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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

By John Boyne

Chapter Eleven

 The Fury

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 0. 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.

'The Fury,' said Bruno again, trying to get it right

but failing again.

'No,' said Father, 'the- Oh, never mind!' 'Well, who is he anyway?' asked Bruno again.

Father stared at him, astonished. 'You know perfectly well who the Fury is,' he said.

'I don't,' said Bruno.

'He runs the country, idiot,' said Gretel, showing off as sisters tend to do. (It was things like this that made her such a Hopeless Case.) 'Don't you  ever read a newspaper?'

'Don't call your  brother  an idiot, please,'  said

Mother.

'Can I call him stupid?'

'I'd rather you didn't.'

Gretel sat down again, disappointed, but stuck her tongue out at Bruno nonetheless.

'Is he coming alone?' asked Mother.

'I forgot to ask,' said Father. 'But I presume he'll be bringing her with him.'

'Oh my,' said Mother again, standing up and counting in her head the number of things she had to organize before Thursday, which was only two evenings away. The house would have to be cleaned from top to bottom, the windows washed, the dining-room table stained and varnished, the food ordered, the maid's and butler's  uniforms  washed and pressed, and the crockery and glasses polished until they sparkled.

Somehow, despite the fact that the list seemed to grow longer and longer all the time,  Mother managed to get everything finished on time, although she commented over and over again that the evening would be a greater success if some people helped out a little bit more around the house.

An hour before the Fury was due to arrive Gretel

and  Bruno  were  brought downstairs, where they received a rare invitation into Father’s office. Gretel was wearing a white dress and knee socks and her hair had been twisted into corkscrew curls. Bruno was wearing a pair of dark brown shorts, a plain white shirt and a dark brown tie. He had a new pair of shoes for the occasion and was very proud of them, even though they were too small for him and were pinching his feet and making it difficult for him to walk. All these preparations and fine clothes seemed a little extravagant, all the same, because Bruno and Gretel weren't even invited to dinner; they had eaten an hour earlier.

'Now,  children,'  said  Father,  sitting  behind  his

desk and looking from his son to his daughter and back again as they stood before him. 'You know that there  is a very  special  evening  ahead  of  us,  don't

you?'

They nodded.

'And that it is very important for my career that

tonight goes well.' They nodded again.

'Then there are a number  of ground rules which

need to be set down before we begin.'  Father was a big believer in ground rules. Whenever there was a special or important occasion in the house, more of them were created.

'Number one,' said Father. 'When the Fury arrives

you will stand in the hall quietly and prepare to greet him. You do not speak until he speaks to you and then you reply in a clear tone, enunciating each word precisely. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, Father,’ mumbled Bruno.

‘That’s exactly the type of thing we don’t want,’ said Father, referring to the  mumbling. 'You open your mouth and speak like an adult. The last thing we need  is for either of you to start behaving like children. If the Fury ignores you then you do not say anything either, but look directly ahead  and  show him the respect and courtesy that such a great leader deserves.'

'Of  course, Father; said  Gretel in a very clear

VOICe.

'And when Mother and I are at dinner with the Fury, you are both to remain in your rooms very quietly. There is to be no running around, no sliding down banisters' - and here he looked very deliberately at Bruno - 'and no interrupting us. Is that understood? I don't want either of you causing chaos.'

Bruno and Gretel nodded and Father stood up to indicate that this meeting was at an end.

'Then the ground rules are established,' he said.

Three quarters of an hour later the doorbell rang and the house erupted in excitement. Bruno and Gretel took their places standing side by side by the staircase and Mother waited beside them, wringing her hands together nervously. Father gave them all a quick glance and nodded, looking pleased by what he saw, and then opened the door.

Two people stood outside: a rather small man and a taller woman.

Father saluted them and ushered them inside, where Maria, her head bowed even lower than usual, took their coats and the introductions were made. They spoke to Mother first, which gave Bruno an opportunity to stare at their guests and decide for himself whether they deserved all the fuss being made of them.

The Fury was far shorter than Father  and not,

Bruno supposed, quite as strong. He had dark hair, which was cut quite short, and a tiny moustache - so tiny in fact that Bruno wondered why he bothered with it at all or whether he had simply forgotten a piece when he was shaving. The woman standing beside him, however, was quite the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. She had blonde hair and very red lips, and while the Fury spoke to Mother she turned and looked at Bruno and smiled, making him go red with embarrassment.

'And these are my children, Fury,' said Father  as

Gretel and Bruno stepped forward. 'Gretel and Bruno.'

'And which is which?' the Fury said, which made

everyone laugh except for Bruno, who thought it was perfectly obvious which was which and hardly cause for a joke. The Fury stretched out his hand and shook theirs and Gretel gave a careful, rehearsed curtsy. Bruno was delighted when it went wrong and she almost fell over.

'What   charming   children,' said  the  beautiful blonde woman. 'And how old are they, might I ask?' 'I'm twelve but he's only nine,' said Gretel, looking at her brother with disdain. 'And I can speak French too,' she added, which was not strictly speaking true, although she had learned a few phrases in

school.

'Yes, but why would you want to?' asked the Fury, and this time no one laughed; instead they shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and Gretel stared at him, unsure whether he wanted an answer or not.

The matter was resolved quickly, however, as the Fury, who was the rudest guest Bruno had ever witnessed, turned round and walked directly into the dining room and promptly sat down at the head of the table - in Father's seat! -without another word. A little flustered, Mother and Father followed him inside and Mother gave instructions to Lars that he could start heating up the soup.

'I can speak French too,' said the beautiful blonde

woman, leaning down and smiling at the  two children. She didn't seem to be as frightened of the Fury as Mother and Father were. 'French is a beautiful language and you are very clever to be learning it.'

'Eva,' shouted the Fury from the other room, clicking his fingers as if she were some sort of puppy dog. The woman rolled her eyes and stood up slowly and turned round.

'I like your shoes, Bruno, but they look  a  little tight on you,' she added with a smile. 'If they are, you should tell your mother, before they cause you to injure yourself.'

'They are a little tight,' admitted Bruno.

'I don't normally wear my hair in curls,' said Gretel, jealous of the attention that her brother was getting.

'But why not?' asked the woman. 'It's so pretty

that way.'

'Eva!' roared the Fury for a second time, and now she started to walk away from them.

'It was lovely to meet you both,' she said, before

stepping into the dining room and sitting down on the Fury's left-hand side. Gretel walked towards the stairs but Bruno stayed rooted to the ground, watching the blonde woman until she caught his eye again and waved at him, just as Father appeared and closed the doors with a jerk of his head- from which Bruno understood that it was time to go to his room, to sit quietly, and not to make any noise and certainly not to slide down any banisters.

The Fury and Eva stayed for the best part of two

hours and neither Gretel nor Bruno were invited downstairs to say goodbye to them. Bruno watched them leave from his bedroom window and noticed that when they stepped towards their car, which he was impressed to see had a chauffeur, the Fury did not open the door for his companion but instead climbed in and started reading a newspaper, while she said goodbye once again to Mother and thanked her for the lovely dinner.

What a horrible man, thought Bruno.

Later that night Bruno overheard snippets of Mother and Father's conversation. Certain phrases drifted through the keyhole or under the door of Father's office and up  the staircase and round the landing and under the door of Bruno's bedroom. Their voices were unusually loud and Bruno could only make out a few fragments of them:

'... to leave Berlin. And for such a place . . .'

Mother was saying.

'... no choice, at least not if we want to continue .. .' said Father.

'... as if it's the most natural thing in the world

and it's not, it's just not ...' said Mother.

'...what would happen is I would be taken away and treated like a .. .' said Father.

'... expect them to grow up in a place like .. .'

said Mother.

'... and that's an end to the matter. I don't want to hear another word on the subject .. .'said Father.

That must have been the end of the conversation because Mother left Father's office then and Bruno fell asleep.

A couple of days later he came home from school to find Maria standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he'd hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else's business, and that is where the story began.

Chapter Twelve

 Shmuel Thinks of an Answer to Bruno's Question

'All I know is this,' began Shmuel. 'Before we came here I lived with my mother and father and my brother Josef in a small flat above the store where Papa makes his watches. Every morning we ate our breakfast together at seven o'clock and while  we went to school, Papa mended  the   watches  that people brought to him and made new ones too. I had a beautiful watch that he gave me but I don't have it any more. It had a golden face and I wound it  up every night before I went to sleep and it always told the right time.'

'What happened to it?' asked Bruno. 'They took it from me,' said Shmuel. 'Who?'

'The soldiers, of course,' said Shmuel as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

'And then one day things started to change,' he continued. 'I came home from school and my mother was making armbands for us from a special cloth and drawing a star on each one. Like this.' Using his finger he drew a design in the dusty ground beneath him.

*

'And every time we left the house, she told us we

had to wear one of these armbands.'

'My father wears one too,' said Bruno. 'On his uniform. It's very nice. It's bright red with a black­ and-white design on it.' Using his finger he drew another design in the dusty ground on his side of the fence.

*

'Yes, but they're different, aren't they?' said Shmuel.

'No one's ever given me an armband,' said Bruno.

'But I never asked to wear one,' said Shmuel.

'All the same,' said Bruno, 'I think I'd quite like one. I don't know which one I'd prefer though, your one or Father's.'

Shmuel shook his head and continued with his

story. He didn't often think about these things any more because  remembering his old life above the watch shop made him very sad.

'We wore the armbands for a few months,' he said.

'And then things changed again. I came home one day and Mama said we couldn't live in our house any more-'

'That happened to me too!' shouted Bruno, delighted that he wasn't the only boy who'd been forced to move. 'The Fury came for dinner, you see, and the next thing I knew we moved here. And I hate it here,' he added in a loud voice. 'Did he come to your house and do the same thing?'

'No, but when we were told we couldn't live in our house we had to move to a different part of Cracow, where the soldiers built a big wall and my mother and father and my brother and I all had to live in  one room.'

'All of you?' asked Bruno. 'In one room?'

'And not just us,' said Shmuel. 'There was another family there and the mother and father were always fighting with each other and one of the sons was bigger than me and he hit me even when I did nothing wrong.'

'You can't have all lived in the one room,' said Bruno, shaking his head. 'That doesn't make any sense.’

‘All of us,’ said Shmuel, nodding his head. ‘Eleven in total.’

Bruno opened his mouth to contradict him again - he didn't really believe that eleven people could live in the same room together - but changed his mind.

'We lived there for some more months,' continued Shmuel, 'all of us in that one room. There was one small window in it but I didn't like to look out of it because then I would see the wall and I hated the wall because our real home was on the other side of it. And this part of town was the bad part because it was always noisy and it was impossible to sleep. And I hated Luka, who was the boy who kept hitting me even when I did nothing wrong.'

'Gretel hits me sometimes,' said Bruno. 'She's my sister,' he added. 'And a Hopeless Case. But soon I'll be bigger and stronger than she is and she won't know what's hit her then.'

'Then one day the soldiers all came with  huge

trucks,' continued Shmuel, who didn't seem all that interested in Gretel. 'And everyone was told to leave the houses. Lots of people didn't want to and they hid wherever they could find a place but in the end I think they caught everyone. And the trucks took us to a train and the train .. .' He hesitated for a moment and bit his lip. Bruno thought he was going to start crying and couldn't understand why.

‘The train was horrible,’ said Shmel. ‘There were too many of us in the carriages for one thing. And there was no air to breathe. And it smelled awful.’

‘That’s because you all crowded onto one train,’ said Bruno, remembering the two trains he had seen at the station when he left Berlin. 'When we came here, there was another one on the other side of the platform but no one  seemed  to  see  it.  That  was the one we got. You should have got on it too.'

'I don't think we would have been allowed,' said Shmuel, shaking his head. 'We weren't able to get out of our carriage.'

'The doors are at the end,' explained Bruno. 'There weren't any doors,' said Shmuel.

'Of course there were doors,' said Bruno with  a sigh. 'They're at the end,' he repeated. 'Just past the buffet section.'

'There weren't any doors,' insisted Shmuel. 'If there had been, we would  ll have got off.'

Bruno mumbled something under his breath along the lines of 'Of course there were', but he didn't say it very loud so Shmuel didn't hear.

'When the train finally stopped,' continued Shmuel, 'we were in a very cold place and we all had to walk here.'

'We had a car,' said Bruno, out loud now.

'And Mama was taken away from us, and Papa and Josef and I were put into the huts over there and that’s where we’ve been ever since.’

               Shmuel looked very sad when he told this story and Bruno didn’t know why; it didn’t seem like such a terrible thing to him, and after all much the same thing had happened to him.

'Are  there  many  other  boys  over  there?'  asked Bruno.

'Hundreds,' said Shmuel.

Bruno's eyes opened wide. 'Hundreds?' he said, amazed. 'That's not fair at all. There's no one to play with on this side of the fence. Not a single person.'

'We don't play,' said Shmuel.

'Don't play? Why ever not?'

'What would we play?' he asked, his face looking confused at the idea of it.

'Well, I don't know,' said Bruno. 'All sorts of things.

Football,  for  example.  Or  exploration.  What's  the exploration like over there anyway? Any good?'

Shmuel shook his head and didn't answer. He looked back towards the huts and turned back to Bruno then. He didn't want to ask the next question but the pains in his stomach made him.

'You  don't  have  any  food  on  you,  do  you?'  he

asked.

'Afraid  not,'  said  Bruno.  'I meant  to  bring  some chocolate but I forgot.'

'Chocolate,'  said Shmuel very  slowly,  his tongue

moving out from behind his teeth. 'I've only ever had

chocolate once.'

'Only once? I love chocolate. I can't get enough of it although Mother says it'll rot my teeth.'

'You don't have any bread, do you?'

Bruno  shook  his  head.  'Nothing  at  all,'  he  said.

'Dinner isn't served until half past six. What time do you have yours?'

Shmuel shrugged his shoulders and pulled himself to his feet. 'I think I'd better get back,' he said.

'Perhaps you can come to dinner with us one evening,' said Bruno, although he wasn't sure it was a very good idea.

'Perhaps,' said Shmuel, although he didn't sound convinced.

'Or I could  come to you,'  said Bruno.  'Perhaps I

could come and meet your friends,' he added hope­ fully. He had hoped that Shmuel would suggest this himself but there didn't seem to be any sign of that.

'You're on the wrong side of the fence though,' said Shmuel.

'I could crawl under,' said Bruno, reaching down and lifting the wire off the ground. In the centre, between the wooden telegraph poles, it lifted quite easily and a boy as small as Bruno could easily fit through.

Shmuel watched him do this and backed away nervously. 'I have to go back,' he said.

'Some other afternoon then,' said Bruno.

'I'm not supposed to be here. If they catch me I'll be

in trouble.'

He turned and walked away and Bruno noticed again just how small and skinny his new friend was. He didn't say anything about this because  he knew only too well how unpleasant it was being criticized for something as silly as your height, and the last thing he wanted to do was be unkind to Shmuel.

'I'll come back  tomorrow,'  shouted  Bruno to the

departing boy and Shmuel said nothing in reply; in fact he started to run off back to the camp, leaving Bruno all on his own.

Bruno  decided  that  that  was  more  than  enough

exploration for one day and he set off home, excited about what had happened and wanting nothing more than to tell Mother and Father and Gretel - who would be so jealous that she might just explode - and Maria and Cook and Lars all about his adventure that afternoon and his new friend with the funny name and the fact that they had the same birthday, but the closer he got to his own house, the more he started to think that that might not be a good idea.

After all, he reasoned, they might not want me to be

friends with him any more and if that happens they might stop me coming out here at all. By the time he went through his front door and smelled the beef that was roasting in the oven for dinner he had decided that it was better to keep the whole story to himself for the moment  and not  breathe  a word about it. It

would be his own secret. Well, his and Shmuel's.

Chapter Thirteen

 The Bottle of Wine

As week followed week it started to become clear to Bruno that he would not be going home to Berlin in the foreseeable future and that he could forget about sliding down the banisters in his comfortable home or seeing Karl or Daniel or Martin any time soon.

However, with each day that passed he began to get used to being at Out-With and stopped feeling quite so unhappy about his new life. After all, it wasn't as if he had nobody to talk to any more. Every afternoon when classes were finished Bruno took the long walk along the fence and sat and talked with his new friend Shmuel until it was time come home and that had started to make up for all the times he missed Berlin.

One afternoon, as he was filling his pockets with some bread and cheese from the kitchen fridge to take with him, Maria came in and stopped when she saw what he was doing.

‘Hello,’ said Bruno, trying to appear as casual as possible.  'You gave me  a fright. I didn't  hear  you coming.'

'You're not eating again, surely?' asked Maria with a smile. 'You had lunch, didn't you? And you're still hungry?'

'A little,' said Bruno. 'I'm going for a walk and

thought I might get peckish on the way.'

Maria shrugged her shoulders and went  over to the cooker, where she put a pan of water on to boil. Laid out on the surface beside it was a pile of potatoes and carrots, ready for peeling when Pavel arrived later in the  afternoon. Bruno was about to leave when the food caught his eye and a question came into his mind that had been bothering him for some time. He hadn't been able to think of anyone to ask before, but this seemed like a perfect moment and the perfect person.

'Maria,' he said, 'can I ask you a question?'

The maid turned round and looked at him m surprise. 'Of course, Master Bruno,' she said.

'And if I ask you this question, will you promise not to tell anyone that I asked it?'

She narrowed  her eyes suspiciously  but nodded.

'All right,' she said. 'What is it you want to know?' 'It's about Pavel,' said Bruno.  'You know him,

don't  you?  The  man  who  comes  and  peels  the vegetables and then waits on us at table.'

'Oh yes,'  said Maria  with  a  smile. She sounded relieved that his question wasn't going to be about anything more serious. 'I know Pavel. We've spoken on many occasions. Why do you ask about him?'

'Well,' said Bruno, choosing his words quite care­ fully in case he said something he shouldn't, 'do you remember soon after we got here when I made the swing on the oak tree and fell and cut my knee?'

'Yes,' said Maria. 'It's not hurting you again, is it?' 'No, it's not that,' said Bruno. 'But when I hurt it, Pavel was the only grown-up around and he brought me in here and cleaned it and washed it and put the green ointment on it, which stung but I suppose it

made it better, and then he put a bandage on it.' 'That's what anyone would do if someone's hurt,'

said Maria.

'I know,' he continued. 'Only he told me then that he wasn't really a waiter at all.'

Maria's face froze a little and she didn't say any­ thing for a moment. Instead she looked away and licked her lips a little before nodding her head. 'I see,' she said. 'And what did he say he was really?'

'He said he was a doctor,' said Bruno. 'Which

didn't seem right at all. He's not a doctor, is he?' 'No,' said Maria, shaking her head. 'No, he's not

a doctor. He's a waiter.'

'I knew it,' said Bruno, feeling very pleased with himself. 'Why did he lie to me then? It doesn't make any sense.'

'Pavel is not a doctor any more, Bruno,' said Maria quietly. 'But he was. In another life. Before he came here.'

Bruno  frowned  and  thought  about  it.  'I  don't

understand,'  he said.

'Few of us do,' said Maria.

'But if he was a doctor, why isn't he one still?'

Maria sighed and looked out of the window to make sure that no one was coming, then nodded towards the chairs and both she and Bruno sat down.

'If I tell you what Pavel told me about his life,' she

said, 'you mustn't tell anyone - do you understand? We would all get in terrible trouble.'

'I won't tell anyone,' said Bruno, who loved to

hear secrets and almost never spread them around, except when it was totally necessary of course, and there was nothing he could do about it.

'All right,' said Maria. 'This is as much as I know.'

Bruno was late arriving at the place in the fence where he met Shmuel every day, but as usual his new friend was sitting cross-legged on the ground waiting for him.

'I'm sorry I'm late,' he said, handing some of the

bread and cheese through the wire - the bits that he hadn't already eaten on the way when he had grown a little peckish after all. 'I was talking to Maria.'

'Who's Maria?' asked Shmuel, not looking up as he gobbled down the food hungrily.

'She's our maid,' explained Bruno. 'She's very nice

although Father says she's overpaid. But she was telling me about this man Pavel who chops our vegetables for us and waits on table. I think he lives on your side of the fence.'

Shmuel looked  up  for  a  moment  and  stopped

eating. 'On my side?' he asked.

'Yes. Do you know him? He's very old and has a white jacket that he wears when he's serving dinner. You've probably seen him.'

'No,' said Shmuel, shaking his head. 'I don't know

him.'

'But you must,' said Bruno irritably, as if Shmuel were being deliberately difficult. 'He's not as tall as some adults and he has grey hair and stoops over a little.'

'I don't think you realize just how many people live on this side of the fence,' said Shmuel. 'There are thousands of us.'

'But  this  one's  name  is  Pavel,'  insisted  Bruno.

'When I fell off my  swing  he  cleaned  out the cut so it didn't  get  infected  and  put  a  bandage  on my leg. Anyway, the reason I wanted to tell  you about him is because he's from Poland  too.  Like you.'

'Most of  us here are from Poland,'  said Shmuel.

'Although there are some from other places too, like Czechoslovakia  and-'

'Yes, but that's why I thought you might know

him. Anyway, he was a doctor in his home town before he came here but he's not allowed to be a doctor any more and if Father had  known  that  he had cleaned my knee when I hurt myself then there would have been trouble.'

'The  soldiers  don't  normally  like  people  getting

better,' said Shmuel, swallowing the last piece of bread. 'It usually works the other way round.'

Bruno nodded, even though he didn't quite know

what Shmuel meant, and gazed up into the sky. After a few moments he looked through the wire and asked another question that had been preying on his mind.

'Do you know what you want to be when you

grow up?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Shmuel. 'I want to work in a zoo.' 'A zoo?' asked Bruno.

'I like animals,' said Shmuel quietly.

'I'm going to be a soldier,' said Bruno in a deter­ mined voice. 'Like Father.'

'I wouldn't like to be a soldier,' said Shmuel.

'I don't mean one like Lieutenant Kotler,' said Bruno quickly. 'Not one who strides around as if he owns the place and laughs with your sister and whispers with your mother. I don't think he's a good soldier  at all. I mean  one like Father.  One  of  the good  soldiers.'

'There aren't any good soldiers,' said Shmuel.

'Of course there are,' said Bruno. 'Who?'

'Well, Father, for one,' said Bruno. 'That's why he has such an impressive uniform and why everyone calls him Commandant and does whatever he says. The Fury has big things in mind for him because he's such a good soldier.'

'There aren't any good soldiers,' repeated Shmuel. 'Except Father,' repeated Bruno, who was hoping that  Shmuel  wouldn't  say  that  again  because  he didn't want to have to argue with him. After all, he was the only friend he had  here at Out-With.  But Father  was  Father,  and  Bruno  didn't  think  it was

right for someone to say something bad about him.

Both  boys  stayed very  quiet for a few minutes, neither one wanting to say anything he might regret. 'You don't know what it's like here,' said Shmuel eventually in a low voice, his words barely carrying

across to Bruno.

'You don't have any sisters, do you?' asked Bruno quickly, pretending he hadn't heard that because then he wouldn't have to answer.

'No,' said Shmuel, shaking his head.

'You're lucky,' said Bruno. 'Gretel's only twelve and  she  thinks  she  knows  everything  but  she's  a Hopeless Case really. She sits looking out of her window and when she sees Lieutenant Kotler coming she runs downstairs into the hallway and pretends that she was there all along. The other day I caught her doing it and when he came in she jumped and said, Why, Lieutenant Kotler, I didn't know you were here, and I know for a fact that she was waiting for him.'

Bruno           hadn't          been          looking  at     Shmuel   as he said all that, but when he looked again he noticed that his friend had grown even more pale than usual. 'What's wrong?' he asked. 'You look as if you're

about to be sick.'

'I don't like talking about him,' said Shmuel. 'About who?' asked Bruno.

'Lieutenant Kotler. He scares me.'

'He scares me too a little,' admitted Bruno. 'He's a bully. And he smells funny. It's all that cologne he puts on.' And then Shmuel started to shiver slightly and Bruno looked around, as if he could see rather than feel whether it was cold or not. 'What's the matter?' he asked. 'It's not that cold, is it? You should have brought a jumper, you know. The evenings are getting chillier.'