Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 271

might support the weightless silken canopy of a bed, for six long years

while it, with all its weight and power, could not possibly prolong the

obliteration of your fragility over five or six seconds; and even during

that five or six seconds you would still be the better man, since all that

it-the catastrophe-could deprive you of, you yourself had already written

off six years ago as being, inherently of and because of its own fragile

self, worthless.

GOVERNOR And now, the man.

STEVENS

I thought you would see it too. Even the first one stuck out like a sore

thumb. Yes, he

GOVERNOR

The first what?

STEVENS

(pauses, looks at the Governor) The first man: Red. Dont you

know anything at all about women? I never saw Red or this next

one, his brother, either, but all three of them, the other two

and her husband, probably all look enough alike or act enough

alike-maybe by simply making enough impossible unfulfillable

demands on her by being drawn to her enough to accept, risk,

almost incredible conditions-to be at least first cousins.

Where have you been all your life?

GOVERNOR

All right. The man.

STEVENS

At first, all he thought of, planned on, was interested in, intended, was

the money-to collect for the letters, beat it, get the hell out. Of

course, even at the end, all he was really after was still the money, not

only after he found out that he would have to take her and the child too

to get it, but even when it looked like all he was going to get, at least

for a while, was just a runaway wife and a six-months-old infant. In fact,

Nancy's error, her really fatal action on that fatal and tragic night, was

in not giving the money and the jewels both to him when she found where

Temple had hidden them, and getting the letters and getting rid