THE BOYS IN THE STRIPED PAJA

Bruno Tells a Perfectly Reasonable Lie

For a few weeks after this Bruno continued to leave the house when

Herr Liszt had gone home for the day and Mother was having one of her

afternoon naps, and made the long track along the fence to meet Shmuel, who

almost every afternoon was waiting there for him, sitting cross-legged on the

ground, staring at the dust beneath him.

Shmuel had a black eye, and when Bruno asked him about

it he just shook his head and said that he didn't want to talk about it. Bruno

assumed that there were bullies all over the world, not just in schools in

Berlin, and that one of them had done this to Shmuel. Felt an urge to help

his friend but he couldn't think of anything he could do to make it better, and

he could tell that Shmuel wanted to pretend it had never happened.

Every day Bruno asked Shmuel while he would be allowed to crawl

underneath the wire so that they could play together on the other side of the

fence, but every day Shmuel said no, it wasn't a good idea.

'I don't know why you're so anxious to come across here anyway, ' said

Shmuel. 'It's not very nice.'

'You haven't tried living in my house, ' said Bruno. 'For one thing it doesn't

have five floors, only three. How can anyone live in so small a space as

that?' He'd forgotten Shmuel's story about the eleven people all living in the

same room together before they had come to Out-With, including the boy

Luka who kept hitting him even when he did nothing wrong.

One day Bruno asked why Shmuel and all the other people on that side of

the fence more the same striped pyjamas and cloth caps.

'That's what they gave us when we got here,' explained Shmuel. 'They

look away our other clothes.'

'But don't you ever wake up in the morning and feel like wearing

something different? There must be something else in your wardrobe.'

Shmuel blinked and opened his mouth to say something but then thought

the better of it.

'I don't even like stripes, ' said Bruno, though this wasn't really true. In

fact he did like strips and he felt increasingly fed up that he had to wear

trousers and shirts and ties and shoes that were too tight for him when

Shmuel and his friends got to wear striped pyjamas all day long.

A few days later Bruno woke up and for the first time in weeks it was

raining. It had started at some point during the night and Bruno even

thought that it might have woken him up, but it was hard to tell because once

he was awake there was no way of knowing how that had happened. As he

ate his breakfast that morning, the rain continued. Through all the morning

classes with Herr Liszt, the rain continued. While he ate his lunch, the rain

continued. And while they finished another session of history and geography

in the afternoon, the rain continued. This was bad news for it meant that he

wouldn't be able to leave the house and meet Shmuel.

That afternoon Bruno lay on his bed with a book but found it hard to

concentrate, and just then the Hopeless Case came in to see him. She didn

often come to Bruno's room, preference to range and rearrange her

collection of dolls constantly during her free time. But, something about

the wet weather had put her off her game and she couldn't face playing it

again just yet.

'What do you want?' bruno Asked.

'That's a nice welcome, ' said Gretel.

'I'm reading, ' said Bruno.

'What are you reading?' she asked him, and rather than answer he simply

turned the cover towards her so she could see for herself.

She made a raspberry sound through her lips and some of her spit landed

on Bruno's face. 'Boring, ' she said in a sing-song voice.

'It's not boring at all, ' said Bruno. 'It's an adventure. It's better than dolls, though,

that's for sure.'

Gretel didn't rise to the bait on that one. 'What are you doing?' she

repeated, irritating Bruno even further.

I told you, I'm trying to read, ' he said in a grumpy voice. 'If some people

would just let me.'

'I've got nothing to do, ' she replied. 'I hate the rain.'

Bruno found this hard to understand. It wasn't as if she ever did anything

anyway, like him, who had adventures and explored places and had made a

friend. She very rarely left the house at all. It was as if she had decided to be

bored simply because on this occasion she didn't have a choice about staying

insides. But still, there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down

their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings

and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.

'I hate the rain too, ' he said. 'I should be with Shmuel by now. He'll think

I've forgotten him.'

The words were out of his mouth ticker than he could stop them and he

felt a pain in his stomach and grew furious with himself for saying that.

'You should be with who?' asked Gretel's.

'What's that?' asked Bruno, blinking back at her. 'Who did you say you

should be with?' she asked again.

'I'm sorry, ' said Bruno, trying to think quickly. 'I didn't quite hear you.

Could you say that again?'

'Who did you say you should be with?' she shouted, leaning forward so

there could be no mistake this time.

'I never said I should be with anyone, ' he said.

'Yes, you did. You said that someone will think you've forgotten them.'

'Pardon?'

'Bruno!' she said in a threatening voice.

'Are you mad?' he asked, trying to make her think that she had entirely

made it up, only he wasn't very convincing for he wasn't a natural actor like

Grandmother, and Gretel shook her head and pointed a finger at him.

'What did you say, Bruno?' she insisted's. 'You said there was someone you

should be. Who was it? Tell me! There's no one around here to play

with, is there?'

Bruno considered the dilemma he was in. On the one hand his sister and

he had one crucial thing in common: they weren't growing-ups. And although he

had never bothed to ask her, there was every chance that she was just as

lonely as he was at Out-With. After all, back in Berlin she had had

Isobel and Louise to play with; they may have been annoying girls but at

the last they were her friends. Here she had no one at all except her collection

the lifeless dolls. Who knows how mad Gretel was after all? Shep she perhaps

But at the same time there was the unknown fact that Shmuel was his

friend and not hers and he didn't want to share him. There was only one thing

for it and that was to lie.

'I have a new friend, ' he began. 'A new friend that I go to see every day.

And he'll be waiting for me now. But you can't tell anyone.'

'Why not?'

'Cause he's an imaginary friend, ' said Bruno, trying his best to look

embarrassed, just like Lieutenant Kotler had when he had become trapped in his story about his father in Switzerland. 'We play together every day.'

Gretel opened her mouth and started at him before breaking into a laugh.

'An imaginary friend!' she cried's. 'Aren't you a little old for an imagination

friend?'

Bruno tried to look inspired and embarrased in order to make his story

convincing. He squirmed on the bed and didn't look her in the eye,

which worked a treat and made him think that perhaps he wasn't such a bad

the actor after all. He wished that he could make himself go red, but it was

difficult to do that so he thought of embarrassing things that had happened to

him over the years and wonder when these would do the trick.

He thought of the time he had forgotten to lock the bathroom door and

Grandmother had walked in and seen everything. He thought of the time he

had put his hand up in class and called the teacher 'Mother' and everyone had

the laughed at him. He thought of the time he'd fallen off his bicycle in front of a

group of girls when he was trying to do a special trick and cut his knee and

cried.

One of them worked and his face started to go red.

'Look at you, ' said Gretel, confirm it. 'You've gone all red.'

'Cause I didn't want to tell you, ' said Bruno.

'An imaginary friend. Honestly, Bruno, you're a hopeless case.'

Bruno smiled because he knew two things. The first was that he had got

away with his lie and the second was that if anyone was the Hopeless Case

around here, it wasn't him.

'Leave me alone, ' he said. 'I want to read my book.'

'Well, why don't you lie down and close your eyes and let your imagination

friend read it to you?' said Gretel, delayed with herself now because of she

had something on him and she wasn't going to let it drop in a hurry. 'Save you

a job.'

'Maybe I should send him to throw all your dollars out of your window, ' he

said.

'You do and there'll be troubled, ' said Gretel, and he knew that she meant

it. 'Well, tell me this, Bruno. What do you and this imaginary friend of yours

do together that makes him so special?'

Bruno thought about it. He realized that he actually wanted to talk about

Shmuel a little bit and that this might be a way to do it without having to tell

her the truth about his existence.

We talk about everything, ' he told her. I tell him about our house back in

Berlin and all the other houses and the streets and the fruit and vegetable

stalls and the cafes, and how you shouldn't go into town on a Saturday

afternoon unless you want to get pushed from pillar to post, and about Karl

and Daniel and Martin and how they were my three best friends for life.'

'How interesting, ' said Gretel sarcastically because she had recently had

a birthday and turned third and thought that sarcasm was the very height of

sophistications. 'And what does he tell you?'

'He tells me about his family and the watch shop that he used to live over

and the adventures he had coming here and the friends he used to have and

the people he knows here and about the boys who he used to play with but he

doesn't any more because they are ignored without even saying goodbye to

him.'

'He sounds like a barrel of laughs, ' said Gretel. 'I wish he was my

imaginary friend.'

'And yesterday he told me that his grandfather has not been seen for days

and no one knows where he is and when ever he asks his father about him he

starts crying and hugs him so hard that he's worried he's going to squeeze him

to death's.'

Bruno got to the end of his sentence and realized that his voice had gone

very quiet's. These were things that Shmuel had told him, but for some reason

he hadn't really understood at the time how sad that must have made his

friend. When Bruno said them out loud himself he felt terrible that he hadn't

tried to say anything to cheer Shmuel up and instant had started talking about

something silly, like exploring. I'll say sorry for that tomorrow, he told

himself.

'If Father knows you were talking to imaginary friends, you'd be in for it,'

gretel Said. 'I think you should stop.'

'Why?' bruno Asked.

'Cause it's not healthy, ' she said. 'It's the first sign of madness.'

Bruno. 'I don't think I can stop, ' he said after a very long pause. 'I 'I

don't think I want to.'

'Well, all the same, ' said Gretel, who was becoming friendlier and

friendlier by the second, 'I'd keep it to myself if I were you.'

'Well, ' said Bruno, trying to look sad, 'you're probably right. You won't

tell anyone, will you?'

She shook her head. 'No one's. My own imaginary friend.

Bruno gasped's. 'Do you have one?' he asked, picturing her at another part

of the fence, talking to a girl her own age, the two of them being sarcastic

together for hours at a time.

'No, ' she said, laughing. 'Thirteen years old, for heaven's sake! I can't

affirm to act like a child even if you can.'

And with that she flounced out of the room, and Bruno could hear her

talking to her dolls in the room across the hall and scolding them for getting

themeselves into such a mess while her back was turned that she had no

choice but to rearrange them and did they think she had nothing better to do

with her time?

'Some people!' she said loudly, before getting down to work.

Bruno tried to return to his book, but he'd lost interest in it for now and

stared out at the rain instant and wonder while Shmuel, werever he

was, was thinking about him too and missing their conversations as much as

he was's.