by Ayn Rand
The walls of the street around him had the stressed, unnatural clarity of a summer twilight, while an orange haze filled the channels of intersections and veiled the tiers of roofs, leaving him on a shrinking remnant of ground. The calendar in the sky seemed to stand insistently out of the haze, yellow like a page of old parchment, saying: August 5.
No--he thought, in answer to things he had not named--it was not true, he felt fine, that's why he wanted to do something tonight. He could not admit to himself that his peculiar restlessness came from a desire to experience pleasure; he could not admit that the particular pleasure he wanted was that of celebration, because he could not admit what it was that he wanted to celebrate.
This had been a day of intense activity, spent on words floating as vaguely as cotton, yet achieving a purpose as precisely as an adding machine, summing up to his full satisfaction. But his purpose and the nature of his satisfaction had to be kept as carefully hidden from himself as they had been from others; and his sudden craving for pleasure was a dangerous breach.
The day had started with a small luncheon in the hotel suite of a visiting Argentinian legislator, where a few people of various nationalities had talked at leisurely length about the climate of Argentina, its soil, its resources, the needs of its people, the value of a dynamic, progressive attitude toward the future--and had mentioned, as the briefest topic of conversation, that Argentina would be declared a People's State within two weeks.
It had been followed by a few cocktails at the home of Orren Boyle, with only one unobtrusive gentleman from Argentina sitting silently in a corner, while two executives from Washington and a few friends of unspecified positions had talked about national resources, metallurgy, mineralogy, neighborly duties and the welfare of the globe--and had mentioned that a loan of four billion dollars would be granted within three weeks to the People's State of Argentina and the People's State of Chile.
It had been followed by a small cocktail party in a private room of the bar built like a cellar on the roof of a skyscraper, an informal party given by him, James Taggart, for the directors of a recently formed company, The Interneighborly Amity and Development Corporation, of which Orren Boyle was president and a slender, graceful, overactive man from Chile was treasurer, a man whose name was Senor Mario Martinez, but whom Taggart was tempted, by some resemblance of spirit, to call Senor Cuffy Meigs. Here they had talked about golf, horse races, boat races, automobiles and women. It had not been necessary to mention, since they all knew it, that the Interneighborly Amity and Development Corporation had an exclusive contract to operate, on a twenty-year "managerial lease," all the industrial properties of the People's States of the Southern Hemisphere.
The last event of the day had been a large dinner reception at the home of Senor Rodrigo Gonzales, a diplomatic representative of Chile. No one had heard of Senor Gonzales a year ago, but he had become famous for the parties he had given in the past six months, ever since his arrival in New York. His guests described him as a progressive businessman. He had lost his property--it was said--when Chile, becoming a People's State, had nationalized all properties, except those belonging to citizens of backward, non-People's countries, such as Argentina; but he had adopted an enlightened attitude and had joined the new regime, placing himself in the service of his country. His home in New York occupied an entire floor of an exclusive residential hotel. He had a fat, blank face and the eyes of a killer. Watching him at tonight's reception, Taggart had concluded that the man was impervious to any sort of feeling, he looked as if a knife could slash, unnoticed, through his pendulous layers of flesh--except that there was a lewd, almost sexual relish in the way he rubbed his feet against the rich pile of his Persian rugs, or patted the polished arm of his chair, or folded his lips about a cigar. His wife, the Senora Gonzales, was a small, attractive woman, not as beautiful as she assumed, but enjoying the reputation of a beauty by means of a violent nervous energy and an odd manner of loose, warm, cynical self-assertiveness that seemed to promise anything and to absolve anyone. It was known that her particular brand of trading was her husband's chief asset, in an age when one traded, not goods, but favors--and, watching her among the guests, Taggart had found amusement in wondering what deals had been made, what directives issued, what industries destroyed in exchange for a few chance nights, which most of those men had had no reason to seek and, perhaps, could no longer remember. The party had bored him, there had been only half a dozen persons for whose sake he had put in an appearance, and it had not been necessary to speak to that half-dozen, merely to be seen and to exchange a few glances. Dinner had been about to be served, when he had heard what he had come to hear: Senor Gonzales had mentioned--the smoke of his cigar weaving over the half-dozen men who had drifted toward his armchair--that by agreement with the future People's State of Argentina, the properties of d.'Anconia Copper would be nationalized by the People's State of Chile, in less than a month, on September 2.
It had all gone as Taggart had expected; the unexpected had come when, on hearing those words, he had felt an irresistible urge to escape. He had felt incapable of enduring the boredom of the dinner, as if some other form of activity were needed to greet the achievement of this night. He had walked out into the summer twilight of the streets, feeling as if he were both pursuing and pursued: pursuing a pleasure which nothing could give him, in celebration of a feeling which he dared not name--pursued by the dread of discovering what motive had moved him through the planning of tonight's achievement and what aspect of it now gave him this feverish sense of gratification.
He reminded himself that he would sell his d.'Anconia Copper stock, which had never rallied fully after its crash of last year, and he would purchase shares of the Interneighborly Amity and Development Corporation, as agreed with his friends, which would bring him a fortune. But the thought brought him nothing but boredom; this was not the thing he wanted to celebrate.
He tried to force himself to enjoy it: money, he thought, had been his motive, money, nothing worse. Wasn't that a normal motive? A valid one? Wasn't that what they all were after, the Wyatts, the Reardens, the d.'Anconias? ... He jerked his head to stop it: he felt as if his thoughts were slipping down a dangerous blind alley, the end of which he must never permit himself to see.
No--he thought bleakly, in reluctant admission--money meant nothing to him any longer. He had thrown dollars about by the hundreds--at that party he had given today--for unfinished drinks, for uneaten delicacies, for unprovoked tips and unexpected whims, for a long-distance phone call to Argentina because one of the guests had wanted to check the exact version of a smutty story he had started telling, for the spur of any moment, for the clammy stupor of knowing that it was easier to pay than to think.
"You've got nothing to worry about, under that Railroad Unification Plan," Orren Boyle had giggled to him drunkenly. Under the Railroad Unification Plan, a local railroad had gone bankrupt in North Dakota, abandoning the region to the fate of a blighted area, the local banker had committed suicide, first killing his wife and children--a freight train had been taken off the schedule in Tennessee, leaving a local factory without transportation at a day's notice, the factory owner's son had quit college and was now in jail, awaiting execution for a murder committed with a gang of raiders--a way station had been closed in Kansas, and the station agent, who had wanted to be a scientist, had given up his studies and become a dishwasher--that he, James Taggart, might sit in a private barroom and pay for the alcohol pouring down Orren Boyle's throat, for the waiter who sponged Boyle's garments when he spilled his drink over his chest, for the carpet burned by the cigarettes of an ex-pimp from Chile who did not want to take the trouble of reaching for an ashtray across a distance of three feet.
It was not the knowledge of his indifference to money that now gave him a shudder of dread. It was the knowledge that he would be equally indifferent, were he reduced to the state of the beggar. There had been a time when he had felt some measure of guilt--in no clearer a for
m than a touch of irritation--at the thought that he shared the sin of greed, which he spent his time denouncing. Now he was hit by the chill realization that, in fact, he had never been a hypocrite: in full truth, he had never cared for money. This left another hole gaping open before him, leading into another blind alley which he could not risk seeing.
I just want to do something tonight!--he cried soundlessly to someone at large, in protest and in demanding anger--in protest against whatever it was that kept forcing these thoughts into his mind--in anger at a universe where some malevolent power would not permit him to find enjoyment without the need to know what he wanted or why.
What do you want?--some enemy voice kept asking, and he walked faster, trying to escape it. It seemed to him that his brain was a maze where a blind alley opened at every turn, leading into a fog that hid an abyss. It seemed to him that he was running, while the small island of safety was shrinking and nothing but those alleys would soon be left. It was like the remnant of clarity in the street around him, with the haze rolling in to fill all exits. Why did it have to shrink?--he thought in panic. This was the way he had lived all his life--keeping his eyes stubbornly, safely on the immediate pavement before him, craftily avoiding the sight of his road, of corners, of distances, of pinnacles. He had never intended going anywhere, he had wanted to be free of progression, free of the yoke of a straight line, he had never wanted his years to add up to any sum--what had summed them up?--why had he reached some unchosen destination where one could no longer stand still or retreat? "Look where you're going, brother!" snarled some voice, while an elbow pushed him back--and he realized that he had collided with some large, ill-smelling figure and that he had been running.
He slowed his steps and admitted into his mind a recognition of the streets he had chosen in his random escape. He had not wanted to know that he was going home to his wife. That, too, was a fogbound alley, but there was no other left to him.
He knew--the moment he saw Cherryl's silent, poised figure as she rose at his entrance into her room--that this was more dangerous than he had allowed himself to know and that he would not find what he wanted. But danger, to him, was a signal to shut off his sight, suspend his judgment and pursue an unaltered course, on the unstated premise that the danger would remain unreal by the sovereign power of his wish not to see it--like a foghorn within him, blowing, not to sound a warning, but to summon the fog.
"Why, yes, I did have an important business banquet to attend, but I changed my mind, I felt like having dinner with you tonight," he said in the tone of a compliment--but a quiet "I see" was the only answer he obtained.
He felt irritation at her unastonished manner and her pale, unrevealing face. He felt irritation at the smooth efficiency with which she gave instructions to the servants, then at finding himself in the candlelight of the dining room, facing her across a perfectly appointed table, with two crystal cups of fruit in silver bowls of ice between them.
It was her poise that irritated him most; she was no longer an incongruous little freak, dwarfed by the luxury of the residence which a famous artist had designed; she matched it. She sat at the table as if she were the kind of hostess that room had the right to demand. She wore a tailored housecoat of russet-colored brocade that blended with the bronze of her hair, the severe simplicity of its lines serving as her only ornament. He would have preferred the jingling bracelets and rhinestone buckles of her past. Her eyes disturbed him, as they had for months: they were neither friendly nor hostile, but watchful and questioning.
"I closed a big deal today," he said, his tone part boastful, part pleading. "A deal involving this whole continent and half a dozen governments."
He realized that the awe, the admiration, the eager curiosity he had expected, belonged to the face of the little shopgirl who had ceased to exist. He saw none of it in the face of his wife; even anger or hatred would have been preferable to her level, attentive glance; the glance was worse than accusing, it was inquiring.
"What deal, Jim?"
"What do you mean, what deal? Why are you suspicious? Why do you have to start prying at once?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't know it was confidential. You don't have to answer me."
"It's not confidential." He waited, but she remained silent. "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"
"Why, no." She said it simply, as if to please him.
"So you're not interested at all?"
"But I thought you didn't want to discuss it."
"Oh, don't be so tricky!" he snapped. "It's a big business deal. That's what you admire, isn't it, big business? Well, it's bigger than anything those boys ever dreamed of. They spend their lives grubbing for their fortunes penny by penny, while I can do it like that"--he snapped his fingers--"just like that. It's the biggest single stunt ever pulled."
"Stunt, Jim?"
"Deal!"
"And you did it? Yourself?"
"You bet I did it! That fat fool, Orren Boyle, couldn't have swung it in a million years. This took knowledge and skill and timing"--he saw a spark of interest in her eyes--"and psychology." The spark vanished, but he went rushing heedlessly on. "One had to know how to approach Wesley, and how to keep the wrong influences away from him, and how to get Mr. Thompson interested without letting him know too much, and how to cut Chick Morrison in on it, but keep Tinky Holloway out, and how to get the right people to give a few parties for Wesley at the right time, and . . . Say, Cherryl, is there any champagne in this house?"
"Champagne?"
"Can't we do something special tonight? Can't we have a sort of celebration together?"
"We can have champagne, yes, Jim, of course."
She rang the bell and gave the orders, in her odd, lifeless, uncritical manner, a manner of meticulous compliance with his wishes while volunteering none of her own.
"You don't seem to be very impressed," he said. "But what would you know about business, anyway? You wouldn't be able to understand anything on so large a scale. Wait till September second. Wait till they hear about it."
"They? Who?"
He glanced at her, as if he had let a dangerous word slip out involuntarily. "We've organized a setup where we--me, Orren and a few friends--are going to control every industrial property south of the border."
"Whose property?"
"Why . . . the people's. This is not an old-fashioned grab for private profit. It's a deal with a mission--a worthy, public-spirited mission--to manage the nationalized properties of the various People's States of South America, to teach their workers our modem techniques of production, to help the underprivileged who've never had a chance, to--" He broke off abruptly, though she had merely sat looking at him without shifting her glance. "You know," he said suddenly, with a cold little chuckle, "if you're so damn anxious to hide that you came from the slums, you ought to be less indifferent to the philosophy of social welfare. It's always the poor who lack humanitarian instincts. One has to be born to wealth in order to know the finer feelings of altruism."
"I've never tried to hide that I came from the slums," she said in the simple, impersonal tone of a factual correction. "And I haven't any sympathy for that welfare philosophy. I've seen enough of them to know what makes the kind of poor who want something for nothing." He did not answer, and she added suddenly, her voice astonished, but firm, as if in final confirmation of a long-standing doubt, "Jim, you don't care about it, either. You don't care about any of that welfare hog-wash."
"Well, if money is all that you're interested in," he snapped, "let me tell you that that deal will bring me a fortune. That's what you've always admired, isn't it, wealth?"
"It depends."
"I think I'll end up as one of the richest men in the world," he said; he did not ask what her admiration depended upon. "There's nothing I won't be able to afford. Nothing. Just name it. I can give you anything you want. Go on, name it."
"I don't want anything, Jim."
"But I'd like to give you a present! To celebrate the o
ccasion, see? Anything you take it into your head to ask. Anything. I can do it. I want to show you that I can do it. Any fancy you care to name."
"I haven't any fancies."
"Oh, come on! Want a yacht?"
"No."
"Want me to buy you the whole neighborhood where you lived in Buffalo?"
."No."
"Want the crown jewels of the People's State of England? They can be had, you know. That People's State has been hinting about it on the black market for a long time. But there aren't any old-fashioned tycoons left who're able to afford it. I'm able to afford it--or will be, after September second. Want it?"
"No."
"Then what do you want?"
"I don't want anything, Jim."
"But you've got to! You've got to want something, damn you!"
She looked at him, faintly startled, but otherwise indifferent.
"Oh, all right, I'm sorry," he said; he seemed astonished by his own outbreak. "I just wanted to please you," he added sullenly, "but I guess you can't understand it at all. You don't know how important it is. You don't know how big a man you're married to."
"I'm trying to find out," she said slowly.
"Do you still think, as you used to, that Hank Rearden is a great man?"
"Yes, Jim, I do."
"Well, I've got him beaten. I'm greater than any of them, greater than Rearden and greater than that other lover of my sister.'s, who--" He stopped, as if he had slid too far.
"Jim," she asked evenly, "what is going to happen on September second?"
He glanced up at her, from under his forehead--a cold glance, while his muscles creased into a semi-smile, as if in cynical breach of some hallowed restraint. "They're going to nationalize d.'Anconia Copper," he said.
He heard the long, harsh roll of a motor, as a plane went by somewhere in the darkness above the roof, then a thin tinkle, as a piece of ice settled, melting, in the silver bowl of his fruit cup--before she answered. She said, "He was your friend, wasn't he?"
"Oh, shut up!"