"Thomas M. Disch - Ringtime" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

took note of. What clarity there can be in a fear defied! What pleasure
(impossible to describe, except that it is intensely, specifically visceral)
in the slow winning to the forbidden goal! What triumph when at last the till
was open and the money in our hands! And (for it would be dishonest to edit
out this final act) what a blast-of panic, horror, and guilt-when she shot the
guard returning with his takeout order of pie and coffee! After the murder (if
it amounted to that; she didn't stop to find out) she walked (resisted
running) four blocks (I counted them) to a public park, where she sat on a
bench and wolfed down the pie and coffee. A cherry pie, and never have I taken
greater pleasure in a meal than in that one slice of pie. (And I am accounted
something of a gourmet by those who've collected the rings I've made.)
After she'd wiped her fingers on a napkin, she counted her take-eighty-seven
dollars. She seemed quite satisfied. At that point she stopped recording.
To speak in greater detail of what the ring revealed would be to betray the
teacher to whom I was to owe so much. (As it is, I have had to disguise the
more incriminating facts: 33 is simply the number I favor at roulette;
eighty-seven dollars, the going price for a blank ring.) Through her I learned
not only (on later viewings) effective methods of picking locks and disabling
alarms but, more critically, the tao of criminality. Just so, a student learns
from the ring of a virtuoso musician not only the feel of his fingerings but
whatever of elan, judgment, and sublimity his artistry can bring to bear. Let
me lay a wreath, therefore, on the grave of the Unknown Felon and pass on to
my own malefactions.
As much, at least, as I know of them.
My own criminal career was, from its inception, undertaken less for the sake
of immediate gain (that eighty-
seven dollars was no great incitement) than for the sake of art. Once I had
practiced lockpicking on my own and my tenants' locks (some of surprisingly
good quality), I determined to profit from my new skill by recording
burglaries that would be, like virtue, their own reward. My objective: not
loot but luminescence. I have an abiding faith, which no amount of experience
has ever been able to shake, in professionalism and quality. From an aesthetic
point of view the ring I'd bought from Morton Shure was rankly
unprofessional-hasty, unstructured, and fuzzy. While, even at their most
minimal, on days when I had accomplished little more than tying my shoelaces,
my own recordings had been clean, clear, and well-paced. "A born recorder,"
Art Scene called me, back in my golden youth, "with a knack for making
something miraculous out of the most obvious materials."
Now that the gun of present purpose was loaded, all I lacked was a target. It
didn't take long to decide what I wanted for Christmas. What else but rings? I
wheedled a back issue of Ringtimes from Morton Shure and compiled a list, from
its classified pages, of Manhattan dealers whose offerings were modest enough
to suggest that their security systems would not be beyond my still-untested
capabilities. List in hand, I began to scout the land and found, like
Goldilocks, that most candidates were either too big or too piffling, too posh
or too drear.
Until I came to, lucky number, 33 New Soho Square. One look at its
degentrified facade of sagging black iron and flaking rose-painted brick,
another look at the lock on the door in the foyer, and instinct told me that
here was my target and now was the hour. As Shakespeare says, present mirth