Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

  She turned to look at him and he saw the light of an inner smile, while her face remained solemnly grave; it was the most eloquently personal glance he had ever seen directed at himself, while she answered in a quiet, impersonal voice, "Mr. Taggart, what else is there to look up to?"

  A screeching sound, neither quite bell nor buzzer, rang out suddenly and went on ringing with nerve-grating insistence.

  She jerked her head, as if awakening at the scream of an alarm clock, then sighed. "That's closing time, Mr. Taggart," she said regretfully.

  "Go get your hat--I'll wait for you outside," he said.

  She stared at him, as if among all of life's possibilities this was one she had never held as conceivable.

  "No kidding?" she whispered.

  "No kidding."

  She whirled around and ran like a streak to the door of the employees' quarters, forgetting her counter, her duties and all feminine concern about never showing eagerness in accepting a man's invitation.

  He stood looking after her for a moment, his eyes narrowed. He did not name to himself the nature of his own feeling--never to identify his emotions was the only steadfast rule of his life; he merely felt it--and this particular feeling was pleasurable, which was the only identification he cared to know. But the feeling was the product of a thought he would not utter. He had often met girls of the lower classes, who had put on a brash little act, pretending to look up to him, spilling crude flattery for an obvious purpose; he had neither liked nor resented them; he had found a bored amusement in their company and he had granted them the status of his equals in a game he considered natural to both players involved. This girl was different. The unuttered words in his mind were: The damn little fool means it.

  That he waited for her impatiently, when he stood in the rain on the sidewalk, that she was the one person he needed tonight, did not disturb him or strike him as a contradiction. He did not name the nature of his need. The unnamed and the unuttered could not clash into a contradiction.

  When she came out, he noted the peculiar combination of her shyness and of her head held high. She wore an ugly raincoat, made worse by a gob of cheap jewelry on the lapel, and a small hat of plush flowers planted defiantly among her curls. Strangely, the lift of her head made the apparel seem attractive; it stressed how well she wore even the things she wore.

  "Want to come to my place and have a drink with me?" he asked.

  She nodded silently, solemnly, as if not trusting herself to find the ight words of acceptance. Then she said, not looking at him, as if stat ng it to herself, "You didn't want to see anybody tonight, but you want o see me. . . ." He had never heard so solemn a tone of pride in any-me's voice.

  She was silent, when she sat beside him in the taxicab. She looked up at the skyscrapers they passed. After a while, she said, "I heard that things like this happened in New York, but I never thought they'd happen to me."

  "Where do you come from?"

  "Buffalo."

  "Got any family?"

  She hesitated. "I guess so. In Buffalo."

  "What do you mean, you guess so?"

  "I walked out on them."

  "Why?"

  "I thought that if I ever was to amount to anything, I had to get away from them, clean away."

  "Why? What happened?"

  "Nothing happened. And nothing was ever going to happen. That's what I couldn't stand."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, they ... well, I guess I ought to tell you the truth, Mr. Taggart. My old man's never been any good, and Ma didn't care whether he was or not, and I got sick of it always turning out that I was the only one of the seven of us that kept a job, and the rest of them always being out of luck, one way or another. I thought if I didn't get out, it would get me--I'd rot all the way through, like the rest of them. So I bought a railroad ticket one day and left. Didn't say good-bye. They didn't even know I was going." She gave a soft, startled little laugh at a sudden thought. "Mr. Taggart," she said, "it was a Taggart train."

  "When did you come here?"

  "Six months ago."

  "And you're all alone?"

  "Yes," she said happily.

  "What was it you wanted to do?"

  "Well, you know--make something of myself, get somewhere."

  "Where?"

  "Oh, I don't know, but ... but people do things in the world I saw pictures of New York and I thought"--she pointed at the gian buildings beyond the streaks of rain on the cab window--"I thought, somebody built those buildings--he didn't just sit and whine that the kitchen was filthy and the roof leaking and the plumbing clogged and it's a goddamn world and ... Mr. Taggart"--she jerked her head in a shudder and looked straight at him--"we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That's what I couldn't take--that they didn't really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!" Beyond the bright look of her eyes, he saw something within her that was hurt and hard. "I don't want to talk about them," she said. "Not with you. This--my meeting you, I mean--that's what they couldn't have. That's what I'm not going to share with them. It's mine, not theirs."

  "How old are you?" he asked.

  "Nineteen."

  When he looked at her in the lights of his living room, he thought that she'd have a good figure if she'd eat a few meals; she seemed too thin for the height and structure of her bones. She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage by the gaudy plastic bracelets tinkling on her wrist. She stood looking at his room as if it were a museum where she must touch nothing and reverently memorize everything.

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "Cherryl Brooks."

  "Well, sit down."

  He mixed the drinks in silence, while she waited obediently, sitting on the edge of an armchair. When he handed her a glass, she swallowed dutifully a few times, then held the glass clutched in her hand. He knew that she did not taste what she was drinking, did not notice it, had no time to care.

  He took a gulp of his drink and put the glass down with irritation: he did not feel like drinking, either. He paced the room sullenly, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his cuff links, his shoe-laces, his lampshades and ashtrays acquired in that gentle, unquestioning glance.

  "Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you so unhappy?"

  "Why should you care whether I am or not?"

  "Because ... well, if you haven't the right to be happy and proud, who has?"

  "That's what I want to know--who has?" He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. "He didn't invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?"

  "Who?"

  "Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything."

  She said, puzzled, "But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?"

  "He didn't do it for any noble purpose, he did it just for his own profit, he's never done anything for any other reason."

  "What's wrong with that, Mr. Taggart?" Then she laughed softly, as if at the sudden solution of a riddle. "That's nonsense, Mr. Taggart. You don't mean it. You know that Mr. Rearden has earned all his profits, and so have you. You're saying those things just to be modest, when everybody knows what a great job you people have done--you and Mr. Rearden and your sister, who must be such a wonderful person!"

  "Yeah? That's what you think. She's a hard, insensitive woman who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not for any great ideal, but only because that's w
hat she enjoys doing. If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it? I'm not so sure it was great--building that Line for all those prosperous industrialists in Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted areas who need transportation."

  "But, Mr. Taggart, it was you who fought to build that Line."

  "Yes, because it was my duty--to the company and the stockholders and our employees. But don't expect me to enjoy it. I'm not so sure it was great--inventing this complex new Metal, when so many nations are in need of plain iron--why, do you know that the People's State of China hasn't even got enough nails to put wooden roofs over people's heads?"

  "But ... but I don't see that that's your fault."

  "Somebody should attend to it. Somebody with the vision to see beyond his own pocketbook. No sensitive person these days--when there's so much suffering around us--would devote ten years of his life to splashing about with a lot of trick metals. You think it's great? Well, it's not any kind of superior ability, but just a hide that you couldn't pierce if you poured a ton of his own steel over his head! There are many people of much greater ability in the world, but you don't read about them in the headlines and you don't run to gape at them at grade crossings--because they can't invent non-collapsible bridges at a time when the suffering of mankind weighs on their spirit!"

  She was looking at him silently, respectfully, her joyous eagerness toned down, her eyes subdued. He felt better.

  He picked up his drink, took a gulp, and chuckled abruptly at a sudden recollection.

  "It was funny, though," he said, his tone easier, livelier, the tone of a confidence to a pal. "You should have seen Orren Boyle yesterday, when the first flash came through on the radio from Wyatt Junction! He turned green--but I mean, green, the color of a fish that's been lying around too long! Do you know what he did last night, by way of taking the bad news? Hired himself a suite at the Valhalla Hotel--and you know what that is--and the last I heard, he was still there today, drinking himself under the table and the beds, with a few choice friends of his and half the female population of upper Amsterdam Avenue!"

  "Who is Mr. Boyle?" she asked, stupefied.

  "Oh, a fat slob that's inclined to overreach himself. A smart guy who gets too smart at times. You should have seen his face yesterday! I got a kick out of that. That--and Dr. Floyd Ferris. That smoothy didn't like it a bit, oh not a bit!--the elegant Dr. Ferris of the State Science Institute, the servant of the people, with the patent-leather vocabulary--but he carried it off pretty well, I must say, only you could see him squirming in every paragraph--I mean, that interview he gave out this morning, where he said, 'The country gave Rearden that Metal, now we expect him to give the country something in return.' That was pretty nifty, considering who's been riding on the gravy train and ... well, considering. That was better than Bertram Scudder--Mr. Scudder couldn't think of anything but 'No comment,' when his fellow gentlemen of the press asked him to voice his sentiments. 'No comment'--from Bertram Scudder who's never been known to shut his trap from the day he was born, about anything you ask him or don't ask, Abyssinian poetry or the state of the ladies' rest rooms in the textile industry! And Dr. Pritchett, the old fool, is going around saying that he knows for certain that Rearden didn't invent that Metal--because he was told, by an unnamed reliable source, that Rearden stole the formula from a penniless inventor whom he murdered!"

  He was chuckling happily. She was listening as to a lecture on higher mathematics, grasping nothing, not even the style of the language, a style which made the mystery greater, because she was certain that it did not mean--coming from him--what it would have meant anywhere else.

  He refilled his glass and drained it, but his gaiety vanished abruptly. He slumped into an armchair, facing her, looking up at her from under his bald forehead, his eyes blurred.

  "She's coming back tomorrow," he said, with a sound like a chuckle devoid of amusement.

  "Who?"

  "My sister. My dear sister. Oh, she'll think she's great, won't she?"

  "You dislike your sister, Mr. Taggart?" He made the same sound; its meaning was so eloquent that she needed no other answer. "Why?" she asked.

  "Because she thinks she's so good. What right has she to think it? What right has anybody to think he's good? Nobody's any good."

  "You don't mean it, Mr. Taggart."

  "I mean, we're only human beings--and what's a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones--so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he's good-that's when he's rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he's done."

  "But if a man knows that what he's done is good?"

  "Then he ought to apologize for it."

  "To whom?"

  "To those who haven't done it."

  "I ... I don't understand."

  "Of course you don't. It takes years and years of study in the higher reaches of the intellect. Have you ever heard of The Metaphysical Contradictions of the Universe, by Dr. Simon Pritchett?" She shook her head, frightened. "How do you know what's good, anyway? Who knows what's good? Who can ever know? There are no absolutes--as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably. Nothing is absolute. Everything is a matter of opinion. How do you know that that bridge hasn't collapsed? You only think it hasn't. How do you know that there's any bridge at all? You think that a system of philosophy--such as Dr. Pritchett's--is just something academic, remote, impractical? But it isn't. Oh, boy, how it isn't!"

  "But, Mr. Taggart, the Line you built--"

  "Oh, what's that Line, anyway? It's only a material achievement. Is that of any importance? Is there any greatness in anything material? Only a low animal can gape at that bridge--when there are so many higher things in life. But do the higher things ever get recognition? Oh no! Look at people. All that hue and cry and front pages about some trick arrangement of some scraps of matter. Do they care about any nobler issue? Do they ever give front pages to a phenomenon of the spirit? Do they notice or appreciate a person of finer sensibility? And you wonder whether it's true that a great man is doomed to unhappiness in this depraved world!" He leaned forward, staring at her intently. "I'll tell you ... I'll tell you something ... unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue. If a man is unhappy, really, truly unhappy, it means that he is a superior sort of person."

  He saw the puzzled, anxious look of her face. "But, Mr. Taggart, you got everything you wanted. Now you have the best railroad in the country, the newspapers call you the greatest business executive of the age, they say the stock of your company made a fortune for you overnight, you got everything you could ask for--aren't you glad of it?"

  In the brief space of his answer, she felt frightened, sensing a sudden fear within him. He answered, "No."

  She didn't know why her voice dropped to a whisper. "You'd rather the bridge had collapsed?"

  "I haven't said that!" he snapped sharply. Then he shrugged and waved his hand in a gesture of contempt. "You don't understand."

  "I'm sorry ... Oh, I know that I have such an awful lot to learn!"

  "I am talking about a hunger for something much beyond that bridge. A hunger that nothing material will ever satisfy."

  "What, Mr. Taggart? What is it you want?"

  "Oh, there you go! The moment you ask, 'What is it?' you're back in the crude, material world where everything's got to be tagged and measured. I'm speaking of things that can't be named in materialistic words ... the higher realms of the spirit, which man can never reach.... What's any human achievement, anyway? The earth is only an atom whirling in the universe--of what importance is that bridge to the solar system?"

  A sudden, happy look of understanding cleared her eyes. "It's great of you, Mr. Taggart, to think that your own achievement isn't good enough for you. I guess no matter how far you've gone, you want to go still farther. You're ambitious. That's what I admire most: ambition. I mean, doing things
, not stopping and giving up, but doing. I understand, Mr. Taggart ... even if I don't understand all the big thoughts."

  "You'll learn."

  "Oh, I'll work very hard to learn!"

  Her glance of admiration had not changed. He walked across the room, moving in that glance as in a gentle spotlight. He went to refill his glass. A mirror hung in the niche behind the portable bar. He caught a glimpse of his own figure: the tall body distorted by a sloppy, sagging posture, as if in deliberate negation of human grace, the thinning hair, the soft, sullen mouth. It struck him suddenly that she did not see him at all: what she saw was the heroic figure of a builder, with proudly straight shoulders and wind-blown hair. He chuckled aloud, feeling that this was a good joke on her, feeling dimly a satisfaction that resembled a sense of victory: the superiority of having put something over on her.

  Sipping his drink, he glanced at the door of his bedroom and thought of the usual ending for an adventure of this kind. He thought that it would be easy: the girl was too awed to resist. He saw the reddish-bronze sparkle of her hair--as she sat, head bent, under a light--and a wedge of smooth, glowing skin on her shoulder. He looked away. Why bother? -he thought.

  The hint of desire that he felt, was no more than a sense of physical discomfort. The sharpest impulse in his mind, nagging him to action, was not the thought of the girl, but of all the men who would not pass up an opportunity of this kind. He admitted to himself that she was a much better person than Betty Pope, perhaps the best person ever offered to him. The admission left him indifferent. He felt no more than he had felt for Betty Pope. He felt nothing. The prospect of experiencing pleasure was not worth the effort; he had no desire to experience pleasure.

  "It's getting late," he said. "Where do you live? Let me give you another drink and then I'll take you home."

  When he said good-bye to her at the door of a miserable rooming house in a slum neighborhood, she hesitated, fighting not to ask a question which she desperately wished to ask him.

  "Will I ..." she began, and stopped.

  "What?"

  "No, nothing, nothing!"

  He knew that the question was: "Will I see you again?" It gave him pleasure not to answer, even though he knew that she would.