‘Why not?’ asked Shmuel.
‘No,’ said Bruno, shaking his head quickly. ‘I don’t mean I don’t believe you. I mean I’m surprised, that’s all. Because my birthday is April the fifteenth too. And I was born in nineteen thirty-four. We were born on the same day.’
Shmuel thought about this. ‘So you’re nine too,’ he said.
‘Yes. Isn’t that strange?’
‘Very strange,’ said Shmuel. ‘Because there may be dozens of Shmuels on this side of the fence but I don’t think that I’ve ever met anyone with the same birthday as me before.’
‘We’re like twins,’ said Bruno.
‘A little bit,’ agreed Shmuel.
Bruno felt very happy all of a sudden. A picture came into his head of Karl and Daniel and Martin, his three best friends for life, and he remembered how much fun they used to have together back in Berlin and he realized how lonely he had been at Out-With.
‘Do you have many friends?’ asked Bruno, cocking his head a little to the side as he waited for an answer.
‘Oh yes,’ said Shmuel. ‘Well, sort of.’
Bruno frowned. He had hoped that Shmuel might have said no as it would give them something else in common. ‘Close friends?’ he asked.
‘Well, not very close,’ said Shmuel. ‘But there are a lot of us – boys our age, I mean – on this side of the fence. We fight a lot of the time though. That’s why I come out here. To be on my own.’
‘It’s so unfair,’ said Bruno. ‘I don’t see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there’s no one to talk to and no one to play with and you get to have dozens of friends and are probably playing for hours every day. I’ll have to speak to Father about it.’
‘Where did you come from?’ asked Shmuel, narrowing his eyes and looking at Bruno curiously.
‘Berlin.’
‘Where’s that?’
Bruno opened his mouth to answer but found that he wasn’t entirely sure. ‘It’s in Germany, of course,’ he said. ‘Don’t you come from Germany?’
‘No, I’m from Poland,’ said Shmuel.
Bruno frowned. ‘Then why do you speak German?’ he asked.
‘Because you said hello in German. So I answered in German. Can you speak Polish?’
‘No,’ said Bruno, laughing nervously. ‘I don’t know anyone who can speak two languages. And especially no one of our age.’
‘Mama is a teacher in my school and she taught me German,’ explained Shmuel. ‘She speaks French too. And Italian. And English. She’s very clever. I don’t speak French or Italian yet, but she said she’d teach me English one day because I might need to know it.’
‘Poland,’ said Bruno thoughtfully, weighing up the word on his tongue. ‘That’s not as good as Germany, is it?’
Shmuel frowned. ‘Why isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Well, because Germany is the greatest of all countries,’ Bruno replied, remembering something that he had overheard Father discussing with Grandfather on any number of occasions. ‘We’re superior.’
Shmuel stared at him but didn’t say anything, and Bruno felt a strong desire to change the subject because even as he had said the words, they didn’t sound quite right to him and the last thing he wanted was for Shmuel to think that he was being unkind.
‘Where is Poland anyway?’ he asked after a few silent moments had passed.
‘Well, it’s in Europe,’ said Shmuel.
Bruno tried to remember the countries he had been taught about in his most recent geography class with Herr Liszt. ‘Have you ever heard of Denmark?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Shmuel.
‘I think Poland is in Denmark,’ said Bruno, growing more confused even though he was trying to sound clever. ‘Because that’s many miles away,’ he repeated for added confirmation.
Shmuel stared at him for a moment and opened his mouth and closed it twice, as if he was considering his words carefully. ‘But this is Poland,’ he said finally.
‘Is it?’ asked Bruno.
‘Yes it is. And Denmark’s quite far away from both Poland and Germany.’
Bruno frowned. He’d heard of all these places but he always found it hard to get them straight in his head. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘But it’s all relative, isn’t it? Distance, I mean.’ He wished they could get off the subject as he was starting to think he was entirely wrong and made a private resolution to pay more attention in future in geography class.