The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Read Free

was unpacking his suitcases upstairs. (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 told, 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.)
    ‘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 sighed. ‘Bruno, why don’t you just go upstairs and help Maria unpack?’ she asked.
    ‘But there’s no point unpacking if we’re only going to—’
    ‘Bruno, just do it, please!’ snapped Mother, because apparently 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 didn’t 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 depths 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 somebody would pay one of these days, or just make him burst into tears instead. He couldn’t understand how this had all come about. One day he was perfectly 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 he turned round and marched away without another word. He could feels tears springing up behind his eyes but he was determined that he wouldn’t allow them to appear.
    He went upstairs and turned slowly around in a full circle, hoping he might find a small door or cubby hole where a decent amount of exploration could eventually 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 not have her priorities right.
    ‘Mother sent me to help,’ he