Atlas Shrugged (167 page)

It was not the knowledge of his indifference to money that now gave him a shudder of dread. It was the knowledge that he would be equally indifferent, were he reduced to the state of the beggar. There had been a time when he had felt some measure of guilt—in no clearer a form than a touch of irritation—at the thought that he shared the sin of greed, which he spent his time denouncing. Now he was hit by the chill realization that, in fact, he had never been a hypocrite: in full truth, he had never cared for money. This left another hole gaping open before him, leading into another blind alley which he could not risk seeing.

I just want to do something tonight!—he cried soundlessly to someone at large, in protest and in demanding anger—in protest against whatever it was that kept forcing these thoughts into his mind—in anger at a universe where some malevolent power would not permit him to find enjoyment without the need to know what he wanted or why.

What do you want?—some enemy voice kept asking, and he walked faster, trying to escape it. It seemed to him that his brain was a maze where a blind alley opened at every turn, leading into a fog that hid an abyss. It seemed to him that he was running, while the small island of safety was shrinking and nothing but those alleys would soon be left. It was like the remnant of clarity in the street around him, with the haze rolling in to fill all exits. Why did it have to shrink?—he thought in panic. This was the way he had lived all his life—keeping his eyes stubbornly, safely on the immediate pavement before him, craftily avoiding the sight of his road, of corners, of distances, of pinnacles. He had never intended going anywhere, he had wanted to be free of progression, free of the yoke of a straight line, he had never wanted his years to add up to any sum—what had summed them up?—why had he reached some unchosen destination where one could no longer stand still or retreat? “Look where you’re going, brother!” snarled some voice, while an elbow pushed him back—and he realized that he had collided with some large, ill-smelling figure and that he had been running.

He slowed his steps and admitted into his mind a recognition of the streets he had chosen in his random escape. He had not wanted to know that he was going home to his wife. That, too, was a fogbound alley, but there was no other left to him.

He knew—the moment he saw Cherryl’s silent, poised figure as she rose at his entrance into her room—that this was more dangerous than he had allowed himself to know and that he would not find what he wanted. But danger, to him, was a signal to shut off his sight, suspend his judgment and pursue an unaltered course, on the unstated premise that the danger would remain unreal by the sovereign power of his wish not to see it—like a foghorn within him, blowing, not to sound a warning, but to summon the fog.

“Why, yes, I did have an important business banquet to attend, but I changed my mind, I felt like having dinner with you tonight,” he said in the tone of a compliment—but a quiet “I see” was the only answer he obtained.

He felt irritation at her unastonished manner and her pale, unrevealing face. He felt irritation at the smooth efficiency with which she gave instructions to the servants, then at finding himself in the candlelight of the dining room, facing her across a perfectly appointed table, with two crystal cups of fruit in silver bowls of ice between them.

It was her poise that irritated him most; she was no longer an incongruous little freak, dwarfed by the luxury of the residence which a famous artist had designed; she matched it. She sat at the table as if she were the kind of hostess that room had the right to demand. She wore a tailored housecoat of russet-colored brocade that blended with the bronze of her hair, the severe simplicity of its lines serving as her only ornament. He would have preferred the jingling bracelets and rhinestone buckles of her past. Her eyes disturbed him, as they had for months: they were neither friendly nor hostile, but watchful and questioning.

“I closed a big deal today,” he said, his tone part boastful, part pleading. “A deal involving this whole continent and half a dozen governments.”

He realized that the awe, the admiration, the eager curiosity he had expected, belonged to the face of the little shopgirl who had ceased to exist. He saw none of it in the face of his wife; even anger or hatred would have been preferable to her level, attentive glance; the glance was worse than accusing, it was inquiring.

“What deal, Jim?”

“What do you mean, what deal? Why are you suspicious? Why do you have to start prying at once?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was confidential. You don’t have to answer me.”

“It’s not confidential.” He waited, but she remained silent. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Why, no.” She said it simply, as if to please him.

“So you’re not interested at all?”

“But I thought you didn’t want to discuss it.”

“Oh, don’t be so tricky!” he snapped. “It’s a big business deal. That’s what you admire, isn’t it, big business? Well, it’s bigger than anything those boys ever dreamed of. They spend their lives grubbing for their fortunes penny by penny, while I can do it like that”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. It’s the biggest single stunt ever pulled.”

“Stunt, Jim?”

“Deal!”

“And you did it? Yourself?”

“You bet I did it! That fat fool, Orren Boyle, couldn’t have swung it in a million years. This took knowledge and skill and timing”—he saw a spark of interest in her eyes—“and psychology.” The spark vanished, but he went rushing heedlessly on. “One had to know how to approach Wesley, and how to keep the wrong influences away from him, and how to get Mr. Thompson interested without letting him know too much, and how to cut Chick Morrison in on it, but keep Tinky Holloway out, and how to get the right people to give a few parties for Wesley at the right time, and . . . Say, Cherryl, is there any champagne in this house?”

“Champagne?”

“Can’t we do something special tonight? Can’t we have a sort of celebration together?”

“We can have champagne, yes, Jim, of course.”

She rang the bell and gave the orders, in her odd, lifeless, uncritical manner, a manner of meticulous compliance with his wishes while volunteering none of her own.

“You don’t seem to be very impressed,” he said. “But what would you know about business, anyway? You wouldn’t be able to understand anything on so large a scale. Wait till September second. Wait till they hear about it.”

“They? Who?”

He glanced at her, as if he had let a dangerous word slip out involuntarily. “We’ve organized a setup where we—me, Orren and a few friends—are going to control every industrial property south of the border.”

“Whose property?”

“Why . . . the people’s. This is not an old-fashioned grab for private profit. It’s a deal with a mission—a worthy, public-spirited mission—to manage the nationalized properties of the various People’s States of South America, to teach their workers our modem techniques of production, to help the underprivileged who’ve never had a chance, to—” He broke off abruptly, though she had merely sat looking at him without shifting her glance. “You know,” he said suddenly, with a cold little chuckle, “if you’re so damn anxious to hide that you came from the slums, you ought to be less indifferent to the philosophy of social welfare. It’s always the poor who lack humanitarian instincts. One has to be born to wealth in order to know the finer feelings of altruism.”

“I’ve never tried to hide that I came from the slums,” she said in the simple, impersonal tone of a factual correction. “And I haven’t any sympathy for that welfare philosophy. I’ve seen enough of them to know what makes the kind of poor who want something for nothing.” He did not answer, and she added suddenly, her voice astonished, but firm, as if in final confirmation of a long-standing doubt, “Jim, you don’t care about it, either. You don’t care about any of that welfare hog-wash.”

“Well, if money is all that you’re interested in,” he snapped, “let me tell you that that deal will bring me a fortune. That’s what you’ve always admired, isn’t it, wealth?”

“It depends.”

“I think I’ll end up as one of the richest men in the world,” he said; he did not ask what her admiration depended upon. “There’s nothing I won’t be able to afford. Nothing. Just name it. I can give you anything you want. Go on, name it.”

“I don’t want anything, Jim.”

“But I’d like to give you a present! To celebrate the occasion, see? Anything you take it into your head to ask. Anything. I can do it. I want to show you that I can do it. Any fancy you care to name.”

“I haven’t any fancies.”

“Oh, come on! Want a yacht?”

“No.”

“Want me to buy you the whole neighborhood where you lived in Buffalo?”

.“No.”

“Want the crown jewels of the People’s State of England? They can be had, you know. That People’s State has been hinting about it on the black market for a long time. But there aren’t any old-fashioned tycoons left who’re able to afford it.
I’m
able to afford it—or will be, after September second. Want it?”

“No.”

“Then what
do you
want?”

“I don’t want anything, Jim.”

“But you’ve got to! You’ve got to want something, damn you!”

She looked at him, faintly startled, but otherwise indifferent.

“Oh, all right, I’m sorry,” he said; he seemed astonished by his own outbreak. “I just wanted to please you,” he added sullenly, “but I guess you can’t understand it at all. You don’t know how important it is. You don’t know how big a man you’re married to.”

“I’m trying to find out,” she said slowly.

“Do you still think, as you used to, that Hank Rearden is a great man?”

“Yes, Jim, I do.”

“Well, I’ve got him beaten. I’m greater than any of them, greater than Rearden and greater than that other lover of my sister.‘s, who—” He stopped, as if he had slid too far.

“Jim,” she asked evenly, “what is going to happen on September second?”

He glanced up at her, from under his forehead—a cold glance, while his muscles creased into a semi-smile, as if in cynical breach of some hallowed restraint. “They’re going to nationalize d.‘Anconia Copper,” he said.

He heard the long, harsh roll of a motor, as a plane went by somewhere in the darkness above the roof, then a thin tinkle, as a piece of ice settled, melting, in the silver bowl of his fruit cup—before she answered. She said, “He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, shut up!”

He remained silent, not looking at her. When his eyes came back to her face, she was still watching him and she spoke first, her voice oddly stem: “What your sister did in her radio broadcast was great.”

“Yes, I know, I know, you’ve been saying that for a month.”

“You’ve never answered me.”

“What is there to ans ... ?”

“Just as your friends in Washington have never answered her.” He remained silent. “Jim, I’m not dropping the subject.” He did not answer. “Your friends in Washington never uttered a word about it. They did not deny the things she said, they did not explain, they did not try to justify themselves. They acted as if she had never spoken. I think they’re hoping that people will forget it. Some people will. But the rest of us know what she said and that your friends were afraid to fight her.”

“That’s not true! The proper action was taken and the incident is closed and I don’t see why you keep bringing it up.”

“What action?”

“Bertram Scudder was taken off the air, as a program not in the public interest at the present time.”

“Does that answer her?”

“It closes the issue and there’s nothing more to be said about it.”

“About a government that works by blackmail and extortion?”

“You can’t say that nothing was done. It’s been publicly announced that Scudder’s programs were disruptive, destructive and untrustworthy.”

“Jim, I want to understand this. Scudder wasn’t on her side—he was on yours. He didn’t even arrange that broadcast. He was acting on orders from Washington, wasn’t he?”

“I thought you didn’t like Bertram Scudder.”

“I didn’t and I don.‘t, but—”

“Then what do you care?”

“But he was innocent, as far as your friends were concerned, wasn’t he?”

“I wish you wouldn’t bother with politics. You talk like a fool.”

“He was innocent, wasn’t he?”

“So what?”

She looked at him, her eyes incredulously wide. “Then they just made him the scapegoat, didn’t they?”

“Oh, don’t sit there looking like Eddie Willers!”

“Do I? I like Eddie Willers. He’s honest.”

“He’s a damn half-wit who doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to deal with practical reality!”

“But you do, don’t you, Jim?”

“You bet I do!”

“Then couldn’t you have helped Scudder?”

“I?”
He burst into helpless, angry laughter. “Oh, why don’t you grow up? I did my best to get Scudder thrown to the lions! Somebody had to be. Don’t you know that it was my neck, if some other hadn’t been found?”

“Your
neck? Why not Dagny.‘s, if she was wrong? Because she wasn’t?”

“Dagny is in an entirely different category! It had to be Scudder or me.”

“Why?”

“And it’s much better for national policy to let it be Scudder. This way, it’s not necessary to argue about what she said—and if anybody brings it up, we start howling that it was said on Scudder’s program and that Scudder’s programs have been discredited and that Scudder is a proven fraud and liar, etc., etc.—and do you think the public will be able to unscramble it? Nobody’s ever trusted Bertram Scudder, anyway. Oh, don’t stare at me like that! Would you rather they’d picked me to discredit?”

“Why not Dagny? Because her speech could not be discredited?”

“If you’re so damn sorry for Bertram Scudder, you should have seen him try his damndest to make them break my neck! He’s been doing that for years—how do you think he got to where he was, except by climbing on carcasses? He thought he was pretty powerful, too—you should have seen how the big business tycoons used to be afraid of him! But he got himself outmaneuvered, this time. This time, he belonged to the wrong faction.”