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 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.
“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?”
“Darling, you’re not being questioned by the police. You will be, though, and you’ll have to be more convincing than that. However, I’m sure you’ll succeed. They won’t think of the Stoddard trial.”
“Oh.”
“You did it then and you’ll always do it. Whatever you think of him, you’ll always feel what I feel about his work.”
“Gail, you’re glad I did it?”
“Yes.”
She saw him looking down at her hand that lay on the edge of the bed. Then he was on his knees, his lips pressed to her hand, not raising it, not touching it with his fingers, only with his mouth. That was the sole confession he would permit himself of what her days in the hospital had cost him. She lifted her other hand and moved it over his hair. She thought: It will be worse for you than if I had died, Gail, but it will be all right, it won’t hurt you, there’s no pain left in the world, nothing to compare with the fact that we exist: he, you and I–you’ve understood all that matters, though you don’t know you’ve lost me.
He lifted his head and got up.
“I didn’t intend to reproach you in any way. Forgive me.”
“I won’t die, Gail. I feel wonderful.”
“You look it.”
“Have they arrested him?”
“He’s out on bail.”
“You’re happy?”
“I’m glad you did it and that it was for him. I’m glad he did it. He had to.”
“Yes. And it will be the Stoddard trial again.”
“Not quite.”
“You’ve wanted another chance, Gail? All these years?”
“Yes.”
“May I see the papers?”
“No. Not until you’re up.”
“Not even the Banner!”
“Particularly not the Banner.”
“I love you, Gail. If you stick to the end…”
“Don’t offer me any bribes. This is not between you and me. Not even between him and me.”
“But between you and God?”
“If you want to call it that. But we won’t discuss it. Not until after it’s over. You have a visitor waiting for you downstairs. He’s been here every day.”
“Who?”
“Your lover. Howard Roark. Want to let him thank you now?”
The gay mockery, the tone of uttering the most preposterous thing he could think of, told her how far he was from guessing the rest. She said:
“Yes. I want to see him. Gail, if I decide to make him my lover?”
“I’ll kill you both. Now don’t move, lie flat, the doctor said you must take it easy, you’ve got twenty-six assorted stitches all over you.”
He walked out and she heard him descending the stairs.
When the first policeman had reached the scene of the explosion, he had found, behind the building, on the shore of the river, the plunger that had set off the dynamite. Roark stood by the plunger, his hands in his pockets, looking at the remnants of Cortlandt.
“What do you know about this, buddy?” the policeman asked.
“You’d better arrest me,” said Roark. “I’ll talk at the trial.”
He had not added another word in reply to all the official questions that followed.
It was Wynand who got him released on bail, in the early hours of the morning. Wynand had been calm at the emergency hospital where he had seen Dominique’s wounds and had been told she would not live. He had been calm while he telephoned, got a county judge out of bed and arranged Roark’s bail. But when he stood in the warden’s office of a small county jail, he began to shake suddenly. “You bloody fools!” he said through his teeth and there followed every obscenity he had learned on the waterfront. He forgot all the aspects of the situation save one: Roark being held behind bars. He was Stretch Wynand of Hell’s Kitchen again and this was the kind of fury that had shattered him in sudden flashes in those days, the fury he had felt when standing behind a crumbling wall, waiting to be killed. Only now he knew that he was also Gail Wynand, the owner of an empire, and he couldn’t understand why some sort of legal procedure was necessary, why he didn’t smash this jail, with his fists or through his papers, it was all one to him at the moment, he wanted to kill, he had to kill, as that night behind the wall, in defense of his life.