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

These facts became known to young Norman Mushari when, upon graduating from Cornell Law
School at the top of his class, he went to work for the Washington, D.C., law firm that had
designed both the Foundation and the Corporation, the firm of McAllister, Robjent, Reed and McGee.
He was of Lebanese extraction, the son of a Brooklyn rug merchant. He was five feet and three
inches tall. He had an enormous ass, which was luminous when bare.
He was the youngest, the shortest, and by all odds the least Anglo-Saxon male employee in
the firm. He was put to work under the most senile partner, Thurmond McAllister, a sweet old poop
who was seventy-six. He would never have been hired if the other partners hadn't felt that
McAllister's operations could do with just a touch more viciousness.
No one ever went out to lunch with Mushari. He took nourishment alone in cheap cafeterias,
and plotted the violent overthrow of the Rosewater Foundation. He knew no Rosewaters. What engaged
his emotions was the fact that the Rosewater fortune was the largest single money package
represented by McAllister, Robjent, Reed and McGee. He recalled what his favorite professor,



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Leonard Leech, once told him about getting ahead in law. Leech said that, just as a good airplane
pilot should always be looking for places to land, so should a lawyer be looking for situations
where large amounts of money were about to change hands.
"In every big transaction," said Leech, "there is a magic moment during which a man has
surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An
alert lawyer will make that moment his own, possessing the treasure for a magic microsecond,
taking a little of it, passing it on. If the man who is to receive the treasure is unused to
wealth, has an inferiority complex and shapeless feelings of guilt, as most people do, the lawyer
can often take as much as half the bundle, and still receive the recipient's blubbering thanks."
The more Mushari rifled the firm's confidential files relative to the Rosewater
Foundation, the more excited he became. Especially thrilling to him was that part of the charter
which called for the immediate expulsion of any officer adjudged insane. It was common gossip in
the office that the very first President of the Foundation, Eliot Rosewater, the Senator's son,
was a lunatic. This characterization was a somewhat playful one, but as Mushari knew, playfulness
was impossible to explain in a court of law. Eliot was spoken of by Mushari's co-workers variously
as "The Nut," "The Saint," "The Holy Roller," "John the Baptist," and so on.
"By all means," Mushari mooned to himself, "we must get this specimen before a judge."
From all reports, the person next in line to be President of the Foundation, a cousin in
Rhode Island, was inferior in all respects. When the magic moment came, Mushari would represent
him.
Mushari, being tone-deaf, did not know that he himself had an office nickname. It was
contained in a tune that someone was generally whistling when he came or went. The tune was "Pop
Goes the Weasel."


*


Eliot Rosewater became President of the Foundation in 1947. When Mushari began to