by John Boyne
The Fury and Eva stayed for the best part of two hours and neither Gretel nor Bruno were invited downstairs to say goodbye to them. Bruno watched them leave from his bedroom window and noticed that when they stepped towards their car, which he was impressed to see had a chauffeur, the Fury did not open the door for his companion but instead climbed in and started reading a newspaper, while she said goodbye once again to Mother and thanked her for the lovely dinner.
What a horrible man, thought Bruno.
Later that night Bruno overheard snippets of Mother and Father's conversation. Certain phrases drifted through the keyhole or under the door of Father's office and up the staircase and round the landing and under the door of Bruno's bedroom. Their voices were unusually loud and Bruno could only make out a few fragments of them:
'… to leave Berlin. And for such a place…' Mother was saying.
'… no choice, at least not if we want to continue…' said Father.
'… as if it's the most natural thing in the world and it's not, it's just not…' said Mother.
'… what would happen is I would be taken away and treated like a…' said Father.
'… expect them to grow up in a place like…' said Mother.
'… and that's an end to the matter. I don't want to hear another word on the subject…' said Father.
That must have been the end of the conversation because Mother left Father's office then and Bruno fell asleep.
A couple of days later he came home from school to find Maria standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he'd hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else's business, and that is where the story began.
Chapter Twelve
Shmuel Thinks of an Answer to Bruno's Question
'All I know is this,' began Shmuel. 'Before we came here I lived with my mother and father and my brother Josef in a small flat above the store where Papa makes his watches. Every morning we ate our breakfast together at seven o'clock and while we went to school, Papa mended the watches that people brought to him and made new ones too. I had a beautiful watch that he gave me but I don't have it any more. It had a golden face and I wound it up every night before I went to sleep and it always told the right time.'
'What happened to it?' asked Bruno.
'They took it from me,' said Shmuel.
'Who?'
'The soldiers, of course,' said Shmuel as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
'And then one day things started to change,' he continued. 'I came home from school and my mother was making armbands for us from a special cloth and drawing a star on each one. Like this.' Using his finger he drew a design in the dusty ground beneath him.
'And every time we left the house, she told us we had to wear one of these armbands.'
'My father wears one too,' said Bruno. 'On his uniform. It's very nice. It's bright red with a black-and-white design on it.' Using his finger he drew another design in the dusty ground on his side of the fence.
'Yes, but they're different, aren't they?' said Shmuel.
'No one's ever given me an armband,' said Bruno.
'But I never asked to wear one,' said Shmuel.
'All the same,' said Bruno, 'I think I'd quite like one. I don't know which one I'd prefer though, your one or Father's.'
Shmuel shook his head and continued with his story. He didn't often think about these things any more because remembering his old life above the watch shop made him very sad.
'We wore the armbands for a few months,' he said.
'And then things changed again. I came home one day and Mama said we couldn't live in our house any more-'
'That happened to me too!' shouted Bruno, delighted that he wasn't the only boy who'd been forced to move. 'The Fury came for dinner, you see, and the next thing I knew we moved here. And I hate it here,' he added in a loud voice. 'Did he come to your house and do the same thing?'
'No, but when we were told we couldn't live in our house we had to move to a different part of Cracow, where the soldiers built a big wall and my mother and father and my brother and I all had to live in one room.'
'All of you?' asked Bruno. 'In one room?'
'And not just us,' said Shmuel. There was another family there and the mother and father were always fighting with each other and one of the sons was bigger than me and he hit me even when I did nothing wrong.'
'You can't have all lived in the one room,' said Bruno, shaking his head. That doesn't make any sense.'
'All of us,' said Shmuel, nodding his head. 'Eleven in total.'
Bruno opened his mouth to contradict him again-he didn't really believe that eleven people could live in the same room together-but changed his mind.
'We lived there for some more months,' continued Shmuel, 'all of us in that one room. There was one small window in it but I didn't like to look out of it because then I would see the wall and I hated the wall because our real home was on the other side of it. And this part of town was the bad part because it was always noisy and it was impossible to sleep. And I hated Luka, who was the boy who kept hitting me even when I did nothing wrong.'
'Gretel hits me sometimes,' said Bruno. 'She's my sister,' he added. 'And a Hopeless Case. But soon I'll be bigger and stronger than she is and she won't know what's hit her then.'
Then one day the soldiers all came with huge trucks,' continued Shmuel, who didn't seem all that interested in Gretel. 'And everyone was told to leave the houses. Lots of people didn't want to and they hid wherever they could find a place but in the end I think they caught everyone. And the trucks took us to a train and the train…' He hesitated for a moment and bit his lip. Bruno thought he was going to start crying and couldn't understand why.
'The train was horrible,' said Shmuel. 'There were too many of us in the carriages for one thing. And there was no air to breathe. And it smelled awful.'
'That's because you all crowded onto one train,' said Bruno, remembering the two trains he had seen at the station when he left Berlin. 'When we came here, there was another one on the other side of the platform but no one seemed to see it. That was the one we got. You should have got on it too.'
'I don't think we would have been allowed,' said Shmuel, shaking his head. 'We weren't able to get out of our carriage.'
'The doors are at the end,' explained Bruno.
'There weren't any doors,' said Shmuel.
'Of course there were doors,' said Bruno with a sigh. 'They're at the end,' he repeated. 'Just past the buffet section.'
'There weren't any doors,' insisted Shmuel. 'If there had been, we would all have got off.'
Bruno mumbled something under his breath along the lines of 'Of course there were', but he didn't say it very loud so Shmuel didn't hear.
'When the train finally stopped,' continued Shmuel, 'we were in a very cold place and we all had to walk here.'
'We had a car,' said Bruno, out loud now.
'And Mama was taken away from us, and Papa and Josef and I were put into the huts over there and that's where we've been ever since.'
Shmuel looked very sad when he told this story and Bruno didn't know why; it didn't seem like such a terrible thing to him, and after all much the same thing had happened to him.
'Are there many other boys over there?' asked Bruno.
'Hundreds,' said Shmuel.
Bruno's eyes opened wide. 'Hundreds?' he said, amazed. 'That's not fair at all. There's no one to play with on this side of the fence. Not a single person.'
'We don't play,' said Shmuel.
'Don't play? Why ever not?'
'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.
Chapter Thirteen
The Bottle of Wine
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 much 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.'