I watched the services over television while my chief editors visited
me one by one unaware of what had happened, ignoring the presence of
the guards. It was assumed that I was too shocked by grief to go to
the office. Needless to say, I did not mention to any of them what had
happened. At first I had thought it best to expose Paul as a murderer
and a fraud but, on second thought (the second thought which followed
all too swiftly upon the first, as Paul had no doubt assumed it would),
I did not want to risk the ruin of our work. Instead, I decided to
wait, to study Paul’s destruction, an event which I had grimly vowed
would take place as soon as possible. He could not now get rid of
either Iris or me in the near future and all we needed, I was sure, was
but a week or two. I was convinced of this though I had no specific
plan. Iris had more influence, more prestige in the Establishment than
Paul, and I figured, correctly as later events corroborated, that
Cave’s death would enhance her position. As for myself, I was not
without influence.
I kept my lines of communication clear the next few days during what
was, virtually, a house-arrest. The editors came to me regularly and I
continued to compose editorials. The explanation for my confinement to
my room was, according to a bulletin signed by Stokharin, a mild heart
condition. Everyone was most kind. I was amused when I first heard of
the diagnosis: one of Stokharin’s pellets in my food and death would be
ascribed to coronary occlusion, the result of the strain attendant upon
Cave’s death. I had less time than I thought. I made plans.
Paul’s funeral oration was competent though less than inspiring.
The Chief Resident of Dallas, one of the great new figures of the
Establishment, made an even finer speech over the corpse. I listened
attentively, judging from what was said and what was not said the
wind’s direction: it was quite obvious that Cavesway was to be the
heart of the doctrine. Death was to be embraced with passion; life
was the criminal; death the better reality; consciousness was an evil
which, in death’s oblivion, met its true fate ... man’s one perfect
virtuous act was the sacrifice of his own consciousness to the pure
nothing from which, by grim accident, it had come, a malignancy in
creation. The Chief Resident of Dallas was most eloquent, and chilling.
Even sequestered in my room, I caught some of the excitement which
circled the globe like a lightning storm. Thirty-five hundred
suicides were reported within forty-eight hours of Cave’s death. The
statisticians lost count of the number of people who fought to get
inside the building to see Cave in death. From my window, however,
I could see that Park Avenue had been roped off for a dozen blocks.
People, like ants, swarmed toward the gates of the tower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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