Requiem for a Nun

266 WILLIAM FAULKNER

bility and peace; not ole cradle-rocking black mammy at all, because

the Gowan Stevenses are young and modern, so young and modern that all

the other young country-club set applauded when they took an

ex-dopefiend nigger whore out of the gutter to nurse their children,

because the rest of the young countryclub set didn't know that it

wasn't the Gowan Stevenses but Temple Drake who had chosen the ex-

dopefiend nigger whore for the reason that an exdopefiend nigger whore

was the only animal in Jefferson that spoke Temple Drake's language-

(quickly takes up the burning cigarette from the tray and puffs at it,

talking through the puffs) Oh yes, I'm going to tell this too. A

confidante. You know: the big-time ball player, the idol on the pedes-

tal, the worshipped; and the worshipper, the acolyte, the one that

never had and never would, no matter how willing or how hard she

tried, get out of the sandlots, the bush league. You know: the long

afternoons, with the last electric button pressed on the last cooking

or washing or sweeping gadget and the baby safely asleep for a while,

and the two sisters in sin swapping trade or anyway avocational

secrets over Coca-Colas in the quiet kitchen. Somebody to talk to, as

we all seem to need, want, have to have, not to converse with you nor

even agree with you, but just keep quiet and listen. Which is all that

people really want, really need; I mean, to behave themselves, keep

out of one another's hair; the maladjustments which they tell us breed

the arsonists and rapists and murderers and thieves and the rest of

the antisocial enemies, are not really maladjustments but simply

because the embryonic murderers and thieves didn't have anybody to

listen to them: which is an idea the Catholic Church discovered two

thousand years ago only it just didn't carry it far enough or maybe it

was too busy being the Church to have time to bother with man, or

maybe it wasn't the Church's fault at all but simply because it had to

deal with human beings and maybe if the world was just populated with

a kind of creature half of which were dumb, couldn't do anything but

listen, couldn't even escape from having to listen to the other half,

there wouldn't even be any war. Which was what Temple had. somebody

paid by the week just to listen, which you would have thought would

have been enough; and