A Separate Peace by John Knowles Page A

completely gaunt during the winter terms at Devon, now seemed about to break from their storms of leaves. Little disregarded patches of ground revealed that they had been gardens all along, and nondescript underbrush around the gymnasium and the river broke into color. There was a latent freshness in the air, as though spring were returning in the middle of the summer.
    But examinations were at hand. I wasn’t as ready for them as I wanted to be. The Suicide Society continued to meet every evening, and I continued to attend, because I didn’t want Finny to understand me as I understood him.
    And also I didn’t want to let him excel me in this, even though I knew that it didn’t matter whether he showed me up at the tree or not. Because it was what you had in your heart that counted. And I had detected that Finny’s was a den of lonely, selfish ambition. He was no better than I was, no matter who won all the contests.
    A French examination was announced for one Friday late in August. Finny and I studied for it in the library Thursday afternoon; I went over vocabulary lists, and he wrote messages—je ne give a damn pas about le francais, les filles en France ne wear pas les pantelons—and passed them with great seriousness to me, as aide-mémoire. Of course I didn’t get any work done. After supper I went to our room to try again. Phineas came in a couple of minutes later.
    â€œArise,” he began airily, “Senior Overseer Charter Member! Elwin ‘Leper’ Lepellier has announced his intentionto make the leap this very night, to qualify, to save his face at last.”
    I didn’t believe it for a second. Leper Lepellier would go down paralyzed with panic on any sinking troopship before making such a jump. Finny had put him up to it, to finish me for good on the exam. I turned around with elaborate resignation. “If he jumps out of that tree I’m Mahatma Gandhi.”
    â€œAll right,” agreed Finny absently. He had a way of turning clichés inside out like that. “Come on, let’s go. We’ve got to be there. You never know, maybe he will do it this time.”
    â€œOh, for God sake.” I slammed closed the French book.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    What a performance! His face was completely questioning and candid.
    â€œStudying!” I snarled. “Studying! You know, books. Work. Examinations.”
    â€œYeah . . .” He waited for me to go on, as though he didn’t see what I was getting at.
    â€œOh for God sake! You don’t know what I’m talking about. No, of course not. Not you.” I stood up and slammed the chair against the desk. “Okay, we go. We watch little lily-liver Lepellier not jump from the tree, and I ruin my grade.”
    He looked at me with an interested, surprised expression. “You want to study?”
    I began to feel a little uneasy at this mildness of his, so I sighed heavily. “Never mind, forget it. I know, I joined the club, I’m going. What else can I do?”
    â€œDon’t go.” He said it very simply and casually, as though he were saying, “Nice day.” He shrugged, “Don’t go. What the hell, it’s only a game.”
    I had stopped halfway across the room, and now I just looked at him. “What d’you mean?” I muttered. What he meant was clear enough, but I was groping for what lay behind his words, for what his thoughts could possibly be. I might have asked, “Who are you, then?” instead. I was facing a total stranger.
    â€œI didn’t know you needed to study, ” he said simply, “I didn’t think you ever did. I thought it just came to you.”
    It seemed that he had made some kind of parallel between my studies and his sports. He probably thought anything you were good at came without effort. He didn’t know yet that he was unique.
    I couldn’t quite achieve a normal speaking voice.