THE BOYS IN THE STRIPED PAJA

The New House's

When he first saw their new house Bruno's eyes opened wide, his mouth

made the shape of an O and his arms stretched out at his sides once again.

Everything about it seemed to be the expose of their old home and he

couldn't believe that they were really going to live there.

The house in Berlin had stood on a quiet street and alongside it were a

handy of other big houses like his own, and it was always nice to look at

them because they were almost the same as his house but not quite, and other

boys lived in them who he played with (if they were friends) or steered clear

of (if they were trouble). The new house, however, stood all on its own in an

empty, desolate place and there were no other houses anywhere to be seen, no,

which mean there would be no other families around and no other boys to

play with, neither friends nor trouble.

The house in Berlin was enormous, and even though he'd lived there for

nine years he was still able to find nooks and crannies that he hadn't fully

the finished exploring yet. There were even whole rooms-such as Father's office,

which was Out Of Bounds At All Times And No Exceptions - that he had

the barrel been inside. However, the new house had only three floors: a top

floor where all three bedrooms were and only one bathroom, a ground floor

with a kitchen, a dining room and a new office for Father (which, he

presumed, had the same restrictions as the old one), and a basement where

the slept servants.

All around the house in Berlin were other streets of large houses, and

when you walked towards the center of town there were always people

stretching along and stopping to chat to each other or rushing around and

saying they had no time to stop, not today, not when they had a hundred and

one things to do. There were shops with bright store fronts, and fruit and

vegetable stalls with big trays piled high with cabbages, carrots, carrot,

cauliflowers and corn. Some were overspilling with leeks and mushrooms,

turnips and sprouts; others with lettuce and green beans, courgettes

parsnips. Sometimes he liked to stand in front of these stalls and close his

eyes and breath in their aromas, feeling his head grow dizzy with the mixed

the Scents of sweetness and life. But there were no other streets around the new

house, no one strolling along or rushing around, and definitively no shops or fruit and vegetable stalls. When he closed his eyes, everything around

him*just felt empty and cold, if he was in the loneliest place in the world.

The middle of nowhere.

In Berlin there had been tables set out on the street, and sometimes when

he walked home from school with Karl, Daniel and Martin there would be

men and women sitting at them, drinking frothy drinks and laughing loudly;

the people who sat at these tables must be very funny people, he always

thought, 'cause it doesn't matter what they said, somebody always laughed.

But there was something about the new house that made Bruno think that no

one ever laughed there; that there was nothing to laugh at and nothing to be

happy about's.

'I think this was a bad idea, ' said Bruno a few hours after they arrived,

while Maria was unpacking her suitcases. (Maria wasn't the only

maid at the new house either: there were three others who were quite skinny

and only ever spoke to each other in whispering voices. There was an old

man too who, he was too, was there to prepare the vegetables every day and

wait on them at the dinner table, and who looked very unhappy but also a

little angry's.)

'We don't have the luxury of thinking, ' said Mother, opening a box that

contained the set of sixty-four glasses that Grandfather and Grandmother had

given her when she married Father. 'Some people make all the decisions for

us.'

Bruno didn't know what she meant by that so he pretended that she'd

never said it at all. 'I think this was a bad idea, ' he repeated. 'I think the best

thing to do would be to forget all about this and just go back home. We can

chalk it up to experience, ' he added, a phrase he had learned recently and

was determined to use as often as possible.

Mother smiled and put the glasses down carefully on the table. 'I have

another phrase for you, ' she said. 'It's that we have to make the best of a bad

situation.'

'Well, I don't know that we do, ' said Bruno. I think you should just tell

Father that you've changed your mind and, well, if we have to stay here for

the rest of the day and have dinner here this evening and sleep here tonight

because we're all tired, then that's all right, but we should probably get up

early in the morning if we're to make it back to Berlin by tea-time tomorrow.'

Mother sigh. 'Bruno, why don't you just go upstairs and help Maria

unpacks?' she asked.

'But there's no point unpacking if we're only going to-'

'Bruno, just do it, please!' snapped Mother, 'cause naturally it was all

right if she interrupted him but it didn't work the other way round. 'We're

here, we've arrived, this is our home for the foreseeable future and we just

have to make the best of things. Do you understand me?'

He did not understand what the 'foreseeable future' meant and told her so.

'It means that this is where we live now, Bruno, ' said Mother. 'And that's

an end to it.'

Bruno had a pain in his stomach and he could feel something growing

inside him, something that when it worked its way up from the lowest depth

inside him to the outside world would either make him shout and scream that

the whole thing was wrong and unfair and a big mistake for which someone

would pay one of these days, or just make him burst into tears. He

couldn't understand how this had all come about. One day he was perfect

content, playing at home, having three best friends for life, sliding down

banisters, trying to stand on his tiptoes to see right across Berlin, and now he

was stuck here in this cold, nasty house with three whispering maids and a

waiter who was both unhappy and angry, where no one looked as if they

could ever be cheerful again.

'Bruno, I want you to go upstairs and unpack and I want you to do it now,'

said Mother in an unfriendly voice, and he knew that she meant business so

springing up behind his eyes but he was determined that he would not allow

the them to appeal.

He went upstairs and turned slowly around in a full circle, hopping he

mind find a small door or cubby hole where a decided amount of exploration

couldn't be done, but there wasn't one. On his floor there were just

four doors, two on either side, facing each other. A door into his room, a

door into Gretel's room, a door into Mother and Father's room, and a door

into the bathroom.

'This isn't home and it never will be, ' he muttered under his breath as he

went through his own door to find all his clothes scattered on the bed and the

boxes of toys and books not even unpacked yet. It was obvious that Maria did

have not her priorities right.

'Mother sent me to help, ' he said quietly, and Maria nodded and pointed

towards a big bag that contained all his socks and vests and underpants.

'If you sort that lot out, you could put them in the chest of draws over

there, ' she said, pointing towards an ugly chest that stood across the room

beside a mirror that was covered in dust.

Bruno sighed and opened the bag; it was full to the brim with his

underwear and he wanted nothing more than to crawl inside it and hope that

when he climbed out again he'd have woken up and be back home again.

'What do you think of all this, Maria?' he asked after a long silence

because he had always liked Maria and felt as if she was one of the family,

even though Father said she was just a maid and overpaid at that.

'All what?' she asked.

'This, ' he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 'Coming to

a place like this. Don't you think we've made a big mistake?'

'That's not for me to say, Master Bruno, ' said Maria. 'Your mother has

explained to you about your father's job and -'

'Oh, I'm tired of hearing about Father's job, ' said Bruno, interrupting her.

'That's all we ever hear about, if you ask me. Father's job this and Father's

job that's. If Father's job means that we have to move away from our

house and the sliding banister and my three best friends for life, then I think

Father should think twice about his job, don't you?'

Just at that moment there was a creep outside in the hallway and Bruno

looked up to see the door of Mother and Father's room opening slowly. He

froze, unable to move for a moment. Mother was still downstairs, which

mean that Father was in there and he might have heard everything that Bruno

had just said's. He watched the door, hardly online to breathe, wondering

while Father might come through it and take him downstairs for a serious

talking-to.

The door opened rider and Bruno stepped back as a figure appeared, but

it wasn't Father. It was a much younger man, and not as tall as Father either,

but he went the same type of uniform, only without as many decorations on it.

He looked very serious and his cap was secured tightly on his head. Around

his temples Bruno could see that he had very blond hair, an almost unnatural

the shade of yellow. He was carrying a box in his hands and walking towards the

staircase, but he stopped for a moment when he saw Bruno standing there

him watching. He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child

before and wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it,

ignore it or kick it down the stairs. Instead he gave Bruno a quick nod

continued on his way.

'Who was that?' bruno Asked. The young man had seen so serious and

busy that he assumed he must be someone very important.

'One, of your father's soldiers, I hope, ' said Maria, who had stood up

very straight when the young man appeared and helped her hands before her

like a person in prayer. She had stared down at the ground rather than at his

face, if she was afraid she might be turned to stone if she looked straight

at him; she only relaxed when he had gone. 'We'll get to know them in time.'

'I don't think I like him, ' said Bruno. 'He was too serious.'

'Your father is very serious too, ' said Maria.

'Yes, but he's Father, ' Bruno explained. 'Fathers are supported to be

serious. It doesn't matter when they're greengrocers or teachers or chefs or

commands, ' he said, listing all the jobs that he knows, 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 '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 Mary. He looked around the room without fully

lifting his eyes up from the ground, trying to see if there was anything

of interest to be found. There wasn't. Or there did't seem to be. But then one

thing caught his eye's. 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 toward it, hopping 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 drunk their frothy drinks and sold each other

hilarious. He walked slowly because he didn't want to be

sappointed. 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

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.