Chapter 5: The Climax of the d'Anconias
Aw yeah, it's the Francisco chapter, time to blare his theme, All You Bastards Get Fired Up!
I can do instrumental themes too!
As every other scene ends with leaving an office, so does every other scene begin with someone entering one. This time it's Eddie bringing news that the Mexican government has determined, without a doubt, that the San Sebastian Mountains are worthless. Dagny is convinced Francisco is no fool for wasting his fortune on them, and arranges to meet him.
As she walks to meet Francisco at his hotel, she recalls Francisco's visits to her parents' estate when they were children, how she and the other children would race to beat his car coming up the drive, but he'd always win. They are both heirs to their respective fortunes; as Francisco put it, part of the aristocracy of money. He's also a badass from a young age. He pronounced his name as if he wished his listeners to be struck in the face and knighted by the sound of it.
So was his ancestor, who left Spain after essentially flipping off the lord of the Inquisition and went carve a fortune in Argentina from the mountains with his own two hands (and a pickax. Credit where it's due, you understand). The d'Anconias are one big Badass Family, each heir having to prove themselves before they're even considered family. And I think it's quite cute that his nickname for Dagny growing up is "Slug". As in the fire that drives a locomotive. U mad, Dagny?
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One day Dagny, age 10, discovers young "Frisco", age 12, working at Taggart Transcontinental under an assumed name, shockingly by passing child labor laws! Wait, they have those? Hank Rearden was slaving away in frickin' iron mines at age 14, and we're supposed to be surprised Francisco is working as a meer callboy at age 12? I suppose 14 year olds are put in charge of military special forces too. This world is weird. Francisco's not worried though. He's done this before, disappearing for months and all his parents want to know is how good a job he did. I guess his Pikachu protected him.
Francisco is pretty much a boy wonder growing up, showing up Dagny and the others at baseball, motorboating, even working out a differential equation after just 2 years of algebra! Well, he IS an heir to a legendary family of ubermenches whose hands have the power to build. Essentially, Francisco wants to be the greatest d'Anconia heir of all time and buy his way into heaven. That's not hyperbole, he literally says the greatest virtue is to make money. Sure Frisco, and you might as well study Divine Fist of the North Star Style and explode God's head. You've studied everything else, so why not? I should also point out that throughout all this, Dagny is unquestioningly admiring Francisco while Jim derides him at every turn. Oh Jim, if you were born with The Spark you'd understand.
One day Dagny sees Francisco eyeing her seriously, and she asks what he likes about her. Despite her thinking it's her body, he says he likes that she'll one day control Taggart Transcontinental. Please, you're 16 now Frisco; we know what you're thinkin'. Francisco leaves for college and Dagny anticipates his visits. One of his old professors warns Dagny that Francisco, so used to feeling happy, will be disappointed by the world. Maybe a lesser man would, but you're talking about Francisco d'Anconia! He visits Dagny and urges her to become a master of Taggart Transcontinental to prove herself to him. Jim, having also been to college, espouses his newfound life lessons that Francisco should avoid becoming the most depraved human being; he who hoards his wealth while his fellow man rots and suffers. Francisco's response? NO U The most depraved human being is he who has no purpose. It doesn't matter what you do, only that you earn it.
Dagny instantly agrees with him. Aww jeez, can't she go on a life lesson to learn this stuff? It's no fun if she just starts knowing it. But wait, there is something! Dagny wonders why no one else appreciates hard work. She gets A's in school without studying and she's disliked. Should she get D's instead and be super popular?
Francisco slaps her. Wow, first real violence in the story so far.
Later they meet when Dagny starts working at Taggart Transcontinental, and they vow to do their ancestors greater honor than the other. Her mother, meanwhile, is concerned that she has no romantic life, indeed, no life at all outside work. Dagny seems happy though, and is even enthusiastic when her mother plans her formal debut for the New York socialites. The evening doesn't go well, though, no one has any spirit save Dagny, and she despises every man she converses with. Expecting exceptionalism, what she finds is more mediocrity.
That summer she tries to reconcile her disappointment by defeating Francisco. He agrees to play her at tennis, with a rather well-written action scene at that. She felt the rising pain of exhaustion—not knowing that it was pain, feeling it only in sudden stabs that made her aware of some part of her body for an instant, to be forgotten in the next; her arm socket—her shoulder blades ... her eyelids, when the sky went dark red and the ball came at her through the darkness like a whirling white flame—the thin, hot wire that shot from her ankle, up her back, and went on shooting straight across the air, driving the ball at Francisco's figure... More than a contest, he is playing to make her struggle, defy him, and ultimately she triumphs. Francisco loses for the first time in his whole life. Yet his ever mocking glance at the conclusion suggests he still won, after a fashion.
He comes by that night to watch her work, which she does while remaining conscious of his enticing presence. They walk home—and really, everyone walks everywhere in this book. I have seen precisely one reference to a car so far—and pause in a clearing, where the heat of their contest earlier still burns as they engage in a new one, in which Francisco moves to have his way with Dagny. She felt a moment's rebellion and a hint of fear. He held her, pressing the length of his body against hers with a tense, purposeful insistence, his hand moving over her breasts as if he were learning a proprietor's intimacy with her body, a shocking intimacy that needed no consent from her, no permission. ... She had no conscious realization of his purpose, her vague knowledge of it was wiped out, she had no power to believe it clearly, in this moment, to believe it about herself, she knew only that she was afraid—yet what she felt was as if she were crying to him: Don't ask me for it—oh, don't ask me—do it! Fortunately, such a spirited advance is the highest compliment for a Mover, and they begin a passionate affair. She even takes pride in being called a mistress.
Anyway, as he's on the verge of completing college it turns out he's also been working at a dingy copper mine and now owns it, using money he earned from playing the stock market while also writing his thesis on Aristotle. Am I good enough now, dad? Huh? Am I?!
Apparently not; his father doesn't want him rising too fast, but that problem is solved quickly when he passes away, and Francisco inherits the estate anyway. Dagny does not see him for three years. Then she gets a phone call to meet him for dinner. When they meet, he seems cold, tortured, and distant. She balks at his suggestion to leave Taggart Transcontinental to rot, so he lets it drop, admitting only that he's in town to meet a friend. Later that night he breaks down in front of her in tears, saying he can't do what is asked of him. He won't say, but only asks Dagny to leave it be; what he has to do will get harder before it gets easier, but she is not ready to accept it. He leaves her, saying "Don't wait for me, Dagny. Next time we meet, you will not want to see me. I will have a reason for the things I'll do. But I can't tell you the reason and you will be right to damn me. I am not committing the contemptible act of asking you to take me on faith. You have to live by your own knowledge and judgement. You will damn me. You will be hurt. Try not to let it hurt you too much. Remember that I told you this and that it was all I could tell you."
From that day on, he begins a long string of scandalous affairs and lavish living, wasting his money on depraved parties and leaving important decisions to his lessers, all while acting like he has no need to make any more money. Dagny is mortified, and had attempted to put it aside for her own affairs, but no longer. Which brings us to the present meeting, mirroring that one they had a year ago. Except where he was cold and torn, he is now languid and mellow. Dagny confronts him about the mine failure, and he gives a long winding discussion about the expectations people put in him, without looking into it themselves, expecting that he always be right and not potentially flawed as everyone else. Is it his fault for failing, or is it their fault for assuming him to never fail? Is Dagny at fault for assuming, even when he admits to acting foolish, that he acted with a plan, and thus not foolish at all? He goes on to describe the housing system built for the San Sebastian workers as part of his settlement with the government for giving them a lousy mine, and that while it looks sound, it was built with the worst materials possible and will be nothing but rubble within the year. Whether he did it on purpose or accidentally, he says, the element of excellence was missing, and that is the real crime. And what he finds so amusing.
Dagny is hurt greatly by Francisco's boasting for having done such terrible things, and yet he denies it was the world that drove him to do it.
"Then—why?"
He shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"
So, she's not ready to know. He leaves complimenting her on her courage, and that some day she'll have enough of it.
End of Chapter 5.
Jeez that was long, but while the first half was mostly "The Awesomesauce Francisco Show" it did have a rather interesting twist at the end. Francisco has uttered the curse of death, and so must be out of the story now. Or is he? We'll find out I suppose.
