The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (6 page)

Everything went black for a moment and then came back into focus. He sat up on the ground just as the tyre swung back and hit him on the head and he let out a yelp and moved out of its way. When he stood up he could feel that his arm and leg were both very sore as he had fallen heavily on them, but they weren’t so sore that they might be broken. He inspected his hand and it was covered in scratches and when he looked at his elbow he could see a nasty cut. His leg felt worse though, and when he looked down at his knee, just below where his shorts ended, there was a wide gash which seemed to have been waiting for him to look at it because once all the attention was focused on it, it started to bleed rather badly.

‘Oh dear,’ said Bruno out loud, staring at it and wondering what he should do next. He didn’t have to wonder for long though, because the swing that he had built was on the same side of the house as the kitchen, and Pavel, the waiter who had helped him find the tyre, had been peeling potatoes while standing at the window and had seen the accident take place. When Bruno looked up again he saw Pavel coming quickly towards him, and only when he arrived did he feel confident enough to let the woozy feeling that was surrounding him take him over completely. He fell a little but didn’t land on the ground this time, as Pavel scooped him up.

‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem dangerous at all.’

‘You were going too high,’ said Pavel in a quiet voice that immediately made Bruno feel safe. ‘I could see it. I thought that at any moment you were going to suffer a mischief.’

‘And I did,’ said Bruno.

‘You certainly did.’

Pavel carried him across the lawn and back towards the house, taking him into the kitchen and settling him on one of the wooden chairs.

‘Where’s Mother?’ asked Bruno, looking around for the first person he usually searched for when he’d had an accident.

‘Your mother hasn’t returned yet, I’m afraid,’ said Pavel, who was kneeling on the floor in front of him and examining the knee. ‘I’m the only one here.’

‘What’s going to happen then?’ asked Bruno, beginning to panic slightly, an emotion that might encourage tears. ‘I might bleed to death.’

Pavel gave a gentle laugh and shook his head. ‘You’re not going to bleed to death,’ he said, pulling a stool across and settling Bruno’s leg on it. ‘Don’t move for a moment. There’s a first-aid box over here.’

Bruno watched as he moved around the kitchen, pulling the green first-aid box from a cupboard and filling a small bowl with water, testing it first with his finger to make sure that it wasn’t too cold.

‘Will I need to go to hospital?’ asked Bruno.

‘No, no,’ said Pavel when he returned to his kneeling position, dipping a dry cloth into the bowl and touching it gently to Bruno’s knee, which made him wince in pain, despite the fact that it wasn’t really all that painful. ‘It’s only a small cut. It won’t even need stitches.’

Bruno frowned and bit his lip nervously as Pavel cleaned the wound of blood and then held another cloth to it quite tightly for a few minutes. When he pulled it away again, gently, the bleeding had stopped, and he took a small bottle of green liquid from the first-aid box and dabbed it over the wound, which stung quite sharply and made Bruno say ‘Ow’ a few times in rapid succession.

‘It’s not that bad,’ said Pavel, but in a gentle and kindly voice. ‘Don’t make it worse by thinking it’s more painful than it actually is.’

Somehow this made sense to Bruno and he resisted the urge to say ‘Ow’ any more, and when Pavel had finished applying the green liquid he took a bandage from the first-aid box and taped it to the cut.

‘There,’ he said. ‘All better, eh?’

Bruno nodded and felt a little ashamed of himself for not behaving as bravely as he would have liked. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Pavel. ‘Now you need to stay sitting there for a few minutes before you walk around on it again, all right? Let the wound relax. And don’t go near that swing again today.’

Bruno nodded and kept his leg stretched out on the stool while Pavel went over to the sink and washed his hands carefully, even scrubbing under his nails with a wire brush, before drying them off and returning to the potatoes.

‘Will you tell Mother what happened?’ asked Bruno, who had spent the last few minutes wondering whether he would be viewed as a hero for suffering an accident or a villain for building a death-trap.

‘I think she’ll see for herself,’ said Pavel, who took the carrots over to the table now and sat down opposite Bruno as he began to peel them onto an old newspaper.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Bruno. ‘Perhaps she’ll want to take me to a doctor.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Pavel quietly.

‘You never know,’ said Bruno, who didn’t want his accident to be dismissed quite so easily. (It was, after all, quite the most exciting thing that had happened to him since arriving here.) ‘It could be worse than it seems.’

‘It’s not,’ said Pavel, who barely seemed to be listening to what Bruno was saying, the carrots were taking up so much of his attention.

‘Well, how do you know?’ asked Bruno quickly, growing irritable now despite the fact that this was the same man who had come out to pick him up off the ground and brought him in and taken care of him. ‘You’re not a doctor.’

Pavel stopped peeling the carrots for a moment and looked across the table at Bruno, his head held low, his eyes looking up, as if he were wondering what to say to such a thing. He sighed and seemed to consider it for quite a long time before saying, ‘Yes I am.’

Bruno stared at him in surprise. This didn’t make any sense to him. ‘But you’re a waiter,’ he said slowly. ‘And you peel the vegetables for dinner. How can you be a doctor too?’

‘Young man,’ said Pavel (and Bruno appreciated the fact that he had the courtesy to call him ‘young man’ instead of ‘little man’ as Lieutenant Kotler had), ‘I certainly am a doctor. Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.’

Bruno had no idea what Pavel meant but something about what he had said made him look at him closely for the first time. He was quite a small man, and very skinny too, with long fingers and angular features. He was older than Father but younger than Grandfather, which still meant he was quite old, and although Bruno had never laid eyes on him before coming to Out-With, something about his face made him believe that he had worn a beard in the past.

But not any more.

‘But I don’t understand,’ said Bruno, wanting to get to the bottom of this. ‘If you’re a doctor, then why are you waiting on tables? Why aren’t you working at a hospital somewhere?’

Pavel hesitated for a long time before answering, and while he did so Bruno said nothing. He wasn’t sure why but he felt that the polite thing to do was to wait until Pavel was ready to speak.

‘Before I came here, I practised as a doctor,’ he said finally.

‘Practised?’ asked Bruno, who was unfamiliar with the word. ‘Weren’t you any good then?’

Pavel smiled. ‘I was very good,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to be a doctor, you see. From the time I was a small boy. From the time I was your age.’

‘I want to be an explorer,’ said Bruno quickly.

‘I wish you luck,’ said Pavel.

‘Thank you.’

‘Have you discovered anything yet?’

‘Back in our house in Berlin there was a lot of exploring to be done,’ recalled Bruno. ‘But then, it was a very big house, bigger than you could possibly imagine, so there were a lot of places to explore. It’s not the same here.’

‘Nothing is the same here,’ agreed Pavel.

‘When did you arrive at Out-With?’ asked Bruno.

Pavel put the carrot and the peeler down for a few moments and thought about it. ‘I think I’ve always been here,’ he said finally in a quiet voice.

‘You grew up here?’

‘No,’ said Pavel, shaking his head. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘But you just said—’

Before he could go on, Mother’s voice could be heard outside. As soon as he heard her, Pavel jumped up quickly from his seat and returned to the sink with the carrots and the peeler and the newspaper full of peelings, and turned his back on Bruno, hanging his head low and not speaking again.

‘What on earth happened to you?’ asked Mother when she appeared in the kitchen, leaning down to examine the plaster which covered Bruno’s cut.

‘I made a swing and then I fell off it,’ explained Bruno. ‘And then the swing hit me on the head and I nearly fainted, but Pavel came out and brought me in and cleaned it all up and put a bandage on me and it stung very badly but I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry once, did I, Pavel?’

Pavel turned his body slightly in their direction but didn’t lift his head. ‘The wound has been cleaned,’ he said quietly, not answering Bruno’s question. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Go to your room, Bruno,’ said Mother, who looked distinctly uncomfortable now.

‘But I—’

‘Don’t argue with me – go to your room!’ she insisted, and Bruno stepped off the chair, putting his weight on what he had decided to call his bad leg, and it hurt a little. He turned and left the room but was still able to hear Mother saying thank you to Pavel as he walked towards the stairs, and this made Bruno happy because surely it was obvious to everyone that if it hadn’t been for him, he would have bled to death.

He heard one last thing before going upstairs and that was Mother’s last line to the waiter who claimed to be a doctor.

‘If the Commandant asks, we’ll say that I cleaned Bruno up.’

Which seemed terribly selfish to Bruno and a way for Mother to take credit for something that she hadn’t done.

Chapter Eight
Why Grandmother Stormed Out

The two people Bruno missed most of all from home were Grandfather and Grandmother. They lived together in a small flat near the fruit and vegetable stalls, and around the time that Bruno moved to Out-With, Grandfather was almost seventy-three years old which, as far as Bruno was concerned, made him just about the oldest man in the world. One afternoon Bruno had calculated that if he lived his entire life over and over again eight times, he would still be a year younger than Grandfather.

Grandfather had spent his entire life running a restaurant in the centre of town, and one of his employees was the father of Bruno’s friend Martin who worked there as a chef. Although Grandfather no longer cooked or waited on tables in the restaurant himself, he spent most of his days there, sitting at the bar in the afternoon talking to the customers, eating his meals there in the evening and staying until closing time, laughing with his friends.

Grandmother never seemed old in comparison to the other boys’ grandmothers. In fact when Bruno learned just how old she was – sixty-two – he was amazed. She had met Grandfather as a young woman after one of her concerts and somehow he had persuaded her to marry him, despite all his flaws. She had long red hair, surprisingly similar to her daughter-in-law’s, and green eyes, and she claimed that was because somewhere in her family there was Irish blood. Bruno always knew when a family party was getting into full swing because Grandmother would hover by the piano until someone sat down at it and asked her to sing.

‘What’s that?’ she always cried, holding a hand to her chest as if the very idea took her breath away. ‘Is it a song you’re wanting? Why, I couldn’t possibly. I’m afraid, young man, my singing days are far behind me.’

‘Sing! Sing!’ everyone at the party would cry, and after a suitable pause – sometimes as long as ten or twelve seconds – she would finally give in and turn to the young man at the piano and say in a quick and humorous voice:

‘
La Vie en Rose
, E-flat minor. And try to keep up with the changes.’

Parties at Bruno’s house were always dominated by Grandmother’s singing, which for some reason always seemed to coincide with the moment when Mother moved from the main party area to the kitchen, followed by some of her own friends. Father always stayed to listen and Bruno did too because there was nothing he liked more than hearing Grandmother break into her full voice and soak up the applause of the guests at the end. Plus,
La Vie en Rose
gave him chills and made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Grandmother liked to think that Bruno or Gretel would follow her onto the stage, and every Christmas and at every birthday party she would devise a small play for the three of them to perform for Mother, Father and Grandfather. She wrote the plays herself and, to Bruno’s way of thinking, always gave herself the best lines, though he didn’t mind that too much. There was usually a song in there somewhere too –
Is it a song you’re wanting?
she’d ask first – and an opportunity for Bruno to do a magic trick and for Gretel to dance. The play always ended with Bruno reciting a long poem by one of the Great Poets, words which he found very hard to understand but which somehow started to sound more and more beautiful the more he read them.

But that wasn’t the best part of these little productions. The best part was the fact that Grandmother made costumes for Bruno and Gretel. No matter what the role, no matter how few lines he might have in comparison to his sister or grandmother, Bruno always got to dress up as a prince, or an Arab sheik, or even on one occasion a Roman gladiator. There were crowns, and when there weren’t crowns there were spears. And when there weren’t spears there were whips or turbans. No one ever knew what Grandmother would come up with next, but a week before Christmas Bruno and Gretel would be summoned to her home on a daily basis for rehearsals.

Of course the last play they performed had ended in disaster and Bruno still remembered it with sadness, although he wasn’t quite sure what had happened to cause the argument.

A week or so before, there had been great excitement in the house and it had something to do with the fact that Father was now to be addressed as ‘Commandant’ by Maria, Cook and Lars the butler, as well as by all the soldiers who came in and out of there and used the place – as far as Bruno could see – as if it were their own and not his. There had been nothing but excitement for weeks. First the Fury and the beautiful blonde woman had come to dinner, which had brought the whole house to a standstill, and then it was this new business of calling Father ‘Commandant’. Mother had told Bruno to congratulate Father and he had done so, although if he was honest with himself (which he always tried to be) he wasn’t entirely sure what he was congratulating him for.

On Christmas Day Father wore his brand-new uniform, the starched and pressed one that he wore every day now, and the whole family applauded when he first appeared in it. It really was something special. Compared to the other soldiers who came in and out of the house, he stood out, and they seemed to respect him all the more now that he had it. Mother went up to him and kissed him on the cheek and ran a hand across the front of it, commenting on how fine she thought the fabric was. Bruno was particularly impressed by all the decorations on the uniform and he had been allowed to wear the cap for a short period, provided his hands were clean when he put it on.

Grandfather was very proud of his son when he saw him in his new uniform but Grandmother was the only one who seemed unimpressed. After dinner had been served, and after she and Gretel and Bruno had performed their latest production, she sat down sadly in one of the armchairs and looked at Father, shaking her head as if he were a huge disappointment to her.

‘I wonder – is this where I went wrong with you, Ralf?’ she said. ‘I wonder if all the performances I made you give as a boy led you to this. Dressing up like a puppet on a string.’

‘Now, Mother,’ said Father in a tolerant voice. ‘You know this isn’t the time.’

‘Standing there in your uniform,’ she continued, ‘as if it makes you something special. Not even caring what it means really. What it stands for.’

‘Nathalie, we discussed this in advance,’ said Grandfather, although everyone knew that when Grandmother had something to say she always found a way to say it, no matter how unpopular it might prove to be.

‘
You
discussed it, Matthias,’ said Grandmother. ‘I was merely the blank wall to whom you addressed your words. As usual.’

‘This is a party, Mother,’ said Father with a sigh. ‘And it’s Christmas. Let’s not spoil things.’

‘I remember when the Great War began,’ said Grandfather proudly, staring into the fire and shaking his head. ‘I remember you coming home to tell us how you had joined up and I was sure that you would come to harm.’

‘He did come to harm, Matthias,’ insisted Grandmother. ‘Take a look at him for your evidence.’

‘And now look at you,’ continued Grandfather, ignoring her. ‘It makes me so proud to see you elevated to such a responsible position. Helping your country reclaim her pride after all the great wrongs that were done to her. The punishments above and beyond—’

‘Oh, will you listen to yourself!’ cried Grandmother. ‘Which one of you is the most foolish, I wonder?’

‘But, Nathalie,’ said Mother, trying to calm the situation down a little, ‘don’t you think Ralf looks very handsome in his new uniform?’

‘Handsome?’ asked Grandmother, leaning forward and staring at her daughter-in-law as if she had lost her reason. ‘Handsome, did you say? You foolish girl! Is that what you consider to be of importance in the world? Looking handsome?’

‘Do I look handsome in my ringmaster’s costume?’ asked Bruno, for that was what he had been wearing for the party that night – the red and black outfit of a circus ringmaster – and he had been very proud of himself in it. The moment he spoke he regretted it, however, for all the adults looked in his and Gretel’s direction, as if they had forgotten that they were there at all.

‘Children, upstairs,’ said Mother quickly. ‘Go to your rooms.’

‘But we don’t want to,’ protested Gretel. ‘Can’t we play down here?’

‘No, children,’ she insisted. ‘Go upstairs and close the door behind you.’

‘That’s all you soldiers are interested in anyway,’ Grandmother said, ignoring the children altogether. ‘Looking handsome in your fine uniforms. Dressing up and doing the terrible, terrible things you do. It makes me ashamed. But I blame myself, Ralf, not you.’

‘Children, upstairs now!’ said Mother, clapping her hands together, and this time they had no choice but to stand up and obey her.

But rather than going straight to their rooms, they closed the door and sat at the top of the stairs, trying to hear what was being said by the grown-ups down below. However, Mother and Father’s voices were muffled and hard to make out, Grandfather’s was not to be heard at all, while Grandmother’s was surprisingly slurred. Finally, after a few minutes, the door slammed open and Gretel and Bruno darted back up the stairs while Grandmother retrieved her coat from the rack in the hallway.

‘Ashamed!’ she called out before she left. ‘That a son of mine should be—’

‘A patriot,’ cried Father, who perhaps had never learned the rule about not interrupting your mother.

‘A patriot indeed!’ she cried out. ‘The people you have to dinner in this house. Why, it makes me sick. And to see you in that uniform makes me want to tear the eyes from my head!’ she added before storming out of the house and slamming the door behind her.

Bruno hadn’t seen much of Grandmother after that and hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to her before they moved to Out-With, but he missed her very much and decided to write her a letter.

That day he sat down with a pen and paper and told her how unhappy he was there and how much he wished he was back home in Berlin. He told her about the house and the garden and the bench with the plaque on it and the tall fence and the wooden telegraph poles and the barbed-wire bales and the hard ground beyond them and the huts and the small buildings and the smoke stacks and the soldiers, but mostly he told her about the people living there and their striped pyjamas and cloth caps, and then he told her how much he missed her and he signed off his letter ‘your loving grandson, Bruno’.