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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

By John Boyne

Chapter Seven

  How Mother Took Credit for Something That She Hadn't Done

Several weeks after Bruno arrived at Out-With with his family and with no prospect of a visit on the horizon from either Karl or Daniel or Martin, he decided that he'd better start to find some way to entertain himself or he would slowly go mad.

Bruno had only known one person whom he

considered to be mad and that was Herr Roller, a man of about the same age as Father, who lived round the corner from him back at the old house in Berlin. He was often seen walking up and down the street at all hours of the day or night, having terrible arguments with himself. Sometimes, in the middle of these arguments, the dispute would  get  out  of  hand  and  he would try to punch the shadow he was throwing up against the wall. From time to time he fought so hard that he banged  his fists against the  brickwork  and they  bled  and  then  he  would  fall  onto  his  knees and   start  crying   loudly  and   slapping   his  hands against his head. On a few occasions Bruno had heard him using those words that he wasn't allowed to use, and when he did this Bruno had to stop him. self from giggling.

'You shouldn't laugh at poor Herr Roller,' Mother had told him one afternoon when he had related the story of his latest escapade. 'You have no idea what he's been through in his life.'

'He's crazy,' Bruno said, twirling a finger in circles around the side of his head and whistling to indicate just how crazy he thought he was. 'He went up to a cat on the street the other day and invited her over for  afternoon  tea.'

'What did the cat say?' asked Gretel, who was making a sandwich in the corner of the kitchen.

'Nothing,' explained Bruno. 'It was a cat.'

'I mean it,' Mother insisted. 'Franz was a very lovely young man - I knew him when I was a little girl. He was kind and thoughtful and could make his way around a dance floor like Fred Astaire. But he suffered a terrible injury during the Great War,  an injury to his head, and that's why he behaves as he does now. It's nothing to laugh at. You have no idea of what the young men went through back  then. Their  suffering.'

Bruno had only been six years old at the time and wasn't quite sure what Mother was referring to. 'It was many years ago,' she explained when he asked her about it. 'Before you were born. Franz was one of the young men who fought for us in the trenches. Your father knew him very well back then; I believe they served together.'

'And what happened to him?' asked Bruno.

'It doesn't matter,' said Mother. 'War is not a fit subject for conversation. I'm afraid we'll be spending too much time talking about it soon.'

That had been just over three years before they all

arrived at Out-With and Bruno hadn't  spent much time thinking about Herr Roller in the meantime, but he suddenly became convinced that if he didn't do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wandering around the streets having fights with him­ self and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.

To keep himself entertained Bruno spent a long

Saturday morning and afternoon creating a new diversion for himself. At some distance from the house - on Gretel's side and impossible to see from his own bedroom window - there was a large oak tree, one with a very wide trunk. A tall tree with

hefty branches. strong enough to support a small

boy. It looked so old that Bruno decided it must have

been planted at some point in the late Middle Ages, a period he had recently been studying and was finding very interesting - particularly those parts about

knights who went off on adventures to foreign lands and discovered something interesting while  they were there.

There were only two things that Bruno needed to create his new entertainment: some rope and a tyre. The rope was easy enough to find as there were bales of it in the basement of the house and it didn't take long to do something extremely dangerous and find a sharp knife and cut as many lengths of it as he thought he might need. He took these to the oak tree and left them on the ground for future use. The tyre was another matter.

On this particular morning neither Mother nor Father was at home. Mother had rushed out of the house early and taken a train  to  a nearby  city for the day for a change of air, while Father had last been seen heading in the direction of the huts and the people in the distance outside Bruno's window. But as usual there were many soldiers' trucks and jeeps parked near the house, and while he knew it would be impossible to steal a tyre off any of them, there was always the possibility that he could find a spare one somewhere.

As he stepped outside he saw Gretel speaking with Lieutenant Kotler and, without much enthusiasm, decided that he would be the sensible person to ask. Lieutenant Kotler was  the  young  officer  whom Bruno had seen on his very first day at Out-With, the

soldier who had appeared upstairs in their house and looked at him for a moment before nodding his head and continuing  on his way. Bruno had seen him on many occasions since - he came in and out  of the house as if he owned the place and Father's office was clearly not out of bounds to him at all- but they hadn't spoken very often. Bruno wasn't entirely sure why, but he knew that he didn't like Lieutenant Kotler. There was an atmosphere around him that made Bruno feel very cold and want to put a jumper on. Still, there was no one else to ask so he marched over with as much confidence as he could muster to say hello.

On most days the young lieutenant looked very smart, striding around in a uniform that appeared to have been ironed while he was wearing it. His black boots always sparkled with polish and his yellow­ blond hair was parted at the side and held perfectly in place with something that made all the comb marks stand out in it, like a field that had just been tilled. Also he wore so much cologne that you could smell him coming from quite a distance. Bruno had learned not to stand downwind of him or he would risk fainting away.

On this particular day, however, since it was a

Saturday morning and was so sunny, he was not so perfectly groomed. Instead he was wearing a white vest over his trousers and his hair flopped down over his   forehead   in   exhaustion.   His   arms   were

surprisingly tanned and he had the kind of muscles that Bruno wished he had himself. He looked so much younger today that Bruno was surprised; in fact he reminded him of the big boys at school, the ones he always steered clear of. Lieutenant Kotler was deep in conversation with Gretel and whatever he was saying must have been terribly funny because she was laughing loudly and twirling her hair around her fingers into ringlets.

'Hello,' said Bruno as he approached them, and Gretel looked at him irritably.

'What do you want?' she asked.

'I don't want anything,' snapped Bruno, glaring at her. 'I just came over to say hello.'

'You'll have to forgive my younger brother, Kurt,'

said Gretel to Lieutenant Kotler. 'He's only nine, you know.'

'Good morning, little man,' said Kotler, reaching out and - quite appallingly - ruffling his hand through Bruno's hair, a gesture  that made Bruno want to push him to the ground and jump up and down on his head. 'And what has you up and about so early on a Saturday morning?' ‘It’s hardly early,’ said Bruno. ‘It’s almost ten o’clock.’

Lieutenant Kotler shrugged his shoulders. 'When I was your age my mother couldn't get me out of bed until lunch time. She said I would never grow

up  to  be  big  and  strong  if  I  slept  my  life  away.' 'Well,  she  was  quite  wrong  there,  wasn't  she?' simpered  Gretel.  Bruno  stared  at her  with  distaste. She was putting on a silly voice that made her sound as  if  she  hadn't  a  thought  in her  head. There  was nothing  Bruno wanted  to do more  than walk  away from the two of  them  and have nothing  to do with whatever they were discussing, but he had no choice but to put his best interests first and ask Lieutenant

Kotler for the unthinkable. A favour.

'I wondered if I could ask you a favour,' said Bruno. 'You can ask,' said Lieutenant Kotler, which made Gretel  laugh  again  even  though  it  was  not  particularly funny.

'I wondered whether there were any spare tyres around,' Bruno continued. 'From one of the jeeps perhaps. Or a truck. One that you're not using.'

'The  only  spare  tyre  I  have  seen  around  here

recently  belongs  to Sergeant  Hoffschneider,  and  he carries it  around  his  waist,'  said Lieutenant  Kotler, his  lips  forming  into  something  that  resembled   a smile. This didn't make any sense at all to Bruno, but it  entertained  Gretel  so much  that  she appeared  to start dancing on the spot.

'Well, is he using it?' asked Bruno.

'Sergeant Hoffschneider?' asked Lieutenant Kotler. 'Yes, I'm afraid so. He's very attached to his spare tyre.'

'Stop it, Kurt,' said Gretel, drying her eyes. 'He doesn't understand  you. He's only nine.'

'Oh, will you be quiet please,' shouted Bruno, staring at his sister in irritation. It was bad enough having to come out here and ask for a favour from Lieutenant Kotler, but it only made things worse when his own sister teased him all the way through it. 'You're only twelve anyway,' he added. 'So stop pretending to be older than you are.'

'I'm nearly thirteen, Kurt,' she snapped, her laughter stopped now, her face frozen in horror. 'I'll be thirteen in a couple of weeks' time. A teenager. Just like you.'

Lieutenant Kotler smiled and nodded his head but

said nothing. Bruno stared at him. If it had been any other adult standing in front of him he would have rolled his eyes to suggest that they both knew that girls were silly, and sisters utterly ridiculous. But this wasn't any other adult. This was Lieutenant Kotler.

'Anyway,' said Bruno, ignoring the look of anger

that Gretel was directing towards  him,  'other than that one, is there anywhere else that I could find a spare tyre?'

'Of  course,'  said  Lieutenant  Kotler,  who  had

stopped smiling now and seemed suddenly bored with the entire thing. 'But what do you want it for anyway?'

'I thought  I'd make a swing,' said Bruno. 'You

know, with a tyre and some rope on the branches of a tree.'

'Indeed,' said Lieutenant Kotler, nodding his head

wisely as if such things were only distant memories to him now, despite the fact that he was, as Gretel had pointed out, no more than a teenager himself. 'Yes, I made many swings myself when I was a child. My friends and I had many happy afternoons together playing on them.'

Bruno felt astonished that he could have anything

in common with  him (and even more surprised to learn that Lieutenant Kotler had ever had friends). 'So what do you think?' he asked. 'Are there any around?'

Lieutenant Kotler stared at him and seemed to be

considering it, as if  he wasn't sure whether he was going to give him a straight answer or try to irritate him as he usually did. Then he caught sight of Pavel

-the old man who came every afternoon to help peel the vegetables in the kitchen for dinner before putting his white jacket on and serving at the table - heading towards the house, and this seemed to make his mind up.

'Hey, you!' he shouted, then adding a word that

Bruno did not understand. 'Come over here, you-' He said the word again, and something about the harsh sound of it made Bruno look away and feel ashamed to be part of this at all.

Pavel came towards them and Kotler spoke to him insolently, despite the fact that he was young enough to be his grandson. 'Take this little man to the storage shed at the back of the main house. Lined up along a side wall are some old tyres. He will select one and you are to carry it wherever he asks you to, is that understood?'

Pavel held his cap before him in his hands and nodded, which made his head bow even lower than it already was. 'Yes, sir,' he said in a quiet voice, so quiet that he may not even have said it at all.

'And afterwards, when you return to the kitchen, make sure you wash your hands before touching any of the food, you filthy-' Lieutenant Kotler repeated the word he had used twice already and he spat a little as he spoke. Bruno glanced across at Gretel, who had been staring adoringly at the sunlight bouncing off Lieutenant Kotler's hair but now, like her brother, looked a little uncomfortable. Neither of them had ever really spoken to Pavel before but he was a very good waiter and they, according to Father, did not grow on trees.

'Off you go then,' said Lieutenant Kotler, and Pavel turned and led the way towards the storage shed, followed by Bruno, who from time to time glanced back in the direction of his sister and the young soldier and felt a great urge to go back there and pull  Gretel away, despite the fact that she was

annoying and self-centred and mean to him most of the time. That, after  all, was her job. She was his sister. But he hated the idea of leaving her alone with a man like Lieutenant Kotler. There really was no other way to dress it up: he was just plain nasty.

The accident took place a couple of hours later after Bruno  had  located  a  suitable  tyre  and  Pavel  had dragged it to the large oak tree on Gretel's side of the house,  and  after  Bruno  had  climbed  up  and  down and up and down and up and down the trunk to tie the ropes securely around the branches and the tyre itself.  Until  then  the  whole  operation  had  been  a tremendous success. He had built one of these once before,  but  back  then he had had Karl and Daniel and Martin to help him with it. On this occasion he was  doing  it  by  himself     and   that   made   things decidedly trickier. And yet somehow he managed it,· and  within  a  few  hours  he  was  happily  installed inside the centre of the tyre and swinging back and forth  as  if  he  did  not  have  a  care  in  the  world, although he was ignoring the fact that it was one of the most uncomfortable  swings he had ever been on in his life.

He lay flat out across the centre of the tyre  and

used his feet to give himself a good push off the ground. Every time the tyre swung backwards it rose in the air and narrowly  avoided hitting the trunk of

the tree itself, but it still came close enough for Bruno to use his feet to kick himself even faster and higher on the next swing. This worked very well until his grip on the tyre slipped a little just as he kicked the tree, and before he knew it his body was turning inside and he fell downwards, one foot still inside the rim while he landed face down on the ground beneath him with a thud.

Everything went black for a moment and then came back into focus. He sat up on the ground just as the tyre swung back and hit him on the head and he let out a yelp and moved out of its way. When he stood up he could feel that his arm and leg were both very sore as he had fallen heavily on them, but they weren't so sore that they might be broken. He inspected his hand and it was covered in scratches and when he looked at his elbow he could see a nasty cut. His leg felt worse though, and when he looked

down at his knee, just below where his shorts ended

.

there was a wide gash which seemed to have been

waiting for him to look at it because once all the attention was focused on it, it started to bleed rather badly.

'Oh dear,' said Bruno out loud, staring at it and wondering what he should  do next. He didn't have to wonder for long though, because the swing that he had built was on the same side of the house as the kitchen, and Pavel, the waiter who had helped him

find the tyre, had been peeling potatoes while stand­ ing at the window and had seen the accident take place. When Bruno looked up again he saw Pavel coming quickly towards him, and only when he arrived did he feel confident enough to let the woozy feeling that was surrounding him take him over com­ pletely. He fell a little but didn't land on the ground this time, as Pavel scooped him up.

'I don't know what happened,' he said. 'It didn't

seem dangerous at all.'

'You were going too high,'  said Pavel in a quiet

voice that immediately made Bruno feel safe. 'I could see it. I thought that at any moment you were going to suffer a mischief.'

'And I did,' said Bruno.

'You certainly did.'

Pavel carried him across the ·lawn and back towards the house, taking him into the kitchen and settling him on one of the wooden chairs.

'Where's Mother?' asked Bruno, looking around

for the first person he usually searched for when he'd had an accident.

'Your mother hasn't returned yet, I'm afraid,' said

Pavel, who was kneeling on the floor in front of him and examining the knee. 'I'm the only one here.'

'What's going to happen then?' asked Bruno, begin­

ning to panic slightly, an emotion that might encourage tears. 'I might bleed to death.'

Pavel gave a gentle laugh and shook his head. 'You're not going to bleed to death,' he said, pulling a stool across and  settling Bruno's leg on it. 'Don't move for a moment. There's a first-aid box  over here.'

Bruno watched as he moved around the kitchen, pulling the green first-aid box from a cupboard and filling a small bowl with water, testing it first with his finger to make sure that it wasn't too cold.

'Will I need to go to hospital?' asked Bruno.

'No, no,' said Pavel when he returned to his kneel­ ing position, dipping a dry cloth into the bowl and touching it gently to Bruno's knee, which made him wince in pain, despite the fact that it wasn't really all that painful. 'It's only a small cut. It won't even need stitches.'

Bruno frowned and bit his lin nervouslv as Pavel cleaned the wound of blood and then held another cloth to it quite tightly for a few minutes. When he pulled it away again, gently, the bleeding had stopped, and he took a small bottle of green liquid from the first-aid box and dabbed it over the wound, which stung quite sharply and made Bruno say 'Ow' a few times in rapid succession.

'It's not that bad,' said Pavel, but in a gentle and kindly voice. 'Don't make it worse by thinking it's more painful than it actually is.'

Somehow this made sense to Bruno and he resisted

the urge to say 'Ow' any more, and when Pavel had finished applying the green liquid he took a bandage from the first-aid box and taped it to the cut.

'There,' he said. 'All better, eh?'

Bruno nodded and felt a little ashamed of himself for not behaving as bravely as he would have liked. 'Thank you,' he said.

'You're welcome,'  said Pavel.  'Now you  need  to

stay sitting there for a few minutes before you walk around on it again, all right? Let the wound relax. And don't go near that swing again today.'

Bruno nodded and kept his leg stretched out on the stool while Pavel went over to the sink and washed his hands carefully, even scrubbing under his nails with a wire brush, before drying them off and returning  to the potatoes.

'Will  you  tell  Mother  what  happened?'  asked

Bruno, who had spent the last few minutes wondering whether he would be viewed as a hero for suffering an accident or a villain for building a death-trap.

'I think she'll see for herself,' said Pavel, who took

the carrots over to the table now and sat down opposite Bruno as he began to peel them onto an old newspaper.

'Yes, I suppose so,' said Bruno.  'Perhaps she'll

want to take me to a doctor.'

'I don't think so,' said Pavel quietly.

'You never know,' said Bruno, who didn't want his accident to be dismissed quite so easily. (It was, after all, quite the most exciting thing that had happened to him since arriving here.) 'It could be worse than it seems.'

'It's not,' said Pavel, who barely seemed to be listening to what Bruno was saying, the carrots were taking up so much of his attention.

'Well, how do you know?' asked Bruno quickly, growing irritable now despite the fact that this was the same man who had come out to pick him up off the ground and brought him in and taken care of him. 'You're not a doctor.'

Pavel stopped peeling the carrots for a moment and looked across the table at Bruno, his head held low, his eyes looking up, as if he were wondering what to say to such a thing. He sighed and seemed to consider it for quite a long time before saying, 'Yes I am.'

Bruno stared at him in surprise. This didn’t make any sense to him. ‘But you’re a waiter,’ he said slowly. ‘And you peel the vegetables for dinner. How can you be a doctor too?’

‘Young man,’ said Pavel (and Bruno appreciated the fact that he had the courtesy to call him ‘young man’ instead of ‘little man’ as Lieutenant Kotler had), ‘I certainly am a doctor. Just because a man glance up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.’

Bruno had no idea what Pavel meant but some­ thing about what he had said made him look at him closely for the first time. He was quite a small man, and very skinny too, with long fingers and angular features. He was older than Father but younger than Grandfather, which still meant he was quite old, and although Bruno had never laid eyes on him before coming to Out-With, something about his face made him believe that he had worn a beard in the past.

But not any more.

'But I don't understand,' said Bruno, wanting to get to the bottom of this. 'If you're a doctor, then why are you waiting on tables? Why aren't you working at a hospital somewhere?'

Pavel hesitated for a long time before answering,

and while he did so Bruno said nothing. He wasn't sure why but he felt that the polite thing to do was to wait until Pavel was ready to speak.

‘Before I came here, I practiced as a doctor,’ he said.

‘Practiced?’ asked Bruno, who was unfamiliar with the word. ‘Weren’t you any good then?’

Pavel smiled. ‘I was very good,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to be a doctor, you see. From the time I was a small boy. From the time I was your age.’

‘I want to be an explorer,’ said Bruno quickly.

‘I wish you luck,’ said Pavel.

‘Thank you.’

'Have you discovered anything yet?'

'Back in our house in Berlin there was a lot of exploring to be done,' recalled Bruno. 'But then, it was a very big house, bigger than you could possibly imagine, so there were a lot of places to explore. It's not the same here.'

'Nothing is the same here,' agreed Pavel.

'When did you arrive at Out-With?' asked Bruno. Pavel put the carrot and the peeler down for a few moments and thought about it. 'I think I've always

been here,' he said finally in a quiet voice. 'You grew up here?'

'No,' said Pavel, shaking his head. 'No, I didn't.'

'But you just said-'

Before he could go on, Mother's voice could be heard outside. As soon as he heard her, Pavel jumped up quickly from his seat and returned to the sink with the carrots and the peeler and the newspaper fuii of peelings, and turned his back on Bruno, hang­ ing his head low and not speaking again.

'What on earth happened to you?' asked Mother

when she appeared in the kitchen, leaning down to examine the plaster which covered Bruno's cut.

'I made a swing and then I fell off it,' explained

Bruno. 'And then the swing hit me on the head and I nearly fainted, but Pavel came out and brought me in and cleaned it all up and put a bandage on me and it

stung very badly but I didn't  cry. I didn't cry once, did I, Pavel?'

Pavel turned his body slightly in their direction but

didn't lift his head. 'The wound has been cleaned,' he said quietly, not answering Bruno's question. 'There's nothing to worry about.'

'Go  to  your  room,  Bruno,'  said  Mother,  who

looked distinctly uncomfortable now. 'But 1-'

'Don't argue with me - go to your room!' she

insisted, and Bruno stepped off the chair, putting his weight on what he had decided to call his bad leg, and it hurt a little. He turned and left the room but was still able to hear Mother saying thank you to Pavel as he walked towards the stairs, and this made Bruno happy because surely it was obvious to everyone that if it hadn't been for him, he would have bled to death.

He heard one last thing before going upstairs and that was Mother's last line to the waiter who claimed to be a doctor.

'If the Commandant asks, we'll say that I cleaned

Bruno up.'

Which seemed terribly selfish to Bruno and a way for Mother to take credit for something that she hadn't done.

Chapter Eight

 Why Grandmother Stormed Out

The two people Bruno missed most of all from home were Grandfather and Grandmother. They lived together in a small flat near the fruit and vegetable stalls, and around the time that Bruno moved to Out-With, Grandfather was almost  seventy-three years old which, as far as Bruno was  concerned, made him just about the oldest man in the world. One afternoon Bruno had calculated that if he lived his entire life over and over again eight times, he would still be a year younger than Grandfather.

Grandfather  had  spent  his  entire  life  running  a

restaurant in the centre of town, and one of his employees was the father of Bruno's friend Martin who worked there as a chef. Although Grandfather no longer cooked or waited on tables in the restau­ rant himself, he spent most of his days there, sitting at the bar in the afternoon talking to the customers, eating his meals there in the evening and staying until closing time, laughing with his friends.

Grandmother never seemed old in comparison to the other boys' grandmothers. In fact when Bruno learned just how old she was - sixty-two - he was amazed. She had met Grandfather as a young woman after one of her concerts and somehow he had persuaded her to marry  him, despite all his flaws. She had long red hair, surprisingly similar to her daughter-in-law's, and green eyes, and she claimed that was because somewhere in her family there was Irish blood. Bruno always knew when a family party was getting into full swing because Grandmother would hover by the piano until some­ one sat down at it and asked her to sing.

'What's that?' she always cried, holding a hand to her chest as if the very idea took her breath away. 'Is it a song you're wanting? Why, I couldn't possibly. I'm afraid, young man, my singing days are far behind me.'

'Sing! Sing!' everyone at the party would cry, and after a suitable pause - sometimes as long as ten or twelve seconds - she would finally give in and turn to the young man at the piano and say in a quick and humorous voice:

'La Vie en Rose, E-flat minor. And try to keep up

with the changes.'

Parties at Bruno's house were always dominated by Grandmother's singing, which for some reason always seemed to coincide with the moment when Mother moved from the main party area to the kitchen, followed by some of her own friends. Father always stayed to listen and Bruno did too because there was nothing he liked more than hearing Grandmother break into her full voice and soak up the applause of the guests at the end. Plus, La Vie en Rose gave him chills and made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Grandmother liked to think that Bruno or Gretel would follow her onto the stage, and every Christmas and at every birthday party she would devise a small play for the three of them to perform for Mother, Father and Grandfather. She wrote the plays herself and, to Bruno's way of thinking, always gave herself the best lines, though he didn't mind that too much. There was usually a song in there some­ where too- Is it a song you're wanting? she'd ask first - and an opportunity for Bruno to do a magic trick and for Gretel to dance. The play always ended with Bruno reciting a long poem by one of the Great Poets, words which he found very hard to  under­ stand but which somehow started to sound more and more beautiful the more he read them.

But that wasn't the best oart of these little oroductions. The best part was the fact that Grandmother made costumes for Bruno and Gretel. No matter what the role, no matter how few lines he might have in comparison to his sister or grandmother, Bruno always

got to dress up as a prince, or an Arab sheik, or even on one occasion a Roman gladiator. There were crowns,  and  when  there  weren't  crowns  there were spears. And when there weren't spears there were whips or turbans. No one ever knew what Grand­ mother would come up with next, but a week before Christmas Bruno and Gretel would be summoned to her home on a daily basis for rehearsals.

Of course the last play they performed had ended

in disaster and Bruno still remembered it with sadness,        although he wasn't quite sure what had happened to cause the argument.

A week or so before, there had been great excitement

in the house and it had something to do with the fact that Father was now to be addressed as 'Commandant' by Maria, Cook and Lars the butler, as well as by all the soldiers who came in and out of there and used the place - as far as Bruno could see

- as if it were their own and not his. There had been

nothing but excitement for weeks. First the Fury and the beautiful blonde woman had come to dinner, which had brought the whole house to a standstill, and then it was this new business of calling Father 'Commandant'. Mother had told Bruno to congratulate Father and he had done so, although if he was honest with himself (which he always tried to be) he wasn't entirely sure what he was congratulating him for.

On Christmas Day Father wore his brand-new uniform, the starched and pressed one that he wore every day now, and the whole family applauded when he first appeared in it. It really was something special. Compared to the other soldiers who came in and out of the house, he stood out, and they seemed to respect him all the more now that he had it. Mother went up to him and kissed him on the cheek and ran a hand across the front of it, commenting on how fine she thought the fabric was. Bruno was particularly impressed by all the decorations on the uniform and he had been allowed to wear the cap for a short period, provided his hands were clean when he put it on.

Grandfather was very proud of his son when he saw him in his new uniform but Grandmother  was the only one who seemed unimpressed. After dinner had been served, and after she and Gretel and Bruno had performed their latest production, she sat down sadly in one of the armchairs and looked at Father, shaking her head as if he were a huge disappointment to her.

'I wonder - is this where I went wrong with you, Ralf? she said. 'I wonder if all the performances I made

made you give as a boy led you to this. Dressing up like a puppet on a string.'

'Now, Mother,'  said Father in a tolerant voice. 'You know this isn't the time.'

'Standing there in your  uniform,'  she continued, 'as if it makes you something special. Not even caring what it means really. What it stands for.'

'Nathalie, we discussed this in advance,' said Grandfather, although everyone knew that when Grandmother had something to say she always found a way to say it, no matter how unpopular it might prove to be.

'You discussed it, Matthias,' said Grandmother. 'I

was merely the blank wall to whom you addressed your words. As usual.'

'This is a party, Mother,' said Father with a sigh.

'And it's Christmas. Let's not spoil things.'

'I remember when the Great  War began,' said Grandfather proudly, staring into the fire and shaking his head. 'I remember you coming home to tell us how you had joined up and I was sure that you would come to harm.'

'He did come     to      harm,     Matthias,'   insisted

Grandmother. 'Take a look at him for your evidence.'

'And now look at you,' continued  Grandfather,

ignoring her. 'It makes me so proud to see you elevated to such a responsible position .. Helping your country reclaim her pride after all the great wrongs that were done to her. The punishments above and beyond-'

'Oh,  will  you  listen to   yourself!'  cried

Grandmother. 'Which one of you is the most foolish, I wonder?'

'But, Nathalie,' said  Mother, trying to calm the situation down a little, 'don't you think Ralf looks very handsome in his new uniform?'

'Handsome?' asked Grandmother, leaning for­ ward and staring at her daughter-in-law as if she had lost her reason. 'Handsome, did you say? You foolish girl! Is that what you consider to be of importance in the world? Looking handsome?'

'Do I look handsome in my ringmaster's costume?' asked Bruno, for that was what he had been wearing for the party that night - the red and black outfit of a circus ringmaster - and he had been very proud of himself in it. The moment he spoke he regretted it, however, for all the adults looked in his and Gretel's direction, as if they had forgotten that they  were there at all.

'Children, upstairs,' said Mother quickly. 'Go to your rooms.'

'But we don't want to,' protested Gretel. 'Can't we play down here?'

'No, children,' she insisted. 'Go upstairs and close the door behind you.'

'That's all you soldiers are interested in anyway,' Grandmother said, ignoring the children altogether. 'Looking handsome in your fine uniforms. Dressing up and doing the terrible, terrible things you do. It makes me ashamed. But I blame myself, Ralf, not you.'

'Children,  upstairs  now!'  said  Mother,  clapping

her hands together, and this time they had no choice but to stand up and obey her.

But rather than going straight to their rooms, they

closed the door and sat at the top of the stairs, trying to hear what was being said by the grown-ups down below. However, Mother and Father's voices were muffled and hard to make out, Grandfather's  was not to be heard at all, while Grandmother's was surprisingly slurred. Finally, after a few minutes, the door slammed open and Gretel and Bruno darted back up the stairs while Grandmother retrieved her coat from the rack in the hallway.

'Ashamed!' she called out before she left. 'That a

son of mine should be-'

'A patriot,' cried Father, who perhaps had never learned the rule about not interrupting your mother. 'A patriot indeed!' she cried out. 'The people you have to dinner in this house. Why, it makes me sick. And to see you in that uniform makes me want to tear the eyes from my head!' she added before storm­ ing out of the house and slamming the door behind

her.

Bruno hadn't seen much of Grandmother  after that and hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye to ·her  before  they  moved  to  Out-With,  but  he

missed her very much and decided to write her a letter.

That day he sat down with a pen and paper and

told her how unhappy he was there and how much he wished he was back home in Berlin. He told her about the house and the garden and the bench with the plaque  on it and the tall fence and the wooden telegraph poles and the barbed-wire bales and the hard ground beyond them and the huts and the small buildings and the smoke stacks and the soldiers, but mostly he told her about the people living there and their striped pyjamas and cloth caps,  and  then  he told her how much he missed her and he signed off his letter  'your loving grandson, Bruno'.