he’d be an architect.”
Toohey folded his napkin, a crisp little square of cloth on his knee; he folded it accurately, once across each way, and he ran his fingernail along the edges to make a sharp crease.
“Do you remember our little youth group of architects, Peter?” he asked. “I’m making arrangements for a first meeting soon. I’ve spoken to many of our future members and you’d be flattered by what they said about you as our prospective chairman.”
They talked pleasantly for another half hour. When Keating rose to go, Toohey declared:
“Oh, yes. I did speak to Lois Cook about you. You’ll hear from her shortly.”
“Thank you so much, Ellsworth. By the way, I’m reading Clouds and Shrouds.”
“And?”
“Oh, it’s tremendous. You know, Ellsworth, it…it makes you think so differently about everything you’ve thought before.”
“Yes,” said Toohey, “doesn’t it?”
He stood at the window, looking out at the last sunshine of a cold, bright afternoon. Then he turned and said:
“It’s a lovely day. Probably one of the last this year. Why don’t you take Catherine out for a little walk, Peter?”
“Oh, I’d love to!” said Catherine eagerly.
“Well, go ahead.” Toohey smiled gaily. “What’s the matter, Catherine? Do you have to wait for my permission?”
When they walked out together, when they were alone in the cold brilliance of streets flooded with late sunlight, Keating felt himself recapturing everything Catherine had always meant to him, the strange emotion that he could not keep in the presence of others. He closed his hand over hers. She withdrew her hand, took off her glove and slipped her fingers into his. And then he thought suddenly that hands did perspire when held too long, and he walked faster in irritation. He thought that they were walking there like Mickey and Minnie Mouse and that they probably appeared ridiculous to the passers-by. To shake himself free of these thoughts he glanced down at her face. She was looking straight ahead at the gold light, he saw her delicate profile and the faint crease of a smile in the corner of her mouth, a smile of quiet happiness. But he noticed that the edge of her eyelid was pale and he began to wonder whether she was anemic.
Lois Cook sat on the floor in the middle of her living room, her legs crossed Turkish fashion, showing large bare knees, gray stockings rolled over tight garters, and a piece of faded pink drawers. Peter Keating sat on the edge of a violet satin chaise lounge. Never before had he felt uncomfortable at a first interview with a client.
Lois Cook was thirty-seven. She had stated insistently, in her publicity and in private conversation, that she was sixty-four. It was repeated as a whimsical joke and it created about her name a vague impression of eternal youth. She was tall, dry, narrow-shouldered and broad-hipped. She had a long, sallow face, and eyes set close together. Her hair hung about her ears in greasy strands. Her fingernails were broken. She looked offensively unkempt, with studied slovenliness as careful as grooming–and for the same purpose.
She talked incessantly, rocking back and forth on her haunches:
“…yes, on the Bowery. A private residence. The shrine on the Bowery. I have the site, I wanted it and I bought it, as simple as that, or my fool lawyer bought it for me, you must meet my lawyer, he has halitosis. I don’t know what you’ll cost me, but it’s unessential, money is commonplace. Cabbage is commonplace too. It must have three stories and a living room with a tile floor.”
“Miss Cook, I’ve read Clouds and Shrouds and it was a spiritual revelation to me. Allow me to include myself among the few who understand the courage and significance of what you’re achieving single-handed while…”
“Oh, can the crap,” said Lois Cook and winked at him.
“But I mean it!” he snapped angrily. “I loved your book. I…”
She looked bored.
“It is so commonplace,” she drawled, “to be understood by everybody.”
“But Mr. Toohey said…”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Toohey.” Her eyes were alert now, insolently guilty, like the eyes of a child who has just perpetrated some nasty little joke. “Mr. Toohey. I’m chairman of a little youth group of writers in which Mr. Toohey is very interested.”
“You are?” he said happily. It seemed to be the first direct communication between them. “Isn’t that interesting! Mr. Toohey is getting together a little youth group of architects, too, and he’s kind enough to have me in mind for chairman.”
“Oh,” she said and winked. “One of us?”
“Of whom?”
He did not know what he had done, but he knew that he had disappointed her in some way. She began to laugh. She sat there, looking up at him, laughing deliberately in his face, laughing ungraciously and not gaily.
“What the…!” He controlled himself. “What’s the matter, Miss Cook?”
“Oh my!” she said. “You’re such a sweet, sweet boy and so pretty!”
“Mr. Toohey is a great man,” he said angrily. “He’s the most…the noblest personality I’ve ever…”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Toohey is a wonderful man.” Her voice was strange by omission, it was flagrantly devoid of respect. “My best friend. The most wonderful man on earth. There’s the earth and there’s Mr. Toohey–a law of nature. Besides, think how nicely you can rhyme it: Toohey–gooey–phooey–hooey. Nevertheless, he’s a saint. That’s very rare. As rare as genius. I’m a genius. I want a living room without windows. No windows at all, remember that when you draw up the plans. No windows, a tile floor and a black ceiling. And no electricity. I want no electricity in my house, just kerosene lamps. Kerosene lamps with chimneys, and candles. To hell with Thomas Edison! Who was he anyway?”
Her words did not disturb him as much as her smile. It was not a smile, it was a permanent smirk raising the corners of her long mouth, making her look like a sly, vicious imp.
“And, Keating, I want the house to be ugly. Magnificently ugly. I want it to be the ugliest house in New York.”
“The…ugliest. Miss Cook?”
“Sweetheart, the beautiful is so commonplace!”
“Yes, but…but I…well, I don’t see how I could permit myself to…”
“Keating, where’s your courage? Aren’t you capable of a sublime gesture on occasion? They all work so hard and struggle and suffer, trying to achieve beauty, trying to surpass one another in beauty. Let’s surpass them all! Let’s throw their sweat in their face. Let’s destroy them at one stroke. Let’s be gods. Let’s be ugly.”
He accepted the commission. After a few weeks he stopped feeling uneasy about it. Wherever he mentioned this new job, he met a respectful curiosity. It was an amused curiosity, but it was respectful. The name of Lois Cook was well known in the best drawing rooms he visited. The titles of her books were flashed in conversation like the diamonds in the speaker’s intellectual crown. There was always a note of challenge in the voices pronouncing them. It sounded as if the speaker were being very brave. It was a satisfying bravery; it never aroused antagonism. For an author who did not sell, her name seemed strangely famous and honored. She was the standard-bearer of a vanguard of intellect and revolt. Only it was not quite clear to him just exactly what the revolt was against. Somehow, he preferred not to know.
He designed the house as she wished it. It was a three-floor edifice, part marble, part stucco, adorned with gargoyles and carriage lanterns. It looked like a structure from an amusement park.
His sketch of it was reproduced in more publications than any other drawing he had ever made, with the exception of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. One commentator expressed the opinion that “Peter Keating is showing a promise of being more than just a bright young man with a knack for pleasing stuffy moguls of big business. He is venturing into the field of intellectual experimentation with a client such as Lois Cook.” Toohey referred to the house as “a cosmic joke.”
But a peculiar sensation remained in Keating’s mind: the feeling of an aftertaste. He would experience a dim flash of it while working on some important structure he liked; he would experience it in the moments when he felt proud of his work. He could not identify the quality of the feeling; but he knew that part of it was a sense of shame.
Once, he confessed it to Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey laughed. “That’s good for you, Peter. One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance. There’s no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes.”
5.
DOMINIQUE had returned to New York. She returned without purpose, merely because she could not stay in her country house longer than three days after her last visit to the quarry. She had to be in the city, it was a sudden necessity, irresistible and senseless. She expected nothing of the city. But she wanted the feeling of the streets and the buildings holding her there. In the morning, when she awakened and heard the muffled roar of traffic far below, the sound was a humiliation, a reminder of where she was and why. She stood at the window, her arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame; it was as if she held a piece of the city, all the streets and rooftops outlined on the glass between her two hands.