"C M Kornbluth - Ms Found In A Chinese Fortune Cookie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie



C. M. Kornbluth




MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie



They say I am mad, but I am not mad-damn it, I've written and sold two million words of fiction and I
know better than to start a story like that, but this isn't a story and they do say I'm mad-catatonic
schizophrenia with assaultive episodes-and I'm not. [This is clearly the first of the Corwin Papers. Like all
the others it is written on a Riz-La cigarette paper with a ball point pen. Like all the others it is headed:
Urgent, Finder please send to C. M. Kornbluth,Wantagh, N. Y. Reward! / might comment that this is
typical of Corwin's generosity with his friends' time and money, though his attitude is at least this once
justified by his desperate plight. As his longtime friend and, indeed, literary executor, I was clearly the
person to turn to. CMK] I have to convince you, Cyril, that I am both sane and the victim of an
enormous conspiracy -and that you are too, and that everybody is. A tall order, but I am going to try to
fill it by writing an orderly account of the events leading up to my present situation. [Here ends the first
paper. To keep the record clear I should state that it was forwarded to me by a Mr. L. Wilmot Shaw^
who found it in a fortune cookie he ordered for dessert at the Great China Republic Restaurant in San
Francisco. Mr. Shaw suspected it was "a publicity gag"

but sent it to me nonetheless, and receivefrby return mail my thanks and my check for one dollar. I had
not realized that Corwin and his wife had disappeared from their home at Painted Post; I was merely
aware that it had been weeks since I'd heard from him. We visited infrequently. To be blunt, he was
easier to take via mail than face to face. For the balance of this account I shall attempt to avoid tedium by
omitting the provenance of each paper, except when noteworthy, and its length. The first is typical-a little
over a hundred words. I have, of course, kept on file all correspondence relating to the papers, and am
eager to display it to the authorities. It is hoped that publication of this account will nudge them out of the
apathy with which they have so far greeted my attempts to engage them. CMK]

OnSunday, May 13, 1956, at about12:30 P.M., I learned The Answer. I was stiff and aching because
all Saturday my wife and I had been putting in young fruit trees. I like to dig, but I was badly out of
condition from an unusually long and idle winter. Creatively, I felt fine. I'd been stale for months, but
when spring came the sap began to run in me too. I was bursting with story ideas; scenes and stretches of
dialog were jostling one another in my mind; all I had to do was let them flow onto paper.

When The Answer popped into my head I thought at first it was an idea for a story-a very good story. I
was going to go downstairs and bounce it off my wife a few times to test it, but I heard the sewing
machine buzzing and remembered she had said she was way behind on her mending. Instead, I put my
feet up, stared blankly through the window at the pasture-and-wooded-hills View we'd bought the old
place for, and fondled the idea.

What about, I thought, using the idea to develop a messy little local situation, the case of Mrs. Clonford?
Mrs. C. is a neighbor, animal-happy, land-poor and unintentionally a fearsome oppressor of her husband