Requiem for a Nun

clemency; if everybody concerned keeps on splitting up into two people, you

wont even know who to pardon, will you? And now that I mention it, here we

are, already back to Nancy Mannigoe, and now surely it shouldn't take long.

Let's see, we'd got back to Jefferson too, hadn't we? Anyway, we are now. I

mean, back in Jefferson, back home. You know: face it: the disgrace: the

sbame, face it down, good and down forever, never to haunt us more;

together, a common front to stink because we love each other and have

forgiven all, strong in our love and mutual forgiveness. Besides having

everything else: the Gowan Stevenses, young, popular: a new bungalow on the

right street to start the Saturday-night hangovers in, a country club with

a country-club younger set of rallying friends to make it a Saturday-night

hangover worthy the name of Saturday-night country-club hangover, a pew in

the right church to recover from it in, provided of course they were not too

hungover even to get to church. Then the son and heir came; and now we have

Nancy: nurse: guide: mentor, catalyst, glue, whatever you want to call it,

holding the whole lot of them together-not just a magnetic center for the

heir apparent and the other little princes or princesses in their orderly

succession, to circle around, but for the two bigger hunks too of mass or

matter or dirt or whatever it is shaped in the image of God, in a semblance

at least of order and respecta-

266 WILLIAM FAULKNER

bility and peace; not ole cradle-rocking black mammy at all, because

the Gowan Stevenses are young and modern, so young and modern that all

the other young country-club set applauded when they took an

ex-dopefiend nigger whore out of the gutter to nurse their children,

because the rest of the young countryclub set didn't know that it

wasn't the Gowan Stevenses but Temple Drake who had chosen the ex-

dopefiend nigger whore for the reason that an exdopefiend nigger whore

was the only animal in Jefferson that spoke Temple Drake's language-

(quickly takes up the burning cigarette from the tray and puffs at it,

talking through the puffs) Oh yes, I'm going to tell this too. A

confidante. You know: the big-time ball player, the idol on the pedes-

tal, the worshipped; and the worshipper, the acolyte, the one that

never had and never would, no matter how willing or how hard she

tried, get out of the sandlots, the bush league. You know: the long

afternoons, with the last electric button pressed on the last cooking

or washing or sweeping gadget and the baby safely asleep for a while,

and the two sisters in sin swapping trade or anyway avocational

secrets over Coca-Colas in the quiet kitchen. Somebody to talk to, as

we all seem to need, want, have to have, not to converse with you nor

even agree with you, but just keep quiet and listen. Which is all that

people really want, really need; I mean, to behave themselves, keep

out of one another's hair; the maladjustments which they tell us breed

the arsonists and rapists and murderers and thieves and the rest of

the antisocial enemies, are not really maladjustments but simply

because the embryonic murderers and thieves didn't have anybody to

listen to them: which is an idea the Catholic Church discovered two

thousand years ago only it just didn't carry it far enough or maybe it

was too busy being the Church to have time to bother with man, or

maybe it wasn't the Church's fault at all but simply because it had to

deal with human beings and maybe if the world was just populated with

a kind of creature half of which were dumb, couldn't do anything but

listen, couldn't even escape from having to listen to the other half,

there wouldn't even be any war. Which was what Temple had. somebody

paid by the week just to listen, which you would have thought would

have been enough; and

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 267

then the other baby came, the infant, the doomed sacrifice (though of course

we dont know that yet) and you would have thought that this was surely

enough, that now even Temple Drake would consider herself safe, could be

depended on, having two-what do sailors call them? oh yes,

sheet-anchors-now. Only it wasn't enough. Because Hemingway was right. I

mean, the gir-woman in his book. All you have got to do is, refuse to

accept. Only, you have got to ... refuse

STEVENS

Now, the letters-

GOVERNOR

(watching Temple) Be quiet, Gavin.

STEVENS

No, I'm going to talk a while now. We'll even stick to the sports metaphor

and call it a relay race, with the senior member of the team carrying the .

. . baton, twig, switch, sapling, tree-whatever you want to call the

symbolical wood, up what remains of the symbolical hill.

(the lights flicker, grow slightly dimmer, then flare back up and

steady again, as though in a signal, a warning)

The letters. The blackmail. The blackmailer was Red's younger brother-a

criminal of course, but at least a man-

TEMPLE

No! No!

STEVENS

(to Temple)

Be quiet too. It only goes up a hill, not over a precipice. Besides, it's

only a stick. The letters were not first. The first thing was the gratitude.

And now we have even come to the husband, my nephew. And when I say 'past,'

I mean that part of it which the husband knows so far, which apparently was

enough in his estimation. Because it was not long before she discovered,

realized, that she was going to spend a good part of the rest of her days

(nights too) being forgiven for it; in being not only constantly reminded-

268 WILLIAM FAULKNER

well, maybe not specifically reminded, but say madekept-aware of it in

order to be forgiven for it so that she might be grateful to the

forgiver, but in having to employ more and more of what tact she had-

and the patience which she probably didn't know she had, since until

now she had never occasion to need patience-to make the gratitude-in

which she bad probably had as little experience as she had had with

patience-acceptable to meet with, match, the high standards of the

forgiver. But she was not too concerned. Her husband-my nepbew-had

made what he probably considered the supreme sacrifice to expiate his

part in her past; she had no doubts of her capacity to continue to

supply whatever increasing degree of gratitude the increasing

appetite-or capacity-of its addict would demand, in return for the

sacrifice which, so she believed, she had accepted for the same reason

of gratitude. Besides, she still had the legs and the eyes; she could

walk away, escape, from it at any moment she wished, even though her

past might have shown her that she probably would not use the ability

to locomote to escape from threat and danger. Do you accept that?

GOVERNOR

All right. Go on.

STEVENS

Then she discovered that the child-the first onewas on the way. For

that first instant, she must have known something almost like frenzy.

Now she couldn't escape; she had waited too long. But it was worse