They neither work nor read; nor do they slumber; a small lighted lamp mitigates the long night; as the night is motionless, they have never known the meaning of an hour; as they need not hurry, then-thoughts are slow; induction is unknown to them, but from three tenuous hypotheses they deduct a metaphysics; and the succession of their thoughts, interrupted from start to finish, devolves from God to man, while their life becomes this succession; they measure their age by the point which they have reached; some have never managed to arrive at the point of their existence; others have passed it by; still others have not noticed it. They have no common tongue; they are forever reckoning. Oh! I could say much more, for I understand them quite well. They are stunted, pug-nosed, slovenly. Their women have no diseases; they make love in the dark.

I am speaking of the more intelligent Eskimos; there are others who, at the dawning of the solemn day, cut short the succession of the syllogism and depart for the frozen sea and the melting snow in search of reindeer and moose. They also fish for whales and return with the dark, laden with a new supply of blubber.

Each climate has its rigors, each land its diseases. In the warm lands we had seen the plague; near the marshlands, lingering illnesses. Now an illness was springing up from the very absence of sensual delights. The salty provisions, the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the studied resistance in which we took such great pride; the joy of living wretchedly in unkind lands, and the strong attraction of the outside world on our enraptured souls gradually eroded our strength; and while our souls had then longed, serene, to undertake supreme conquests, scurvy was beginning to afflict all of us and we remained dejected on the deck of the ship, trembling for fear that we would die before finishing our tasks.* Oh, chosen tasks! Most precious tasks! For four days we remained in that condition, not far from the land of our expectation; we saw its icy peaks plunging into the slushy sea; and I believe that our voyage would indeed have come to an end at that point if not for the exquisite liquor that Eric had taken from the Eskimos’ hut.

Our blood had become too thin; it was escaping from all over our bodies; it oozed from our gums, from our nostrils, from our eyelids, from under our nails; it seemed at times to be nothing more than a stagnant humor and almost to cease circulating; the slightest movement made it pour out as from a tilted cup; under the skin, in the tenderest areas it formed livid spots; our heads swam and we were overcome by a feeling of nausea; our necks ached; because our teeth were loose and shook in their alveoli, we could not eat dry sea biscuit; cooked in water it formed a thick pap in which our teeth stuck and remained. Rice tore the skin from our gums; about all we could do was drink. And lying listlessly on the deck all day long, we dreamed of ripe fruits, with fresh tasty meat, of fruits from the islands we had once known, from the pernicious islands. But even then I believe that we would have refused to taste them. We rejoiced because Paride was no longer with us and did not share our suffering. But the hemostatic liquor cured our sickness.

It was the evening of the last day; the sun that marked the season’s end had disappeared on the horizon; a crepuscular glow remained long after its disappearance. The sunset was without agony, without purple on the clouds; the sun had disappeared slowly; its refracted rays still reached us. But it was already beginning to become very cold; the sea around us had frozen once more, imprisoning the ship. The ice thickened by the hour and constantly threatened to crush the ship; it offered us only the flimsiest protection, and we resolved to leave it. But I want to state clearly that our decision resulted neither from despair nor from timorous prudence but rather from a maniacal urge, for we could still break the ice, flee from the winter and follow the course of the sun; but that would have taken us backward. And so, preferring the harshest shores, provided that they were new, we moved toward the night, our day having come to an end. We knew that happiness is not simply escape from sadness; we were going, proud and strong, beyond the worst sorrows to the purest joy.

From parts of the ship we had fashioned a sled. After hitching the big reindeer to the sled, we began to load it with wood, axes and ropes. The last rays were disappearing as we set out toward the pole. On the deck of the ship was one spot, hidden by piles of cordage, which we never went near. Oh sad day’s end, when before leaving the ship, I walked the full length of the deck! Behind the rolls of cordage, when I untied them to take them along, alas, what did I see?

Paride!

We had sought for him in vain; I supposed that he, too weak to stir and too sick to reply, had hidden there like a dog searching for a place to die. But was this really Paride?

He was hairless, beardless; his teeth lay white on the deck around him, where he had spat them out. His skin was mottled, like a piece of cloth on which the colors have run; it was violet and pearl; nothing was more pitiful to see. He had lost his eyelashes, and at first I was unable to determine whether he was looking at us or at something else, for he could no longer smile. His huge, swollen, mummified, spongy gums had retracted and split his lips and now bulged outward like a large fruit; protruding from the middle was one white tooth, his last. He tried to extend his hand; his bones were too fragile and broke. I wanted to grasp his hand; it fell apart in mine, leaving between my fingers blood and rotted flesh.