The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

by John Boyne

  Gretel agreed. She didn't want to go on staring but it was very difficult to turn her eyes away. So far, all she had seen was the forest facing her own window, which looked a little dark but a good place for picnics if there was any sort of clearing further along it. But from this side of the house the view was very different.

  It started off nicely enough. There was a garden directly beneath Bruno's window. Quite a large one too, and full of flowers which grew in neat orderly sections in soil that looked as if it was tended very carefully by someone who knew that growing flowers in a place like this was something good that they could do, like putting a tiny candle of light in the corner of a huge castle on a misty moor on a dark winter's night.

  Past the flowers there was a very pleasant pavement with a wooden bench on it, where Gretel could imagine sitting in the sunshine and reading a book. There was a plaque attached to the top of the bench but she couldn't read the inscription from this distance. The seat was turned to face the house-which, usually, would be a strange thing to do but on this occasion she could understand why.

  About twenty feet further along from the garden and the flowers and the bench with the plaque on it, everything changed. There was a huge wire fence that ran along the length of the house and turned in at the top, extending further along in either direction, further than she could possibly see. The fence was very high, higher even than the house they were standing in, and there were huge wooden posts, like telegraph poles, dotted along it, holding it up. At the top of the fence enormous bales of barbed wire were tangled in spirals, and Gretel felt an unexpected pain inside her as she looked at the sharp spikes sticking out all the way round it.

  There wasn't any grass after the fence; in fact there was no greenery anywhere to be seen in the distance. Instead the ground was made of a sand-like substance, and as far as she could make out there was nothing but low huts and large square buildings dotted around and one or two smoke stacks in the distance. She opened her mouth to say something, but when she did she realized that she couldn't find any words to express her surprise, and so she did the only sensible thing she could think of and closed it again.

  'You see?' said Bruno from the corner of the room, feeling quietly pleased with himself because whatever it was that was out there-and whoever they were-he had seen it first and he could see it whenever he wanted because they were outside his bedroom window and not hers and therefore they belonged to him and he was the king of everything they surveyed and she was his lowly subject.

  'I don't understand,' said Gretel. 'Who would build such a nasty-looking place?'

  'It is a nasty-looking place, isn't it?' agreed Bruno.

  'I think those huts have only one floor too. Look how low they are.'

  'They must be modern types of houses,' said Gretel. 'Father hates modern things.'

  'Then he won't like them very much,' said Bruno.

  'No,' replied Gretel. She stood still for a long time staring at them. She was twelve years old and was considered to be one of the brightest girls in her class, so she squeezed her lips together and narrowed her eyes and forced her brain to understand what she was looking at. Finally she could think of only one explanation.

  'This must be the countryside,' said Gretel, turning round to look at her brother triumphantly. 'The countryside?'

  'Yes, it's the only explanation, don't you see? When we're at home, in Berlin, we're in the city. That's why there are so many people and so many houses and the schools are full and you can't make your way through the centre of town on a Saturday afternoon without getting pushed from pillar to post.'

  'Yes…' said Bruno, nodding his head, trying to keep up.

  'But we learned in geography class that in the countryside, where all the farmers are and the animals, and they grow all the food, there are huge areas like this where people live and work and send all the food to feed us.' She looked out of the window again at the huge area spread out before her and the distances that existed between each of the huts. 'This must be it. It's the countryside. Perhaps this is our holiday home,' she added hopefully.

  Bruno thought about it and shook his head. 'I don't think so,' he said with great conviction.

  'You're nine,' countered Gretel. 'How would you know? When you get to my age you'll understand these things a lot better.'

  'That might be so,' said Bruno, who knew that he was younger but didn't agree that that made him less likely to be right, 'but if this is the countryside like you say it is, then where are all the animals you're talking about?'

  Gretel opened her mouth to answer him but couldn't think of a suitable reply, so she looked out of the window again instead and peered around for them, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  'There should be cows and pigs and sheep and horses,' said Bruno. 'If it was a farm, I mean. Not to mention chickens and ducks.'

  'And there aren't any,' admitted Gretel quietly.

  'And if they grew food here, like you suggested,' continued Bruno, enjoying himself enormously, 'then I think the ground would have to look a lot better than that, don't you? I don't think you could grow anything in all that dirt.'

  Gretel looked at it again and nodded, because she was not so silly as to insist on being in the right all the time when it was clear the argument stood against her.

  'Perhaps it's not a farm then,' she said.

  'It's not,' agreed Bruno.

  'Which means this mightn't be the countryside,' she continued.

  'No, I don't think it is,' he replied.

  'Which also means that this probably isn't our holiday home after all,' she concluded.

  'I don't think so,' said Bruno.

  He sat down on the bed and for a moment wished that Gretel would sit down beside him and put her arm around him and tell him that it was all going to be all right and that sooner or later they'd get to like it here and they'd never want to go back to Berlin. But she was still watching from the window and this time she wasn't looking at the flowers or the pavement or the bench with the plaque on it or the tall fence or the wooden telegraph poles or the barbed wire bales or the hard ground beyond them or the huts or the small buildings or the smoke stacks; instead she was looking at the people.

  'Who are all those people?' she asked in a quiet voice, almost as if she wasn't asking Bruno but looking for an answer from someone else. 'And what are they all doing there?'

  Bruno stood up, and for the first time they stood there together, shoulder to shoulder, and stared at what was happening not fifty feet away from their new home.

  Everywhere they looked they could see people, tall, short, old, young, all moving around. Some stood perfectly still in groups, their hands by then-sides, trying to keep their heads up, as a soldier marched in front of them, his mouth opening and closing quickly as if he were shouting something at them. Some were formed into a sort of chain gang and pushing wheelbarrows from one side of the camp to the other, appearing from a place out of sight and taking their wheelbarrows further along behind a hut, where they disappeared again. A few stood near the huts in quiet groups, staring at the ground as if it was the sort of game where they didn't want to be spotted. Others were on crutches and many had bandages around their heads. Some carried spades and were being led by groups of soldiers to a place where they could no longer be seen.

  Bruno and Gretel could see hundreds of people, but there were so many huts before them, and the camp spread out so much further than they could possibly see, that it looked as though there must be thousands out there.

  'And all living so close to us,' said Gretel, frowning.

  'In Berlin, on our nice quiet street, we only had six houses. And now there are so many. Why would Father take a new job here in such a nasty place and with so many neighbours? It doesn't make any sense.'

  'Look over there,' said Bruno, and Gretel followed the direction of the finger he was pointing and saw, emerging from a hut in the distance, a group of children huddled together and being shouted at by a group of soldiers. The more
they were shouted at, the closer they huddled together, but then one of the soldiers lunged towards them and they separated and seemed to do what he had wanted them to do all along, which was to stand in a single line. When they did, the soldiers all started to laugh and applaud them.

  'It must be some sort of rehearsal,' suggested Gretel, ignoring the fact that some of the children, even some of the older ones, even the ones as grown up as her, looked as if they were crying.

  'I told you there were children here,' said Bruno.

  'Not the type of children J want to play with,' said Gretel in a determined voice. 'They look filthy. Hilda and Isobel and Louise have a bath every morning and so do I. Those children look like they've never had a bath in their lives.'

  'It does look very dirty over there,' said Bruno. 'But maybe they don't have any baths?'

  'Don't be stupid,' said Gretel, despite the fact that she had been told time and time again that she was not to call her brother stupid. 'What kind of people don't have baths?'

  'I don't know,' said Bruno. 'People who don't have any hot water?'

  Gretel watched for another few moments before shivering and turning away. 'I'm going back to my room to arrange my dolls,' she said. 'The view is decidedly nicer from there.'

  With that remark she walked away, returning across the hallway to her bedroom and closing the door behind her, but she didn't go back to arranging her dolls quite yet. Instead she sat down on the bed and a lot of things went through her head.

  And one final thought came into her brother's head as he watched the hundreds of people in the distance going about their business, and that was the fact that all of them-the small boys, the big boys, the fathers, the grandfathers, the uncles, the people who lived on their own on everybody's road but didn't seem to have any relatives at all-were wearing the same clothes as each other: a pair of grey striped pyjamas with a grey striped cap on their heads.

  'How extraordinary,' he muttered, before turning away.

  Chapter Five

  Out Of Bounds At All Times And No Exceptions

  There was only one thing for it and that was to speak to Father.

  Father hadn't left Berlin in the car with them that morning. Instead he had left a few days earlier, on the night of the day that Bruno had come home to find Maria going through his things, even the things he'd hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else's business. In the days following, Mother, Gretel, Maria, Cook, Lars and Bruno had spent all their time boxing up their belongings and loading them into a big truck to be brought to their new home at Out-With.

  It was on this final morning, when the house looked empty and not like their real home at all, that the very last things they owned were put into suitcases and an official car with red-and-black flags on the front had stopped at their door to take them away.

  Mother, Maria and Bruno were the last people to leave the house and it was Bruno's belief that Mother didn't realize the maid was still standing there, because as they took one last look around the empty hallway where they had spent so many happy times, the place where the Christmas tree stood in December, the place where the wet umbrellas were left in a stand during the winter months, the place where Bruno was supposed to leave his muddy shoes when he came in but never did, Mother had shaken her head and said something very strange.

  'We should never have let the Fury come to dinner,' she said. 'Some people and their determination to get ahead.'

  Just after she said that she turned round and Bruno could see that she had tears in her eyes, but she jumped when she saw Maria standing there, watching her.

  'Maria,' she said, in a startled tone of voice. 'I thought you were in the car.'

  'I was just leaving, ma'am,' said Maria.

  'I didn't mean-' began Mother before shaking her head and starting again. 'I wasn't trying to suggest-'

  'I was just leaving, ma'am,* repeated Maria, who must not have known the rule about not interrupting Mother, and stepped through the door quickly and ran to the car.

  Mother had frowned but then shrugged, as if none of it really mattered any more anyway. 'Come on then, Bruno,' she said, taking his hand and locking the door behind them. 'Let's just hope we get to come back here someday when all this is over.'

  The official car with the flags on the front had taken them to a train station, where there were two tracks separated by a wide platform, and on either side a train stood waiting for the passengers to board. Because there were so many soldiers marching about on the other side, not to mention the fact that there was a long hut belonging to the signalman separating the tracks, Bruno could only make out the crowds of people for a few moments before he and his family boarded a very comfortable train with very few people on it and plenty of empty seats and fresh air when the windows were pulled down. If the trains had been going in different directions, he thought, it wouldn't have seemed so odd, but they weren't; they were both pointed eastwards. For a moment he considered running across the platform to tell the people about the empty seats in his carriage, but he decided not to as something told him that if it didn't make Mother angry, it would probably make Gretel furious, and that would be worse still.

  Since arriving at Out-With and their new house, Bruno hadn't seen his father. He had thought perhaps he was in his bedroom earlier when the door creaked open, but that had turned out to be the unfriendly young soldier who had stared at Bruno without any warmth in his eyes. He hadn't heard Father's booming voice anywhere and he hadn't heard the heavy sound of his boots on the floorboards downstairs. But there were definitely people coming and going, and as he debated what to do for the best he heard a terrific commotion coming from downstairs and went out to the hallway to look over the banister.

  Down below he saw the door to Father's office standing open and a group of five men outside it, laughing and shaking hands. Father was at the centre of them and looked very smart in his freshly pressed uniform. His thick dark hair had obviously been recently lacquered and combed, and as Bruno watched from above he felt both scared and in awe of him. He didn't like the look of the other men quite as much. They certainly weren't as handsome as Father. Nor were their uniforms as freshly pressed. Nor were their voices so booming or their boots so polished. They all held their caps under their arms and seemed to be fighting with each other for Father's attention. Bruno could only understand a few of their phrases as they travelled up to him. «… made mistakes from the moment he got here. It got to the point where the Fury had no choice but to…' said one.

  '… discipline!' said another. 'And efficiency. We have lacked efficiency since the start of 'forty-two and without that…'

  '… it's clear, it's clear what the numbers say. It's clear, Commandant…' said the third… and if we build another,' said the last, 'imagine what we could do then… just imagine it…!'

  Father held a hand in the air, which immediately caused the other men to fall silent. It was as if he was the conductor of a barbershop quartet.

  'Gentlemen,' he said, and this time Bruno could make out every word because there had never been a man born who was more capable of being heard from one side of a room to the other than Father. 'Your suggestions and your encouragement are very much appreciated. And the past is the past. Here we have a fresh beginning, but let that beginning start tomorrow. For now, I'd better help my family settle in or there will be as much trouble for me in here as there is for them out there, you understand?'

  The men all broke into laughter and shook Father's hand. As they left they stood in a row together like toy soldiers and their arms shot out in the same way that Father had taught Bruno to salute, the palm stretched flat, moving from their chests up into the air in front of them in a sharp motion as they cried out the two words that Bruno had been taught to say whenever anyone said it to him. Then they left and Father returned to his office, which was Out Of Bounds At All Times And No Exceptions.

  Bruno walked slowly down the stairs and hesitated for a moment outside the door. He felt sad t
hat Father had not come up to say hello to him in the hour or so that he had been here, but it had been explained to him on many occasions just how busy Father was and that he couldn't be disturbed by silly things like saying hello to him all the time. But the soldiers had left now and he thought it would be all right if he knocked on the door.

  Back in Berlin, Bruno had been inside Father's office on only a handful of occasions, and it was usually because he had been naughty and needed to have a serious talking-to. However, the rule that applied to Father's office in Berlin was one of the most important rules that Bruno had ever learned and he was not so silly as to think that it would not apply here at Out-With too. But since they had not seen each other in some days, he thought that no one would mind if he knocked now.

  And so he tapped carefully on the door. Twice, and quietly.

  Perhaps Father didn't hear, perhaps Bruno didn't knock loudly enough, but no one came to the door, so Bruno knocked again and did it louder this time, and as he did-so he heard the booming voice from inside call out, 'Enter!'

  Bruno turned the door handle and stepped inside and assumed his customary pose of wide-open eyes, mouth in the shape of an O and arms stretched out by his sides. The rest of the house might have been a little dark and gloomy and hardly full of possibilities for exploration but this room was something else. It had a very high ceiling to begin with, and a carpet underfoot that Bruno thought he might sink into. The walls were hardly visible; instead they were covered with dark mahogany shelves, all lined with books, like the ones in the library at the house in Berlin. There were enormous windows on the wall facing him, which stretched out into the garden beyond, allowing a comfortable seat to be placed in front of them, and in the centre of all this, seated behind a massive oak desk, was Father himself, who looked up from his papers when Bruno entered and broke into a wide smile.

  'Bruno,' he said, coming round from behind the desk and shaking the boy's hand solidly, for Father was not usually the type of man to give anyone a hug, unlike Mother and Grandmother, who gave them a little too often for comfort, complementing them with slobbering kisses. 'My boy,' he added after a moment.