Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 227

STEVENS

Temple Drake.

TEMPLE

(quick, harsh, immediate) No. Mrs Gowan Stevens.

STEVENS

(implacable and calm) Temple Drake. The truth.

TEMPLE

Truth? We're trying to save a condemned murderess whose lawyer has already

admitted that he has failed. What has truth got to do with that?

(rapid, harsh)

We? 1, 1, the mother of the baby she murdered; not you, Gavin Stevens. the

lawyer, but 1, Mrs Gowan Stevens, the mother. Cant you get it through your

head that I will do anything, anything?

STEVENS

Except one. Which is all. We're not concerned with death. That's nothing:

any handful of petty facts and sworn documents can cope with that. That's

all finished now; we can forget it. What we are trying to deal with now

is injustice. Only truth can cope with that. Or love.

TEMPLE

(harshly) Love. Oh, God. Love.

STEVENS

Call it pity then. Or courage. Or simple honor, honesty, or a simple

desire for the right to sleep at night.

TEMPLE

You prate of sleep, to me, who learned six years ago how not even to

realise any more that I didn't mind not sleeping at night?

STEVENS

Yet you invented the coincidence.

TEMPLE

Will you for Christ's sake stop? Will you . . . All right. Then if her

dying is nothing, what do you want? What in God's name do you want?

STEVENS

I told you. Truth.