As for the political role that Soros has created for himself in countries like Ukraine, de Botton continued, “There is such a vacuum, isn’t there? And in a time of crisis someone can emerge. As when a family is in crisis, and suddenly the chauffeur takes charge! But then the crisis passes, things go back to normal. I would expect that in some of these countries they will eventually say, ‘We don’t care how many billions this guy has, we don’t want him telling us what to do.’ ”

Ultimately, what is so striking about Soros is the degree to which—no matter how one tries to focus one’s lens—the twin images persist, resisting alignment, irreducible: the two George Soroses. It is not uncommon to find individuals who have constructed a persona at odds with who they really are, as evidenced by their actions; and it is even less uncommon to find individuals with markedly conflicting impulses, in whom, nonetheless, one side predominates. It is rare, however, to find someone in whom contradictory impulses are so extreme and so strong that the principle of cognitive dissonance seems not to apply—and who seems as a consequence to be pushed and pulled in restless, frenetic motion between these polar zones.

A person who has known Soros for many years says, “Messianic zeal often works as concealment for what one really craves—and it strikes me that the more George covets control the more hysterical he becomes about open society. But I don’t think he recognizes this in himself. He is not a knowing charlatan. He is sincere.”

If Soros were not sincere, surely he would seek to mask himself, cultivating a type of guardedness common among those far less powerful than he. But probably his most appealing—and disarming—trait is his unguardedness, manifested sometimes in a tendency to think aloud, as if he were trying ideas on for size, and sometimes in surprising (and even, on occasion, self-damaging) revelations. Soros is well aware of this trait, which he refers to as “this urge to reveal myself”; he told me that his brother first called it to his attention back in 1982, when Soros began telling his investors that he was in a state of some turmoil and that they ought to think twice about leaving their money with him. “My brother said, ‘You are really stupid! Why are you doing this?’ ”

Why, indeed?

“Well, partly, of course, I think it’s my self-involvement, because I do find myself rather fascinating. So there is a certain wanton element, and it is an indulgence.” He went on, “And the other thing is that in my previous lives I always had to keep things secret, starting with having to live with a false identity. So to me it’s the reward for success—that I don’t need to hide.”

Before I could ask for a further illustration, Soros said, “My lawyer, for instance, who set up the tax structure which effectively protected me from taxation for many years—until the loophole was finally plugged, and I became a fully taxpaying citizen—just couldn’t understand why I should ever allow myself to be seen!”

The loophole to which Soros referred was closed with the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The act created something called a “passive foreign-investment company” (PFIC), and a new taxation regime, which took effect in 1987. When I asked Gary Gladstein, of Soros Fund Management, about what Soros had told me, he confirmed that taxes on his Quantum profits had been deferred until Soros sold his shares in the fund, which he rarely did. “So he had no taxes—he had a free ride,” Gladstein said.

What was critical to the fact that Soros did not pay taxes on his income before PFIC was that he did not have a controlling interest in the fund—that is, he did not own more than fifty per cent. That is why the period in 1982, when shareholders were redeeming their shares in the fund and his ownership was therefore increasing (approaching the fifty-per-cent mark, according to one friend), was a truly perilous time for him, and why it was all the more remarkable that he should have gone to some shareholders and urged them to carefully consider whether or not to leave their funds with him. The law in those pre-PFIC years also attempted to penetrate arrangements designed to circumvent that voting-control test, and find those situations where an American shareholder might—despite not owning fifty per cent—be in control. Presumably, the fact that Soros was not even a director of Quantum would have helped his claim to the I.R.S. that Quantum was not “controlled” by him.

As it was, Soros’s profits were compounded year after year, tax-free, from 1969 through 1986, and in those years the fund, of which Soros came to own roughly a third, grew from four million dollars to more than a billion and a half. Without what Soros refers to as “a clever tax thing,” he would probably have had to pay at least a couple of hundred million dollars to the I.R.S.

And, as Gladstein also noted, the first years that Soros had to pay taxes, 1987 and 1988, were not very good years at Quantum. (The returns were 14.1 per cent and 10.1 per cent, respectively.) “It was in ’89”—when the fund achieved a return of 31.6 per cent—“that his taxable income went up so much,” Gladstein said. And it was also then that Soros’s massive giving began. Soros now says that his aim is to give away fifty per cent of his income each year—the maximum amount that he is allowed to deduct.

Whether or not Soros has been able to bring a similar ingenuity to his nonprofit empire is an interesting question. Certainly in a country like Ukraine, his foundation is engaging in plainly political activities, although a reading of the foundation’s annual report—which lists, as its major areas of support, education and research; civil-society programs; and culture, environment, and health—gives no such suggestion. In addition to political activity, another I.R.S. issue is control. An operating (as distinct from a grant-giving) foundation that conducts its own programs cannot be directly controlled by the donor; some of Soros’s offshore foundations, therefore—such as the one in Ukraine—are constituted as legally noncontrolled entities, each with its own board of directors. But the idea that it is these local boards which have control—and not Soros—is as much a chimera as any notion that the Quantum board has control. Doubtless, the foundation boards have made decisions; but, as many people within the organization told me, there was no decision that Soros could not overturn, and in many instances the decisions emanated solely from him. Soros himself had told me, “I made all the decisions.”

While Soros’s more stunning revelations tend to be self-generated, there are few subjects from which, upon being questioned, he will shy away. The corruption in the Moscow-foundation office, for example, had been distressing to him, but he was not reticent when I asked about it. Discussing the deposit of fourteen million dollars in unreliable banks, he quickly assumed some responsibility, deriding “our stupidity in sending them five million dollars a month for a program without looking at how they were spending it.” The foundation in Moscow had had a checkered history, Soros continued, “and finally we hit on this transformation program, which is a great success.” The program, which was aimed at transforming the education system, was so successful, Soros said, that “I wanted to make it bigger. I threw a lot of money at it—and, in doing that, I destroyed it, effectively. Because it was too much money.” This was a criticism I had often heard of the mega-grants that were made in the wake of the pound-sterling bonanza, but it was surprising to hear it as self-criticism. Those administering the funds apparently found themselves struggling to push vast sums of money through a hastily constructed, haphazard system, which could not possibly maximize the benefit. And in the one instance that came to light, of course—the fourteen million dollars in Moscow—the money was not being spent on the program at all.