"Kurt Vonnegut - God Bless You Mr Rosewater" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vonnegut Kurt)

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ONE


A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey
might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.
The sum was $87,472,033.61 on June 1, 1964, to pick a day. That was the day it caught the
soft eyes of a boy shyster named Norman Mushari. The income the interesting sum produced was
$3,500,000 a year, nearly $10,000 a day -- Sundays, too.
The sum was made the core of a charitable and cultural foundation in 1947, when Norman
Mushari was only six. Before that, it was the fourteenth largest family fortune in America, the
Rosewater fortune. It was stashed into a foundation in order that tax-collectors and other
predators not named Rosewater might be prevented from getting their hands on it. And the baroque
masterpiece of legal folderol that was the charter of the Rosewater Foundation declared, in
effect, that the presidency of the Foundation was to be inherited in the same manner as the
British Crown. It was to be handed down throughout all eternity to the closest and oldest heirs of
the Foundation's creator, Senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana.
Siblings of the President were to become officers of the Foundation upon reaching the age
of twenty-one. All officers were officers for life, unless proved legally insane. They were free
to compensate themselves for their services as lavishly as they pleased, but only from the
Foundation's income.


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As required by law, the charter prohibited the Senator's heirs having anything to do with
the management of the Foundation's capital. Caring for the capital became the responsibility of a
corporation that was born simultaneously with the Foundation. It was called, straightforwardly
enough, The Rosewater Corporation. Like almost all corporations, it was dedicated to prudence and
profit, to balance sheets. Its employees were very well paid. They were cunning and happy and
energetic on that account. Their main enterprise was the churning of stocks and bonds of other
corporations. A minor activity was the management of a saw factory, a bowling alley, a motel, a
bank, a brewery, extensive farms in Rosewater County, Indiana, and some coal mines in northern
Kentucky.
The Rosewater Corporation occupied two floors at 500 Fifth Avenue, in New York, and
maintained small branch offices in London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Rosewater County. No member of
the Rosewater Foundation could tell the Corporation what to do with the capital. Conversely, the
Corporation was powerless to tell the Foundation what to do with the copious profits the
Corporation made.


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