"Spider Robinson - The Magnificent Conspiracy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

and bantering with his wife's boyfriend when they came to visit him, which was
frequently.
I wandered into John Smiley's room one day, sick in my heart and desperately
thirsty for something more than thirty-six years had taught me of life, seeking a
reason to go on living. Like many others before and since, I drank from John Smiley,
drank from his seemingly inexhaustible well of joy in livingтАФand in the process, I
acquired the taste. I learned some things. Mostly, I think, I learned the difference
between pleasure and joy. I suppose I had already made the distinction,
subconsciously, but I considered the latter a fraud, an illusion overlaid upon the
former to lend it respectability. John Smiley proved me wrong. His pleasures were as
restricted as mine had been unrestrictedтАФand his joy was so incan-descently
superior to mine that on the night of the day I met him I found myself humming the
last verse of "Richard Corey" in my mind.
 Cardwell paused, and his voice softened.
He forgave me my ignorance. He forgave me my money and my outlook and my
arrogance and treated me as an equal, and most amazing of all, he made me forgive
myself. The word "forgive" is interesting. Someone robs you of your wallet, and
they find him down the line and bring him back to you, saying, "We found your
wallet on this man," and you say, "That's all right. He can have--can have hadтАФit; I
fore-give it to him."
To preserve his sanity, John Smiley had been forced to "fore-give" virtually
everything God had given him. In his presence you could not do less yourself.
And so I even gave up mourning a "lost inno-cence" I had never had, and put the
shame he inspired in me to positive use. I began design-ing my ethics.

[I interrupted for the first and last time. "A rich man who would design his own
eth-ics is a dangerous thing," I said.]

Damn right [he said, with the delight of one who sees that his friend really
understands]. A profit is without honor except in its own coun-tryтАФbut that's a hell
of a lot of territory. The economic system reacts, with the full power of the racial
unconscious, to preserve itselfтАФand I had no wish to tilt at the windmill. I confess
that my first thought was of simply giving my money away, in a stupendous orgy of
charity, and taking a job in a garage. But John was wise enough to be able to show
me that that would have been as practical as disposing of a warehouse full of high
explosive by setting fire to it with a match. You may have read in newspapers, some
years back, of a young man who attempted to give away an inheritance, a much
smaller fortune than mine. He is now hopelessly insane, shattered by the power that
was thrust upon him. He did not do it to himself.
So I started small, and very slowly. The first thing I did was to heal the ulcers of
the hospital's accounting department. They had been juggling desperately to cover
the cost of the care that John Smiley was getting, so I bought the hospital and told
them to juggle away, whenever they felt they should. That habit was hard to break; I
bought forty-seven hospitals in the next two years, and quietly instructed them to run
whatever loss they had to, to provide maximum care and comfort for their patients. I
spent the next six years working in them, a month or two each, as a janitor. This
helped me to assess their management, replacing entire staffs down to the bedpan
level when neces-sary. It also added considerably to my educa-tion. There are many
hospitals in the world, Mr. Campbell, some good, some bad, but I know for certain
that forty-seven of them are won-derful places in which to hurt.