Chapter 5 five

No one was allowed to go to the infirmary the next day, but I heard all kinds of rumors about it.A fact was finally revealed: one of his legs was shattered.I couldn't tell what the word meant, whether it meant a complete and badly broken bone or bones, and I didn't ask.I have had no further information, although the topic has been talked about endlessly.People must have talked about other things in my absence, but everyone talked about Phineas to me.I think this is also natural.I happened to be with him when it happened, and I was his roommate. His injury seemed to affect teachers more than any other disaster I can recall.It seemed to them that it was especially unfair that the accident should have happened to a sixteen-year-old, one of the rare teenage boys who had been free and happy in the summer of 1942.

I can't go on listening to people like that.If anyone doubts me, I will defend myself with all my might.But nothing happened, no one suspected it.Phineas must have been too miserable, or too noble, not to tell them. I was alone in my room as much as possible, trying to empty my head of all thoughts, to forget where I was, and even who I was.One night, as I was getting dressed for dinner with this numbness in my mind, a thought popped into my head, and it was the first thing that popped into my head after Finny fell from a tree. thought.I decided to wear his clothes.We wear the same size, and although he always criticizes my clothes, he wears them a lot and quickly forgets which ones belong to him and which ones belong to me.I never forgot that that evening, as I put on his Cordoba shoes and his trousers, I searched for and found in a drawer his pink shirt, cleanly laundered.Its high, slightly stiff collar rubs against my neck, its wide cuffs touch my wrists, and the delicate fabric against my skin provokes a strange and different feeling; Like a nobleman, some Spanish Grand Duke.

But when I looked in the mirror, I realized that I hadn't become an aristocrat at all, I wasn't a pipe dream.I am Phineas, and Phineas has returned.Even my face wore his good humor, his exuberant optimism and alertness.I don't know why that thought makes me so at ease, but I'm standing here in this gorgeous blouse by Feeney and it seems like I'll never be confused about my role again. I didn't go to dinner.This sense of change stayed with me throughout the night, even after I undressed and went to bed.I slept soundly that night, and it was only when I woke up that the hallucination disappeared and I confronted myself and what I had done to Finny.

Sooner or later what is going to happen happens, and this morning it happened.Feeney is better!Dr. Stempel called to me from the steps of the chapel, and the organ was playing the finale behind us.I walked hesitantly through the choir, the black robes of the choir members fluttering in the morning breeze, the doctor's words echoing around me.He could have exposed me here, in front of the whole school.But he kindly led me into a path leading to the school infirmary.Now he can see a visitor or two, and he has suffered a lot these days. Do you think I won't bother him? you?No reason?I don't want those teachers to give condolences to him.But it would be good for him to have a friend or two visit.

He's still having a hard time right? The fracture is really serious. But how does he feel?I mean, is he happy, or Ah, you know Finny.I don't know, I'm pretty sure I don't know Finny at all.The fracture was really bad, he went on, but we'll fix him eventually and he'll be walking again. Walk again! Yes.The doctor didn't look at me, but changed his tone slightly.After such an accident, of course sports cannot be done. But he can still do it, I shouted, as long as his legs are still there, as long as you don't amputate him, you won't amputate him, right?As long as the limb is not amputated, the bone is still there, so it will grow slowly, won't it?Of course it will grow.

Dr. Stempel hesitated, and I think for a moment he glanced at me.Sports can't do it.As a friend, you should help him face and accept this fact.The sooner he accepts, the better off he will be.If there was even the slightest hope that he could do anything else than walk, I would do my best.There is no such hope.I'm sorry, and of course everyone is.It's a tragedy, but it's true. I grab my head and squeeze my scalp with my fingers.Perhaps feeling kinder, the doctor put a hand on my shoulder.With him doing this, I lost all control over myself.I covered my face and cried; I cried for Phineas, I cried for myself, I cried for the doctor who thought he should face reality.Most of all, I cried because of that kindness, which I didn't expect.

Well, this is useless.You gotta keep your spirits up and hopeful.He needs you like that.He desperately wants to see you, and you're the only one he asks about. This made me hold back my tears.I let go of the hand covering my face and looked at the red brick wall outside the school doctor's house. It was a beaming house, and I felt that it was getting closer and closer to me.Of course I was the first person he wanted to meet.Phineas wouldn't speak ill of me behind my back; he would accuse me to my face. We went up the infirmary stairs, and everything happened so quickly that in a moment I was led down the corridor and toward a door, being led by Dr. Stempel.he is inside.You go in first, I'll go in later.

The door was ajar, I pushed it open and stood there blankly.Phineas was lying between pillows and sheets, his left leg, which was so large that it was wrapped in a white bandage, hung slightly above the hospital bed.A tube ran from a bottle to his right arm.A channel inside me started to close and I knew I was going to back off. Come in, I heard him say, you look uglier than me.The fact that he was still talking merrily pulled me back a little, and I sat down in a chair by his bed.Over the past few days, he seemed to have shrunk in size and lost his sun-tanned colour.His eyes examined me as if I were the patient.There was no keen humor in those eyes, but they had become hazy and dreamy.After a while, I realized he had been sedated.Why are you so sick?he continued.

Feeney, I have no control over what I say, words are purely instinctive, like the reactions of someone in a desperate situation.What happened to that tree?That damned tree, I'm going to cut it down.Who cares who gets to jump off the top?What's going on, what's going on?How did you fall, how did you fall like that? I just fell, and he looked at my face with blurry eyes, something shook, and I fell.I remember turning around to look at you and it seemed like an eternity.I thought I could reach out and grab you. I jerk away from him.Pull me down too! He continued to look at my face with blurred eyes.Catch you so I don't fall.

Yes of course.I was desperately breathing air in this closed ward, I tried, remember?I reached out, but you were gone, you fell through the twigs below, and I reached out and caught nothing. I just remember looking at your face for a little while.Your expression is very ridiculous.Extremely shocked, as it is now. Now?Ah, of course, I am indeed in shock now.For heaven's sake, who wouldn't be shocked?So terrible, all so terrible. But I don't understand why your shock is so egoistic.Look at you like this, it's like it happened to you. Almost even happened to me!I was there, right next to you, on that branch.

Yes I know.I remember them all. There was a heavy silence, and then I spoke in a very soft voice, as if my words were going to blow up this ward, do you remember what made you fall? His gaze still lingers on my face.No idea, I must have just lost my balance.It must be so.I do have that thought, I feel, you were standing next to me, you and I don't know, I have a feeling.But you can't be sure just by feeling.That feeling makes no sense.That was a crazy idea, and I must have been out of my mind.So, I just had to forget about it.I just fell, and he turned his face away, fumbling among the pillows, that's all.Then he looked at me again.I'm sorry I should feel that way. For his sincerity, I can't say anything. He even apologized for doubting the truth when he was still under the anesthesia.He will never accuse me.He just had a feeling that at this very moment he must be imposing a new commandment on his own Ten Commandments: never accuse a friend of wrongdoing based on his own feelings. And I thought we were competitors!This is so ridiculous, I just want to cry. What would he think, what would he do if it was Phineas, sitting here with guilt? He will tell me the truth. I stood up abruptly, knocking over the chair.I stared at him in amazement, and he stared back at me, and a moment later his mouth turned into a grin.Ah, he finally said kindly in his knowing voice, what are you trying to do, hypnotize me? Feeney, I have something to tell you.You'd hate me if you said it, but I have to tell you about it. God, how majestic, he said, leaning back on the pillow, sounding like General MacArthur. Sounds like who I don't care, and when I tell you, you won't.It's the worst thing, and I'm so sorry, I don't want to tell you, but I have to. But I didn't tell him.Before I could pour my heart out, Dr. Stempel walked in, then a nurse, and I was dismissed.The next day, the doctor decided that Feeney wasn't in good enough shape for a visit, even with an old friend like me.An ambulance soon took him away and returned him to his home outside Boston. The summer term is drawing to a close and is officially over.But to me, it seemed to be wobbly staying there and being called off strangely early.I went back to my hometown in the south for a month's vacation. I spent this holiday time in an atmosphere of daydream and unreality, as if I had been like this before, and this was the first time that I had no interest in vacation. At the end of September, I boarded the crowded and indeterminate train of September 1942, and set off for Devon.I arrived in Boston seventeen hours late; in Devon, such an experience would be the stuff of conversation.After a vacation, those of us who have traveled long distances would go on for days talking or making up about our adventures on the road. I was lucky enough to catch a taxi at South Station, and instead of telling the driver North Station, I didn't cross Boston to catch the last train to Devon for the last short leg of the journey, but instead leaned on On the seat, he involuntarily said the address of Finny's house in the suburbs. We found his house easily in a street over which the branches of old elms swayed.The house itself was tall and white, and it certainly looked appropriate as Phineas' home.The street side of the house was very elegant, but behind the wings and wings the house dwindled rapidly in decent proportions, ending in a large bare barn. Nothing surprised Phineas.A cleaning lady came to answer the door, and when I entered the room where he was sitting, he looked very happy but not surprised at all. So you are finally willing to visit us!His voice was passionate and high-pitched, so high-pitched that it changed a little bit, did you bring me delicious food from the south?Honeysuckle and molasses, or something else good?I tried to think of something funny.cornbread?You must have brought something.You don't go all the way back to the South, and then all the way back, with nothing but your listless face.He talked on and on, regardless of my shock and clumsiness, and his words covered my shock and clumsiness.Seeing him reclining on the hospital-style white pillow in the big armchair, I was speechless.In spite of his embarrassment in the Devon school infirmary, he seemed at the time to be an athlete who had been temporarily injured in play; as if the coaches would come at any moment and bandage him.And now, curled up in front of the great New England fireplace on this quiet old street, I think he is like a sick man who can't get out of the house. I bring, I forgot to bring anything to anybody.I struggled to speak a little louder about the muttered self-blame.I'll mail you some back, flowers or something. flower!What happened to you in the South? Ah, I can't find a lighthearted joke in my head, so I'll mail you some books. Forget about books, I want to chat with you more.What's new in the South? I tried to sound as jovial as I could, and, in fact, started a fire.Right behind my house, the grass caught fire.We took brooms and went to fight the fire.I figured we were actually fanning the flames because it kept growing until the fire brigade finally arrived.They could see where the fire was burning, because we were waving our flaming brooms in the air, trying to put out the fire on the brooms. Feeney loved the story.But it put the two of us on that familiar platform of friendship, buddies who tell each other stories.How can I open my mouth to talk about that matter?That was not just a thunderbolt.It doesn't even seem real. I can't talk in this conversation, I can't talk in this room.I wish I had met him at a train station, or at some highway junction, and not here.Here the little panes in the windows glistened with painstaking polishing, and miniatures and old portraits hung on the walls.The chairs were either heavily cushioned and so comfortable that you dozed off in them, or they were made in the USA in the early days and never used.There were a couple of sturdy square tables filled with family photos and random books and magazines, and three small tables, elegant and useless.It's a compromise of a room with a few decent pieces for guests to look at and the rest for people to use. But I was the Finny I met in the impersonal dorm, in the gym, on the playing field.The room we shared in Devon had been occupied by many strangers before us, and many strangers will live after us.I did it there, but I have to tell him here.I felt like a wild man who just stumbled out of the jungle and was going to turn this place upside down. I sat back in the early American chair, and its straight back and high arms immediately forced me to sit upright.My blood could start throbbing if it wanted to; throb.I went straight to the point, and I've been thinking of you this trip home. oh?He glanced quickly into my eyes. I think you want this accident. You are a good buddy, you still miss me when you are on vacation. I think it misses you because I miss you and the accident because I caused the accident. Finny stared at me intently, with no expression on his strikingly handsome face.What do you mean, you caused it?His voice was as calm as his gaze. My own voice was very soft, as if speaking a foreign language.I shook the branch.I caused the accident.I would add that I shook that branch on purpose so that you would fall. He looks older than ever, and of course it's not your fault. it's me.I made it! Of course you didn't.you fool.Sit down, fool. Of course I did! If you don't sit down, I'll beat you up. hit me!I look at him and hit me!You can't even stand up!You can't even walk up to me! If you don't keep your mouth shut, I'll kill you. ha!Kill me!Now you know what's going on!I shake the branch because I want to!Now you understand it yourself! I don't understand anything.let's go.I'm tired and you're making me sick.let's go.In a way that never looked like him, he clutched his forehead wearily. Then it occurred to me that I was hurting him again.I realize this has the potential to be a deeper injury than what I did the last time.I have to withdraw from it, I have to deny it.Could it be possible that he was right?Did I do that explicitly and deliberately?I can't remember, I can't think.However, letting him know this made things worse.I have to take my words back. But not here.You're back in Devon in a few weeks, right?After we sat for a while without saying a word, I murmured. Of course, I went back before Thanksgiving. There wasn't a single piece of furniture that fit Feeney in Devon, and I could make it up to him. Now I have to get out of here.There's only one way to do it; I have to make everything I say and do seem false.The trek was terrible, I said, I didn't get much sleep on the train.Maybe I'm a bit of a bullshit today. It doesn't matter. I think it's time for me to go to the station, I'm a day late to Devon. You're not going to start following those rules again, are you? I smiled at him.No, I don't, that's the most false thing to say, the biggest lie.