When the speeches were done, refreshments were served. Then, accompanied only by his closest kin, fifteen or twenty people, Golding was ushered into the innermost room of the Chambers of Farewell. The door slid shut behind him, and in his absence the Leavetaking party proceeded merrily.
There were four such events in the next five weeks At two of them—the Goings of Michael Green and Katherine Parks—Staunt was asked to give the speech of farewell. It was a task that he performed gracefully, serenely, and, he thought, with a good deal of eloquence. He spoke for ten minutes about Michael Green, for close to fifteen about Katherine Parks, talking not so much about the Departing Ones, whom he had scarcely come to know well, but about the entire philosophy of Going, the beauty and wonder of the act of world-renunciation. It was not customary for the giver of the speech of farewell to manage such sustained feats, and his audience listened in total fascination; if the occasion had permitted it, Staunt suspected, they would have applauded.
So he had a new vocation, and several Departing Ones whom he did not know at all accelerated their own Goings so that they would not fail to have Staunt speak at the rites. It was summer now, and Arizona was caught in glistening tides of heat. Staunt never went outdoors any longer; he spent much of his time mingling in the recreation center, doing research, so to speak, for future oratory. He rarely read these days. He never listened to music. He had settled into a pleasing, quiet routine. This was his fourth month at the House of Leavetaking. Except for Seymour Church, who still refused to be nudged into Going, Staunt was now the senior Departing One in point of length of residence. And at the end of July, Church at last took his leave. Staunt, of course, spoke, touching on the Departing One’s slow journey toward Going, and it was difficult for him to avoid self-conscious references to his own similar reluctance. Why do I tarry here? Staunt wondered. Why do I not say the word?
Every few weeks his son Paul visited him. Staunt found their meetings difficult. Paul, showing signs of strain and anxiety, always seemed on the verge of blurting out, “Why don’t you. Go, already?” And Staunt would have no answer, for he did not know the answer. He had read Hallam four times. Philosophically and psychologically he was prepared to Go. Yet he remained.
Twenty-Five
In mid-August Martin Bollinger entered his suite, held out a sheet of paper, and said, “What’s this, Henry?”
Staunt glanced at it. It was a photocopy of the aria from The New Inn. “Where did you find that?” he asked.
“One of the staff people came across it while tidying your room.”
“I thought we were entitled to privacy.”
“This isn’t an inquisition, Henry. I’m just curious. Have you started to compose again?”
“That scrap is all I wrote. It was months ago.”
“It’s fascinating music,” Bollinger said.
“Is it, now? I thought it was rather harsh and forced, myself.”
“No. No. Not at all. You always talked about a Ben Jonson opera, didn’t you? And now you’ve begun it.”
“I was enlivening a dull day,” said Staunt. “Mere scribbling.”
“Henry, would you like to get out of this place?”
“Are we back to that?”
“Obviously you still have music in you. Perhaps a great opera.”
“Which you mean to squeeze out of me, eh? Don’t talk nonsense. There’s nothing left in me, Martin. I’m here to Go.”
“You haven’t Gone, though.”
“You’ve noticed that,” Staunt said.
“It was made clear to you at the beginning that you wouldn’t be rushed. But I’ve begun to suspect, Henry, that you aren’t interested in Going at all, that you’re marking time here, perhaps incubating this opera, perhaps coming to terms with something indigestible in your soul. Whatever. You don’t have to Go. We’ll send you home. Finish The New Inn. Think the thoughts you want to think. Reapply for Going next year or the year after.”
“You want that opera out of me, don’t you?”
“I want you to be happy,” said Bollinger. “I want your Going to be right. The bit of music here is just a clue to your inner state.”
“There won’t be any opera, Martin. And I don’t plan to leave Omega Prime alive. To have put my family through this ordeal, and then to come home, to tell them it’s all been just a holiday lark out here—no. No.”
“As you wish,” Bollinger said. He smiled and turned away, leaving an unspoken question hanging like a sword between them: If you want to Go, Henry, why don’t you Go?
Twenty-Six
Staunt realized that he had taken on the status of a permanent Departing One, a kind of curator emeritus of the House of Fulfillment. Here he was, enjoying this life of ease and dignity, accepting the soft-voiced attentions of those who meant to slide him gently from the world, playing his role of patriarch among the shattered hulks that were the other Departing Ones here. Each week new ones came; he greeted them solemnly, helped them blend with those already in residence, and, in time, presided over their Goings. And he stayed on. Why? Why? Surely not out of fear of dying. Why, then, was he making a career out of his Going?
So that he might have the prestige of being a hero of his time, possibly—an exponent of noble renunciation, a practitioner of joyful departure. Making much glib talk of turning the wheel and creating a place for those to come—a twenty-first-century Sydney Carton, standing by the guillotine and praising the far, far better thing that he will do, only he finds himself enjoying the part so much that he forgets to kneel and present his neck to the blade.
Or maybe he is only interrupting the boredom of a too-bland life with a feigned fling at dying. The glamour of becoming a Departing One injecting interesting complexities into a static existence. But diversion and not death his real object. Yes? If that’s it, Henry, go home and write your opera; the holiday should have ended by now.
He came close to summoning Bollinger and asking to be sent home. But he fought the impulse down. To leave Omega Prime now would be the true cowardice. He owed the world a death. He had occupied this body long enough. His place was needed; soon he would Go. Soon. Soon. Soon.
Twenty-Seven
At the beginning of September there were four days in a row of rain, an almost unknown occurrence in that part of Arizona. Miss Elliot said that the Hopi, doing their annual snake dances on their mesas far to the north, had overdone things this year and sent rain clouds all through the state. Staunt, to the horror of the staff, went out each day to stand in the rain, letting the cool drops soak his thin gown, watching the water sink swiftly into the parched red soil. “You’ll catch your death of cold,” Mr. Falkenbridge told him sternly. Staunt laughed.
He requested another wide-spaced print-out of The New Inn and tried to set the opening scene. Nothing came. He could not find the right vocal line, nor could he recapture the strange color of the earlier aria. The tones and textures of Ben Jonson were gone from his head. He gave the project up without regret.
There were three Farewell ceremonies in eight days. Staunt attended them all, and spoke at two of them.
Arbitrarily, he chose September 19 as the day of his own Going. But he told no one about his decision, and September 19 came and went with Staunt unchanged.
At the end of the month he told Martin Bollinger, “I’m a fraud. I haven’t gotten an inch closer to Going in all the time I’ve been here. I never wanted to Go at all. I still want to live, to see and do things, to experience things. I came here out of desperation, because I was stale, I was bored, I needed novelty. To toy with death, to live a little scenario of dying—that was all I was after. Excitement. An event in an eventless life: Henry Staunt Prepares to Die. I’ve been using all you people as players in a cynical charade.”