Atlas Shrugged (52 page)

He had never had the experience of seeing his presence give color to a place he entered: the girl looked as if she was not tired any longer, as if the dime store had become a scene of drama and wonder.

“Mr. Taggart, is it true, what they said about you in the paper?”

“What did they say?”

“About your secret.”

“What secret?”

“Well, they said that when everybody was fighting about your bridge, whether it would stand or not, you didn’t argue with them, you just went ahead, because you knew it would stand, when nobody else was sure of it—so the Line was a Taggart project and you were the guiding spirit behind the scenes, but you kept it secret, because you didn’t care whether you got credit for it or not.”

He had seen the mimeographed release of his Public Relations Department. “Yes,” he said, “it’s true.” The way she looked at him made him feel as if it were.

“It was wonderful of you, Mr. Taggart.”

“Do you always remember what you read in the newspapers, so well, in such detail?”

“Why, yes, I guess so—all the interesting things. The big things. I like to read about them. Nothing big ever happens to me.”

She said it gaily, without self-pity. There was a young, determined brusqueness in her voice and movements. She had a head of reddish-brown curls, wide-set eyes, a few freckles on the bridge of an upturned nose. He thought that one would call her face attractive if one ever noticed it, but there was no particular reason to notice it. It was a common little face, except for a look of alertness, of eager interest, a look that expected the world to contain an exciting secret behind every corner.

“Mr. Taggart, how does it feel to be a great man?”

“How does it feel to be a little girl?”

She laughed. “Why, wonderful.”

“Then you’re better off than I am.”

“Oh, how can you say such a—”

“Maybe you’re lucky if you don’t have anything to do with the big events in the newspapers. Big. What do you call big, anyway?”

“Why ... important.”

“What’s important?”

“You’re the one who ought to tell me that, Mr. Taggart.”

“Nothing’s important.”

She looked at him incredulously. “You, of all people, saying that tonight of all nights!”

“I don’t feel wonderful at all, if that’s what you want to know. I’ve never felt less wonderful in my life.”

He was astonished to see her studying his face with a look of concern such as no one had ever granted him. “You’re worn out, Mr. Taggart,” she said earnestly. “Tell them to go to hell.”

“Whom?”

“Whoever’s getting you down. It isn’t right.”

“What isn’t?”

“That you should feel this way. You’ve had a tough time, but you’ve licked them all, so you ought to enjoy yourself now. You’ve earned it.”

“And how do you propose that I enjoy myself?”

“Oh, I don’t know. But I thought you’d be having a celebration tonight, a party with all the big shots, and champagne, and things given to you, like keys to cities, a real swank party like that—instead of walking around all by yourself, shopping for paper handkerchiefs, of all fool things!”

“You give me those handkerchiefs, before you forget them altogether,” he said, handing her a dime. “And as to the swank party, did it occur to you that I might not want to see anybody tonight?”

She considered it earnestly. “No,” she said, “I hadn’t thought of it. But I can see why you wouldn’t.”

“Why?” It was a question to which he had no answer.

“Nobody’s really good enough for you, Mr. Taggart,” she answered very simply, not as flattery, but as a matter of fact.

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t think I like people very much, Mr. Taggart. Not most of them.”

“I don’t either. Not any of them.”

“I thought a man like you—you wouldn’t know how mean they can be and how they try to step on you and ride on your back, if you let them. I thought the big men in the world could get away from them and not have to be flea-bait all of the time, but maybe I was wrong.”

“What do you mean, flea-bait?”

“Oh, it’s just something I tell myself when things get tough—that I’ve got to beat my way out to where I won’t feel like I’m flea-bitten all the time by all kinds of lousiness—but maybe it’s the same anywhere, only the fleas get bigger.”

“Much bigger.”

She remained silent, as if considering something. “It’s funny,” she said sadly to some thought of her own.

“What’s funny?”

“I read a book once where it said that great men are always unhappy, and the greater—the unhappier. It didn’t make sense to me. But maybe it’s true.”

“It’s much truer than you think.”

She looked away, her face disturbed.

“Why do you worry so much about the great men?” he asked. “What are you, a hero worshipper of some kind?”

She turned to look at him and he saw the light of an inner smile, while her face remained solemnly grave; it was the most eloquently personal glance he had ever seen directed at himself, while she answered in a quiet, impersonal voice, “Mr. Taggart, what else is there to look up to?”

A screeching sound, neither quite bell nor buzzer, rang out suddenly and went on ringing with nerve-grating insistence.

She jerked her head, as if awakening at the scream of an alarm clock, then sighed. “That’s closing time, Mr. Taggart,” she said regretfully.

“Go get your hat—I’ll wait for you outside,” he said.

She stared at him, as if among all of life’s possibilities this was one she had never held as conceivable.

“No kidding?” she whispered.

“No kidding.”

She whirled around and ran like a streak to the door of the employees’ quarters, forgetting her counter, her duties and all feminine concern about never showing eagerness in accepting a man’s invitation.

He stood looking after her for a moment, his eyes narrowed. He did not name to himself the nature of his own feeling—never to identify his emotions was the only steadfast rule of his life; he merely felt it—and this particular feeling was pleasurable, which was the only identification he cared to know. But the feeling was the product of a thought he would not utter. He had often met girls of the lower classes, who had put on a brash little act, pretending to look up to him, spilling crude flattery for an obvious purpose; he had neither liked nor resented them; he had found a bored amusement in their company and he had granted them the status of his equals in a game he considered natural to both players involved. This girl was different. The unuttered words in his mind were: The damn little fool means it.

That he waited for her impatiently, when he stood in the rain on the sidewalk, that she was the one person he needed tonight, did not disturb him or strike him as a contradiction. He did not name the nature of his need. The unnamed and the unuttered could not clash into a contradiction.

When she came out, he noted the peculiar combination of her shyness and of her head held high. She wore an ugly raincoat, made worse by a gob of cheap jewelry on the lapel, and a small hat of plush flowers planted defiantly among her curls. Strangely, the lift of her head made the apparel seem attractive; it stressed how well she wore even the things she wore.

“Want to come to my place and have a drink with me?” he asked.

She nodded silently, solemnly, as if not trusting herself to find the ight words of acceptance. Then she said, not looking at him, as if stat ng it to herself, “You didn’t want to see anybody tonight, but you want o see
me.
. . .” He had never heard so solemn a tone of pride in any-me’s voice.

She was silent, when she sat beside him in the taxicab. She looked up at the skyscrapers they passed. After a while, she said, “I heard that things like this happened in New York, but I never thought they’d happen to me.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Buffalo.”

“Got any family?”

She hesitated. “I guess so. In Buffalo.”

“What do you mean, you guess so?”

“I walked out on them.”

“Why?”

“I thought that if I ever was to amount to anything, I had to get away from them, clean away.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing happened. And nothing was ever going to happen. That’s what I couldn’t stand.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they ... well, I guess I ought to tell you the truth, Mr. Taggart. My old man’s never been any good, and Ma didn’t care whether he was or not, and I got sick of it always turning out that I was the only one of the seven of us that kept a job, and the rest of them always being out of luck, one way or another. I thought if I didn’t get out, it would get me—I’d rot all the way through, like the rest of them. So I bought a railroad ticket one day and left. Didn’t say good-bye. They didn’t even know I was going.” She gave a soft, startled little laugh at a sudden thought. “Mr. Taggart,” she said, “it was a Taggart train.”

“When did you come here?”

“Six months ago.”

“And you’re all alone?”

“Yes,” she said happily.

“What was it you wanted to do?”

“Well, you know—make something of myself, get somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Oh, I don’t know, but ... but people do things in the world I saw pictures of New York and I thought”—she pointed at the gian buildings beyond the streaks of rain on the cab window—“I thought, somebody built those buildings—he didn’t just sit and whine that the kitchen was filthy and the roof leaking and the plumbing clogged and it’s a goddamn world and ... Mr. Taggart”—she jerked her head in a shudder and looked straight at him—“we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That’s what I couldn’t take—that they didn’t really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!” Beyond the bright look of her eyes, he saw something within her that was hurt and hard. “I don’t want to talk about them,” she said. “Not with you. This—my meeting you, I mean—that’s what they couldn’t have. That’s what I’m not going to share with them. It’s mine, not theirs.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen.”

When he looked at her in the lights of his living room, he thought that she’d have a good figure if she’d eat a few meals; she seemed too thin for the height and structure of her bones. She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage by the gaudy plastic bracelets tinkling on her wrist. She stood looking at his room as if it were a museum where she must touch nothing and reverently memorize everything.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Cherryl Brooks.”

“Well, sit down.”

He mixed the drinks in silence, while she waited obediently, sitting on the edge of an armchair. When he handed her a glass, she swallowed dutifully a few times, then held the glass clutched in her hand. He knew that she did not taste what she was drinking, did not notice it, had no time to care.

He took a gulp of his drink and put the glass down with irritation: he did not feel like drinking, either. He paced the room sullenly, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his cuff links, his shoe-laces, his lampshades and ashtrays acquired in that gentle, unquestioning glance.

“Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you so unhappy?”

“Why should you care whether I am or not?”

“Because ... well, if you haven’t the right to be happy and proud, who has?”

“That’s what I want to know—who has?” He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. “He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people.
His
Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

“He didn’t do it for any noble purpose, he did it just for his own profit, he’s never done anything for any other reason.”

“What’s wrong with that, Mr. Taggart?” Then she laughed softly, as if at the sudden solution of a riddle. “That’s nonsense, Mr. Taggart. You don’t mean it. You know that Mr. Rearden has
earned
all his profits, and so have you. You’re saying those things just to be modest, when everybody knows what a great job you people have done—you and Mr. Rearden and your sister, who must be such a wonderful person!”

“Yeah? That’s what
you
think. She’s a hard, insensitive woman who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not for any great ideal, but only because that’s what she enjoys doing. If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it? I’m not so sure it was great—building that Line for all those prosperous industrialists in Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted areas who need transportation.”

“But, Mr. Taggart, it was you who fought to build that Line.”

“Yes, because it was my duty—to the company and the stockholders and our employees. But don’t expect me to enjoy it. I’m not so sure it was great—inventing this complex new Metal, when so many nations are in need of plain iron—why, do you know that the People’s State of China hasn’t even got enough nails to put wooden roofs over people’s heads?”

“But ... but I don’t see that that’s your fault.”

“Somebody should attend to it. Somebody with the vision to see beyond his own pocketbook. No sensitive person these days—when there’s so much suffering around us—would devote ten years of his life to splashing about with a lot of trick metals. You think it’s great? Well, it’s not any kind of superior ability, but just a hide that you couldn’t pierce if you poured a ton of his own steel over his head! There are many people of much greater ability in the world, but you don’t read about them in the headlines and you don’t run to gape at them at grade crossings—because they can’t invent non-collapsible bridges at a time when the suffering of mankind weighs on their spirit!”