“Now you see, Lucius,” Francon answered dryly, “why I say that you should retire. You’re overstraining your nerves and you’re beginning to imagine things.”
Then came the competition for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building.
Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures of Hollywood, California, had decided to erect a stupendous home office in New York, a skyscraper to house a motion-picture theater and forty floors of offices. A world-wide competition for the selection of the architect had been announced a year in advance. It was stated that Cosmo-Slotnick were not merely the leaders in the art of the motion picture, but embraced all the arts, since all contributed to the creation of the films; and architecture being a lofty, though neglected, branch of esthetics, Cosmo-Slotnick were ready to put it on the map.
With the latest news of the casting of I’ll Take a Sailor and the shooting of Wives for Sale, came stories about the Parthenon and the Pantheon. Miss Sally O’Dawn was photographed on the steps of the Rheims Cathedral–in a bathing suit, and Mr. Pratt (“Pardner”) Purcell gave an interview, stating that he had always dreamed of being a master builder, if he hadn’t been a movie actor. Ralston Holcombe, Guy Francon and Gordon L. Prescott were quoted on the future of American architecture–in an article written by Miss Dimples Williams, and an imaginary interview quoted what Sir Christopher Wren would have said about the motion picture. In the Sunday supplements there were photographs of Cosmo-Slotnick starlets in shorts and sweaters, holding T-squares and slide-rules, standing before drawing boards that bore the legend: “Cosmo-Slotnick Building” over a huge question mark.
The competition was open to all architects of all countries; the building was to rise on Broadway and to cost ten million dollars; it was to symbolize the genius of modern technology and the spirit of the American people; it was announced in advance as “the most beautiful building in the world.” The jury of award consisted of Mr. Shupe, representing Cosmo, Mr. Slotnick, representing Slotnick. Professor Peterkin of the Stanton Institute of Technology, the Mayor of the City of New York, Ralston Holcombe, president of the A.G.A., and Ellsworth M. Toohey.
“Go to it, Peter!” Francon told Keating enthusiastically. “Do your best. Give me all you’ve got. This is your great chance. You’ll be known the world over if you win. And here’s what we’ll do: we’ll put your name on our entry, along with the firm’s. If we win, you’ll get one fifth of the prize. The grand prize is sixty thousand dollars, you know.”
“Heyer will object” said Keating cautiously.
“Let him object. That’s why I’m doing it. He might get it through his head what’s the decent thing for him to do. And I…well, you know how I feel, Peter. I think of you as my partner already. I owe it to you. You’ve earned it. This might be your key to it.”
Keating redrew his project five times. He hated it. He hated every girder of that building before it was born. He worked, his hand trembling. He did not think of the drawing under his hand. He thought of all the other contestants, of the man who might win and be proclaimed publicly as his superior. He wondered what that other one would do, how the other would solve the problem and surpass him. He had to beat that man; nothing else mattered; there was no Peter Keating, there was only a suction chamber, like the kind of tropical plant he’d heard about, a plant that drew an insect into its vacuum and sucked it dry and thus acquired its own substance.
He felt nothing but immense uncertainty when his sketches were ready and the delicate perspective of a white marble edifice lay, neatly finished, before him. It looked like a Renaissance palace made of rubber and stretched to the height of forty stories. He had chosen the style of the Renaissance because he knew the unwritten law that all architectural juries liked columns, and because he remembered Ralston Holcombe was on the jury. He had borrowed from all of Holcombe’s favorite Italian palaces. It looked good…it might be good…he was not sure. He had no one to ask.
He heard these words in his own mind and he felt a wave of blind fury. He felt it before he knew the reason, but he knew the reason almost in the same instant: there was someone whom he could ask. He did not want to think of that name; he would not go to him; the anger rose to his face and he felt the hot, tight patches under his eyes. He knew that he would go.
He pushed the thought out of his mind. He was not going anywhere. When the time came, he slipped his drawings into a folder and went to Roark’s office.
He found Roark alone, sitting at the desk in the large room that bore no signs of activity.
“Hello, Howard!” he said brightly. “How are you? I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“Hello, Peter,” said Roark. “You aren’t.”
“Not awfully busy, are you?”
“No.”
“Mind if I sit down for a few minutes?”
“Sit down.”
“Well, Howard, you’ve been doing great work. I’ve seen the Fargo Store. It’s splendid. My congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve been forging straight ahead, haven’t you? Had three commissions already?”
“Four.”
“Oh, yes, of course, four. Pretty good. I hear you’ve been having a little trouble with the Sanborns.”
“I have.”
“Well, it’s not all smooth sailing, not all of it, you know. No new commissions since? Nothing?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Well, it will come. I’ve always said that architects don’t have to cut one another’s throat, there’s plenty of work for all of us, we must develop a spirit of professional unity and co-operation. For instance, take that competition–have you sent your entry in already?”
“What competition?”
“Why, the competition. The Cosmo-Slotnick competition.”
“I’m not sending any entry.”
“You’re…not? Not at all?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t enter competitions.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Come on, Peter. You didn’t come here to discuss that.”
“As a matter of fact I did think I’d show you my own entry, you understand I’m not asking you to help me, I just want your reaction, just a general opinion.”
He hastened to open the folder.
Roark studied the sketches. Keating snapped: “Well? Is it all right?”
“No. It’s rotten. And you know it.”
Then, for hours, while Keating watched and the sky darkened and lights flared up in the windows of the city, Roark talked, explained, slashed lines through the plans, untangled the labyrinth of the theater’s exits out windows, unraveled halls, smashed useless arches, straightened stairways. Keating stammered once: “Jesus, Howard! Why don’t you enter the competition, if you can do it like this?” Roark answered: “Because I can’t. I couldn’t if I tried. I dry up. I go blank. I can’t give them what they want. But I can straighten someone else’s damn mess when I see it:”
It was morning when he pushed the plans aside. Keating whispered:
“And the elevation?”
“Oh, to hell with your elevation! I don’t want to look at your damn Renaissance elevations!” But he looked. He could not prevent his hand from cutting lines across the perspective. “All right, damn you, give them good Renaissance if you must and if there is such a thing! Only I can’t do that for you. Figure it out yourself. Something like this. Simpler. Peter, simpler, more direct, as honest as you can make of a dishonest thing. Now go home and try to work out something on this order.”
Keating went home. He copied Roark’s plans. He worked out Roark’s hasty sketch of the elevation into a neat, finished perspective. Then the drawings were mailed, properly addressed to:
“The Most Beautiful Building in the World” Competition
Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures, Inc.
New York City.
The envelope, accompanying the entry, contained the names: “Francon & Heyer, architects, Peter Keating, associated designer.”
Through the months of that winter Roark found no other chances, no offers, no prospects of commissions. He sat at his desk and forgot, at times, to turn on the lights in the early dusk. It was as if the heavy immobility of all the hours that had flowed through the office, of its door, of its air were beginning to seep into his muscles. He would rise and fling a book at the wall, to feel his arm move, to hear the burst of sound. He smiled, amused, picked up the book, and laid it neatly back on the desk. He turned on the desk lamp. Then he stopped, before he had withdrawn his hands from the cone of light under the lamp, and he looked at his hands; he spread his fingers out slowly. Then he remembered what Cameron had said to him long ago. He jerked his hands away. He reached for his coat, turned the lights off, locked the door and went home.
As spring approached he knew that his money would not last much longer. He paid the rent on his office promptly on the first of each month. He wanted the feeling of thirty days ahead, during which he would still own the office. He entered it calmly each morning. He found only that he did not want to look at the calendar when it began to grow dark and he knew that another day of the thirty had gone. When he noticed this, he made himself look at the calendar. It was a race he was running now, a race between his rent money and…he did not know the name of the other contestant. Perhaps it was every man whom he passed on the street.