Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 245

GOVERNOR

Yes. This far, this late at night. Tell it.

TEMPLE

(she puffs rapidly at the cigarette, leans and crushes it

out in the ashtray and sits erect again. She speaks in a

hard rapid brittle emotionless voice)

Whore, dopefiend; hopeless, already damned before she was ever born,

whose only reason for living was to get the chance to die a murderess

on the gallows.Who not only entered the home of the socialite Gowan

Stevenses out of the gutter, but made her debut into the public life

of her native city while lying in the gutter with a white man trying

to kick her teeth or at least her voice back down her throat.You

remember, Gavin: what was his name? it was before my time in

Jefferson, but you remember: the cashier in the bank, the pillar of

the church or anyway in the name of his childless wife; and this Mon-

day morning and still drunk, Nancy comes up while he is unlocking the

front door of the bank and fifty people standing at his back to get

in, and Nancy comes into the crowd and right up to him and says,

'Where's my two dollars, white man?' and he turned and struck her,

knocked her across the pavement into the gutter and then ran after

her, stomping and kicking at her face or anyway her voice which was

still saying 'Where's my two dollars, white man?' until the crowd

caught and held him still kicking at the face lying in the gutter,

spitting blood and teeth and still saying, 'It was two dollars more

than two weeks ago and you done been back twice since'-

She stops speaking, presses both hands to her face for an instant, then

removes them.

TEMPLE

No, no handkerchief; Lawyer Stevens and I made a dry run on

handkerchiefs before we left home tonight. Where was I?

GOVERNOR

(quotes her) 'It was already two dollars'-