Requiem for a Nun

264 WILLIAM FAULKNER

side of heaven could you hope for to remove stink? Not to mention a

new automobile and a honeymoon in a rented hideaway built for his

European mistress by a Mohammedan prince at Cap Ferrat. Only-

(she pauses, falters, for just an instant, then goes on)

-we-I thought we-I didn't want to efface the stink really-

(rapidly now, tense, erect, her hands gripped again into

fists on her lap)

You know: just the marriage would be enough: not the Embassy and the

Crillon and Cap Ferrat but just to kneel down, the two of us, and say

'We have sinned, forgive us.' And then maybe there would be the love

this time-the peace, the quiet, the no shame that I . . .

didn't-missed that other time-

(falters again, then rapidly again, glib and succinct)

Love, but more than love too: not depending on just love to hold two

people together, make them better than either one would have been

alone, but tragedy, suffering, having suffered and caused grief;

having something to have to live with even when, because you knew both

of you could never forget it. And then I began to believe something

even more than that: that there was something even better, stronger,

than tragedy to hold two people together: forgiveness. Only that

seemed to be wrong. Only maybe it wasn't the forgiveness that was

wrong, but the gratitude; and maybe the only thing worse than having

to give gratitude constantly all the time, is having to accept it-

STEVENS

Which is exactly backward. What was wrong wasn't-

GOVERNOR

Gavin.

STEVENS

Shut up yourself, Henry. What was wrong wasn't Temple's good name. It

wasn't even her husband's conscience. It was his vanity: the

Virginia-trained aristocrat caught with his gentility around his knees

like the guest in the trick Hollywood bathroom. So the forgiving

wasn't enough for him, or perhaps he hadn't read Hemingway's book.

Because after about a year, his restiveness under the onus of

accepting the