by John Boyne
While he was there, Bruno realized he wasn’t quite as small as he had been when he left because he could see over things that he couldn’t see over before, and when they stayed in their old house he could look through the window on the top floor and see across Berlin without having to stand on tiptoes.
Bruno hadn’t seen his grandmother since leaving Berlin but he had thought about her every day. The things he remembered most about her were the productions that she and he and Gretel performed at Christmas and birthdays and how she always had the perfect costume to suit whatever role he played. When he thought that they would never be able to do that again it made him very sad indeed.
The two days they spent in Berlin were also very sad ones. There was the funeral, and Bruno and Gretel and Father and Mother and Grandfather sat in the front row, Father wearing his most impressive uniform, the starched and pressed one with the decorations. Father was particularly sad, Mother told Bruno, because he had fought with Grandmother and they hadn’t made it up before she died.
There were a lot of wreaths delivered to the church and Father was proud of the fact that one of them had been sent by the Fury, but when Mother heard she said that Grandmother would turn in her grave if she knew it was there.
Bruno felt almost glad when they returned to Out-With. The house there had become his home now and he’d stopped worrying about the fact that it had only three floors rather than five, and it didn’t bother him so much that the soldiers came and went as if they owned the place. It slowly dawned on him that things weren’t too bad there after all, especially since he’d met Shmuel. He knew that there were many things he should be happy about, like the fact that Father and Mother seemed cheerful all the time now and Mother didn’t have to take as many of her afternoon naps or medicinal sherries. And Gretel was going through a phase – Mother’s words – and tended to keep out of his way.
There was also the fact that Lieutenant Kotler had been transferred away from Out-With and wasn’t around to make Bruno feel angry and upset all the time. (His departure had come about very suddenly and there had been a lot of shouting between Father and Mother about it late at night, but he was gone, that was for sure, and he wasn’t coming back; Gretel was inconsolable.) That was something else to be happy about: no one called him ‘little man’ any more.
But the best thing was that he had a friend called Shmuel.
He enjoyed walking along the fence every afternoon and was pleased to see that his friend seemed a lot happier these days and his eyes didn’t seem so sunken, although his body was still ridiculously skinny and his face unpleasantly grey.
One day, while sitting opposite him at their usual place, Bruno remarked, ‘This is the strangest friendship I’ve ever had.’
‘Why?’ asked Shmuel.
‘Because every other boy I’ve ever been friends with has been someone that I’ve been able to play with,’ he replied. ‘And we never get to play together. All we get to do is sit here and talk.’
‘I like sitting here and talking,’ said Shmuel.
‘Well, I do too of course,’ said Bruno. ‘But it’s a pity we can’t do something more exciting from time to time. A bit of exploring, perhaps. Or a game of football. We’ve never even seen each other without all this wire fencing in the way.’
Bruno often made comments like this because he wanted to pretend that the incident a few months earlier when he had denied his friendship with Shmuel had never taken place. It still preyed on his mind and made him feel bad about himself, although Shmuel, to his credit, seemed to have forgotten all about it.
‘Maybe someday we will,’ said Shmuel. ‘If they ever let us out.’
Bruno started to think more and more about the two sides of the fence and the reason it was there in the first place. He considered speaking to Father or Mother about it but suspected that they would either be angry with him for mentioning it or tell him something unpleasant about Shmuel and his family, so instead he did something quite unusual. He decided to talk to the Hopeless Case.
Gretel’s room had changed quite considerably since the last time he had been there. For one thing there wasn’t a single doll in sight. One afternoon a month or so earlier, around the time that Lieutenant Kotler had left Out-With, Gretel had decided that she didn’t like dolls any more and had put them all into four large bags and thrown them away. In their place she had hung up maps of Europe that Father had given her, and every day she put little pins into them and moved the pins around constantly after consulting the daily newspaper. Bruno thought she might be going mad. But still, she didn’t tease him or bully him as much as she used to, so he thought there could be no harm in talking to her.
‘Hello,’ he said, knocking politely on her door because he knew how angry she always got if he just went in.
‘What do you want?’ asked Gretel, who was sitting at her dressing table, experimenting with her hair.
‘Nothing,’ said Bruno.
‘Then go away.’
Bruno nodded but came inside anyway and sat down on the side of the bed. Gretel watched him from out of the side of her eyes but didn’t say anything.
‘Gretel,’ he said finally, ‘can I ask you something?’
‘If you make it quick,’ she said.
‘Everything here at Out-With—’ he began, but she interrupted him immediately.
‘It’s not called Out-With, Bruno,’ she said angrily, as if this was the worst mistake anyone had ever made in the history of the world. ‘Why can’t you pronounce it right?’
‘It is called Out-With,’ he protested.
‘It’s not,’ she insisted, pronouncing the name of the camp correctly for him.
Bruno frowned and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. ‘But that’s what I said,’ he said.
‘No it’s not. Anyway, I’m not going to argue with you,’ said Gretel, losing her patience already, for she had very little of it to begin with. ‘What is it anyway? What do you want to know?’
‘I want to know about the fence,’ he said firmly, deciding that this was the most important thing to begin with. ‘I want to know why it’s there.’
Gretel turned round in her chair and looked at him curiously. ‘You mean you don’t know?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Bruno. ‘I don’t understand why we’re not allowed on the other side of it. What’s so wrong with us that we can’t go over there and play?’
Gretel stared at him and then suddenly started laughing, only stopping when she saw that Bruno was being perfectly serious.
‘Bruno,’ she said in a childish voice, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world, ‘the fence isn’t there to stop us from going over there. It’s to stop them from coming over here.’
Bruno considered this but it didn’t make things any clearer. ‘But why?’ he asked.
‘Because they have to be kept together,’ explained Gretel.
‘With their families, you mean?’
‘Well, yes, with their families. But with their own kind too.’
‘What do you mean, their own kind?’
Gretel sighed and shook her head. ‘With the other Jews, Bruno. Didn’t you know that? That’s why they have to be kept together. They can’t mix with us.’
‘Jews,’ said Bruno, testing the word out. He quite liked the way it sounded. ‘Jews,’ he repeated. ‘All the people over that side of the fence are Jews.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Gretel.
‘Are we Jews?’
Gretel opened her mouth wide, as if she had been slapped in the face. ‘No, Bruno,’ she said. ‘No, we most certainly are not. And you shouldn’t even say something like that.’
‘But why not? What are we then?’
‘We’re…’ began Gretel, but then she had to stop to think about it. ‘We’re…’ she repeated, but she wasn’t quite sure what the answer to this question really was. ‘Well we’re not Jews,’ she said finally.
‘I know we’re not,’ said Bruno in frustration. ‘I’
m asking you, if we’re not Jews, what are we instead?’
‘We’re the opposite,’ said Gretel, answering quickly and sounding a lot more satisfied with this answer. ‘Yes, that’s it. We’re the opposite.’
‘All right,’ said Bruno, pleased that he had it settled in his head at last. ‘And the Opposite live on this side of the fence and the Jews live on that.’
‘That’s right, Bruno.’
‘Don’t the Jews like the Opposite then?’
‘No, it’s us who don’t like them, stupid.’
Bruno frowned. Gretel had been told time and time again that she wasn’t allowed to call him stupid but still she persisted with it.
‘Well, why don’t we like them?’ he asked.
‘Because they’re Jews,’ said Gretel.
‘I see. And the Opposite and the Jews don’t get along.’
‘No, Bruno,’ said Gretel, but she said this slowly because she had discovered something unusual in her hair and was examining it carefully.
‘Well, can’t someone just get them together and—’
Bruno was interrupted by the sound of Gretel breaking into a piercing scream; one that woke Mother up from her afternoon nap and brought her running into the bedroom to find out which of her children had murdered the other one.
While experimenting with her hair Gretel had found a tiny egg, no bigger than the top of a pin. She showed it to Mother, who looked through her hair, pulling strands of it apart quickly, before marching over to Bruno and doing the same thing to him.
‘Oh, I don’t believe it,’ said Mother angrily. ‘I knew something like this would happen in a place like this.’
It turned out that both Gretel and Bruno had lice in their hair, and Gretel had to be treated with a special shampoo that smelled horrible and afterwards she sat in her room for hours on end, crying her eyes out.
Bruno had the shampoo as well, but then Father decided that the best thing was for him to start afresh and he got a razor and shaved all Bruno’s hair off, which made Bruno cry. It didn’t take long and he hated seeing all his hair float down from his head and land on the floor at his feet, but Father said it had to be done.
Afterwards Bruno looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and he felt sick. His entire head looked misshapen now that he was bald and his eyes looked too big for his face. He was almost scared of his own reflection.
‘Don’t worry,’ Father reassured him. ‘It’ll grow back. It’ll only take a few weeks.’
‘It’s the filth around here that did it,’ said Mother. ‘If some people could only see the effect this place is having on us all.’
When he saw himself in the mirror Bruno couldn’t help but think how much like Shmuel he looked now, and he wondered whether all the people on that side of the fence had lice as well and that was why all their heads were shaved too.
When he saw his friend the next day Shmuel started to laugh at Bruno’s appearance, which didn’t do a lot for his dwindling self-confidence.
‘I look just like you now,’ said Bruno sadly, as if this was a terrible thing to admit.
‘Only fatter,’ admitted Shmuel.
Over the course of the next few weeks Mother seemed increasingly unhappy with life at Out-With and Bruno understood perfectly well why that might be. After all, when they’d first arrived he had hated it, due to the fact that it was nothing like home and lacked such things as three best friends for life. But that had changed for him over time, mostly due to Shmuel, who had become more important to him than Karl or Daniel or Martin had ever been. But Mother didn’t have a Shmuel of her own. There was no one for her to talk to, and the only person who she had been remotely friendly with – the young Lieutenant Kotler – had been transferred somewhere else.
Although he tried not to be one of those boys who spends his time listening at keyholes and down chimneys, Bruno was passing by Father’s office one afternoon while Mother and Father were inside having one of their conversations. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but they were talking quite loudly and he couldn’t help but overhear.
‘It’s horrible,’ Mother was saying. ‘Just horrible. I can’t stand it any more.’
‘We don’t have any choice,’ said Father. ‘This is our assignment and—’
‘No, this is your assignment,’ said Mother. ‘Your assignment, not ours. You stay if you want to.’
‘And what will people think,’ asked Father, ‘if I permit you and the children to return to Berlin without me? They will ask questions about my commitment to the work here.’
‘Work?’ shouted Mother. ‘You call this work?’
Bruno didn’t hear much more because the voices were getting closer to the door and there was always a chance that Mother would come storming out in search of a medicinal sherry, so he ran back upstairs instead. Still, he had heard enough to know that there was a chance they might be returning to Berlin, and to his surprise he didn’t know how to feel about that.
There was one part of him that remembered that he had loved his own life back there, but so many things would have changed by now. Karl and the other two best friends whose names he couldn’t remember would probably have forgotten about him by now. Grandmother was dead and they almost never heard from Grandfather, who Father said had gone senile.
But on the other hand he’d grown used to life at Out-With: he didn’t mind Herr Liszt, he’d become much friendlier with Maria than he ever had been back in Berlin, Gretel was still going through a phase and keeping out of his way (and she didn’t seem to be quite so much of a Hopeless Case any more) and his afternoon conversations with Shmuel filled him with happiness.
Bruno didn’t know how to feel and decided that whatever happened, he would accept the decision without complaint.
Nothing at all changed for a few weeks; life went on as normal. Father spent most of his time either in his office or on the other side of the fence. Mother kept very quiet during the day and was having an awful lot more of her afternoon naps, some of them not even in the afternoon but before lunch, and Bruno was worried for her health because he’d never known anyone need quite so many medicinal sherries. Gretel stayed in her room concentrating on the various maps she had pasted on the walls and consulting the newspapers for hours at a time before moving the pins around a little. (Herr Liszt was particularly pleased with her for doing this.)
And Bruno did exactly what was asked of him and caused no chaos at all and enjoyed the fact that he had one secret friend whom no one knew about.
Then one day Father summoned Bruno and Gretel into his office and informed them of the changes that were to come.
‘Sit down, children,’ he said, indicating the two large leather armchairs that they were usually told not to sit in when they had occasion to visit Father’s office because of their grubby mitts. Father sat down behind his desk. ‘We’ve decided to make a few changes,’ he continued, looking a little sad as he spoke. ‘Tell me this: are you happy here?’
‘Yes, Father, of course,’ said Gretel.
‘Certainly, Father,’ said Bruno.
‘And you don’t miss Berlin at all?’
The children paused for a moment and glanced at each other, wondering which one of them was going to commit to an answer. ‘Well, I miss it terribly,’ said Gretel eventually. ‘I wouldn’t mind having some friends again.’
Bruno smiled, thinking about his secret.
‘Friends,’ said Father, nodding his head. ‘Yes, I’ve often thought of that. It must have been lonely for you at times.’
‘Very lonely,’ said Gretel in a determined voice.
‘And you, Bruno,’ asked Father, looking at him now. ‘Do you miss your friends?’
‘Well, yes,’ he replied, considering his answer carefully. ‘But I think I’d miss people no matter where I went.’ That was an indirect reference to Shmuel but he didn’t want to make it any more explicit than that.
‘But would you like to go back to Berlin?’ asked Father. ‘If the chance was there?’
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‘All of us?’ asked Bruno.
Father gave a deep sigh and shook his head. ‘Mother and Gretel and you. Back to our old house in Berlin. Would you like that?’
Bruno thought about it. ‘Well, I wouldn’t like it if you weren’t there,’ he said, because that was the truth.
‘So you’d prefer to stay here with me?’
‘I’d prefer all four of us to stay together,’ he said, reluctantly including Gretel in that. ‘Whether that was in Berlin or Out-With.’
‘Oh, Bruno!’ said Gretel in an exasperated voice, and he didn’t know whether that was because he might be spoiling the plans for their return or because (according to her) he continued to mispronounce the name of their home.
‘Well, for the moment I’m afraid that’s going to be impossible,’ said Father. ‘I’m afraid that the Fury will not relieve me of my command just yet. Mother, on the other hand, thinks this would be a good time for the three of you to return home and reopen the house, and when I think about it…’ He paused for a moment and looked out of the window to his left – the window that led off to a view of the camp on the other side of the fence. ‘When I think about it, perhaps she is right. Perhaps this is not a place for children.’
‘There are hundreds of children here,’ said Bruno, without really thinking about his words before saying them. ‘Only they’re on the other side of the fence.’
A silence followed this remark, but it wasn’t like a normal silence where it just happens that no one is talking. It was like a silence that was very noisy. Father and Gretel stared at him and he blinked in surprise.
‘What do you mean there are hundreds of children over there?’ asked Father. ‘What do you know of what goes on over there?’