THE BOYS IN THE STRIPED PAJAMA

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 at 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 remained the right time.'

'What happened to it?' bruno Asked.

'They look it from me, ' said Shmuel.

'Who?'

'The soldiers, of course,' said Shmuel as if this was the most obvious

thing in the world's.

'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.

'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?' shmuel Said.

'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 thought, your one or Father's.'

Shmuel shook his head and continued with his story. He did not o often think

about these things any more because remembering his old life above the

watch shop made him very sad.

'We went 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, delayed 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 know we moved here. And I hate it here, ' he added in a loud

voice. 'He came to your house and do the same thing?'

'No, but when we were too old 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?' bruno Asked. 'In the 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 did not 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 noise and it was impossible to sleep. And I hated

Luka, who was the boy who wanted me even when I did nothing wrong.'

'Gretel hits me sometimes, ' said Bruno. 'She's my sister, ' he added. 'And a

Hopeless Cases. 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 too old to leave

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 look us

to a train and the train...' He hesitated for a moment and beet his lip. Bruno

thought he was going to start crying and couldn't understand why.

'The train was terrible, ' said Shmuel. 'There were too many of us in the

the Carriages for one thing. And there was no air to breathe. And it smelled

awfully.'

'That's because you all crowded on 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

seen 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

heads. 'We weren't able to get out of our carriage.'

'The doors are at the end, ' Bruno explained.

'There are no doors, ' said Shmuel.

'Of course there were doors, ' said Bruno with a sigh. 'They're at the end,'

he repeated's. 'Just past the buffet section.'

all 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?' bruno Asked.

'Hundreds, ' said Shmuel.

Bruno's eyes opened wide. 'Hundreds?' he said, amazed. 'That's not fair

at all's. There's no one to play with on this side of the fence. Not a single

personals.'

'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

examples. Exploration or. What's the exploration like over there anyway? Anyways

good?'

Shmuel shook his head and didn't answer. He looked back towards

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 mean to bring some chocolate but I forget.

Chocolate, ' said Shmuel very slowly, this tongue moving out from behind

his teeth. 'I've only ever had chocolate once.'

'Only once? I love chocolate's. 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 your?'

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,

though he wasn't sure it was a very good idea.

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

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

your friends, ' he added hopefully. He had hoped that Shmuel would suggest

this himself but there did'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

ground's. In the center, between the wooden telegraph poles, it's lifted quite

easy 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 after then, ' said Bruno.

'I'm not supported 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 not to Shmuel.

'I'll come back tomorrow,' shout Bruno to the departing boy and

Shmuel said nothing in reply; in fact he started to run off back to the camp, he said,

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 wanted nothing

more than to tell Mother and Father and Gretel - who would be so jealous that

she might just explain - and Maria and Cook and Lars all about his adventure

that after and his new friend with the funny name and the fact that they

had the same birthday, but the closet he got to his own house, the more he

start to think 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's. Well, his and Shmuel's.

Bruno was of the opinion that when it came to parents, and especially

when it came to sisters, what they didn't know couldn't hurt them.