her eyes from the light while her pupils readjust)
TEMPLE
Nor cigarette either; this time it certainly wont take long, since all
he has to say is, No.
(still not turning her face to look, even though she is now
speaking directly to the Governor whom she still thinks is
sitting behind the desk)
Because you aren't going to save her, are you? Because all this was not
for the sake of her soul because her soul doesn't need it, but for mine.
STEVENS
(gently)
Why not finish first? Tell the rest of it. You had started to say
something about the jail.
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 287
TEMPLE
The jail. They had the funeral the next day--Gowan had barely reached New
Orleans, so he chartered an airplane back that morning-and in Jefferson,
everything going to the graveyard passes the jail, or going anywhere else
for that matter, passing right under the upstairs barred windows-the
bullpen and the cells where the Negro prisoners-the crapshooters and
whiskey-peddlers and vagrants and the murderers and murderesses too-can
look down and enjoy it, enjoy the funerals too. Like this. Some white
person you know is in a jail or a hospital, and right off you say, How
ghastly: not at the shame or the pain, but the walls, the locks, and
before you even know it, you have sent them books to read, cards, puzzles
to play with. But not Negroes. You don't even think about the cards and
puzzles and books. And so all of a sudden you find out with a kind of
terror, that they have not only escaped having to read, they have escaped
having to escape. So whenever you pass the jail, you can see them-no, not
them, you dont see them at all, you just see the hands among the bars of
the windows, not tapping or fidgeting or even holding, gripping the bars
like white hands would be, but just lying there among the interstices, not
just at rest, but even restful, already shaped and easy and unanguished
to the handles of the plows and axes and hoes, and the mops and brooms and
the rockers of white folks' cradles, until even the steel bars fitted them
too without alarm or anguish. You see? not gnarled and twisted with work
at all, but even limbered and suppled by it, smoothed and even softened,
as though with only the penny-change of simple sweat they had already got
the same thing the white ones have to pay dollars by the ounce jar for.
Not immune to work, and in compromise with work is not the right word
either, but in confederacy with work and so free from it; in armistice,
peace;-the same long supple hands serene and immune to anguish, so that
all the owners of them need to look out with, to see with -to look out at
the outdoors-the funerals, the passing, the people, the freedom, the
sunlight, the free air-are just the hands: not the eyes: just the hands
lying there among the bars and looking out, that can see the shape of the
plow or hoe or axe before daylight comes; and even in the dark, without
even having to turn on the light, can not only find the child, the
288 WILLIAM FAULKNER
baby-not her child but yours, the white one-but the trouble and
discomfort too-the hunger, the wet didy, the unfastened safety-pin-and
see to remedy it. You see. If I could just cry. There was another one,
a man this time, before my time in Jefferson but Uncle Gavin will
remember this too. His wife had just died-they had been married only
two weeksand he buried her and so at first he tried just walking the
country roads at night for exhaustion and sleep, only that failed and
then he tried getting drunk so he could sleep, and that failed and
then he tried fighting and then he cut a white man's throat with a
razor in a dice game and so at last he could sleep for a little while;
which was where the sheriff found him, asleep on the wooden floor of
the gallery of the house he had rented for his wife, his marriage, his
life, his old age. Only that waked him up, and so in the jail that
afternoon, all of a sudden it took the jailer and a deputy and five
other Negro prisoners just to throw him down and hold him while they
locked the chains on him-lying there on the floor with more than a
half dozen men panting to hold him down, and what do you think he
said? 'Look like I just cant quit thinking. Look like I just cant
quit.'
(she ceases, blinking, rubs her eyes and then extends one
hand blindly toward Stevens, who has already shaken out
his handkerchief and hands it to her. There are still no
tears on her face; she merely takes the handkerchief and
dabs, pats at her eyes with it as if it were a powderpuff,
talking again)
But we have passed the jail, haven't we? We're in the courtroom now.
It was the same there; Uncle Gavin had rehearsed her, of course, which
was easy, since all you can say when they ask you to answer to a
murder charge is, Not Guilty. Otherwise, they cant even have a trial;
they would have to hurry out and find another murderer before they
could take the next official step. So they asked her, all correct and
formal among the judges and lawyers and bailiffs and jury and the
Scales and the Sword and the flag and the ghosts of Coke upon
Littleton upon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar and all the rest of it, not
to mention the eyes and the faces which were getting a moving-
REQUIEM FOR A NUN 289
picture show for free since they had already paid for it in the taxes, and
nobody really listening since there was only one thing she could say. Except
that she didn't say it: just raising her head enough to be heard plain-not
loud: just plain-and said, 'Guilty, Lord' -like that, disrupting and
confounding and dispersing and flinging back two thousand years, the whole
edifice of corpus juris and rules of evidence we have been working to make
stand up by itself ever since Caesar, like when without even watching
yourself or even knowing you were doing it, you would reach out your hand
and turn over a chip and expose to air and light and vision the frantic and
aghast turmoil of an antbed. And moved the chip again, when even the ants
must have thought there couldn't be another one within her reach: when they
finally explained to her that to say she was not guilty, had nothing to do
with truth but only with law, and this time she said it right, Not Guilty,
and so then the jury could tell her she lied and everything was all correct
again and, as everybody thought, even safe, since now she wouldn't be asked
to say anything at all any more. Only, they were wrong; the jury said Guilty
and the judge said Hang and now everybody was already picking up his hat to
go home, when she picked up that chip too: the judge said, 'And may God have
mercy on your soul' and Nancy answered: 'Yes, Lord.'
(she turns suddenly, almost briskly, speaking so briskly that her
momentum carries her on past the instant when she sees and
recognises Gowan sitting where she had thought all the time that
the Governor was sitting and listening to her)
And that is all, this time. And so now you can tell us. I know you're not