Requiem for a Nun

330 WILLIAM FAULKNER

TEMPLE

Hush! Hush! At least, don't blaspheme. But who am I to challenge the

language you talk about Him in, when He Himself certainly cant

challenge it, since that's the only language He arranged for you to

learn?

NANCY

What's wrong with what I said? Jesus is a man too. He's got to be.

Menfolks listens to somebody because of what he says. Women dont. They

dont care what he said. They listens because of what he is.

TEMPLE

Then let Him talk to me. I can get low for Him too, if that's all He

wants, demands, asks. I'll do anything He wants if He'll just tell me

what to do. No: how to do it. I know what to do, what I must do, what

I've got to do. But how? We-I thought that all I would have to do

would be to come back and go to the Big Man and tell him it wasn't you

who killed my baby, but I did it eight years ago that day when I

slipped out the back door of that train, and that would be all. But we

were wrong. Then I-we thought that all it would be was, for me just to

come back here and tell you you had to die; to come all the way two

thousand miles from California, to sit up all night driving to Jackson

and talking for an hour or two and then driving back, to tell you you

had to die: not just to bring you the news that you had to die,

because any messenger could do that, but just so it could be me that

would have to sit up all night and talk for the hour or two hours and

then bring you the news back. You know: not to save you, that wasn't

really concerned in it: but just for me, just for the suffering and

the paying: a little more suffering simply because there was a little

more time left for a little more of it, and we might as well use it

since we were already paying for it; and that would be all; it would

be finished then. But we were wrong again. That was all, only for you.

You wouldn't be any worse off if I had never come back from

California. You couldn't even be any worse off. And this time

tomorrow, you won't be anything at all. But not me. Because there's

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. All you've got to do is, just to

die. But let Him tell me what to do. No: that's wrong; I know what to

do, what I'm going to do; I found that out that same night in the

nursery