The Early Ayn Rand

"Yes, damn you, you do understand!... Oh, don't look at me like that!... Howard, Howard, please listen. It's this: you want the impossible. You are the impossible yourself — and you expect the impossible. I can't feel human around you. I can't feel simple, natural, comfortable. And one's got to be comfortable sometime! It's like... like as if you had no weekdays at all in your life, nothing but Sundays, and you expect me always to be on my Sunday behavior. Everything is important to you, everything is great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. God, Howard, one can't stand that! It becomes unbearable... if... if I could only put it into words!"

"You have. Very nicely."

"Oh, please, Howard, don't look like that! I'm not... I'm not criticizing you. I understand. I know what you want of life. I want it too. That's why I love you. But, Howard! You can't be that all the time! God, not all the time! One's got to be human also."

"What?"

"Human! One has to relax. One gets tired of the heroic."

"What's heroic about me?"

"Nothing. Everything!... No, you don't do anything. You don't say anything. I don't know. It's only what you make people feel in your presence."

"What?"

"The abnormal. The overnormal. The strain. When I'm with you — it's always like a choice. A choice between you — and the rest of the world. I don't want such a choice. I'm afraid because I want you too much — but I don't want to give up everybody, everything. I want to be a part of the world. They like me, they recognize me now, I don't want to be an outsider. There's so much that's beautiful in the world, and gay and simple and pleasant. It's not all a fight and a renunciation. It doesn't have to be. It is — with you."

"What have I ever renounced?"

"Oh, you'll never renounce anything. You'll walk over corpses for what you want. But it's what you've renounced by never wanting it. What you've closed your eyes to — what you were born with your eyes closed to."

"Don't you think that perhaps one can't have one's eyes open to both?"

"Everybody else can! Everybody but you. You're so old, Howard. So old, so serious... And there's something else. What you said about my going after people. Look, Howard, don't other people mean anything to you at all? I know, you like some of them and you hate others, but neither really makes much difference to you. That's what's horrifying. Everyone's a blank around you. They're there, but they don't touch you in any way, not in any single way. You're so closed, so finished. It's unbearable. All of us react upon one another in some way, I don't mean that we have to be slaves of others, or be influenced, or changed, no, not that, but we react. You don't. We're aware of others. You're not. You don't hate people — that's the ghastliness of it. If you did — it would be simple to face. But you're worse. You're a fiend. You're the real enemy of all mankind — because one can't do anything against your kind of weapon — your utter, horrible, inhuman indifference!"

She stood waiting. She stood, as if she had slapped his face and triumphantly expected the answer. He looked at her. She saw that his lips were opening wide, his mouth loose, young, easy; she could not believe for a moment that he was laughing. She did not believe what he said either. He said:

"I'm sorry, Vesta."

Then she felt frightened. He said very gently:

"I didn't want it to come to this. I think I knew also that it would, from the first. I'm sorry. There are chances I shouldn't take. You see — I'm weak, like everybody else. I'm not closed enough nor certain enough. I see hope sometimes where I shouldn't. Now forget me. It will be easier than it seems to you right now."

"You... you don't mean for me... to leave you?"

"Yes."

"Oh, no, Howard! Not like that! Not now!"

"Like that, Vesta. Now."

"Why?"

"You know that"

"Howard..."

"I think you know also that you'll be glad of it later. Maybe tomorrow. Just forget me. If you want to see me affected by someone else — well, I'll tell you that I'm sorry."

"No, you aren't. Not to lose me."

"No. Not any more. But to see what will happen to you... no. Not that either. But this: to see what will never happen to you."

"What?"

"That is what you don't want to know. So forget it."

"Oh, Howard! Howard..."

Her voice broke, as the consciousness of what had happened, like a blow delayed, reached her at last. She stood, her shoulders drooping forward, her hands hanging uselessly, awkwardly, suddenly conscious of her hands and not knowing where to put them, her body huddled and loose, looking at him, her eyes clear and too brilliant, her mouth twisted. She swallowed slowly, with a hard effort, as if her whole energy had gone into the movement of her throat, into the purpose of knowing that her throat could be made to move. It was a bewilderment of pain, helpless and astonished, as an animal wondering what had happened, knowing only that it was hurt, but not how or why, puzzled that it should be hurt and that this was the shape of pain.