The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

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 Shmuel. ‘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 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?’ 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 hopefully. 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