第 117 页

"I want you to help me."

She was standing on the station platform of Clayton, Ohio, on the witness stand

of the Stoddard trial, on the ledge of a quarry, to let herself--as she had been

then--share this sentence she heard now.

"Yes, Roark."

He walked across the room he had designed for her, he sat down, facing her, the

width of the room between them. She found herself seated too, not conscious of

her own movements, only of his, as if his body contained two sets of nerves, his

own and hers.

"Next Monday night, Dominique, exactly at eleven-thirty, I want you to drive up

to the site of Cortlandt Homes."

She noticed that she was conscious of her eyelids; not painfully, but just

conscious; as if they had tightened and would not move again. She had seen the

first building of Cortlandt. She knew what she was about to hear.

"You must be alone in your car and you must be on your way home from some place

where you had an appointment to visit, made in advance. A place that can be

reached from here only by driving past Cortlandt. You must be able to prove that

afterward. I want your car to run out of gas in front of Cortlandt, at

eleven-thirty. Honk your horn. There’s an old night watchman there. He will come

out. Ask him to help you and send him to the nearest garage, which is a mile

away."

She said steadily, "Yes, Roark."

"When he’s gone, get out of your car. There’s a big stretch of vacant land by

the road, across from the building, and a kind of trench beyond. Walk to that

trench as fast as you can, get to the bottom and lie down on the ground. Lie

flat. After a while, you can come back to the car. You will know when to come

back. See that you’re found in the car and that your condition matches its

condition--approximately."

"Yes, Roark."

"Have you understood?"

"Yes."

"Everything?"

"Yes. Everything."

They were standing. She saw only his eyes and that he was smiling.

She heard him say: "Good night, Dominique," he walked out and she heard his car

driving away. She thought of his smile.

She knew that he did not need her help for the thing he was going to do, he

could find other means to get rid of the watchman; that he had let her have a

part in this, because she would not survive what was to follow if he hadn’t;

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that this had been the test.

He had not wanted to name it; he had wanted her to understand and show no fear.

She had not been able to accept the Stoddard trial, she had run from the dread

of seeing him hurt by the world, but she had agreed to help him in this. Had

agreed in complete serenity. She was free and he knew it.

#

The road ran flat across the dark stretches of Long Island, but Dominique felt

as if she were driving uphill. That was the only abnormal sensation: the

sensation of rising, as if her car were speeding vertically. She kept her eyes

on the road, but the dashboard on the rim of her vision looked like the panel of

an airplane. The clock on the dashboard said 11:10.

She was amused, thinking: I’ve never learned to fly a plane and now I know how

it feels; just like this, the unobstructed space and no effort. And no weight.

That’s supposed to happen in the stratosphere--or is it the interplanetary

space?--where one begins to float and there’s no law of gravity. No law of any

kind of gravity at all. She heard herself laughing aloud.

Just the sense of rising....Otherwise, she felt normal. She had never driven a

car so well. She thought: It’s a dry, mechanical job, to drive a car, so I know

I’m very clearheaded; because driving seemed easy, like breathing or swallowing,

an immediate function requiring no attention. She stopped for red lights that

hung in the air over crossings of anonymous streets in unknown suburbs, she

turned corners, she passed other cars, and she was certain that no accident

could happen to her tonight; her car was directed by remote control--one of

those automatic rays she’d read about--was it a beacon or a radio beam?--and she

only sat at the wheel.

It left her free to be conscious of nothing but small matters, and to feel

careless and...unserious, she thought; so completely unserious. It was a kind of

clarity, being more normal than normal, as crystal is more transparent than

empty air. Just small matters: the thin silk of her short, black dress and the

way it was pulled over her knee, the flexing of her toes inside her pump when

she moved her foot, "Danny’s Diner" in gold letters on a dark window that

flashed past.

She had been very gay at the dinner given by the wife of some banker, important

friends of Gail’s, whose names she could not quite remember now. It had been a

wonderful dinner in a huge Long Island mansion. They had been so glad to see her

and so sorry that Gail could not come. She had eaten everything she had seen

placed before her. She had had a splendid appetite--as on rare occasions of her

childhood when she came running home after a day spent in the woods and her

mother was so pleased, because her mother was afraid that she might grow up to

be anemic.

She had entertained the guests at the dinner table with stories of her

childhood, she had made them laugh, and it had been the gayest dinner party her

hosts could remember. Afterward, in the drawing room with the windows open wide

to a dark sky--a moonless sky that stretched out beyond the trees, beyond the

towns, all the way to the banks of the East River--she had laughed and talked,

she had smiled at the people around her with a warmth that made them all speak

freely of the things dearest to them, she had loved those people, and they had

known they were loved, she had loved every person anywhere on earth, and some

woman had said: "Dominique, I didn’t know you could be so wonderful!" and she

had answered: "I haven’t a care in the world."

But she had really noticed nothing except the watch on her wrist and that she

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must be out of that house by 10:50. She had no idea of what she would say to

take her leave, but by 10:45 it had been said, correctly and convincingly, and

by 10:50 her foot was on the accelerator.

It was a closed roadster, black with red leather upholstery. She thought how

nicely John, the chauffeur, had kept that red leather polished. There would be

nothing left of the car, and it was proper that it should look its best for its

last ride. Like a woman on her first night. I never dressed for my first

night--I had no first night--only something ripped off me and the taste of

quarry dust in my teeth.

When she saw black vertical strips with dots of light filling the glass of the

car’s side window, she wondered what had happened to the glass. Then she

realized that she was driving along the East River and that this was New York,

on the other side. She laughed and thought: No, this is not New York, this is a

private picture pasted to the window of my car, all of it, here, on one small

pane, under my hand, I own it, it’s mine now--she ran one hand across the

buildings from the Battery to Queensboro Bridge--Roark, it’s mine and I’m giving

it to you.

#

The figure of the night watchman was now fifteen inches tall in the distance.

When it gets to be ten inches, I’ll start, thought Dominique. She stood by the

side of her car and wished the watchman would walk faster.

The building was a black mass that propped the sky in one spot. The rest of the

sky sagged, intimately low over a flat stretch of ground. The closest streets

and houses were years away, far on the rim of space, irregular little dents,

like the teeth of a broken saw.

She felt a large pebble under the sole of her pump; it was uncomfortable, but

she would not move her foot; it would make a sound. She was not alone. She knew

that he was somewhere in that building, the width of a street away from her.

There was no sound and no light in the building; only white crosses on black

windows. He would need no light; he knew every hall, every stairwell.

The watchman had shrunk away. She jerked the door of her car open. She threw her

hat and bag inside, and flung the door shut. She heard the slam of sound when

she was across the road, running over the empty tract, away from the building.

She felt the silk of her dress clinging to her legs, and it served as a tangible

purpose of flight, to push against that, to tear past that barrier as fast as

she could. There were pits and dry stubble on the ground. She fell once, but she

noticed it only when she was running again.

She saw the trench in the darkness. Then she was on her knees, at the bottom,

and then stretched flat on her stomach, face down, her mouth pressed to the

earth.

She felt the pounding of her thighs and she twisted her body once in a long

convulsion, to feel the earth with her legs, her breasts, the skin of her arms.

It was like lying in Roark’s bed.

The sound was the crack of a fist on the back of her head. She felt the thrust

of the earth against her, flinging her up to her feet, to the edge of the

trench. The upper part of the Cortlandt building had tilted and hung still while

a broken streak of sky grew slowly across it. As if the sky were slicing the

building in half. Then the streak became turquoise blue light. Then there was no

upper part, but only window frames and girders flying through the air, the

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building spreading over the sky, a long, thin tongue of red shooting from the

center, another blow of a fist, and then another, a blinding flash and the glass

panes of the skyscrapers across the river glittering like spangles.

She did not remember that he had ordered her to lie flat, that she was standing,

that glass and twisted iron were raining around her. In the flash when walls

rose outward and a building opened like a sunburst, she thought of him there,

somewhere beyond, the builder who had to destroy, who knew every crucial point

of that structure, who had made the delicate balance of stress and support; she

thought of him selecting these key spots, placing the blast, a doctor turned

murderer, expertly cracking heart, brain and lungs at once. He was there, he saw

it and what it did to him was worse than what it did to the building. But he was

there and he welcomed it.

She saw the city enveloped in light for half a second, she could see window

ledges and cornices miles away, she thought of dark rooms and ceilings licked by

this fire, she saw the peaks of towers lighted against the sky, her city now and

his. "Roark!" she screamed. "Roark! Roark!" She did not know she screamed. She

could not hear her voice in the blast.

Then she was running across the field to the smoking ruin, running over broken

glass, planting her feet down full with each step, because she enjoyed the pain.

There was no pain left ever to be felt by her again. A spread of dust stood over

the field like an awning. She heard the shriek of sirens starting far away.

It was still a car, though the rear wheels were crushed under a piece of furnace

machinery, and an elevator door lay over the hood. She crawled to the seat. She

had to look as if she had not moved from here. She gathered handfuls of glass

off the floor and poured it over her lap, over her hair. She took a sharp

splinter and slashed the skin of her neck, her legs, her arms. What she felt was

not pain. She saw blood shooting out of her arm, running down on her lap,

soaking the black silk, trickling between her thighs. Her head fell back, mouth

open, panting. She did not want to stop. She was free. She was invulnerable. She

did not know she had cut an artery. She felt so light. She was laughing at the

law of gravity.

When she was found by the men of the first police car to reach the scene, she

was unconscious, a few minutes’ worth of life left in her body.

13.

DOMINIQUE glanced about the bedroom of the penthouse. It was her first contact

with surroundings she was ready to recognize. She knew she had been brought here

after many days in a hospital. The bedroom seemed lacquered with light. It’s

that clarity of crystal over everything, she thought; that has remained; it will

remain forever. She saw Wynand standing by her bed. He was watching her. He

looked amused.

She remembered seeing him at the hospital. He had not looked amused then. She

knew the doctor had told him she would not survive, that first night. She had

wanted to tell them all that she would, that she had no choice now but to live;

only it did not seem important to tell people anything, ever.

Now she was back. She could feel bandages on her throat, her legs, her left arm.

But her hands lay before her on the blanket, and the gauze had been removed;

there were only a few thin red scars left.

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"You blasted little fool!" said Wynand happily. "Why did you have to make such a

good job of it?"

Lying on the white pillow, with her smooth gold hair and a white, high-necked

hospital gown, she looked younger than she had ever looked as a child. She had

the quiet radiance presumed and never found in childhood: the full consciousness

of certainty, of innocence, of peace.

"I ran out of gas," she said, "and I was waiting there in my car when

suddenly..."

"I’ve already told that story to the police. So has the night watchman. But

didn’t you know that glass must be handled with discretion?"

Gail looks rested, she thought, and very confident. It has changed everything

for him, too; in the same way.

"It didn’t hurt," she said.

"Next time you want to play the innocent bystander, let me coach you."

"They believe it though, don’t they?"

"Oh yes, they believe it. They have to. You almost died. I don’t see why he had

to save the watchman’s life and almost take yours."

"Who?"

"Howard, my dear. Howard Roark."

"What has he to do with it?"