“I want you to meet a very special lady.” Woodroe went to the telephone.
They traveled, Than Koo talking, Woodroe listening attentively, the twenty minutes to the Thirty-fourth Street subway station, and then walked over to Paone’s restaurant. Lee was waiting.
They ordered wine and, tackling his risotto as best he could while speaking, Koo told his story, and tried to tell the story of his beleaguered country.
Later, back in the apartment, Woodroe said that as he viewed it, Vietnam was the next contest in the struggle for the world.
Lee agreed. She said that the cause of a free South Vietnam was a holy cause, in her eyes.
29
NATHANIEL BRANDEN had hoped that, somehow, divulging their secrets might be put off. But put off forever? He had to force himself to think through to the consequences of—thinking. Thinking about this subject. Thinking. Reasoning. These were supremely critical skills required of the Designated Successor.
Ayn and he had talked on the subject hours and hours and hours, lying together in adulterous sheets. They had made their love, up until that last Monday, on the large sofa in the living room. It was as safe from intrusion as human quarters could be.
Yet, Nathan reflected, how safe could any quarters be? There had been that man in London who had somehow materialized one morning at breakfast time in the bedroom of the queen of England! If somebody could get through to the sovereign bedchamber in Buckingham Palace, which was probably guarded by, what—a thousand foot guards? Foot guards with those forbidding bearskins on top of their heads. . . . True, in the afternoon hours between two and six, nobody entered Miss Rand’s studio. Frank O’Connor worked in his own quarters upstairs and knew never to interrupt his wife at work; the cleaning lady was gone after washing the lunch dishes; and when Ayn was at work in her private quarters, only those specifically told to be there rang at the door. And that had meant, in the last year or two, only one person, Nathaniel Branden, her collaborator.
Then, a week ago, Frank O’Connor had gone to Boston to visit the museum there and to approach a dealer whose name had been given to him. Frank would show him slides of his artwork. Maybe the dealer would take Frank on and find a market for his paintings. In any case, he would spend the night in Boston and go then to see a second dealer in Hartford, getting back to New York the next day.
On Monday afternoon, Ayn’s eyes were especially luminous when Nathaniel came in, as expected, at three. But this time she led him upstairs into a room he had never laid eyes on, a bedroom with a king-size bed and not less than six oil pictures of Ayn on the walls, one of them showing her bare-breasted, the Ayn of twenty years ago. The shades had been drawn and Nathaniel could savor the scent. Today her lover was being welcomed with synesthetical concern for all the senses, only the music missing. But as he lay and later groaned with writhing and release, he brought the full force of his mind to transmuted, voluptuarian elation in this physical union with the very woman who had created John Galt and Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden, and had touched down her scepter on him, Nathaniel, igniting his mind, and his own scepter, which paid, now, devoted service.
But she was right.
There was necessarily a hypothetical risk of detection. That would be very bad. Very, very bad. What would be worse, worse than the detected relationship, would be the deception. That she would deceive Frank, her husband and companion; that Nathaniel would deceive Barbara, his wife and companion and, however incompletely, his lover—that would hurt most awfully. Their pride would be forfeit. No.
The alternative would be painful, but it had to be done. Tomorrow.
She would instruct Frank and Barbara to come to her studio at four o’clock.
Barbara came in and then Nathaniel, who turned his head slightly to one side, toward poor Frank, lonely on his large sofa on the left. Nathaniel looked away. He could hardly expect to get relief from training his eyes on the husband of the woman he was sleeping with.
Addressing Barbara, Ayn got right to the point.
She said that Barbara had undoubtedly sensed it on the trip to Toronto and during the ride back in the car, that an irresistible flowering was taking place, a great union that expressed rejection of Platonist mysticism and acknowledged the primacy of reason, because it was human reason that compelled this union: she had found in Nathaniel, and he in her, a being who incorporated ideals all of them sought.
Now this union, Ayn said without pausing, had nothing whatever to do with other unions in which they had entered, she with Frank, whom she loved dearly. Contrary to her habit of looking square into the face of a person she was addressing, Miss Rand now kept her eyes straight ahead.
And, of course, as much was so in the union of Nathaniel and Barbara—
“That’s nice of you to say so, Ayn, since you were matron of honor at our wedding.”
Ayn ignored Barbara’s comment. Nathaniel was glad for Ayn’s ability to speak endlessly. By doing so now, she was having the customary hypnotic effect on her assembly, going on and on about heroic sentiments and about organic needs and about the simultaneity of love at different levels.
After a half hour Nathaniel permitted himself a look at Barbara. She had that clenched-jaw look. Nathaniel prayed that there would be no tears. He’d have found them unbearable. He turned his eyes to Frank, who looked like a schoolboy having problems with his new chair. What Frank most wants right now is a drink, Nathaniel guessed. Poor, poor Frank. What could he do if he left Ayn? He could hardly survive as a painter. There were no reserves left in this nice sixty-five-year-old derelict, if he were to remove himself from his great mother ship, the SS Rand, fully armed, fully provisioned, in which he had quarters, even if, now, he would have to share them.
Ayn now brought up practical matters.
Nobody, ever, was to know about the ongoing arrangements.
She wished, for herself and Nathaniel, only one afternoon of solitude every week.
There was to be not a hint of the dissolution of their marriages—it was hardly suggested that she would propose marrying someone twenty-five years younger. But now they would have to acknowledge realities; deal with them, the products of reason serving the truly moral purpose of self-fulfillment.
On the subject of self-fulfillment, years later, Nathaniel Branden would write several books.
30
THE SUCCEEDING CALL from General Walker was perplexing. He said he wished to “spend a little time” with Woodroe. He had learned that Woodroe had been transferred to New York by the Society. “That, of course, is their business. But Helena—Mrs. Crowder—wants me to go on a very special mission. In order to undertake what she has in mind, I would need some deep consultation with you. I understand she has cleared the request with Bob Welch, so let me know, Woodroe, when you will get here.”
“Could I ask about the—the nature of my mission?”
“It is very important to learn to be very careful when talking over the telephone. My phone is almost certainly being tapped. And probably your phone is being tapped. So I won’t answer the question. But ring me, Woodroe, about when you are arriving, or leave word with my office.”
“Sure will . . . Ed.” With practice, the pause before using the general’s first name was now almost unnoticeable, a mere hint of Woodroe’s instinctive problem in addressing fifty-year-olds by their first names, let alone major generals. Let alone Edwin A. Walker.
It hadn’t even occurred to Woodroe that his telephone might be bugged. But if it was, it would surely be his office line. Maybe one day he could figure out how to sweep a phone.
Meanwhile he had the lunch date. Leonora wanted him to meet Leonard Peikoff. Peikoff was a first cousin of Barbara Branden, and a gifted philosophy student. Woodroe was in awe when told that Leonard had been admitted, at age seventeen, as an original member of the Collective.
“You ought to know, Woody, that Lenny—call him ‘Leonard,’ he doesn’t like ‘Lenny,’ but cousin Barbara began calling him Lenny when he was a baby and
still does. Leonard is not . . . well, not teeming with social graces.”
“You mean he’s a nerd?”
“Well, yes, sort of. No, not even sort of. He is one. But . . . you should meet him.”
They walked together into the little cafeteria at Fortieth Street. Leonard was thin and tall, seemingly without shoulders. His neck simply winnowed its way down to his torso. He wore thick glasses, and a loose sweater against the April nip. In his left arm he cradled a swollen notebook.
He shook hands and put his notebook on the table. The three filed by the buffet, sliding their aluminum trays along the railing. Leonard selected a carrot salad and chicken stew. Back at the table, nibbling at her ravioli, Leonora said, “Woody, I’ve told Leonard we’re good friends and that you work for the John Birch Society. Leonard is a terrific expert on objectivism. It is embarrassing to me, how much he knows. He came to Miss Rand not long before I started doing volunteer work for her and he’s now almost a Ph.D. The most useful thing I do is grade papers for Nathaniel.”
Without a smile Leonard said, “That’s not exactly the case, Woodruff—”
“Woodroe,” she corrected.
“That’s not so. Leonora is quite adept in our studies. She is a very good student. Do you, at the John Birch Society, study much in objectivism?”
“Not directly,” Woodroe said. “What we’ve done is arrive at similar conclusions to yours on matters of public policy. We are very much opposed to the growth of the state.”
“You run the danger of the sorcerer’s apprentice.”
Woodroe smiled at the taunt.
Leonora missed it. “What’s the sorcerer’s apprentice?” She turned, quizzical, first to Leonard, then to Woodroe.
Woodroe explained, affably, that the apprentice is the guy in the fable who tried to duplicate the work of the sorcerer but got one thing wrong, so everything was screwed up. “Paul Dukas wrote a . . . whatever it was, tone poem, caprice, étude—piece of music—called ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.’” He turned to Leonard. “You mean, one has to know the objectivist foundation for believing in individual liberty, free of statist impositions?”
“Something like that.” Leonard resumed eating. Leonora managed to communicate her empathy to Woodroe. But she might as well persevere. “Leonard, talk a bit on that subject, why an objectivist foundation is so necessary to . . . well, to correct thinking on freedom.”
Without looking up at Woodroe, Leonard explained that the term human freedom was everywhere loosely used, giving no evidence that the user recognized its integral connection to the whole view of life, provided by objectivism. Human freedom is the actualization of reason done by an open mind unimpeded by metaphysics or mysticism. Religion, which is of course the mysticism of the mind, obstructs the work of reason, which is why the call for human freedom based on anything to do with divinity gives freedom a superstitious foundation.
Woodroe did not pursue the subject, pursuing instead the advertised rhubarb pie, rhubarb being a center of attraction at the Raynor household in Salt Lake. When he got back to the table, Leonard had gone.
“He is tutoring some undergrads.”
“I’m glad I’m not one of them.”
“I see what you mean. But listen, he’s a straight-A student.”
“Objectively qualified. Listen, I’ve got to go to your apartment, after lunch, to use the phone. Looks like I’m going to have to make a quick trip to Dallas.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I have to find out about.”
“Well, you have a key.” They kissed lightly and, at the corner, went off in separate directions.
He got through to Jesse Andrews.
“Jess, are you up on this request by General Walker that I go down to Dallas?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that all about?”
“That’s a—there’s a big oilman there. Russell Daugherty. He gave the Dallas Chapter five thousand dollars last year. Helena’s been working on him for a big-time donation, and he’s dangled fifty thousand in front of her. But he said he wanted to hear from General Walker himself why he should invest that much money in JBS.”
“So?”
“Well, that seemed easy to arrange, but no. The general said that the future of the Society depended on its appeal to young people and that in his judgment you were the best representative of a young Bircher he could imagine. He’d agree to take on Daugherty only after a session with you. He talked about ‘joint planning’ and the ‘emphasis on youth.’ . . . You know, Woodroe, the general doesn’t always make things absolutely clear.”
“Uh, yes. Jess, do you assume your phone is bugged?”
“Well, sure. There are certain things I would not discuss over the telephone.”
“But this isn’t one of them?”
“No. There isn’t much anybody can do with what I’ve mentioned to you.”
“Should I assume my phone at the office is bugged?”
“It’s wise to assume that. Bob Welch has one phone here with a scrambler. He uses that a lot.”
“So I’m just to book passage on my American Express?”
“Yes. Dallas will reimburse us.”
“Do I need to speak to Bob?”
“No. He’s pretty busy. You got any problems?”
Woodroe thought to tell Jesse that Woodroe’s problem would be with Mr. Daugherty if he asked how many twenty-five-year-olds Woodroe was bringing into the movement. Never mind.
“Well, that’s it, then. Thanks, Jess.”
“Hope everything else is going all right.”
“Yeah. Oh, I think I’ve got a mole in the Nathaniel Branden Institute. Guy called Peikoff.” Woody grinned.
“Doesn’t hurt to have contacts. Let me know how it goes with General Walker.”
“I will. So long. Say hello to the Founder.”
He hung up the line and let his eyes roam about Lee’s comfortable living room, with all the conventional arrangements. But if you looked hard you might find a personal touch, like the little framed photograph on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, a photograph of a container of pills. But it wasn’t just pills, it was The Pill. Why keep a photograph of it, he had once asked her?
“Why have a photograph of the Statue of Liberty?” she had countered.
He let the matter drop.
But now he leaned down, pulled out the photograph, and looked at its back side. Was there a date there, telling when it was framed?
There wasn’t.
Might there be such a date on the pillbox in the bathroom?
Probably.
But he wasn’t going to let his curiosity take him that far.
31
WOODROE CHECKED INTO the Hotel Clover, called his old number at JBS, and chatted for a minute with Jody. “I know you’re not here for long, Woody, but I hope you can come by and say hello to the gang. We sure miss you. You’re probably calling for Mrs. Crowder?”
“Yes. Is she there?”
“No, she was here this morning. She’s got a bridge tournament. Do you want me to leave a message with her at home?”
“Yes. Just tell her I called.”
“Okay.”
His next call was to General Walker’s number. Christine, the secretary, told him the general was not available, but that Mr. Raynor was expected at 4011 Turtle Creek Boulevard for supper at 6:33. “Is that okay?”
“That’ll be fine.”
He spent two of the three hours left of the afternoon in an extraordinary extravagance these days: he sat in the armchair and read. On the plane, he had gone through the latest issue of National Review, looking out, at first, for animadversions on Mr. Welch or the Society. He lingered to admire essays by Richard Weaver and Russell Kirk, and an exchange on the compatibility of tradition and libertarianism between Frank Meyer and Brent Bozell. He reflected on that nest of influential and productive conservatives in the office a mere block away from Ayn Rand’s apartment. He would take Marvin Liebman up on the su
ggestion that it would make sense for him to meet the people over there. “They won’t shoot at you, Woodroe.”
“They already have, Marvin.”
But he yearned, mostly, to read the remaining chapters of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, that surrealistic, obscene, fascinating novel about deranged young men and their crazy antics, made almost endurable by the skillful language of the eccentric author. At five, Woodroe donned shorts and walked the three blocks down Houston Street to the park off Dealey Plaza. He did his jogging around and around the small green, the azaleas in full bloom. Perspiring, he returned to the hotel, showered, and called for a cab. He knew the general’s fetish on punctuality, so, arriving a few minutes early, he walked about, his eye on his watch, until exactly 1833. He knocked on the door.
“You Misser Reinorr?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“The general will come quickly. Very quickly.”
Graciela showed him into the living room/office. At the corner was a desk, facing into the living room. The bookcases beside the desk were filled, mostly with pamphlets and back issues of American Opinion. A dictating machine was prominent. Behind the sofa, a glassed showcase displayed the general’s decorations. Woodroe would be told, later in the evening, their identity, and the circumstances of General Walker’s having got them—using a wooden pointer common to military instructors, the general would describe them to him. On either side there were photographs of men in uniform and of the golfer Bobby Jones. The general would in due course identify each one of them and comment.
Woodroe was struggling to make out the inscription on the photograph of Admiral Nimitz when his host came into the room.
Ed Walker looked down at his watch. “I am a minute or two late. I apologize.” He wore dark green slacks, a cream-colored sports shirt, and a blue sweater. “Played a little golf this afternoon. I’m getting there. My goal is 84. I shot 85. But I’m a good loser.”
Getting It Right Page 17
