The Boy at the Top of the Mountain

by John Boyne

  There was now an almighty cacophony coming from the coop, and the bird that was shut outside was panicking as it tried to get back in. The other chickens were looking at it and screeching, but of course there was nothing they could do. Before it knew what was happening, Emma was upon it, picking it up by the legs and carrying it over to the stump where, within an instant, it met the same grisly fate. Unable to look away, Pierrot felt his stomach begin to turn.

  ‘If you throw up on that bird and ruin it,’ said Emma, waving the axe in the air, ‘you’ll be next. Do you hear me?’

  Pierrot stumbled to his feet and looked at the carnage around him – the two chicken heads lying in the grass, the spattered blood on Emma’s apron – and ran back into the house, slamming the door shut. Even as he ran out of the kitchen and back to his room, he could hear Emma’s laughter mixing with the noise of the birds until it all become one, the sound that nightmares make.

  Pierrot spent most of the next hour lying on his bed, writing a letter to Anshel about what he’d just witnessed. Of course, he’d seen headless chickens hanging in the windows of the butchers’ shops in Paris hundreds of times, and sometimes, when she had a little extra money, Maman would bring one home and sit by the kitchen table plucking the feathers from its body, telling him how they might get a week’s worth of dinners from the bird if they were careful, but he had never actually witnessed one being killed before.

  Of course, someone has to kill them, he reasoned with himself. But he didn’t like the idea of cruelty. From as far back as he could recall he had hated any sort of violence and instinctively walked away from confrontation. There were boys at school in Paris who would start fighting at the slightest provocation, who seemed to enjoy it; when two of them raised their fists and faced off against each other, the other children would gather in a circle around them, shielding them from the teachers and urging them on. But Pierrot never watched; he could never understand the enjoyment some people got from hurting others.

  And that, he told Anshel, applied to chickens too.

  He didn’t say much about the things Anshel had told him in his letter – how the streets of Paris were becoming more dangerous for a boy like him; how the bakery shop owned by M. Goldblum had had its windows smashed and the word Juden! painted across its door; and how he had to step off the pavement and wait in the gutter if a non-Jew came along the street towards him. Pierrot ignored all this because it troubled him to think of his friend being called names and bullied.

  At the end of his letter he told his friend that they should adopt a special code for writing to each other in future.

  We can’t allow our correspondence to fall into enemy hands! he wrote. So from now on, Anshel, we won’t ever write our names at the end of our letters. Instead, we’ll use the names we gave each other when we lived together in Paris. You must use the sign of the fox, and I will use the sign of the dog.

  When Pierrot went back downstairs he kept as far away from the kitchen as possible, not wanting to see what Emma might be doing to the bodies of the dead birds. He could see his aunt brushing down the sofa cushions in the living room, where there was a wonderful view across the Obersalzberg. Two flags hung down the walls – long strips of fire-engine red with white circles in the centre and four-hooked crosses within that were both impressive and scary at the same time. He walked on quietly, passing Ute and Herta, who were carrying trays of clean glasses into the main bedrooms, and then stopped at the end of the corridor, wondering what to do next.

  The two doors to his left were closed, but he stepped into the library, making his way around the shelves, glancing at the titles of the books. It was a little disappointing, as none of them sounded as good as Emil and the Detectives; they were mostly history books and biographies of dead people. On one shelf there were a dozen copies of a single book – a book written by the master himself – and he flicked through one before replacing it on the shelf.

  Finally he turned his attention to the table that stood in the centre of the room – a large rectangular desk with a map open on top of it, held down at its four corners by solid, smooth stones. He looked down and recognized the continent of Europe.

  He leaned down, placing his index finger at the centre of Europe, finding Salzburg quite easily but unable to locate the town, Berchtesgaden, that stood at the bottom of the mountain. He ran his finger westward across Zurich and Basel and into France until he reached Paris. He felt a great longing for home, for Maman and Papa, as he closed his eyes and recalled lying on the grass in the Champ de Mars with Anshel next to him and D’Artagnan running around chasing unfamiliar scents.

  So interested was he in it that he didn’t hear the rush of people outside, the sound of the car pulling up on the driveway or Ernst’s voice as he opened the doors to let the passengers out. Nor did he hear the welcomes extended and the sound of boots marching down the corridor towards him.

  Only when he became aware that someone was watching him did he turn round. A man was standing in the doorway: not very tall, but dressed in a heavy grey overcoat with a military cap under his arm, a small moustache sitting above his upper lip. He was staring at Pierrot as he removed his gloves, slowly, methodically pulling on the fingers of each one. Pierrot’s heart jumped; he recognized him immediately from the portrait in his room.

  The master.

  He remembered the instructions that Aunt Beatrix had given him on dozens of occasions since his arrival and tried to follow them exactly. He stood up straight, snapped his feet together and clicked his heels once, quickly and loudly. His right arm shot out in the air, five fingers pointing directly ahead, just above the height of his shoulder. Finally he shouted in the clearest, most confident voice that he could muster the two words that he had practised over and over since his arrival at the Berghof.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’

  PART 2

  1937–1941

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Brown Paper Parcel

  Pierrot had been living at the Berghof for almost a year when the Führer gave him a present.

  He was eight years old by now and enjoying life at the top of the Obersalzberg – even the strict daily routines that were set in place for him. Every morning he rose at seven o’clock and ran outside to the storeroom to collect the bag of feed for the chickens – a mixture of grains and seeds – before pouring it into the trough for the birds’ breakfast. Afterwards he would make his way to the kitchen, where Emma would prepare a bowl of fruit and cereal for him before he took a quick cold bath.

  Ernst drove him to Berchtesgaden five mornings a week for school, and as he was the newest arrival and still spoke with a slight French accent, some of the children made fun of him, although the girl who sat next to him, Katarina, never did.

  ‘Don’t let them bully you, Pieter,’ she told him. ‘There’s nothing I hate more than bullies. They’re just cowards, that’s all. You have to stand up to them whenever you can.’

  ‘But they’re everywhere,’ replied Pierrot, telling her about the Parisian boy who had called him ‘Le Petit’ and about the way Hugo had treated him in the Durand sisters’ orphanage.

  ‘So you just laugh at them,’ insisted Katarina. ‘You let their words fall off you like water.’

  Pierrot waited a few moments before saying what was really on his mind. ‘Don’t you ever think,’ he asked cautiously, ‘that it would be better to be a bully than to be bullied? At least that way no one could ever hurt you.’

  Katarina turned to him in amazement. ‘No,’ she said definitively, shaking her head. ‘No, Pieter, I never think that. Not for a moment.’

  ‘No,’ he replied quickly, looking away. ‘No, neither do I.’

  In the late afternoons he was free to run around the mountain to his heart’s content, and as the weather was usually good at that altitude – bright and crisp with the fresh aroma of pine needles in the air – there was rarely a day when he didn’t spend time outdoors. He climbed trees and headed off into the forest, venturing far fro
m the house before finding his way back again using only his tracks, the sky and his knowledge of the landscape for guidance.

  He didn’t think of Maman as much as he once had, although his father occasionally appeared in his dreams, always in uniform and usually with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He had also become less diligent in responding to Anshel, who now signed all his letters to the Berghof using the symbol that Pierrot had suggested – the sign of the fox – instead of his name. As every day passed and he hadn’t written, he felt guilty for letting his friend down, but when he read Anshel’s letters and heard about the things that were going on in Paris, he found that he simply couldn’t think of anything to say.

  The Führer was not present on the Obersalzberg very often, but whenever he was due to arrive there was a great deal of panic and a lot of work that needed to be done. Ute had disappeared one night without even saying goodbye, and was replaced by Wilhelmina, a soft-headed girl who giggled constantly and would run into a different room whenever the master approached. Pierrot observed Hitler staring at her occasionally, and Emma, who had been cooking at the Berghof since 1924, thought she knew the reason why.

  ‘When I first came here, Pieter,’ she told him over breakfast one morning, closing the door and keeping her voice low, ‘this house wasn’t called the Berghof at all. No, the master came up with that name. Originally it was called Haus Wachenfeld and was a holiday home for a couple from Hamburg, the Winters. When Herr Winter died, however, his widow began renting it out to holidaymakers. That was terrible for me, because every time someone new came I had to find out what kind of food they liked and how they wanted it cooked. I remember when Herr Hitler first came to stay in 1928 with Angela and Geli—’

  ‘Who?’ asked Pierrot.

  ‘His sister and his niece. Angela once held the job that your aunt holds now. They came that summer, and Herr Hitler – he was Herr Hitler then, of course, not the Führer – informed me that he didn’t eat meat. I had never heard of such a thing and thought it terribly odd. But over time I learned how to cook the dishes he preferred, and thankfully he didn’t stop the rest of us eating what we liked.’

  Almost on cue, Pierrot heard the sound of the chickens squawking in the back yard, as if they wished that the Führer would impose his dietary standards on everyone.

  ‘Angela was a tough woman,’ said Emma, sitting down and looking out of the window as she cast her mind back nine years. ‘She and the master argued all the time, and it always seemed to be about Geli, Angela’s daughter.’

  ‘Was she my age?’ asked Pierrot, picturing a young girl running around the mountain top every day like he did, which made him think that it might be a good idea to invite Katarina up there some day.

  ‘No, much older,’ said Emma. ‘Around twenty, I think. She was very close to the master for a time. Too close, perhaps.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Emma hesitated for a moment and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be talking about these things. Especially not to you.’

  ‘But why not?’ asked Pierrot, his interest growing now. ‘Please, Emma. I promise I won’t tell anyone.’

  The cook sighed, and Pierrot could see that she desperately wanted to gossip. ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘But if you breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you—’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said quickly.

  ‘The thing is, Pieter, at this time the master was already leader of the National Socialist Party, which was gaining more and more seats in the Reichstag. He was building an army of supporters and Geli enjoyed the attention he paid her. Until, that is, she grew bored of it. But if she was losing interest in him, the master still adored her, and followed her everywhere. And then she fell in love with Emil, the Führer’s driver at the time, and there was so much trouble over it. Poor Emil was dismissed from the master’s service – he was lucky to escape with his life – Geli was inconsolable and Angela was furious, but the Führer wouldn’t let her go. He insisted that Geli accompany him everywhere, and she, poor child, grew more and more withdrawn and unhappy. The reason I think the Führer watches Wilhelmina so closely is because she reminds him of Geli. They have a similar appearance. A big round face. The same dark eyes and dimpled cheeks. Equally feather-brained. Really, Pieter, the first day she arrived I thought I was seeing a ghost.’

  Pierrot considered all this while Emma returned to her cooking. After washing up his bowl and spoon, however, and replacing them in the dresser, he turned to ask one last question.

  ‘A ghost?’ he said. ‘Why, what happened to her?’

  Emma sighed and shook her head. ‘She went to Munich,’ she said. ‘He took her there. He refused to allow her out of his sight. And one day, when he left her alone in his apartment on the Prinzregentenplatz, she went into his bedroom, took a gun from his drawer and shot herself through the heart.’

  Eva Braun almost always accompanied the Führer when he came to the Berghof, and Pierrot was under strict instructions to call her Fräulein at all times. She was a tall lady in her early twenties with blonde hair and blue eyes, and always dressed very fashionably. Pierrot had never seen her wear the same clothes twice.

  ‘You can clear all this stuff out,’ she once told Beatrix when she was departing from the Obersalzberg after a weekend stay, throwing open her wardrobes and running a hand over all the blouses and dresses that hung there. ‘They’re last season’s fashions. The designers in Berlin have promised to send samples of their new collections directly.’

  ‘Shall I give them to the poor?’ asked Beatrix, but Eva shook her head.

  ‘It would be inappropriate,’ she said, ‘for any German woman, wealthy or impoverished, to wear a dress that had previously touched my skin. No, you can just throw them in the incinerator out the back with all the other rubbish. They’re no good to me now. Just let them burn, Beatrix.’

  Eva did not pay very much attention to Pierrot – certainly nowhere near as much as the Führer did – but occasionally, when she passed him in a corridor, she would tousle his hair or tickle him under the chin, as if he was a spaniel, and say things like ‘sweet little Pieter’ or ‘aren’t you angelic?’ – comments which embarrassed him. He didn’t like being spoken down to, and knew that she remained uncertain whether he worked for them, was an unwelcome tenant or simply a pet.

  On the afternoon when he received the Führer’s present Pierrot was outside in the garden, not far from the main house, throwing a stick for Blondi, Hitler’s German shepherd dog.

  ‘Pieter!’ cried Beatrix, stepping outside and waving towards her nephew. ‘Pieter, come here, please!’

  ‘I’m playing!’ Pierrot shouted back, picking up the stick that Blondi had just retrieved for him and throwing it again.

  ‘Now, Pieter!’ insisted Beatrix, and the boy groaned as he made his way towards her. ‘You and that dog,’ she said. ‘Whenever I need you, all I have to do is follow the sound of barking.’

  ‘Blondi loves it up here,’ said Pierrot, grinning. ‘Do you think I should ask the Führer whether he might leave her here all the time from now on instead of taking her to Berlin with him?’

  ‘I wouldn’t if I was you,’ said Beatrix, shaking her head. ‘You know how attached he is to his dog.’

  ‘But Blondi loves it on the mountain. And from what I’ve heard, when she’s at party headquarters she’s stuck inside meeting rooms and never gets out to play. You can see how excited she is whenever the car arrives and she jumps out.’

  ‘Please don’t ask him,’ said Beatrix. ‘We don’t ask the Führer for favours.’

  ‘But it’s not for me!’ insisted Pierrot. ‘It’s for Blondi. The Führer won’t mind. I think if I say it to him—’

  ‘You’ve grown close, haven’t you?’ asked Beatrix, an anxious note creeping into her tone.

  ‘Me and Blondi?’

  ‘You and Herr Hitler.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you call him the Führer?’ asked Pierrot.

 
; ‘Of course. I meant that. But it’s true, isn’t it? You spend a lot of time with him when he’s here.’

  Pierrot thought about it, and his eyes opened wide when he realized why. ‘He reminds me of Papa,’ he told her. ‘The way he talks about Germany. About its destiny and its past. The pride he takes in his people. That’s the way Papa used to talk too.’

  ‘But he’s not your papa,’ said Beatrix.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ admitted Pierrot. ‘He doesn’t stay up all night drinking, after all. Instead he spends his time working. For the good of others. For the future of the Fatherland.’

  Beatrix stared at him and shook her head before looking away, her eyes glancing towards the tips of the mountains, and Pierrot thought that she must have got a sudden chill for, quite unexpectedly, she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, wondering whether he could go back and play with Blondi now. ‘Did you need me for something?’

  ‘No,’ replied Beatrix. ‘He does.’

  ‘The Führer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you should have said,’ Pierrot cried, rushing past her towards the house, filled with anxiety that he might be in trouble. ‘You know he should never be kept waiting!’

  He made his way quickly down the hallway towards the master’s office, almost colliding with Eva as she emerged from one of the side rooms. Her arms flew out and she grabbed him by the shoulders, her fingers digging in so deeply that he squirmed.

  ‘Pieter,’ she snapped. ‘Haven’t I asked you not to run in the house?’

  ‘The Führer wants to see me,’ said Pierrot quickly, struggling to release himself from her grasp.

  ‘Did he ask for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said, glancing up at the clock on the wall. ‘But don’t keep him too long, all right? Dinner will be served soon and I want to play some new records for him before we eat tonight. Music always helps with his digestion.’