THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 5 page

"Why did you buy that factory?"

"Why does anybody buy any business? To squeeze whatever can be squeezed out of it. I know a good chance when I see it. It was a bankruptcy sale and nobody much who'd want to bid on the old mess. So I got the place for peanuts. Didn't have to hold it long, either—Mark took it off my hands in two-three months. Sure, it was a smart deal, if I say so myself. No big business tycoon could have done any better with it."

"Was the factory operating when you took it over?"

"Naw. It was shut down."

"Did you attempt to reopen it?"

"Not me. I'm a practical person."

"Can you recall the names of any men who worked there?"

"No. Never met 'em."

"Did you move anything out of the factory?"

"Well, I'll tell you. I took a look around—and what I liked was old Jed's desk. Old led Starnes. He was a real big shot in his time. Wonderful desk, solid mahogany. So I carted it home. And some executive, don't know who he was, had a stall shower in his bathroom, the like of which I never saw. A glass door with a mermaid cut in the glass, real art work, and hot stuff, too, hotter than any oil painting. So I had that shower lifted and moved here. What the hell, I owned it, didn't I? I was entitled to get something valuable out of that factory."

"Whose bankruptcy sale was it, when you bought the factory?"

"Oh, that was the big crash of the Community National Bank in Madison. Boy, was that a crash! It just about finished the whole state of Wisconsin—sure finished this part of it. Some say it was this motor factory that broke the bank, but others say it was only the last drop in a leaking bucket, because the Community National had bum investments all over three or four states. Eugene Lawson was the head of it. The banker with a heart, they called him. He was quite famous in these parts two-three years ago."

"Did Lawson operate the factory?"

"No. He merely lent an awful lot of money on it, more than he could ever hope to get back out of the old dump. When the factory busted, that was the last straw for Gene Lawson. The bank busted three months later." He sighed. "It hit the folks pretty hard around here. They all had their life savings in the Community National."

Mayor Bascom looked regretfully past his porch railing at his town.

He jerked his thumb at a figure across the street: it was a white-haired charwoman, moving painfully on her knees, scrubbing the steps of a house.

"See that woman, for instance? They used to be solid, respectable folks. Her husband owned the dry-goods store. He worked all his life to provide for her in her old age, and he did, too, by the time he died—only the money was in the Community National Bank."

"Who operated the factory when it failed?"

"Oh, that was some quicky corporation called Amalgamated Service, Inc. Just a puff-ball. Came up out of nothing and went back to it."

"Where are its members?"

"Where are the pieces of a puff-ball when it bursts? Try and trace them all over the United States. Try it."

"Where is Eugene Lawson?"

"Oh, him? He's done all right. He's got a job in Washington—in the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources."

Rearden rose too fast, thrown to his feet by a jolt of anger, then said, controlling himself, "Thank you for the information."

"You're welcome, friend, you're welcome," said Mayor Bascom placidly. "I don't know what it is you're after, but take my word for it, give it up. There's nothing more to be had out of that factory."

"I told you that we are looking for a friend of ours."

"Well, have it your way. Must be a pretty good friend, if you'll go to so much trouble to find him, you and the charming lady who is not your Wife."

Dagny saw Rearden's face go white, so that even his lips became a sculptured feature, indistinguishable against his skin. "Keep your dirty —" he began, but she stepped between them.

"Why do you think that I am not his wife?" she asked calmly.

Mayor Bascom looked astonished by Rearden's reaction; he had made the remark without malice, merely like a fellow cheat displaying his shrewdness to his partners in guilt.

"Lady, I've seen a lot in my lifetime," he said good-naturedly. "Married people don't look as if they have a bedroom on their minds when they look at each other. In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both."

"I've asked him a question," she said to Rearden in time to silence him. "He's given me an instructive explanation."

"If you want a tip, lady," said Mayor Bascom, "get yourself a wedding ring from the dime store and wear it. It's not sure fire, but it helps."

"Thank you," she said, "Good-bye."

The stern, stressed calm of her manner was a command that made Rearden follow her back to their car in silence.

They were miles beyond the town when he said, not looking at her, his voice desperate and low, "Dagny, Dagny, Dagny . . . I'm sorry!"

"I'm not."

Moments later, when she saw the look of control returning to his face, she said, "Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth."

"That particular truth was none of his business."

"His particular estimate of it was none of your concern or mine."

He said through his teeth, not as an answer, but as if the single thought battering his brain turned into sounds against his will, 'T couldn't protect you from that unspeakable little—"

"I didn't need protection."

He remained silent, not looking at her.

"Hank, when you're able to keep down the anger, tomorrow or next week, give some thought to that man's explanation and see if you recognize any part of it."

He jerked his head to glance at her, but said nothing.

When he spoke, a long time later, it was only to say in a tired, even voice, "We can't call New York and have our engineers come here to search the factory. We can't meet them here. We can't let it be known that we found the motor together. . . . I had forgotten all that . . . up there . . . in the laboratory."

"Let me call Eddie, when we find a telephone. I'll have him send two engineers from the Taggart staff. I'm here alone, on my vacation, for all they'll know or have to know."

They drove two hundred miles before they found a long-distance telephone line. When she called Eddie Willers, he gasped, hearing her voice.

"Dagny! For God's sake, where are you?"

"In Wisconsin. Why?"

"1 didn't know where to reach you. You'd better come back at once.

As fast as you can."

"What happened?"

"Nothing—yet. But there are things going on, which . . . You'd better stop them now, if you can. If anybody can."

"What things?"

"Haven't you been reading the newspapers?"

"No."

"I can't tell you over the phone. I can't give you all the details.

Dagny, you'll think I'm insane, but I think they're planning to kill Colorado."

"I'll come back at once," she said.

Cut into the granite of Manhattan, under the Taggart Terminal, there were tunnels which had once been used as sidings, at a time when traffic ran in clicking currents through every artery of the Terminal every hour of the day. The need for space had shrunk through the years, with the shrinking of the traffic, and the side tunnels had been abandoned, like dry river beds; a few lights remained as blue patches on the granite over rails left to rust on the ground.

Dagny placed the remnant of the motor into a vault in one of the tunnels; the vault had once contained an emergency electric generator, which had been removed long ago. She did not trust the useless young men of the Taggart research staff; there were only two engineers of talent among them, who could appreciate her discovery. She had shared her secret with the two and sent them to search the factory in Wisconsin. Then she had hidden the motor where no one else would know of its existence.

When her workers carried the motor down to the vault and departed, she was about to follow them and lock the steel door, but she stopped, key in hand, as if the silence and solitude had suddenly thrown her at the problem she had been facing for days, as if this were the moment to make her decision.

Her office car was waiting for her at one of the Terminal platforms, attached to the end of a train due to leave for Washington in a few minutes. She had made an appointment to see Eugene Lawson, but she had told herself that she would cancel it and postpone her quest—if she could think of some action to take against the things she had found on her return to New York, the things Eddie begged her to fight.

She had tried to think, but she could see no way of fighting, no rules of battle, no weapons. Helplessness was a strange experience, new to her; she had never found it hard to face things and make decisions; but she was not dealing with things—this was a fog without shapes or definitions, in which something kept forming and shifting before it could be seen, like semi-clots in a not-quite-liquid—it was as if her eyes were reduced to side-vision and she were sensing blurs of disaster coiling toward her, but she could not move her glance, she had no glance to move and focus.

The Union of Locomotive Engineers was demanding that the maximum speed of all trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty miles an hour. The Union of Railway Conductors and Brakemen was demanding that the length of all freight trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty cars.

The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona were demanding that the number of trains run in Colorado not exceed the number of trains run in each of these neighboring states.

A group headed by Orren Boyle was demanding the passage of a Preservation of Livelihood Law, which would limit the production of Rearden Metal to an amount equal to the output of any other steel mill of equal plant capacity, A group headed by Mr. Mowen was demanding the passage of a Fair Share Law to give every customer who wanted it an equal supply of Rearden Metal.

A group headed by Bertram Scudder was demanding the passage of a Public Stability Law, forbidding Eastern business firms to move out of their states.

Wesley Mouch, Top Co-ordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, was issuing a great many statements, the content and purpose of which could not be denned, except that the words "emergency powers" and "unbalanced economy" kept appearing in the text every few lines.

"Dagny, by what right?” Eddie Willers had asked her, his voice quiet, but the words sounding like a cry. "By what right are they all doing it?

By what right?"

She had confronted James Taggart in his office and said, "Jim, this is your battle. I've fought mine. You're supposed to be an expert at dealing with the looters. Stop them."

Taggart had said, not looking at her, "You can't expect to run the national economy to suit your own convenience."

"I don't want to run the national economy! I want your national economy runners to leave me alone! I have a railroad to run—and I know what's going to happen to your national economy if my railroad collapses!"

"I see no necessity for panic."

"Jim, do I have to explain to you that the income from our Rio Norte Line is all we've got, to save us from collapsing? That we need every penny of it, every fare, every carload of freight—as fast as we can get it?" He had not answered. "When we have to use every bit of power in every one of our broken-down Diesels, when we don't have enough of them to give Colorado the service it needs—what's going to happen if we reduce the speed and the length of trains?"

"Well, there's something to be said for the unions' viewpoint, too.

With so many railroads closing and so many railroad men out of work, they feel that those extra speeds you've established on the Rio Norte Line are unfair—they feel that there should be more trains, instead, so that the work would be divided around—they feel that it's not fair for us to get all the benefit of that new rail, they want a share of it, too."

"Who wants a share of it? In payment for what?" He had not answered. "Who'll bear the cost of two trains doing the work of one?" He had not answered. "Where are you going to get the cars and the engines?" He had not answered. "What are those men going to do after they've put Taggart Transcontinental out of existence?"

"I fully intend to protect the interests of Taggart Transcontinental."

"How?" He had not answered. "How—if you kill Colorado?"

"It seems to me that before we worry about giving some people a chance to expand, we ought to give some consideration to the people who need a chance of bare survival."

"If you kill Colorado, what is there going to be left for your damn looters to survive on?"

"You have always been opposed to every progressive social measure. I seem to remember that you predicted disaster when we passed the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule—but the disaster has not come."

"Because I saved you, you rotten fools! I won't be able to save you this time!" He had shrugged, not looking at her. "And if I don't, who will?" He had not answered.

It did not seem real to her, here, under the ground. Thinking of it here, she knew she could have no part in Jim's battle. There was no action she could take against the men of undefined thought, of unnamed motives, of unstated purposes, of unspecified morality. There was nothing she could say to them—nothing would be heard or answered. What were the weapons, she thought, in a realm where reason was not a weapon any longer? It was a realm she could not enter. She had to leave it to Jim and count on his self-interest. Dimly, she felt the chill of a thought telling her that self-interest was not Jim's motive.

She looked at the object before her, a glass case containing the remnant of the motor. The man who made the motor—she thought suddenly, the thought coming like a cry of despair. She felt a moment's helpless longing to find him, to lean against him and let him tell her what to do. A mind like his would know the way to win this battle.

She looked around her. In the clean, rational world of the underground tunnels, nothing was of so urgent an importance as the task of finding the man who made the motor. She thought: Could she delay it in order to argue with Orren Boyle?—to reason with Mr. Mowen?—to plead with Bertram Scudder? She saw the motor, completed, built into an engine that pulled a train of two hundred cars down a track of Rearden Metal at two hundred miles an hour. When the vision was within her reach, within the possible, was she to give it up and spend her time bargaining about sixty miles and sixty cars? She could not descend to an existence where her brain would explode under the pressure of forcing itself not to outdistance incompetence. She could not function to the rule of: Pipe down—keep down—slow down—don't do your best, it is not wanted!

She turned resolutely and left the vault, to take the train for Washington.

It seemed to her, as she locked the steel door, that she heard a faint echo of steps. She glanced up and down the dark curve of the tunnel.

There was no one in sight; there was nothing but a string of blue lights glistening on walls of damp granite.

Rearden could not fight the gangs who demanded the laws. The choice was to fight them or to keep his mills open. He had lost his supply of iron ore. He had to fight one battle or the other. There was no time for both.

He had found, on his return, that a scheduled shipment of ore had not been delivered. No word or explanation had been heard from Larkin. When summoned to Rearden's office, Larkin appeared three days later than the appointment made, offering no apology. He said, not looking at Rearden, his mouth drawn tightly into an expression of rancorous dignity: "After all, you can't order people to come running to your office any time you please."

Rearden spoke slowly and carefully. "Why wasn't the ore delivered?"

"I won't take abuse, I simply won't take any abuse for something I couldn't help. I can run a mine just as well as you ran it, every bit as well, I did everything you did—I don't know why something keeps going wrong unexpectedly all the time. I can't be blamed for the unexpected."

"To whom did you ship your ore last month?"

"I intended to ship you your share of it, I fully intended it, but I couldn't help it if we lost ten days of production last month on account of the rainstorm in the whole of north Minnesota—I intended to ship you the ore, so you can't blame me, because my intention was completely honest."

"If one of my blast furnaces goes down, will I be able to keep it going by feeding your intention into it?"

"That's why nobody can deal with you or talk to you—because you're inhuman,"

"I have just learned that for the last three months, you have not been shipping your ore by the lake boats, you have been shipping it by rail.

Why?"

"Well, after all, I have a right to run my business as I see fit."

"Why are you willing to pay the extra cost?"

"What do you care? I'm not charging it to you."

"What will you do when you find that you can't afford the rail rates and that you have destroyed the lake shipping?"

"I am sure you wouldn't understand any consideration other than dollars and cents, but some people do consider their social and patriotic responsibilities."

"What responsibilities?"

"Well, I think that a railroad like Taggart Transcontinental is essential to the national welfare and it is one's public duty to support Jim's Minnesota branch line, which is running at a deficit."

Rearden leaned forward across the desk; he was beginning to see the links of a sequence he had never understood. "To whom did you ship your ore last month?" he asked evenly.

"Well, after all, that is my private business which—"

"To Orren Boyle, wasn't it?"

"You can't expect people to sacrifice the entire steel industry of the nation to your selfish interests and—"

"Get out of here," said Rearden. He said it calmly. The sequence was clear to him now.

"Don't misunderstand me, I didn't mean—"

"Get out."

Larkin got out.

Then there followed the days and nights of searching a continent by phone, by wire, by plane—of looking at abandoned mines and at mines ready to be abandoned—of tense, rushed conferences held at tables hi the unlighted corners of disreputable restaurants. Looking across the table, Rearden had to decide how much he could risk to invest upon the sole evidence of a man's face, manner and tone of voice, hating the state of having to hope for honesty as for a favor, but risking it, pouring money into unknown hands in exchange for unsupported promises, into unsigned, unrecorded loans to dummy owners of failing mines—money handed and taken furtively, as an exchange between criminals, in anonymous cash; money poured into unenforceable contracts—both parties knowing that in case of fraud, the defrauded was to be punished, not the defrauder—but poured that a stream of ore might continue flowing into furnaces, that the furnaces might continue to pour a stream of white metal.

"Mr. Rearden," asked the purchasing manager of his mills, "if you keep that up, where will be your profit?"

"We'll make it up on tonnage," said Rearden wearily. "We have an unlimited market for Rearden Metal."

The purchasing manager was an elderly man with graying hair, a lean, dry face, and a heart which, people said, was given exclusively to the task of squeezing every last ounce of value out of a penny. He stood in front of Rearden's desk, saying nothing else, merely looking straight at Rearden, his cold eyes narrowed and grim. It was a look of the most profound sympathy that Rearden had ever seen.

There's no other course open, thought Rearden, as he had thought through days and nights. He knew no weapons but to pay for what he wanted, to give value for value, to ask nothing of nature without trading his effort in return, to ask nothing of men without trading the product of his effort. What were the weapons, he thought, if values were not a weapon any longer?

"An unlimited market, Mr. Rearden?" the purchasing manager asked dryly.

Rearden glanced up at him. "I guess I'm not smart enough to make the sort of deals needed nowadays," he said, in answer to the unspoken thoughts that hung across his desk.

The purchasing manager shook his head. "No, Mr. Rearden, it's one or the other. The same kind of brain can't do both. Either you're good at running the mills or you're good at running to Washington."

"Maybe I ought to learn their method."

"You couldn't learn it and it wouldn't do you any good. You wouldn't win in any of those deals. Don't you understand? You're the one who's got something to be looted."

When he was left alone, Rearden felt a jolt of blinding anger, as it had come to him before, painful, single and sudden like an electric shock—the anger bursting out of the knowledge that one cannot deal with pure evil, with the naked, full-conscious evil that neither has nor seeks justification. But when he felt the wish to fight and kill in the rightful cause of self-defense—he saw the fat, grinning face of Mayor Bascom and heard the drawling voice saying, ". . . you and the charming lady who is not your wife."

Then no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning into the shameful pain of submission. He had no right to condemn anyone—he thought—to denounce anything, to fight and die joyously, claiming the sanction of virtue. The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud—he was guilty of them all. What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil.

He did not know—as he sat slumped at his desk, thinking of the honesty he could claim no longer, of the sense of justice he had lost—that it was his rigid honesty and ruthless sense of justice that were now knocking his only weapon out of his hands. He would fight the looters, but the wrath and fire were gone. He would fight, but only as one guilty wretch against the others. He did not pronounce the words, but the pain was their equivalent, the ugly pain saying: Who am I to cast the first stone?

He let his body fall across the desk. . . . Dagny, he thought, Dagny, if this is the price I have to pay, I'll pay it. . . . He was still the trader who knew no code except that of full payment for his desires.

It was late when he came home and hurried soundlessly up the stairs to his bedroom. He hated himself for being reduced to sneaking, but he had done it on most of his evenings for months. The sight of his family had become unbearable to him; he could not tell why. Don't hate them for your own guilt, he had told himself, but knew dimly that this was not the root of his hatred.

He closed the door of his bedroom like a fugitive winning a moment's reprieve. He moved cautiously, undressing for bed: he wanted no sound to betray his presence to his family, he wanted no contact with them, not even in their own minds.

He had put on his pajamas and stopped to light a cigarette, when the door of his bedroom opened. The only person who could properly enter his room without knocking had never volunteered to enter it, so he stared blankly for a moment before he was able to believe that it was Lillian who came in.

She wore an Empire garment of pale chartreuse, its pleated skirt streaming gracefully from its high waistline; one could not tell at first glance whether it was an evening gown or a negligee; it was a negligee.

She paused in the doorway, the lines of her body flowing into an attractive silhouette against the light.

"I know I shouldn't introduce myself to a stranger," she said softly, "but I'll have to: my name is Mrs. Rearden." He could not tell whether it was sarcasm or a plea.

She entered and threw the door closed with a casual, imperious gesture, the gesture of an owner.

"What is it, Lillian?" he asked quietly.

"My dear, you mustn't confess so much so bluntly"—she moved in a leisurely manner across the room, past his bed, and sat down in an armchair—"and so unflatteringly. It's an admission that I need to show special cause for taking your time. Should I make an appointment through your secretary?"

He stood in the middle of the room, holding the cigarette at his lips, looking at her. volunteering no answer.

She laughed. "My reason is so unusual that I know it will never occur to you: loneliness, darling. Do you mind throwing a few crumbs of your expensive attention to a beggar? Do you mind if I stay here without any formal reason at all?"

"No," he said quietly, "not if you wish to."

"I have nothing weighty to discuss—no million-dollar orders, no transcontinental deals, no rails, no bridges. Not even the political situation. I just want to chatter like a woman about perfectly unimportant things."

"Go ahead."

"Henry, there's no better way to stop me, is there?" She had an air of helpless, appealing sincerity. "What can I say after that? Suppose I wanted to tell you about the new novel which Balph Eubank is writing—he is dedicating it to me—would that interest you?"

"If it's the truth that you want—not in the least."

She laughed. "And if it's not the truth that I want?"

"Then I wouldn't know what to say," he answered—and felt a rush of blood to his brain, tight as a slap, realizing suddenly the double infamy of a lie uttered in protestation of honesty; he had said it sincerely, but it implied a boast to which he had no right any longer. "Why would you want it, if it's not the truth?" he asked. "What for?"

"Now you see, that's the cruelty of conscientious people. You wouldn't understand it—would you?—if I answered that real devotion consists of being willing to lie, cheat and fake in order to make another person happy—to create for him the reality he wants, if he doesn't like the one that exists."

"No," he said slowly, "I wouldn't understand it."

"It's really very simple. If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It's no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake—and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”

He looked at her blankly. It sounded like some sort of monstrous corruption that precluded the possibility of wondering whether anyone could mean it; he wondered only what was the point of uttering it.

"What's love, darling, if it's not self-sacrifice?" she went on lightly, in the tone of a drawing-room discussion. "What's self-sacrifice, unless one sacrifices that which is one's most precious and most important? But I don't expect you to understand it. Not a stainless-steel Puritan like you.

That's the immense selfishness of the Puritan. You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed."

He said slowly, his voice oddly strained and solemn, "I have never claimed to be immaculate."

She laughed. "And what is it you're being right now? You're giving me an honest answer, aren't you?" She shrugged her naked shoulders.

"Oh, darling, don't take me seriously! I'm just talking."

He ground his cigarette into an ashtray; he did not answer.

"Darling," she said, "I actually came here only because I kept thinking that I had a husband and I wanted to find out what he looked like."

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 568