John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

She looked away from him for a few silent moments and shook her head sadly before turning back to face him. ‘Your father knows what is for the best,’ she said. ‘You must trust in that.’

‘But I’m not sure I do,’ said Bruno. I think he’s made a terrible mistake.’

‘Then it’s a mistake we all have to live with.’

‘When I make mistakes I get punished,’ insisted Bruno, irritated by the fact that the rules that always applied to children never seemed to apply to grownups at all (despite the fact that they were the ones who enforced them). ‘Stupid Father,’ he added under his breath.

Maria’s eyes opened wide and she took a step towards him, her hands covering her mouth for a moment in horror. She looked round to make sure that no one was listening to them and had heard what Bruno had just said. ‘You mustn’t say that,’ she said. ‘You must never say something like that about your father.’

I don’t see why not,’ said Bruno; he was a little ashamed of himself for having said it, but the last thing he was going to do was sit back and receive a telling-off when no one seemed to care about his opinions anyway.

‘Because your father is a good man,’ said Maria. ‘A very good man. He takes care of all of us.’

‘Bringing us all the way out here, to the middle of nowhere, you mean? Is that taking care of us?’

‘There are many things your father has done,’ she said. ‘Many things of which you should be proud. If it wasn’t for your father, where would I be now after all?’

‘Back in Berlin, I expect,’ said Bruno. ‘Working in a nice house. Eating your lunch underneath the ivy and leaving the bees alone.’

‘You don’t remember when I came to work for you, do you?’ she asked quietly, sitting down for a moment on the side of his bed, something she had never done before. ‘How could you? You were only three. Your father took me in and helped me when I needed him. He gave me a job, a home. Food. You can’t imagine what it’s like to need food. You’ve never been hungry, have you?’

Bruno frowned. He wanted to mention that he was feeling a bit peckish right now, but instead he looked across at Maria and realized for the first time that he had never fully considered her to be a person with a life and a history all of her own. After all, she had never done anything (as far as he knew) other than be his family’s maid. He wasn’t even sure that he had ever seen her dressed in anything other than her maid’s uniform. But when he came to think of it, as he did now, he had to admit that there must be more to her life than just waiting on him and his family. She must have thoughts in her head, just like him. She must have things that she missed, friends whom she wanted to see again, just like him. And she must have cried herself to sleep every night since she got here, just like boys far less grown up and brave than him. She was rather pretty too, he noticed, feeling a little funny inside as he did so.

‘My mother knew your father when he was just a boy of your age,’ said Maria after a few moments. ‘She worked for your grandmother. She was a dresser for her when she toured Germany as a younger woman. She arranged all the clothes for her concerts-washed them, ironed them, repaired them. Magnificent gowns, all of them. And the stitching, Bruno! Like art work, every design. You don’t find dressmakers like that these days.’ She shook her head and smiled at the memory as Bruno listened patiently. ‘She made sure that they were all laid out and ready whenever your grandmother arrived in her dressing room before a show. And after your grandmother retired, of course my mother stayed friendly with her and received a small pension, but times were hard then and your father offered me a job, the first I had ever had. A few months later my mother became very sick and she needed a lot of hospital care and your father arranged it all, even though he was not obliged to. He paid for it out of his own pocket because she had been a friend to his mother. And he took me into his household for the same reason. And when she died he paid all the expenses for her funeral too. So don’t you ever call your father stupid, Bruno. Not around me. I won’t allow it.’

Bruno bit his lip. He had hoped that Maria would take his side in the campaign to get away from Out-With but he could see where her loyalties really lay. And he had to admit that he was rather proud of his father when he heard that story.

‘Well,’ he said, unable to think of something clever to say now, ‘I suppose that was nice of him.’

‘Yes,’ said Maria, standing up and walking over towards the window, the one through which Bruno could see all the way to the huts and the people in the distance. ‘He was very kind to me then,’ she continued quietly, looking through it herself now and watching the people and the soldiers go about their business far away. ‘He has a lot of kindness in his soul, truly he does, which makes me wonder…’ She drifted off as she watched them and her voice cracked suddenly and she sounded as if she might cry.

‘Wonder what?’ asked Bruno.

‘Wonder what he… how he can…’

‘How he can what?’ insisted Bruno.

The noise of a door slamming came from downstairs and reverberated through the house so loudly-like a gunshot-that Bruno jumped and Maria let out a small scream. Bruno recognized footsteps pounding up the stairs towards them, quicker and quicker, and he crawled back on the bed, pressing himself against the wall, suddenly afraid of what was going to happen next. He held his breath, expecting trouble, but it was only Gretel, the Hopeless Case. She poked her head through the doorway and seemed surprised to find her brother and the family maid engaged in conversation.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Gretel.

‘Nothing,’ said Bruno defensively. ‘What do you want? Get out.’

‘Get out yourself,’ she replied even though it was his room, and then turned to look at Maria, narrowing her eyes suspiciously as she did so. ‘Run me a bath, Maria, will you?’ she asked.

‘Why can’t you run your own bath?’ snapped Bruno.

‘Because she’s the maid,’ said Gretel, staring at him. ‘That’s what she’s here for.’

‘That’s not what she’s here for,’ shouted Bruno, standing up and marching over to her. ‘She’s not just here to do things for us all the time, you know. Especially things that we can do ourselves.’

Gretel stared at him as if he had gone mad and then looked at Maria, who shook her head quickly.

‘Of course, Miss Gretel,’ said Maria. ‘I’ll just finish tidying your brother’s clothes away and I’ll be right with you.’

‘Well, don’t be long,’ said Gretel rudely-because unlike Bruno she never stopped to think about the fact that Maria was a person with feelings just like hers-before marching off back to her room and closing the door behind her. Maria’s eyes didn’t follow her but her cheeks had taken on a pink glow.

‘I still think he’s made a terrible mistake,’ said Bruno quietly after a few minutes when he felt as if he wanted to apologize for his sister’s behaviour but didn’t know whether that was the right thing to do or not. Situations like that always made Bruno feel very uncomfortable because, in his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.

‘Even if you do, you mustn’t say it out loud,’ said Maria quickly, coming towards him and looking as if she wanted to shake some sense into him. ‘Promise me you won’t.’

‘But why?’ he asked, frowning. ‘I’m only saying what I feel. I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you’re not.’