John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

It was the first time they had ever touched.

It had been almost a year since Bruno had come home to find Maria packing his things, and his memories of life in Berlin had almost all faded away. When he thought back he could remember that Karl and Martin were two of his three best friends for life, but try as he might he couldn’t remember who the other one was. And then something happened that meant that for two days he could leave Out-With and return to his old house: Grandmother had died and the family had to go home for the funeral.

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?’