He listened to Roark silently, and his eyes were like a stop watch registering each separate second consumed by each separate word of Roark's. He let the first sentence go by; on the second he interrupted to say curtly: "Let me see your drawings," as if to make it clear that anything Roark might say was quite well known to him already.
He held the drawings in his bronzed hands. Before he looked down at them, he said: "Ah, yes, so many young men come to me for advice, so many." He glanced at the first sketch, but raised his head before he had seen it. "Of course, it's the combination of the practical and the transcendental that is so hard for beginners to grasp." He slipped the sketch to the bottom of the pile. "Architecture is primarily a utilitarian conception, and the problem is to elevate the principle of pragmatism into the realm of esthetic abstraction. All else is nonsense." He glanced at two sketches and slipped them to the bottom. "I have no patience with visionaries who see a holy crusade in architecture for architecture's sake. The great dynamic principle is the common principle of the human equation." He glanced at a sketch and slipped it under. "The public taste and the public heart are the final criteria of the artist. The genius is the one who knows how to express the general. The exception is to tap the unexceptional." He
weighed the pile of sketches in his hand, noted that he had gone through half of them and dropped them down on the desk.
"Ah, yes," he said, "your work. Very interesting. But not practical. Not mature. Unfocused and undisciplined. Adolescent. Originality for originality's sake. Not at all in the spirit of the present day. If you want an idea of the sort of thing for which there is a crying need — here — let me show you." He took a sketch out of a drawer of the desk. "Here's a young man who came to me totally unrecommended, a beginner who had never worked before. When you can produce stuff like this, you won't find it necessary to look for a job. I saw this one sketch of his and I took him on at once, started him at twenty-five a week, too. There's no question but that he is a potential genius." He extended the sketch to Roark. The sketch represented a house in the shape of a grain silo incredibly merged with the simplified, emaciated shadow of the Parthenon.
"That," said Gordon L. Prescott, "is originality, the new in the eternal. Try toward something like this. I can't really say that I predict a great deal for your future. We must be frank, I wouldn't want to give you illusions based on my authority. You have a great deal to learn. I couldn't venture a guess on what talent you might possess or develop later. But with hard work, perhaps ... Architecture is a difficult profession, however, and the competition is stiff, you know, very stiff ... And now, if you'll excuse me, my secretary has an appointment waiting for me ... "
Roark walked home late on an evening in October. It had been another of the many days that stretched into months behind him, and he could not tell what had taken place in the hours of that day, whom he had seen, what form the words of refusal had taken. He concentrated fiercely on the few minutes at hand, when he was in an office, forgetting everything else; he forgot these minutes when he left the office; it had to be done, it had been done, it concerned him no longer. He was free once more on his way home.
A long street stretched before him, its high banks, coming close together ahead, so narrow that he felt as if he could spread his arms, seize the spires and push them apart. He walked swiftly, the pavements as a springboard throwing his steps forward.
He saw a lighted triangle of concrete suspended somewhere hundreds of feet above the ground. He could not see what stood below, supporting it; he was free to think of what he'd want to see there, what he would have made to be seen. Then he thought suddenly that now, in this moment, according to the city, according to everyone save that hard certainty within him, he would never build again, never — before he had begun. He shrugged. Those things happening to him, in those offices of strangers, were only a kind of sub-reality, unsubstantial incidents in the path of a substance they could not reach or touch.
He turned into side streets leading to the East River. A lonely traffic light hung far ahead, a spot of red in a bleak darkness. The old houses crouched low to the ground, hunched under the weight of the sky. The street was empty and hollow, echoing to his footsteps. He went on, his collar raised, his hands in his pockets. His shadow rose from under his heels, when he passed a light, and brushed a wall in a long black arc, like the sweep of a windshield wiper.
9.
JOHN ERIK SNYTE looked through Roark's sketches, flipped three of them aside, gathered the rest into an even pile, glanced again at the three, tossed them down one after another on top of the pile, with three sharp thuds, and said:
"Remarkable. Radical, but remarkable. What are you doing tonight?"
"Why?" asked Roark, stupefied.
"Are you free? Mind starting in at once? Take your coat off, go to the drafting room, borrow tools from somebody and do me up a sketch for a department store we're remodeling. Just a quick sketch, just a general idea, but I must have it tomorrow. Mind staying late tonight? The heat's on and I'll have Joe send you up some dinner. Want black coffee or Scotch or what? Just tell Joe. Can you stay?"
"Yes," said Roark, incredulously. "I can work all night."
"Fine! Splendid! that's just what I've always needed — a Cameron man. I've got every other kind. Oh, yes, what did they pay you at Francon's?"
"Sixty-five."
"Well, I can't splurge like Guy the Epicure. Fifty's tops. Okay? Fine. Go right in. I'll have Billings explain about the store to you. I want something modern. Understand? Modern, violent, crazy, to knock their eye out. Don't restrain yourself. Go the limit. Pull any stunt you can think of, the goofier the better. Come on!"
John Erik Snyte shot to his feet, flung a door open into a huge drafting room, flew in, skidded against a table, stopped, and said to a stout man with a grim moon-face: "Billings — Roark. He's our modernist. Give him the Benton store. Get him some instruments. Leave him your keys and show him what to lock up tonight. Start him as of this morning. Fifty. What time was my appointment with Dolson Brothers? I'm late already. So long, I won't be back tonight."
He skidded out, slamming the door. Billings evinced no surprise. He looked at Roark as if Roark had always been there. He spoke impassively, in a weary drawl. Within twenty minutes he left Roark at a drafting table with paper, pencils, instruments, a set of plans and photographs of the department store, a set of charts and a long list of instructions.
Roark looked at the clean white sheet before him, his fist closed tightly about the thin stem of a pencil. He put the pencil down, and picked it up again, his thumb running softly up and down the smooth shaft; he saw that the pencil was trembling. He put it down quickly, and he felt anger at himself for the weakness of allowing this job to mean so much to him, for the sudden knowledge of what the months of idleness behind him had really meant. His fingertips were pressed to the paper, as if the paper held them, as a surface charged with electricity will hold the flesh of a man who has brushed against it, hold and hurt. He tore his fingers off the paper. Then he went to work ...