Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 187

little terrifying (though at least it was bloodless, which would have

contented neither Harne) : not just the lock gone from the door nor even

just the door gone from the jail, but the entire wall gone, the

mud-chinked axe-morticed logs unjointed neatly and quietly in the darkness

and stacked as neatly to one side, leaving the jail open to the world like

a stage on which the late insurgents still lay sprawled and various in

deathlike slumber, the whole settlement gathered now to watch Compson

trying to kick at least one of them awake, until one of the Holston

slaves-the cook's husband, the waiter-groom

hostler-ran into the crowd shouting, 'Whar de lock, whar de lock, ole Boss

say whar de lock.'

It was gone (as were three horses belonging to three of the lynching

faction). They couldn't even find the heavy door and the chain, and at

first they were almost betrayed into believing that the bandits had had

to take the door in order to steal the chain and lock, catching themselves

back from the very brink of this wanton accusation of rationality. But the

lock was gone; nor did it take the settlement long to realize that it was

not the escaped bandits and the aborted reward, but the lock, and not a

simple situation which faced them, but a problem which threatened, the

slave departing back to the Holston House at a dead run and then

reappearing at the dead run almost before the door, the walls, had had

time to hide him, engulf and then eject him again, darting through the

crowd and up to Compson himself now, saying, "Ole Boss say fetch de

lock"-not send the lock, but bring the lock, So Compson and his

lieutenants (and this was where the mail rider began to appear, or rather,

to emerge-the fragile wisp of a man ageless, hairless and toothless, who

looked too frail even to approach a horse, let alone ride one six hundred

miles every two weeks, yet who did so, and not only that but had wind

enough left not only to an -nounce and precede but even follow his passing

with the jeering musical triumph of the horn:-a contempt for

possible-probable-despoilers matched only by that for the official dross

of which he might be despoiled, and which agreed to remain in civilized

bounds only so long as the despoilers had the taste to refrain) -repaired

to the kitchen where old Alec still sat before his smoldering log, his

back still to the room, and still not turning it this time either. And

that was all. He ordered the immediate return of his lock. It was not even

an ultimatum, it was a simple instruction, a decree, impersonal, the mail

rider now well into the fringe of the group, saying nothing and missing

nothing, like a weightless desiccated or fossil bird, not a vulture of

course nor even quite a hawk, but say a pterodactyl chick arrested just

out of the egg ten glaciers ago and so old in