Atlas Shrugged [567]
Any underling can do that. The real heart of a railroad is in Washington. My job is politics. Politics. Decisions made on a national scale, affecting everything, controlling everybody. A few words on paper, a directive-changing the life of every person in every nook, cranny and penthouse of this country!"
"Yes, Jim," she said, wishing to believe that he was, perhaps, a man of stature in the mysterious realm of Washington.
"You'll see," he said, pacing the room. "You think they're powerful -those giants of industry who're so clever with motors and furnaces?
They'll be stopped! They'll be stripped! They'll be brought down! They'll be-" He noticed the way she was staring at him. "It's not for ourselves," he snapped hastily, "it's for the people. That's the difference between business and politics-we have no selfish ends in view, no private motives, we're not after profit, we don't spend our lives scrambling for money, we don't have to! That's why we're slandered and misunderstood by all the greedy profit-chasers who can't conceive of a spiritual motive or a moral ideal or . . . We couldn't help it!" he cried suddenly, whirling to her. "We had to have that plan! With everything falling to pieces and stopping, something had to be done! We had to stop them from stopping! We couldn't help it!"
His eyes were desperate; she did not know whether he was boasting or begging for forgiveness; she did not know whether this was triumph or terror. "Jim, don't you feel well? Maybe you've worked too hard and you're worn out and-"
"I've never felt better in my life!" he snapped, resuming his pacing.
"You bet I've worked hard. My work is bigger than any job you can hope to imagine. It's above anything that grubbing mechanics like Rearden and my sister, are doing. Whatever they do, I can undo it. Let them build a track-I can come and break it, just like that!"
He snapped his fingers. "Just like breaking a spine'"
"You want to break spines?" she whispered, trembling.
"I haven't said that!" he screamed. "What's the matter with you? I haven't said it!"
"I'm sorry, Jim!" she gasped, shocked by her own words and by the terror in his eyes. "It's just that I don't understand, but . . . but I know I shouldn't bother you with questions when you're so tired"-
she was struggling desperately to convince herself-"when you have so many things on your mind . . . such . . . such great things . . .
things I can't even begin to think of . . ."
His shoulders sagged, relaxing. He approached her and dropped wearily down on his knees, slipping his arms around her. "You poor little fool," he said affectionately.
She held onto him, moved by something that felt like tenderness and almost like pity. But he raised his head to glance up at her face, and it seemed to her that the look she saw in his eyes was part-gratification, part-contempt-almost as if, by some unknown kind of sanction, she had absolved him and damned herself.
It was useless-she found in the days that followed-to tell herself that these things were beyond her understanding, that it was her duty to believe in him, that love was faith. Her doubt kept growing-doubt of his incomprehensible work and of his relation to the railroad. She wondered why it kept growing in direct proportion to her self-admonitions that faith was the duty she owed him. Then, one sleepless night, she realized that her effort to fulfill that duty consisted of turning away whenever people discussed his job, of refusing to look at newspaper mentions of Taggart Transcontinental, of slamming her mind shut against any evidence and every contradiction. She stopped, aghast, struck by the question: What is it, then-faith versus truth? And realizing that part of her zeal to believe was her fear to know, she set out to learn the truth, with a cleaner, calmer sense of Tightness than the effort at dutiful self-fraud had ever given her.
It did not take her long to learn. The evasiveness of the Taggart executives, when she asked a few casual questions, the stale generalities of their answers, the strain of their manner