There were white crosses on the fresh panes of glass in the windows, and it looked appropriate, like an error X-ed out of existence. There was a band of red in the sky, to the west, beyond Manhattan, and the buildings of the city rose straight and black against it.
Roark stood across the space of the future road before the first house of Cortlandt. He stood straight, the muscles of his throat pulled, his wrists held down and away from his body, as he would have stood before a firing squad.
No one could tell how it had happened. There had been no deliberate intention behind it. It had just happened.
First, Toohey told Keating one morning that Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb would be put on the payroll as associate designers. “What do you care, Peter? It won’t come out of your fee. It won’t cut your prestige at all, since you’re the big boss. They won’t be much more than your draftsmen. All I want is to give the boys a boost. It will help their reputation, to be tagged with this project in some way. I’m very interested in building up their reputation.”
“But what for? There’s nothing for them to do. It’s all done.”
“Oh, any kind of last-minute drafting. Save time for your own staff. You can share the expense with them. Don’t be a hog.”
Toohey had told the truth; he had no other purpose in mind.
Keating could not discover what connections Prescott and Webb possessed, with whom, in what office, on what terms–among the dozens of officials involved in the project. The entanglement of responsibility was such that no one could be quite certain of anyone’s authority. It was clear only that Prescott and Webb had friends, and that Keating could not keep them off the job.
The changes began with the gymnasium. The lady in charge of tenant selection demanded a gymnasium. She was a social worker and her task was to end with the opening of the project. She acquired a permanent job by getting herself appointed Director of Social Recreation for Cortlandt. No gymnasium had been provided in the original plans; there were two schools and a Y.M.C.A. within walking distance. She declared that this was an outrage against the children of the poor, Prescott and Webb supplied the gymnasium. Other changes followed, of a purely esthetic nature. Extras piled on the cost of construction so carefully devised for economy. The Director of Social Recreation departed for Washington to discuss the matter of a Little Theater and a Meeting Hall she wished added to the next two buildings of Cortlandt.
The changes in the drawings came gradually, a few at a time. The others okaying the changes came from headquarters. “But we’re ready to start!” cried Keating. “What the hell,” drawled Gus Webb, “set ’em back just a coupla thousand bucks more, that’s all.”
“Now as to the balconies,” said Gordon L. Prescott, “they lend a certain modern style. You don’t want the damn thing to look so bare. It’s depressing. Besides, you don’t understand psychology. The people who’ll live here are used to sitting out on fire-escapes. They love it. They’ll miss it. You gotta give ’em a place to sit on in the fresh air….The cost? Hell, if you’re so damn worried about the cost, I’ve got an idea where we can save plenty. We’ll do without closet doors. What do they need doors for on closets? It’s old-fashioned.” All the closet doors were omitted.
Keating fought. It was the kind of battle he had never entered, but he tried everything possible to him, to the honest limit of his exhausted strength. He went from office to office, arguing, threatening, pleading. But he had no influence, while his associate designers seemed to control an underground river with interlocking tributaries. The officials shrugged and referred him to someone else. No one cared about an issue of esthetics. “What’s the difference?” “It doesn’t come out of your pocket, does it?” “Who are you to have it all your way? Let the boys contribute something.”
He appealed to Ellsworth Toohey, but Toohey was not interested. He was busy with other matters and he had no desire to provoke a bureaucratic quarrel. In all truth, he had not prompted his protégés to their artistic endeavor, but he saw no reason for attempting to stop them. He was amused by the whole thing. “But it’s awful, Ellsworth! You know it’s awful!” “Oh, I suppose so. What do you care, Peter? Your poor but unwashed tenants won’t be able to appreciate the finer points of architectural art. See that the plumbing works.”
“But what for? What for? What for?” Keating cried to his associate designers. “Well, why shouldn’t we have any say at all?” asked Gordon L. Prescott. “We want to express our individuality too.”
When Keating invoked his contract, he was told: “All right, go ahead, try to sue the government. Try it.” At times, he felt a desire to kill. There was no one to kill. Had he been granted the privilege, he could not have chosen a victim. Nobody was responsible. There was no purpose and no cause. It had just happened.
Keating came to Roark’s house on the evening after Roark’s return. He had not been summoned. Roark opened the door and said: “Good evening, Peter,” but Keating could not answer. They walked silently into the work room. Roark sat down, but Keating remained standing in the middle of the floor and asked his voice dull:
“What are you going to do?”
“You must leave that up to me now.”
“I couldn’t help it, Howard….I couldn’t help it!”
“I suppose not.”
“What can you do now? You can’t sue the government.”
“No.”
Keating thought that he should sit down, but the distance to a chair seemed too great. He felt he would be too conspicuous if he moved.
“What are you going to do to me, Howard?”
“Nothing.”
“Want me to confess the truth to them? To everybody?”
“No.”
After a while Keating whispered:
“Will you let me give you the fee…everything…and…”
Roark smiled.
“I’m sorry…” Keating whispered, looking away.
He waited, and then the plea he knew he must not utter came out as:
“I’m scared, Howard…”
Roark shook his head.
“Whatever I do, it won’t be to hurt you, Peter. I’m guilty, too. We both are.”
“You’re guilty?”
“It’s I who’ve destroyed you, Peter. From the beginning. By helping you. There are matters in which one must not ask for help nor give it. I shouldn’t have done your projects at Stanton. I shouldn’t have done the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. Nor Cortlandt. I loaded you with more than you could carry. It’s like an electric current too strong for the circuit. It blows the fuse. Now we’ll both pay for it. It will be hard on you, but it will be harder on me.”
“You’d rather…I went home now, Howard?”
“Yes.”
At the door Keating said:
“Howard! They didn’t do it on purpose.”
“That’s what makes it worse.”
Dominique heard the sound of the car rising up the hill road. She thought it was Wynand coming home. He had worked late in the city every night of the two weeks since his return.
The motor filled the spring silence of the countryside. There was no sound in the house; only the small rustle of her hair as she leaned her head back against a chair cushion. In a moment she was not conscious of hearing the car’s approach, it was so familiar at this hour, part of the loneliness and privacy outside.
She heard the car stop at the door. The door was never locked; there were no neighbors or guests to expect. She heard the door opening, and steps in the hall downstairs. The steps did not pause, but walked with familiar certainty up the stairs. A hand turned the knob of her door.
It was Roark. She thought, while she was rising to her feet, that he had never entered her room before; but he knew every part of this house; as he knew everything about her body. She felt no moment of shock, only the memory of one, a shock in the past tense, the thought: I must have been shocked when I saw him, but not now. Now, by the time she was standing before him, it seemed very simple.
She thought: The most important never has to be said between us. It has always been said like this. He did not want to see me alone. Now he’s here. I waited and I’m ready.
“Good evening, Dominique.”
She heard the name pronounced to fill the space of five years. She said quietly:
“Good evening, Roark.”
“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.