The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

by John Boyne

  There were only two things that Bruno needed to create his new entertainment: some rope and a tyre. The rope was easy enough to find as there were bales of it in the basement of the house and it didn’t take long to do something extremely dangerous and find a sharp knife and cut as many lengths of it as he thought he might need. He took these to the oak tree and left them on the ground for future use. The tyre was another matter.

  On this particular morning neither Mother nor Father was at home. Mother had rushed out of the house early and taken a train to a nearby city for the day for a change of air, while Father had last been seen heading in the direction of the huts and the people in the distance outside Bruno’s window. But as usual there were many soldiers’ trucks and jeeps parked near the house, and while he knew it would be impossible to steal a tyre off any of them, there was always the possibility that he could find a spare one somewhere.

  As he stepped outside he saw Gretel speaking with Lieutenant Kotler and, without much enthusiasm, decided that he would be the sensible person to ask. Lieutenant Kotler was the young officer whom Bruno had seen on his very first day at Out-With, the soldier who had appeared upstairs in their house and looked at him for a moment before nodding his head and continuing on his way. Bruno had seen him on many occasions since – he came in and out of the house as if he owned the place and Father’s office was clearly not out of bounds to him at all – but they hadn’t spoken very often. Bruno wasn’t entirely sure why, but he knew that he didn’t like Lieutenant Kotler. There was an atmosphere around him that made Bruno feel very cold and want to put a jumper on. Still, there was no one else to ask so he marched over with as much confidence as he could muster to say hello.

  On most days the young lieutenant looked very smart, striding around in a uniform that appeared to have been ironed while he was wearing it. His black boots always sparkled with polish and his yellow-blond hair was parted at the side and held perfectly in place with something that made all the comb marks stand out in it, like a field that had just been tilled. Also he wore so much cologne that you could smell him coming from quite a distance. Bruno had learned not to stand downwind of him or he would risk fainting away.

  On this particular day, however, since it was a Saturday morning and was so sunny, he was not so perfectly groomed. Instead he was wearing a white vest over his trousers and his hair flopped down over his forehead in exhaustion. His arms were surprisingly tanned and he had the kind of muscles that Bruno wished he had himself. He looked so much younger today that Bruno was surprised; in fact he reminded him of the big boys at school, the ones he always steered clear of. Lieutenant Kotler was deep in conversation with Gretel and whatever he was saying must have been terribly funny because she was laughing loudly and twirling her hair around her fingers into ringlets.

  ‘Hello,’ said Bruno as he approached them, and Gretel looked at him irritably.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ snapped Bruno, glaring at her. ‘I just came over to say hello.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive my younger brother, Kurt,’ said Gretel to Lieutenant Kotler. ‘He’s only nine, you know.’

  ‘Good morning, little man,’ said Kotler, reaching out and – quite appallingly – ruffling his hand through Bruno’s hair, a gesture that made Bruno want to push him to the ground and jump up and down on his head. ‘And what has you up and about so early on a Saturday morning?’

  ‘It’s hardly early,’ said Bruno. ‘It’s almost ten o’clock.’

  Lieutenant Kotler shrugged his shoulders. ‘When I was your age my mother couldn’t get me out of bed until lunch time. She said I would never grow up to be big and strong if I slept my life away.’

  ‘Well, she was quite wrong there, wasn’t she?’ simpered Gretel. Bruno stared at her with distaste. She was putting on a silly voice that made her sound as if she hadn’t a thought in her head. There was nothing Bruno wanted to do more than walk away from the two of them and have nothing to do with whatever they were discussing, but he had no choice but to put his best interests first and ask Lieutenant Kotler for the unthinkable. A favour.

  ‘I wondered if I could ask you a favour,’ said Bruno.

  ‘You can ask,’ said Lieutenant Kotler, which made Gretel laugh again even though it was not particularly funny.

  ‘I wondered whether there were any spare tyres around,’ Bruno continued. ‘From one of the jeeps perhaps. Or a truck. One that you’re not using.’

  ‘The only spare tyre I have seen around here recently belongs to Sergeant Hoffschneider, and he carries it around his waist,’ said Lieutenant Kotler, his lips forming into something that resembled a smile. This didn’t make any sense at all to Bruno, but it entertained Gretel so much that she appeared to start dancing on the spot.

  ‘Well, is he using it?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘Sergeant Hoffschneider?’ asked Lieutenant Kotler. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. He’s very attached to his spare tyre.’

  ‘Stop it, Kurt,’ said Gretel, drying her eyes. ‘He doesn’t understand you. He’s only nine.’

  ‘Oh, will you be quiet please,’ shouted Bruno, staring at his sister in irritation. It was bad enough having to come out here and ask for a favour from Lieutenant Kotler, but it only made things worse when his own sister teased him all the way through it. ‘You’re only twelve anyway,’ he added. ‘So stop pretending to be older than you are.’

  ‘I’m nearly thirteen, Kurt,’ she snapped, her laughter stopped now, her face frozen in horror. ‘I’ll be thirteen in a couple of weeks’ time. A teenager. Just like you.’

  Lieutenant Kotler smiled and nodded his head but said nothing. Bruno stared at him. If it had been any other adult standing in front of him he would have rolled his eyes to suggest that they both knew that girls were silly, and sisters utterly ridiculous. But this wasn’t any other adult. This was Lieutenant Kotler.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Bruno, ignoring the look of anger that Gretel was directing towards him, ‘other than that one, is there anywhere else that I could find a spare tyre?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lieutenant Kotler, who had stopped smiling now and seemed suddenly bored with the entire thing. ‘But what do you want it for anyway?’

  ‘I thought I’d make a swing,’ said Bruno. ‘You know, with a tyre and some rope on the branches of a tree.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Lieutenant Kotler, nodding his head wisely as if such things were only distant memories to him now, despite the fact that he was, as Gretel had pointed out, no more than a teenager himself. ‘Yes, I made many swings myself when I was a child. My friends and I had many happy afternoons together playing on them.’

  Bruno felt astonished that he could have anything in common with him (and even more surprised to learn that Lieutenant Kotler had ever had friends). ‘So what do you think?’ he asked. ‘Are there any around?’

  Lieutenant Kotler stared at him and seemed to be considering it, as if he wasn’t sure whether he was going to give him a straight answer or try to irritate him as he usually did. Then he caught sight of Pavel – the old man who came every afternoon to help peel the vegetables in the kitchen for dinner before putting his white jacket on and serving at the table – heading towards the house, and this seemed to make his mind up.

  ‘Hey, you!’ he shouted, then adding a word that Bruno did not understand. ‘Come over here, you—’ He said the word again, and something about the harsh sound of it made Bruno look away and feel ashamed to be part of this at all.

  Pavel came towards them and Kotler spoke to him insolently, despite the fact that he was young enough to be his grandson. ‘Take this little man to the storage shed at the back of the main house. Lined up along a side wall are some old tyres. He will select one and you are to carry it wherever he asks you to, is that understood?’

  Pavel held his cap before him in his hands and nodded, which made his head bow even lower than it already was. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said in a quiet voice, so quiet that he may not ev
en have said it at all.

  ‘And afterwards, when you return to the kitchen, make sure you wash your hands before touching any of the food, you filthy—’ Lieutenant Kotler repeated the word he had used twice already and he spat a little as he spoke. Bruno glanced across at Gretel, who had been staring adoringly at the sunlight bouncing off Lieutenant Kotler’s hair but now, like her brother, looked a little uncomfortable. Neither of them had ever really spoken to Pavel before but he was a very good waiter and they, according to Father, did not grow on trees.

  ‘Off you go then,’ said Lieutenant Kotler, and Pavel turned and led the way towards the storage shed, followed by Bruno, who from time to time glanced back in the direction of his sister and the young soldier and felt a great urge to go back there and pull Gretel away, despite the fact that she was annoying and self-centred and mean to him most of the time. That, after all, was her job. She was his sister. But he hated the idea of leaving her alone with a man like Lieutenant Kotler. There really was no other way to dress it up: he was just plain nasty.

  —

  The accident took place a couple of hours later after Bruno had located a suitable tyre and Pavel had dragged it to the large oak tree on Gretel’s side of the house, and after Bruno had climbed up and down and up and down and up and down the trunk to tie the ropes securely around the branches and the tyre itself. Until then the whole operation had been a tremendous success. He had built one of these once before, but back then he had had Karl and Daniel and Martin to help him with it. On this occasion he was doing it by himself and that made things decidedly trickier. And yet somehow he managed it, and within a few hours he was happily installed inside the centre of the tyre and swinging back and forth as if he did not have a care in the world, although he was ignoring the fact that it was one of the most uncomfortable swings he had ever been on in his life.

  He lay flat out across the centre of the tyre and used his feet to give himself a good push off the ground. Every time the tyre swung backwards it rose in the air and narrowly avoided hitting the trunk of the tree itself, but it still came close enough for Bruno to use his feet to kick himself even faster and higher on the next swing. This worked very well until his grip on the tyre slipped a little just as he kicked the tree, and before he knew it his body was turning inside and he fell downwards, one foot still inside the rim while he landed face down on the ground beneath him with a thud.

  Everything went black for a moment and then came back into focus. He sat up on the ground just as the tyre swung back and hit him on the head and he let out a yelp and moved out of its way. When he stood up he could feel that his arm and leg were both very sore as he had fallen heavily on them, but they weren’t so sore that they might be broken. He inspected his hand and it was covered in scratches and when he looked at his elbow he could see a nasty cut. His leg felt worse though, and when he looked down at his knee, just below where his shorts ended, there was a wide gash which seemed to have been waiting for him to look at it because once all the attention was focused on it, it started to bleed rather badly.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Bruno out loud, staring at it and wondering what he should do next. He didn’t have to wonder for long though, because the swing that he had built was on the same side of the house as the kitchen, and Pavel, the waiter who had helped him find the tyre, had been peeling potatoes while standing at the window and had seen the accident take place. When Bruno looked up again he saw Pavel coming quickly towards him, and only when he arrived did he feel confident enough to let the woozy feeling that was surrounding him take him over completely. He fell a little but didn’t land on the ground this time, as Pavel scooped him up.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem dangerous at all.’

  ‘You were going too high,’ said Pavel in a quiet voice that immediately made Bruno feel safe. ‘I could see it. I thought that at any moment you were going to suffer a mischief.’

  ‘And I did,’ said Bruno.

  ‘You certainly did.’

  Pavel carried him across the lawn and back towards the house, taking him into the kitchen and settling him on one of the wooden chairs.

  ‘Where’s Mother?’ asked Bruno, looking around for the first person he usually searched for when he’d had an accident.

  ‘Your mother hasn’t returned yet, I’m afraid,’ said Pavel, who was kneeling on the floor in front of him and examining the knee. ‘I’m the only one here.’

  ‘What’s going to happen then?’ asked Bruno, beginning to panic slightly, an emotion that might encourage tears. ‘I might bleed to death.’

  Pavel gave a gentle laugh and shook his head. ‘You’re not going to bleed to death,’ he said, pulling a stool across and settling Bruno’s leg on it. ‘Don’t move for a moment. There’s a first-aid box over here.’

  Bruno watched as he moved around the kitchen, pulling the green first-aid box from a cupboard and filling a small bowl with water, testing it first with his finger to make sure that it wasn’t too cold.

  ‘Will I need to go to hospital?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘No, no,’ said Pavel when he returned to his kneeling position, dipping a dry cloth into the bowl and touching it gently to Bruno’s knee, which made him wince in pain, despite the fact that it wasn’t really all that painful. ‘It’s only a small cut. It won’t even need stitches.’

  Bruno frowned and bit his lip nervously as Pavel cleaned the wound of blood and then held another cloth to it quite tightly for a few minutes. When he pulled it away again, gently, the bleeding had stopped, and he took a small bottle of green liquid from the first-aid box and dabbed it over the wound, which stung quite sharply and made Bruno say ‘Ow’ a few times in rapid succession.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ said Pavel, but in a gentle and kindly voice. ‘Don’t make it worse by thinking it’s more painful than it actually is.’

  Somehow this made sense to Bruno and he resisted the urge to say ‘Ow’ any more, and when Pavel had finished applying the green liquid he took a bandage from the first-aid box and taped it to the cut.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘All better, eh?’

  Bruno nodded and felt a little ashamed of himself for not behaving as bravely as he would have liked. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Pavel. ‘Now you need to stay sitting there for a few minutes before you walk around on it again, all right? Let the wound relax. And don’t go near that swing again today.’

  Bruno nodded and kept his leg stretched out on the stool while Pavel went over to the sink and washed his hands carefully, even scrubbing under his nails with a wire brush, before drying them off and returning to the potatoes.

  ‘Will you tell Mother what happened?’ asked Bruno, who had spent the last few minutes wondering whether he would be viewed as a hero for suffering an accident or a villain for building a death-trap.

  ‘I think she’ll see for herself,’ said Pavel, who took the carrots over to the table now and sat down opposite Bruno as he began to peel them onto an old newspaper.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Bruno. ‘Perhaps she’ll want to take me to a doctor.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Pavel quietly.

  ‘You never know,’ said Bruno, who didn’t want his accident to be dismissed quite so easily. (It was, after all, quite the most exciting thing that had happened to him since arriving here.) ‘It could be worse than it seems.’

  ‘It’s not,’ said Pavel, who barely seemed to be listening to what Bruno was saying, the carrots were taking up so much of his attention.

  ‘Well, how do you know?’ asked Bruno quickly, growing irritable now despite the fact that this was the same man who had come out to pick him up off the ground and brought him in and taken care of him. ‘You’re not a doctor.’

  Pavel stopped peeling the carrots for a moment and looked across the table at Bruno, his head held low, his eyes looking up, as if he were wondering what to say to such a thing. He sighed and seemed to consider it for quite
a long time before saying, ‘Yes I am.’

  Bruno stared at him in surprise. This didn’t make any sense to him. ‘But you’re a waiter,’ he said slowly. ‘And you peel the vegetables for dinner. How can you be a doctor too?’

  ‘Young man,’ said Pavel (and Bruno appreciated the fact that he had the courtesy to call him ‘young man’ instead of ‘little man’ as Lieutenant Kotler had), ‘I certainly am a doctor. Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.’

  Bruno had no idea what Pavel meant but something about what he had said made him look at him closely for the first time. He was quite a small man, and very skinny too, with long fingers and angular features. He was older than Father but younger than Grandfather, which still meant he was quite old, and although Bruno had never laid eyes on him before coming to Out-With, something about his face made him believe that he had worn a beard in the past.

  But not any more.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ said Bruno, wanting to get to the bottom of this. ‘If you’re a doctor, then why are you waiting on tables? Why aren’t you working at a hospital somewhere?’

  Pavel hesitated for a long time before answering, and while he did so Bruno said nothing. He wasn’t sure why but he felt that the polite thing to do was to wait until Pavel was ready to speak.

  ‘Before I came here, I practised as a doctor,’ he said finally.

  ‘Practised?’ asked Bruno, who was unfamiliar with the word. ‘Weren’t you any good then?’

  Pavel smiled. ‘I was very good,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to be a doctor, you see. From the time I was a small boy. From the time I was your age.’