"a_taste_of_heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lovegrove James)

I missed him, and though I didn't give up hope that he
might still be alive, quietly, privately, I began to
mourn him. Of all the strange and mad and sad and
extraordinary human beings who passed through the
doors of the homeless shelter, Harold was perhaps
the most remarkable. In his time, before answering
the call of the road, he had been a fireman, a
trawlerman, a professor of Linguistics at a minor
provincial university, war correspondent for a
French magazine, and campaign manager for a
Colombian presidential candidate; he had worked as
a missionary in Zaire and had also enjoyed a career
as a petty criminal back here at home; he had fitted
curtains, carpets and men's suits, had sold double
glazing, life insurance and Jesus door to door, and
had earned an Olympic Bronze for pistol-shooting, a
gold disc for a song he co-wrote that was made
popular by Marti Wilde in the sixties, and the respect
of a number of peers of the realm for his sound
advice on the preservation of British wetlands (his
suggestions led to a Bill being passed in Parliament).
And these were just the achievements I knew about.
Harold darkly hinted that there were more, and that
he had done some things so shady, so hush-hush, that
if he told me what they were he would have to kill
me. He said that he had run errands for people so
nebulously important and powerful that even
politicians in the highest echelons of government
didn't know they existed, and that his eyes had
passed over official documents the contents of which
were so alarming they would have turned my hair
white. He said this in that calm, cultured voice of his
that only served to reinforce the impression that he
was truly au fait with the secret workings of the
world, the unseen cogs which turned the hands on the
clockface of everything that ordinary people
perceived.

He was, of course, lying his arse off. Everybody
knew that. Even I, who have the word "gullible"
stamped across my forehead, had ceased to believe
anything Harold told me after the first couple of
fables I had fallen for. Harold lived to lie. It was his
craft, his art, his true vocation. He did not do it idly
or maliciously, to start gossip or spread a rumour or
destroy a reputation. He lied the way you or I might
collect records or read books. It was his recreation.
It took him out of himself. It cleared his head of
mind-junk, spring-cleaned the attics of his brain. It
was a diversion, an entertainment, a stage act.