‘No, no,’ said Pavel when he returned to his kneeling position, dipping a dry cloth into the bowl and touching it gently to Bruno’s knee, which made him wince in pain, despite the fact that it wasn’t really all that painful. ‘It’s only a small cut. It won’t even need stitches.’
Bruno frowned and bit his lip nervously as Pavel cleaned the wound of blood and then held another cloth to it quite tightly for a few minutes. When he pulled it away again, gently, the bleeding had stopped, and he took a small bottle of green liquid from the first-aid box and dabbed it over the wound, which stung quite sharply and made Bruno say ‘Ow’ a few times in rapid succession.
‘It’s not that bad,’ said Pavel, but in a gentle and kindly voice. ‘Don’t make it worse by thinking it’s more painful than it actually is.’
Somehow this made sense to Bruno and he resisted the urge to say ‘Ow’ any more, and when Pavel had finished applying the green liquid he took a bandage from the first-aid box and taped it to the cut.
‘There,’ he said. ‘All better, eh?’
Bruno nodded and felt a little ashamed of himself for not behaving as bravely as he would have liked. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ said Pavel. ‘Now you need to stay sitting there for a few minutes before you walk around on it again, all right? Let the wound relax. And don’t go near that swing again today.’
Bruno nodded and kept his leg stretched out on the stool while Pavel went over to the sink and washed his hands carefully, even scrubbing under his nails with a wire brush, before drying them off and returning to the potatoes.
‘Will you tell Mother what happened?’ asked Bruno, who had spent the last few minutes wondering whether he would be viewed as a hero for suffering an accident or a villain for building a death-trap.
‘I think she’ll see for herself,’ said Pavel, who took the carrots over to the table now and sat down opposite Bruno as he began to peel them onto an old newspaper.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Bruno. ‘Perhaps she’ll want to take me to a doctor.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Pavel quietly.
‘You never know,’ said Bruno, who didn’t want his accident to be dismissed quite so easily. (It was, after all, quite the most exciting thing that had happened to him since arriving here.) ‘It could be worse than it seems.’
‘It’s not,’ said Pavel, who barely seemed to be listening to what Bruno was saying, the carrots were taking up so much of his attention.
‘Well, how do you know?’ asked Bruno quickly, growing irritable now despite the fact that this was the same man who had come out to pick him up off the ground and brought him in and taken care of him. ‘You’re not a doctor.’
Pavel stopped peeling the carrots for a moment and looked across the table at Bruno, his head held low, his eyes looking up, as if he were wondering what to say to such a thing. He sighed and seemed to consider it for quite a long time before saying, ‘Yes I am.’
Bruno stared at him in surprise. This didn’t make any sense to him. ‘But you’re a waiter,’ he said slowly. ‘And you peel the vegetables for dinner. How can you be a doctor too?’
‘Young man,’ said Pavel (and Bruno appreciated the fact that he had the courtesy to call him ‘young man’ instead of ‘little man’ as Lieutenant Kotler had), ‘I certainly am a doctor. Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.’
Bruno had no idea what Pavel meant but something about what he had said made him look at him closely for the first time. He was quite a small man, and very skinny too, with long fingers and angular features. He was older than Father but younger than Grandfather, which still meant he was quite old, and although Bruno had never laid eyes on him before coming to Out-With, something about his face made him believe that he had worn a beard in the past.
But not any more.
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Bruno, wanting to get to the bottom of this. ‘If you’re a doctor, then why are you waiting on tables? Why aren’t you working at a hospital somewhere?’
Pavel hesitated for a long time before answering, and while he did so Bruno said nothing. He wasn’t sure why but he felt that the polite thing to do was to wait until Pavel was ready to speak.
‘Before I came here, I practised as a doctor,’ he said finally.
‘Practised?’ asked Bruno, who was unfamiliar with the word. ‘Weren’t you any good then?’
Pavel smiled. ‘I was very good,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to be a doctor, you see. From the time I was a small boy. From the time I was your age.’
‘I want to be an explorer,’ said Bruno quickly.
‘I wish you luck,’ said Pavel.
‘Thank you.’
‘Have you discovered anything yet?’
‘Back in our house in Berlin there was a lot of exploring to be done,’ recalled Bruno. ‘But then, it was a very big house, bigger than you could possibly imagine, so there were a lot of places to explore. It’s not the same here.’
‘Nothing is the same here,’ agreed Pavel.
‘When did you arrive at Out-With?’ asked Bruno.
Pavel put the carrot and the peeler down for a few moments and thought about it. ‘I think I’ve always been here,’ he said finally in a quiet voice.
‘You grew up here?’
‘No,’ said Pavel, shaking his head. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you just said—’