Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 289

picture show for free since they had already paid for it in the taxes, and

nobody really listening since there was only one thing she could say. Except

that she didn't say it: just raising her head enough to be heard plain-not

loud: just plain-and said, 'Guilty, Lord' -like that, disrupting and

confounding and dispersing and flinging back two thousand years, the whole

edifice of corpus juris and rules of evidence we have been working to make

stand up by itself ever since Caesar, like when without even watching

yourself or even knowing you were doing it, you would reach out your hand

and turn over a chip and expose to air and light and vision the frantic and

aghast turmoil of an antbed. And moved the chip again, when even the ants

must have thought there couldn't be another one within her reach: when they

finally explained to her that to say she was not guilty, had nothing to do

with truth but only with law, and this time she said it right, Not Guilty,

and so then the jury could tell her she lied and everything was all correct

again and, as everybody thought, even safe, since now she wouldn't be asked

to say anything at all any more. Only, they were wrong; the jury said Guilty

and the judge said Hang and now everybody was already picking up his hat to

go home, when she picked up that chip too: the judge said, 'And may God have

mercy on your soul' and Nancy answered: 'Yes, Lord.'

(she turns suddenly, almost briskly, speaking so briskly that her

momentum carries her on past the instant when she sees and

recognises Gowan sitting where she had thought all the time that

the Governor was sitting and listening to her)

And that is all, this time. And so now you can tell us. I know you're not

going to save her, but now you can say so. It wont be difficult. Just one

word-

(she stops, arrested, utterly motionless, but even then she is

first to recover)

Oh God.

(Gowan rises quickly. Temple whirls to Stevens)

Why is it you must always believe in plants? Do you have to? Is it because

you have to? Because you are a