Requiem for a Nun Read online

  —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 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 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 shame, 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 respectability 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-dope-fiend-nigger whore out of the gutter to nurse their children, because the rest of the young country-club set didn’t know that it wasn’t the Gowan Stevenses but Temple Drake who had chosen the ex-dope-fiend-nigger whore for the reason that an ex-dope-fiend-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 pedestal, 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 anti-social 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 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—well, maybe not specifically reminded, but say made—kept—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 had 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 nephew—had made what he p
robably 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 one—was 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 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 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—have 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 ease. 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 bargain, 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, 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, or 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, destroyed 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—

  The 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 catastrophe can do to you, is crush and obliterate the fragility; you were the better man, you out-faced even catastrophe, outlasted it, compelled it to move first; you did not 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 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. Don’t 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 or 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, and 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 Temple had hidden them, and getting the letters and getting rid of him forever, instead of hiding the money and jewels from Temple in her turn—which was what Temple herself thought too apparently, since she—Temple—told him a lie about how much the money was, telling him it was only two hundred dollars when it was actually almost two thousand. So you would have said that he wanted the money indeed, and just how much, how badly, to have been willing to pay that price for it. Or maybe he was being wise—‘smart,’ he would have called it—beyond his years and time, and without having actually planned it that way, was really inventing a new and safe method of kidnapping: that is, pick an adult victim capable of signing her own
checks—also with an infant in arms for added persuasion—and not forcing but actually persuading her to come along under her own power and then—still peaceably—extracting the money later at your leisure, using the tender welfare of the infant as a fulcrum for your lever. Or maybe we’re both wrong and both should give credit—what little of it—where credit—what little of it—is due, since it was just the money with her too at first, though he was probably still thinking it was just the money at the very time when, having got her own jewelry together and found where her husband kept the key to the strongbox (and I imagine, even opened it one night after her husband was in bed asleep and counted the money in it or at least made sure there was money in it or anyway that the key would actually open it), she found herself still trying to rationalise why she had not paid over the money and got the letters and destroyed them and so rid herself forever of her Damocles’ roof. Which was what she did not do. Because Hemingway—his girl—was quite right: all you have got to do is, refuse to accept it. Only, you have got to be told truthfully beforehand what you must refuse; the gods owe you that—at least a clear picture and a clear choice. Not to be fooled by . . . who knows? probably even gentleness, after a fashion, back there on those afternoons or whenever they were in the Memphis . . . all right: honeymoon, even with a witness; in this case certainly anything much better lacked, and indeed, who knows? (I am Red now) even a little of awe, incredulous hope, incredulous amazement, even a little of trembling at this much fortune, this much luck dropping out of the very sky itself, into his embrace; at least (Temple now) no gang: even rape become tender: only one, an individual, still refusable, giving her at least (this time) the similitude of being wooed, of an opportunity to say Yes first, letting her even believe she could say either one of yes or no. I imagine that he (the new one, the blackmailer) even looked like his brother—a younger Red, the Red of a few years even before she knew him, and—if you will permit it—less stained, so that in a way it may have seemed to her that here at last even she might slough away the six years’ soilure of struggle and repentance and terror to no avail. And if this is what you meant, then you are right too: a man, at least a man, after six years of that sort of forgiving which debased not only the forgiven but the forgiven’s gratitude too—a bad man of course, a criminal by intent regardless of how cramped his opportunities may have been up to this moment; and, capable of blackmail, vicious and not merely competent to, but destined to, bring nothing but evil and disaster and ruin to anyone foolish enough to enter his orbit, cast her lot with his. But—by comparison, that six years of comparison—at least a man—a man so single, so hard and ruthless, so impeccable in amorality, as to have a kind of integrity, purity, who would not only never need nor intend to forgive anyone anything, he would never even realise that anyone expected him to forgive anyone anything; who wouldn’t even bother to forgive her if it ever dawned on him that he had the opportunity, but instead would simply black her eyes and knock a few teeth out and fling her into the gutter: so that she could rest secure forever in the knowledge that, until she found herself with a black eye and or spitting teeth in the gutter, he would never even know he had anything to forgive her for.