How the Dead Dream Read Online Free
seemed to be turning away to what occupied him. Later T. remembered mainly the sight of his back.
As he grew up his love became sophisticated. He no longer needed to touch coins or bills; he found his satisfaction in surges of energy, in the stream of contact between machines that processed binary. He learned to like abstract money better than its physical body. The solid house that money built sheltered him and he felt keenly that money was both everything and nothing, at once infinite, open potential and an end in itself.
Money was commerce and the movement of broad arms. It was how, in the great halls of trade and public service, the walls were so thick that sound could not penetrate and the foundations so strong an earthquake could barely move them. There was the honor and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within—and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums. He gazed upon the paintings steadily and for a moment thought he knew their private beauty as his own, as though it had only ever meant the same thing once, to him and him alone: and as he turned away he felt a hush of air rise in the corridors.
There was the noble trace of money in the half-imagined bodies of the dinosaurs, looming with arched necks in the shadowed halls of natural history museums, the back-lit shapes of toothy deep-sea fish brought up from dark fathoms below; money in the shining link between the Treasury Building and the aircraft that flew across the continent, the trains that ran through mountain towns, the cabins perched
among the pines. There was money in the grandeur of the ranks of the imperial armies as they might march across the deserts underneath the skies, in the great thick cables that ran beneath the surging Atlantic, the intricate and freezing satellites that whirred a thousand miles above the surface of the earth, displaying all the ingenuity and subtlety of humankind as their metal veins ran silver in the moon’s reflected light. It was the alchemy of money then, the shivering power of its quiet numerals, the wish of money that was such a clear command.
Currency infused all things, from the small to the monolithic. And to be a statesman the first thing needed was not morals, public service, or the power of rhetoric; the first thing needed was money. Because finally there was always a single answer. As there was only one intelligence residing in a self, as trees grew upward toward the sun, as women lived outward and men walked in insulation to the end of their lives: when all was said and done, from place to place and country to country, forget the subtleties of right and wrong, the struggle toward affinity. In the lurch and flux, in all the variation and the same, it was only money that could set a person free.
•
Of having private gluts of feeling, holding his secrets close, and seeming all the while the whitest of white bread; of being perfectly opaque and seeming transparent; of being merely well-informed and shrewd while seeming like a prodigy—he was guilty of all of these and in all of them excelled.
By the time he left home to attend college in a small town
in North Carolina he had amassed sufficient funds for an account with a discount brokerage firm. He attended classes in deference to the wishes of his parents but all the while his real work was day trading. He was always discreet, and few knew of his enterprise; when he had losses he did not reveal them and of course his wins went unheralded also, which gave him on some days an air of quiet satisfaction.
The stiff discipline of discretion was part of his training. It was crucial, he believed, to learn which aspects of his character to make available to sight and which to keep hidden. Honesty was seldom the best policy in social intercourse; and when it was
As he grew up his love became sophisticated. He no longer needed to touch coins or bills; he found his satisfaction in surges of energy, in the stream of contact between machines that processed binary. He learned to like abstract money better than its physical body. The solid house that money built sheltered him and he felt keenly that money was both everything and nothing, at once infinite, open potential and an end in itself.
Money was commerce and the movement of broad arms. It was how, in the great halls of trade and public service, the walls were so thick that sound could not penetrate and the foundations so strong an earthquake could barely move them. There was the honor and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within—and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums. He gazed upon the paintings steadily and for a moment thought he knew their private beauty as his own, as though it had only ever meant the same thing once, to him and him alone: and as he turned away he felt a hush of air rise in the corridors.
There was the noble trace of money in the half-imagined bodies of the dinosaurs, looming with arched necks in the shadowed halls of natural history museums, the back-lit shapes of toothy deep-sea fish brought up from dark fathoms below; money in the shining link between the Treasury Building and the aircraft that flew across the continent, the trains that ran through mountain towns, the cabins perched
among the pines. There was money in the grandeur of the ranks of the imperial armies as they might march across the deserts underneath the skies, in the great thick cables that ran beneath the surging Atlantic, the intricate and freezing satellites that whirred a thousand miles above the surface of the earth, displaying all the ingenuity and subtlety of humankind as their metal veins ran silver in the moon’s reflected light. It was the alchemy of money then, the shivering power of its quiet numerals, the wish of money that was such a clear command.
Currency infused all things, from the small to the monolithic. And to be a statesman the first thing needed was not morals, public service, or the power of rhetoric; the first thing needed was money. Because finally there was always a single answer. As there was only one intelligence residing in a self, as trees grew upward toward the sun, as women lived outward and men walked in insulation to the end of their lives: when all was said and done, from place to place and country to country, forget the subtleties of right and wrong, the struggle toward affinity. In the lurch and flux, in all the variation and the same, it was only money that could set a person free.
•
Of having private gluts of feeling, holding his secrets close, and seeming all the while the whitest of white bread; of being perfectly opaque and seeming transparent; of being merely well-informed and shrewd while seeming like a prodigy—he was guilty of all of these and in all of them excelled.
By the time he left home to attend college in a small town
in North Carolina he had amassed sufficient funds for an account with a discount brokerage firm. He attended classes in deference to the wishes of his parents but all the while his real work was day trading. He was always discreet, and few knew of his enterprise; when he had losses he did not reveal them and of course his wins went unheralded also, which gave him on some days an air of quiet satisfaction.
The stiff discipline of discretion was part of his training. It was crucial, he believed, to learn which aspects of his character to make available to sight and which to keep hidden. Honesty was seldom the best policy in social intercourse; and when it was
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