Requiem for a Nun Read online

  But not drifting, these: paddling: because this was upstream, bearing not volitionless into the unknown mystery and authority, but establishing in the wilderness a point for men to rally to in conscience and free will, scanning, watching the dense inscrutable banks in their turn too, conscious of the alien incorrigible eyes too perhaps but already rejectant of them, not that the wilderness’s dark denizens, already dispossessed at Doak’s Stand, were less inveterate now, but because this canoe bore not the meek and bloody cross of Christ and Saint Louis, but the scales the blindfold and the sword—up the river to Le Fleur’s Bluff, the trading post-store on the high mild promontory established by the Canadian voyageur, whose name, called and spelled ‘Leflore’ now, would be borne by the half-French half-Choctaw hereditary first chief of the Choctaw nation who, siding with the white men at the Council of Dancing Rabbit, would remain in Mississippi after his people departed for the west, to become in time among the first of the great slave-holding cotton planters and leave behind him a county and its seat named for himself and a plantation named in honor of a French king’s mistress—stopping at last though still paddling slowly to hold the pirogue against the current, looking not up at the dark dispossessed faces watching them from the top of the bluff, but looking staring rather from one to another among themselves in the transfixed boat, saying, ‘This is the city. This is the State’;

  1821, General Hinds and his co-commissioners, with Abraham DeFrance, superintendent of public buildings at Washington, to advise them, laid out the city according to Thomas Jefferson’s plan to Territorial Governor Claiborne seventeen years ago, and built the statehouse, thirty by forty feet of brick and clay and native limestone yet large enough to contain the dream; the first legislature convened in it in the new year 1822;

  And named the city after the other old hero, hero Hinds’ brother-in-arms on beaten British and Seminole fields and presently to be President—the old duellist, the brawling lean fierce mangy durable old lion who set the well-being of the Nation above the White House, and the health of his new political party above either, and above them all set, not his wife’s honor, but the principle that honor must be defended whether it was or not since, defended, it was, whether or not;—Jackson, that the new city created not for a city but a central point for the governance of men, might partake of the successful soldier’s courage and endurance and luck, and named the area surrounding it ‘Hinds County’ after the lesser hero, as the hero’s quarters, even empty, not only partake of his dignity but even guard and increase its stature;

  And needed them, the luck at least: in 1829 the Senate passed a bill authorising the removal of the capital to Clinton, the House defeated it; in 1830 the House itself voted to move to Port Gibson on the Mississippi, but with the next breath reconsidered, reneged, the following day they voted to move to Vicksburg but nothing came of that either, no records (Sherman burned them in 1863 and notified his superior, General Grant, by note of hand with comfortable and encouraging brevity.) to show just what happened this time: a trial, a dry run perhaps or perhaps still enchannelled by a week’s or a month’s rut of habit or perhaps innocent in juvenility, absent or anyway missing the unanimous voice or presence of the three patriot-dreamers who forced the current and bore the dream, like a child with dynamite: innocent of its own power for alteration: until in 1832, perhaps in simple self-defense or perhaps in simple weariness, a constitution was written designating Jackson as the capital if not in perpetuity at least in escrow until 1850, when (hoped perhaps) a maturer legislature would be composed of maturer men outgrown or anyway become used to the novelty of manipulation;

  Which by that time was enough; Jackson was secure, impregnable to simple toyment; fixed and founded strong, it would endure always; men had come there to live and the railroads had followed them, crossing off with steel cancellations the age of the steamboat: in ’36 to Vicksburg, in ’37 to Natchez, then last of all the junction of two giving a route from New Orleans to Tennessee and the Southern railroad to New York and the Atlantic ocean; secure and fixed: in 1836 Old Hickory himself addressed the legislature in its own halls, five years later Henry Clay was entertained under that roof; it knew the convention called to consider Clay’s last compromise, it saw that Convention in 1861 which declared Mississippi to be the third star in that new galaxy of commonwealths dedicated to the principle that voluntary communities of men shall be not just safe but even secured from Federal meddling, and knew General Pemberton while defending that principle and right, and Joseph Johnston: and Sherman: and fire: and nothing remained, a City of Chimneys (once pigs rooted in the streets; now rats did) ruled over by a general of the United States army while the new blood poured in: men who had followed, pressed close the Federal field armies with spoiled grain and tainted meat and spavined mules, now pressing close the Federal provost-marshals with carpet bags stuffed with blank ballot-forms on which freed slaves could mark their formal X’s;

  But endured; the government, which fled before Sherman in 1863, returned in ’65, and even grew too despite the fact that a city government of carpetbaggers held on long after the State as a whole had dispossessed them; in 1869 Tougaloo College for Negroes was founded, in 1884 Jackson College for Negroes was brought from Natchez, in 1898 Campbell College for Negroes removed from Vicksburg; Negro leaders developed by these schools intervened when in 1868 one ‘Buzzard’ Egglestone instigated the use of troops to drive Governor Humphries from the executive offices and mansion; in 1887 Jackson women sponsored the Kermis Ball lasting three days to raise money for a monument to the Confederate dead; in 1884 Jefferson Davis spoke for his last time in public at the old Capitol; in 1890 the state’s greatest convention drew up the present constitution;

  And still the people and the railroads: the New Orleans and Great Northern down the Pearl River valley, the Gulf Mobile and Northern northeast; Alabama and the eastern black prairies were almost a commuter’s leap and a line to Yazoo City and the upper river towns made of the Great Lakes five suburban ponds; the Gulf and Ship Island opened the south Mississippi lumber boom and Chicago voices spoke among the magnolias and the odor of jasmine and oleander; population doubled and trebled in a decade, in 1892 Millsaps College opened its doors to assume its place among the first establishments for higher learning; then the natural gas and the oil, Texas and Oklahoma license plates flitted like a migration of birds about the land and the tall flames from the vent pipes stood like incandescent plumes above the century-cold ashes of Choctaw campfires and the vanished imprints of deer; and in 1903 the new Capitol was completed—the golden dome, the knob, the gleamy crumb, the gilded pustule longer than the miasma and the gigantic ephemeral saurians, more durable than the ice and the pre-night cold, soaring, hanging as one blinding spheroid above the center of the Commonwealth, incapable of being either looked full or evaded, peremptory, irrefragible, and reassuring;

  In the roster of Mississippi names:

  Claiborne. Humphries. Dickson. McLaurin. Barksdale. Lamar. Prentiss. Davis. Sartoris. Compson;

  In the roster of cities:

  Jackson. Alt. 294 ft. Pop. (A.D.1950) 201,092.

  Railroads: Illinois Central, Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, Alabama & Vicksburg, Gulf & Ship Island.

  Bus: Tri-State Transit, Vanardo, Thomas, Greyhound, Dixie-Greyhound, Teche-Greyhound, Oliver.

  Air: Delta, Chicago & Southern.

  Transport: Street buses, Taxis.

  Accommodations: Hotels, Tourist camps, Rooming houses.

  Radio: WJDX, WTJS.

  Diversions: chronic: S.I.A.A., Basketball Tournament, Music Festival, Junior Auxiliary Follies, May Day Festival, State Tennis Tournament, Red Cross Water Pageant, State Fair, Junior Auxiliary Style Show, Girl Scouts Horse Show, Feast of Carols.

  Diversions: acute: Religion, Politics.

  Scene I

  Office of the Governor of the State. 2:00 A.M. March twelfth.

  The whole bottom of
the stage is in darkness, as in Scene I, Act One, so that the visible scene has the effect of being held in the beam of a spotlight. Suspended too, since it is upper left and even higher above the shadow of the stage proper than the same in Scene I, Act One, carrying still further the symbolism of the still higher, the last, the ultimate seat of judgment.

  It is a corner or section of the office of the Governor of the Commonwealth, late at night, about two A.M.—a clock on the wall says two minutes past two—, a massive flat-topped desk bare except for an ashtray and a telephone, behind it a high-backed heavy chair like a throne; on the wall behind and above the chair, is the emblem, official badge, of the State, sovereignty (a mythical one, since this is rather the State of which Yoknapatawpha County is a unit)—an eagle, the blind scales of justice, a device in Latin perhaps, against a flag. There are two other chairs in front of the desk, turned slightly to face each other, the length of the desk between them.

  The Governor stands in front of the high chair, between it and the desk, beneath the emblem on the wall. He is symbolic too: no known person, neither old nor young; he might be someone’s idea not of God but of Gabriel perhaps, the Gabriel not before the Crucifixion but after it. He has obviously just been routed out of bed or at least out of his study or dressing room; he wears a dressing gown, though there is a collar and tie beneath it, and his hair is neatly combed.

  Temple and Stevens have just entered. Temple wears the same fur coat, hat, bag, gloves etc. as in Act One, Scene II, Stevens is dressed exactly as he was in Scene III, Act One, is carrying his hat. They are moving toward the two chairs at either end of the desk.

  Stevens

  Good morning, Henry. Here we are.

  Governor

  Yes. Sit down.

  (as Temple sits down)

  Does Mrs Stevens smoke?

  Stevens

  Yes. Thank you.

  He takes a pack of cigarettes from his topcoat pocket, as though he had come prepared for the need, emergency. He works one of them free and extends the pack to Temple. The Governor puts one hand into his dressing-gown pocket and withdraws it, holding something in his closed fist.

  Temple

  (takes the cigarette)

  What, no blindfold?

  (the Governor extends his hand across the desk. It contains a lighter. Temple puts the cigarette into her mouth. The Governor snaps on the lighter)

  But of course, the only one waiting execution is back there in Jefferson. So all we need to do here is fire away, and hope that at least the volley rids us of the metaphor.

  Governor

  Metaphor?

  Temple

  The blindfold. The firing squad. Or is metaphor wrong? Or maybe it’s the joke. But dont apologise; a joke that has to be diagrammed is like trying to excuse an egg, isn’t it? The only thing you can do is, bury them both, quick.

  (the Governor approaches the flame to Temple’s cigarette. She leans and accepts the light, then sits back)

  Thanks.

  The Governor closes the lighter, sits down in the tall chair behind the desk, still holding the lighter in his hand, his hands resting on the desk before him. Stevens sits down in the other chair across from Temple, laying the pack of cigarettes on the desk beside him.

  Governor

  What has Mrs Gowan Stevens to tell me?

  Temple

  Not tell you: ask you. No, that’s wrong. I could have asked you to revoke or commute or whatever you do to a sentence to hang when we—Uncle Gavin telephoned you last night.

  (to Stevens)

  Go on. Tell him. Aren’t you the mouthpiece?—isn’t that how you say it? Don’t lawyers always tell their patients—I mean clients—never to say anything at all: to let them do all the talking?

  Governor

  That’s only before the client enters the witness stand.

  Temple

  So this is the witness stand.

  Governor

  You have come all the way here from Jefferson at two o’clock in the morning. What would you call it?

  Temple

  All right. Touché then. But not Mrs Gowan Stevens: Temple Drake. You remember Temple: the all-Mississippi debutante whose finishing school was the Memphis sporting house? About eight years ago, remember? Not that anyone, certainly not the sovereign state of Mississippi’s first paid servant, need be reminded of that, provided they could read newspapers eight years ago or were kin to somebody who could read eight years ago or even had a friend who 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 eatin
g 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, already damned before she was ever born, whose only reason for living was to get the chance to die a murderess on the gallows.—Who not only entered the home of the socialite Gowan Stevenses out of the gutter, but made her debut into the public life of her native city while lying in the gutter with a white man trying to kick her teeth or at least her voice back down her throat.—You remember, Gavin: what was his name? it was before my time in Jefferson, but you remember: the cashier in the bank, the pillar of the church or anyway in the name of his childless wife; and this Monday morning and still drunk, Nancy comes up while he is unlocking the front door of the bank and fifty people standing at his back to get in, and Nancy comes into the crowd and right up to him and says, ‘Where’s my two dollars, white man?’ and he turned and struck her, knocked her across the pavement into the gutter and then ran after her, stomping and kicking at her face or anyway her voice which was still saying ‘Where’s my two dollars, white man?’ until the crowd caught and held him still kicking at the face lying in the gutter, spitting blood and teeth and still saying, ‘It was two dollars more than two weeks ago and you done been back twice since’—