The Fountainhead (34 page)

Keating’s face fell upon his arm on the corner of the desk. He could not let Francon see his face. He was going to be sick; sick, because through the horror, he had caught himself wondering how much Heyer had actually left....

The will had been made out five years ago; perhaps in a senseless spurt of affection for the only person who had shown Heyer consideration in the office; perhaps as a gesture against his partner; it had been made and forgotten. The estate amounted to two hundred thousand dollars, plus Heyer’s interest in the firm and his porcelain collection.

Keating left the office early, that day, not hearing the congratulations. He went home, told the news to his mother, left her gasping in the middle of the living room, and locked himself in his bedroom. He went out, saying nothing, before dinner. He had no dinner that night, but he drank himself into a ferocious lucidity, at his favorite speak-easy. And in that heightened state of luminous vision, his head nodding over a glass but his mind steady, he told himself that he had nothing to regret; he had done what anyone would have done; Catherine had said it, he was selfish; everybody was selfish; it was not a pretty thing, to be selfish, but he was not alone in it; he had merely been luckier than most; he had been, because he was better than most; he felt fine; he hoped the useless questions would never come back to him again; every man for himself, he muttered, falling asleep on the table.

The useless questions never came back to him again. He had no time for them in the days that followed. He had won the Cosmo-Slotnick competition.

 

Peter Keating had known it would be a triumph, but he had not expected the thing that happened. He had dreamed of a sound of trumpets; he had not foreseen a symphonic explosion.

It began with the thin ringing of a telephone, announcing the names of the winners. Then every phone in the office joined in, screaming, bursting from under the fingers of the operator who could barely control the switchboard; calls from every paper in town, from famous architects, questions, demands for interviews, congratulations. Then the flood rushed out of the elevators, poured through the office doors, the messages, the telegrams, the people Keating knew, the people he had never seen before, the reception clerk losing all sense, not knowing whom to admit or refuse, and Keating shaking hands, an endless stream of hands like a wheel with soft moist cogs flapping against his fingers. He did not know what he said at that first interview, with Francon’s office full of people and cameras; Francon had thrown the doors of his liquor cabinet wide-open. Francon gulped to all these people that the Cosmo-Slotnick building had been created by Peter Keating alone; Francon did not care; he was magnanimous in a spurt of enthusiasm; besides, it made a good story.

It made a better story than Francon had expected. From the pages of newspapers the face of Peter Keating looked upon the country, the handsome, wholesome, smiling face with the brilliant eyes and the dark curls; it headed columns of print about poverty, struggle, aspiration and unremitting toil that had won their reward; about the faith of a mother who had sacrificed everything to her boy’s success; about the “Cinderella of Architecture.”

Cosmo-Slotnick were pleased; they had not thought that prize-winning architects could also be young, handsome and poor—well, so recently poor. They had discovered a boy genius; Cosmo-Slotnick adored boy geniuses; Mr. Slotnick was one himself, being only forty-three.

Keating’s drawings of the “most beautiful skyscraper on earth” were reproduced in the papers, with the words of the award underneath: “... for the brilliant skill and simplicity of its plan ... for its clean, ruthless efficiency ... for its ingenious economy of space ... for the masterful blending of the modern with the traditional in Art ... to Francon & Heyer and Peter Keating ...”

Keating appeared in newsreels, shaking hands with Mr. Shupe and Mr. Slotnick, and the subtitle announced what these two gentlemen thought of his building. Keating appeared in newsreels, shaking hands with Miss Dimples Williams, and the subtitle announced what he thought of her current picture. He appeared at architectural banquets and at film banquets, in the place of honor, and he had to make speeches, forgetting whether he was to speak of buildings or of movies. He appeared at architectural clubs and at fan clubs. Cosmo-Slotnick put out a composite picture of Keating and of his building, which could be had for a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and two bits. He made a personal appearance each evening, for a week, on the stage of the Cosmo Theater, with the first run of the latest Cosmo-Slotnick special; he bowed over the footlights, slim and graceful in a black tuxedo, and he spoke for two minutes on the significance of architecture. He presided as judge at a beauty contest in Atlantic City, the winner to be awarded a screen test by Cosmo-Slotnick. He was photographed with a famous prizefighter, under the caption: “Champions.” A scale model of his building was made and sent on tour, together with the photographs of the best among the other entries, to be exhibited in the foyers of Cosmo-Slotnick theaters throughout the country.

Mrs. Keating had sobbed at first, clasped Peter in her arms and gulped that she could not believe it. She had stammered, answering questions about Petey and she had posed for pictures, embarrassed, eager to please. Then she became used to it. She told Peter, shrugging, that of course he had won, it was nothing to gape at, no one else could have won. She acquired a brisk little tone of condescension for the reporters. She was distinctly annoyed when she was not included in the photographs taken of Petey. She acquired a mink coat.

Keating let himself be carried by the torrent. He needed the people and the clamor around him. There were no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent—admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right as the number of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself born in them, he saw himself being granted the gift of life. That was Peter Keating, that, the reflection in those staring pupils, and his body was only its reflection.

He found time to spend two hours with Catherine, one evening. He held her in his arms and she whispered radiant plans for their future; he glanced at her with contentment; he did not hear her words; he was thinking of how it would look if they were photographed like this together and in how many papers it would be syndicated.

He saw Dominque once. She was leaving the city for the summer. Dominque was disappointing. She congratulated him, quite correctly; but she looked at him as she had always looked, as if nothing had happened. Of all architectural publications, her column had been the only one that had never mentioned the Cosmo-Slotnick competition or its winner.

“I’m going to Connecticut,” she told him. “I’m taking over Father’s place down there for the summer. He’s letting me have it all to myself. No, Peter, you can’t come to visit me. Not even once. I’m going there so I won’t have to see anybody.” He was disappointed, but it did not spoil the triumph of his days. He was not afraid of Dominique any longer. He felt confident that he could bring her to change her attitude, that he would see the change when she came back in the fall.

But there was one thing which did spoil his triumph; not often and not too loudly. He never tired of hearing what was said about him; but he did not like to hear too much about his building. And when he had to hear it, he did not mind the comments on “the masterful blending of the modern with the traditional” in its façade; but when they spoke of the plan—and they spoke so much of the plan—when he heard about “the brilliant skill and simplicity ... the clean, ruthless efficiency ... the ingenious economy of space ...” when he heard it and thought of ... He did not think it. There were no words in his brain. He would not allow them. There was only a heavy, dark feeling—and a name.

For two weeks after the award he pushed this thing out of his mind, as a thing unworthy of his concern, to be buried as his doubting, humble past was buried. All winter long he had kept his own sketches of the building with the pencil lines cut across them by another’s hand; on the evening of the award he had burned them; it was the first thing he had done.

But the thing would not leave him. Then he grasped suddenly that it was not a vague threat, but a practical danger; and he lost all fear of it. He could deal with a practical danger, he could dispose of it quite simply. He chuckled with relief, he telephoned Roark’s office, and made an appointment to see him.

He went to that appointment confidently. For the first time in his life he felt free of the strange uneasiness which he had never been able to explain or escape in Roark’s presence. He felt safe now. He was through with Howard Roark.

 

Roark sat at the desk in his office, waiting. The telephone had rung once, that morning, but it had been only Peter Keating asking for an appointment. He had forgotten now that Keating was coming. He was waiting for the telephone. He had become dependent on that telephone in the last few weeks. He was to hear at any moment about his drawings for the Manhattan Bank Company.

His rent on the office was long since overdue. So was the rent on the room where he lived. He did not care about the room; he could tell the landlord to wait; the landlord waited; it would not have mattered greatly if he had stopped waiting. But it mattered at the office. He told the rental agent that he would have to wait; he did not ask for the delay; he only said flatly, quietly, that there would be a delay, which was all he knew how to do. But his knowledge that he needed this alms from the rental agent, that too much depended on it, had made it sound like begging in his own mind. That was torture. All right, he thought, it’s torture. What of it?

The telephone bill was overdue for two months. He had received the final warning. The telephone was to be disconnected in a few days. He had to wait. So much could happen in a few days.

The answer of the bank board, which Weidler had promised him long ago, had been postponed from week to week. The board could reach no decision; there had been objectors and there had been violent supporters; there had been conferences; Weidler told him eloquently little, but he could guess much; there had been days of silence, of silence in the office, of silence in the whole city, of silence within him. He waited.

He sat, slumped across the desk, his face on his arm, his fingers on the stand of the telephone. He thought dimly that he should not sit like that; but he felt very tired today. He thought that he should take his hand off that phone; but he did not move it. Well, yes, he depended on that phone; he could smash it, but he would still depend on it; he and every breath in him and every bit of him. His fingers rested on the stand without moving. It was this and the mail; he had lied to himself also about the mail; he had lied when he had forced himself not to leap, as a rare letter fell through the slot in the door, not to run forward, but to wait, to stand looking at the white envelope on the floor, then to walk to it slowly and pick it up. The slot in the door and the telephone—there was nothing else left to him of the world.

He raised his head, as he thought of it, to look down at the door, at the foot of the door. There was nothing. It was late in the afternoon, probably past the time of the last delivery. He raised his wrist to glance at his watch; he saw his bare wrist; the watch had been pawned. He turned to the window; there was a clock he could distinguish on a distant tower; it was half past four; there would be no other delivery today.

He saw that his hand was lifting the telephone receiver. His fingers were dialing the number.

“No, not yet,” Weidler’s voice told him over the wire. “We had that meeting scheduled for yesterday, but it had to be called off.... I’m keeping after them like a bulldog.... I can promise you that we’ll have a definite answer tomorrow. I can almost promise you. If not tomorrow, then it will have to wait over the week end, but by Monday I promise it for certain.... You’ve been wonderfully patient with us, Mr. Roark. We appreciate it.” Roark dropped the receiver. He closed his eyes. He thought he would allow himself to rest, just to rest blankly like this for a few minutes, before he would begin to think of what the date on the telephone notice had been and in what way he could manage to last until Monday.

“Hello, Howard,” said Peter Keating.

He opened his eyes. Keating had entered and stood before him, smiling. He wore a light tan spring coat, thrown open, the loops of its belt like handles at his sides, a blue cornflower in his button hole. He stood, his legs apart, his fists on his hips, his hat on the back of his head, his black curls so bright and crisp over his pale forehead that one expected to see drops of spring dew glistening on them as on the cornflower.

“Hello, Peter,” said Roark.

Keating sat down comfortably, took his hat off, dropped it in the middle of the desk, and clasped one hand over each knee with a brisk little slap.

“Well, Howard, things are happening, aren’t they?”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. What’s the matter, Howard? You look like hell. Surely, you’re not overworking yourself, from what I hear?”

This was not the manner he had intended to assume. He had planned the interview to be smooth and friendly. Well, he decided, he’d switch back to that later. But first he had to show that he was not afraid of Roark, that he’d never be afraid again.

“No, I’m not overworking.”

“Look, Howard, why don’t you drop it?”

That was something he had not intended saying at all. His mouth remained open a little, in atonishment.

“Drop what?”

“The pose. Oh, the ideals, if you prefer. Why don’t you come down to earth? Why don’t you start working like everybody else? Why don’t you stop being a damn fool?” He felt himself rolling down a hill, without brakes. He could not stop.