John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

‘Your father is very serious too,’ said Maria.

‘Yes, but he’s Father,’ explained Bruno. ‘Fathers are supposed to be serious. It doesn’t matter whether they’re greengrocers or teachers or chefs or commandants,’ he said, listing all the jobs that he knew decent, respectable fathers did and whose titles he had thought about a thousand times. ‘And I don’t think that man looked like a father. Although he was very serious, that’s for sure.’

‘Well, they have very serious jobs,’ said Maria with a sigh. ‘Or so they think anyway. But if I was you I’d steer clear of the soldiers.’

‘I don’t see what else there is to do other than that,’ said Bruno sadly. ‘I don’t even think there’s going to be anyone to play with other than Gretel, and what fun is that after all? She’s a Hopeless Case.’

He felt as if he was about to cry again but stopped himself, not wanting to look like a baby in front of Maria. He looked around the room without fully lifting his eyes up from the ground, trying to see whether there was anything of interest to be found. There wasn’t. Or there didn’t seem to be. But then one thing caught his eye. Over in the corner of the room opposite the door there was a window in the ceiling that stretched down into the wall, a little like the one on the top floor of the house in Berlin, only not so high. Bruno looked at it and thought that he might be able to see out without even having to stand on tiptoes.

He walked slowly towards it, hoping that from here he might be able to see all the way back to Berlin and his house and the streets around it and the tables where the people sat and drank their frothy drinks and told each other hilarious stories. He walked slowly because he didn’t want to be disappointed. But it was just a small boy’s room and there was only so far he could walk before he arrived at the window. He put his face to the glass and saw what was out there, and this time when his eyes opened wide and his mouth made the shape of an O, his hands stayed by his sides because something made him feel very cold and unsafe.

Bruno was sure that it would have made a lot more sense if they had left Gretel behind in Berlin to look after the house because she was nothing but trouble. In fact he had heard her described on any number of occasions as being Trouble From Day One.

Gretel was three years older than Bruno and she had made it clear to him from as far back as he could remember that when it came to the ways of the world, particularly any events within that world that concerned the two of them, she was in charge. Bruno didn’t like to admit that he was a little scared of her, but if he was honest with himself-which he always tried to be-he would have admitted that he was.

She had some nasty habits, as was to be expected from sisters. She spent far too long in the bathroom in the mornings for one thing, and didn’t seem to mind if Bruno was left outside, hopping from foot to foot, desperate to go.

She had a large collection of dolls positioned on shelves around her room that stared at Bruno when he went inside and followed him around, watching whatever he did. He was sure that if he went exploring in her room when she was out of the house, they would report back to her on everything he did. She had some very unpleasant friends too, who seemed to think that it was clever to make fun of him, a thing he never would have done if he had been three years older than her. All Gretel’s unpleasant friends seemed to enjoy nothing more than torturing him and said nasty things to him whenever Mother or Maria were nowhere in sight.

‘Bruno’s not nine, he’s only six,’ said one particular monster over and over again in a sing-song voice, dancing around him and poking him in the ribs.

‘I’m not six, I’m nine,’ he protested, trying to get away.

‘Then why are you so small?’ asked the monster. ‘All the other nine-year-olds are bigger than you.’

This was true, and a particular sore point for Bruno. It was a source of constant disappointment to him that he wasn’t as tall as any of the other boys in his class. In fact he only came up to their shoulders. Whenever he walked along the streets with Karl, Daniel and Martin, people sometimes mistook him for the younger brother of one of them when in fact he was the second oldest.

‘So you must be only six,’ insisted the monster, and Bruno would run away and do his stretching exercises and hope that he would wake up one morning and have grown an extra foot or two.

So one good thing about not being in Berlin any more was the fact that none of them would be around to torture him. Perhaps if he was forced to stay at the new house for a while, even as long as a month, he would have grown by the time they returned home and then they wouldn’t be able to be mean to him any more. It was something to keep in mind anyway if he wanted to do what Mother had suggested and make the best of a bad situation.

He ran into Gretel’s room without knocking and discovered her placing her civilization of dolls on various shelves around the room.

‘What are you doing in here?’ she shouted, spinning round. ‘Don’t you know you don’t enter a lady’s room without knocking?’

‘You didn’t bring all your dolls with you, surely?’ asked Bruno, who had developed a habit of ignoring most of his sister’s questions and asking a few of his own in their place.

‘Of course I did,’ she replied. ‘You don’t think I’d have left them at home? Why, it could be weeks before we’re back there again.’

‘Weeks?’ said Bruno, sounding disappointed but secretly pleased because he’d resigned himself to the idea of spending a month there. ‘Do you really think so?’

‘Well, I asked Father and he said we would be here for the foreseeable future.’

‘What is the foreseeable future exactly?’ asked Bruno, sitting down on the side of her bed.

‘It means weeks from now,’ said Gretel with an intelligent nod of her head. ‘Perhaps as long as three.’

‘That’s all right then,’ said Bruno. ‘As long as it’s just for the foreseeable future and not for a month. I hate it here.’

Gretel looked at her little brother and found herself agreeing with him for once. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘It’s not very nice, is it?’

‘It’s horrible,’ said Bruno.

‘Well, yes,’ said Gretel, acknowledging that. ‘It’s horrible right now. But once the house is smartened up a bit it probably won’t seem so bad. I heard Father say that whoever lived here at Out-With before us lost their job very quickly and didn’t have time to make the place nice for us.’

‘Out- With?’ asked Bruno. ‘What’s an Out-With?’

‘It’s not an Out-With, Bruno,’ said Gretel with a sigh. ‘It’s just Out-With.’

‘Well, what’s Out-With then?’ he repeated. ‘Out with what?’

‘That’s the name of the house,’ explained Gretel. ‘Out-With.’

Bruno considered this. He hadn’t seen any sign on the outside to say that was what it was called, nor had he seen any writing on the front door. His own house back in Berlin didn’t even have a name; it was just called number four.

‘But what does it mean?’ he asked in exasperation. ‘Out with what?’

‘Out with the people who lived here before us, I expect,’ said Gretel. ‘It must have to do with the fact that he didn’t do a very good job and someone said out with him and let’s get a man in who can do it right.’

‘You mean Father.’

‘Of course,’ said Gretel, who always spoke of Father as if he could never do any wrong and never got angry and always came in to kiss her goodnight before she went to sleep which, if Bruno was to be really fair and not just sad about moving houses, he would have admitted Father did for him too.