Late in June a man named Kent Lansing came to see Roark. He was forty years old, he was dressed like a fashion plate and looked like a prize fighter, though he was not burly, muscular or tough: he was thin and angular. He merely made one think of a boxer and of other things that did not fit his appearance: of a battering ram, of a tank, of a submarine torpedo. He was a member of a corporation formed for the purpose of erecting a luxurious hotel on Central Park South. There were many wealthy men involved and the corporation was ruled by a numerous board; they had purchased their site; they had not decided on an architect. But Kent Lansing had made up his mind that it would be Roark.
"I won't try to tell you how much I'd like to do it," Roark said to him at the end of their first interview. "But there's not a chance of my getting it. I can get along with people — when they're alone. I can do nothing with them in groups. No board has ever hired me — and I don't think one ever will."
Kent Lansing smiled. "Have you ever known a board to do. anything?"
"What do you mean?"
"Just that: have you ever known a board to do anything at all?"
"Well, they seem to exist and function."
"Do they? You know, there was a time when everyone thought it self-evident that the earth was flat. It would be entertaining to speculate upon the nature and causes of humanity's illusions. I'll write a book about it some day. It won't be popular. I'll have a chapter on boards of directors. You see, they don't exist."
"I'd like to believe you, but what's the gag?"
"No, you wouldn't like to believe me. The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic. This one is both. Mainly vicious. And it's not a gag. But we won't go into that now. All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men — and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't ... Don't look at me like that, as if I were crazy. You ought to know. You've fought a vacuum all your life."
"I'm looking at you like that because I like you."
"Of course you like me. As I knew I'd like you. Men are brothers, you know, and they have a great instinct for brotherhood — except in boards, unions, corporations and other chain gangs. But I talk too much. That's why I'm a good salesman. However, I have nothing to sell you. You know. So we'll just say that you're going to build the Aquitania — that's the name of our hotel — and we'll let it go at that."
If the violence of the battles which people never hear about could be measured in material statistics, the battle of Kent Lansing against the board of directors of the Aquitania Corporation would have been listed among the greatest carnages of history. But the things he fought were not solid enough to leave anything as substantial as corpses on the battlefield.
He had to fight phenomena such as: "Listen, Palmer, Lansing's talking about somebody named Roark, how're you going to vote, do the big boys approve of him or not?"
"I'm not going to decide till I know who's voted for or against."
"Lansing says ... but on the other hand, Thorpe tells me ... "Talbot's putting up a swank hotel on Fifth up in the sixties — and he's got Francon & Keating." "Harper swears by this young fellow — Gordon Prescott." "Listen, Betsy says we're crazy." "I don't like Roark's face — he doesn't look co-operative." "I know, I feel it, Roark's the kind that don't fit in. He's not a regular fellow."
"What's a regular fellow?"
"Aw hell, you know very well what I mean: regular."
"Thompson says that Mrs. Pritchett says that she knows for certain because Mr. Macy told her that if ... "
"Well, boys, I don't give a damn what anybody says, I make up my own mind, and I'm here to tell you that I think this Roark is lousy. I don't like the Enright House."
"Why?"
"I don't know why. I just don't like it, and that's that. Haven't I got a right to an opinion of my own?"
The battle lasted for weeks. Everybody had his say, except Roark. Lansing told him: "It's all right. Lay off. Don't do anything. Let me do the talking. There's nothing you can do. When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced — since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand. However, that's how it's done. You see, reasons require scales to weigh them. And scales are not made of cotton. And cotton is what the human spirit is made of — you know, the stuff that keeps no shape and offers no resistance and can be twisted forward and backward and into a pretzel. You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than I could. But they won't listen to you and they'll listen to me. Because I'm the middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line — it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel."
"Why are you fighting for me like that?" Roark asked.
"Why are you a good architect? Because you have certain standards of what is good, and they're your own, and you stand by them. I want a good hotel, and I have certain standards of what is good, and they're my own, and you're the one who can give me what I want. And when I fight for you, I'm doing — on my side of it — just what you're doing when you design a building. Do you think integrity is the monopoly of the artist? And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn. And yet, if I were asked to choose a symbol for humanity as we know it, I wouldn't choose a cross nor an eagle nor a lion and unicorn. I'd choose three gilded balls."
And as Roark looked at him, he added: "Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do."
At the end of July, Roark signed a contract to build the Aquitania.