The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

CHAPTER THREE The Hopeless Case

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.

‘So we’re here at Out-With because someone said out with the people before us?’

‘Exactly, Bruno,’ said Gretel. ‘Now get off my bedspread. You’re messing it up.’

Bruno jumped off the bed and landed with a thud on the carpet. He didn’t like the sound it made. It was very hollow and he immediately decided he’d better not go jumping around this house too often or it might collapse around their ears.

‘I don’t like it here,’ he said for the hundredth time.

‘I know you don’t,’ said Gretel. ‘But there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?’

‘I miss Karl and Daniel and Martin,’ said Bruno.

‘And I miss Hilda and Isobel and Louise,’ said Gretel, and Bruno tried to remember which of those three girls was the monster.

‘I don’t think the other children look at all friendly,’ said Bruno, and Gretel immediately stopped putting one of her more terrifying dolls on a shelf and turned round to stare at him.

‘What did you just say?’ she asked.

‘I said I don’t think the other children look at all friendly,’ he repeated.

‘The other children?’ said Gretel, sounding confused. ‘What other children? I haven’t seen any other children.’

Bruno looked around the room. There was a window here but Gretel’s room was on the opposite side of the hall, facing his, and so looked in a totally different direction. Trying not to appear too obvious, he strolled casually towards it. He placed his hands in the pockets of his short trousers and attempted to whistle a song he knew while not looking at his sister at all.

‘Bruno?’ asked Gretel. ‘What on earth are you doing? Have you gone mad?’

He continued to stroll and whistle and he continued not to look until he reached the window, which, by a stroke of luck, was also low enough for him to be able to see out of. He looked outside and saw the car they had arrived in, as well as three or four others belonging to the soldiers who worked for Father, some of whom were standing around smoking cigarettes and laughing about something while looking nervously up at the house. Beyond that was the driveway and further along a forest which seemed ripe for exploration.

‘Bruno, will you please explain to me what you meant by that last remark?’ asked Gretel.

‘There’s a forest over there,’ said Bruno, ignoring her.

‘Bruno!’ snapped Gretel, marching towards him so quickly that he jumped back from the window and backed up against a wall.

‘What?’ he asked, pretending not to know what she was talking about.

‘The other children,’ said Gretel. ‘You said they don’t look at all friendly.’

‘Well, they don’t,’ said Bruno, not wishing to judge them before he met them but going by appearances, which Mother had told him time and time again not to do.

‘But what other children?’ asked Gretel. ‘Where are they?’

Bruno smiled and walked towards the door, indicating that Gretel should follow him. She gave out a deep sigh as she did so, stopping to put the doll on the bed but then changing her mind and picking it up and holding it close to her chest as she went into her brother’s room, where she was nearly knocked over by Maria storming out of it holding something that closely resembled a dead mouse.

‘They’re out there,’ said Bruno, who had walked over to his own window again and was looking out of it. He didn’t turn back to check that Gretel was in the room; he was too busy watching the children. For a few moments he forgot that she was even there.

Gretel was still a few feet away and desperately wanted to look for herself, but something about the way he had said it and something about the way he was watching made her feel suddenly nervous. Bruno had never been able to trick her before about anything and she was fairly sure that he wasn’t tricking her now, but there was something about the way he stood there that made her feel as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to see these children at all. She swallowed nervously and said a silent prayer that they would indeed be returning to Berlin in the foreseeable future and not in a month as Bruno had suggested.

‘Well?’ he said, turning round now and seeing his sister standing in the doorway, clutching the doll, her golden pigtails perfectly balanced on each shoulder, ripe for the pulling. ‘Don’t you want to see them?’

‘Of course I do,’ she replied and walked hesitantly towards him. ‘Step out of the way then,’ she said, elbowing him aside.

It was a bright, sunny day that first afternoon at Out-With and the sun reappeared from behind a cloud just as Gretel looked through the window, but after a moment her eyes adjusted and the sun disappeared again and she saw exactly what Bruno had been talking about.