第 17 页

throw them at Keating’s face and resign, one thought stopped him: the thought

that it was a building and that he had to save it, as others could not pass a

drowning man without leaping in to the rescue.

Then he worked for hours, sometimes all night, while Keating sat and watched. He

forgot Keating’s presence. He saw only a building and his chance to shape it. He

knew that the shape would be changed, torn, distorted. Still, some order and

reason would remain in its plan. It would be a better building than it would

have been if he refused.

Sometimes, looking at the sketch of a structure simpler, cleaner, more honest

than the others, Roark would say: "That’s not so bad, Peter. You’re improving."

And Keating would feel an odd little jolt inside, something quiet, private and

precious, such as he never felt from the compliments of Guy Francon, of his

clients, of all others. Then he would forget it and feel much more substantially

pleased when a wealthy lady murmured over a teacup: "You’re the coming architect

of America, Mr. Keating," though she had never seen his buildings.

He found compensations for his submission to Roark. He would enter the drafting

room in the morning, throw a tracing boy’s assignment down on Roark’s table and

say: "Howard, do this up for me, will you?--and make it fast." In the middle of

the day, he would send a boy to Roark’s table to say loudly: "Mr. Keating wishes

to see you in his office at once." He would come out of the office and walk in

Roark’s direction and say to the room at large: "Where the hell are those

Twelfth Street plumbing specifications? Oh, Howard, will you look through the

files and dig them up for me?"

At first, he was afraid of Roark’s reaction. When he saw no reaction, only a

silent obedience, he could restrain himself no longer. He felt a sensual

pleasure in giving orders to Roark; and he felt also a fury of resentment at

Roark’s passive compliance. He continued, knowing that he could continue only so

long as Roark exhibited no anger, yet wishing desperately to break him down to

an explosion. No explosion came.

74

Roark liked the days when he was sent out to inspect buildings in construction.

He walked through the steel hulks of buildings more naturally than on pavements.

The workers observed with curiosity that he walked on narrow planks, on naked

beams hanging over empty space, as easily as the best of them.

It was a day in March, and the sky was a faint green with the first hint of

spring. In Central Park, five hundred feet below, the earth caught the tone of

the sky in a shade of brown that promised to become green, and the lakes lay

like splinters of glass under the cobwebs of bare branches. Roark walked through

the shell of what was to be a gigantic apartment hotel, and stopped before an

electrician at work.

The man was toiling assiduously, bending conduits around a beam. It was a task

for hours of strain and patience, in a space overfilled against all

calculations. Roark stood, his hands in his pockets, watching the man’s slow,

painful progress.

The man raised his head and turned to him abruptly. He had a big head and a face

so ugly that it became fascinating; it was neither old nor flabby, but it was

creased in deep gashes and the powerful jowls drooped like a bulldog’s; the eyes

were startling--wide, round and china-blue.

"Well?" the man asked angrily, "what’s the matter, Brick-top?"

"You’re wasting your time," said Roark.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You don’t say!"

"It will take you hours to get your pipes around that beam."

"Know a better way to do it?"

"Sure."

"Run along, punk. We don’t like college smarties around here."

"Cut a hole in that beam and put your pipes through."

"What?"

"Cut a hole through the beam."

"The hell I will!"

"The hell you won’t."

"It ain’t done that way."

"I’ve done it."

"You?"

"It’s done everywhere."

"It ain’t gonna be done here. Not by me."

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"Then I’ll do it for you."

The man roared. "That’s rich! When did office boys learn to do a man’s work?"

"Give me your torch."

"Look out, boy! It’ll burn your pretty pink toes!"

Roark took the man’s gloves and goggles, took the acetylene torch, knelt, and

sent a thin jet of blue fire at the center of the beam. The man stood watching

him. Roark’s arm was steady, holding the tense, hissing streak of flame in

leash, shuddering faintly with its violence, but holding it aimed straight.

There was no strain, no effort in the easy posture of his body, only in his arm.

And it seemed as if the blue tension eating slowly through metal came not from

the flame but from the hand holding it.

He finished, put the torch down, and rose.

"Jesus!" said the electrician. "Do you know how to handle a torch!"

"Looks like it, doesn’t it?" He removed the gloves, the goggles, and handed them

back. "Do it that way from now on. Tell the foreman I said so."

The electrician was staring reverently at the neat hole cut through the beam. He

muttered: "Where did you learn to handle it like that, Red?"

Roark’s slow, amused smile acknowledged this concession of victory. "Oh, I’ve

been an electrician, and a plumber, and a rivet catcher, and many other things."

"And went to school besides?"

"Well, in a way."

"Gonna be an architect?"

"Yes."

"Well, you’ll be the first one that knows something besides pretty pictures and

tea parties. You should see the teacher’s pets they send us down from the

office."

"If you’re apologizing, don’t. I don’t like them either. Go back to the pipes.

So long."

"So long, Red."

The next time Roark appeared on that job, the blue-eyed electrician waved to him

from afar, and called him over, and asked advice about his work which he did not

need; he stated that his name was Mike and that he had missed Roark for several

days. On the next visit the day shift was just leaving, and Mike waited outside

for Roark to finish the inspection. "How about a glass of beer, Red?" he

invited, when Roark came out. "Sure," said Roark, "thanks."

They sat together at a table in the corner of a basement speakeasy, and they

drank beer, and Mike related his favorite tale of how he had fallen five stories

when a scaffolding gave way under him, how he had broken three ribs but lived to

tell it, and Roark spoke of his days in the building trades. Mike did have a

real name, which was Sean Xavier Donnigan, but everyone had forgotten it long

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ago; he owned a set of tools and an ancient Ford, and existed for the sole

purpose of traveling around the country from one big construction job to

another. People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal.

He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no

tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in

his own field and he felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world

was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not

concerned with the latter. He loved buildings. He despised, however, all

architects.

"There was one, Red," he said earnestly, over his fifth beer, "one only and

you’d be too young to know about him, but that was the only man that knew

building. I worked for him when I was your age."

"Who was that?"

"Henry Cameron was his name. He’s dead, I guess, these many years."

Roark looked at him for a long time, then said: "He’s not dead, Mike," and

added: "I’ve worked for him."

"You did?"

"For almost three years."

They looked at each other silently, and that was the final seal on their

friendship.

Weeks later, Mike stopped Roark, one day, at the building, his ugly face

puzzled, and asked:

"Say, Red, I heard the super tell a guy from the contractor’s that you’re

stuck-up and stubborn and the lousiest bastard he’s ever been up against. What

did you do to him?"

"Nothing."

"What the hell did he mean?"

"I don’t know," said Roark. "Do you?"

Mike looked at him, shrugged and grinned.

"No," said Mike.

8.

EARLY IN May, Peter Keating departed for Washington, to supervise the

construction of a museum donated to the city by a great philanthropist easing

his conscience. The museum building, Keating pointed out proudly, was to be

decidedly different: it was not a reproduction of the Parthenon, but of the

Maison Carrée at N.mes.

Keating had been away for some time when an office boy approached Roark’s table

and informed him that Mr. Francon wished to see him in his office. When Roark

entered the sanctuary, Francon smiled from behind the desk and said cheerfully:

"Sit down, my friend. Sit down...." but something in Roark’s eyes, which he had

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never seen at close range before, made Francon’s voice shrink and stop, and he

added dryly: "Sit down." Roark obeyed. Francon studied him for a second, but

could reach no conclusion beyond deciding that the man had a most unpleasant

face, yet looked quite correctly attentive.

"You’re the one who’s worked for Cameron, aren’t you?" Francon asked. "Yes,"

said Roark.

"Mr. Keating has been telling me very nice things about you," Francon tried

pleasantly and stopped. It was wasted courtesy; Roark just sat looking at him,

waiting. "Listen...what’s your name?"

"Roark."

"Listen, Roark. We have a client who is a little...odd, but he’s an important

man, a very important man, and we have to satisfy him. He’s given us a

commission for an eight-million-dollar office building, but the trouble is that

he has very definite ideas on what he wants it to look like. He wants it--"

Francon shrugged apologetically, disclaiming all blame for the preposterous

suggestion--"he wants it to look like this." He handed Roark a photograph. It

was a photograph of the Dana Building.

Roark sat quite still, the photograph hanging between his fingers. "Do you know

that building?" asked Francon.

"Yes."

"Well, that’s what he wants. And Mr. Keating’s away. I’ve had Bennett and Cooper

and Williams make sketches, but he’s turned them down. So I thought I’d give you

a chance."

Francon looked at him, impressed by the magnanimity of his own offer. There was

no reaction. There was only a man who still looked as if he’d been struck on the

head.

"Of course," said Francon, "it’s quite a jump for you, quite an assignment, but

I thought I’d let you try. Don’t be afraid. Mr. Keating and I will go over it

afterward. Just draw up the plans and a good sketch of it. You must have an idea

of what the man wants. You know Cameron’s tricks. But of course, we can’t let a

crude thing like this come out of our office. We must please him, but we must

also preserve our reputation and not frighten all our other clients away. The

point is to make it simple and in the general mood of this, but also artistic.

You know, the more severe kind of Greek. You don’t have to use the Ionic order,

use the Doric. Plain pediments and simple moldings, or something like that. Get

the idea? Now take this along and show me what you can do. Bennett will give you

all the particulars and...What’s the mat--"

Francon’s voice cut itself off.

"Mr. Francon, please let me design it the way the Dana Building was designed."

"Huh?"

"Let me do it. Not copy the Dana Building, but design it as Henry Cameron would

have wanted it done, as I will."

"You mean modernistic?"

"I...well, call it that."

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"Are you crazy?"

"Mr. Francon, please listen to me." Roark’s words were like the steps of a man

walking a tightwire, slow, strained, groping for the only right spot, quivering

over an abyss, but precise. "I don’t blame you for the things you’re doing. I’m

Working for you, I’m taking your money, I have no right to express objections.

But this time...this time the client is asking for it. You’re risking nothing.

He wants it. Think of it, there’s a man, one man who sees and understands and

wants it and has the power to build it. Are you going to fight a client for the

first time in your life--and fight for what? To cheat him and to give him the

same old trash, when you have so many others asking for it, and one, only one,

who comes with a request like this?"

"Aren’t you forgetting yourself?" asked Francon, coldly. "What difference would

it make to you? Just let me do it my way and show it to him. Only show it to

him. He’s already turned down three sketches, what if he turns down a fourth?

But if he doesn’t...if he doesn’t..." Roark had never known how to entreat and

he was not doing it well; his voice was hard, toneless, revealing the effort, so

that the plea became an insult to the man who was making him plead. Keating

would have given a great deal to see Roark in that moment. But Francon could not

appreciate the triumph he was the first ever to achieve; he recognized only the

insult.

"Am I correct in gathering," Francon asked, "that you are criticizing me and

teaching me something about architecture?"

"I’m begging you," said Roark, closing his eyes. "If you weren’t a protégé of

Mr. Keating’s, I wouldn’t bother to discuss the matter with you any further. But

since you are quite obviously naive and inexperienced, I shall point out to you