Atlas Shrugged (111 page)

Had he asked himself a moment earlier whether he carried in his mind an image of what he wanted a woman to look like, he would have answered that he did not; yet, seeing her, he knew that this was the image and that it had been for years. But he was not looking at her as at a woman. He had forgotten where he was and on what errand, he was held by a child’s sensation of joy in the immediate moment, by the delight of the unexpected and undiscovered, he was held by the astonishment of realizing how seldom he came upon a sight he truly liked, liked in complete acceptance and for its own sake, he was looking up at her with a faint smile, as he would have looked at a statue or a landscape, and what he felt was the sheer pleasure of the sight, the purest esthetic pleasure he had ever experienced.

He saw a switchman going by and he asked, pointing, “Who is that?”

“Dagny Taggart,” said the man, walking on.

Rearden felt as if the words struck him inside his throat. He felt the start of a current that cut his breath for a moment, then went slowly down his body, carrying in its wake a sense of weight, a drained heaviness that left him no capacity but one. He was aware—with an abnormal clarity—of the place, the woman’s name, and everything it implied, but all of it had receded into some outer ring and had become a pressure that left him alone in the center, as the ring’s meaning and essence—and his only reality was the desire to have this woman, now, here, on top of the flatcar in the open sun—to have her before a word was spoken between them, as the first act of their meeting, because it would say everything and because they had earned it long ago.

She turned her head. In the slow curve of the movement, her eyes came to his and stopped. He felt certain that she saw the nature of his glance, that she was held by it, yet did not name it to herself. Her eyes moved on and he saw her speak to some man who stood beside the flatcar, taking notes.

Two things struck him together: his return to his normal reality, and the shattering impact of guilt. He felt a moment’s approach to that which no man may feel fully and survive: a sense of self-hatred-the more terrible because some part of him refused to accept it and made him feel guiltier. It was not a progression of words, but the instantaneous verdict of an emotion, a verdict that told him: This, then, was his nature, this was his depravity—that the shameful desire he had never been able to conquer, came to him in response to the only sight of beauty he had found, that it came with a violence he had not known to be possible, and that the only freedom now left to him was to hide it and to despise himself, but never to be rid of it so long as he and this woman were alive.

He did not know how long he stood there or what devastation that span of time left within him. All that he could preserve was the will to decide that she must never know it.

He waited until she had descended to the ground and the man with the notes had departed; then he approached her and said coldly:

“Miss Taggart? I am Henry Rearden.”

“Oh!” It was just a small break, then he heard the quietly natural “How do you do, Mr. Rearden.”

He knew, not admitting it to himself, that the break came from some faint equivalent of his own feeling: she was glad that a face she had liked belonged to a man she could admire. When he proceeded to speak to her about business, his manner was more harshly abrupt than it had ever been with any of his masculine customers.

Now, looking from the memory of the girl on the flatcar to the Gift Certificate lying on his desk, he felt as if the two met in a single shock, fusing all the days and doubts he had lived between them, and, by the glare of the explosion, in a moment’s vision of a final sum, he saw the answer to all his questions.

He thought: Guilty?—guiltier than I had known, far guiltier than I had thought, that day—guilty of the evil of damning as guilt that which was my best. I damned the fact that my mind and body were a unit, and that my body responded to the values of my mind. I damned the fact that joy is the core of existence, the motive power of every living being, that it is the need of one’s body as it is the goal of one’s spirit, that my body was not a weight of inanimate muscles, but an instrument able to give me an experience of superlative joy to unite my flesh and my spirit. That capacity, which I damned as shameful, had left me indifferent to sluts, but gave me my one desire in answer to a woman’s greatness. That desire, which I damned as obscene, did not come from the sight of her body, but from the knowledge that the lovely form I saw, did express the spirit I was seeing—it was not her body that I wanted, but her person—it was not the girl in gray that I had to possess, but the woman who ran a railroad.

But I damned my body’s capacity to express what I felt, I damned, as an affront to her, the highest tribute I could give her—just as they damn my ability to translate the work of my mind into Rearden Metal, just as they damn me for the power to transform matter to serve my needs. I accepted their code and believed, as they taught me, that the values of one’s spirit must remain as an impotent longing, unexpressed in action, untranslated into reality, while the life of one’s body must be lived in misery, as a senseless, degrading performance, and those who attempt to enjoy it must be branded as inferior animals.

I broke their code, but I fell into the trap they intended, the trap of a code devised to be broken. I took no pride in my rebellion, I took it as guilt, I did not damn them, I damned myself, I did not damn their code, I damned existence—and I hid my happiness as a shameful secret. I should have lived it openly, as of our right—or made her my wife, as in truth she was. But I branded my happiness as evil and made her bear it as a disgrace. What they want to do to her now, I did it first. I made it possible.

I did it—in the name of pity for the most contemptible woman I know. That, too, was their code, and I accepted it. I believed that one person owes a duty to another with no payment for it in return. I believed that it was my duty to love a woman who gave me nothing, who betrayed everything I lived for, who demanded her happiness at the price of mine. I believed that love is some static gift which, once granted, need no longer be deserved—just as they believe that wealth is a static possession which can be seized and held without further effort. I believed that love is a gratuity, not a reward to be earned—just as they believe it is their right to demand an unearned wealth. And just as they believe that their need is a claim on my energy, so I believed that her unhappiness was a claim on my life. For the sake of pity, not justice, I endured ten years of self-torture. I placed pity above my own conscience, and
this
is the core of my guilt. My crime was committed when I said to her, “By every standard of mine, to maintain our marriage will be a vicious fraud. But my standards are not yours. I do not understand yours, I never have, but I will accept them.”

Here they are, lying on my desk, those standards I accepted without understanding, here is the manner of her love for me, that love which I never believed, but tried to spare. Here is the final product of the unearned. I thought that it was proper to commit injustice, so long as I would be the only one to suffer. But nothing can justify injustice. And this is the punishment for accepting as proper that hideous evil which is self-immolation. I thought that I would be the only victim. Instead, I’ve sacrificed the noblest woman to the vilest. When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

It was not the cheap little looters of wealth who have beaten me—it was I. They did not disarm me—I threw away my weapon. This is a battle that cannot be fought except with clean hands—because the enemy’s sole power is in the sores of one’s conscience—and I accepted a code that made me regard the strength of my hands as a sin and a stain.

“Do we get the Metal, Mr. Rearden?”

He looked from the Gift Certificate on his desk to the memory of the girl on the flatcar. He asked himself whether he could deliver the radiant being he had seen in that moment, to the looters of the mind and the thugs of the press. Could he continue to let the innocent bear punishment? Could he let her take the stand
he
should have taken? Could he now defy the enemy’s code, when the disgrace would be hers, not his—when the muck would be thrown at her, not at him-when she would have to fight, while he’d be spared? Could he let her existence be turned into a hell he would have no way of sharing?

He sat still, looking up at her. I love you, he said to the girl on the flatcar, silently pronouncing the words that had been the meaning of that moment four years ago, feeling the solemn happiness that belonged with the words, even though this was how he had to say it to her for the first time.

He looked down at the Gift Certificate. Dagny, he thought, you would not let me do it if you knew, you will hate me for it if you learn—but I cannot let you pay my debts. The fault was mine and I will not shift to you the punishment which is mine to take. Even if I have nothing else now left to me, I have this much: that I see the truth, that I am free of their guilt, that I can now stand guiltless in my own eyes, that I know I am right, right fully and for the first time—and that I will remain faithful to the one commandment of
my
code which I have never broken: to be a man who pays his own way.

I love you, he said to the girl on the flatcar, feeling as if the light of that summer’s sun were touching his forehead, as if he, too, were standing under an open sky over an unobstructed earth, with nothing left to him except himself.

“Well, Mr. Rearden? Are you going to sign?” asked Dr. Ferris.

Rearden’s eyes moved to him. He had forgotten that Ferris was there, he did not know whether Ferris had been speaking, arguing or waiting in silence.

“Oh, that?” said Rearden.

He picked up a pen and with no second glance, with the easy gesture of a millionaire signing a check, he signed his name at the foot of the Statue of Liberty and pushed the Gift Certificate across the desk.

CHAPTER VII

THE MORATORIUM ON BRAINS

“Where have you been all this time?” Eddie Willers asked the worker in the underground cafeteria, and added, with a smile that was an appeal, an apology and a confession of despair, “Oh, I know it’s I who’ve stayed away from here for weeks.” The smile looked like the effort of a crippled child groping for a gesture that he could not perform any longer. “I did come here once, about two weeks ago, but you weren’t here that night. I was afraid you’d gone ... so many people are vanishing without notice. I hear there’s hundreds of them roving around the country. The police have been arresting them for leaving their jobs—they’re called deserters—but there’s too many of them and no food to feed them in jail, so nobody gives a damn any more, one way or another. I hear the deserters are just wandering about, doing odd jobs or worse—who’s got any odd jobs to offer these days? ... It’s our best men that we’re losing, the kind who’ve been with the company for twenty years or more. Why did they have to chain them to their jobs? Those men never intended to quit—but now they’re quitting at the slightest disagreement, just dropping their tools and walking off, any hour of the day or night, leaving us in all sorts of jams—the men who used to leap out of bed and come running if the railroad needed them.... You should see the kind of human driftwood we’re getting to fill the vacancies. Some of them mean well, but they’re scared of their own shadows. Others are the kind of scum I didn’t think existed—they get the jobs and they know that we can’t throw them out once they’re in, so they make it clear that they don’t intend to work for their pay and never did intend. They’re the kind of men who
like
it—who like the way things are now. Can you imagine that there are human beings who like it? Well, there are.... You know, I don’t think that I really believe it—all that’s happening to us these days. It’s happening all right, but I don’t believe it. I keep thinking that insanity is a state where a person can’t tell what’s real. Well, what’s real now is insane—and if I accepted it as real, I’d have to lose my mind, wouldn’t I? ... I go on working and I keep telling myself that this is Taggart Transcontinental. I keep waiting for her to come back—for the door to open at any moment and--oh God, I’m not supposed to say that! ... What? You knew it? You knew that she’s gone? ... They’re keeping it secret. But I guess everybody knows it, only nobody is supposed to say it. They’re telling people that she’s away on a leave of absence. She’s still listed as our Vice-President in Charge of Operation. I think Jim and I are the only ones who know that she has resigned for good. Jim is scared to death that his friends in Washington will take it out on him, if it becomes known that she’s quit. It’s supposed to be disastrous for public morale, if any prominent person quits, and Jim doesn’t want them to know that he’s got a deserter right in his own family.... But that’s not all. Jim is scared that the stockholders, the employees and whoever we do business with, will lose the last of their confidence in Taggart Transcontinental if they learn that she’s gone. Confidence! You’d think that it wouldn’t matter now, since there’s nothing any of them can do about it. And yet, Jim knows that we have to preserve some semblance of the greatness that Taggart Transcontinental once stood for. And he knows that the last of it went with her.... No, they don’t know where she is.... Yes, I do, but I won’t tell them. I’m the only one who knows.... Oh yes, they’ve been trying to find out. They’ve tried to pump me in every way they could think of, but it’s no use. I won’t tell anyone.... You should see the trained seal that we now have in her place—our new Operating Vice-President. Oh sure, we have one—that is, we have and we haven’t. It’s like everything they do today—it is and it ain‘t, at the same time. His name is Clifton Locey—he’s from Jim’s personal staff—a bright, progressive young man of forty-seven and a friend of Jim’s. He’s only supposed to be pinch-hitting for her, but he sits in her office and we all know that that’s the new Operating Vice-President. He gives the orders—that is, he sees to it that he’s never caught actually giving an order. He works very hard at making sure that no decision can ever be pinned down on him, so that he won’t be blamed for anything. You see, his purpose is not to operate a railroad, but to hold a job. He doesn’t want to run trains—he wants to please Jim. He doesn’t give a damn whether there’s a single train moving or not, so long as he can make a good impression on Jim and on the boys in Washington. So far, Mr. Clifton Locey has managed to frame up two men: a young third assistant, for not relaying an order which Mr. Locey had never given—and the freight manager, for issuing an order which Mr. Locey did give, only the freight manager couldn’t prove it. Both men were fired, officially, by ruling of the Unification Board.... When things go well—which is never longer than half an hour—Mr. Locey makes it a point to remind us that ’.these are not the days of Miss Taggart.‘. At the first sign of trouble, he calls me into his office and asks me—casually, in the midst of the most irrelevant drivel—what Miss Taggart used to do in such an emergency. I tell him, whenever I can. I tell myself that it’s Taggart Transcontinental, and ... and there’s thousands of lives on dozens of trains that hang on our decisions. Between emergencies, Mr. Locey goes out of his way to be rude to me—that’s so I wouldn’t think that he needs me. He’s made it a point to change everything she used to do, in every respect that doesn’t matter, but he’s damn cautious not to change anything that matters. The only trouble is that he can’t always tell which is which.... On his first day in her office, he told me that it wasn’t a good idea to have a picture of Nat Taggart on the wall—’.Nat Taggart,‘. he said, ’.belongs to a dark past, to the age of selfish greed, he is not exactly a symbol of our modern, progressive policies, so it could make a bad impression, people could identify me with him.‘. ’.No, they couldn‘t,’ I said—but I took the picture off his wall.... What? ... No, she doesn’t know any of it. I haven’t communicated with her. Not once. She told me not to.... Last week, I almost quit. It was over Chick’s Special. Mr. Chick Morrison of Washington, whoever the hell he is, has gone on a speaking tour of the whole country—to speak about the directive and build up the people’s morale, as things are getting to be pretty wild everywhere. He demanded a special train, for himself and party—a sleeper, a parlor car and a diner with barroom and lounge. The Unification Board gave him permission to travel at a hundred miles an hour—by reason, the ruling said, of this being a non-profit journey. Well, so it is. It’s just a journey to talk people into continuing to break their backs at making profits in order to support men who are superior by reason of not making any. Well, our trouble came when Mr. Chick Morrison demanded a Diesel engine for his train. We had none to give him. Every Diesel we own is out on the road, pulling the Comet and the transcontinental freights, and there wasn’t a spare one anywhere on the system, except—well, that was an exception I wasn’t going to mention to Mr. Clifton Locey. Mr. Locey raised the roof, screaming that come hell or high water we couldn’t refuse a demand of Mr. Chick Morrison. I don’t know what damn fool finally told him about the extra Diesel that was kept at Winston, Colorado, at the mouth of the tunnel. You know the way our Diesels break down nowadays, they’re all breathing their last—so you can understand why that extra Diesel had to be kept at the tunnel. I explained it to Mr. Locey, I threatened him, I pleaded, I told him that she had made it our strictest rule that Winston Station was never to be left without an extra Diesel. He told me to remember that he was not Miss Taggart—as if I could ever forget it!—and that the rule was nonsense, because nothing had happened all these years, so Winston could do without a Diesel for a couple of months, and he wasn’t going to worry about some theoretical disaster in the future when we were up against the very real, practical, immediate disaster of getting Mr. Chick Morrison angry at us. Well, Chick’s Special got the Diesel. The superintendent of the Colorado Division quit. Mr. Locey gave that job to a friend of his own. I wanted to quit. I had never wanted to so badly. But I didn’t.... No, I haven’t heard from her. I haven’t heard a word since she left. Why do you keep questioning me about her? Forget it. She won’t be back.... I don’t know what it is that I’m hoping for. Nothing, I guess. I just go day by day, and I try not to look ahead. At first, I hoped that somebody would save us. I thought maybe it would be Hank Rearden. But he gave in. I don’t know what they did to him to make him sign, but I know that it must have been something terrible. Everybody thinks so. Everybody’s whispering about it, wondering what sort of pressure was used on him.... No, nobody knows. He’s made no public statements and he’s refused to see anyone.... But, listen, I’ll tell you something else that everybody’s whispering about. Lean closer, will you?—I don’t want to speak too loudly. They say that Orren Boyle seems to have known about that directive long ago, weeks or months in advance, because he had started, quietly and secretly, to reconstruct his furnaces for the production of Rearden Metal, in one of his lesser steel plants, an obscure little place way out on the coast of Maine. He was ready to start pouring the Metal the moment Rearden’s extortion paper—I mean, Gift Certincate—was signed. But—listen—the night before they were to start, Boyle’s men were heating the furnaces in that place on the coast, when they heard a voice, they didn’t know whether it came from a plane or a radio or some sort of loud-speaker, but it was a man’s voice and it said that he would give them ten minutes to get out of the place. They got out. They started going and they kept on going—because the man’s voice had said that he was Ragnar Danneskjöld. In the next half-hour, Boyle’s mills were razed to the ground. Razed, wiped out, not a brick of them left standing. They say it was done by long-range naval guns, from somewhere way out on the Atlantic. Nobody saw Danneskjöld’s ship.... That’s what people are whispering. The newspapers haven’t printed a word about it. The boys in Washington say that it’s only a rumor spread by panic-mongers .... I don’t know whether the story is true. I think it is. I
hope
it is.... You know, when I was fifteen years old, I used to wonder how any man could become a criminal, I couldn’t understand what would make it possible. Now—now I’m glad that Ragnar Danneskjöld has blown up those mills. May God bless him and never let them find him, whatever and wherever he is! ... Yes, that’s what I’ve come to feel. Well, how much do they think people can take? ... It’s not so bad for me in the daytime, because I can keep busy and not think, but it gets me at night. I can’t sleep any more, I lie awake for hours.... Yes!—if you want to know it—yes, it’s because I’m worried about her! I’m scared to death for her. Woodstock is just a miserable little hole of a place, miles away from everything, and the Taggart lodge is twenty miles farther, twenty miles of a twisting trail in a godforsaken forest. How do I know what might happen to her there, alone, and with the kind of gangs that are roving all through the country these nights—just through such desolate parts of the country as the Berkshires? ... I know I shouldn’t think about it. I know that she can take care of herself. Only I wish she’d drop me a line. I wish I could go there. But she told me not to. I told her I’d wait.... You know, I’m glad you’re here tonight. It helps me—talking to you and ... just seeing you here. You won’t vanish, like all the others, will you? ... What? Next week? ... Oh, on your vacation. For how long? ... How do you rate a whole month’s vacation? ... I wish I could do that, too—take a month off at my own expense. But they wouldn’t let me.... Really? I envy you.... I wouldn’t have envied you a few years ago. But now—now I’d like to get away. Now I envy you—if you’ve been able to take a month off every summer for twelve years.”