by John Boyne
'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.
I beg your pardon, Herr Commandant?' asked Lieutenant Kotler, even though Father had spoken in a perfectly clear voice.
'I asked you where he went,' he repeated. 'Your father. The professor of literature. Where did he go when he left Germany?'
Lieutenant Kotler's face grew a little red and he stuttered somewhat as he spoke. I believe… I believe he is currently in Switzerland,' he said finally. 'The last I heard he was teaching at a university in Berne.'
'Oh, but Switzerland's a beautiful country,' said
Mother quickly. 'I haven't ever been there, I admit, but from what I hear-'
'He can't be very old, your father,' said Father, his deep voice silencing them all. 'I mean you're only… what? Seventeen? Eighteen years old?'
'I've just turned nineteen, Herr Commandant.'
'So your father would be… in his forties, I expect?'
Lieutenant Kotler said nothing but continued to eat although he didn't appear to be enjoying his food at all.
'Strange that he chose not to stay in the Fatherland,' said Father.
&n
bsp; 'We're not close, my father and I,' said Lieutenant Kotler quickly, looking around the table as if he owed everyone an explanation. 'Really, we haven't spoken in years.'
'And what reason did he give, might I ask,' continued Father, 'for leaving Germany at the moment of her greatest glory and her most vital need, when it is incumbent upon all of us to play our part in the national revival? Was he tubercular?'
Lieutenant Kotler stared at Father, confused. 'I beg your pardon?' he asked.
'Did he go to Switzerland to take the air?' explained Father. 'Or did he have a particular reason for leaving Germany? In nineteen thirty-eight,' he added after a moment.
'I'm afraid I don't know, Herr Commandant,' said Lieutenant Kotler. 'You would have to ask him.'
'Well, that would be rather difficult to do, wouldn't it? With him being so far away, I mean. But perhaps that was it. Perhaps he was ill.' Father hesitated before picking up his knife and fork again and continuing to eat. 'Or perhaps he had… disagreements.'
'Disagreements, Herr Commandant?'
'With government policy. One hears tales of men like this from time to time. Curious fellows, I imagine. Disturbed, some of them. Traitors, others. Cowards too. Of course you have informed your superiors of your father's views, Lieutenant Kotler?'
The young lieutenant opened his mouth and then swallowed, despite the fact that he hadn't been eating anything.
'Never mind,' said Father cheerfully. 'Perhaps it is not an appropriate subject of conversation for the dinner table. We can discuss it in more depth at a later time.'
'Herr Commandant,' said Lieutenant Kotler, leaning forward anxiously, 'I can assure you-'
'It is not an appropriate subject of conversation for the dinner table,' repeated Father sharply, silencing him immediately, and Bruno looked from one to the other, both enjoying and being frightened by the atmosphere at the same time.
'I'd love to go to Switzerland,' said Gretel after a lengthy silence.
'Eat your dinner, Gretel,' said Mother. 'But I was just saying!'
'Eat your dinner,' Mother repeated and was about to say more but she was interrupted by Father calling for Pavel again.
'What's the matter with you tonight?' he asked as Pavel uncorked the new bottle. 'This is the fourth time I've had to ask for more wine.'
Bruno watched him, hoping he was feeling all right, although he managed to release the cork without any accidents. But after he had filled Father's glass and turned to refill Lieutenant Kotler's, he lost his grip of the bottle somehow and it fell crashing, glug-glug-glugging its contents out directly onto the young man's lap.
What happened then was both unexpected and extremely unpleasant. Lieutenant Kotler grew very angry with Pavel and no one-not Bruno, not Gretel, not Mother and not even Father-stepped in to stop him doing what he did next, even though none of them could watch. Even though it made Bruno cry and Gretel grow pale.
Later that night, when Bruno went to bed, he thought about all that had happened over dinner. He remembered how kind Pavel had been to him on the afternoon he had made the swing, and how he had stopped his knee from bleeding and been very gentle in the way he administered the green ointment. And while Bruno realized that Father was generally a very kind and thoughtful man, it hardly seemed fair or right that no one had stopped Lieutenant Kotler getting so angry at Pavel, and if that was the kind of thing that went on at Out-With then he'd better not disagree with anyone any more about anything; in fact he would do well to keep his mouth shut and cause no chaos at all. Some people might not like it.
His old life in Berlin seemed like a very distant memory now and he could hardly even remember what Karl, Daniel or Martin looked like, except for the fact that one of them was a ginger.
Chapter Fourteen
Bruno Tells a Perfectly Reasonable Lie
For several weeks after this Bruno continued to leave the house when Herr Liszt had gone home for the day and Mother was having one of her afternoon naps, and made the long trek along the fence to meet Shmuel, who almost every afternoon was waiting there for him, sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring at the dust beneath him.
One afternoon Shmuel had a black eye, and when Bruno asked him about it he just shook his head and said that he didn't want to talk about it. Bruno assumed that there were bullies all over the world, not just in schools in Berlin, and that one of them had done this to Shmuel. He felt an urge to help his friend but he couldn't think of anything he could do to make it better, and he could tell that Shmuel wanted to pretend it had never happened.
Every day Bruno asked Shmuel whether he would be allowed to crawl underneath the wire so that they could play together on the other side of the fence, but every day Shmuel said no, it wasn't a good idea.
'I don't know why you're so anxious to come across here anyway,' said Shmuel. 'It's not very nice.'
'You haven't tried living in my house,' said Bruno. 'For one thing it doesn't have five floors, only three. How can anyone live in so small a space as that?' He'd forgotten Shmuel's story about the eleven people all living in the same room together before they had come to Out-With, including the boy Luka who kept hitting him even when he did nothing wrong.
One day Bruno asked why Shmuel and all the other people on that side of the fence wore the same striped pyjamas and cloth caps.
'That's what they gave us when we got here,' explained Shmuel. 'They took away our other clothes.'
'But don't you ever wake up in the morning and feel like wearing something different? There must be something else in your wardrobe.'
Shmuel blinked and opened his mouth to say something but then thought better of it.
'I don't even like stripes,' said Bruno, although this wasn't actually true. In fact he did like stripes and he felt increasingly fed up that he had to wear trousers and shirts and ties and shoes that were too tight for him when Shmuel and his friends got to wear striped pyjamas all day long.
A few days later Bruno woke up and for the first time in weeks it was raining heavily. It had started at some point during the night and Bruno even thought that it might have woken him up, but it was hard to tell because once he was awake there was no way of knowing how that had happened. As he ate his breakfast that morning, the rain continued. Through all the morning classes with Herr Liszt, the rain continued. While he ate his lunch, the rain continued. And while they finished another session of history and geography in the afternoon, the rain continued. This was bad news for it meant that he wouldn't be able to leave the house and meet Shmuel.
That afternoon Bruno lay on his bed with a book but found it hard to concentrate, and just then the Hopeless Case came in to see him. She didn't often come to Bruno's room, preferring to arrange and rearrange her collection of dolls constantly during her free time. However, something about the wet weather had put her off her game and she couldn't face playing it again just yet.
'What do you want?' asked Bruno.
'That's a nice welcome,' said Gretel.
'I'm reading,' said Bruno.
'What are you reading?' she asked him, and rather than answer he simply turned the cover towards her so she could see for herself.
She made a raspberry sound through her lips and some of her spit landed on Bruno's face. 'Boring,' she said in a sing-song voice.
'It's not boring at all,' said Bruno. 'It's an adventure. It's better than dolls, that's for sure.'
Gretel didn't rise to the bait on that one. 'What are you doing?' she repeated, irritating Bruno even further.
I told you, I'm trying to read,' he said in a grumpy voice. 'If some people would just let me.'
'I've got nothing to do,' she replied. 'I hate the rain.'
Bruno found this hard to understand. It wasn't as if she ever did anything anyway, unlike him, who had adventures and explored places and had made a friend. She very rarely left the house at all. It was as if she had decided to be bored simply because on this occasion she didn't have a choice about staying inside. But still, there are moments
when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.
'I hate the rain too,' he said. 'I should be with Shmuel by now. He'll think I've forgotten him.'
The words were out of his mouth quicker than he could stop them and he felt a pain in his stomach and grew furious with himself for saying that.
'You should be with who?' asked Gretel.
'What's that?' asked Bruno, blinking back at her. 'Who did you say you should be with?' she asked again.
'I'm sorry,' said Bruno, trying to think quickly. 'I didn't quite hear you. Could you say that again?'
'Who did you say you should be with?' she shouted, leaning forward so there could be no mistake this time.
'I never said I should be with anyone,' he said.
'Yes, you did. You said that someone will think you've forgotten them.'
'Pardon?'
'Bruno!' she said in a threatening voice.
'Are you mad?' he asked, trying to make her think that she had entirely made it up, only he wasn't very convincing for he wasn't a natural actor like Grandmother, and Gretel shook her head and pointed a finger at him.
'What did you say, Bruno?' she insisted. 'You said there was someone you should be with. Who was it? Tell me! There's no one around here to play with, is there?'
Bruno considered the dilemma he was in. On the one hand his sister and he had one crucial thing in common: they weren't grown-ups. And although he had never bothered to ask her, there was every chance that she was just as lonely as he was at Out-With. After all, back in Berlin she had had Hilda and
Isobel and Louise to play with; they may have been annoying girls but at least they were her friends. Here she had no one at all except her collection of lifeless dolls. Who knew how mad Gretel was after all? Perhaps she thought the dolls were talking to her.
But at the same time there was the undeniable fact that Shmuel was his friend and not hers and he didn't want to share him. There was only one thing for it and that was to lie.