Requiem for a Nun

248 WILLIAM FAULKNER

TEMPLE

He hasn't answered my question yet.

(to Governor)

Try to answer it. How much will I have to tell? Don't just say

'everything.' I've already heard that.

GOVERNOR

I know who Temple Drake was: the young woman student at the University

eight years ago who left the school one morning on a special train of

students to attend a baseball game at another college, and disappeared

from the train somewhere during its run, and vanished, nobody knew

where, until she reappeared six weeks later as a witness in a murder

trial in Jefferson, produced by the lawyer of the man who, it was then

learned, had abducted her and held her prisoner-

TEMPLE

-in the Memphis sporting house: don't forget that.

GOVERNOR

-in order to produce her to prove his alibi in the murder-

TEMPLE

-that Temple Drake knew had done the murder for the very good reason

that-

STEVENS

Wait. Let me play too. She got off the train at the instigation of a

young man who met the train at an intermediate stop with an

automobile, the plan being to drive on to the ball game in the car,

except that the young man was drunk at the time and got drunker, and

wrecked the car and stranded both of them at the moonshiner's house

where the murder happened, and from which the murderer kidnapped her

and carried her to Memphis, to hold her until he would need his alibi.

Afterward he-the young man with the automobile, her escort and

protector at the moment of the abduction-married her. He is her

husband now. He is my nephew.

TEMPLE

(to Stevens, bitterly)

You too. So wise too. Why cant you believe in truth? At least that I'm

trying to tell it. At least trying now to tell it.