Read Online Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner - Free Book Online Page A

but almost immediately it is out of hand, just on hysteria, while he still pours whiskey into the glass, which in a moment now will overflow, except that Stevens reaches his hand and grasps the bottle and stops it.

    Stevens
    Stop it. Stop it, now. Here.
    He takes the bottle from Gowan, sets it down, takes the tumbler and tilts part of its contents into the other empty one, leaving at least a reasonable, a believable, drink, and hands it to Gowan. Gowan takes it, stopping the crazy laughter, gets hold of himself again.

    Gowan
    (holding the glass untasted)

    Eight years. Eight years on the wagon—and this is what I got for it: my child murdered by a dope-fiend-nigger whore that wouldn’t even run so that a cop or somebody could have shot her down like the mad-dog—You see? Eight years without the drink, and so I got whatever it was I was buying by not drinking, and now I’ve got whatever it was I was paying for and it’s paid for and so I can drink again. And now I dont want the drink. You see? Like whatever it was I was buying I not only didn’t want, but what I was paying for it wasn’t worth anything, wasn’t even any loss. So I have a laugh coming. That’s triumph. Because I got a bargain even in what I didn’t want. I got a cut rate. I had two children. I had to pay only one of them to find out it wasn’t really costing me anything—Half price: a child, and a dope-fiend-nigger whore on a public gallows: that’s all I had to pay for immunity.

    Stevens
    There’s no such thing.

    Gowan
    From the past. From my folly. My drunkenness. My cowardice, if you like—

    Stevens
    There’s no such thing as past either.

    Gowan
    That is a laugh, that one. Only, not so loud, huh? to disturb the ladies—disturb Miss Drake—Miss Temple Drake.—Sure, why not cowardice. Only, for euphony, call it simple over-training. You know? Gowan Stevens, trained at Virginia to drink like a gentleman, gets drunk as ten gentlemen, takes a country college girl, a maiden: who knows? maybe even a virgin, cross country by car to another country college ball game, gets drunker than twenty gentlemen, gets lost, gets still drunker than forty gentlemen, wrecks the car, passes eighty gentlemen now, passes completely out while the maiden the virgin is being kidnapped into a Memphis whorehouse—

    (he mumbles an indistinguishable word)

    Stevens
    What?

    Gowan
    Sure; cowardice. Call it cowardice; what’s a little euphony between old married people?

    Stevens
    Not the marrying her afterward, at least. What—

    Gowan
    Sure. Marrying her was purest Old Virginia. That was indeed the hundred and sixty gentlemen.

    Stevens
    The intent was, by any other standards too. The prisoner in the whorehouse; I didn’t quite hear—

    Gowan
    (quickly: reaching for it)

    Where’s your glass? Dump that slop—here—

    Stevens
    (holds glass)

    This will do. What was that you said about held prisoner in the whorehouse?

    Gowan
    (harshly)

    That’s all. You heard it.

    Stevens
    You said ‘and loved it.’

    (they stare at each other)

    Is that what you can never forgive her for?—not for having been the instrument creating that moment in your life which you can never recall nor forget nor explain nor condone nor even stop thinking about, but because she herself didn’t even suffer, but on the contrary, even liked it—that month or whatever it was like the episode in the old movie of the white girl held prisoner in the cave by the Bedouin prince?—That you had to lose not only your bachelor freedom, but your man’s self-respect in the chastity of his wife and your child too, to pay for something your wife hadn’t even lost, didn’t even regret, didn’t even miss? Is that why this poor lost doomed crazy Negro woman must die?

    Gowan
    (tensely)

    Get out of here. Go on.

    Stevens
    In a minute.—Or else, blow your own brains out: stop