Requiem for a Nun

216 WILLIAM FAULKNER

STEVENS

I wish it could comfort you.

GOWAN

I wish to God it could. I wish to God that what I wanted was only

revenge. An eye for an eye-were ever words emptier? Only, you have got

to have lost the eye to know it.

STEVENS

Yet she still has to die.

GOWAN

Why not? Even if she would be any loss-a nigger whore, a drunkard, a

dope-fiend-

STEVENS

-a vagabond, a tramp, hopeless until one day Mr and Mrs Gowan Stevens

out of simple pity and humanity picked her up out of the gutter to

give her one more chance-

(Gowan stands motionless, his hand tightening slowly about

the glass. Stevens watches him)

And then in return for it-

GOWAN

Look, Uncle Gavin. Why dont you go for God's sake home? Or to hell,

or anywhere out of here?

STEVENS

I am, in a minute. Is that why you think-why you would still say she

has to die?

GOWAN

I dont. I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't even the plaintiff. I

didn't even instigate-that's the word, isn't 0-the suit. My only

connection with it was, I happened by chance to be the father of the

child she- Who in hell ever called that a drink?

He dashes the whiskey, glass and all, into the ice bowl, quickly catches

up one of the empty tumblers in one hand and, at the same time, tilts the

whiskey bottle over it, pouring. At first he makes no sound, but at once

it is obvious that he is laughing: laughter which begins normally enough,

but almost immediately it is out of hand, just on hysteria, while he still

pours whiskey into the glass, which in a moment now will overflow, except

that Stevens reaches his hand and grasps the bottle and stops it.