Requiem for a Nun

242 WILLIAM FAULKNER

GOVERNOR

What has Mrs Gowan Stevens to tell me?

TEMPLE

Not tell you: ask you. No, that's wrong. I could have

asked you to revoke or commute or whatever you do

to a sentence to hang when we-Uncle Gavin tele

phoned you last night.

(to Stevens)

Go on. Tell him. Aren't you the mouthpiece?-isn't that how you say it?

Dont lawyers always tell their patients-1 mean clients-never to say

anything at all: to let them do all the talking?

GOVERNOR

That's only before the client enters the witness stand.

TEMPLE

So this is the witness stand.

GOVERNOR

You have come all the way here from Jefferson at two o'clock in the

morning. What would you call it?

TEMPLE

All right. Touchg then. But not Mrs Gowan Stevens: Temple Drake. You

remember Temple: the allMississippi debutante whose finishing school

was the Memphis sporting house? About eight years ago, remember? Not

that anyone, certainly not the sovereign state of Mississippi's first

paid servant, need be reminded of that, provided they could read

newspapers eight years ago or were kin to somebody who could read

eight years ago or even had a friend who could or even just hear or

even just remember or just believe the worst or even just hope for it.

GOVERNOR

I think I remember. What has Temple Drake to tell me then?

TEMPLE

That's not first. The first thing is, how much will I have to tell? I

mean, how much of it that you don't already know, so that I wont be

wasting all of our times telling it over? It's two o'clock in the

morning; you want to-maybe even need to-sleep some, even if you are

our first paid servant; maybe even because of that- You see? I'm

already lying. What does it matter to me how much sleep the state's

first paid