John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

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.