Atlas Shrugged (55 page)

Dagny stood at the window of her living room, looking at the city. It was late and the lights were like the last sparks left glittering on the black remnants of a bonfire.

She felt at peace, and she wished she could hold her mind still to let her own emotions catch up with her, to look at every moment of the month that had rushed past her. She had had no time to feel that she was back in her own office at Taggart Transcontinental; there had been so much to do that she forgot it was a return from exile. She had not noticed what Jim had said on her return or whether he had said anything. There had been only one person whose reaction she had wanted to know; she had telephoned the Wayne-Falkland Hotel; but Senor Francisco d‘Anconia, she was told, had gone back to Buenos Aires.

She remembered the moment when she signed her name at the bottom of a long legal page; it was the moment that ended the John Galt Line. Now it was the Rio Norte Line of Taggart Transcontinental again—except that the men of the train crews refused to give up its name. She, too, found it hard to give up; she forced herself not to call it “the John Galt,” and wondered why that required an effort, and why she felt a faint wrench of sadness.

One evening, on a sudden impulse, she had turned the corner of the Taggart Building, for a last look at the office of John Galt, Inc., in the alley; she did not know what she wanted—just to see it, she thought. A plank barrier had been raised along the sidewalk: the old building was being demolished; it had given up, at last. She had climbed over the planks and, by the light of the street lamp that had once thrown a stranger’s shadow across the pavement, she had looked in through the window of her former office. Nothing was left of the ground floor; the partitions had been torn down, there were broken pipes hanging from the ceiling and a pile of rubble on the floor. There was nothing to see.

She had asked Rearden whether he had come there one night last spring and stood outside her window, fighting his desire to enter. But she had known, even before he answered, that he had not. She did not tell him why she asked it. She did not know why that memory still disturbed her at times.

Beyond the window of her living room, the lighted rectangle of the calendar hung like a small shipping tag in the black sky. It read: September 2. She smiled defiantly, remembering the race she had run against its changing pages: there were no deadlines now, she thought, no barriers, no threats, no limits.

She heard a key turning in the door of her apartment; this was the sound she had waited for, had wanted to hear tonight.

Rearden came in, as he had come many times, using the key she had given him, as sole announcement. He threw his hat and coat down on a chair with a gesture that had become familiar; he wore the formal black of dinner clothes.

“Hello,” she said.

“I’m still waiting for the evening when I won’t find you in,” he answered.

“Then you’ll have to phone the offices of Taggart Transcontinental.”

“Any evening? Nowhere else?”

“Jealous, Hank?”

“No. Curious what it would feel like, to be.”

He stood looking at her across the room, refusing to let himself approach her, deliberately prolonging the pleasure of knowing that he could do it whenever he wished. She wore the tight gray skirt of an office suit and a blouse of transparent white cloth tailored like a man’s shirt; the blouse flared out above her waistline, stressing the trim flatness of her hips; against the glow of a lamp behind her, he could see the slender silhouette of her body within the flaring circle of the blouse.

“How was the banquet?” she asked.

“Fine. I escaped as soon as I could. Why didn’t you come? You were invited.”

“I didn’t want to see you in public.”

He glanced at her, as if stressing that he noted the full meaning of her answer; then the lines of his face moved to the hint of an amused smile. “You missed a lot. The National Council of Metal Industries won’t put itself again through the ordeal of having me for guest of honor. Not if they can help it.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Just a lot of speeches.”

“Was it an ordeal for you?”

“No ... Yes, in a way ... I had really wanted to enjoy it.”

“Shall I get you a drink?”

“Yes, will you?”

She turned to go. He stopped her, grasping her shoulders from behind; he bent her head back and kissed her mouth. When he raised his head, she pulled it down again with a demanding gesture of ownership, as if stressing her right to do it. Then she stepped away from him.

“Never mind the drink,” he said, “I didn’t really want it—except for seeing you wait on me.”

“Well, then, let me wait on you.”

“No.”

He smiled, stretching himself out on the couch, his hands crossed under his head. He felt at home; it was the first home he had ever found.

“You know, the worst part of the banquet was that the only wish of every person present was to get it over with,” he said. “What I can’t understand is why they wanted to do it at all. They didn’t have to. Certainly not for my sake.”

She picked up a cigarette box, extended it to him, then held the flame of a lighter to the tip of his cigarette, in the deliberate manner of waiting on him. She smiled in answer to his chuckle, then sat down on the arm of a chair across the room.

“Why did you accept their invitation, Hank?” she asked. “You’ve always refused to join them.”

“I didn’t want to refuse a peace offer—when I’ve beaten them and they know it. I’ll never join them, but an invitation to appear as a guest of honor—well, I thought they were good losers. I thought it was generous of them.”

“Of
them?”

“Are you going to say: of
me?”

“Hank! After all the things they’ve done to stop you—”

“I won, didn’t I? So I thought ... You know, I didn’t hold it against them that they couldn’t see the value of the Metal sooner—so long as they saw it at last. Every man learns in his own way and time. Sure, I knew there was a lot of cowardice there, and envy and hypocrisy, but I thought that that was only the surface—
now
, when I’ve proved my case, when I’ve proved it so loudly!—I thought their real motive for inviting me was their appreciation of the Metal, and—”

She smiled in the brief space of his pause; she knew the sentence he had stopped himself from uttering: “—and for that, I would forgive anyone anything.”

“But it wasn‘t,” he said. “And I couldn’t figure out what their motive was. Dagny, I don’t think they had any motive at all. They didn’t give that banquet to please me, or to gain something from me, or to save face with the public. There was no purpose of any kind about it, no meaning. They didn’t really care when they denounced the Metal—and they don’t care now. They’re not really afraid that I’ll drive them all off the market—they don’t care enough even about that. Do you know what that banquet was like? It’s as if they’d heard that there are values one is supposed to honor and this is what one does to honor them—so they went through the motions, like ghosts pulled by some sort of distant echoes from a better age. I ... I couldn’t stand it.”

She said, her face tight, “And you don’t think you’re generous!”

He glanced up at her; his eyes brightened to a look of amusement. “Why do they make you so angry?”

She said, her voice low to hide the sound of tenderness, “You wanted to enjoy it ...”

“It probably serves me right. I shouldn’t have expected anything. I don’t know what it was that I wanted.”

“I do.”

“I’ve never liked occasions of that sort. I don’t see why I expected it to be different, this time.... You know, I went there feeling almost as if the Metal had changed everything, even people.”

“Oh yes, Hank, I know!”

“Well, it was the wrong place to seek anything.... Do you remember ? You said once that celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate.”

The dot of her lighted cigarette stopped in mid-air; she sat still. She had never spoken to him of that party or of anything related to his home. In a moment, she answered quietly, “I remember.”

“I know what you meant ... I knew it then, too.”

He was looking straight at her. She lowered her eyes.

He remained silent; when he spoke again, his voice was gay. “The worst thing about people is not the insults they hand out, but the compliments. I couldn’t bear the kind they spouted tonight, particularly when they kept saying how much everybody needs me—they, the city, the country and the whole world, I guess. Apparently, their idea of the height of glory is to deal with people who need them. I can’t stand people who need me.” He glanced at her. “Do you need me?”

She answered, her voice earnest, “Desperately.”

He laughed. “No. Not the way I meant. You didn’t say it the way they do.”

“How did I say it?”

“Like a trader—who pays for what he wants. They say it like beggars who use a tin cup as a claim check.”

“I ... pay for it, Hank?”

“Don’t look innocent. You know exactly what I mean.”

“Yes,” she whispered; she was smiling.

“Oh, to hell with them!” he said happily, stretching his legs, shifting the position of his body on the couch, stressing the luxury of relaxation. “I’m no good as a public figure. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. We don’t have to care what they see or don’t see. They’ll leave us alone. It’s clear track ahead. What’s the next undertaking, Mr. Vice-President?”

“A transcontinental track of Rearden Metal.”

“How soon do you want it?”

“Tomorrow morning. Three years from now is when I’ll get it.”

“Think you can do it in three years?”

“If the John Galt ... if the Rio Norte Line does as well as it’s doing now.”

“It’s going to do better. That’s only the beginning.”

“I have an installment plan made out. As the money comes in, I’m going to start tearing up the main track, one division at a time, and replacing it with Rearden Metal rail.”

“Okay. Any time you wish to start.”

“I’ll keep moving the old rail to the branch lines—they won’t last much longer, if I don’t. In three years, you’ll ride on your own Metal into San Francisco, if somebody wants to give you a banquet there.”

“In three years, I’ll have mills pouring Rearden Metal in Colorado, in Michigan and in Idaho. That’s
my
installment plan.”

“Your own mills? Branches?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What about the Equalization of Opportunity Bill?”

“You don’t think it’s going to exist three years from now, do you? We’ve given them such a demonstration that all that rot is going to be swept away. The whole country is with us. Who’ll want to stop things now? Who’ll listen to the bilge? There’s a lobby of the better kind of men working in Washington right this moment. They’re going to get the Equalization Bill scrapped at the next session.”

“I ... I hope so.”

“I’ve had a terrible time, these last few weeks, getting the new furnaces started, but it’s all set now, they’re being built, I can sit back and take it easy. I can sit at my desk, rake in the money, loaf like a bum, watch the orders for the Metal pouring in and play favorites all over the place.... Say, what’s the first train you’ve got for Philadelphia tomorrow morning?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t? What’s the use of an Operating Vice-President? I have to be at the mills by seven tomorrow. Got anything running around six?”

“Five-thirty A.M. is the first one, I think.”

“Will you wake me up in time to make it or would you rather order the train held for me?”

“I’ll wake you up.”

She sat, watching him as he remained silent. He had looked tired when he came in; the lines of exhaustion were gone from his face now.

“Dagny,” he asked suddenly; his tone had changed, there was some hidden, earnest note in his voice, “why didn’t you want to see me in public?”

“I don’t want to be part of your ... official life.”

He did not answer; in a moment, he asked casually, “When did you take a vacation last?”

“I think it was two ... no, three years ago.”

“What did you do?”

“Went to the Adirondacks for a month. Came back in a week.”

“I did that five years ago. Only it was Oregon.” He lay flat on his back, looking at the ceiling. “Dagny, let’s take a vacation together. Let’s take my car and drive away for a few weeks, anywhere, just drive, down the back roads, where no one knows us. We’ll leave no address, we won’t look at a newspaper, we won’t touch a phone—we won’t have any official life at all.”

She got up. She approached him, she stood by the side of the couch, looking down at him, the light of the lamp behind her; she did not want him to see her face and the effort she was making not to smile.

“You can take a few weeks off, can’t you?” he said. “Things are set and going now. It’s safe. We won’t have another chance in the next three years.”