Chapter 10 Chapter nine

Divorce procedures delayed my trip.The shadow of another world war has loomed over the globe.I got pneumonia and ended up in America after a boring winter in Portugal.In New York, I eagerly accepted the cushy job fate offered me: it consisted mostly of writing perfume commercials.I love the rambling nature and pseudo-literary veneer of advertising, a job I do whenever I have nothing better to do.On the other hand, a wartime university in New York required me to complete a comparative history of French literature that I wrote for English students.The writing of the first volume took me two or three years.During those two or three years, I probably worked fifteen hours a day.When I look back on those days, I see that they are neatly divided into two parts: full light and narrow shadow: the light is the comfort of research work in a large and magnificent library, and the shadow is the command to prepare me. Much has been said about tortured desires and insomnia.Now that the reader knows me a bit, it's easy to imagine how ambiguous and agitated I get when I try to catch a glimpse of nymphets playing in Central Park (hey, always far away); And how sick I am of those fancy, de-smelling career women being constantly pushed on me by some goat in some office.Let's skip all that.My health suddenly failed so badly that I was confined to a sanitarium for over a year.I went back to work - ended up in the hospital again.

A healthy outdoor life seems to do me some good.One doctor I particularly liked was a very funny, cynical fellow with a little brown beard; he had a younger brother who was leading an expedition to the Canadian arctic.I also joined the expedition as a "recorder of mental reactions".Two young botanists and an old carpenter and I shared from time to time (not always smoothly) the favor of one of our nutritionists, Dr. Anita Johnson--happy to say, she soon gave the plane Sent it back.I don't know much about the purpose of the expedition's trip.Judging by the number of meteorologists present, we may be tracking the wobbly north magnetic pole all the way to its lair (somewhere on Prince of Wales Isle, I suppose).One group, along with the Canadians, set up a weather station at Point Pierre in the Melville Strait.Another group was equally misguided to collect plankton.A third group studied tuberculosis in the tundra.Burt, the cinematographer—a jittery guy with whom I was asked to do a whole lot of menial work for a while (he had some mental issues, too)— insisted that the big guys on our team, the ones we The real leader, who has never been seen, is mainly engaged in verification work to see the impact of climate change on the fur of arctic foxes.

We lived in some wooden prefabs in the Precambrian granite world.We have a huge stock of groceries—Reader's Digest, ice cream mixers, chemical deodorant, paper hats for Christmas.Despite the emptiness and drearyness of life, or perhaps because of it, my health improved miraculously.Surrounded by wimpy willow bushes and lichens and other deaf vegetation; presumably infiltrated and washed by the howling wind; unseen), sitting on a boulder, I felt strangely detached from myself.No temptation drives me mad.Those fat smooth-skinned little Eskimo girls, smelling like fish, with ugly black hair and guinea-pig faces, were even less arousing to me than Dr. Johnson.There are no nymphets in the Arctic.

I left the analysis of glacial drifts, drum mounds, leprechauns, and great castles to someone better than me, and for a while tried to jot down what I naively thought were "reactions" (e.g., I noticed Dreams in the midnight sun are always colorful. This was also confirmed by my friend the photographer).I should also test my various companions on many important questions, such as nostalgia, fear of strange animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, radio program choice, change of opinion, and so on.Everyone was so sick of it that I soon had to abandon the project entirely, but at the end of my twenty months of cold climate labor (as one botanist jokingly put it) I wrote another A completely fabricated and very graphic report.The reader will find it in both the 1945 or 1946 Annals of Psychophysics for Adults and the issue of Arctic Expedition dedicated to that expedition.Anyway, that expedition had nothing to do with copper on Victoria Island or anything like that, as I later learned from my kind and friendly doctor; the real purpose of the expedition was "secret," so let me Just to say one more thing: whatever the purpose of the expedition, it was accomplished very well.

The reader will be quite sorry to know that not long after my return to civilization I had another episode of insanity (if that distressing name must be used for melancholia and a crushing sense of depression).My complete recovery was due to a condition that I discovered while I was being treated in that special, expensive sanitarium.I found it a lot of fun to play psychiatrists on: slyly leading them step by step; (that's what they call them, those blackmailers who dream their own dreams and then wake up screaming); tease them with some fabricated "raw scene"; never give them a glimpse of one's real sexual dilemma .I bribed a nurse, looked at some medical records, and was delighted to find that the card referred to me as "potentially gay" and "utterly impotent."The game was so cleverly played, and the results - in my case - so abominable, that when I was quite well (slept soundly, had the appetite of a schoolgirl), I stayed on for a full hour. moon.Then I added another week just for all the fun of pitting against a mighty newcomer.It was an uprooted (and indeed deranged) celebrity known for his ability to convince his patients that they were witnessing their own conceptions.