Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner Page A

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 won’t 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 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 already know?

    Temple
    (after a moment: she doesn’t answer at first, staring at the Governor: then:)

    Uncle Gavin’s right. Maybe you are the one to ask the questions. Only, make it as painless 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 can’t. She can’t read or write either. You are hanging her under Mannigoe, which may be wrong too, though after tomorrow morning it won’t matter.

    Governor
    Oh 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 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 I, 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 don’t mean why I am asking you to save her, but why I—we hired a whore and a tramp and a dope fiend to nurse our children.

    (she puffs rapidly, talking through the smoke)

    To give her another chance—a human being too, even a nigger dope-fiend whore—

    Stevens
    Nor that, either.

    Temple
    (rapidly, with a sort of despair)

    Oh yes, not even stalling now. Why can’t 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 have to tell the rest of it in order to tell you why I had to have a dope-fiend 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 dope-fiend whore that could speak her language—

    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, dope fiend; hopeless,