Requiem for a Nun

260 WILLIAM FAULKNER

TEMPLE

(to Governor)

And what does that matter either? Whether he knows or not? What can

another face or two or name or two matter, since he knows that I lived

for six weeks in a Manuel Street brothel? Or another body or two in the

bed? Or three or four? I'm trying to tell it, enough of it. Cant you see

that? But cant you make him let me alone so I can. Make him, for God's

sake, let me alone.

GOVERNOR

(to Stevens: watching Temple) No more, Gavin.

(to Temple) So you fell in love.

TEMPLE

Thank you for that. I mean, the 'love.' Except that I didn't even fall,

I was already there: the bad, the lost: who could have climbed down the

gutter or lightning rod any time and got away, or even simpler than that:

disguised myself as the nigger maid with a stack of towels and a bottle

opener and change for ten dollars, and walked right out the front door.

So I wrote the letters. I would write one each time . . . afterward,

after they-he left, and sometimes I would write two or three when it

would be two or three days between, when they-he wouldn't-

GOVERNOR

What? What's that?

TEMPLE

-you know: something to do, be doing, filling the time, better than the

fashion parades in front of the two-foot glass with nobody to be

disturbed even by the ... pants, or even no pants. Good letters-

GOVERNOR

Wait. What did you say?

TEMPLE

I said they were good letters, even for-

GOVERNOR

You said, after they left.

(they look at one another. Tem

ple doesn't answer: to Stevens,

though still watching Temple)