JOHN KNOWLES: A Separate Peace Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Either 17 Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: Gradually the noise in the room, which had revived when the three of them came in, subsided again. Brinker managed it. He never raised his voice, but instead he let the noise surrounding it gradually sink so that his voice emerged in the ensuing silence without any emphasis on his part–‘so that you were standing next to the river bank, watching Phineas climb the tree?' he was saying, and had waited, I knew, until this silence to say. 5 'Sure. Right there by the trunk of the tree. I was looking up. It was almost sunset, and I remember the way the sun was shining in my eyes.' 'So you couldn't ...' I began before I could stop myself. There was a short pause during which every ear and no eyes were directed toward me, and then Brinker went on. ‘And what did you see? Could you see anything with the sun in your eyes?' 10 'Oh sure,' said Leper in his new, confident, false voice. 'I just shaded my eyes a little, like this,' he demonstrated how a hand shades the eyes, 'and then I could see. I could see both of them clearly enough because the sun was blazing all around them,' a certain singsong sincerity was developing in his voice, as though he were trying to hold the interest of young children, 'and the rays of the sun were shooting past them, millions of rays shooting past them like–like golden machine-gun fire.' He paused to let us consider the profoundly revealing exactness of this phrase. 'That's what it was like, if you want to know. The two of them looked as black as–as black as death standing up there with this fire burning all around them.' 15 Everyone could hear, couldn't they? the derangement in his voice. Everyone must be able to see how false his confidence was. Any fool could see that. But whatever I said would be a self-indictment; others would have to fight for me. 20 'Up there where?' said Brinker brusquely. 'Where were the two of them standing up there?' 'On the limb!' Leper's annoyed, this-is-obvious tone would discount what he said in their minds; they would know that he had never been like this before, that he had changed and was not responsible. 'Who was where on the limb? Was one of them ahead of the other?' 'Well of course.' 25 'Who was ahead?' Leper smiled waggishly. 'I couldn't see that. There were just two shapes, and with that fire shooting past them they looked as black as–' 'You've already told us that. You couldn't see who was ahead?' 'No, naturally I couldn't.' 30 'But you could see how they were standing. Where were they exactly?' 'One of them was next to the trunk, holding the trunk of the tree. I'll never forget that because the tree was a huge black shape too, and his hand touching the black trunk anchored him, if you see what I mean, to something solid in all the bright fire they were standing in up there. And the other one was a little farther out on the limb.' 35 'Then what happened?' 'Then they both moved.' 'How did they move?' 40 45 'They moved,' now Leper was smiling, a charming and slightly arch smile, like a child who knows he is going to say something clever, 'they moved like an engine.' 50 In the baffled silence I began to uncoil slowly. 'Like an engine!' Brinker's expression was a struggle between surprise and disgust. 'I can't think of the name of the engine. But it has two pistons. What is that engine? Well anyway, in this engine first one piston sinks, and then the next one sinks. The one holding on to the trunk sank for a second, up and down like a piston, and then the other one sank and fell.' 55 Someone on the platform exclaimed, ‘The one who moved first shook the other one's balance!' 'I suppose so.' Leper seemed to be rapidly losing interest. 60 [from Chapter 11]