Requiem for a Nun

258 WILLIAM FAULKNER

isn't it?-of their trade. But not me, not Temple: shut up in that room

twenty-four hours a day, with nothing to do but hold fashion shows in

the fur coat and the flashy pants and negligees, with nothing to see

it but a two-foot mirror and a Negro maid; hanging bone dry and safe

in the middle of sin and pleasure like being suspended twenty fathoms

deep in an ocean diving bell. Because he wanted her to be contented,

you see. He even made the last effort himself. But Temple didn't want

to be just contented. So she had to do what us sporting girls call

fall in love.

GOVERNOR

Ah.

STEVENS

That's right.

TEMPLE

(quickly: to Stevens) Hush.

STEVENS

(to Temple) Hush yourself.

(to Governor)

He-Vitelli-they called him Popeye-brought the man there himself.

He-the young man-

TEMPLE

Gavin! No, I tell you!

STEVENS

(to Temple)

You are drowning in an orgasm of abjectness and moderation when all

you need is truth.

(to Governor)

-was known in his own circles as Red, Alabama Red; not to the police,

or not officially, since he was not a criminal, or anyway not yet, but

just a thug, probably cursed more by simple eupepsia than by anything

else. He was a houseman-the bouncer-at the nightclub, joint, on the

outskirts of town, which Popeye owned and which was Popeye's

headquarters. He died shortly afterward in the alley behind Temple's

prison, of a bullet from the same pistol which had done the

Mississippi murder, though Popeye too was dead, hanged in Alabama for

a murder he did not commit, before the pistol was ever found and con-

nected with him.