"Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ayn)

from their first knowledge of death, pain or fear. But these had never
scarred him; his shock came when he stood very quietly, looking into the
black hole of the trunk. It was an immense betrayalthe more terrible because
he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he
knew, nor his trust; it was something else. He stood there for a while,
making no sound, then he walked back to the house. He never spoke about it to
anyone, then or since.
Eddie Willers shook his head, as the screech of a -rusty mechanism changing a
traffic light stopped him on the edge of a curb. He felt anger at himself.
There was no reason that he had to remember the oak tree tonight. It meant
nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadnessand somewhere within
him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the
glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark.
He wanted no sadness attached to his childhood; he loved its memories: any
day of it he remembered now seemed flooded by a still, brilliant sunlight. It
seemed to him as if a few rays from it reached into his present: not rays,
more like pinpoint spotlights that gave an occasional momentтАЩs glitter to his
job, to his lonely apartment, to the quiet, scrupulous progression of his
existence.
He thought of a summer day when he was ten years old. That day, in a clearing
of the woods, the one precious companion of his childhood told him what they
would do when they grew up. The words were harsh and glowing, like the
sunlight. He listened in admiration and in wonder. When he was asked what he
would want to do, he answered at once, "Whatever is right," and added, "You
ought to do something great . . . I mean, the two of us together." "What?"
she asked. He said, "I donтАЩt know. ThatтАЩs what we ought to find out. Not just
what you said. Not just business and earning a living. Things like winning
battles, or saving people out of fires, or climbing mountains." "What for?"
she asked. He said, "The minister said last Sunday that we must always reach
for the best within us. What do you suppose is the best within us?" "I donтАЩt
know." "WeтАЩll have to find out." She did not answer; she was looking away, up
the railroad track.
Eddie Willers smiled. He had said, "Whatever is right," twenty-two years ago.
He had kept that statement unchallenged ever since; the other questions had
faded in his mind; he had been too busy to ask them. But he still thought it
self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how
people could want to do otherwise; he had learned only that they did. It
still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be
right, and incomprehensible that they werenтАЩt. He knew that they werenтАЩt. He
thought of that, as he turned a corner and came to the great building of
Taggart Transcontinental. The building stood over the street as its tallest and proudest structure.
Eddie Willers always smiled at his first sight of it. Its long bands of
windows were unbroken, in contrast to those of its neighbors. Its rising
lines cut the sky, with no crumbling corners or worn edges. It seemed to
stand above the years, untouched. It would always stand there, thought Eddie
Willers.
Whenever he entered the Taggart Building, he felt relief and a sense of
security. This was a place of competence and power. The floors of its
hallways were mirrors made of marble. The frosted rectangles of its electric
fixtures were chips of solid light. Behind sheets of glass, rows of girls sat