THE CONCERTO OF DELIVERANCE 1 page

On October 20, the steel workers' union of Rearden Steel demanded a raise in wages.

Hank Rearden learned it from the newspaper; no demand had been presented to him and it had not been considered necessary to inform him. The demand was made to the Unification Board; it was not explained why no other steel company was presented with a similar claim.

He was unable to tell whether the demanders did or did not represent his workers, the Board's rules on union elections having made it a matter impossible to define. He learned only that the group consisted of those newcomers whom the Board had slipped into his mills in the past few months.

On October 23, the Unification Board rejected the union's petition, refusing to grant the raise. If any hearings had been held on the matter, Rearden had not known about it. He had not been consulted, informed or notified. He had waited, volunteering no questions.

On October 25, the newspapers of the country, controlled by the same men who controlled the Board, began a campaign of commiseration with the workers of Rearden Steel. They printed stories about the refusal of the wage raise, omitting any mention of who had refused it or who held the exclusive legal power to refuse, as if counting on the public to forget legal technicalities under a barrage of stories implying that an employer was the natural cause of all miseries suffered by employees. They printed a story describing the hardships of the workers of Rearden Steel under the present rise in the cost of their living—next to a story describing Hank Rearden's profits, of five years ago. They printed a story on the plight of a Rearden worker's wife trudging from store to store in a hopeless quest for food—next to a story about a champagne bottle broken over somebody's head at a drunken party given by an unnamed steel tycoon at a fashionable hotel; the steel tycoon had been Orren Boyle, but the story mentioned no names. "Inequalities still exist among us," the newspapers were saying, "and cheat us of the benefits of our enlightened age." "Privations have worn the nerves and temper of the people. The situation is reaching the danger point. We fear an outbreak of violence." "We fear an outbreak of violence," the newspapers kept repeating, On October 28, a group of the new workers at Rearden Steel attacked a foreman and knocked the tuyeres off a blast furnace. Two days later, a similar group broke the ground-floor windows of the administration building. A new worker smashed the gears of a crane, upsetting a ladle of molten metal within a yard of five bystanders. "Guess I went nuts, worrying about my hungry kids," he said, when arrested. "This is no time to theorize about who's right or wrong," the newspapers commented. "Our sole concern is the fact that an inflammatory situation is endangering the steel output of the country."

Rearden watched, asking no questions. He waited, as if some final knowledge were in the process of unraveling before him, a process not to be hastened or stopped. No—he thought through the early dusk of autumn evenings, looking out the window of his office—no, he was not indifferent to his mills;4but the feeling which had once been passion for a living entity was now like the wistful tenderness one feels for the memory of the loved and dead. The special quality of what one feels for the dead, he thought, is that no action is possible any longer.

On the morning of October 31, he received a notice informing him that all of his property, including his bank accounts and safety deposit boxes, had been attached to satisfy a delinquent judgment obtained against him in a trial involving a deficiency in his personal income tax of three years ago. It was a formal notice, complying with every requirement of the law—except that no such deficiency had ever existed and no such trial had ever taken place.

"No," he said to his indignation-choked attorney, "don't question them, don't answer, don't object." "But this is fantastic!" "Any more fantastic than the rest?" "Hank, do you want me to do nothing? To take it lying down?" "No, standing up. And I mean, standing. Don't move. Don't act." "But they've left you helpless." "Have they?" he asked softly, smiling.

He had a few hundred dollars in cash, left in his wallet, nothing else.

But the odd, glowing warmth in his mind, like the feel of a distant handshake, was the thought that in a secret safe of his bedroom there lay a bar of solid gold, given to him by a gold-haired pirate.

Next day, on November 1, he received a telephone call from Washington, from a bureaucrat whose voice seemed to come sliding down the wire on its knees in protestations of apology. "A mistake, Mr. Rearden! It was nothing but an unfortunate mistake! That attachment was not intended for you. You know how it is nowadays, with the inefficiency of all office help and with the amount of red tape we're tangled in, some bungling fool mixed the records and processed the attachment order against you—when it wasn't your case at all, it was, in fact, the case of a soap manufacturer! Please accept our apologies, Mr. Rearden, our deepest personal apologies at the top level." The voice slid to a slight, expectant pause. "Mr. Rearden . . . ?" "I'm listening." "I can't tell you how sorry we are to have caused you any embarrassment or inconvenience. And with all those damn formalities that we have to go through—you know how it is, red tape!—it will take a few days, perhaps a week, to de-process that order and to lift the attachment.

. . . Mr. Rearden?" "I heard you." "We're desperately sorry and ready to make any amends within our power. You will, of course, be entitled to claim damages for any inconvenience this might cause you, and we are prepared to pay. We won't contest it. You will, of course, file such a claim and—" "I have not said that." "Uh? No, you haven't . . . that is . . . well, what have you said, Mr. Rearden?" "I have said nothing."

Late on the next afternoon, another voice came pleading from Washington. This one did not seem to slide, but to bounce on the telephone wire with the gay virtuosity of a tight-rope walker. It introduced itself as Tinky Holloway and pleaded that Rearden attend a conference, "an informal little conference, just a few of us, the top-level few," to be held in New York, at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, day after next.

"There have been so many misunderstandings in the past few weeks!" said Tinky Holloway. "Such unfortunate misunderstandings—and so unnecessary! We could straighten everything out in a jiffy, Mr.

Rearden, if we had a chance to have a little talk with you. We're extremely anxious to see you."

"You can issue a subpoena for me any time you wish."

"Oh, no! no! no!" The voice sounded frightened. "No, Mr. Rearden —why think of such things? You don't understand us, we're anxious to meet you on a friendly basis, we're seeking nothing but your voluntary co-operation." Holloway paused tensely, wondering whether he had heard the faint sound of a distant chuckle; he waited, but heard nothing else.

"Mr. Rearden?"

"Yes?"

"Surely, Mr. Rearden, at a time like this, a conference with us could be to your great advantage."

"A conference—about what?"

"You've encountered so many difficulties—and we're anxious to help you in any way we can."

"I have not asked for help."

"These are precarious times, Mr. Rearden, the public mood is so uncertain and inflammatory, so . . . so dangerous . . . and we want to be able to protect you."

"I have not asked for protection."

"But surely you realize that we're in a position to be of value to you. and if there's anything you want from us, any . . ."

"There isn't."

"But you must have problems you'd like to discuss with us."

"I haven't."

"Then . . . well, then" —giving up the attempt at the play of granting a favor, Holloway switched to an open plea—"then won't you just give us a hearing?"

"If you have anything to say to me,"

"We have, Mr. Rearden, we certainly have! That's all we're asking for—a hearing. Just give us a chance. Just come to this conference.

You wouldn't be committing yourself to anything—" He said it involuntarily, and stopped, hearing a bright, mocking stab of life in Rearden's voice, an unpromising-sound, as Rearden answered: "I know it."

"Well, I mean . . . that is . . . well, then, will you come?"

"All Tight," said Rearden. "I'll come."

He did not listen to Holloway's assurances of gratitude, he noted only that Holloway kept repeating, "At seven P.M., November fourth, Mr. Rearden . . . November fourth . . ." as if the date had some special significance.

Rearden dropped the receiver and lay back in his chair, looking at the glow of furnace flames on the ceiling of his office. He knew that the conference was a trap; he knew also that he was walking into it with nothing for any trappers to gain.

Tinky Holloway dropped the receiver, in his Washington office, and sat up tensely, frowning. Claude Slagenhop, president of Friends of Global Progress, who had sat in an armchair, nervously chewing a matchstick, glanced up at him and asked, "Not so good?"

Holloway shook his head. "He'll come, but . . . no, not so good."

He added, "I don't think he'll take it."

"That's what my punk told me."

"I know."

"The punk said we'd better not try it."

"God damn your punk! We've got to! We'll have to risk it!"

The punk was Philip Rearden who, weeks ago, had reported to Claude Slagenhop: "No, he won't let me in, he won't give me a job, I've tried, as you wanted me to, I've tried my best, but it's no use, he won't let me set foot inside his mills. And as to his frame of mind—listen, it's bad. It's worse than anything I expected. I know him and I can tell you that you won't have a chance. He's pretty much at the end of his rope. One more squeeze will snap it. You said the big boys wanted to know. Tell them not to do it. Tell them he . . . Claude, God help us, if they do it, they'll lose him!" "Well, you're not of much help,"

Slagenhop had said dryly, turning away. Philip had seized his sleeve and asked, his voice shrinking suddenly into open anxiety, "Say, Claude - . . according to . . . to Directive 10-289 . . . if he goes, there's . . . there's to be no heirs?" "That's right." "They'd seize the mills and . . . and everything?" 'That's the law." "But . . . Claude, they wouldn't do that to me, would they?" "They don't want him to go. You know that. Hold him, if you can." "But I can't! You know I can't! Because of my political ideas and . . . and everything I've done for you, you know what he thinks of me! I have no hold on him at all!" "Well, that's your tough luck." "Claude!" Philip had cried in panic. "Claude, they won't leave me out in the cold, will they? I belong, don't I?

They've always said I belonged, they've always said they needed me . . . they said they needed men like me, not like him, men with my . . . my sort of spirit, remember? And after all I've done for them, after all my faith and service and loyalty to the cause—" "You damn fool," Slagenhop had snapped, "of what use are you to us without him?"

On the morning of November 4, Hank Rearden was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. He opened his eyes to the sight of a clear, pale sky, the sky of early dawn, in the window of his bedroom, a sky the delicate color of aquamarine, with the first rays of an invisible sun giving a shade of porcelain pink to Philadelphia's ancient roof tops.

For a moment, while his consciousness had a purity to equal the sky's, while he was aware of nothing but himself and had not yet reharnessed his soul to the burden of alien memories, he lay still, held by the sight and by the enchantment of a world to match it, a world where the style of existence would be a continuous morning.

The telephone threw him back into exile: it was screaming at spaced intervals, like a nagging, chronic cry for help, the kind of cry that did not belong in his world. He lifted the receiver, frowning. "Hello?"

"Good morning, Henry," said a quavering voice; it was his mother.

"Mother—at this hour?" he asked dryly.

"Oh, you're always up at dawn, and I wanted to catch you before you went to the office."

"Yes? What is it?"

"I've got to see you, Henry. I've got to speak to you. Today. Sometime today. It's important."

"Has anything happened?"

"No . . . yes . . . that is . . . I've got to have a talk with you in person. Will you come?"

"I'm sorry, I can't. I have an appointment in New York tonight. If you want me to come tomorrow—"

"No! No, not tomorrow. It's got to be today. It's got to." There was a dim tone of panic in her voice, but it was the stale panic of chronic helplessness, not the sound of an emergency—except for an odd echo of fear in her mechanical insistence.

"What is it, Mother?"

"I can't talk about it over the telephone, I've got to see you."

"Then if you wish to come to the office—"

"No! Not at the office! I've got to sec you alone, where we can talk.

Can't you come here today, as a favor? It's your mother who's asking you a favor. You've never come to see us at all. And maybe you're not the one to blame for it, either. But can't you do it for me this once, if I beg you to?"

"All right, Mother. I'll be there at four o'clock this afternoon."

"That will be fine, Henry. Thank you, Henry. That will be fine.”

It seemed to him that there was a touch of tension in the air of the mills, that day. It was a touch too slight to define—but the mills, to him, were like the face of a loved wife where he could catch shades of feeling almost ahead of expression. He noticed small clusters of the new workers, just three or four of them huddling together in conversation —once or twice too often. He noticed their manner, a manner suggesting a poolroom corner, not a factory. He noticed a few glances thrown at him as he went by, glances a shade too pointed and lingering. He dismissed it; it was not quite enough to wonder about—and he had no time to wonder.

When he drove up to his former home, that afternoon, he stopped his car abruptly at the foot of the hill. He had not seen the house since that May 15, six months ago, when he had walked out of it—and the sight brought back to him the sum of all he had felt in ten years of daily home-coming: the strain, the bewilderment, the gray weight of unconfessed unhappiness, the stern endurance that forbade him to confess it, the desperate innocence of the effort to understand his family . . . the effort to be just.

He walked slowly up the path toward the door. He felt no emotion, only the sense of a great, solemn clarity. He knew that this house was a monument of guilt—of his guilt toward himself.

He had expected to see his mother and Philip; he had not expected the third person who rose, as they did, at his entrance into the living room: it was Lillian.

He stopped on the threshold. They stood looking at his face and at the open door behind him. Their faces had a look of fear and cunning, the look of that blackmail-through-virtue which he had learned to understand, as if they hoped to get away with it by means of nothing but his pity, to hold him trapped, when a single step back could take him out of their reach.

They had counted on his pity and dreaded his anger; they had not dared consider the third alternative; his indifference.

"What is she doing here?" he asked, turning to his mother, his voice dispassionately flat.

"Lillian's been living here ever since your divorce," she answered defensively. "I couldn't let her starve on the city pavements, could I?"

The look in his mother's eyes was half-plea, as if she were begging him not to slap her face, half-triumph, as if she had slapped his. He knew her motive: it was not compassion, there had never been much love between Lillian and her, it was their common revenge against him, it was the secret satisfaction of spending his money on the ex-wife he had refused to support.

Lillian's head was poised to bow in greeting, with the tentative hint of a smile on her lips, half-timid, half-brash. He did not pretend to ignore her; he looked at her, as if he were seeing her fully, yet as if no presence were being registered in his mind. He said nothing, closed the door and stepped into the room.

His mother gave a small sigh of uneasy relief and dropped hastily into the nearest chair, watching him, nervously uncertain of whether he would follow her example.

"What was it you wanted?" he asked, sitting down.

His mother sat erect and oddly hunched, her shoulders raised, her head half-lowered. "Mercy, Henry," she whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you understand me?"

"No."

"Well"—she spread her hands in an untidily fluttering gesture of helplessness—"well . . . " Her eyes darted about, struggling to escape his attentive glance. "Well, there are so many things to say and . . . and I don't know how to say them, but . . . well, there's one practical matter, but it's not important by itself . . . it's not why I called you here . . . "

"What is it?"

"The practical matter? Our allowance checks—Philip's and mine. It's the first of the month, but on account of that attachment order, the checks couldn't come through. You know that, don't you?"

"I know it."

"Well, what are we going to do?"

"I don't know."

"I mean, what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing,"

His mother sat staring at him, as if counting the seconds of silence.

"Nothing, Henry?"

"I have no power to do anything."

They were watching his face with a kind of searching intensity; he felt certain that his mother had told him the truth, that immediate financial worry was not their purpose, that it was only the symbol of a much wider issue.

"But, Henry, we're caught short."

"So was I."

"But can't you send us some cash or something?"

"They gave me no warning, no time to get any cash."

"Then . . . Look, Henry, the thing was so unexpected, it scared people, I guess—the grocery store refuses to give us credit, unless you ask for it. I think they want you to sign a credit card or something. So will you speak to them and arrange it?"

"I will not."

"You won't?" She choked on a small gasp. "Why?"

"I will not assume obligations that I can't fulfill."

"What do you mean?"

"I will not assume debts I have no way of repaying."

"What do you mean, no way? That attachment is only some sort of technicality, it's only temporary, everybody knows that!"

"Do they? I don't."

"But, Henry—a grocery bill! You're not sure you'll be able to pay a grocery bill, you, with all the millions you own?"

"I'm not going to defraud the grocer by pretending that I own those millions."

"What are you talking about? Who owns them?"

"Nobody."

"What do you mean?"

"Mother, I think you understand me fully. I think you understood it before I did. There isn't any ownership left in existence or any property. It's what you've approved of and believed in for years. You wanted me tied. I'm tied. Now it's too late to play any games about it."

"Are you going to let some political ideas of yours—" She saw the look on his face and stopped abruptly.

Lillian sat looking down at the floor, as if afraid to glance up at this moment. Philip sat cracking his knuckles.

His mother dragged her eyes into focus again and whispered, "Don't abandon us, Henry." Some faint stab of life in her voice told him that the lid of her real purpose was cracking open. "These are terrible times, and we're scared. That's the truth of it, Henry, we're scared, because you're turning away from us. Oh, I don't mean just that grocery bill, but that's a sign—a year ago you wouldn't have let that happen to us. Now . . . now you don't care." She made an expectant pause.

"Do you?"

"No."

"Well . . . well, I guess the blame is ours. That's what I wanted to tell you—that we know we're to blame. We haven't treated you right, all these years. We've been unfair to you, we've made you suffer, we've used you and given you no thanks in return. We're guilty, Henry, we've sinned against you, and we confess it. What more can we say to you now? Will you find it in your heart to forgive us?"

"What is it you want me to do?" he asked, in the clear, flat tone of a business conference.

"I don't know! Who am I to know? But that's not what I'm talking of right now. Not of doing, only of feeling. It's your feeling that I'm begging you for, Henry—just your feeling—even if we don't deserve it. You're generous and strong. Will you cancel the past, Henry? Will you forgive us?"

The look of terror in her eyes was real. A year ago, he would have told himself that this was her way of making amends; he would have choked his revulsion against her words, words which conveyed nothing to him but the fog of the meaningless; he would have violated his mind to give them meaning, even if he did not understand; he would have ascribed to her the virtue of sincerity in her own terms, even if they were not his. But he was through with granting respect to any terms other than his own.

"Will you forgive us?"

"Mother, it would be best not to speak of that. Don't press me to tell you why. I think you know it as well as I do. If there's anything you want done, tell me what it is. There's nothing else to discuss.

"But I don't understand you! I don't! That's what I called you here for—to ask your forgiveness! Are you going to refuse to answer me?"

"Very well. What would it mean, my forgiveness?"

"Uh?"

"I said, what would it mean?"

. She spread her hands out in an astonished gesture to indicate the self-evident. "Why, it . . . it would make us feel better."

"Will it change the past?"

"It would make us feel better to know that you've forgiven it."

"Do you wish me to pretend that the past has not existed?"

"Oh God, Henry, can't you see? All we want is only to know that you . . . that you feel some concern for us."

"I don't feel it. Do you wish me to fake it?"

"But that's what I'm begging you for—to feel it!"

"On what ground?"

"Ground?"

"In exchange for what?"

"Henry, Henry, it's not business we're talking about, not steel tonnages and bank balances, it's feelings—and you talk like a trader!"

"I am one."

What he saw in her eyes was terror—not the helpless terror of struggling and failing to understand, but the terror of being pushed toward the edge where to avoid understanding would no longer be possible.

"Look, Henry," said Philip hastily, "Mother can't understand those things. We don't know how to approach you. We can't speak your language."

"I don't speak yours."

"What she's trying to say is that we're sorry. We're terribly sorry that we've hurt you. You think we're not paying for it, but we are.

We're suffering remorse."

The pain in Philip's face was real. A year ago, Rearden would have felt pity. Now, he knew that they had held him through nothing but his reluctance to hurt them, his fear of their pain. He was not afraid of it any longer, "We're sorry, Henry. We know we've harmed you. We wish we could atone for it. But what can we do? The past is past. We can't undo it."

"Neither can I."

"You can accept our repentance," said Lillian, in a voice glassy with caution. "I have nothing to gain from you now. I only want you to know that whatever I've done, I've done it because I loved you."

He turned away, without answering.

"Henry!" cried his mother. "What's happened to you? What's changed you like that? You don't seem to be human any more! You keep pressing us for answers, when we haven't any answers to give. You keep beating us with logic—what's logic at a time like this?—what's logic when people are suffering?"

"We can't help it!" cried Philip.

"We're at your mercy," said Lillian.

They were throwing their pleas at a face that could not be reached.

They did not know—and their panic was the last of their struggle to escape the knowledge—that his merciless sense of justice, which had been their only hold on him, which had made him take any punishment and give them the benefit of every doubt, was now turned against them—that the same force that had made him tolerant, was now the force that made him ruthless—that the justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.

"Henry, don't you understand us?" his mother was pleading.

"I do," he said quietly.

She looked away, avoiding the clarity of his eyes. "Don't you care what becomes of us?"

"I don't."

"Aren't you human?" Her voice grew shrill with anger. "Aren't you capable of any love at all? It's your heart I'm trying to reach, not your mind! Love is not something to argue and reason and bargain about!

It's something to give! To feel! Oh God, Henry, can't you feel without thinking?"

"I never have."

In a moment, her voice came back, low and droning: "We're not as smart as you are, not as strong. If we've sinned and blundered, it's because we're helpless. We need you, you're all we've got—and we're losing you—and we're afraid. These are terrible times, and getting worse, people are scared to death, scared and blind and not knowing what to do. How are we to cope with it, if you leave us? We're small and weak and we'll be swept like driftwood in that terror that's running loose in the world. Maybe we had our share of guilt for it, maybe we helped to bring it about, not knowing any better, but what's done is done—and we can't stop it now. If you abandon us, we're lost. If you give up and vanish, like all those men who—"

It was not a sound that stopped her, it was only a movement of his eyebrows, the brief, swift movement of a check mark. Then they saw him smile; the nature of the smile was the most terrifying of answers.

"So that's what you're afraid of," he said slowly.

"You can't quit!" his mother screamed in blind panic. "You can't quit now! You could have, last year, but not now! Not today! You can't turn deserter, because now they take it out on your family! They'll leave us penniless, they'll seize everything, they'll leave us to starve, they'll—"

"Keep still!" cried Lillian, more adept than the others at reading danger signs in Rearden's face.

His face held the remnant of a smile, and they knew that he was not seeing them any longer, but it was not in their power to know why his smile now seemed to hold pain and an almost wistful longing, or why he was looking across the room, at the niche of the farthest window.

He was seeing a finely sculptured face held composed under the lashing of his insults, he was hearing a voice that had said to him quietly, here, in this room: "It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you." You who had known it then, he thought . . . but he did not finish the sentence in his mind, he let it end in the bitter twist of his smile, because he knew what he had been about to think: You who had known it then—forgive me.

There it was—he thought, looking at his family—the nature of their pleas for mercy, the logic of those feelings they so righteously proclaimed as non-logical—there was the simple, brutal essence of all men who speak of being able to feel without thought and of placing mercy over justice.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 582