The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (12 page)

Bruno wished he could run away. He hated Lieutenant Kotler, but he was advancing on him now and all Bruno could think of was the afternoon when he had seen him shooting a dog and the evening when Pavel had made him so angry that he—

‘Tell me, Bruno!’ shouted Kotler, his face growing red. ‘I won’t ask you a third time.’

‘I’ve never spoken to him,’ said Bruno immediately. ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life. I don’t know him.’

Lieutenant Kotler nodded and seemed satisfied with the answer. Very slowly he turned his head back to look at Shmuel, who wasn’t crying any more, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body any more, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.

‘You will finish polishing all these glasses,’ said Lieutenant Kotler in a very quiet voice now, so quiet that Bruno almost couldn’t hear him. It was as if all his anger had just changed into something else. Not quite the opposite, but something unexpected and dreadful. ‘And then I will come to collect you and bring you back to the camp, where we will have a discussion about what happens to boys who steal. This is understood, yes?’

Shmuel nodded and picked up another napkin and started to polish another glass; Bruno watched as his fingers shook and knew that he was terrified of breaking one. His heart sank, but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t look away.

‘Come on, little man,’ said Lieutenant Kotler, coming towards Bruno now and putting an unfriendly arm around his shoulder. ‘You go to the living room and read your book and leave this little — to finish his work.’ He used the same word he had used to Pavel when he had sent him to find the tyre.

Bruno nodded and turned round and left the kitchen without looking back. His stomach churned inside him and he thought for a moment that he was going to be sick. He had never felt so ashamed in his life; he had never imagined that he could behave so cruelly. He wondered how a boy who thought he was a good person really could act in such a cowardly way towards a friend. He sat in the living room for several hours but couldn’t concentrate on his book and didn’t dare to go back to the kitchen until later that evening, when Lieutenant Kotler had already come back and collected Shmuel and taken him away again.

Every afternoon that followed, Bruno returned to the place in the fence where they met, but Shmuel was never there. After almost a week he was convinced that what he had done was so terrible that he would never be forgiven, but on the seventh day he was delighted to see that Shmuel was waiting for him, sitting cross-legged on the ground as usual and staring at the dust beneath him.

‘Shmuel,’ he said, running towards him and sitting down, almost crying with relief and regret. ‘I’m so sorry, Shmuel. I don’t know why I did it. Say you’ll forgive me.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Shmuel, looking up at him now. There was a lot of bruising on his face and Bruno grimaced, and for a moment he forgot about his apology.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked and then didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Was it your bicycle? Because that happened to me back in Berlin a couple of years ago. I fell off when I was going too fast and was black and blue for weeks. Does it hurt?’

‘I don’t feel it any more,’ said Shmuel.

‘It looks like it hurts.’

‘I don’t feel anything any more,’ said Shmuel.

‘Well, I am sorry about last week,’ said Bruno. ‘I hate that Lieutenant Kotler. He thinks he’s in charge but he isn’t.’ He hesitated for a moment, not wanting to get sidetracked. He felt that he should say it one last time and really mean it. ‘I’m very sorry, Shmuel,’ he said in a clear voice. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t tell him the truth. I’ve never let a friend down like that before. Shmuel, I’m ashamed of myself.’

And when he said that, Shmuel smiled and nodded and Bruno knew that he was forgiven, and then Shmuel did something that he had never done before. He lifted the bottom of the fence up like he did whenever Bruno brought him food, but this time he reached his hand out and held it there, waiting until Bruno did the same, and then the two boys shook hands and smiled at each other.

It was the first time they had ever touched.

Chapter Sixteen
The Haircut

It had been almost a year since Bruno had come home to find Maria packing his things, and his memories of life in Berlin had almost all faded away. When he thought back he could remember that Karl and Martin were two of his three best friends for life, but try as he might he couldn’t remember who the other one was. And then something happened that meant that for two days he could leave Out-With and return to his old house: Grandmother had died and the family had to go home for the funeral.

While he was there, Bruno realized he wasn’t quite as small as he had been when he left because he could see over things that he couldn’t see over before, and when they stayed in their old house he could look through the window on the top floor and see across Berlin without having to stand on tiptoes.

Bruno hadn’t seen his grandmother since leaving Berlin but he had thought about her every day. The things he remembered most about her were the productions that she and he and Gretel performed at Christmas and birthdays and how she always had the perfect costume to suit whatever role he played. When he thought that they would never be able to do that again it made him very sad indeed.

The two days they spent in Berlin were also very sad ones. There was the funeral, and Bruno and Gretel and Father and Mother and Grandfather sat in the front row, Father wearing his most impressive uniform, the starched and pressed one with the decorations. Father was particularly sad, Mother told Bruno, because he had fought with Grandmother and they hadn’t made it up before she died.

There were a lot of wreaths delivered to the church and Father was proud of the fact that one of them had been sent by the Fury, but when Mother heard she said that Grandmother would turn in her grave if she knew it was there.

Bruno felt almost glad when they returned to Out-With. The house there had become his home now and he’d stopped worrying about the fact that it had only three floors rather than five, and it didn’t bother him so much that the soldiers came and went as if they owned the place. It slowly dawned on him that things weren’t too bad there after all, especially since he’d met Shmuel. He knew that there were many things he should be happy about, like the fact that Father and Mother seemed cheerful all the time now and Mother didn’t have to take as many of her afternoon naps or medicinal sherries. And Gretel was going through a phase – Mother’s words – and tended to keep out of his way.

There was also the fact that Lieutenant Kotler had been transferred away from Out-With and wasn’t around to make Bruno feel angry and upset all the time. (His departure had come about very suddenly and there had been a lot of shouting between Father and Mother about it late at night, but he was gone, that was for sure, and he wasn’t coming back; Gretel was inconsolable.) That was something else to be happy about: no one called him ‘little man’ any more.

But the best thing was that he had a friend called Shmuel.

He enjoyed walking along the fence every afternoon and was pleased to see that his friend seemed a lot happier these days and his eyes didn’t seem so sunken, although his body was still ridiculously skinny and his face unpleasantly grey.

One day, while sitting opposite him at their usual place, Bruno remarked, ‘This is the strangest friendship I’ve ever had.’

‘Why?’ asked Shmuel.

‘Because every other boy I’ve ever been friends with has been someone that I’ve been able to play with,’ he replied. ‘And we never get to play together. All we get to do is sit here and talk.’

‘I like sitting here and talking,’ said Shmuel.

‘Well, I do too of course,’ said Bruno. ‘But it’s a pity we can’t do something more exciting from time to time. A bit of exploring, perhaps. Or a game of football. We’ve never even seen each other without all this wire fencing in the way.’

Bruno often made comments like this because he wanted to pretend that the incident a few months earlier when he had denied his friendship with Shmuel had never taken place. It still preyed on his mind and made him feel bad about himself, although Shmuel, to his credit, seemed to have forgotten all about it.

‘Maybe someday we will,’ said Shmuel. ‘If they ever let us out.’

Bruno started to think more and more about the two sides of the fence and the reason it was there in the first place. He considered speaking to Father or Mother about it but suspected that they would either be angry with him for mentioning it or tell him something unpleasant about Shmuel and his family, so instead he did something quite unusual. He decided to talk to the Hopeless Case.

Gretel’s room had changed quite considerably since the last time he had been there. For one thing there wasn’t a single doll in sight. One afternoon a month or so earlier, around the time that Lieutenant Kotler had left Out-With, Gretel had decided that she didn’t like dolls any more and had put them all into four large bags and thrown them away. In their place she had hung up maps of Europe that Father had given her, and every day she put little pins into them and moved the pins around constantly after consulting the daily newspaper. Bruno thought she might be going mad. But still, she didn’t tease him or bully him as much as she used to, so he thought there could be no harm in talking to her.

‘Hello,’ he said, knocking politely on her door because he knew how angry she always got if he just went in.

‘What do you want?’ asked Gretel, who was sitting at her dressing table, experimenting with her hair.

‘Nothing,’ said Bruno.

‘Then go away.’

Bruno nodded but came inside anyway and sat down on the side of the bed. Gretel watched him from out of the side of her eyes but didn’t say anything.

‘Gretel,’ he said finally, ‘can I ask you something?’

‘If you make it quick,’ she said.

‘Everything here at Out-With—’ he began, but she interrupted him immediately.

‘It’s not called Out-With, Bruno,’ she said angrily, as if this was the worst mistake anyone had ever made in the history of the world. ‘Why can’t you pronounce it right?’

‘It
is
called Out-With,’ he protested.

‘It’s not,’ she insisted, pronouncing the name of the camp correctly for him.

Bruno frowned and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. ‘But that’s what I said,’ he said.

‘No it’s not. Anyway, I’m not going to argue with you,’ said Gretel, losing her patience already, for she had very little of it to begin with. ‘What is it anyway? What do you want to know?’

‘I want to know about the fence,’ he said firmly, deciding that this was the most important thing to begin with. ‘I want to know why it’s there.’

Gretel turned round in her chair and looked at him curiously. ‘You mean you don’t know?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Bruno. ‘I don’t understand why we’re not allowed on the other side of it. What’s so wrong with us that we can’t go over there and play?’

Gretel stared at him and then suddenly started laughing, only stopping when she saw that Bruno was being perfectly serious.

‘Bruno,’ she said in a childish voice, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world, ‘the fence isn’t there to stop us from going over there. It’s to stop them from coming over here.’

Bruno considered this but it didn’t make things any clearer. ‘But why?’ he asked.

‘Because they have to be kept together,’ explained Gretel.

‘With their families, you mean?’

‘Well, yes, with their families. But with their own kind too.’

‘What do you mean, their own kind?’

Gretel sighed and shook her head. ‘With the other Jews, Bruno. Didn’t you know that? That’s why they have to be kept together. They can’t mix with us.’

‘Jews,’ said Bruno, testing the word out. He quite liked the way it sounded. ‘Jews,’ he repeated. ‘All the people over that side of the fence are Jews.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Gretel.

‘Are we Jews?’

Gretel opened her mouth wide, as if she had been slapped in the face. ‘No, Bruno,’ she said. ‘No, we most certainly are not. And you shouldn’t even say something like that.’

‘But why not? What are we then?’

‘We’re …’ began Gretel, but then she had to stop to think about it. ‘We’re …’ she repeated, but she wasn’t quite sure what the answer to this question really was. ‘Well we’re not Jews,’ she said finally.

‘I know we’re not,’ said Bruno in frustration. ‘I’m asking you, if we’re not Jews, what are we instead?’

‘We’re the opposite,’ said Gretel, answering quickly and sounding a lot more satisfied with this answer. ‘Yes, that’s it. We’re the opposite.’

‘All right,’ said Bruno, pleased that he had it settled in his head at last. ‘And the Opposite live on this side of the fence and the Jews live on that.’

‘That’s right, Bruno.’

‘Don’t the Jews like the Opposite then?’

‘No, it’s us who don’t like them, stupid.’

Bruno frowned. Gretel had been told time and time again that she wasn’t allowed to call him stupid but still she persisted with it.

‘Well, why don’t we like them?’ he asked.

‘Because they’re Jews,’ said Gretel.

‘I see. And the Opposite and the Jews don’t get along.’

‘No, Bruno,’ said Gretel, but she said this slowly because she had discovered something unusual in her hair and was examining it carefully.

‘Well, can’t someone just get them together and—’

Bruno was interrupted by the sound of Gretel breaking into a piercing scream; one that woke Mother up from her afternoon nap and brought her running into the bedroom to find out which of her children had murdered the other one.

While experimenting with her hair Gretel had found a tiny egg, no bigger than the top of a pin. She showed it to Mother, who looked through her hair, pulling strands of it apart quickly, before marching over to Bruno and doing the same thing to him.

‘Oh, I don’t believe it,’ said Mother angrily. ‘I knew something like this would happen in a place like this.’

It turned out that both Gretel and Bruno had lice in their hair, and Gretel had to be treated with a special shampoo that smelled horrible and afterwards she sat in her room for hours on end, crying her eyes out.

Bruno had the shampoo as well, but then Father decided that the best thing was for him to start afresh and he got a razor and shaved all Bruno’s hair off, which made Bruno cry. It didn’t take long and he hated seeing all his hair float down from his head and land on the floor at his feet, but Father said it had to be done.

Afterwards Bruno looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and he felt sick. His entire head looked misshapen now that he was bald and his eyes looked too big for his face. He was almost scared of his own reflection.

‘Don’t worry,’ Father reassured him. ‘It’ll grow back. It’ll only take a few weeks.’

‘It’s the filth around here that did it,’ said Mother. ‘If some people could only see the effect this place is having on us all.’

When he saw himself in the mirror Bruno couldn’t help but think how much like Shmuel he looked now, and he wondered whether all the people on that side of the fence had lice as well and that was why all their heads were shaved too.

When he saw his friend the next day Shmuel started to laugh at Bruno’s appearance, which didn’t do a lot for his dwindling self-confidence.

‘I look just like you now,’ said Bruno sadly, as if this was a terrible thing to admit.

‘Only fatter,’ admitted Shmuel.