“To win what?”
“His case.”
“Is the case of any importance? There’s nothing I can do to stop him from touching the building. He owns it. He can blast it off the face of the earth or make a glue factory out of it. He can do it whether I win that suit or lose it.”
“But he’ll take your money to do it with.”
“Yes. He might take my money.”
Steven Mallory made no comment on anything. But his face looked as it had looked on the night Roark met him for the first time.
“Steve, talk about it, if it will make it easier for you,” Roark said to him one evening.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mallory answered indifferently. “I told you I didn’t think they’d let you survive.”
“Rubbish. You have no right to be afraid for me.”
“I’m not afraid for you. What would be the use? It’s something else.”
Days later, sitting on the window sill in Roark’s room, looking out at the street, Mallory said suddenly:
“Howard, do you remember what I told you about the beast I’m afraid of? I know nothing about Ellsworth Toohey. I had never seen him before I shot at him. I had only read what he writes. Howard, I shot at him because I think he knows everything about that beast.”
Dominique came to Roark’s room on the evening when Stoddard announced his lawsuit. She said nothing. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a routine gesture here, in his room; she looked down at her fingers. Then she raised her head. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.
“You’re wrong,” he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. “I don’t feel that.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“I want you to know. What you’re thinking is much worse than the truth. I don’t believe it matters to me–that they’re going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so much that I don’t even know I’m hurt. But I don’t think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don’t carry more than I do. I’m not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain. You mustn’t look like that.”
“Where does it stop?”
“Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important.”
“You shouldn’t have built it. You shouldn’t have delivered it to the sort of thing they’re doing.”
“That doesn’t matter. Not even that they’ll destroy it. Only that it had existed.”
She shook her head. “Do you see what I was saving you from when I took commissions away from you?…To give them no right to do this to you….No right to live in a building of yours…No right to touch you…not in any way….”
When Dominique walked into Toohey’s office, he smiled, an eager smile of welcome, unexpectedly sincere. He forgot to control it while his eyebrows moved into a frown of disappointment; the frown and the smile remained ludicrously together for a moment. He was disappointed, because it was not her usual dramatic entrance; he saw no anger, no mockery; she entered like a bookkeeper on a business errand. She asked:
“What do you intend to accomplish by it?”
He tried to recapture the exhilaration of their usual feud. He
“Sit down, my dear. I’m delighted to see you. Quite frankly and helplessly delighted. It really took you too long. I expected you here much sooner. I’ve had so many compliments on that little article of mine, but, honestly, it was no fun at all, I wanted to hear what you’d say.”
“What do you intend to accomplish by it?”
“Look, darling, I do hope you didn’t mind what I said about that uplifting statue of yours. I thought you d understand I just couldn’t pass up that one.”
“What is the purpose of that lawsuit?”
“Oh well, you want to make me talk. And I did so want to hear you. But half a pleasure is better than none. I want to talk. I’ve waited for you so impatiently. But I do wish you’d sit down, I’ll be more comfortable….No? Well, as you prefer, so long as you don’t run away. The lawsuit? Well, isn’t it obvious?”
“How is it going to stop him?” she asked in the tone one would use to recite a list of statistics. “It will prove nothing, whether he wins or loses. The whole thing is just a spree for great number of louts, filthy but pointless. I did not think you wasted your time on stink bombs. All of it will be forgotten before Christmas.”
“My God, but I must be a failure! I never thought of myself as such a poor teacher. That you should have learned so little in two years of close association with me! It’s really discouraging. Since you are the most intelligent woman I know, the fault must be mine. Well, let’s see, you did learn one thing: that I don’t waste my time. Quite correct. I don’t. Right, my dear, everything will be forgotten by next Christmas. And that, you see, will be the achievement. You can fight a live issue. You can’t fight a dead one. Dead issues, like all dead things, don’t just vanish, but leave some decomposing matter behind. A most unpleasant thing to carry on your name. Mr. Hopton Stoddard will be thoroughly forgotten. The Temple will be forgotten. The lawsuit will be forgotten. But here’s what will remain: ‘Howard Roark? Why, how could you trust a man like that? He’s an enemy of religion. He’s completely immortal. First thing you know, he’ll gyp you on your construction costs.’ ‘Roark? He’s no good–why, a client had to sue him because he made such a botch of a building.’ ‘Roark? Roark? Wait a moment, isn’t that the guy who got into all the papers over some sort of a mess? Now what was it? Some rotten kind of scandal, the owner of the building–I think the place was a disorderly house–anyway the owner had to sue him. You don’t want to get involved with a notorious character like that. What for, when there are so many decent architects to choose from?’ Fight that, my dear. Tell me a way to fight it. Particularly when you have no weapons except your genius, which is not a weapon but a great liability.”
Her eyes were disappointing; they listened patiently, an unmoving glance that would not become anger. She stood before his desk, straight, controlled, like a sentry in a storm who knows that he has to take it and has to remain there even when he can take it no longer.
“I believe you want me to continue,” said Toohey. “Now you see the peculiar effectiveness of a dead issue. You can’t talk your way out of it, you can’t explain, you can’t defend yourself. Nobody wants to listen. It is difficult enough to acquire fame. It is impossible to change its nature once you’ve acquired it. No, you can never ruin an architect by proving that he’s a bad architect. But you can ruin him because he’s an atheist, or because somebody sued him, or because he slept with some woman, or because he pulls wings off bottleflies. You’ll say it doesn’t make sense? Of course it doesn’t. That’s why it works. Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy. But if you can make it become your ally–ah, my dear!…Look, Dominique, I will stop talking the moment you show a sign of being frightened.”
“Go on,” she said.
“I think you should now ask me a question, or perhaps you don’t like to be obvious and feel that I must guess the question myself? I think you’re right. The question is, why did I choose Howard Roark? Because–to quote my own article–it is not my function to be a fly swatter. I quote this now with a somewhat different meaning, but we’ll let that pass. Also, this has helped me to get something I wanted from Hopton Stoddard, but that’s only a minor side-issue, an incidental, just pure gravy. Principally, however, the whole thing was an experiment. Just a test skirmish, shall we say? The results are most gratifying. If you were not involved as you are, you’d be the one person who’d appreciate the spectacle. Really, you know, I’ve done very little when you consider the extent of what followed. Don’t you find it interesting to see a huge, complicated piece of machinery, such as our society, all levers and belts and interlocking gears, the kind that looks as if one would need an army to operate it–and you find that by pressing your little finger against one spot, the one vital spot, the center of all its gravity, you can make the thing crumble into a worthless heap of scrap iron? It can be done, my dear. But it takes a long time. It takes centuries. I have the advantage of many experts who came before me. I think I shall be the last and the successful one of the line, because–though not abler than they were–I see more clearly what we’re after. However, that’s abstraction. Speaking of concrete reality, don’t you find anything amusing in my little experiment? I do. For instance, do you notice that all the wrong people are on the wrong sides? Alvah Scarret, the college professors, the newspaper editors, the respectable mothers and the Chambers of Commerce should have come flying to the defense of Howard Roark–if they value their own lives. But they didn’t. They are upholding Hopton Stoddard. On the other hand I heard that some screwy bunch of cafeteria radicals called ‘The New League of Proletarian Art’ tried to enlist in support of Howard Roark–they said he was a victim of capitalism–when they should have known that Hopton Stoddard is their champion. Roark, by the way, had the good sense to decline. He understands. You do. I do. Not many others. Oh, well. Scrap iron has its uses.”