Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter II
Dagny has only been in Galt’s Gulch for a few days, but she’s having a grand old time. Between buying stuff with gold coins, getting constantly lectured at about capitalism, and being John Galt’s subservient housemaid, she’s got everything a female Randian hero could want. However, an unwelcome realization is about to spoil her fun:
Owen Kellogg arrived on the afternoon of her third day in the valley.
…He descended among a group of men, he saw her, he stopped, then ran to her as if flung forward by some emotion so strong that, whatever its nature, it looked like terror.
“Miss Taggart…” he whispered — and said nothing else, while she laughed, trying to explain how she had come to beat him to his destination.
He listened, as if it were irrelevant, and then he uttered the thing from which he had to recover, “But we thought you were dead.”
“Who thought it?”
“All of us… I mean, everybody in the outside world.”
Then she suddenly stopped smiling, while his voice began to recapture his story and his first sound of joy.
Kellogg points out that, as far as the outside world is concerned, she vanished in a plane crash in the wilderness of the high Rockies and is almost certainly dead. This is something that apparently hadn’t occurred to her until now. Kellogg goes on to say that, after he selflessly took over for her and got the Taggart train she abandoned on its way, he made a phone call:
“The last long-distance call I made from that station in New Mexico,” he said slowly, “was to Pennsylvania. I spoke to Hank Rearden. I told him everything I knew. He listened, and then there was a pause, and then he said, ‘Thank you for calling me.'” Kellogg’s eyes were lowered; he added, “I never want to hear that kind of pause again as long as I live.”
It may be unintentional, but it’s entirely in keeping with Rand’s characterization that her heroes never think of anyone but themselves unless forced to. Since Dagny’s been having a marvelous time in Capitalist Utopia, it never even crossed her mind that there are people she cares about still outside – much less that those people have good reason to think she’s dead. Or rather, I should probably say “person”, since the text tells us that the only one she longs to contact is Hank Rearden. She doesn’t even spare a thought for her poor, loyal servant Eddie Willers, whom we can safely presume is running the company for her (again).
Over dinner with John Galt that night, she broaches the subject:
Then she heard her own voice asking suddenly, involuntarily… “Do you permit any communication with the outside world?”
“No.”
“Not any? Not even a note without return address?”
“No.”
“Not even a message, if no secret of yours were given away?”
“Not from here. Not during this month. Not to outsiders at any time.”
She noticed that she was avoiding his eyes, and she forced herself to lift her head and face him. His glance had changed; it was watchful, unmoving, implacably perceptive. He asked, looking at her as if he knew the reason of her query, “Do you wish to ask for a special exception?”
“No,” she answered, holding his glance.
Later in this chapter, John Galt says to her, “Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever.” Yet he’s clearly guilty of that himself. He knows that people in the outside world falsely but justifiably believe that Dagny is dead, and he’s preventing the truth from getting out. How is that not “faking reality”?
The next day, she’s sitting in her room mending a shirt when she hears a voice from downstairs:
She heard Galt’s steps hurrying across the living room, she heard him jerk the entrance door open and call out with the joyous anger of relief: “It’s about time!”
She rose to her feet, but stopped: she heard his voice, its tone abruptly changed and grave, as if in answer to the shock of some sight confronting him: “What’s the matter?”
“Hello, John,” said a clear, quiet voice that sounded steady, but weighted with exhaustion.
She sat down on her bed, feeling suddenly drained of strength: the voice was Francisco’s.
Francisco says wearily that he can’t stay in the valley this month, that there’s an urgent task he has to complete. John Galt suggests (trying not to giggle, I like to imagine) that there’s someone in the guest room he’ll probably want to see:
She did not know how long Francisco stood looking at her, because the first moment that she grasped fully was when she saw him on his knees, holding onto her, his face pressed to her legs, the moment when she felt as if the shudder that ran through his body and left him still, had run into hers and made her able to move.
She saw, in astonishment, that her hand was moving gently over his hair, while she was thinking that she had no right to do it and feeling as if a current of serenity were flowing from her hand, enveloping them both, smoothing the past.
… “Dagny, Dagny, Dagny” — his voice sounded, not as if a confession resisted for years were breaking out, but as if he were repeating the long since known, laughing at the pretense that it had ever been unsaid — “of course I love you. Were you afraid when he made me say it?
I’ll say it as often as you wish — I love you, darling, I love you, I always will — don’t be afraid for me, I don’t care if I’ll never have you again, what does that matter? — you’re alive and you’re here and you know everything now. And it’s so simple, isn’t it? Do you see what it was and why I had to desert you?
…You’ve seen this valley. It’s the place we set out to reach when we were children, you and I. We’ve reached it. What else can I ask for now? Just to see you here — did John say you’re still a scab? — oh well, it’s only a matter of time, but you’ll be one of us, because you’ve always been, if you don’t see it fully, we’ll wait, I don’t care — so long as you’re alive, so long as I don’t have to go on flying over the Rockies, looking for the wreckage of your plane!”
She gasped a little, realizing why he had not come to the valley on time.
I said I’d point out the good parts of this book when we came to them, and this is another. Probably it’s because this is one of the rare occasions where a Randian character acts like a normal human being, with genuine, recognizable emotions (although it’s spoiled a bit by Dagny, again, being so self-absorbed that she didn’t realize anyone else might be missing her or care about her).
Unfortunately, after that brief glimpse of real human vulnerability, the moment fades and Francisco goes back to being a Randian protagonist. Despite his confession of love, he says that he knows that she’s not in love with him anymore, and even though he’s spent three sleepless days and nights searching for the wreck of her plane, he’s not in the least disturbed or upset by this. That’s because a) he’s just glad she’s alive, and b) because showing her his copper-refining operation is just as good as having sex with her anyway. (Yes, really: “if I’ll see you smile with admiration at a new copper smelter that I built, it will be another form of what I felt when I lay in bed beside you.”)
This goes back to what I said about the strange, unnatural way that Rand’s characters instinctively recognize who their superiors are and stand aside for them without a word of complaint. It’s a pity, because it would be tremendously amusing to see John Galt and Francisco having a Sue-off to determine which of them is the better capitalist and therefore more deserving of Dagny’s love. “Oh yeah? Well, I independently reinvented calculus at six, and general relativity by nine! Take that, copper boy!”
Other posts in this series: