The Fountainhead (125 page)

The presses were rolling; a man’s heartbeats gathered and re-broadcast. He heard no other sound and he thought it was absurd to keep this up if Wynand had gone, but most inadvisable to look in his direction if he hadn’t.

After a while he looked up. Wynand was still there. The light picked out two white spots of his figure: the long fingers of one hand closed over an elbow, and the high forehead. It was the forehead that Toohey wanted to see; no, there were no slanting ridges over the eyebrows. The eyes made two solid white ovals, faintly discernible in the angular shadows of the face. The ovals were directed at Toohey. But there was nothing in the face; no indication of purpose.

After a while, Toohey said:

“Really, Mr. Wynand, there’s no reason why you and I can’t get together.”

Wynand did not answer.

Toohey picked up a sheet of paper and inserted it in the typewriter. He sat looking at the keys, holding his chin between two fingers, in the pose he knew he assumed when preparing to attack a paragraph. The rims of the keys glittered under the lamps, rings of bright nickel suspended in the dim room.

The presses stopped.

Toohey jerked back, automatically, before he knew why he had jerked: he was a newspaperman and it was a sound that did not stop like that.

Wynand looked at his wrist watch. He said:

“It’s nine o’clock. You’re out of a job, Mr. Toohey. The
Banner
has ceased to exist.”

The next incident of reality Toohey apprehended was his own hand dropping down on the typewriter keys: he heard the metal cough of the levers tangling and striking together, and the small jump of the carriage.

He did not speak, but he thought his face was naked because he heard Wynand answering him:

“Yes, you had worked here for thirteen years.... Yes, I bought them all out, Mitchell Layton included, two weeks ago....” The voice was indifferent. “No, the boys in the city room didn’t know it. Only the boys in the pressroom....”

Toohey turned away. He picked up a paper clip, held it on his palm, then turned his hand over and let the clip fall, observing with mild astonishment the finality of the law that had not permitted it to remain on his downturned palm.

He got up. He stood looking at Wynand, a stretch of gray carpet between them.

Wynand’s head moved, leaned slightly to one shoulder. Wynand’s face looked as if no barrier were necessary now, it looked simple, it held no anger, the closed lips were drawn in the hint of a smile of pain that was almost humble.

Wynand said:

“This was the end of the
Banner....
I think it’s proper that I should meet it with you.”

 

Many newspapers bid for the services of Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. He selected the
Courier,
a paper of well-bred prestige and gently uncertain policy.

In the evening of his first day on the new job Ellsworth Toohey sat on the edge of an associate editor’s desk and they talked about Mr. Talbot, the owner of the
Courier,
whom Toohey had met but a few times.

“But Mr. Talbot as a man?” asked Ellsworth Toohey. “What’s his particular god? What would he go to pieces without?”

In the radio room across the hall somebody was twisting a dial. “Time,” blared a solemn voice, “marches on!”

 

Roark sat at the drafting table in his office, working. The city beyond the glass walls seemed lustrous, the air washed by the first cold of October.

The telephone rang. He held his pencil suspended in a jerk of impatience; the telephone was never to ring when he was drawing. He walked to his desk and picked up the receiver.

“Mr. Roark,” said his secretary, the tense little note in her voice serving as apology for a broken order, “Mr. Gail Wynand wishes to know whether it would be convenient for you to come to his office at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”

She heard the faint buzz of silence in the receiver at her ear and counted many seconds.

“Is he on the wire?” asked Roark. She knew it was not the phone connection that made his voice sound like that.

“No, Mr. Roark. It’s Mr. Wynand’s secretary.”

“Yes. Yes. Tell her yes.”

He walked to the drafting table and looked down at the sketches; it was the first desertion he had ever been forced to commit: he knew he would not be able to work today. The weight of hope and relief together was too great.

When Roark approached the door of what had been the Banner Building, he saw that the sign, the
Banner’s
masthead, was gone. Nothing replaced it. A discolored rectangle was left over the door. He knew the building now contained the offices of the
Clarion
and floors of empty rooms. The
Clarion,
a third-rate afternoon tabloid, was the only representative of the Wynand chain in New York.

He walked to an elevator. He was glad to be the only passenger: he felt a sudden, violent possessiveness for the small cage of steel; it was his, found again, given back to him. The intensity of the relief told him the intensity of the pain it had ended; the special pain, like no other in his life.

When he entered Wynand’s office, he knew that he had to accept that pain and carry it forever, that there was to be no cure and no hope. Wynand sat behind his desk and rose when he entered, looking straight at him. Wynand’s face was more than the face of a stranger: a stranger’s face is an unapproached potentiality, to be opened if one makes the choice and effort; this was a face known, closed and never to be reached again. A face that held no pain of renunciation, but the stamp of the next step, when even pain is renounced. A face remote and quiet, with a dignity of its own, not a living attribute, but the dignity of a figure on a medieval tomb that speaks of past greatness and forbids a hand to reach out for the remains.

“Mr. Roark, this interview is necessary, but very difficult for me. Please act accordingly.”

Roark knew that the last act of kindness he could offer was to claim no bond. He knew he would break what was left of the man before him if he pronounced one word: Gail.

Roark answered:

“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”

Wynand picked up four typewritten sheets of paper and handed them across the desk:

“Please read this and sign it if it meets with your approval.”

“What is it?”

“Your contract to design the Wynand Building.”

Roark put the sheets down. He could not hold them. He could not look at them.

“Please listen carefully, Mr. Roark. This must be explained and understood. I wish to undertake the construction of the Wynand Building at once. I wish it to be the tallest structure of the city. Do not discuss with me the question of whether this is timely or economically advisable. I wish it built. It will be used—which is all that concerns you. It will house the
Clarion
and all the offices of the Wynand Enterprises now located in various parts of the city. The rest of the space will be rented. I have sufficient standing left to guarantee that. You need have no fear of erecting a useless structure. I shall send you a written statement on all details and requirements. The rest will be up to you. You will design the building as you wish. Your decisions will be final. They will not require my approval. You will have full charge and complete authority. This is stated in the contract. But I wish it understood that I shall not have to see you. There will be an agent to represent me in all technical and financial matters. You will deal with him. You will hold all further conferences with him. Let him know what contractors you prefer chosen for the job. If you find it necessary to communicate with me, you will do it through my agent. You are not to expect or attempt to see me. Should you do so, you will be refused admittance. I do not wish to speak to you. I do not wish ever to see you again. If you are prepared to comply with these conditions, please read the contract and sign it.”

Roark reached for a pen and signed without looking at the paper.

“You have not read it,” said Wynand.

Roark threw the paper across the desk.

“Please sign both copies.”

Roark obeyed.

“Thank you,” said Wynand, signed the sheets and handed one to Roark. “This is your copy.”

Roark slipped the paper into his pocket.

“I have not mentioned the financial part of the undertaking. It is an open secret that the so-called Wynand empire is dead. It is sound and doing as well as ever throughout the country, with the exception of New York City. It will last my lifetime. But it will end with me. I intend to liquidate a great part of it. You will, therefore, have no reason to limit yourself by any consideration of costs in your design of the building. You are free to make it cost whatever you find necessary. The building will remain long after the newsreels and tabloids are gone.”

“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”

“I presume you will want to make the structure efficiently economical in maintenance costs. But you do not have to consider the return of the original investment. There’s no one to whom it must return.”

“Yes, Mr. Wynand.”

“If you consider the behavior of the world at present and the disaster toward which it is moving you might find the undertaking preposterous. The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave. But you are not afraid of a gesture against the whole world. This will be the last skyscraper ever built in New York. It is proper that it should be so. The last achievement of man on earth before mankind destroys itself.”

“Mankind will never destroy itself, Mr. Wynand. Nor should it think of itself as destroyed. Not so long as it does things such as this.”

“As what?”

“As the Wynand Building.”

“That is up to you. Dead things—such as the
Banner
—are only the financial fertilizer that will make it possible. It is their proper function.”

He picked up his copy of the contract, folded it and put it, with a precise gesture, into his inside coat pocket. He said, with no change in the tone of his voice:

“I told you once that this building was to be a monument to my life. There is nothing to commemorate now. The Wynand Building will have nothing—except what you give it.”

He rose to his feet, indicating that the interview was ended. Roark got up and inclined his head in parting. He held his head down a moment longer than a formal bow required.

At the door he stopped and turned. Wynand stood behind his desk without moving. They looked at each other.

Wynand said:

“Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours ... and could have been mine.”

O
N A SPRING DAY, EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER, DOMINIQUE WALKED to the construction site of the Wynand Building.

She looked at the skyscrapers of the city. They rose from unexpected spots, out of the low roof lines. They had a kind of startling suddenness, as if they had sprung up the second before she saw them and she had caught the last thrust of the motion; as if, were she to turn away and look again fast enough, she would catch them in the act of springing.

She turned a corner of Hell’s Kitchen and came to the vast cleared tract.

Machines were crawling over the torn earth, grading the future park. From its center, the skeleton of the Wynand Building rose, completed, to the sky. The top part of the frame still hung naked, an intercrossed cage of steel. Glass and masonry had followed its rise, covering the rest of the long streak slashed through space.

She thought: They say the heart of the earth is made of fire. It is held imprisoned and silent. But at times it breaks through the clay, the iron, the granite, and shoots out to freedom. Then it becomes a thing like this.

She walked to the building. A wooden fence surrounded its lower stories. The fence was bright with large signs advertising the names of the firms who had supplied materials for the tallest structure in the world. “Steel by National Steel, Inc.” “Glass by Ludlow.” “Electrical Equipment by Wells-Clairmont.” “Elevators by Kessler, Inc.” “Nash & Dunning, Contractors.”

She stopped. She saw an object she had never noticed before. The sight was like the touch of a hand on her forehead, the hand of those figures in legend who had the power to heal. She had not known Henry Cameron and she had not heard him say it, but what she felt now was as if she were hearing it: “And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world—and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer.”

She saw, on the fence surrounding New York’s greatest building, a small tin plate bearing the words:

She walked to the superintendent’s shed. She had come here often to call for Roark, to watch the progress of construction. But there was a new man in the shed who did not know her. She asked for Roark.

“Mr. Roark is way up on top by the water tank. Who’s calling, ma’am?”

“Mrs. Roark,” she answered.

The man found the superintendent who let her ride the outside hoist, as she always did—a few planks with a rope for a railing, that rose up the side of the building.

She stood, her hand lifted and closed about a cable, her high heels posed firmly on the planks. The planks shuddered, a current of air pressed her skirt to her body, and she saw the ground dropping softly away from her.

She rose above the broad panes of shop windows. The channels of streets grew deeper, sinking. She rose above the marquees of movie theaters, black mats held by spirals of color. Office windows streamed past her, long belts of glass running down. The squat hulks of warehouses vanished, sinking with the treasures they guarded. Hotel towers slanted, like the spokes of an opening fan, and folded over. The fuming matchsticks were factory stacks and the moving gray squares were cars. The sun made lighthouses of peaked summits, they reeled, flashing long white rays over the city. The city spread out, marching in angular rows to the rivers. It stood held between two thin black arms of water. It leaped across and rolled away to a haze of plains and sky.