Roark pushed some books and a skillet off the only chair, and sat down. Mallory stood before him, grinning, swaying a little.
“You’re doing it all wrong,” said Mallory. “That’s not the way it’s done. You must be pretty hard up to come running after a sculptor. The way it’s done is like this: You make me come to your office, and the first time I come you mustn’t be there. The second time you must keep me waiting for an hour and a half, then come out into the reception room and shake hands and ask me whether I know the Wilsons of Podunk and say how nice that we have mutual friends, but you’re in an awful hurry today and you’ll call me up for lunch soon and then we’ll talk business. Then you keep this up for two months. Then you give me the commission. Then you tell me that I’m no good and wasn’t any good in the first place, and you throw the thing into the ash can. Then you hire Valerian Bronson and he does the job. That’s the way it’s done. Only not this time.”
But his eyes were studying Roark intently, and his eyes had the certainty of a professional. As he spoke, his voice kept losing its swaggering gaiety, and it slipped to a dead flatness on the last sentences.
“No,” said Roark, “not this time.”
The boy stood looking at him silently.
“You’re Howard Roark?” he asked. “I like your buildings. That’s why I didn’t want to meet you. So I wouldn’t have to be sick every time I looked at them. I wanted to go on thinking that they had to be done by somebody who matched them.”
“What if I do?”
“That doesn’t happen.”
But he sat down on the edge of the crumpled bed and slumped forward, his glance like a sensitive scale weighing Roark’s features, impertinent in its open action of appraisal.
“Listen,” said Roark, speaking clearly and very carefully, “I want you to do a statue for the Stoddard Temple. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write you a contract right now, stating that I will owe you a million dollars damages if I hire another sculptor or if your work is not used.”
“You can speak normal. I’m not drunk. Not all the way. I understand.”
“Well?”
“Why did you pick me?”
“Because you’re a good sculptor.”
“That’s not true.”
“That you’re good?”
“No. That it’s your reason. Who asked you to hire me?”
“Nobody.”
“Some woman I laid?”
“I don’t know any women you laid.”
“Stuck on your building budget?”
“No. The budget’s unlimited.”
“Feel sorry for me?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Want to get publicity out of that shooting Toohey business?”
“Good God, no!”
“Well, what then?”
“Why did you fish for all that nonsense instead of the simplest reason?”
“Which?”
“That I like your work.”
“Sure. That’s what they all say. That’s what we’re all supposed to say and to believe. Imagine what would happen if somebody blew the lid off that one! So, all right, you like my work. What’s the real reason?”
“I like your work.”
Mallory spoke earnestly, his voice sober.
“You mean you saw the things I’ve done, and you like them–you–yourself–alone–without anyone telling you that you should like them or why you should like them–and you decided that you wanted me, for that reason–only for that reason–without knowing anything about me or giving a damn–only because of the things I’ve done and…and what you saw in them–only because of that, you decided to hire me, and you went to the bother of finding me and coming here, and being insulted–only because you saw–and what you saw made me important to you, made you want me? Is that what you mean?”
“Just that,” said Roark.
The things that pulled Mallory’s eyes wide were frightening to see. Then he shook his head, and said very simply, in the tone of soothing himself:
“No.”
He leaned forward. His voice sounded dead and pleading.
“Listen, Mr. Roark. I won’t be mad at you. I just want to know. All right, I see that you’re set on having me work for you, and you know you can get me, for anything you say, you don’t have to sign any million-dollar contract, look at this room, you know you’ve got me, so why shouldn’t you tell me the truth? It won’t make any difference to you–and it’s very important to me.”
“What’s very important to you?”
“Not to…not to…Look. I didn’t think anybody’d ever want me again. But you do. All right. I’ll go through it again. Only I don’t want to think again that I’m working for somebody who…who likes my work. That, I couldn’t go through any more. I’ll feel better if you tell me, I’ll…I’ll feel calmer. Why should you put on an act for me? I’m nothing. I won’t think less of you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Don’t you see? It’s much more decent to tell me the truth. Then it will be simple and honest. I’ll respect you more. Really, I will.”
“What’s the matter with you, kid? What have they done to you? Why do you want to say things like that?”
“Because…” Mallory roared suddenly, and then his voice broke, and his head dropped, and he finished in a flat whisper: “because I’ve spent two years”–his hand circled limply indicating the room–“that’s how I’ve spent them–trying to get used to the fact that what you’re trying to tell me doesn’t exist….”
Roark walked over to him, lifted his chin, knocking it upward, and said:
“You’re a God-damn fool. You have no right to care what I think of your work, what I am or why I’m here. You’re too good for that. But if you want to know it–I think you’re the best sculptor we’ve got. I think it, because your figures are not what men are, but what men could be–and should be. Because you’ve gone beyond the probable and made us see what is possible, but possible only through you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt for humanity than any work I’ve ever seen. Because you have a magnificent respect for the human being. Because your figures are the heroic in man. And so I didn’t come here to do you a favor or because I felt sorry for you or because you need a job pretty badly. I came for a simple, selfish reason–the same reason that makes a man choose the cleanest food he can find. It’s a law of survival, isn’t it?–to seek the best. I didn’t come for your sake. I came for mine.”
Mallory jerked himself away from him, and dropped face down on the bed, his two arms stretched out, one on each side of his head, hands closed into fists. The thin trembling of the shirt cloth on his back showed that he was sobbing; the shirt cloth and the fists that twisted slowly, digging into the pillow. Roark knew that he was looking at a man who had never cried before. He sat down on the side of the bed and could not take his eyes off the twisting wrists, even though the sight was hard to bear.
After a while Mallory sat up. He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest face–a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul that feeds upon another’s humiliation. Roark’s face seemed tired, drawn at the temples, as if he had just taken a beating. But his eyes were serene and they looked at Mallory quietly, a hard, clean glance of understanding–and respect.
“Lie down now,” said Roar. “Lie still for a while.”
“How did they ever let you survive?”
“Lie down. Rest. We’ll talk afterward.”
Mallory got up. Roark took him by the shoulders, forced him down, lifted his legs off the floor, lowered his head on the pillow. The boy did not resist.
Stepping back, Roark brushed against a table loaded with junk. Something clattered to the floor. Mallory jerked forward, trying to reach it first. Roark pushed his arm aside and picked up the object.
It was a small plaster plaque, the kind sold in cheap gift shops. It represented a baby sprawled on its stomach, dimpled rear forward, peeking coyly over its shoulder. A few lines, the structure of a few muscles showed a magnificent talent that could not be hidden, that broke fiercely through the rest; the rest was a deliberate attempt to be obvious, vulgar and trite, a clumsy effort, unconvincing and tortured. It was an object that belonged in a chamber of horrors.
Mallory saw Roark’s hand begin to shake. Then Roark’s arm went back and up, over his head, slowly, as if gathering the weight of air in the crook of his elbow; it was only a flash, but it seemed to last for minutes, the arm stood lifted and still–then it slashed forward, the plaque shot across the room and burst to pieces against the wall. It was the only time anyone had ever seen Roark murderously angry.