandt Homes presented six buildings, fifteen stories high, each made in the shape of an irregular star with arms extending from a central shaft. The shafts contained elevators, stairways, heating systems and all the utilities. The apartments radiated from the center in the form of extended triangles. The space between the arms allowed light and air from three sides. The ceilings were pre-cast; the inner walls were of plastic tile that required no painting or plastering; all pipes and wires were laid out in metal ducts at the edge of the floors, to be opened and replaced, when necessary, without costly demolition; the kitchens and bathrooms were prefabricated as complete units; the inner partitions were of light metal that could be folded into the walls to provide one large room or pulled out to divide it; there were few halls or lobbies to clean, a minimum of cost and labor required for the maintenance of the place. The entire plan was a composition in triangles. The buildings, of poured concrete, were a complex modeling of simple structural features; there was no ornament; none was needed; the shapes had the beauty of sculpture.

  Ellsworth Toohey did not look at the plans which Keating had spread out on his desk. He stared at the perspective drawing. He stared, his mouth open.

  Then he threw his head back and howled with laughter.

  "Peter," he said, "you're a genius."

  He added: "I think you know exactly what I mean." Keating looked at him blankly, without curiosity. "You've succeeded in what I've spent a lifetime trying to achieve, in what centuries of men and bloody battles behind us have tried to achieve. I take my hat off to you, Peter, in awe and admiration."

  "Look at the plans," said Keating listlessly. "It will rent for ten dollars a unit."

  "I haven't the slightest doubt that it will. I don't have to look. Oh yes, Peter, this will go through. Don't worry. This will be accepted. My congratulations, Peter."

  "You God-damn fool!" said Gail Wynand. "What are you up to?"

  He threw to Roark a copy of the Banner, folded at an inside page. The page bore a photograph captioned: "Architects' drawing of Cortlandt Homes, the $15,000,000 Federal Housing Project to be built in Astoria, L. I., Keating & Dumont, architects."

  Roark glanced at the photograph and asked: "What do you mean?"

  "You know damn well what I mean. Do you think I picked the things in my art gallery by their signatures? If Peter Keating designed this, I'll eat every copy of today's Banner."

  "Peter Keating designed this, Gail."

  "You fool. What are you after?"

  "If I don't want to understand what you're talking about, I won't understand it, no matter what you say."

  "Oh, you might, if I run a story to the effect that a certain housing project was designed by Howard Roark, which would make a swell exclusive story and a joke on one Mr. Toohey who's the boy behind the boys on most of those damn projects."

  "You publish that and I'll sue hell out of you."

  "You really would?"

  "I would. Drop it, Gail. Don't you see I don't want to discuss it?"

  Later, Wynand showed the picture to Dominique and asked:

  "Who designed this?"

  She looked at it. "Of course," was all she answered.

  "What kind of 'changing world,' Alvah? Changing to what? From what? Who's doing the changing?"

  Parts of Alvah Scarret's face looked anxious, but most of it was impatient, as he glanced at the proofs of his editorial on "Motherhood in a Changing World," which lay on Wynand's desk.

  "What the hell, Gail," he muttered indifferently.

  "That's what I want to know--what the hell?" He picked up the proof and read aloud: " 'The world we have known is gone and done for and it's no use kidding ourselves about it. We cannot go back, we must go forward. The mothers of today must set the example by broadening their own emotional view and raising their selfish love for their own children to a higher plane, to include everybody's little children. Mothers must love every kid in their block, in their street, in their city, county, state, nation and the whole wide, wide world--just exactly as much as their own little Mary or Johnny.' " Wynand wrinkled his nose fastidiously. "Alvah? ... It's all right to dish out crap. But--this kind of crap?"

  Alvah Scarret would not look at him.

  "You're out of step with the times, Gail," he said. His voice was low; it had a tone of warning--as of something baring its teeth, tentatively, just for future reference.

  This was so odd a behavior for Alvah Scarret that Wynand lost all desire to pursue the conversation. He drew a line across the editorial, but the blue pencil stroke seemed tired and ended in a blur. He said: "Go and bat out something else, Alvah."

  Scarret rose, picked up the strip of paper, turned and left the room without a word.

  Wynand looked after him, puzzled, amused and slightly sick.

  He had known for several years the trend which his paper had embraced gradually, imperceptibly, without any directive from him. He had noticed the cautious "slanting" of news stories, the half-hints, the vague allusions, the peculiar adjectives peculiarly placed, the stressing of certain themes, the insertion of political conclusions where none was needed. If a story concerned a dispute between employer and employee, the employer was made to appear guilty, simply through wording, no matter what the facts presented. If a sentence referred to the past, it was always "our dark past" or "our dead past." If a statement involved someone's personal motive, it was always "goaded by selfishness" or "egged by greed." A crossword puzzle gave the definition of "obsolescent individuals" and the word came out as "capitalists."

  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 financ
ial 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."