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worse than showing him a field of unburied corpses?"

Wynand pointed to the white-tiled front of a new diner across the street: "Let’s

go in there."

They sat by the window, at a clean metal table, and Wynand ordered coffee. He

seemed as graciously at home as in the best restaurants of the city; his

elegance had an odd quality here--it did not insult the place, but seemed to

transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes

a palace of any house he enters. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table,

watching Roark through the steam of the coffee, his eyes narrowed, amused. He

moved one finger to point across the

street.

"That’s the first piece of property I ever bought, Howard. It was a long time

ago. I haven’t touched it since."

"What were you saving it for?"

"You."

Roark raised the heavy white mug of coffee to his lips, his eyes holding

Wynand’s, narrowed and mocking in answer. He knew that Wynand wanted eager

questions and he waited patiently instead.

"You stubborn bastard," Wynand chuckled, surrendering. "All right. Listen. This

is where I was born. When I could begin to think of buying real estate, I bought

this piece. House by house. Block by block. It took a long time. I could have

bought better property and made money fast, as I did later, but I waited until I

had this. Even though I knew I would make no use of it for years. You see, I had

decided then that this is where the Wynand Building would stand some day....All

right, keep still all you want--I’ve seen what your face looked like just now."

"Oh, God, Gail!..."

"What’s the matter? Want to do it? Want it pretty badly?"

"I think I’d almost give my life for it--only then I couldn’t build it. Is that

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what you wanted to hear?"

"Something like that. I won’t demand your life. But it’s nice to shock the

breath out of you for once. Thank you for being shocked. It means you understood

what the Wynand Building implies. The highest structure in the city. And the

greatest."

"I know that’s what you’d want."

"I won’t build it yet. But I’ve waited for it all these years. And now you’ll

wait with me. Do you know that I really like to torture you, in a way? That I

always want to?"

"I know."

"I brought you here only to tell you that it will be yours when I build it. I

have waited, because I felt I was not ready for it. Since I met you, I knew I

was ready--and I don’t mean because you’re an architect. But we’ll have to wait

a little longer, just another year or two, till the country gets back on its

feet. This is the wrong time for building. Of course, everybody says that the

day of the skyscraper is past. That it’s obsolete. I don’t give a damn about

that. I’ll make it pay for itself. The Wynand Enterprises have offices scattered

all over town. I want them all in one building. And I hold enough over the heads

of enough important people to force them to rent all the rest of the space.

Perhaps, it will be the last skyscraper built in New York. So much the better.

The greatest and the last."

Roark sat looking across the street, at the streaked ruins.

"To be torn down, Howard. All of it. Razed off. The place where I did not run

things. To be supplanted by a park and the Wynand Building....The best

structures of New York are wasted because they can’t be seen, squeezed against

one another in blocks. My building will be seen. It will reclaim the whole

neighborhood. Let the others follow. Not the right location, they’ll say? Who

makes right locations? They’ll see. This might become the new center of the

city--when the city starts living again. I planned it when the Banner was

nothing but a fourth-rate rag. I haven’t miscalculated, have I? I knew what I

would become...A monument to my life, Howard. Remember what you said when you

came to my office for the first time? A statement of my life. There were things

in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will

remain. After I am gone that building will be Gail Wynand....I knew I’d find the

right architect when the time came. I didn’t know he would be much more than

just an architect I hired. I’m glad it happened this way. It’s a kind of reward.

It’s as if I had been forgiven. My last and greatest achievement will also be

your greatest. It will be not only my monument but the best gift I could offer

to the man who means most to me on earth. Don’t frown, you know that’s what you

are to me. Look at that horror across the street. I want to sit here and watch

you looking at it. That’s what we’re going to destroy--you and I. That’s what it

will rise from--the Wynand Building by Howard Roark. I’ve waited for it from the

day I was born. From the day you were born, you’ve waited for your one great

chance. There it is, Howard, across the street. Yours--from me."

10.

IT HAD stopped raining, but Peter Keating wished it would start again. The

pavements glistened, there were dark blotches on the walls of buildings, and

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since it did not come from the sky, it looked as if the city were bathed in cold

sweat. The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old

age, and there were yellow puddles of light in windows. Keating had missed the

rain, but he felt wet, from his bones out.

He had left his office early, and he walked home. The office seemed unreal to

him, as it had for a long time. He could find reality only in the evenings, when

he slipped furtively up to Roark’s apartment. He did not slip and it was not

furtive, he told himself angrily--and knew that it was; even though he walked

through the lobby of the Enright House and rode up in an elevator, like any man

on a legitimate errand. It was the vague anxiety,’ the impulse to glance around

at every face, the fear of being recognized; it was a load of anonymous guilt,

not toward any person, but the more frightening sense of guilt without a victim.

He took from Roark rough sketches for every detail of Cortlandt--to have them

translated into working drawings by his own staff. He listened to Roark’s

instructions. He memorized arguments to offer his employers against every

possible objection. He absorbed like a recording machine. Afterward, when he

gave explanations to his draftsmen, his voice sounded like a disk being played.

He did not mind. He questioned nothing.

Now he walked slowly, through the streets full of rain that would not come. He

looked up and saw empty space where the towers of familiar buildings had been;

it did not look like fog or clouds, but like a solid spread of gray sky that had

worked a gigantic, soundless destruction. That sight of buildings vanishing

through the sky had always made him uneasy. He walked on, looking down.

It was the shoes that he noticed first. He knew that he must have seen the

woman’s face, that the instinct of self-preservation had jerked his glance away

from it and let his conscious perception begin with the shoes. They were flat,

brown oxfords, offensively competent, too well shined on the muddy pavement,

contemptuous of rain and of beauty. His eyes went to the brown skirt, to the

tailored jacket, costly and cold like a uniform, to the hand with a hole in the

finger of an expensive glove, to the lapel that bore a preposterous ornament--a

bow-legged Mexican with red-enameled pants--stuck there in a clumsy attempt at

pertness; to the thin lips, to the glasses, to the eyes.

"Katie," he said.

She stood by the window of a bookstore; her glance hesitated halfway between

recognition and a book title she had been examining; then, with recognition

evident in the beginning of a smile, the glance went back to the book title, to

finish and make an efficient note of it. Then her eyes returned to Keating. Her

smile was pleasant; not as an effort over bitterness, and not as welcome; just

pleasant.

"Why, Peter Keating," she said. "Hello, Peter."

"Katie..." He could not extend his hand or move closer to her.

"Yes, imagine running into you like this, why, New York is just like any small

town, though I suppose without the better features." There was no strain in her

voice.

"What are you doing here? I thought...I heard..." He knew she had a good job in

Washington and had moved there two years ago.

"Just a business trip. Have to dash right back tomorrow. Can’t say that I mind

it, either. New York seems so dead, so slow."

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"Well, I’m glad you like your job...if you mean...isn’t that what you mean?"

"Like my job? What a silly thing to say. Washington is the only grownup place in

the country. I don’t see how people can live anywhere else. What have you been

doing, Peter? I saw your name in the paper the other day, it was something

important."

"I...I’m working....You haven’t changed much, Katie, not really, have you?--I

mean, your face--you look like you used to--in a way..."

"It’s the only face I’ve got. Why do people always have to talk about changes if

they haven’t seen each other for a year or two? I ran into Grace Parker

yesterday and she had to go into an inventory of my appearance. I could just

hear every word before she said it--’You look so nice--not a day older, really,

Catherine.’ People are provincial."

"But...you do look nice....It’s...it’s nice to see you..."

"I’m glad to see you, too. How is the building industry?"

"I don’t know....What you read about must have been Cortlandt...I’m doing

Cortlandt Homes, a housing..."

"Yes, of course. That was it. I think it’s very good for you, Peter. To do a

job, not just for private profit and a fat fee, but with a social purpose. I

think architects should stop money grubbing and give a little time to government

work and broader objectives."

"Why, most of them would grab it if they could get it, it’s one of the hardest

rackets to break into, it’s a closed..."

"Yes, yes, I know. It’s simply impossible to make the laymen understand our

methods of working, and that’s why all we hear are all those stupid, boring

complaints. You mustn’t read the Wynand papers, Peter."

"I never read the Wynand papers. What on earth has it got to do with...Oh, I...I

don’t know what we’re talking about. Katie."

He thought that she owed him nothing, or every kind of anger and scorn she could

command; and yet there was a human obligation she still had toward him: she owed

him an evidence of strain in this meeting. There was none.

"We really should have a great deal to talk about, Peter." The words would have

lifted him, had they not been pronounced so easily. "But we can’t stand here all

day." She glanced at her wrist watch. "I’ve got an hour or so, suppose you take

me somewhere for a cup of tea, you could use some hot tea, you look frozen."

That was her first comment on his appearance; that, and a glance without

reaction. He thought, even Roark had been shocked, had acknowledged the change.

"Yes, Katie. That will be wonderful. I..." He wished she had not been the one to

suggest it; it was the right thing for them to do; he wished she had not been

able to think of the right thing; not so quickly. "Let’s find a nice, quiet

place..."

"We’ll go to Thorpe’s. There’s one around the corner. They have the nicest

watercress sandwiches."

530

It was she who took his arm to cross the street, and dropped it again on the

other side. The gesture had been automatic. She had not noticed it.

There was a counter of pastry and candy inside the door of Thorpe’s. A large

bowl of sugar-coated almonds, green and white, glared at Keating. The place

smelled of orange icing. The lights were dim, a stuffy orange haze; the odor

made the light seem sticky. The tables were too small, set close together.

He sat, looking down at a paper lace doily on a black glass table top. But when

he lifted his eyes to Catherine, he knew that no caution was necessary: she did

not react to his scrutiny; her expression remained the same, whether he studied

her face or that of the woman at the next table; she seemed to have no

consciousness of her own person.

It was her mouth that had changed most, he thought; the lips were drawn in, with

only a pale edge of flesh left around the imperious line of their opening; a

mouth to issue orders, he thought, but not big orders or cruel orders; just mean

little ones--about plumbing and disinfectants. He saw the fine wrinkles at the

corners of her eyes--a skin like paper that had been crumpled and then smoothed

out.

She was telling him about her work in Washington, and he listened bleakly. He

did not hear the words, only the tone of her voice, dry and crackling.

A waitress in a starched orchid uniform came to take their orders. Catherine

snapped:

"The tea sandwiches special. Please."

Keating said:

"A cup of coffee." He saw Catherine’s eyes on him, and in a sudden panic of

embarrassment, feeling he must not confess that he couldn’t swallow a bite of

food now, feeling that the confession would anger her, he added: "A ham and

swiss on rye, I guess."

"Peter, what ghastly food habits! Wait a minute, waitress. You don’t want that,

Peter. It’s very bad for you. You should have a fresh salad. And coffee is bad

at this time of the day. Americans drink too much coffee."

"All right," said Keating.

"Tea and a combination salad, waitress ... And--oh, waitress!--no bread

with the salad--you’re gaining weight, Peter--some diet crackers. Please."

Keating waited until the orchid uniform had moved away, and then he said,

hopefully:

"I have changed, haven’t I, Katie? I do look pretty awful?" Even a disparaging

comment would be a personal link.