by John Boyne
He opened the door and Father called him back for a moment, standing up and raising an eyebrow as if he’d forgotten something. Bruno remembered the moment his father made the signal, and said the phrase and imitated him exactly.
He pushed his two feet together and shot his right arm into the air before clicking his two heels together and saying in as deep and clear a voice as possible – as much like Father’s as he could manage – the words he said every time he left a soldier’s presence.
‘Heil Hitler,’ he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, ‘Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.’
Some days later Bruno was lying on the bed in his room, staring at the ceiling above his head. The white paint was cracked and peeling away from itself in a most unpleasant manner, unlike the paintwork in the house in Berlin, which was never chipped and received an annual top-up every summer when Mother brought the decorators in. On this particular afternoon he lay there and stared at the spidery cracks, narrowing his eyes to consider what might lie behind them. He imagined that there were insects living in the spaces between the paint and the ceiling itself which were pushing it out, cracking it wide, opening it up, trying to create a gap so that they could squeeze through and look for a window where they might make their escape. Nothing, thought Bruno, not even the insects, would ever choose to stay at Out-With.
‘Everything here is horrible,’ he said out loud, even though there was no one present to hear him, but somehow it made him feel better to hear the words stated anyway. ‘I hate this house, I hate my room and I even hate the paintwork. I hate it all. Absolutely everything.’
Just as he finished speaking Maria came through the door carrying an armful of his washed, dried and ironed clothes. She hesitated for a moment when she saw him lying there but then bowed her head a little and walked silently over towards the wardrobe.
‘Hello,’ said Bruno, for although talking to a maid wasn’t quite the same thing as having some friends to talk to, there was no one else around to have a conversation with and it made much more sense than talking to himself. Gretel was nowhere to be found and he had begun to worry that he would go mad with boredom.
‘Master Bruno,’ said Maria quietly, separating his vests from his trousers and his underwear and putting them in different drawers and on different shelves.
‘I expect you’re as unhappy about this new arrangement as I am,’ said Bruno, and she turned to look at him with an expression that suggested she didn’t understand what he meant. ‘This,’ he explained, sitting up and looking around. ‘Everything here. It’s awful, isn’t it? Don’t you hate it too?’
Maria opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again just as quickly. She seemed to be considering her response carefully, selecting the right words, preparing to say them, and then thinking better of it and discarding them altogether. Bruno had known her for almost all his life – she had come to work for them when he was only three years old – and they had always got along quite well for the most part, but she had never showed any particular signs of life before. She just got on with her job, polishing the furniture, washing the clothes, helping with the shopping and the cooking, sometimes taking him to school and collecting him again, although that had been more common when Bruno was eight; when he turned nine he decided he was old enough to make his way there and home alone.
‘Don’t you like it here then?’ she said finally.
‘Like it?’ replied Bruno with a slight laugh. ‘Like it?’ he repeated, but louder this time. ‘Of course I don’t like it! It’s awful. There’s nothing to do, there’s no one to talk to, nobody to play with. You can’t tell me that you’re happy we’ve moved here, surely?’
‘I always enjoyed the garden at the house in Berlin,’ said Maria, answering an entirely different question. ‘Sometimes, when it was a warm afternoon, I liked to sit out there in the sunshine and eat my lunch underneath the ivy tree by the pond. The flowers were very beautiful there. The scents. The way the bees hovered around them and never bothered you if you just left them alone.’
‘So you don’t like it here then?’ asked Bruno. ‘You think it’s as bad as I do?’
Maria frowned. ‘It’s not important,’ she said.
‘What isn’t?’
‘What I think.’
‘Well, of course it’s important,’ said Bruno irritably, as if she was just being deliberately difficult. ‘You’re part of the family, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not sure whether your father would agree with that,’ said Maria, allowing herself a smile because she was touched by what he had just said.
‘Well, you’ve been brought here against your will, just like I have. If you ask me, we’re all in the same boat. And it’s leaking.’
For a moment it seemed to Bruno as if Maria really was going to tell him what she was thinking. She laid the rest of his clothes down on the bed and her hands clenched into fists, as if she was terribly angry about something. Her mouth opened but froze there for a moment, as if she was scared of all the things she might say if she allowed herself to begin.
‘Please tell me, Maria,’ said Bruno. ‘Because maybe if we all feel the same way we can persuade Father to take us home again.’
She looked away from him for a few silent moments and shook her head sadly before turning back to face him. ‘Your father knows what is for the best,’ she said. ‘You must trust in that.’
‘But I’m not sure I do,’ said Bruno. ‘I think he’s made a terrible mistake.’
‘Then it’s a mistake we all have to live with.’
‘When I make mistakes I get punished,’ insisted Bruno, irritated by the fact that the rules that always applied to children never seemed to apply to grown-ups at all (despite the fact that they were the ones who enforced them). ‘Stupid Father,’ he added under his breath.
Maria’s eyes opened wide and she took a step towards him, her hands covering her mouth for a moment in horror. She looked round to make sure that no one was listening to them and had heard what Bruno had just said. ‘You mustn’t say that,’ she said. ‘You must never say something like that about your father.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Bruno; he was a little ashamed of himself for having said it, but the last thing he was going to do was sit back and receive a telling-off when no one seemed to care about his opinions anyway.
‘Because your father is a good man,’ said Maria. ‘A very good man. He takes care of all of us.’
‘Bringing us all the way out here, to the middle of nowhere, you mean? Is that taking care of us?’
‘There are many things your father has done,’ she said. ‘Many things of which you should be proud. If it wasn’t for your father, where would I be now after all?’
‘Back in Berlin, I expect,’ said Bruno. ‘Working in a nice house. Eating your lunch underneath the ivy and leaving the bees alone.’
‘You don’t remember when I came to work for you, do you?’ she asked quietly, sitting down for a moment on the side of his bed, something she had never done before. ‘How could you? You were only three. Your father took me in and helped me when I needed him. He gave me a job, a home. Food. You can’t imagine what it’s like to need food. You’ve never been hungry, have you?’
Bruno frowned. He wanted to mention that he was feeling a bit peckish right now, but instead he looked across at Maria and realized for the first time that he had never fully considered her to be a person with a life and a history all of her own. After all, she had never done anything (as far as he knew) other than be his family’s maid. He wasn’t even sure that he had ever seen her dressed in anything other than her maid’s uniform. But when he came to think of it, as he did now, he had to admit that there must be more to her life than just waiting on him and his family. She must have thoughts in her head, just like him. She must have things that she missed, friends whom she wanted to see again, just like him. And she must have cried herself to sleep every night since she got here, just like boys far less grown u
p and brave than him. She was rather pretty too, he noticed, feeling a little funny inside as he did so.
‘My mother knew your father when he was just a boy of your age,’ said Maria after a few moments. ‘She worked for your grandmother. She was a dresser for her when she toured Germany as a younger woman. She arranged all the clothes for her concerts – washed them, ironed them, repaired them. Magnificent gowns, all of them. And the stitching, Bruno! Like artwork, every design. You don’t find dressmakers like that these days.’ She shook her head and smiled at the memory as Bruno listened patiently. ‘She made sure that they were all laid out and ready whenever your grandmother arrived in her dressing room before a show. And after your grandmother retired, of course my mother stayed friendly with her and received a small pension, but times were hard then and your father offered me a job, the first I had ever had. A few months later my mother became very sick and she needed a lot of hospital care and your father arranged it all, even though he was not obliged to. He paid for it out of his own pocket because she had been a friend to his mother. And he took me into his household for the same reason. And when she died he paid all the expenses for her funeral too. So don’t you ever call your father stupid, Bruno. Not around me. I won’t allow it.’
Bruno bit his lip. He had hoped that Maria would take his side in the campaign to get away from Out-With but he could see where her loyalties really lay. And he had to admit that he was rather proud of his father when he heard that story.
‘Well,’ he said, unable to think of something clever to say now, ‘I suppose that was nice of him.’
‘Yes,’ said Maria, standing up and walking over towards the window, the one through which Bruno could see all the way to the huts and the people in the distance. ‘He was very kind to me then,’ she continued quietly, looking through it herself now and watching the people and the soldiers go about their business far away. ‘He has a lot of kindness in his soul, truly he does, which makes me wonder…’ She drifted off as she watched them and her voice cracked suddenly and she sounded as if she might cry.
‘Wonder what?’ asked Bruno.
‘Wonder what he…how he can…’
‘How he can what?’ insisted Bruno.
The noise of a door slamming came from downstairs and reverberated through the house so loudly – like a gunshot – that Bruno jumped and Maria let out a small scream. Bruno recognized footsteps pounding up the stairs towards them, quicker and quicker, and he crawled back on the bed, pressing himself against the wall, suddenly afraid of what was going to happen next. He held his breath, expecting trouble, but it was only Gretel, the Hopeless Case. She poked her head through the doorway and seemed surprised to find her brother and the family maid engaged in conversation.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Gretel.
‘Nothing,’ said Bruno defensively. ‘What do you want? Get out.’
‘Get out yourself,’ she replied even though it was his room, and then turned to look at Maria, narrowing her eyes suspiciously as she did so. ‘Run me a bath, Maria, will you?’ she asked.
‘Why can’t you run your own bath?’ snapped Bruno.
‘Because she’s the maid,’ said Gretel, staring at him. ‘That’s what she’s here for.’
‘That’s not what she’s here for,’ shouted Bruno, standing up and marching over to her. ‘She’s not just here to do things for us all the time, you know. Especially things that we can do ourselves.’
Gretel stared at him as if he had gone mad and then looked at Maria, who shook her head quickly.
‘Of course, Miss Gretel,’ said Maria. ‘I’ll just finish tidying your brother’s clothes away and I’ll be right with you.’
‘Well, don’t be long,’ said Gretel rudely – because unlike Bruno she never stopped to think about the fact that Maria was a person with feelings just like hers – before marching off back to her room and closing the door behind her. Maria’s eyes didn’t follow her but her cheeks had taken on a pink glow.
‘I still think he’s made a terrible mistake,’ said Bruno quietly after a few minutes when he felt as if he wanted to apologize for his sister’s behaviour but didn’t know whether that was the right thing to do or not. Situations like that always made Bruno feel very uncomfortable because, in his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.
‘Even if you do, you mustn’t say it out loud,’ said Maria quickly, coming towards him and looking as if she wanted to shake some sense into him. ‘Promise me you won’t.’
‘But why?’ he asked, frowning. ‘I’m only saying what I feel. I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you’re not.’
‘I’m not allowed to say what I feel?’ he repeated, incredulous.
‘No,’ she insisted, her voice becoming grating now as she appealed to him. ‘Just keep quiet about it, Bruno. Don’t you know how much trouble you could cause? For all of us?’
Bruno stared at her. There was something in her eyes, a sort of frenzied worry, that he had never seen there before and that unsettled him. ‘Well,’ he muttered, standing up now and heading over towards the door, suddenly anxious to be away from her, ‘I was only saying I didn’t like it here, that’s all. I was just making conversation while you put the clothes away. It’s not like I’m planning on running away or anything. Although if I did I don’t think anyone could criticize me for it.’
‘And worry your mother and father half to death?’ asked Maria. ‘Bruno, if you have any sense at all, you will stay quiet and concentrate on your school work and do whatever your father tells you. We must all just keep ourselves safe until this is all over. That’s what I intend to do anyway. What more can we do than that after all? It’s not up to us to change things.’
Suddenly, and for no reason that he could think of, Bruno felt an overwhelming urge to cry. It surprised even him and he blinked a few times very quickly so that Maria wouldn’t see how he felt. Although when he caught her eye again he thought that perhaps there must be something strange in the air that day because her eyes looked as if they were filling with tears too. All in all, he began to feel very awkward, so he turned his back on her and made his way to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Maria.
‘Outside,’ said Bruno angrily. ‘If it’s any of your business.’
He had walked slowly but once he left the room he went more quickly towards the stairs and then ran down them at a great pace, suddenly feeling that if he didn’t get out of the house soon he was going to faint away. And within a few seconds he was outside and he started to run up and down the driveway, eager to do something active, anything that would tire him out. In the distance he could see the gate that led to the road that led to the train station that led home, but the idea of going there, the idea of running away and being left on his own without anyone at all, was even more unpleasant to him than the idea of staying.
Several weeks after Bruno arrived at Out-With with his family and with no prospect of a visit on the horizon from either Karl or Daniel or Martin, he decided that he’d better start to find some way to entertain himself or he would slowly go mad.
Bruno had only known one person whom he considered to be mad and that was Herr Roller, a man of about the same age as Father, who lived round the corner from him back at the old house in Berlin. He was often seen walking up and down the street at all hours of the day or night, having terrible arguments with himself. Sometimes, in the middle of these arguments, the dispute would get out of hand and he would try to punch the shadow he was throwing up against the wall. From time to time he fought so hard that he banged his fists against the brickwork and they bled and then he would fall onto his knees and start crying loudly and slapping his hands against his head. On a few occasions Bruno had heard him using those words that he wasn’t allowed to use, and when he did this Bruno had to stop himself from giggling.
‘You shouldn�
�t laugh at poor Herr Roller,’ Mother had told him one afternoon when he had related the story of his latest escapade. ‘You have no idea what he’s been through in his life.’
‘He’s crazy,’ Bruno said, twirling a finger in circles around the side of his head and whistling to indicate just how crazy he thought he was. ‘He went up to a cat on the street the other day and invited her over for afternoon tea.’
‘What did the cat say?’ asked Gretel, who was making a sandwich in the corner of the kitchen.
‘Nothing,’ explained Bruno. ‘It was a cat.’
‘I mean it,’ Mother insisted. ‘Franz was a very lovely young man – I knew him when I was a little girl. He was kind and thoughtful and could make his way around a dance floor like Fred Astaire. But he suffered a terrible injury during the Great War, an injury to his head, and that’s why he behaves as he does now. It’s nothing to laugh at. You have no idea of what the young men went through back then. Their suffering.’
Bruno had only been six years old at the time and wasn’t quite sure what Mother was referring to. ‘It was many years ago,’ she explained when he asked her about it. ‘Before you were born. Franz was one of the young men who fought for us in the trenches. Your father knew him very well back then; I believe they served together.’
‘And what happened to him?’ asked Bruno.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Mother. ‘War is not a fit subject for conversation. I’m afraid we’ll be spending too much time talking about it soon.’
That had been just over three years before they all arrived at Out-With and Bruno hadn’t spent much time thinking about Herr Roller in the meantime, but he suddenly became convinced that if he didn’t do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wandering around the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.
To keep himself entertained Bruno spent a long Saturday morning and afternoon creating a new diversion for himself. At some distance from the house – on Gretel’s side and impossible to see from his own bedroom window – there was a large oak tree, one with a very wide trunk. A tall tree with hefty branches, strong enough to support a small boy. It looked so old that Bruno decided it must have been planted at some point in the late Middle Ages, a period he had recently been studying and was finding very interesting – particularly those parts about knights who went off on adventures to foreign lands and discovered something interesting while they were there.