In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  Gertrude also enforced more rigid rules of hygiene. I learned to shave every day instead of every other day, to take showers every morning instead of when I got around to it, and that deodorants are for always.

  About the only thing I somehow never learned how to do was to

  comb my hair properly. It still tends to get as sloppy as the day when the head of Seth Low combed it for me.

  Somehow we never managed to work into the social swim at the Navy Yard. We were occasionally invited to attend one gathering or another, and sometimes we even attended.

  On October 17, 1942, John Hardecker (my boss's boss's boss—or my great-grandboss) was celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary at the Navy Yard and we attended the celebration dinner. Everything went well. I had two Cuba Libres (I knew what they were now) and promptly got drunk, but Gertrude saw to it that I got home safely.

  It might have helped if I could dance. Gertrude was a good dancer and, on occasion, when she danced with someone else at some party, I could see how much she enjoyed it. I, however, simply lacked the aptitude.

  Once when Gertrude was in New York, I tried a little socializing on my own. I had an evening out with the boys and played poker— with chips and for money. I ended up winning $.15, but the next time I tried, I ended with a loss of $1.70—my entire bankroll.

  The result of a few such experiments taught me quickly that I hated losing far more than I enjoyed winning. Therefore, even assuming a fair game at which I was an average player so that I could win and lose with equal frequency, I would nevertheless lose emotionally.

  The result was that I never played poker for money again—or any other game "for money," either.

  7

  In October, I managed to wangle permission to have a Monday off (because I had worked one day without pay when I had started) and seized the opportunity for a two-day visit to New York. Monday, October 26, then, saw me at Campbell's for the first time in six months. Gertrude was with me and she met Campbell for the first time.

  I don't think they hit it off. It always seemed to me that Campbell was not at his best with women. At least, I have never heard him make a single remark in the presence of one from which one could deduce that he had noticed she was a woman.

  Perhaps that is the way it's supposed to be. It may be that I find it odd only because I never make a single remark in the presence of a

  woman from which one can deduce that I have even momentarily forgotten she is a woman.

  In any case, nothing came of the visit in the sense that I was not inspired to return to writing. I didn't seem to be motivated. I was getting a regular paycheck.

  8

  Our apartment, as I said, was only sublet, and the lease was to expire on January 7, 1943. We paid that no mind, assuming it would automatically be renewed. As in so many things in life, the assumption was false.

  On November 2, we got official notice that our lease would not be renewed and that we would have to be out by January 7. We went down to talk to the obnoxious Mr. Moses, to point out that we had gotten a rug as soon as we had been asked to do so, and offering to cooperate in any other reasonable way.

  Nothing helped. He talked and talked and talked, and I finally said impatiently, "Oh, do the world a favor and drop dead!" and left him in midsentence.

  It seemed rather a crisis and Gertrude's parents came to visit. Henry offered to talk to Moses on our behalf, which was rather amusing. Henry was a soft-spoken angel of a man whom everybody idolized. I never knew him to raise his voice, or be unkind or even unfair. To throw him to Moses, the human buzz saw, was out of the question.

  I shook my head and said firmly, "It will work out." It sounded a lot braver than I felt.

  Wingate Hall

  It did work out. On the last day of November, Gertrude found an apartment much like the one we were leaving, but in a far better apartment house called Wingate Hall at Fiftieth and Spruce.

  The new apartment was not far away. The kitchen was a little smaller and there were the same disadvantages as before: a Murphy bed and one-way ventilation. The rent, however, was $42.50, including utilities. We could scarcely afford more than this and we had to be satisfied.

  The month of apartment hunting, which was, understandably, an anxious one of tramping about and debating possibilities, was lightened by developments in the war.

  On November 8, 1942, we heard the news that a British-American fleet was landing troops in North Africa for the first large Western counteroffensive. It was not against the Germans directly, of course, but clearly that would come, too.

  It was a Sunday morning when we heard the news on the radio and Gertrude and I danced wildly about the living room out of sheer joy. It evoked banging from below, but a lot we cared now; they could do no more to us than they had already done.

  Later that month, the British struck at El Alamein in Egypt and the German general, Erwin Rommel, was sent reeling backward into a long, long retreat. With the Allies advancing from both ends of the African Mediterranean coastline, it was clear that the Nazis would be driven out of Africa.

  Then, most spectacularly, at Stalingrad, where the Soviets had held on grimly for two months (with myself expecting the city to be lost from day to day), the Soviets launched a counterattack that for the first time saw the Nazis forced into the same kind of defeat, and retreat, and army destruction that, until then, had been inflicted only by them upon their enemies.

  In the Pacific, though the only news was of endless fighting on Guadalcanal, it was now clear that ever since the Battle of Midway, the Japanese advance had been stopped. I had enough confidence in the American Navy and Air Force to believe the Japanese advance was stopped forever.

  An additional item of relief on a far less cosmic scale was that my 2B rating was renewed on November 9—which gave me half a year more.

  The officers at the Navy Yard, by the way, were amused, or professed to be amused, by the concern of the civilian employees over draft status. They would frequently ask one or another of us how we stood, and would then go on to ask if it were true that there had been a report that all Navy Yard employees under the age of thirty-five were to be drafted.

  Usually this would create some mild panic, and finally I could stand it no more. I went in one morning and reported that I had heard on the radio that all naval officers on shore duty were to be sent out to sea to replace those with more than six months' service there—and could it be true, do you suppose?

  The news spread like wildfire and there was a tremendous flap among the officers. No work was done by them that day and it took a second day, I think, before they decided that the rumor was false.

  After that, the officers most likely to ask us about the draft had to withstand being asked about sea duty, and by general consent there was a truce.

  On December 28, 1942, we moved for the second time as a married couple. It was not as easy as the move in September, when we had had no furniture at all, and could carry our belongings in suitcases, but it was still neither difficult nor expensive. It took one hour and cost $7.oo. 1

  Some pleasant things had happened even during the dreary find-a-new-apartment interval. Sprague de Camp, who had been gone for six weeks to attend officers' candidate school, returned on September 9 in the uniform of a naval lieutenant, senior grade. He looked very handsome, indeed.

  For the rest of the war, he and I did similar work, he in an officer's uniform, which entitled him to walk the streets as a presumed hero, and I in civilian dress and therefore entitled to slink the streets as a presumed draft dodger. I never resented it, though, for Sprague is far too lovable a person to elicit anything but affection, and never, never did he pull rank on me.

  1 Every move I have made since then has been more difficult than the one before, and more expensive. Eventually one becomes willing to suffer indescribable catastrophes rather than move, I suppose.

  On December 1, we visited the de Camps' place in Lansdowne, a western suburb of Philadelphia, and Gertrude and C
atherine de Camp met for the first time.

  What I remember best about that meeting is that Catherine scolded me rather thoroughly over my habit of referring to "my wife" in Gertrude's presence. She said it showed an ugly tendency to view Gertrude as my property, as an appendage of myself.

  My point of view in the matter was that I was proud of my achievement in managing to marry Gertrude and I referred to "my wife" only to make sure the world knew what I had accomplished. That, however, only had the truth going for it, so that it failed to carry conviction. As for Sprague, who always referred to Catherine as "Catherine," he maintained a discreet neutrality.

  The next day we saw lolanthe. Although I knew the various Gilbert and Sullivan plays by heart, this was the first time I had ever seen one staged, as opposed to hearing it on the radio. I was ravished with delight, and a week later we saw The Gondoliers.

  3

  When the year 1942 came to an end, it turned out I had sold only two stories in my fifth year as a professional writer, both very minor ones, and had earned only $152. This was less than one seventh what I had earned the year before and was, indeed, less than I had made in any year since my very first. I wasn't concerned, for my earnings at the Navy Yard had amounted to $1,420 that year and my total income was therefore over $1,500.

  As the new year of 1943 began (my twenty-third birthday, on January 2, 1943, was my first away from home and my first as a married man) I received a couple of letters from Fred Pohl.

  There was personal news—he was separating from his wife and he would soon be in the Army—but there was also science-fiction news. He wanted to try his hand at rewriting "Legal Rites" once more and resubmitting it. I agreed to that, of course.

  Pohl's letters reminded me that science fiction existed, and it was as though I suddenly emerged from the influence of the lotus. All at once I felt myself a writer again.

  Specifically, Pohl's mention of "Legal Rites" reminded me that I had never managed to sell a story to Unknown, and it was Unknown that was my ideal magazine. Even in Philadelphia, I managed to keep up to date in my Unknown reading, even though I was at least five issues behind in Astounding and read the other magazines not at all.

  So far I had written five stories intended for Unknown and all had been rejected. On January 13, 1943, I was suddenly impelled to make a sixth attempt.

  I began a story called "Author! Author!/' which dealt with a mystery writer's fictional detective who suddenly came alive. I wrote seven pages that day with an ease I had forgotten I could manage.

  Unfortunately, the nine-hour day at work (Saturday was only eight hours) had a draining effect, and I didn't work on the story every day. And when Gertrude was away, I was usually too downhearted to write at all.

  It wasn't till March 5 that I finished the first draft, and not until April 4 that I had finished the final copy. It was the first story I had actually finished in fourteen months.

  And meanwhile I kept experimenting with adulthood in various ways. My occasional poker games for pennies were an example. Then, on March 3, 1943, while Gertrude was in New York on her monthly visit, I worked up my courage and went to Philadelphia's one and only burlesque theater to see the one and only burlesque show I was ever to see.

  Like drinking the full bottle of soda, burlesque turned out to be a disappointment. The theater was dirty, the dancing girls were clearly tired and unhappy. The strippers showed me nothing I didn't know was there. And as for the off-color objects sold during intermission, it was clear from what I saw of them that they were pallid indeed, even by the standards of those days.

  A more serious project that March was my attempt to master the Russian language on my own. The Soviets were in high favor at the time, for during the winter of 1942-43 they had driven the Nazis back in marvelous fashion, canceling out almost all the gains the Germans had made in the previous summer.

  I regretted, therefore, that although my parents could speak Russian perfectly they had never given me the chance to learn it as a child when I would have picked it up as though I were blotting paper. I bought a Russian grammar on March 17, 1943, however, and got to work to repair the omission.

  The Cyrillic alphabet and the vocabulary were no problem, but the grammar was. The multiplicity of cases graveled me but I stuck with it until I reached Chapter 11. There I learned that there were two forms of each verb, depending on whether action was completed or ongoing.

  You formed the former from the latter (or, possibly, the latter from the former, I no longer remember) by adding the prefix pa in some cases, na in other cases, s in still other cases, introducing a vowel change in yet other cases.

  There were no rules as to which verbs underwent which changes. It all had to be learned by brute memory. And then, when I was beginning to suffer intensely, the chapter added with a straight face, "And some verbs are completely irregular." Thus, I recall, there were two verbs meaning "to speak," one being gavareet and the other skavat. You are gavareeting now, but you skavated yesterday (or possibly vice versa).

  At this point I discarded the book (actually, I threw it against the wall) on the ground that I would rather be sane than talk Russian. About a year later I repented, and began over from the beginning, going carefully and slowly—until I hit Chapter 11 and the book hit the wall again.

  To this day, therefore, I know no Russian. It frequently happens that someone of Russian descent or, on occasion, an actual Russian meets me and assumes from my name and my birthplace that I speak Russian. I must then always interrupt the spate of Slavic syllables by saying, "Nyet gavareet" or "Nyet skavat"—Ym not sure which—if either.

  5

  On the lighter side (or at least it seems lighter now, it didn't then), the Navy Yard was in the leisurely process of revising and improving its parking lot in the winter of 1942-43. As a result, everyone had to park in an unpaved desolation about half a mile away. The rains turned the said unpaved desolation into a deep sea of mud, a sea that never really dried after a rain before the next rain came.

  I remember once that we were maneuvering in Mud Lot when one of the members of the car pool, Tom Walb, who was sitting in the back seat, decided to get rid of his cigarette. He opened the rear left window and flipped out the butt just as another car passed us quickly on the left. He turned back in instant black-face.

  Since Tom Walb was a short, handsome fellow, who prided himself on his fine clothes and good appearance, it followed as a matter of course that the rest of us thought the incident a very funny one and soothed his feelings by laughing uproariously.

  We had to move across huge lengths of mud on foot once we got out of the car and, what made it worse, the contractors were planning

  to drain the parking lot (or something) and had therefore dug ditches across the desolation. They did not bother with any such boring task as marking out the paths of the ditches in any way, reasoning that anyone could see them. And so they could, until they were filled with mud and were thereby blended into the general flatness.

  I was walking gingerly across the mud, wearing what was a reasonably new pair of pants, and stepped into one of those ditches one day. My leg, complete with shoe, sock, and pants, disappeared into it up to the knee, and Jack Bullen (another labmate), who was up ahead and who had recognized the ditch and who had stepped across it without wearying himself by calling back a warning, stopped to help me out by laughing.

  I was furious and ran up to him red-faced. He assumed I meant fisticuffs and threw himself into a posture of defense, fists upraised. I meant no such thing, of course.

  Way back on January 22, 1939, I had a fist fight with a neighborhood boy and had been properly banged up. I recognized at that time that my instinctive feeling that fist fights were not a specialty of mine was completely correct. I have tended to avoid them ever since and to achieve my results by more effective methods—if I could think of them.

  This time I could think of one. I held onto one of his upraised arms to steady myself, and, lifting my muddy leg, wiped
it carefully on his overcoat, which looked quite new.

  Bullen was a tall, beaky-nosed fellow, very good and meticulous in his lab work, very hard-working and reliable—but totally lacking in a sense of humor. The rest of us couldn't resist kidding him and he would grow angry and seek for ways to get even.

  We all had wash bottles as a matter of course. These were flat-bottomed round flasks filled with distilled water. Pressure on a rubber bulb fitted into the side would eject a thin stream of water from a nozzle for use in rinsing beakers, washing out residues, wetting filter paper, or any of a dozen other things chemists were always eager to do.

  The wash bottles could also be used to send a thin stream of water down the unsuspecting neck of a fellow worker who, for some reason, had stooped. Bullen modified his own wash bottle in such a way that it ejected a stream of water farther and more forcefully than one would think possible. He would save up hurts and repay them with water when least expected. At times we would try to return in kind, but he would always win.

  Once when Bullen was away for a day, someone (not me) care-

  fully plugged his wash bottle with wax in five different places and put it back. When Bullen returned, one of us (not me) walked up casually to him, lifted a wash bottle, and let him have a trickle on his sleeve. Bullen stared disbelievingly at the other, who made no attempt to get out of range, snatched up his own powerful piece of artillery, and attempted to return the attack—and nothing happened.

  He quickly dismantled it, and located and removed a wax plug. He was greeted with another squirt of water, and found that his wash bottle still did not work. The process was repeated over and over, with everyone in the lab suspending operations to watch. It was only when Bullen had located the fifth and last plug and had removed it that a truce was hastily declared.