The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

by John Boyne

  ‘What would we play?’ he asked, his face looking confused at the idea of it.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Bruno. ‘All sorts of things. Football, for example. Or exploration. What’s the exploration like over there anyway? Any good?’

  Shmuel shook his head and didn’t answer. He looked back towards the huts and turned back to Bruno then. He didn’t want to ask the next question but the pains in his stomach made him.

  ‘You don’t have any food on you, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘Afraid not,’ said Bruno. ‘I meant to bring some chocolate but I forgot.’

  ‘Chocolate,’ said Shmuel very slowly, his tongue moving out from behind his teeth. ‘I’ve only ever had chocolate once.’

  ‘Only once? I love chocolate. I can’t get enough of it although Mother says it’ll rot my teeth.’

  ‘You don’t have any bread, do you?’

  Bruno shook his head. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘Dinner isn’t served until half past six. What time do you have yours?’

  Shmuel shrugged his shoulders and pulled himself to his feet. ‘I think I’d better get back,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps you can come to dinner with us one evening,’ said Bruno, although he wasn’t sure it was a very good idea.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Shmuel, although he didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Or I could come to you,’ said Bruno. ‘Perhaps I could come and meet your friends,’ he added hopefully. He had hoped that Shmuel would suggest this himself but there didn’t seem to be any sign of that.

  ‘You’re on the wrong side of the fence though,’ said Shmuel.

  ‘I could crawl under,’ said Bruno, reaching down and lifting the wire off the ground. In the centre, between the wooden telegraph poles, it lifted quite easily and a boy as small as Bruno could easily fit through.

  Shmuel watched him do this and backed away nervously. ‘I have to go back,’ he said.

  ‘Some other afternoon then,’ said Bruno.

  ‘I’m not supposed to be here. If they catch me I’ll be in trouble.’

  He turned and walked away and Bruno noticed again just how small and skinny his new friend was. He didn’t say anything about this because he knew only too well how unpleasant it was being criticized for something as silly as your height, and the last thing he wanted to do was be unkind to Shmuel.

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ shouted Bruno to the departing boy and Shmuel said nothing in reply; in fact he started to run off back to the camp, leaving Bruno all on his own.

  Bruno decided that that was more than enough exploration for one day and he set off home, excited about what had happened and wanting nothing more than to tell Mother and Father and Gretel – who would be so jealous that she might just explode – and Maria and Cook and Lars all about his adventure that afternoon and his new friend with the funny name and the fact that they had the same birthday, but the closer he got to his own house, the more he started to think that that might not be a good idea.

  After all, he reasoned, they might not want me to be friends with him any more and if that happens they might stop me coming out here at all. By the time he went through his front door and smelled the beef that was roasting in the oven for dinner he had decided that it was better to keep the whole story to himself for the moment and not breathe a word about it. It would be his own secret. Well, his and Shmuel’s.

  Bruno was of the opinion that when it came to parents, and especially when it came to sisters, what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

  As week followed week it started to become clear to Bruno that he would not be going home to Berlin in the foreseeable future and that he could forget about sliding down the banisters in his comfortable home or seeing Karl or Daniel or Martin any time soon.

  However, with each day that passed he began to get used to being at Out-with and stopped feeling quite so unhappy about his new life. After all, it wasn’t as if he had nobody to talk to any more. Every afternoon when classes were finished Bruno took the long walk along the fence and sat and talked with his new friend Shmuel until it was time to come home, and that had started to make up for all the times he had missed Berlin.

  One afternoon, as he was filling his pockets with some bread and cheese from the kitchen fridge to take with him, Maria came in and stopped when she saw what he was doing.

  ‘Hello,’ said Bruno, trying to appear as casual as possible. ‘You gave me a fright. I didn’t hear you coming.’

  ‘You’re not eating again, surely?’ asked Maria with a smile. ‘You had lunch, didn’t you? And you’re still hungry?’

  ‘A little,’ said Bruno. ‘I’m going for a walk and thought I might get peckish on the way.’

  Maria shrugged her shoulders and went over to the cooker, where she put a pan of water on to boil. Laid out on the surface beside it was a pile of potatoes and carrots, ready for peeling when Pavel arrived later in the afternoon. Bruno was about to leave when the food caught his eye and a question came into his mind that had been bothering him for some time. He hadn’t been able to think of anyone to ask before, but this seemed like a perfect moment and the perfect person.

  ‘Maria,’ he said, ‘can I ask you a question?’

  The maid turned round and looked at him in surprise. ‘Of course, Master Bruno,’ she said.

  ‘And if I ask you this question, will you promise not to tell anyone that I asked it?’

  She narrowed her eyes suspiciously but nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘What is it you want to know?’

  ‘It’s about Pavel,’ said Bruno. ‘You know him, don’t you? The man who comes and peels the vegetables and then waits on us at table.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Maria with a smile. She sounded relieved that his question wasn’t going to be about anything more serious. ‘I know Pavel. We’ve spoken on many occasions. Why do you ask about him?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bruno, choosing his words quite carefully in case he said something he shouldn’t, ‘do you remember soon after we got here when I made the swing on the oak tree and fell and cut my knee?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘It’s not hurting you again, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ said Bruno. ‘But when I hurt it, Pavel was the only grown-up around and he brought me in here and cleaned it and washed it and put the green ointment on it, which stung but I suppose it made it better, and then he put a bandage on it.’

  ‘That’s what anyone would do if someone’s hurt,’ said Maria.

  ‘I know,’ he continued. ‘Only he told me then that he wasn’t really a waiter at all.’

  Maria’s face froze a little and she didn’t say anything for a moment. Instead she looked away and licked her lips a little before nodding her head. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘And what did he say he was really?’

  ‘He said he was a doctor,’ said Bruno. ‘Which didn’t seem right at all. He’s not a doctor, is he?’

  ‘No,’ said Maria, shaking her head. ‘No, he’s not a doctor. He’s a waiter.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Bruno, feeling very pleased with himself. ‘Why did he lie to me then? It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Pavel is not a doctor any more, Bruno,’ said Maria quietly. ‘But he was. In another life. Before he came here.’

  Bruno frowned and thought about it. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Few of us do,’ said Maria.

  ‘But if he was a doctor, why isn’t he one still?’

  Maria sighed and looked out of the window to make sure that no one was coming, then nodded towards the chairs and both she and Bruno sat down.

  ‘If I tell you what Pavel told me about his life,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t tell anyone – do you understand? We would all get in terrible trouble.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ said Bruno, who loved to hear secrets and almost never spread them around, except when it was totally necessary of course, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘All right,’ said Maria. ‘This is as m
uch as I know.’

  —

  Bruno was late arriving at the place in the fence where he met Shmuel every day, but as usual his new friend was sitting cross-legged on the ground waiting for him.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said, handing some of the bread and cheese through the wire – the bits that he hadn’t already eaten on the way when he had grown a little peckish after all. ‘I was talking to Maria.’

  ‘Who’s Maria?’ asked Shmuel, not looking up as he gobbled down the food hungrily.

  ‘She’s our maid,’ explained Bruno. ‘She’s very nice although Father says she’s overpaid. But she was telling me about this man Pavel who chops our vegetables for us and waits on table. I think he lives on your side of the fence.’

  Shmuel looked up for a moment and stopped eating. ‘On my side?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Do you know him? He’s very old and has a white jacket that he wears when he’s serving dinner. You’ve probably seen him.’

  ‘No,’ said Shmuel, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘But you must,’ said Bruno irritably, as if Shmuel were being deliberately difficult. ‘He’s not as tall as some adults and he has grey hair and stoops over a little.’

  ‘I don’t think you realize just how many people live on this side of the fence,’ said Shmuel. ‘There are thousands of us.’

  ‘But this one’s name is Pavel,’ insisted Bruno. ‘When I fell off my swing he cleaned out the cut so it didn’t get infected and put a bandage on my leg. Anyway, the reason I wanted to tell you about him is because he’s from Poland too. Like you.’

  ‘Most of us here are from Poland,’ said Shmuel. ‘Although there are some from other places too, like Czechoslovakia and—’

  ‘Yes, but that’s why I thought you might know him. Anyway, he was a doctor in his home town before he came here but he’s not allowed to be a doctor any more and if Father had known that he had cleaned my knee when I hurt myself then there would have been trouble.’

  ‘The soldiers don’t normally like people getting better,’ said Shmuel, swallowing the last piece of bread. ‘It usually works the other way round.’

  Bruno nodded, even though he didn’t quite know what Shmuel meant, and gazed up into the sky. After a few moments he looked through the wire and asked another question that had been preying on his mind.

  ‘Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Shmuel. ‘I want to work in a zoo.’

  ‘A zoo?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘I like animals,’ said Shmuel quietly.

  ‘I’m going to be a soldier,’ said Bruno in a determined voice. ‘Like Father.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be a soldier,’ said Shmuel.

  ‘I don’t mean one like Lieutenant Kotler,’ said Bruno quickly. ‘Not one who strides around as if he owns the place and laughs with your sister and whispers with your mother. I don’t think he’s a good soldier at all. I mean one like Father. One of the good soldiers.’

  ‘There aren’t any good soldiers,’ said Shmuel.

  ‘Of course there are,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, Father, for one,’ said Bruno. ‘That’s why he has such an impressive uniform and why everyone calls him Commandant and does whatever he says. The Fury has big things in mind for him because he’s such a good soldier.’

  ‘There aren’t any good soldiers,’ repeated Shmuel.

  ‘Except Father,’ repeated Bruno, who was hoping that Shmuel wouldn’t say that again because he didn’t want to have to argue with him. After all, he was the only friend he had here at Out-With. But Father was Father, and Bruno didn’t think it was right for someone to say something bad about him.

  Both boys stayed very quiet for a few minutes, neither one wanting to say anything he might regret.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like here,’ said Shmuel eventually in a low voice, his words barely carrying across to Bruno.

  ‘You don’t have any sisters, do you?’ asked Bruno quickly, pretending he hadn’t heard that because then he wouldn’t have to answer.

  ‘No,’ said Shmuel, shaking his head.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Bruno. ‘Gretel’s only twelve and she thinks she knows everything but she’s a Hopeless Case really. She sits looking out of her window and when she sees Lieutenant Kotler coming she runs downstairs into the hallway and pretends that she was there all along. The other day I caught her doing it and when he came in she jumped and said, Why, Lieutenant Kotler, I didn’t know you were here, and I know for a fact that she was waiting for him.’

  Bruno hadn’t been looking at Shmuel as he said all that, but when he looked again he noticed that his friend had grown even more pale than usual.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘You look as if you’re about to be sick.’

  ‘I don’t like talking about him,’ said Shmuel.

  ‘About who?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘Lieutenant Kotler. He scares me.’

  ‘He scares me too a little,’ admitted Bruno. ‘He’s a bully. And he smells funny. It’s all that cologne he puts on.’ And then Shmuel started to shiver slightly and Bruno looked around, as if he could see rather than feel whether it was cold or not. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘It’s not that cold, is it? You should have brought a jumper, you know. The evenings are getting chillier.’

  —

  Later that evening Bruno was disappointed to find that Lieutenant Kotler was joining him, Mother, Father and Gretel for dinner. Pavel was wearing his white jacket as usual and served them as they ate.

  Bruno watched Pavel as he went around the table and found that he felt sad whenever he looked at him. He wondered whether the white jacket he wore as a waiter was the same as the white jacket he had worn before as a doctor. As he brought the plates in and set them down in front of each of them, and while they ate their food and talked, he stepped back towards the wall and held himself perfectly still, neither looking ahead nor not. It was as if his body had gone to sleep standing up and with his eyes open.

  Whenever anyone needed anything, Pavel would bring it immediately, but the more Bruno watched him the more he was sure that catastrophe was going to strike. He seemed to grow smaller and smaller each week, if such a thing were possible, and the colour that should have been in his cheeks had drained almost entirely away. His eyes appeared heavy with tears and Bruno thought that one good blink might bring on a torrent.

  When Pavel came in with the plates, Bruno couldn’t help but notice that his hands were shaking slightly under the weight of them. And when he stepped back to his usual position he seemed to sway on his feet and had to press a hand against the wall to steady himself. Mother had to ask twice for her extra helping of soup before he heard her, and he let the bottle of wine empty without having opened another one in time to fill Father’s glass.

  ‘Herr Liszt won’t let us read poetry or plays,’ complained Bruno during the main course. As they had company for dinner, the family were dressed formally – Father in his uniform, Mother in a green dress that set off her eyes, and Gretel and Bruno in the clothes they wore to church when they lived in Berlin. ‘I asked him if we could read them just one day a week but he said no, not while he was in charge of our education.’

  ‘I’m sure he has his reasons,’ said Father, attacking a leg of lamb.

  ‘All he wants us to do is study history and geography,’ said Bruno. ‘And I’m starting to hate history and geography.’

  ‘Don’t say hate, Bruno, please,’ said Mother.

  ‘Why do you hate history?’ asked Father, laying down his fork for a moment and looking across the table at his son, who shrugged his shoulders, a bad habit of his.

  ‘Because it’s boring,’ he said.

  ‘Boring?’ said Father. ‘A son of mine calling the study of history boring? Let me tell you this, Bruno,’ he went on, leaning forward and pointing his knife at the boy, ‘it’s history that’s got us here today.
If it wasn’t for history, none of us would be sitting around this table now. We’d be safely back at our table in our house in Berlin. We are correcting history here.’

  ‘It’s still boring,’ repeated Bruno, who wasn’t really paying attention.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive my brother, Lieutenant Kotler,’ said Gretel, laying a hand on his arm for a moment, which made Mother stare at her and narrow her eyes. ‘He’s a very ignorant little boy.’

  ‘I am not ignorant,’ snapped Bruno, who had had enough of her insults. ‘You’ll have to forgive my sister, Lieutenant Kotler,’ he added politely, ‘but she’s a Hopeless Case. There’s very little we can do for her. The doctors say she’s gone past the point of help.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Gretel, blushing scarlet.

  ‘You shut up,’ said Bruno with a broad smile.

  ‘Children, please,’ said Mother.

  Father tapped his knife on the table and everyone was silent. Bruno glanced in his direction. He didn’t look angry exactly, but he did look as if he wasn’t going to put up with much more arguing.

  ‘I enjoyed history very much when I was a boy,’ said Lieutenant Kotler after a few silent moments. ‘And although my father was a professor of literature at the university, I preferred the social sciences to the arts.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, Kurt,’ said Mother, turning to look at him for a moment. ‘Does he still teach then?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Lieutenant Kotler. ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Well, how could you not know?’ she asked, frowning at him. ‘Don’t you keep in touch with him?’

  The young lieutenant chewed on a mouthful of lamb and it gave him an opportunity to think of a reply. He looked to Bruno as if he regretted having brought the matter up in the first place.

  ‘Kurt,’ repeated Mother, ‘don’t you keep in touch with your father?’

  ‘Not really,’ he replied, shrugging his shoulders dismissively and not turning his head to look at her. ‘He left Germany some years ago. Nineteen thirty-eight, I think it was. I haven’t seen him since then.’

  Father stopped eating for a moment and stared across at Lieutenant Kotler, frowning slightly. ‘And where did he go?’ he asked.