“The situation is medieval and a disgrace to democracy.” The voice whined. It was Mitchell Layton speaking. “It’s about time somebody had some say around here. One man running all those papers as he damn pleases–what is this, the nineteenth century?” Layton pouted; he looked somewhere in the direction of a banker across the table. “Has anybody here ever bothered to inquire about my ideas? I’ve got ideas. We’ve all got to pool ideas. What I mean is teamwork, one big orchestra. It’s about time this paper had a modem, liberal, progressive policy! For instance, take the question of the sharecroppers…”
“Shut up, Mitch,” said Alvah Scarret. Scarret had drops of sweat running down his temples; he didn’t know why; he wanted the board to win; there was just something in the room…it’s too hot in here, he thought, I wish somebody’d open a window.
“I won’t shut up!” shrieked Mitchell Layton. “I’m just as good as…”
“Please, Mr. Layton,” said the banker.
“All right,” said Layton, “all right. Don’t forget who holds the biggest hunk of stock next to Superman here.” He jerked his thumb at Wynand, not looking at him. “Just don’t forget it. Just you guess who’s going to run things around here.”
“Gail,” said Alvah Scarret, looking up at Wynand, his eyes strangely honest and tortured, “Gail, it’s no use. But we can save the pieces. Look, if we just admit that we were wrong about Cortlandt and…and if we just take Harding back, he’s a valuable man, and…maybe Toohey…”
“No one is to mention the name of Toohey in this discussion,” said Wynand.
Mitchell Layton snapped his mouth open and dropped it shut again.
“That’s it, Gail!” cried Alvah Scarret. “That’s great! We can bargain and make them an offer. We’ll reverse our policy on Cortlandt–that, we’ve got to, not for the damn Union, but we’ve got to rebuild circulation, Gail–so we’ll offer them that and we’ll take Harding, Alien and Falk, but not To…not Ellsworth. We give in and they give in. Saves everybody’s face. Is that it, Gail?”
Wynand said nothing.
“I think that’s it, Mr. Scarret,” said the banker. “I think that’s the solution. After all, Mr. Wynand must be allowed to maintain his prestige. We can sacrifice…a columnist and keep peace among ourselves.”
“I don’t see it!” yelled Mitchell Layton. “I don’t see it at all! Why should we sacrifice Mr….a great liberal, just because…”
“I stand with Mr. Scarret,” said the man who had spoken of Senators, and the voices of the others seconded him, and the man who had criticized the editorials said suddenly, in the general noise: “I think Gail Wynand was a hell of a swell boss after all!” There was something about Mitchell Layton which he didn’t want to see. Now he looked at Wynand, for protection. Wynand did not notice him.
“Gail?” asked Scarret. “Gail, what do you say?” There was no answer.
“God damn it, Wynand, it’s now or never! This can’t go on!”
“Make up your mind or get out!”
“I’ll buy you out!” shrieked Layton. “Want to sell? Want to sell and get the hell out of it?”
“For God’s sake, Wynand, don’t be a fool!”
“Gail, it’s the Banner…” whispered Scarret. “It’s our Banner….”
“We’ll stand by you, Gail, we’ll all chip in, we’ll pull the old paper back on its feet, we’ll do as you say, you’ll be the boss–but for God’s sake, act like a boss now!”
“Quiet, gentlemen, quiet! Wynand, this is final: we switch policy on Cortlandt, we take Harding, Alien and Falk back, and we save the wreck. Yes or no?”
There was no answer.
“Wynand, you know it’s that–or you have to close the Banner. You can’t keep this up, even if you bought us all out. Give in or close the Banner. You had better give in.”
Wynand heard that. He had heard it through all the speeches. He had heard it for days before the meeting. He knew it better than any man present. Close the Banner.
He saw a single picture: the new masthead rising over the door of the Gazette.
“You had better give in.”
He made a step back. It was not a wall behind him. It was only the side of his chair.
He thought of the moment in his bedroom when he had almost pulled a trigger. He knew he was pulling it now.
“All right,” he said.
It’s only a bottle cap, thought Wynand looking down at a speck of glitter under his feet; a bottle cap ground into the pavement. The pavements of New York are full of things like that–bottle caps, safety pins, campaign buttons, sink chains; sometimes–lost jewels; it’s all alike now, flattened, ground in; it makes the pavements sparkle at night. The fertilizer of a city. Someone drank the bottle empty and threw the cap away. How many cars have passed over it? Could one retrieve it now? Could one kneel and dig with bare hands and tear it out again? I had no right to hope for escape. I had no right to kneel and seek redemption. Millions of years ago, when the earth was being born, there were living things like me: flies caught in resin that became amber, animals caught in ooze that became rock. I am a man of the twentieth century and I became a bit of tin in the pavements, for the trucks of New York to roll over.
He walked slowly, the collar of his topcoat raised. The street stretched before him, empty, and the buildings ahead were like the backs of books lining a shelf, assembled without order, of all sizes. The comers he passed led to black channels; street lamps gave the city a protective cover, but it cracked in spots. He turned a corner when he saw a slant of light ahead; it was a goal for three or four blocks.
The light came from the window of a pawnshop. The shop was closed, but a glaring bulb hung there to discourage looters who might be reduced to this. He stopped and looked at it. He thought, the most indecent sight on earth, a pawnshop window. The things which had been sacred to men, and the things which had been precious, surrendered to the sight of all, to the pawing and the bargaining, trash to the indifferent eyes of strangers, the equality of a junk heap, typewriters and violins–the tools of dreams, old photographs and wedding rings–the tags of love, together with soiled trousers, coffee pots, ash trays, pornographic plaster figures; the refuse of despair, pledged, not sold, not cut off in clean finality, but hocked to a stillborn hope, never to be redeemed. “Hello, Gail Wynand,” he said to the things in the window, and walked on.
He felt an iron grate under his feet and an odor struck him in the face, an odor of dust, sweat and dirty clothing, worse than the smell of stockyards, because it had a homey, normal quality, like decomposition made routine. The grating of a subway. He thought, this is the residue of many people put together, of human bodies pressed into a mass, with no space to move, with no air to breathe. This is the sum, even though down there, among the packed flesh, one can find the smell of starched white dresses, of clean hair, of healthy young skin. Such is the nature of sums and of quests for the lowest common denominator. What, then, is the residue of many human minds put together, unaired, unspaced, undifferentiated? The Banner, he thought, and walked on.
My city, he thought, the city I loved, the city I thought I ruled.
He had walked out of the board meeting, he had said: “Take over, Alvah, until I come back.” He had not stopped to see Manning drunk with exhaustion at the city desk, nor the people in the city room, still functioning, waiting, knowing what was being decided in the board room; nor Dominique. Scarret would tell them. He had walked out of the building and gone to his penthouse and sat alone in the bedroom without windows. Nobody had come to disturb him.
When he left the penthouse, it was safe to go out: it was dark. He passed a newsstand and saw late editions of the afternoon papers announcing the settlement of the Wynand strike. The Union had accepted Scarret’s compromise. He knew that Scarret would take care of all the rest. Scarret would replate the front page of tomorrow’s Banner. Scarret would write the editorial that would appear on the front page. He thought, the presses are rolling right now. Tomorrow morning’s Banner will be out on the streets in an hour.
He walked at random. He owned nothing, but he was owned by any part of the city. It was right that the city should now direct his way and that he should be moved by the pull of chance corners. Here I am, my masters, I am coming to salute you and acknowledge, wherever you want me, I shall go as I’m told. I’m the man who wanted power.