Not that face; that was nowhere near enough: no symbol there of connubial matriarchy, but fatal instead with all insatiate and deathless sterility; spouseless, barren, and undescended; not even demanding more than that: simply requiring it, requiring all — Lilith’s lost and insatiable face drawing the substance — the will and hope and dream and imagination — of all men (you too: yourself and the host too) into that one bright fragile net and snare;
not even to be caught, over-flung, by one single unerring cast of it, but drawn to watch in patient and thronging turn the very weaving of the strangling golden strands — drawing the two of you from almost a hundred years away in your turn — yourself the stranger, the outlander with a B.A. or (perhaps even) M.A. from Harvard or Northwestern or Stanford, passing through Jefferson by chance or accident on the way to somewhere else, and the host who in three generations has never been out of Yoknapatawpha farther than a few prolonged Saturday-nights in Memphis or New Orleans, who has heard of Jenny Lind, not because he has heard of Mark Twain and Mark Twain spoke well of her, but for the same reason that Mark Twain spoke well of her: not that she sang songs, but that she sang them in the old West in the old days, and the man sanctioned by public affirmation to wear a pistol openly in his belt is an inevictable part of the Missouri and the Yoknapatawpha dream too, but never of Duse or Bernhardt or Maximilian of Mexico, let alone whether the Emperor of Mexico even ever had a wife or not (saying — the host — : ‘You mean, she was one of them? maybe even that emperor’s wife?’ and you:
‘Why not? Wasn’t she a Jefferson girl?’) — to stand, in this hot strange little room furious with frying fat, among the roster and chronicle, the deathless murmur of the sublime and deathless names and the deathless faces, the faces omnivorous and insatiable and forever incontent: demon-nun and angel-witch; empress, siren, Erinys: Mistinguette, too, invincibly possessed of a half-century more of years than the mere threescore or so she bragged and boasted, for you to choose among, which one she was — not might have been, nor even could have been, but was: so vast, so limitless in capacity is man’s imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream — then gone, you are outside again, in the hot noon sun: late;
you have already wasted too much time: to unfumble among the road signs and filling stations to get back on to a highway you know, back into the United States; not that it matters, since you know again now that there is no time: no space: no distance: a fragile and workless scratching almost depthless in a sheet of old barely transparent glass, and (all you had to do was look at it a while; all you have to do now is remember it) there is the clear undistanced voice as though out of the delicate antenna-skeins of radio, further than empress’s throne, than splendid insatiation, even than matriarch’s peaceful rocking chair, across the vast instantaneous intervention, from the long long time ago: ‘Listen, stranger; this was myself: this was I.’
Scene I
INTERIOR, THE JAIL. 10.30 a.m. March twelfth.
The common room, or ‘bullpen.’ It is on the second floor. A heavy barred door at left is the entrance to it, to the entire cell-block, which — the cells — are indicated by a row of steel doors, each with its own individual small barred window, lining the right wall. A narrow passage at the far end of the right wall leads to more cells. A single big heavily barred window in the rear wall looks down into the street. It is mid-morning of a sunny day.
The door, left, opens with a heavy clashing of the steel lock, and swings back and outward. Temple enters, followed by Stevens and the Jailor. Temple has changed her dress, but wears the fur coat and the same hat. Stevens is dressed exactly as he was in Act II. The Jailor is a typical small-town turnkey, in shirt-sleeves and no necktie, carrying the heavy keys on a big iron ring against his leg as a farmer carries a lantern, say. He is drawing the door to behind him as he enters.
Temple stops just inside the room. Stevens perforce stops also. The Jailor closes the door and locks it on the inside with another clash and clang of steel, and turns.
JAILOR
Well, Lawyer, singing school will be over after tonight, huh?
(to Temple)
You been away, you see. You don’t know about this, you ain’t up with what’s ——
(he stops himself quickly; he is about to commit what he would call a very bad impoliteness, what in the tenets of his class and kind would be the most grave of gaucherie and bad taste: referring directly to a recent bereavement in the presence of the bereaved, particularly one of this nature, even though by this time tomorrow the state itself will have made restitution with the perpetrator’s life. He tries to rectify it)
Not that I wouldn’t too, if I’d a been the ma of the very ——
(stopping himself again; this is getting worse than ever; now he not only is looking at Stevens, but actually addressing him)
Every Sunday night, and every night since last Sunday except last night — come to think of it, Lawyer, where was you last night? We missed you — Lawyer here and Na — the prisoner have been singing hymns in her cell. The first time, he just stood out there on the sidewalk while she stood in that window yonder. Which was all right, not doing no harm, just singing church hymns. Because all of us home folks here in Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County both know Lawyer Stevens, even if some of us might have thought he got a little out of line ——
(again it is getting out of hand; he realises it, but there is nothing he can do now; he is like someone walking a foot-log: all he can do is move as fast as he dares until he can reach solid ground or at least pass another log to leap to)
defending a nigger murderer let alone when it was his own niece was mur ——
(and reaches another log and leaps to it without stopping: at least one running at right angles for a little distance into simple generality)
— maybe suppose some stranger say, some durn Yankee tourist, happened to be passing through in a car, when we get enough durn criticism from Yankees like it is — besides, a white man standing out there in the cold, while a durned nigger murderer is up here all warm and comfortable; so it happened that me and Mrs. Tubbs hadn’t went to prayer meeting that night, so we invited him to come in; and to tell the truth, we come to enjoy it too.
Because as soon as they found out there wasn’t going to be no objection to it, the other nigger prisoners (I got five more right now, but I taken them out back and locked them up in the coal house so you could have some privacy) joined in too, and by the second or third Sunday night, folks was stopping along the street to listen to them instead of going to regular church. Of course, the other niggers would just be in and out over Saturday and Sunday night for fighting or gambling or vagrance or drunk, so just about the time they would begin to get in tune, the whole choir would be a complete turnover. In fact, I had a idea at one time to have the Marshal comb the nigger dives and joints not for drunks and gamblers, but basses and baritones.
(he starts to laugh, guffaws once, then catches himself; he looks at Temple with something almost gentle, almost articulate, in his face, taking (as though) by the horns, facing frankly and openly the dilemma of his own inescapable vice)
Excuse me, Mrs. Stevens. I talk too much. All I want to say is, this whole county, not a man or woman, wife or mother either in the whole state of Mississippi, that don’t — don’t feel ——
(stopping again, looking at Temple)
There I am, still at it, still talking too much. Wouldn’t you like for Mrs. Tubbs to bring you up a cup of coffee or maybe a Coca-Cola? She’s usually got a bottle or two of sody pop in the icebox.
TEMPLE
No, thank you, Mr. Tubbs. If we could just see Nancy ——
JAILOR
(turning)
Sure, sure.
He crosses toward the rear, right, and disappears into the passage.
TEMPLE
The blindfold again. Out of a Coca-Cola bottle this time or a cup of county-owned coffee.
Stevens takes the same pack of cigarettes from his overcoat pocket, though Temple has declined before he can even offer them.
No, thanks. My hide’s toughened now. I hardly feel it. People. They’re really innately, inherently gentle and compassionate and kind. That’s what wrings, wrenches . . . something. Your entrails, maybe. The member of the mob who holds up the whole ceremony for seconds or even minutes while he dislodges a family of bugs or lizards from the log he is about to put on the fire ——
(there is the clash of another steel door off-stage as the Jailor unlocks Nancy’s cell. Temple pauses, turns and listens, then continues rapidly)
And now I’ve
