Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 257

or anyway the most expensive-the taste at least of the big end of an

underworld big shot's wallet. Because he wanted me to be contented,

you see; and not only contented, he didn't even mind if I was happy

too: just so I was there when or in case the police finally connected

him with that Mississippi murder; not only didn't mind if I was happy;

he even made the effort himself to see that I was. And so at last we

have come to it, because now I have got to tell you this too to give

you a valid reason why I waked you up at two in the morning to ask you

to save a murderess.

She stops speaking, reaches and takes the unlighted cigarette from the

tray, then realises it is unlit. Stevens takes up the lighter from the

desk and starts to get up. Still watching Temple, the Governor makes to

Stevens a slight arresting signal with his hand. Stevens pauses, then

pushes the lighter along the desk to where Temple can reach it, and sits

back down. Temple takes the lighter, snaps it on, lights the cigarette,

closes the lighter and puts it back on the desk. But after only one puff

at the cigarette, she lays it back on the tray and sits again as before,

speaking again.

TEMPLE

Because I still had the two arms and legs and eyes; I could have

climbed down the rainspout at any time, the only difference being that

I didn't, I would never leave the room except late at night, when he

would come in a closed car the size of an undertaker's wagon, and he

and the chauffeur on the front seat, and me and the madam in the back,

rushing at forty and fifty and sixty miles an hour up and down the

back alleys of the redlight district. Which-the back alleys -was all

I ever saw of them too. I was not even permitted to meet or visit with

or even see the other girls in my own house, not even to sit with them

after work and listen to the shop talk while they counted their chips

or blisters or whatever they would do sitting on one another's beds

in the elected dormitory....

(she pauses again, continues in a sort of surprise,

amazement)

Yes, it was like the dormitory at school: the smell: of women, young

women all busy thinking not about men but just man: only a little

stronger, a little calmer, less excited-sitting on the temporarily

idle beds discussing the exigencies-th at's surely the right one,