Requiem for a Nun

324 WILLIAM FAULKNER

at it a while; all you have to do now is remember it) there is the clear

undistanced voice as though out of the delicate anterma-skeins of radio,

further than empress's throne, than splendid insatiation, even than

matriarch's peaceful rocking chair, across the vast instantaneous

intervention, from the long long time ago: 'Listen, stranger; this was

myself: this was V

Scene One

Interior, the Jail. 10:30 A.M. March twelfth.

The common room, or 'bull-pen'. It is on the second floor. A heavy barred

door at left is the entrance to it, to the entire cell-block, which-the

cells-are indicated by a row of steel doors, each with its own individual

small barred window, lining the right wall. A narrow passage at the far end

of the right wall leads to more cells. A single big heavily barred window in

the rear wall looks down into the street. It is mid-morning of a sunny day.

The door, left, opens with a heavy clashing of the steel lock, and swings

backward and outward. Temple enters, followed by Stevens and the Jailor.

Temple has changed her dress, but wears the fur coat and the same hat.

Stevens is dressed exactly as he was in Act Two. The Jailor is a typical

small-town turnkey, in shirt-sleeves and no necktie, carrying the heavy

keys on a big iron ring against his leg as a farmer carries a lantern, say.

He is drawing the door to behind him as he enters.

Temple stops just inside the room. Stevens perforce stops also. The Jailor

closes the door and locks it on the inside with another clash and clang of

steel, and turns.

JAILOR

Well, Lawyer, singing school will be over after tonight, huh?

(to Temple)

You been away, you see. You dont know about this, you aint up with

what's-

(he stops himself quickly; he is about to commit what he

would call a very bad impoliteness, what in the tenets of

his class and kind would be the most grave of gaucherie and

bad taste: referring directly to a recent bereavement in the

presence of the bereaved, particularly one of