The Early Ayn Rand (64 page)

“I don’t want to see you,” she said. “Not tonight or ever. I wanted you to know that. You see, here, I’m saying it to you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t need you. I want you to know that.”

He did not seem surprised by the irrelevance of her words. He understood what had never been said between them, what should have been said to make her words coherent. He sat watching her silently.

“You think you know what I think of you, don’t you?” she said, her voice rising. “Well, you don’t. It isn’t that. I can’t stand you. You’re not a human being. You’re a monster of some kind. I would like to hurt you. You’re abnormal. You’re a perverted egotist. You’re a monster of egotism. You shouldn’t exist.”

It was not the despair of her love. It was hatred and it was real. Her voice, clear and breaking, was free of him. But she could not move. His presence held her there, rooted to one spot. She threw her shoulders back, her arms taut behind her, bent slightly at the elbows, her hands closed, her wrists heavy, beating. She said, her voice choked:

“I’m saying this because I’ve always wanted to say it and now I can. I just want to say it, like this, to your face. It’s wonderful. Just to say that you don’t own me and you never will. Not you. Anyone but you. To say that you’re nothing, you, nothing, and I can laugh at you. And I can loathe you. Do you hear me? You . . .”

And then she saw that he was looking at her as he had never looked before. He was leaning forward, his arm across his knee, and his hand, hanging in the air, seemed to support the whole weight of his body, a still, heavy, gathered weight. In his eyes, she saw for the first time a new, open, eager interest, an attention so avid that her breath stopped. What she saw in his face terrified her: it was cold, bare, raw cruelty. She was conscious suddenly, overwhelmingly of what she had never felt in that room before: that a man was looking at her.

She could not move from that spot. She whispered, her eyes closed:

“I don’t want you . . . I don’t want you . . .”

He was beside her. She was in his arms, her body jerked tight against his, his mouth on hers.

She knew that it was not love and that she was to expect no love. She knew that she did not want that which would happen to her, because she was afraid, because she had never thought of that as real. She knew also that none of this mattered, nothing mattered except his desire and that she could grant him his desire. When he threw her down on the bed, she thought that the sole thing existing, the substance of all reality for her and for everyone, was only to do what he wanted.

 

[One] evening, Keating climbed, unannounced, to Roark’s room and knocked, a little nervously, and entered cheerfully, brisk, smiling, casual. He found Roark sitting on the windowsill, smoking, swinging one leg absentmindedly, and Vesta Dunning on the floor, by a lamp, sewing buttons on his old shirt.

“Just passing by,” said Keating brightly, having acknowledged an introduction to Vesta, “just passing by with an evening to kill and happened to think that that’s where you live, Howard, and thought I’d drop in to say hello, haven’t seen you for such a long time.”

“I know what you want,” said Roark. “All right. How much?”

“How . . . What do you mean, Howard?”

“You know what I mean. How much do you offer?”

“I . . . Fifty a week,” Keating blurted out involuntarily. This was not at all the elaborate approach he had prepared, but he had not expected to find that no approach would be necessary. “Fifty to start with. Of course, if you think it’s not enough, I could maybe . . .”

“Fifty will do.”

“You . . . you’ll come with us, Howard?”

“When do you want me to start?”

“Why . . . God! as soon as you can. Monday?”

“All right.”

Gee, Howard, thanks!” said Keating and wondered while pronouncing it why he was saying this, when Roark should have been the one to thank him, and wondered what it was that Roark always did to him to throw him off the track completely.

“Now listen to me,” said Roark. “I’m not going to do any designing. No, not any. No details. No Louis XV skyscrapers. Just keep me off aesthetics if you want to keep me at all. I have nothing to learn about design at Francon & Heyer’s. Put me in the engineering department. Send me on inspections. I want to get out in the field. That’s all I can learn at your place. Now, do you still want me?”

“Oh, sure, Howard, sure, anything you say. You’ll like the place, just wait and see. You’ll like Francon. He’s one of Cameron’s men himself.”

“He shouldn’t boast about it.”

“Well . . . that is . . .”

“No. Don’t worry. I won’t say it to his face. I won’t say anything to anyone. I won’t embarrass you. I won’t preach any modernism. I won’t say what I think of the work I’ll see there. I’ll behave. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Oh, no, Howard, I know I can trust your good judgment, really, I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t even thinking of it.”

“Well, it’s all settled then? Goodnight. See you Monday.”

“Well, yes . . . that is . . . I . . . I’m in no special hurry to go, really I came to see you and . . .”

“What’s the matter, Peter? Something bothering you?”

“Why, no . . . I . . .”

“You want to know why I’m doing it?” Roark looked at him and smiled, without resentment or interest. “Is that it? I’ll tell you, if you want to know. I don’t give a damn where I work next. There’s no architect in town that I’d cross the street to work for. And since I have to work somewhere, it might as well be your Francon—if I can get what I want from you. Don’t worry. I’m selling myself, and I’ll play the game that way—for the time being.”

“Really, Howard, you don’t have to look at it like that. There’s no limit to how far you can go with us, once you get used to it. You’ll see, for a change, what a real office looks like. After Cameron’s, you’ll find such a scope for your talent that . . .”

“We’ll shut up about that, won’t we, Peter?”

“Oh . . . I . . . I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t mean anything.” And he kept still. He did not quite know what to say nor what he should feel. It was a victory, but it was hollow somehow. Still, it was a victory and he felt that he wanted to feel affection for Roark.

Keating smiled warmly, cheerily, and he saw Vesta smiling in answer, in approval and understanding; but Roark would not smile; Roark looked at him steadily, his gray eyes at their most exasperating, without expression, without hint of thought or feeling.

“Gee, Howard,” Keating tried with resolute brightness, “it will be wonderful to have you with us. Just like in the old days. Just like . . .” It petered out; he had nothing to say.

“It’s wonderful of you to be doing this, Mr. Keating,” said Vesta. She was not looking at Roark.

“Oh, not at all, Miss Dunning, not at all.” It was like a shot in the arm to Keating, and the sudden, supple lift of his head was his own again, his usual own, in the manner with which he moved everywhere else. He loved Roark in that moment. “Say, Howard, how about our going out for a little drink somewhere, Miss Dunning and you and I, just sort of to celebrate the occasion?”

“Swell,” said Vesta. “I’d love to.”

“Sorry, Peter,” said Roark. “That isn’t part of the job.”

“Well, as you wish,” said Keating, rising. “See you Monday, Howard.” He looked at Roark, and his eyes narrowed, and he smiled, too pleasantly. “Nine o’clock, Howard. Do be on time. That’s one thing we insist upon. We’ve had a time clock installed for the draftsmen—my idea—you won’t mind, of course?” He swung his overcoat closed, with a swift, sweeping gesture he had learned from Francon, a gesture that seemed to display the luster of the cloth and the cost of it and everything that the cost implied. He stood buttoning it casually, with straight fingertips, not looking down at his hands. “I shall be responsible for you, Howard. You’ll be under me personally, by the way. Goodnight, Howard.”

He left. Roark lit a cigarette and sat down, one foot on the windowsill, his knee bent, his head thrown back. Vesta looked at the curve of his neck, at the smoke rising in a straight, even streak with his even breathing. She knew that he had forgotten her presence.

“Why did you have to act like that?” she snapped.

“Huh?” he asked, his eyes closed.

“Why did you have to insult Mr. Keating?”

“Oh? Did I?”

“It was darn decent of him. And he tried so hard to be friendly. I thought he’s such a nice person. Why did you have to go out of your way to be nasty? Can’t you ever be human? After all, he was doing you a favor. And you accepted it. You took it and you treated him like dirt under your feet. You . . . Are you listening to me, Howard?”

“No.”

She stood looking at him, her hands tight, grasping the cloth of her blouse at her shoulders, pulling it savagely so that she felt the collar cutting the back of her neck. She tried to think of something that would bring him to the humiliation of anger. She couldn’t. She felt the anger growing within her instead, and she forced herself to say nothing until she could keep her voice from shaking.

It was not the scene she had witnessed that made her hate him for the moment. It was something she had felt present in that scene, something in him which she could not name, the thing she dreaded, the thing she had fought—and loved—for a year.

That year of her life had given her no happiness; only bewilderment and doubts and fear; a fear underscored by rare moments of a joy which was too much to bear. . . . She never felt the distance between them as she felt it lying in his arms, in his bed. It was as if the nights they shared gave her no rights, not the right to the confidence of a friend, not the right of the consideration of an acquaintance, not even the right to the courtesy of a stranger passing her on the street. He listened silently to her breathless voice whispering to him, when she could not stop it: “I love you, Howard . . . I love you . . . I love you . . .” her lips pressed to his arm, to his shoulder, as if her mouth were telling it to his skin, and it was not from her nor for him. She could be grateful only that he heard. He never answered.

She spoke to him of his meaning to her, of her life, of every thought, every spring of her life. He said nothing. He shared nothing. He never came to her for consolation, for encouragement, not even as to a mirror to reflect him and to listen. He had never known the need of someone listening. He had never known need. He did not need her. It was this—hidden, unconfessed, unacknowledged, but present, there, there within her—which made her afraid. She would have given anything, she would have lost him happily afterwards, if only she could see once one sign, one hint of his need for her, for anything of her. She could never see it.

She asked sometimes, her arms about him: “Howard, do you love me?” He answered: “No.” She expected no other answer; somehow, the simple honesty in his voice, as he answered, the gentleness, the quiet unconsciousness of any cruelty made her accept it without hurt.

“Howard, do you think you’ll ever love anyone?”

“No.”

“You’re too selfish!”

“Oh, yes.”

“And conceited.”

“No. I’m too selfish to be conceited.”

Yet he was not indifferent to her. There were moments when she felt his attention, to her voice, to her every movement in the room, and behind his silence a question mark that was almost admiration. In such moments, she was not afraid of him and she felt closer to him than to any being in the world. Those were the moments when she did not laugh and did not feel comfortable, but felt happy instead and spoke of her work. She had had several parts after her first small success; they were not good parts and the shows had not lasted, and on some she had received no notice at all. But she was moving forward, and the more she hated the empty words she had to speak each evening in some half-empty theater, the more eagerly she could think of things she would do some day, when she reached the freedom to do them, of the women she would play, of Joan d’Arc. She found that she could speak of it to Roark, that it was easier, speaking of it to him than dreaming it secretly. His mere presence, his silence, his eyes, still and listening to her, gave it a reality she could not create alone. She was so aware of him, when she spoke of it, that she could forget his presence and yet feel it in all of her body, in the sharp, quickened, exhilarated tension of her muscles, and she could read the words of Joan d’Arc aloud, turned away from him, not seeing him, not knowing him, but reading it to him for him, with every vibration of her ecstatic voice. “Howard,” she said sometimes, breaking off her lines, her back turned to him, not feeling the necessity to face him, because he was everywhere around her, and his name was only a mechanical convention for the thing she was addressing, “there are things that are normal and comfortable and easy, and that’s most of life for all of us. And then there are also things above it, things so much more than human, and not many can bear it and then not often, but that’s the only reason for living at all. Things that make you very quiet and still and it’s difficult to breathe. Can I explain that to the people who’ve never seen it? Can I show it to them? Can I? That’s what I’ll do someday with her, with Joan d’Arc, to make them look up, up, Howard. . . . You see it, don’t you?” And when she looked at him, his eyes were wide and open to her, and in that instant there were no secrets in him hidden from her, and she knew him, knowing also that she would lose him again in a moment, and she felt that her legs could not hold her, and she was sitting on the floor, her head buried against his knees, and she was whispering: “Howard, I’m afraid of you . . . I’m afraid of myself because of you . . . Howard . . . Howard . . .” She felt his lips on the back of her neck and she felt a thing incredible from him, incredible and right, right only in that moment: tenderness.

Then she knew, not that he loved her, but that he granted her a strange value, not for him, but in herself alone, apart from him, not needing her, but admiring her. And she felt at once that this was right and what she wanted and what she loved in him, and also that it was inhuman, bewildering, cold, and not the love others called love. She felt both things, confused, inextricable, and she knew only, with a certainty beyond explanation, that she was happy in that moment and would hate him for it when the moment passed and life became normal again.