Requiem for a Nun

than that. It was as though she realized for the first time that

you-everyone-must, or anyway may have to, pay for your past; that past

is something like a promissory note with a trick clause in it which,

as long as nothing goes wrong, can be manumitted in an orderly manner,

but which fate or luck or chance, can foreclose on you without

warning. That is, she had known, accepted, this all the time and

dismissed it because she knew that she could cope, was invulnerable

through simple integration, own-womanness. But now there would be a

child, tender and defenseless. But you never really give up hope, you

know, not even after you finally realize that people not only can bear

anything, but probably will have to, so probably even before the

frenzy had had time to fade, she found a

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 269

hope: which was the child's own tender and defenseless innocence: that

God-if there was one-would protect the child-not her: she asked no quarter

and wanted none; she could cope, either cope or bear it, but the child from

the sight draft of her past-because it was innocent, even though she knew

better, all her observation having shown her that God either would not or

could not-anyway, did not-save innocence just because it was innocent; that

when He said 'Suffer little children to come unto Me' He meant exactly that:

He meant suffer; that the adults, the fathers, the old in and capable of

sin, must be ready and willing-nay, eager-to suffer at any time, that the

little children shall come unto Him unanguished, unterrified, undefiled. Do

you accept that?

GOVERNOR

Go on.

STEVENS

So at least she had case. Not hope: ease. It was precarious of course, a

balance, but she could walk a tightrope too. It was as though she had

struck, not a barg~!in, but an armistice with God-if there was one. She had

not tried to cheat; she had not tried to evade the promissory note of her

past by intervening the blank check of a child's innocence-it was born now,

a little boy, a son, her husband's son and heir-between. She had not tried

to prevent the child; she had simply never thought about pregnancy in this

connection, since it took the physical fact of the pregnancy to reveal to

her the existence of that promissory note bearing her post-dated signature.

And since God-if there was one-must be aware of that, then she too would

bear her side of the bargain by not demanding on Him a second time since

He-if there was one-would at least play fair, would be at least a gentleman.

And that?

GOVERNOR

Go on.

STEVENS

So you can take your choice about the second child. Perhaps she was too busy

between the three of them to be careful enough: between the three of them:

the doom, the fate, the past; the bargain with God; the forgiveness and the

gratitude. Like the juggler says,

270 WILLIAM FAULKNER

not with three insentient replaceable Indian clubs or balls, but three

glass bulbs filled with nitroglycerin and not enough hands for one even:

one hand to offer the atonement with and another to receive the

forgiveness with and a third needed to offer the gratitude, and still a

fourth hand more and more imperative as time passed to sprinkle in

steadily and constantly increasing doses a little more and a little more

of the sugar and seasoning on the gratitude to keep it palatable to its

swallower-that perhaps: she just didn't have time to be careful enough,

perhaps it was desperation, or perhaps this was when her husband first

refuted or implied or anyway impugned whichever it was-his son's

paternity. Anyway, she was pregnant again; she had broken her word, de-

stroyed her talisman, and she probably knew fifteen months before the

letters that this was the end, and when the man appeared with the old

letters she probably was not even surprised: she had merely been

wondering for fifteen months what form the doom would take. And accept

this too-

lights flicker and dim further, then steady at that point.

And relief too. Because at last it was over; the roof had fallen,

avalanche had roared; even the helplessness and the impotence were

finished now, because now even the old fragility of bone and meat was no

longer a factor-and, who knows? because of that fragility, a kind of

pride, triumph: you have waited for destruction: you endured; it was

inevitable, inescapable, you had no hope. Nevertheless, you did not

merely cringe, crouching, your head, vision, buried in your arms; you

were not watching that poised arrestment all the time, true enough, but

that was not because you feared it but because you were too busy putting

one foot before the other, never for one instant really flagging,

faltering, even though you knew it was in vain-triumph in the very

fragility which no longer need concern you now, for the reason that the

all, the very worst, which catastraphe can do to you, is crush and

obliterate the fragility; you were the better man, you outfaced even

catastrophe, outlasted it, compelled it to move first; you did riot even

defy it, not even contemptuous: with no other tool or implement but that

worthless fragility, you held disaster off as with one hand you

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 271

might support the weightless silken canopy of a bed, for six long years

while it, with all its weight and power, could not possibly prolong the

obliteration of your fragility over five or six seconds; and even during

that five or six seconds you would still be the better man, since all that

it-the catastrophe-could deprive you of, you yourself had already written

off six years ago as being, inherently of and because of its own fragile

self, worthless.

GOVERNOR And now, the man.

STEVENS

I thought you would see it too. Even the first one stuck out like a sore

thumb. Yes, he

GOVERNOR

The first what?

STEVENS

(pauses, looks at the Governor) The first man: Red. Dont you

know anything at all about women? I never saw Red or this next

one, his brother, either, but all three of them, the other two

and her husband, probably all look enough alike or act enough

alike-maybe by simply making enough impossible unfulfillable

demands on her by being drawn to her enough to accept, risk,

almost incredible conditions-to be at least first cousins.

Where have you been all your life?

GOVERNOR

All right. The man.

STEVENS

At first, all he thought of, planned on, was interested in, intended, was

the money-to collect for the letters, beat it, get the hell out. Of

course, even at the end, all he was really after was still the money, not

only after he found out that he would have to take her and the child too

to get it, but even when it looked like all he was going to get, at least

for a while, was just a runaway wife and a six-months-old infant. In fact,

Nancy's error, her really fatal action on that fatal and tragic night, was

in not giving the money and the jewels both to him when she found where