Going

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?