Kolymsky Heights [antikvár]

PrologxieHow long, dear friendhow long? I await you with eagerness! So much has happened, so much I must not forget, that I use this time to make an account. And to offer a warning. Everything that follows you will find very strange. For now just follow the sequence.Soon after our last meeting (you remember when?) I returned home and took a short holiday with my wife in Pit-sunda on the Black Sea. There, there was a motor accident. My wife was killed, I myself baidly injured. I spent some weeks in hospital and more in a sanatorium, a victim of severe depression. My friends, my colleagues, all urged a return to work. I returned to work but could not work. My institute was nothing to me, my former interests of no further interest.This depression was diagnosed as "clinical," and I was thereupon transported to a clinic! There I received various treatments, none of avail; and there presently a certain academician began paying me visits.This academician was only vaguely familiar to me, yet it was soon apparent that he had the liveliest and most knowledgeable interest in my affairs. He had fully consulted my doctors, was aware of my domestic situation and of course of my publications. In a series of conversations he assured himself that I was still alert in my field. And he made me a proposition.A research station in the north, he said, needed a new director. Its present head was in a precarious state of health and had not long to live. The work conducted by the station was of the greatest value, and a committee had sat for some time considering possible candidates, aided by members of the "state organs"; from which I deduced that there must be a security aspect to the work. This he confirmed, and went further.That part of the work that interested the "organs" would