BY
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Other SIGNET Books by William Faulkner
Intruder in the Dust (#131848-50~)
Knight's Gambit(#S1315-35~)
Pylon (#S1485-35~)
Sartoris (#131614-50~)
Soldiers' Pay(#I)1629-50~)
The Unvanquished(#CD9-500)
The Wild Palms and The Old Man
(#D1643-500) The Long (Hot) Summer
(Book III of "The Hamlet") (#S1501-350)
The Sound and the Fury (#D1628-500)
To OUR READERS: We welcome your request for our free catalog Of SIGNET and
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them by mail enclosing the list price plus 50 a copy to cover mailing. The
New American Library of World Literature, Inc., P.O. Box 2310, Grand Central
Station, New York 17, N. Y.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Sanctuary
and
Requiem for a Nun
A SIGNET BOOK
Published by THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
CoPYRIGHT, 1931, BY WILLIAM FAULKNER
COPYRIGHT, 1950, 1951, BY WILLIAM FAULKNER
Published as a SIGNET BOOK By Arrangement with Random House, Inc.
FIRST JOINT PRINTING, MARCH, 1954
SECOND PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1957
THIRD PRINTING, AUGUST, 1958
FOURTH PRINTING, JANUARY, 1961
Sanctuary, as a separate SIGNET book, has had thirteen printings.
SIGNET BOOKS are published by
The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.
501 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
SANCTUARY
FROM BEYOND THE SCREEN OF BUSHES WHICH SURROUNDED the spring, Popeye watched
the man drinking. A faint path led from the road to the spring. Popeye
watched the mana tall, thin man, hatless, in worn gray flannel trousers and
carrying a tweed coat over his arm--emerge from the path and kneel to drink
from the spring.
The spring welled up at the root of a beech tree and flowed away upon a
bottom of whorled and waved sand. It was surrounded by a thick growth of
cane and brier, of cypress and gum in which broken sunlight lay sourceless.
Somewhere, hidden and secret yet nearby, a bird sang three notes and
ceased.
In the spring the drinking man leaned his face to the broken and myriad
reflection of his own drinking. When he rose up he saw among them the
scattered reflection of Popeye's straw hat, though he had heard no sound.
He saw, facing him across the spring, a man of under size, his hands in his
coat pockets, a cigarette slanted from his chin. His suit was black, with
a tight, high-waisted coat. His trousers were rolled once and caked with
mud above mud-caked shoes. His face had a queer, bloodless color, as though
seen by electric light; against the sunny silence, in his slanted straw hat
and his slightly akimbo arms, he had that vicious depthless quality of
stamped tin.
Behind him the bird sang again, three bars in monotonous repetition: a
sound meaningless and profound out of a suspirant and peaceful following
silence which seemed to isolate the spot, and out of which a moment later
tame the sound of an automobile passing along a road and dying away.
The drinking man knelt beside the spring. "You've got a pistol in that
pocket, I suppose," he said.
Across the spring Popeye appeared to contemplate him with two knobs of soft
black rubber. "I'm asking you," Popeye said. "What's that in your pocket?"
The other man's coat wasstill across his arm. He lifted 5
6 WILLIAM FAULKNER
his other hand toward the coat, out of one pocket of which protruded a
crushed felt hat, from the other a book. "Which pocket?" he said.
"Dont show me," Popeye said. "Tell me."
The other man stopped his hand. "It's a book."
"What book?" Popeye said.
"Just a book. The kind that people read. Some people do."
"Do you read books?" Popeye said.
The other man's hand was frozen above the coat. Across the spring they
looked at one another. The cigarette wreathed its faint plume across
Popeye's face, one side of his face squinted against the smoke like a
mask carved into two simultaneous expressions.
From his hip pocket Popeye took a soiled handkerchief and spread it upon
his heels. Then he squatted, facing the man across the spring. That was
about four o'clock on an afternoon in May. They squatted so, facing one
another across the spring, for two hours. Now and then the bird sang back
in the swamp, as though it were worked by a clock; twice more invisible
automobiles passed along the highroad and died away. Again the bird sang.
"And of course you dont know the name of it," the man across the spring
said. "I dont suppose you'd know a bird at all, without it was singing
in a cage in a hotel lounge, or cost four dollars on a plate." Popeye
said nothing. He squatted in his tight black suit, his right-hand coat
pocket sagging compactly against his flank, twisting and pinching
cigarettes in his little, doll-like hands, spitting into the spring. His
skin had a dead, dark pallor. His nose was faintly acquiline, and he had
no chin at all. His face just went away, like the face of a wax doll set
too near a hot fire and forgotten. Across his vest ran a platinum chain
like a spider web. "Look here," the other man said. "My name is Horace
Benbow. I'm a lawyer in Kinston. I used to live in Jefferson yonder; I'm
