Ayn Rand: The Early Ayn Rand

"I'm going," said Roark.

He had his coat and cap on, he was out, before the others knew what to say; they knew also that they had better keep quiet.

Roark jumped into a cab, ordering: "Step on it! Fly, go through the lights!" He had in his pocket five dollars and forty-six cents, saved painstakingly from seven months of work. He hoped it would be enough to pay for the cab.

The Huston Street job was a twenty-story office building in a squalid block of lofts. It was the most important commission that Cameron had had for a long time. He had said nothing about it, but Roark knew that it was precious to the old master as a newborn child, as a first son. Once again, Cameron thought, he had a chance to show the indifferent city what he could do, how cheaply, how efficiently he could do it. Cameron, the bitter, the cynical, the hater of all men, had never lost the expectation of a miracle. He kept waiting, saying to himself always, "Next time," next time someone would see, next time the men who spent fortunes on grocery displays of marble vegetables and cursed the twisted, botched space within would realize the simplicity, the economy, the wisdom of his work, would come to him if he gave them but one more example. The example was granted to him again. And Cameron, who cursed all builders and owners, who laughed in their faces, prayed now that nothing would go wrong with the Huston Street job. Everything had gone wrong with it from the beginning.

The structure was owned by two brothers. It was the younger one who had insisted upon choosing Cameron as the architect, because he had seen Cameron's old buildings and a glimmer of sense had settled itself stubbornly within his brain; it was the older who had resented it, while giving in, had doubted the choice, and had selected as contractor for the building an old friend of his, who had little reputation but much contempt for architects. It had been a silent, vicious war from the beginning, with the contractor disregarding Cameron's orders, botching instructions, ignoring specifications, then running to the owners with complaints against ignorant architects whom he intended to teach a thing or two about building. The owners always took the side of the contractor, who was, they felt certain, protecting their interests against malignant strangers. There had been delays. There had been strikes among the building workers, due to unfair, planless, purposeless management. The delays cost money. It was not Cameron's fault, but there was no court before which he could prove it. The court that passed judgment upon him would be the spreading whispers: "Oh, yeah, Cameron. He starts with a budget of four hundred thousand and it's six hundred before the steel's up. Have you heard what that building of his down in Huston Street has cost?"

Roark thought of that as the cab whirled into Huston Street. Then he forgot it for a moment, forgot Cameron, forgot everything else. He was looking at a cage of steel rising in a gash between streaked, sooted brick walls. There it was, steel columns pointing at the sky, gray arches of floors mounting like even shelves, tangled in wires, in ropes and cables and grimy planks, with scaffoldings clinging to its empty flanks, gray overalls burrowing through its bowels, derricks like fountains of iron flung up from its veins. It was only a raw chaos of beams to those passing it in the street, but Roark thought that those on the street had the narrow, dissecting eyes of the X-ray marking nothing save bones, while he saw the whole body completed, the shape of living flesh, the walls, the angles, the windows. He could never look at the structure of a building, which he had seen born in lines and dots and squares upon a piece of paper, without feeling his throat tighten, his breath plunge to his stomach, and the silly desire, dim and real in his hand, to take his hat off. His fingers tightened on the edge of the cab window. When the car stopped, he got out supplely, he walked to the building swiftly, confidently, his head high and light as if he were coming home, as if the steel hulk were gathering assurance from him and he — from its naked beams. Then, he stopped.

Cameron stood leaning against the boards of the superintendent's shanty. Cameron was erect, with an air of self-possessed, utter, terrifying dignity. Only his eyes, dun, swimming, unfocused, were blinking at Roark with a heavy, offensive persistence.

"Who are you?" asked Cameron.

The voice, thick, blurred, spongy, was not one that Roark had ever heard.

Cameron lunged towards him, swayed, stretched an arm to hold on to the wall, stood uncertainly, the weight of his short, thick body sagging suspended to his arm, with five stubby fingers spread on the planks, like leeches sucking into wood.

"Hey, you," he said to Roark softly, waving a limp finger in his face, "I'll tell you something. I've got something to tell you. It's on account of the drill. You know the drill? It drills a little hole, so softly, it purrs like a bee in springtime, it drills right down through your throat, through your stomach, through the earth below, there's no bottom to that hole, no end, no stopping. There's a hole in the earth and it widens all the time and things whirl in it, spirals, widening. It hurts so very terribly... I know a fellow who's hurt so much that I hear him screaming all the time. But I don't know him very well... That's why I've got something to tell you. If you're looking at this thing here behind us, go and get a good laugh. It's wonderful what they've done to it. But walk carefully, there's spirals in the ground, widening... you see?..."

"Mr. Cameron," said Roark softly, "sit down." His strong hands closed over the old man's forearms, forcing him gently down upon a pile of planks. Cameron did not resist; he sat, looking up, muttering feebly: "That's funny... very funny... I know someone who looks just like you..."

Then Roark noticed the men who stood watching him curiously. Among them, he saw Darrow, a lanky, stooped, elderly giant with an impassive face; and the contractor's chief estimator, a muscular individual with his hands in his pockets, a pale, puffed face, a dab of mustache in the too wide space between his nose and mouth. He knew the contractor's estimator; Cameron had thrown him out of his office two weeks ago, concluding the last of his too frequent visits.

"What's happened here?" Roark asked.

"Oh, what the hell!" said the estimator. "Darrow's been calling your place all morning and then this shows up all of a sudden!" He jerked his thumb at Cameron.

"What were you calling about? Where's the trouble?"

"Well, Roark, I don't know if you can do anything about it..." Darrow began, but the estimator interrupted him.

"Aw, what the hell! We got no time to waste explaining to punk kids!"

Roark was looking at Darrow.

"Well?" Roark asked, and the question was a command.

"It's the concrete," said Darrow impassively. "The penthouse, the elevator machinery-room floor arches. It's running under test. It won't stand the load. I told the bastards not to pour it in this weather. But they went right ahead. Now it's set. And it's no good. What are you going to do about it?"

Roark stood, his head thrown back, looking at the gray shadow of the penthouse among the gray clouds far away. Then he turned to the estimator.

"Well?" Roark asked.

"Well, what?" the estimator snapped, and added, his voice whining: "Aw, we couldn't help it!"

"Talk fast," said Roark.

"Aw, what the hell! We were behind schedule and the boss was stepping on us and the old man's sniveling about all the dough this thing's costing him as it is, and so we figured we'd save time, what the hell, nothing's ever happened before, and anyway you know how concrete is, it's a killer, you never can tell how the damn stuff will set, it's not our fault, it can happen to anybody, we couldn't help it... And anyway, if your damn drawings weren't so damn fancy, we could've... A good architect'd know how to fix it up, even if..." His voice just petered out before the eyes that faced him.