Requiem for a Nun (9 page)

But endured; the government, which fled before Sherman in 1863, returned in '65, and even grew too despite the fact that a city government of carpetbaggers held on long after the State as a whole had dispossessed them; in 1869 Tougaloo College for Negroes was founded, in 1884 Jackson College for Negroes was brought from Natchez, in 1898 Campbell College for Negroes removed from Vicksburg; Negro leaders developed by these schools intervened when in 1868 one ‘Buzzard' Egglestone instigated the use of troops to drive Governor Humphries from the executive offices and mansion; in 1887 Jackson women sponsored the Kermis Ball lasting three days to raise money for a monument to the Confederate dead; in 1884 Jefferson Davis spoke for his last time in public at the old Capitol; in 1890 the state's greatest convention drew up the present constitution;

And still the people and the railroads: the New Orleans and Great Northern down the Pearl River valley, the Gulf Mobile and Northern northeast; Alabama and the eastern black prairies were almost a commuter's leap and a line to Yazoo City and the upper river towns made of the Great Lakes five suburban ponds; the Gulf and Ship Island opened the south Mississippi lumber boom and Chicago voices spoke among the magnolias and the odor of jasmine and oleander; population doubled and trebled in a decade, in 1892 Millsaps College opened its doors to assume its place among the first establishments for higher learning; then the natural gas and the oil, Texas and Oklahoma license plates flitted like a migration of birds about the land and the tall flames from the vent pipes stood like incandescent plumes above the century-cold ashes of Choctaw campfires and the vanished imprints of deer; and in 1903 the new Capitol was completed—the golden dome, the knob, the gleamy crumb, the gilded pustule longer than the miasma and the gigantic ephemeral saurians, more durable than the ice and the pre-night cold, soaring, hanging as one blinding spheroid above the center of the Commonwealth, incapable of being either looked full or evaded, peremptory, irrefragible, and reassuring;

In the roster of Mississippi names:

Claiborne. Humphries. Dickson. McLaurin. Barksdale. Lamar. Prentiss. Davis. Sartoris. Compson;

In the roster of cities:

Jackson. Alt. 294 ft. Pop. (A.D.1950) 201,092.

Railroads: Illinois Central, Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, Alabama & Vicksburg, Gulf & Ship Island.

Bus: Tri-State Transit, Vanardo, Thomas, Greyhound, Dixie-Greyhound, Teche-Greyhound, Oliver.

Air: Delta, Chicago & Southern.

Transport: Street buses, Taxis.

Accommodations: Hotels, Tourist camps, Rooming houses.

Radio: WJDX, WTJS.

Diversions: chronic: S.I.A.A., Basketball Tournament, Music Festival, Junior Auxiliary Follies, May Day Festival, State Tennis Tournament, Red Cross Water Pageant, State Fair, Junior Auxiliary Style Show, Girl Scouts Horse Show, Feast of Carols.

Diversions: acute: Religion, Politics.

Office of the Governor of the State. 2:00 A.M. March twelfth.

The whole bottom of the stage is in darkness, as in Scene I, Act One, so that the visible scene has the effect of being held in the beam of a spotlight. Suspended too, since it is upper left and even higher above the shadow of the stage proper than the same in Scene I, Act One, carrying still further the symbolism of the still higher, the last, the ultimate seat of judgment.

It is a corner or section of the office of the Governor of the Commonwealth, late at night, about two A.M.—a clock on the wall says two minutes past two—, a massive flat-topped desk bare except for an ashtray and a telephone, behind it a high-backed heavy chair like a throne; on the wall behind and above the chair, is the emblem, official badge, of the State, sovereignty (a mythical one, since this is rather the State of which Yoknapatawpha County is a unit)—an eagle, the blind scales of justice, a device in Latin perhaps, against a flag. There are two other chairs in front of the desk, turned slightly to face each other, the length of the desk between them.

The Governor stands in front of the high chair, between it and the desk, beneath the emblem on the wall. He is symbolic too: no known person, neither old nor young; he might be someone's idea not of God but of Gabriel perhaps, the Gabriel not before the Crucifixion but after it. He has obviously just been routed out of bed or at least out of his study or dressing room; he wears a dressing gown, though there is a collar and tie beneath it, and his hair is neatly combed.

Temple and Stevens have just entered. Temple wears the same fur coat, hat, bag, gloves etc. as in Act One, Scene II, Stevens is dressed exactly as he was in Scene III, Act One, is carrying his hat. They are moving toward the two chairs at either end of the desk.

Stevens

Good morning, Henry. Here we are.

Governor

Yes. Sit down.

(as Temple sits down)

Does Mrs Stevens smoke?

Stevens

Yes. Thank you.

He takes a pack of cigarettes from his topcoat pocket, as though he had come prepared for the need, emergency. He works one of them free and extends the pack to Temple. The Governor puts one hand into his dressing-gown pocket and withdraws it, holding something in his closed fist.

Temple

(takes the cigarette)

What, no blindfold?

(the Governor extends his hand across the desk. It contains a lighter. Temple puts the cigarette into her mouth. The Governor snaps on the lighter)

But of course, the only one waiting execution is back there in Jefferson. So all we need to do here is fire away, and hope that at least the volley rids us of the metaphor.

Governor

Metaphor?

Temple

The blindfold. The firing squad. Or is metaphor wrong? Or maybe it's the joke. But dont apologise; a joke that has to be diagrammed is like trying to excuse an egg, isn't it? The only thing you can do is, bury them both, quick.

(the Governor approaches the flame to Temple's cigarette. She leans and accepts the light, then sits back)

Thanks.

The Governor closes the lighter, sits down in the tall chair behind the desk, still holding the lighter in his hand, his hands resting on the desk before him. Stevens sits down in the other chair across from Temple, laying the pack of cigarettes on the desk beside him.

Governor

What has Mrs Gowan Stevens to tell me?

Temple

Not tell you: ask you. No, that's wrong. I could have asked you to revoke or commute or whatever you do to a sentence to hang when we—Uncle Gavin telephoned you last night.

(to Stevens)

Go on. Tell him. Aren't you the mouthpiece?—isn't that how you say it? Don't lawyers always tell their patients—I mean clients—never to say anything at all: to let them do all the talking?

Governor

That's only before the client enters the witness stand.

Temple

So this is the witness stand.

Governor

You have come all the way here from Jefferson at two o'clock in the morning. What would you call it?

Temple

All right.
Touché
then. But not Mrs Gowan Stevens: Temple Drake. You remember Temple: the all-Mississippi debutante whose finishing school was the Memphis sporting house? About eight years ago, remember? Not that anyone, certainly not the sovereign state of Mississippi's first paid servant, need be reminded of that, provided they could read newspapers eight years ago or were kin to somebody who could read eight years ago or even had a friend who could or even just hear or even just remember or just believe the worst or even just hope for it.

Governor

I think I remember. What has Temple Drake to tell me then?

Temple

That's not first. The first thing is, how much will I have to tell? I mean, how much of it that you don't already know, so that I won't be wasting all of our times telling it over? It's two o'clock in the morning; you want to—maybe even need to—sleep some, even if you are our first paid servant; maybe even because of that—You see? I'm already lying. What does it matter to me how much sleep the state's first paid servant loses, any more than it matters to the first paid servant, a part of whose job is being paid to lose sleep over the Nancy Mannigoes and Temple Drakes?

Stevens

Not lying.

Temple

All right. Stalling, then. So maybe if his excellency or his honor or whatever they call him, will answer the question, we can get on.

Stevens

Why not let the question go, and just get on?

Governor

(to Temple)

Ask me your question. How much of what do I already know?

Temple

(after a moment: she doesn't answer at first, staring at the Governor: then:)

Uncle Gavin's right. Maybe you are the one to ask the questions. Only, make it as painless as possible. Because it's going to be a little . . . painful, to put it euphoniously—at least ‘euphonious' is right, isn't it?—no matter who bragged about blindfolds.

Governor

Tell me about Nancy—Mannihoe, Mannikoe— how does she spell it?

Temple

She doesn't. She can't. She can't read or write either. You are hanging her under Mannigoe, which may be wrong too, though after tomorrow morning it won't matter.

Governor

Oh yes, Manigault. The old Charleston name.

Stevens

Older than that. Maingault. Nancy's heritage—or anyway her patronym—runs Norman blood.

Governor

Why not start by telling me about her?

Temple

You are so wise. She was a dope-fiend whore that my husband and I took out of the gutter to nurse our children. She murdered one of them and is to be hung tomorrow morning. We—her lawyer and I—have come to ask you to save her.

Governor

Yes. I know all that. Why?

Temple

Why am I, the mother whose child she murdered, asking you to save her? Because I have forgiven her.

(the Governor watches her, he and Stevens both do, waiting. She stares back at the Governor steadily, not defiant: just alert)

Because she was crazy.

(the Governor watches her: she stares back, puffing rapidly at the cigarette)

All right. You don't mean why I am asking you to save her, but why I—we hired a whore and a tramp and a dope fiend to nurse our children.

(she puffs rapidly, talking through the smoke)

To give her another chance—a human being too, even a nigger dope-fiend whore—

Stevens

Nor that, either.

Temple

(rapidly, with a sort of despair)

Oh yes, not even stalling now. Why can't you stop lying? You know: just stop for a while or a time like you can stop playing tennis or running or dancing or drinking or eating sweets during Lent. You know: not to reform: just to quit for a while, clear your system, rest up for a new tune or set or lie? All right. It was to have someone to talk to. And now you see? I have to tell the rest of it in order to tell you why I had to have a dope-fiend whore to talk to, why Temple Drake, the white woman, the all-Mississippi debutante, descendant of long lines of statesmen and soldiers high and proud in the high proud annals of our sovereign state, couldn't find anybody except a nigger dope-fiend whore that could speak her language—

Governor

Yes. This far, this late at night. Tell it.

Temple

(she puffs rapidly at the cigarette, leans and crushes it out in the ashtray and sits erect again. She speaks in a hard rapid brittle emotionless voice)

Whore, dope fiend; hopeless, already damned before she was ever born, whose only reason for living was to get the chance to die a murderess on the gallows.—Who not only entered the home of the socialite Gowan Stevenses out of the gutter, but made her debut into the public life of her native city while lying in the gutter with a white man trying to kick her teeth or at least her voice back down her throat.—You remember, Gavin: what was his name? it was before my time in Jefferson, but you remember: the cashier in the bank, the pillar of the church or anyway in the name of his childless wife; and this Monday morning and still drunk, Nancy comes up while he is unlocking the front door of the bank and fifty people standing at his back to get in, and Nancy comes into the crowd and right up to him and says, ‘Where's my two dollars, white man?' and he turned and struck her, knocked her across the pavement into the gutter and then ran after her, stomping and kicking at her face or anyway her voice which was still saying ‘Where's my two dollars, white man?' until the crowd caught and held him still kicking at the face lying in the gutter, spitting blood and teeth and still saying, ‘It was two dollars more than two weeks ago and you done been back twice since'—

She stops speaking, presses both hands to her face for an instant, then removes them.

Temple

No, no handkerchief; Lawyer Stevens and I made a dry run on handkerchiefs before we left home tonight. Where was I?

Governor

(quotes her) ‘It was already two dollars'—

Temple

So now I've got to tell all of it. Because that was just Nancy Mannigoe. Temple Drake was in more than just a two-dollar Saturday-night house. But then, I said
touché,
didn't I?

She leans forward and starts to take up the crushed cigarette from the ashtray. Stevens picks up the pack from the desk and prepares to offer it to her. She withdraws her hand from the crushed cigarette and sits back.

Temple

(to the proffered cigarette in Stevens' hand)

No, thanks; I wont need it, after all. From here out, it's merely anticlimax.
Coup de grace.
The victim never feels that, does he?—Where was I?

(quickly)

Never mind. I said that before too, didn't I?