"Your side, Ellsworth?"
"Look, Dominique, that's the trouble with your written--and spoken --style: you use too many question marks. Bad, in any case. Particularly bad when unnecessary. Let's drop the quiz technique--and just talk. Since we both understand and there aren't any questions to be asked between us. If there were--you'd have thrown me out. Instead, you gave me a very expensive liqueur."
He held the rim of the glass under his nose and inhaled with a loose kind of sensual relish, which, at a dinner table, would have been equivalent to a loud lip-smacking, vulgar there, superlatively elegant here, over a cut-crystal edge pressed to a neat little mustache.
"All right," she said. "Talk."
"That's what I've been doing. Which is considerate of me--since you're not ready to talk. Not yet, for a while. Well, let's talk--in a purely contemplative manner--about how interesting it is to see people welcoming you into their midst so eagerly, accepting you, flocking to you. Why is it, do you suppose? They do plenty of snubbing on their own, but just let someone who's snubbed them all her life suddenly break down and turn gregarious--and they all come rolling on their backs with their paws folded, for you to rub their bellies. Why? There could be two explanations, I think. The nice one would be that they are generous and wish to honor you with their friendship. Only the nice explanations are never the true ones. The other one is that they know you're degrading yourself by needing them, you're coming down off a pinnacle--every loneliness is a pinnacle--and they're delighted to drag you down through their friendship. Though, of course, none of them knows it consciously, except yourself. That's why you go through agonies, doing it, and you'd never do it for a noble cause, you'd never do it except for the end you've chosen, an end viler than the means and making the means endurable."
"You know, Ellsworth, you've said a sentence there you'd never use in your column."
"Did I? Undoubtedly. I can say a great many things to you that I'd never use in my column. Which one?"
"Every loneliness is a pinnacle."
"That? Yes, quite right. I wouldn't. You're welcome to it--though it's not too good. Fairly crude. I'll give you better ones some day, if you wish. Sorry, however, that that's all you picked out of my little speech."
"What did you want me to pick?"
"Well, my two explanations, for instance. There's an interesting question there. What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable? Kindness being more important than justice, of course."
"I don't give a damn, Ellsworth."
"Not in a mood for abstract speculation? Interested only in concrete results? All right. How many commissions have you landed for Peter Keating in the last three months?"
She rose, walked to the tray which the maid had left, poured herself a drink, and said: "Four," raising the glass to her mouth. Then she turned to look at him, standing, glass in hand, and added: "And that was the famous Toohey technique. Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line."
He bowed courteously. "Quite. That's why I like to talk to you. It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious. But the drivel is never accidental, Dominique. Also, I didn't know that the technique of my column was becoming obvious. I will have to think of a new one."
"Don't bother. They love it."
"Of course. They'll love anything I write. So it's four? I missed one. I counted three."
"I can't understand why you had to come here if that's all you wanted to know. You're so fond of Peter Keating, and I'm helping him along beautifully, better than you could, so if you wanted to give me a pep talk about Petey--it wasn't necessary, was it?"
"You're wrong there twice in one sentence, Dominique. One honest error and one lie. The honest error is the assumption that I wish to help Petey Keating--and, incidentally, I can help him much better than you can, and I have and will, but that's long-range contemplation. The lie is that I came here to talk about Peter Keating--you knew what I came here to talk about when you saw me enter. And--oh my!--you'd allow someone more obnoxious than myself to barge in on you, just to talk about that subject. Though I don't know who could be more obnoxious to you than myself, at the moment."
"Peter Keating," she said.
He made a grimace, wrinkling his nose: "Oh, no. He's not big enough for that. But let's talk about Peter Keating. It's such a convenient coincidence that he happens to be your father's partner. You're merely working your head off to procure commissions for your father, like a dutiful daughter, nothing more natural. You've done wonders for the firm of Francon & Keating in these last three months. Just by smiling at a few dowagers and wearing stunning models at some of our better gatherings. Wonder what you'd accomplish if you decided to go all the way and sell your matchless body for purposes other than esthetic contemplation--in exchange for commissions for Peter Keating." He paused, she said nothing, and he added: "My compliments, Dominique, you've lived up to my best opinion of you--by not being shocked at this."
"What was that intended for, Ellsworth? Shock value or hint value?"
"Oh, it could have been a number of things--a preliminary feeler, for instance. But, as a matter of fact, it was nothing at all. Just a touch of vulgarity. Also the Toohey technique--you know, I always advise the wrong touch at the right time. I am--essentially--such an earnest, single-toned Puritan that I must allow myself another color occasionally--to relieve the monotony."
"Are you, Ellsworth? I wonder what you are--essentially. I don't know."
"I dare say nobody does," he said pleasantly. "Although really, there's no mystery about it at all. It's very simple. All things are simple when you reduce them to fundamentals. You'd be surprised if you knew how few fundamentals there are. Only two, perhaps. To explain all of us. It's the untangling, the reducing that's dimcult--that's why people don't like to bother. I don't think they'd like the results, either."
"I don't mind. I know what I am. Go ahead and say it. I'm just a bitch."
"Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable."
"And you?"
"As a matter of fact, I know exactly what I am. That alone can explain a great deal about me. I'm giving you a helpful hint--if you care to use it. You don't, of course. You might, though--in the future."
"Why should I?" "You need me, Dominique. You might as well understand me a little. You see, I'm not afraid of being understood. Not by you."
"I need you?"
"Oh, come on, show a little courage, too."
She sat up and waited coldly, silently. He smiled, obviously with pleasure, making no effort to hide the pleasure.
"Let's see," he said, studying the ceiling with casual attention, "those commissions you got for Peter Keating. The Cryson office building was mere nuisance value--Howard Roark never had a chance at that. The Lindsay home was better--Roark was definitely considered, I think he would have got it but for you. The Stonebrook Clubhouse also--he had a chance at that, which you ruined." He looked at her and chuckled softly. "No comments on techniques and punches, Dominique?" The smile was like cold grease floating over the fluid sounds of his voice. "You slipped up on the Norris country house--he got that last week, you know. Well, you can't be a hundred per cent successful. After all, the Enright House is a big job; it's creating a lot of talk, and quite a few people are beginning to show interest in Mr. Howard Roark. But you've done remarkably well. My congratulations. Now don't you think I'm being nice to you? Every artist needs appreciation--and there's nobody to compliment you, since nobody knows what you're doing, but Roark and me, and he won't thank you. On second thought, I don't think Roark knows what you're doing, and that spoils the fun, doesn't it?"
She asked: "Ho
w do you know what I'm doing?"--her voice tired.
"My dear, surely you haven't forgotten that it was I who gave you the idea in the first place?"
"Oh, yes," she said absently. "Yes."
"And now you know why I came here. Now you know what I meant when I spoke about my side."
"Yes," she said. "Of course."
"This is a pact, my dear. An alliance. Allies never trust each other, but that doesn't spoil their effectiveness. Our motives might be quite opposite. In fact, they are. But it doesn't matter. The result will be the same. It is not necessary to have a noble aim in common. It is necessary only to have a common enemy. We have."
"Yes."
"That's why you need me. I've been helpful once."
"Yes."
"I can hurt your Mr. Roark much better than any tea party you'll ever give."
"What for?"
"Omit the what-fors, I don't inquire into yours."
"All right."
"Then it's to be understood between us? We're allies in this?"
She looked at him, she slouched forward, attentive, her face empty. Then she said: "We're allies."
"Fine, my dear. Now listen. Stop mentioning him in your column every other day or so. I know, you take vicious cracks at him each time, but it's too much. You're keeping his name in print, and you don't want to do that. Further: you'd better invite me to those parties of yours. There are things I can do which you can't. Another tip: Mr. Gilbert Colton--you know, the California pottery Coltons--is planning a branch factory in the east. He's thinking of a good modernist. In fact, he's thinking of Mr. Roark. Don't let Roark get it. It's a huge job--with lots of publicity. Go and invent a new tea sandwich for Mrs. Colton. Do anything you wish. But don't let Roark get it."
She got up, dragged her feet to a table, her arms swinging loosely, and took a cigarette. She lighted it, turned to him, and said indifferently: "You can talk very briefly and to the point--when you want to."
"When I find it necessary."
She stood at the window, looking out over the city. She said: "You've never actually done anything against Roark. I didn't know you cared quite so much."
"Oh, my dear. Haven't I?"
"You've never mentioned him in print."
"That, my dear, is what I've done against Mr. Roark. So far."
"When did you first hear of him?"
"When I saw drawings of the Heller house. You didn't think I'd miss that, did you? And you?"
"When I saw drawings of the Enright House."
"Not before?"
"Not before."
She smoked in silence; then she said, without turning to him:
"Ellsworth, if one of us tried to repeat what we said here tonight, the other would deny it and it could never be proved. So it doesn't matter if we're sincere with each other, does it? It's quite safe. Why do you hate him?"
"I never said I hated him."
She shrugged.
"As for the rest," he added, "I think you can answer that yourself."
She nodded slowly to the bright little point of her cigarette's reflection on the glass pane.
He got up, walked over to her, and stood looking at the lights of the city below them, at the angular shapes of buildings, at the dark walls made translucent by the glow of the windows, as if the walls were only a checkered veil of thin black gauze over a solid mass of radiance. And Ellsworth Toohey said softly:
"Look at it. A sublime achievement, isn't it? A heroic achievement. Think of the thousands who worked to create this and of the millions who profit by it. And it is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages, but for a dozen men--less, perhaps--none of this would have been possible. And that might be true. If so, there are--again--two possible attitudes to take. We can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or, we can say that by the splendor of their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to skyscrapers and neon lights--if the cave and the sticks are the limit of our own creative capacities. Of the two attitudes, Dominique, which would you call the truly humanitarian one? Because, you see, I'm a humanitarian."
After a while Dominique found it easier to associate with people. She learned to accept self-torture as an endurance test, urged on by the curiosity to discover how much she could endure. She moved through formal receptions, theater parties, dinners, dances--gracious and smiling, a smile that made her face brighter and colder, like the sun on a winter day. She listened emptily to empty words uttered as if the speaker would be insulted by any sign of enthusiastic interest from his listener, as if oily boredom were the only bond possible between people, the only preservative of their precarious dignity. She nodded to everything and accepted everything.
"Yes, Mr. Holt, I think Peter Keating is the man of the century--our century."
"No, Mr. Inskip, not Howard Roark, you don't want Howard Roark. ... A phony? Of course, he's a phony--it takes your sensitive honesty to evaluate the integrity of a man.... Nothing much? No, Mr. Inskip, of course, Howard Roark is nothing much. It's all a matter of size and distance--and distance.... No, I don't drink very much, Mr. Inskip--I'm glad you like my eyes--yes, they always look like that when I'm enjoying myself--and it made me so happy to hear you say that Howard Roark is nothing much."
"You've met Mr. Roark, Mrs. Jones? And you didn't like him? ... Oh, he's the type of man for whom one can feel no compassion? How true. Compassion is a wonderful thing. It's what one feels when one looks at a squashed caterpillar. An elevating experience. One can let oneself go and spread--you know, like taking a girdle off. You don't have to hold your stomach, your heart or your spirit up--when you feel compassion. All you have to do is look down. It's much easier. When you look up, you get a pain in the neck. Compassion is the greatest virtue. It justifies suffering. There's got to be suffering in the world, else how would we be virtuous and feel compassion? ... Oh, it has an antithesis--but such a hard, demanding one.... Admiration, Mrs. Jones, admiration. But that takes more than a girdle.... So I say that anyone for whom we can't feel sorry is a vicious person. Like Howard Roark."
Late at night, often, she came to Roark's room. She came unannounced, certain of finding him there and alone. In his room, there was no necessity to spare, lie, agree and erase herself out of being. Here she was free to resist, to see her resistance welcomed by an adversary too strong to fear a contest, strong enough to need it; she found a will granting her the recognition of her own entity, untouched and not to be touched except in clean battle, to win or to be defeated, but to be preserved in victory or defeat, not ground into the meaningless pulp of the impersonal.
When they lay in bed together it was--as it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded--an act of violence. It was surrender, made the more complete by the force of their resistance. It was an act of tension, as the great things on earth are things of tension. It was tense as electricity, the force fed on resistance, rushing through wires of metal stretched tight; it was tense as water made into power by the restraining violence of a dam. The touch of his skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and denial. It was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the agony, an act of passion--the word born to mean sunering--it was the moment made of hatred, tension, pain--the moment that broke its own elements, inverted them, triumphed, swept into a denial of all suffering, into its antithesis, into ecstasy.
She came to his room from a party, wearing an evening gown expensive and fragile like a coating of ice over her body--and she leaned against the wall, feeling the rough plaster under her skin, glancing slowly at every object around her, at the crude kitchen tabl
e loaded with sheets of paper, at the steel rulers, at the towels smudged by the black prints of five fingers, at the bare boards of the floor--and she let her glance slide down the length of her shining satin, down to the small triangle of a silver sandal, thinking of how she would be undressed here. She liked to wander about the room, to throw her gloves down among a litter of pencils, rubber erasers and rags, to put her small silver bag on a stained, discarded shirt, to snap open the catch of a diamond bracelet and drop it on a plate with the remnant of a sandwich, by an unfinished drawing.
"Roark," she said, standing behind his chair, her arms over his shoulders, her hand under his shirt, fingers spread and pressed flat against his chest, "I made Mr. Symons promise his job to Peter Keating today. Thirty-five floors, and anything he'll wish to make it cost, money no object, just art, free art." She heard the sound of his soft chuckle, but he did not turn to look at her, only his fingers closed over her wrist and he pushed her hand farther down under his shirt, pressing it hard against his skin. Then she pulled his head back, and she bent down to cover his mouth with hers.
She came in and found a copy of the Banner spread out on his table, open at the page bearing "Your House" by Dominique Francon. Her column contained the line: "Howard Roark is the Marquis de Sade of architecture. He's in love with his buildings--and look at them." She knew that he disliked the Banner, that he put it there only for her sake, that he watched her noticing it, with the half-smile she dreaded on his face. She was angry; she wanted him to read everything she wrote, yet she would have preferred to think that it hurt him enough to make him avoid it. Later, lying across the bed, with his mouth on her breast, she looked past the orange tangle of his head, at that sheet of newspaper on the table, and he felt her trembling with pleasure.
She sat on the floor, at his feet, her head pressed to his knees, holding his hand, closing her fist in turn over each of his fingers, closing it tight and letting it slide slowly down the length of his finger, feeling the hard, small stops at the joints, and she asked softly: "Roark, you wanted to get the Colton Factory? You wanted it very badly?" "Yes, very badly," he answered, without smiling and without pain. Then she raised his hand to her lips and held it there for a long time.