Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 265

gratitude began to take the form of doubting the paternity of their child.

TEMPLE

Oh God. Oh God.

GOVERNOR

Gavin.

(Stevens stops.) No more, I said. Call that an order.

(to Temple) Yes. Tell me.

TEMPLE

I'm trying to. I expected our main obstacle in this would be the bereaved

plaintiff. Apparently though it's the defendant's lawyer. I mean, I'm trying

to tell you about one Temple Drake, and our Uncle Gavin is showing you

another one. So already you've got two different people begging for the same

clemency; if everybody concerned keeps on splitting up into two people, you

wont even know who to pardon, will you? And now that I mention it, here we

are, already back to Nancy Mannigoe, and now surely it shouldn't take long.

Let's see, we'd got back to Jefferson too, hadn't we? Anyway, we are now. I

mean, back in Jefferson, back home. You know: face it: the disgrace: the

sbame, face it down, good and down forever, never to haunt us more;

together, a common front to stink because we love each other and have

forgiven all, strong in our love and mutual forgiveness. Besides having

everything else: the Gowan Stevenses, young, popular: a new bungalow on the

right street to start the Saturday-night hangovers in, a country club with

a country-club younger set of rallying friends to make it a Saturday-night

hangover worthy the name of Saturday-night country-club hangover, a pew in

the right church to recover from it in, provided of course they were not too

hungover even to get to church. Then the son and heir came; and now we have

Nancy: nurse: guide: mentor, catalyst, glue, whatever you want to call it,

holding the whole lot of them together-not just a magnetic center for the

heir apparent and the other little princes or princesses in their orderly

succession, to circle around, but for the two bigger hunks too of mass or

matter or dirt or whatever it is shaped in the image of God, in a semblance

at least of order and respecta-