The Fountainhead (66 page)

“Now, my dear, this doesn’t sound like you at all. None of it.”

She shook her head helplessly: “I know.”

“What is the matter?”

She said, looking at the toes of her shoes, her lips moving with effort:

“I guess I’m no good, Uncle Ellsworth.” She raised her eyes to him. “I’m so terribly unhappy.”

He looked at her silently, his face earnest, his eyes gentle. She whispered:

“You understand?” He nodded. “You’re not angry at me? You don’t despise me?”

“My dear, how could I?”

“I didn’t want to say it. Not even to myself. It’s not just tonight, it’s for a long time back. Just let me say everything, don’t be shocked, I’ve got to tell it. It’s like going to confession as I used to—oh, don’t think I’m returning to that, I know religion is only a ... a device of class exploitation, don’t think I’d let you down after you explained it all so well. I don’t miss going to church. But it’s just—it’s just that I’ve got to have somebody listen.”

“Katie, darling, first of all, why are you so frightened? You mustn’t be. Certainly not of speaking to me. Just relax, be yourself and tell me what happened.”

She looked at him gratefully. “You’re ... so sensitive, Uncle Ellsworth. That’s one thing I didn’t want to say, but you guessed. I
am
frightened. Because—well, you see, you just said, be yourself. And what I’m afraid of most is of being myself. Because I’m vicious.”

He laughed, not offensively, but warmly, the sound destroying her statement. But she did not smile.

“No, Uncle Ellsworth, it’s true. I’ll try to explain. You see, always, since I was a child, I wanted to do right. I used to think everybody did, but now I don’t think so. Some people try their best, even if they do make mistakes, and others just don’t care. I’ve always cared. I took it very seriously. Of course I knew that I’m not a brilliant person and that it’s a very big subject, good and evil. But I felt that whatever is the good—as much as it would be possible for me to know—I would do my honest best to live up to it. Which is all anybody can try, isn’t it? This probably sounds terribly childish to you.”

“No, Katie, it doesn’t. Go on, my dear.”

“Well, to begin with, I knew that it was evil to be selfish. That much I was sure of. So I tried never to demand anything for myself. When Peter would disappear for months ... No, I don’t think you approve of that.”

“Of what, my dear?”

“Of Peter and me. So I won’t talk about that. It’s not important anyway. Well, you can see why I was so happy when I came to live with you. You’re as close to the ideal of unselfishness as anyone can be. I tried to follow you the best I could. That’s how I chose the work I’m doing. You never actually said that I should choose it, but I came to feel that you thought so. Don’t ask me how I came to feel it—it was nothing tangible, just little things you said. I felt very confident when I started. I knew that unhappiness comes from selfishness, and that one can find true happiness only in dedicating oneself to others. You said that. So many people have said that. Why, all the greatest men in history have been saying that for centuries.”

“And?”

“Well, look at me.”

His face remained motionless for a moment, then he smiled gaily and said:

“What’s wrong with you, pet? Apart from the fact that your stockings don’t match and that you could be more careful about your make-up?”

“Don’t laugh, Uncle Ellsworth. Please don’t laugh. I know you say we must be able to laugh at everything, particularly at ourselves. Only—I can’t.”

“I won’t laugh, Katie. But what is the matter?”

“I’m unhappy. I’m unhappy in such a horrible, nasty, undignified way. In a way that seems ... unclean. And dishonest. I go for days, afraid to think, to look at myself. And that’s wrong. It’s ... becoming a hypocrite. I always wanted to be honest with myself. But I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!”

“Hold on, my dear. Don’t shout. The neighbors will hear you.”

She brushed the back of her hand against her forehead. She shook her head. She whispered:

“I’m sorry.... I’ll be all right....”

“Just why are you unhappy, my dear?”

“I don’t know. I can’t understand it. For instance, it was I who arranged to have the classes in prenatal care down at the Clifford House —it was my idea-I raised the money—I found the teacher. The classes are doing very well. I tell myself that I should be happy about it. But I’m not. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to me. I sit down and I tell myself: It was you who arranged to have Marie Gonzales’ baby adopted into a nice family—now, be happy. But I’m not. I feel nothing. When I’m honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I’ve felt for years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It’s as if ... as if there were nobody there to feel any more.”

She took off her glasses, as if the double barrier of her glasses and his prevented her from reaching him. She spoke, her voice lower, the words coming with greater effort:

“But that’s not all. There’s something much worse. It’s doing something horrible to me. I’m beginning to hate people, Uncle Ellsworth. I’m beginning to be cruel and mean and petty in a way I’ve never been before. I expect people to be grateful to me. I ... I
demand
gratitude. I find myself pleased when slum people bow and scrape and fawn over me. I find myself liking only those who are servile. Once ... once I told a woman that she didn’t appreciate what people like us did for trash like her. I cried for hours afterward, I was so ashamed. I begin to resent it when people argue with me. I feel that they have no right to minds of their own, that I know best, that I’m the final authority for them. There was a girl we were worried about, because she was running around with a very handsome boy who had a bad reputation. I tortured her for weeks about it, telling her how he’d get her in trouble and that she should drop him. Well, they got married and they’re the happiest couple in the district. Do you think I’m glad? No, I’m furious and I’m barely civil to the girl when I meet her. Then there was a girl who needed a job desperately—it was really a ghastly situation in her home, and I promised that I’d get her one. Before I could find it, she got a good job all by herself. I wasn’t pleased. I was sore as hell that somebody got out of a bad hole without
my
help. Yesterday, I was speaking to a boy who wanted to go to college and I was discouraging him, telling him to get a good job, instead. I was quite angry, too. And suddenly I realized that it was because I had wanted so much to go to college—you remember, you wouldn’t let me—and so I wasn’t going to let that kid do it either.... Uncle Ellsworth, don’t you see? I’m becoming
selfish.
I’m becoming selfish in a way that’s much more horrible than if I were some petty chiseler pinching pennies off these people’s wages in a sweatshop!”

He asked quietly:

“Is that all?”

She closed her eyes, and then she said, looking down at her hands:

“Yes ... except that I’m not the only one who’s like that. A lot of them are, most of the women I work with.... I don’t know how they got that way.... I don’t know how it happened to me.... I used to feel happy when I helped somebody. I remember once—I had lunch with Peter that day—and on my way back I saw an old organ-grinder and I gave him five dollars I had in my bag. It was all the money I had; I’d saved it to buy a bottle of ‘Christmas Night,’ I wanted ‘Christmas Night’ very badly, but afterward every time I thought of that organ-grinder I was happy.... I saw Peter often in those days.... I’d come home after seeing him and I’d want to kiss every ragged kid on our block.... I think I hate the poor now.... I think all the other women do, too.... But the poor don’t hate us, as they should. They only despise us.... You know, it’s funny: it’s the masters who despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters. I don’t know who is which. Maybe it doesn’t fit here. Maybe it does. I don’t know ...”

She raised her head with a last spurt of rebellion.

“Don’t you see what it is that I must understand? Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it’s making me rotten? I think it’s probably because I’m vicious by nature and incapable of leading a good life. That seems to be the only explanation. But ... but sometimes I think it doesn’t make sense that a human being is completely sincere in good will and yet the good is not for him to achieve. I can’t be as rotten as that. But ... but I’ve given up everything, I have no selfish desire left, I have nothing of my own—and I’m miserable. And so are the other women like me. And I don’t know a single selfless person in the world who’s happy—except you.”

She dropped her head and she did not raise it again; she seemed indifferent even to the answer she was seeking.

“Katie,” he said softly, reproachfully, “Katie darling.”

She waited silently.

“Do you really want me to tell you the answer?” She nodded. “Because, you know, you’ve given the answer yourself, in the things you said.” She lifted her eyes blankly. “What have you been talking about? What have you been complaining about? About the fact that you are unhappy. About Katie Halsey and nothing else. It was the most egotistical speech I’ve ever heard in my life.”

She blinked attentively, like a schoolchild disturbed by a difficult lesson.

“Don’t you see how selfish you have been? You chose a noble career, not for the good you could accomplish, but for the personal happiness you expected to find in it.”

“But I really wanted to help people.”

“Because you thought you’d be good and virtuous doing it.”

“Why—yes. Because I thought it was right. Is it vicious to want to do right?”

“Yes, if it’s your chief concern. Don’t you see how egotistical it is? To hell with everybody so long as I’m virtuous.”

“But if you have no ... no self-respect, how can you be anything?”

“Why must you be anything?”

She spread her hands out, bewildered.

“If your first concern is for what you are or think or feel or have or haven’t got—you’re still a common egotist.”

“But I can’t jump out of my own body.”

“No. But you can jump out of your narrow soul.”

“You mean, I must
want
to be unhappy?”

“No. You must stop wanting
anything.
You must forget how important Miss Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn’t. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you’ve found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It’s just growing pains. One can’t jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. A beautiful woman is usually a gawky adolescent first. All growth demands destruction. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean—anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul—only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you.”

“But, Uncle Ellsworth,” she whispered, “when the gates fall open, who is it that’s going to enter?”

He laughed aloud, crisply. It sounded like a laugh of appreciation. “My dear,” he said, “I never thought you could surprise me.”

Then his face became earnest again.

“It was a smart crack, Katie, but you know, I hope, that it was only a smart crack?”

“Yes,” she said uncertainly, “I suppose so. Still ...”

“We can’t be too literal when we deal in abstractions. Of course it’s you who’ll enter. You won’t have lost your identity—you will merely have acquired a broader one, an identity that will be part of everybody else and of the whole universe.”

“How? In what way? Part of what?”

“Now you see how difficult it is to discuss these things when our entire language is the language of individualism, with all its terms and superstitions. ‘Identity’—it’s an illusion, you know. But you can’t build a new house out of crumbling old bricks. You can’t expect to understand me completely through the medium of present-day conceptions. We are poisoned by the superstition of the ego. We cannot know what will be right or wrong in a selfless society, nor what we’ll feel, nor in what manner. We must destroy the ego first. That is why the mind is so unreliable. We must not think. We must believe. Believe, Katie, even if your mind objects. Don’t think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don’t think. Feel. Believe.”

She sat still, composed, but somehow she looked like something run over by a tank. She whispered obediently:

“Yes, Uncle Ellsworth ... I ... I didn’t think of it that way. I mean, I always thought that I must think ... But you’re right, that is, if right is the word I mean, if there is a word ... Yes, I will believe.... I’ll try to understand.... No, not to understand. To feel. To believe, I mean.... Only I’m so weak.... I always feel so small after talking to you.... I suppose I was right in a way—I
am
worthless ... but it doesn’t matter ... it doesn’t matter....”

 

When the doorbell rang on the following evening Toohey went to open the door himself.

He smiled when he admitted Peter Keating. After the trial he had expected Keating to come to him; he knew that Keating would need to come. But he had expected him sooner.

Keating walked in uncertainly. His hands seemed too heavy for his wrists. His eyes were puffed, and the skin of his face looked slack.

“Hello, Peter,” said Toohey brightly. “Want to see me? Come right in. Just your luck. I have the whole evening free.”

“No,” said Keating. “I want to see Katie.”

He was not looking at Toohey and he did not see the expression behind Toohey’s glasses.