The Fountainhead (106 page)

“I like to look at it from here,” said Wynand. “I spent all day here yesterday, watching the light change on it. When you design a building, Howard, do you know exactly what the sun will do to it at any moment of the day from any angle? Do you control the sun?”

“Sure,” said Roark without raising his head. “Unfortunately, I can’t control it here. Move over, Gail. You’re in my way. I like the sun on my back.”

Wynand let himself flop down into the grass. Roark lay stretched on his stomach, his face buried on his arm, the orange hair on the white shirt sleeve, one hand extended before him, palm pressed to the ground. Dominique looked at the blades of grass between his fingers. The fingers moved once in a while, crushing the grass with lazy, sensuous pleasure.

The lake spread behind them, a flat sheet darkening at the edges, as if the distant trees were moving in to enclose it for the evening. The sun cut a glittering band across the water. Dominique looked up at the house and thought that she would like to stand there at a window and look down and see this one white figure stretched on a deserted shore, his hand on the ground, spent, emptied, at the foot of that hill.

She had lived in the house for a month. She had never thought she would. Then Roark had said: “The house will be ready for you in ten days, Mrs. Wynand,” and she had answered: “Yes, Mr. Roark.”

She accepted the house, the touch of the stair railings under her hand, the walls that enclosed the air she breathed. She accepted the light switches she pressed in the evening, and the light firm wires he had laid out through the walls; the water that ran when she turned a tap, from conduits he had planned; the warmth of an open fire on August evenings, before a fireplace built stone by stone from his drawing. She thought: Every moment ... every need of my existence ... She thought: Why not? It’s the same with my body—lungs, blood vessels, nerves, brain—under the same control. She felt one with the house.

She accepted the nights when she lay in Wynand’s arms and opened her eyes to see the shape of the bedroom Roark had designed, and she set her teeth against a racking pleasure that was part answer, part mockery of the unsatisfied hunger in her body, and surrendered to it, not knowing what man gave her this, which one of them, or both.

Wynand watched her as she walked across a room, as she descended the stairs, as she stood at a window. She had heard him saying to her: “I didn’t know a house could be designed for a woman, like a dress. You can’t see yourself here as I do, you can’t see how completely this house is yours. Every angle, every part of every room is a setting for you. It’s scaled to your height, to your body. Even the texture of the walls goes with the texture of your skin in an odd way. It’s the Stoddard Temple, but built for a single person, and it’s mine. This is what I wanted. The city can’t touch you here. I’ve always felt that the city would take you away from me. It gave me everything I have. I don’t know why I feel at times that it will demand payment some day. But here you’re safe and you’re mine.” She wanted to cry: Gail, I belong to him here as I’ve never belonged to him.

Roark was the only guest Wynand allowed in their new home. She accepted Roark’s visits to them on weekends. That was the hardest to accept. She knew he did not come to torture her, but simply because Wynand asked him and he liked being with Wynand. She remembered saying to him in the evening, her hand on the stair railing, on the steps of the stairs leading up to her bedroom: “Come down to breakfast whenever you wish, Mr. Roark. Just press the button in the dining room.” “Thank you, Mrs. Wynand. Good night.”

Once, she saw him alone, for a moment. It was early morning; she had not slept all night, thinking of him in a room across the hall; she had come out before the house was awake. She walked down the hill and she found relief in the unnatural stillness of the earth around her, the stillness of full light without sun, of leaves without motion, of a luminous, waiting silence. She heard steps behind her, she stopped, she leaned against a tree trunk. He had a bathing suit thrown over his shoulder, he was going down to swim in the lake. He stopped before her, and they stood still with the rest of the earth, looking at each other. He said nothing, turned, and went on. She remained leaning against the tree, and after a while she walked back to the house.

Now, sitting by the lake, she heard Wynand saying to him:

“You look like the laziest creature in the world, Howard.”

“I am.”

“I’ve never seen anyone relax like that.”

“Try staying awake for three nights in succession.”

“I told you to get here yesterday.”

“Couldn’t.”

“Are you going to pass out right here?”

“I’d like to. This is wonderful.” He lifted his head, his eyes laughing, as if he had not seen the building on the hill, as if he were not speaking of it. “This is the way I’d like to die, stretched out on some shore like this, just close my eyes and never come back.”

She thought: He thinks what I’m thinking—we still have that together —Gail wouldn’t understand—not he and Gail, for this once—he and I.

Wynand said: “You damn fool. This is not like you, not even as a joke. You’re killing yourself over something. What?”

“Ventilator shafts, at the moment. Very stubborn ventilator shafts.”

“For whom?”

“Clients.... I have all sorts of clients right now.”

“Do you have to work nights?”

“Yes—for these particular people. Very special work. Can’t even bring it into the office.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Don’t pay any attention. I’m half asleep.”

She thought: This is the tribute to Gail, the confidence of surrender—he relaxes like a cat—and cats don’t relax except with people they like.

“I’ll kick you upstairs after dinner and lock the door,” said Wynand, “and leave you there to sleep twelve hours.”

“All right.”

“Want to get up early? Let’s go for a swim before sunrise.”

“Mr. Roark is tired, Gail,” said Dominique, her voice sharp.

Roark raised himself on an elbow to look at her. She saw his eyes, direct, understanding.

“You’re acquiring the bad habits of all commuters, Gail,” she said, “imposing your country hours on guests from the city who are not used to them.” She thought: Let it be mine—that one moment when you were walking to the lake—don’t let Gail take that also, like everything else. “You can’t order Mr. Roark around as if he were an employee of the
Banner.”

“I don’t know anyone on earth I’d rather order around than Mr. Roark,” said Wynand gaily, “whenever I can get away with it.”

“You’re getting away with it.”

“I don’t mind taking orders, Mrs. Wynand,” said Roark. “Not from a man as capable as Gail.”

Let me win this time, she thought, please let me win this time—it means nothing to you—it’s senseless and it means nothing at all—but refuse him, refuse him for the sake of the memory of a moment’s pause that had not belonged to him.

“I think you should rest, Mr. Roark. You should sleep late tomorrow. I’ll tell the servants not to disturb you.”

“Why, no, thanks, I’ll be all right in a few hours, Mrs. Wynand. I like to swim before breakfast. Knock at the door when you’re ready, Gail, and we’ll go down together.”

She looked over the spread of lake and hills, with not a sign of men, not another house anywhere, just water, trees and sun, a world of their own, and she thought he was right—they belonged together—the three of them.

 

The drawings of Cortlandt Homes presented six buildings, fifteen stories high, each made in the shape of an irregular star with arms extending from a central shaft. The shafts contained elevators, stairways, heating systems and all the utilities. The apartments radiated from the center in the form of extended triangles. The space between the arms allowed light and air from three sides. The ceilings were pre-cast; the inner walls were of plastic tile that required no painting or plastering; all pipes and wires were laid out in metal ducts at the edge of the floors, to be opened and replaced, when necessary, without costly demolition; the kitchens and bathrooms were prefabricated as complete units; the inner partitions were of light metal that could be folded into the walls to provide one large room or pulled out to divide it; there were few halls or lobbies to clean, a minimum of cost and labor required for the maintenance of the place. The entire plan was a composition in triangles. The buildings, of poured concrete, were a complex modeling of simple structural features; there was no ornament; none was needed; the shapes had the beauty of sculpture.

Ellsworth Toohey did not look at the plans which Keating had spread out on his desk. He stared at the perspective drawing. He stared, his mouth open.

Then he threw his head back and howled with laughter.

“Peter,” he said, “you’re a genius.”

He added: “I think you know exactly what I mean.” Keating looked at him blankly, without curiosity. “You’ve succeeded in what I’ve spent a lifetime trying to achieve, in what centuries of men and bloody battles behind us have tried to achieve. I take my hat off to you, Peter, in awe and admiration.”

“Look at the plans,” said Keating listlessly. “It will rent for ten dollars a unit.”

“I haven’t the slightest doubt that it will. I don’t have to look. Oh yes, Peter, this will go through. Don’t worry. This will be accepted. My congratulations, Peter.”

 

“You God-damn fool!” said Gail Wynand. “What are you up to?”

He threw to Roark a copy of the
Banner,
folded at an inside page. The page bore a photograph captioned: “Architects’ drawing of Cortlandt Homes, the $15,000,000 Federal Housing Project to be built in Astoria, L. I., Keating & Dumont, architects.”

Roark glanced at the photograph and asked: “What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean. Do you think I picked the things in my art gallery by their signatures? If Peter Keating designed this, I’ll eat every copy of today’s
Banner.”

“Peter Keating designed this, Gail.”

“You fool. What are you after?”

“If I don’t want to understand what you’re talking about, I won’t understand it, no matter what you say.”

“Oh, you might, if I run a story to the effect that a certain housing project was designed by Howard Roark, which would make a swell exclusive story and a joke on one Mr. Toohey who’s the boy behind the boys on most of those damn projects.”

“You publish that and I’ll sue hell out of you.”

“You really would?”

“I would. Drop it, Gail. Don’t you see I don’t want to discuss it?”

Later, Wynand showed the picture to Dominique and asked:

“Who designed this?”

She looked at it. “Of course,” was all she answered.

 

“What kind of ‘changing world,’ Alvah? Changing to what? From what? Who’s doing the changing?”

Parts of Alvah Scarret’s face looked anxious, but most of it was impatient, as he glanced at the proofs of his editorial on “Motherhood in a Changing World,” which lay on Wynand’s desk.

“What the hell, Gail,” he muttered indifferently.

“That’s what I want to know—what the hell?” He picked up the proof and read aloud: “ ‘The world we have known is gone and done for and it’s no use kidding ourselves about it. We cannot go back, we must go forward. The mothers of today must set the example by broadening their own emotional view and raising their selfish love for their own children to a higher plane, to include everybody’s little children. Mothers must love every kid in their block, in their street, in their city, county, state, nation and the whole wide, wide world—just exactly as much as their own little Mary or Johnny.’ ” Wynand wrinkled his nose fastidiously. “Alvah? ... It’s all right to dish out crap. But—this kind of crap?”

Alvah Scarret would not look at him.

“You’re out of step with the times, Gail,” he said. His voice was low; it had a tone of warning—as of something baring its teeth, tentatively, just for future reference.

This was so odd a behavior for Alvah Scarret that Wynand lost all desire to pursue the conversation. He drew a line across the editorial, but the blue pencil stroke seemed tired and ended in a blur. He said: “Go and bat out something else, Alvah.”

Scarret rose, picked up the strip of paper, turned and left the room without a word.

Wynand looked after him, puzzled, amused and slightly sick.

He had known for several years the trend which his paper had embraced gradually, imperceptibly, without any directive from him. He had noticed the cautious “slanting” of news stories, the half-hints, the vague allusions, the peculiar adjectives peculiarly placed, the stressing of certain themes, the insertion of political conclusions where none was needed. If a story concerned a dispute between employer and employee, the employer was made to appear guilty, simply through wording, no matter what the facts presented. If a sentence referred to the past, it was always “our dark past” or “our dead past.” If a statement involved someone’s personal motive, it was always “goaded by selfishness” or “egged by greed.” A crossword puzzle gave the definition of “obsolescent individuals” and the word came out as “capitalists.”

Wynand had shrugged about it, contemptuously amused. His staff, he thought, was well trained: if this was the popular slang of the day, his boys assumed it automatically. It meant nothing at all. He kept it off the editorial page and the rest did not matter. It was no more than a fashion of the moment—and he had survived many changing fashions.

He felt no concern over the “We Don’t Read Wynand” campaign. He obtained one of their men’s-room stickers, pasted it on the windshield of his own Lincoln, added the words: “We don’t either,” and kept it there long enough to be discovered and snapped by a photographer from a neutral paper. In the course of his career he had been fought, damned, denounced by the greatest publishers of his time, by the shrewdest coalitions of financial power. He could not summon any apprehension over the activities of somebody named Gus Webb.