John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

‘Do you have many friends?’ asked Bruno, cocking his head a little to the side as he waited for an answer.

‘Oh yes,’ said Shmuel. ‘Well, sort of.’

Bruno frowned. He had hoped that Shmuel might have said no as it would give them something else in common. ‘ Close friends?’ he asked.

‘Well, not very close,’ said Shmuel. ‘But there are a lot of us-boys our age, I mean-on this side of the fence. We fight a lot of the time though. That’s why I come out here. To be on my own.’

‘It’s so unfair,’ said Bruno. ‘I don’t see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there’s no one to talk to and no one to play with and you get to have dozens of friends and are probably playing for hours every day. I’ll have to speak to Father about it.’

‘Where did you come from?’ asked Shmuel, narrowing his eyes and looking at Bruno curiously.

‘Berlin.’

‘Where’s that?’

Bruno opened his mouth to answer but found that he wasn’t entirely sure. ‘It’s in Germany, of course,’ he said. ‘Don’t you come from Germany?’

‘No, I’m from Poland,’ said Shmuel.

Bruno frowned. ‘Then why do you speak German?’ he asked.

‘Because you said hello in German. So I answered in German. Can you speak Polish?’

‘No,’ said Bruno, laughing nervously. ‘I don’t know anyone who can speak two languages. And especially no one of our age.’

‘Mama is a teacher in my school and she taught me German,’ explained Shmuel. ‘She speaks French too. And Italian. And English. She’s very clever. I don’t speak French or Italian yet, but she said she’d teach me English one day because I might need to know it.’

‘Poland,’ said Bruno thoughtfully, weighing up the word on his tongue. ‘That’s not as good as Germany, is it?’

Shmuel frowned. ‘Why isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘Well, because Germany is the greatest of all countries,’ Bruno replied, remembering something that he had overheard Father discussing with Grandfather on any number of occasions. ‘We’re superior.’

Shmuel stared at him but didn’t say anything, and Bruno felt a strong desire to change the subject because even as he had said the words, they didn’t sound quite right to him and the last thing he wanted was for Shmuel to think that he was being unkind.

‘Where is Poland anyway?’ he asked after a few silent moments had passed.

‘Well, it’s in Europe,’ said Shmuel.

Bruno tried to remember the countries he had been taught about in his most recent geography class with Herr Liszt. ‘Have you ever heard of Denmark?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Shmuel.

‘I think Poland is in Denmark,’ said Bruno, growing more confused even though he was trying to sound clever. ‘Because that’s many miles away,’ he repeated for added confirmation.

Shmuel stared at him for a moment and opened his mouth and closed it twice, as if he was considering his words carefully. ‘But this is Poland,’ he said finally.

‘Is it?’ asked Bruno.

‘Yes it is. And Denmark’s quite far away from both Poland and Germany.’

Bruno frowned. He’d heard of all these places but he always found it hard to get them straight in his head. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘But it’s all relative, isn’t it? Distance, I mean.’ He wished they could get off the subject as he was starting to think he was entirely wrong and made a private resolution to pay more attention in future in geography class.

‘I’ve never been to Berlin,’ said Shmuel.

‘And I don’t think I’d ever been to Poland before I came here,’ said Bruno, which was true because he hadn’t. ‘That is, if this really is Poland.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ said Shmuel quietly. ‘Although it’s not a very nice part of it.’

‘No.’

‘Where I come from is a lot nicer.’

‘It’s certainly not as nice as Berlin,’ said Bruno. ‘In Berlin we had a big house with five floors if you counted the basement and the little room at the top with the window. And there were lovely streets and shops and fruit and vegetable stalls and any number of cafes. But if you ever go there I wouldn’t recommend walking around town on a Saturday afternoon because there are far too many people there then and you get pushed from pillar to post. And it was much nicer before things changed.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Shmuel.

‘Well, it used to be very quiet there,’ explained Bruno, who didn’t like to talk about how things had changed. ‘And I was able to read in bed at night. But now it’s quite noisy sometimes, and scary, and we have to turn all the lights off when it starts to get dark.’

‘Where I come from is much nicer than Berlin,’ said Shmuel, who had never been to Berlin. ‘Everyone there is very friendly and we have lots of people in our family and the food is a lot better too.’

‘Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree,’ said Bruno, who didn’t want to fight with his new friend.

‘All right,’ said Shmuel.

‘Do you like exploring?’ asked Bruno after a moment.

‘I’ve never really done any,’ admitted Shmuel.

‘I’m going to be an explorer when I grow up,’ said Bruno, nodding his head quickly. ‘At the moment I can’t do very much more than read about explorers, but at least that means that when I’m one myself, I won’t make the mistakes they did.’

Shmuel frowned. ‘What kind of mistakes?’ he asked.

‘Oh, countless ones,’ explained Bruno. ‘The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you’ve found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of a cupboard.’

‘I think I belong to the first category,’ said Shmuel.

‘Yes,’ replied Bruno. ‘I think you do. Can I ask you something?’ he added after a moment.

‘Yes,’ said Shmuel.

Bruno thought about it. He wanted to phrase the question just right.

‘Why are there so many people on that side of the fence?’ he asked. ‘And what are you all doing there?’

Some months earlier, just after Father received the new uniform which meant that everyone had to call him ‘Commandant’ and just before Bruno came home to find Maria packing up his things, Father came home one evening in a state of great excitement, which was terribly unlike him, and marched into the living room where Mother, Bruno and Gretel were sitting reading their books.

‘Thursday night,’ he announced. ‘If we’ve any plans for Thursday night we have to cancel them.’

‘You can change your plans if you want to,’ said Mother, ‘but I’ve made arrangements to go to the theatre with-’

‘The Fury has something he wants to discuss with me,’ said Father, who was allowed to interrupt Mother even if no one else was. I just got a phone call this afternoon. The only time he can make it is Thursday evening and he’s invited himself to dinner.’

Mother’s eyes opened wide and her mouth made the shape of an O. Bruno stared at her and wondered whether this was what he looked like when he was surprised about something.

‘But you’re not serious,’ said Mother, growing a little pale. ‘He’s coming here? To our house?’

Father nodded. ‘At seven o’clock,’ he said. ‘So we’d better think about something special for dinner.’

‘Oh my,’ said Mother, her eyes moving back and forth quickly as she started to think of all the things that needed doing.

‘Who’s the Fury?’ asked Bruno.

‘You’re pronouncing it wrong,’ said Father, pronouncing it correctly for him.