eight years ago or even had a friend who could or even just hear or
even just remember or just believe the worst or even just hope for it.
GOVERNOR
I think I remember. What has Temple Drake to tell me then?
TEMPLE
That's not first. The first thing is, how much will I have to tell? I
mean, how much of it that you don't already know, so that I wont be
wasting all of our times telling it over? It's two o'clock in the
morning; you want to-maybe even need to-sleep some, even if you are
our first paid servant; maybe even because of that- You see? I'm
already lying. What does it matter to me how much sleep the state's
first paid
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 243
servant loses, any more than it matters to the first paid servant, a part of
whose job is being paid to lose sleep over the Nancy Mannigoes and Temple
Drakes?
STEVENS
Not lying.
TEMPLE
All right. Stalling, then. So maybe if his excellency or his honor or
whatever they call him, will answer the question, we can get on.
STEVENS
Why not let the question go, and just get on?
GOVERNOR
(to Temple)
Ask me your question. How much of what do I al
ready know?
TEMPLE
(after a moment: she doesn't answer at first, staring at the Gov-
ernor: then:)
Uncle Gavin's right. Maybe you are the one to ask the questions. Only, make
it as painicss as possible. Because it's going to be a little . . . painful,
to put it euphoniously-at least 'euphonious' is right, isn't it?-no matter
who bragged about blindfolds.
GOVERNOR
Tell me about Nancy-Mannihoe, Mannikoe-how does she spell it?
TEMPLE
She doesn't. She cant. She cant read or write either. You are hanging her
under Mannigoe, which may be wrong too, though after tomorrow morning it
wont matter.
GOVERNOR
Ob yes, Manigault. The old Charleston name.
STEVENS
Older than that. Maingault. Nancy's heritage-or
anyway her patronym-runs Norman blood.
GOVERNOR
Why not start by telling me about her?
TEMPLE
You are so wise. She was a dope-fiend whore that my
244 WILLIAM FAULKNER
husband and I took out of the gutter to nurse our children. She murdered
one of them and is to be hung tomorrow morning. We-her lawyer and I-have
come to ask you to save her.
GOVERNOR
Yes. I know all that. Why?
TEMPLE
Why am 1, the mother whose child she murdered, asking you to save her?
Because I have forgiven her.
(the Governor watches her, he and Stevens both do, waiting. She stares
back at the Governor steadily, not defiant: just alert) Because she was
crazy.
(the Governor watches her: she stares back, puffing rapidly
at the cigarette)
All right. You dont mean why I am asking you to save her, but why 1-we
hired a whore and a tramp and a dopefiend to nurse our children.
(she puffs rapidly, talking
through the smoke)
To give her another chance-a human being too, even a nigger dopefiend
whore-
STEVENS
Nor that, either.
TEMPLE
(rapidly, with a sort of despair) Oh yes, not even stalling
now. Why cant you stop lying? You know: just stop for a
while or a time like you can stop playing tennis or running
or dancing or drinking or eating sweets during Lent. You
know: not to reform: just to quit for a while, clear your
system, rest up for a new tune or set or lie? All right. It
was to have someone to talk to. And now you see? I'll have
to tell the rest of it in order to tell you why I had to
have a dopefiend whore to talk to, why Temple Drake, the
white woman, the all-Mississippi debutante, descendant of
long lines of statesmen and soldiers high and proud in the
high proud annals of our sovereign state, couldn't find
anybody except a nigger dopefiend whore that could speak her
language-
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 245
GOVERNOR
Yes. This far, this late at night. Tell it.
TEMPLE
(she puffs rapidly at the cigarette, leans and crushes it
out in the ashtray and sits erect again. She speaks in a
hard rapid brittle emotionless voice)
Whore, dopefiend; hopeless, already damned before she was ever born,
whose only reason for living was to get the chance to die a murderess
on the gallows.Who not only entered the home of the socialite Gowan
Stevenses out of the gutter, but made her debut into the public life
of her native city while lying in the gutter with a white man trying
to kick her teeth or at least her voice back down her throat.You
remember, Gavin: what was his name? it was before my time in
Jefferson, but you remember: the cashier in the bank, the pillar of
the church or anyway in the name of his childless wife; and this Mon-
day morning and still drunk, Nancy comes up while he is unlocking the
front door of the bank and fifty people standing at his back to get
in, and Nancy comes into the crowd and right up to him and says,
'Where's my two dollars, white man?' and he turned and struck her,
knocked her across the pavement into the gutter and then ran after
her, stomping and kicking at her face or anyway her voice which was
still saying 'Where's my two dollars, white man?' until the crowd
caught and held him still kicking at the face lying in the gutter,
spitting blood and teeth and still saying, 'It was two dollars more
than two weeks ago and you done been back twice since'-
She stops speaking, presses both hands to her face for an instant, then
removes them.
TEMPLE
No, no handkerchief; Lawyer Stevens and I made a dry run on
handkerchiefs before we left home tonight. Where was I?
GOVERNOR
(quotes her) 'It was already two dollars'-
246 WILLIAM FAULKNER
TEMPLE
So now I've got to tell all of it. Because that was just Nancy Mannigoe.
Temple Drake was in more than just a two-dollar Saturday-night house. But
then, I said touch~, didn't I?
She leans forward and starts to take up the crushed cigarette from the
ashtray. Stevens picks up the pack from the desk and prepares to offer it to
her. She withdraws her hand from the crushed cigarette and sits back.
TEMPLE
(to the proffered cigarette in Stevens' hand) No, thanks; I wont need it,
after all. From here out, it's merely anticlimax. Coup de grace. The
victim never feels that, does he?-Where was I?
(quickly) Never mind. I said that before too, didn't I?
(she sits for a moment, her hands gripped in her lap, motionless) There