than you would expect from a seventeen-yearold amateur. I mean, you would
have wondered how anybody just seventeen and not even through freshman in
college, could have learned the-right words. Though all you would have
needed probably would be an old dictionary from back in Shakespeare's time
when, so they say, people hadn't learned how to blush at words. That is,
anybody except Temple Drake, who didn't need a dictionary, who was a fast
learner and so even just one lesson would have
262 WILLIAM FAULKNER
been enough for her, let alone three or four or a dozen or two or three
dozen.
(staring at the Governor)
No, not even one lesson because the bad was already there waiting, who
hadn't even heard yet that you must be already resisting the corruption
not only before you look at it but before you even know what it is, what
you are resisting. So I wrote the letters, I dont know how many, enough,
more than enough because just one would have been enough. And that's all.
GOVERNOR
All?
TEMPLE
Yes. You've certainly heard the blackmail. The letters turned up again
of course. And of course, being Temple Drake, the first way to buy them
back that Temple Drake thought of, was to produce the material for
another set of them.
STEVENS
(to Temple)
Yes, that's all. But you've got to tell him why it's all.
TEMPLE
I thought I had. I wrote some letters that you would have thought that
even Temple Drake might have been ashamed to put on paper, and then the
man I wrote them to died, and I married another man and reformed, or
thought I had, and bore two children and hired another reformed whore so
that I would have somebody to talk to, and I even thought I had forgotten
about the letters until they turned up again and then I found out that
I not only hadn't forgot about the letters, I hadn't even reformed-
STEVENS
All right. Do you want me to tell it, then?
TEMPLE
And you were the one preaching moderation.
STEVENS
I was preaching against orgasms of it.
TEMPLE
(bitterly)
Oh, I know. Just suffering. Not for anything: just suf-
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 263
fering. Just because it's good for you, like calomel or ipecac.
(to Governor) All right. What?
GOVERNOR
The young man died-
TEMPLE
Oh yes.-Died, shot from a car while be was slipping up the alley behind the
house, to climb up the same drainpipe I could have climbed down at any time
and got away, to see me-the one time, the first time, the only time when we
thought we had dodged, fooled him, could be alone together, just the two of
us, after all the . . . other ones.-If love can be, mean anything, except
the newness, the learning, the peace, the privacy: no shame: not even
conscious that you are naked because you are just using the nakedness be-
cause that's a part of it; then he was dead, killed, shot down right in the
middle of thinking about me, when in just one more minute maybe he would
have been in the room with me, when all of him except just his body was
already in the room with me and the door locked at last for just the two of
us alone; and then it was all over and as though it had never been, hap-
pened: it had to be as though it had never happened, except that that was
even worse-
(rapidly)
Then the courtroom in Jefferson and I didn't care, not about anything any
more, and my father and brothers waiting and then the year in Europe, Paris,
and I still didn't care, and then after a while it really did get easier.
You know. People are lucky. They are wonderful. At first you think that you
can bear only so much and then you will be free. Then you find out that you
can bear anything, you really can and then it wont even matter. Because
suddenly it could be as if it had never been, never happened. You know:
somebody-Hemingway, wasn't it?-wrote a book about how it actually happened
to a gir-woman, if she refused to accept it, no matter who remembered,
bragged. And besides, the ones who could-remember-were both dead. Then Gowan
came to Paris that winter and we were married-at the Embassy, with a
reception afterward at the Crillon, and if that couldn't fumigate an
American past, what else this
264 WILLIAM FAULKNER
side of heaven could you hope for to remove stink? Not to mention a
new automobile and a honeymoon in a rented hideaway built for his
European mistress by a Mohammedan prince at Cap Ferrat. Only-
(she pauses, falters, for just an instant, then goes on)
-we-I thought we-I didn't want to efface the stink really-
(rapidly now, tense, erect, her hands gripped again into
fists on her lap)
You know: just the marriage would be enough: not the Embassy and the
Crillon and Cap Ferrat but just to kneel down, the two of us, and say
'We have sinned, forgive us.' And then maybe there would be the love
this time-the peace, the quiet, the no shame that I . . .
didn't-missed that other time-
(falters again, then rapidly again, glib and succinct)
Love, but more than love too: not depending on just love to hold two
people together, make them better than either one would have been
alone, but tragedy, suffering, having suffered and caused grief;
having something to have to live with even when, because you knew both
of you could never forget it. And then I began to believe something
even more than that: that there was something even better, stronger,
than tragedy to hold two people together: forgiveness. Only that
seemed to be wrong. Only maybe it wasn't the forgiveness that was
wrong, but the gratitude; and maybe the only thing worse than having
to give gratitude constantly all the time, is having to accept it-
STEVENS
Which is exactly backward. What was wrong wasn't-
GOVERNOR
Gavin.
STEVENS
Shut up yourself, Henry. What was wrong wasn't Temple's good name. It
wasn't even her husband's conscience. It was his vanity: the
Virginia-trained aristocrat caught with his gentility around his knees
like the guest in the trick Hollywood bathroom. So the forgiving
wasn't enough for him, or perhaps he hadn't read Hemingway's book.
Because after about a year, his restiveness under the onus of
accepting the
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 265
gratitude began to take the form of doubting the paternity of their child.
TEMPLE
Oh God. Oh God.
GOVERNOR
Gavin.
(Stevens stops.) No more, I said. Call that an order.
(to Temple) Yes. Tell me.
TEMPLE
I'm trying to. I expected our main obstacle in this would be the bereaved
plaintiff. Apparently though it's the defendant's lawyer. I mean, I'm trying
to tell you about one Temple Drake, and our Uncle Gavin is showing you
another one. So already you've got two different people begging for the same