‘You do and there’ll be trouble,’ said Gretel, and he knew that she meant it. ‘Well, tell me this, Bruno. What do you and this imaginary friend of yours do together that makes him so special?’
Bruno thought about it. He realized that he actually wanted to talk about Shmuel a little bit and that this might be a way to do it without having to tell her the truth about his existence.
‘We talk about everything,’ he told her. ‘I tell him about our house back in Berlin and all the other houses and the streets and the fruit and vegetable stalls and the cafés, and how you shouldn’t go into town on a Saturday afternoon unless you want to get pushed from pillar to post, and about Karl and Daniel and Martin and how they were my three best friends for life.’
‘How interesting,’ said Gretel sarcastically because she had recently had a birthday and turned thirteen and thought that sarcasm was the very height of sophistication. ‘And what does he tell you?’
‘He tells me about his family and the watch shop that he used to live over and the adventures he had coming here and the friends he used to have and the people he knows here and about the boys who he used to play with but he doesn’t any more because they disappeared without even saying goodbye to him.’
‘He sounds like a barrel of laughs,’ said Gretel. ‘I wish he was my imaginary friend.’
‘And yesterday he told me that his grandfather hasn’t been seen for days and no one knows where he is and whenever he asks his father about him he starts crying and hugs him so hard that he’s worried he’s going to squeeze him to death.’
Bruno got to the end of his sentence and realized that his voice had gone very quiet. These were things that Shmuel had told him, but for some reason he hadn’t really understood at the time how sad that must have made his friend. When Bruno said them out loud himself he felt terrible that he hadn’t tried to say anything to cheer Shmuel up and instead had started talking about something silly, like exploring. I’ll say sorry for that tomorrow, he told himself.
‘If Father knew you were talking to imaginary friends, you’d be in for it,’ said Gretel. ‘I think you should stop.’
‘Why?’ asked Bruno.
‘Because it’s not healthy,’ she said. ‘It’s the first sign of madness.’
Bruno nodded. ‘I don’t think I can stop,’ he said after a very long pause. ‘I don’t think I want to.’
‘Well, all the same,’ said Gretel, who was becoming friendlier and friendlier by the second, ‘I’d keep it to myself if I were you.’
‘Well,’ said Bruno, trying to look sad, ‘you’re probably right. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’
She shook her head. ‘No one. Except my own imaginary friend.’
Bruno gasped. ‘Do you have one?’ he asked, picturing her at another part of the fence, talking to a girl her own age, the two of them being sarcastic together for hours at a time.
‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m thirteen years old, for heaven’s sake! I can’t afford to act like a child even if you can.’
And with that she flounced out of the room, and Bruno could hear her talking to her dolls in the room across the hall and scolding them for getting themselves into such a mess while her back was turned that she had no choice but to rearrange them and did they think she had nothing better to do with her time?
‘Some people!’ she said loudly, before getting down to work.
Bruno tried to return to his book, but he’d lost interest in it for now and stared out at the rain instead and wondered whether Shmuel, wherever he was, was thinking about him too and missing their conversations as much as he was.
Chapter Fifteen
Something He Shouldn’t Have Done
For several weeks the rain was on and off and on and off and Bruno and Shmuel did not see as much of each other as they would have liked. When they did meet Bruno found that he was starting to worry about his friend because he seemed to be getting even thinner by the day and his face was growing more and more grey. Sometimes he brought more bread and cheese with him to give to Shmuel, and from time to time he even managed to hide a piece of chocolate cake in his pocket, but the walk from the house to the place in the fence where the two boys met was a long one and sometimes Bruno got hungry on the way and found that one bite of the cake would lead to another, and that in turn led to another, and by the time there was only one mouthful left he knew it would be wrong to give that to Shmuel because it would only tease his appetite and not satisfy it.
Father’s birthday was coming up soon, and although he said he didn’t want a fuss, Mother arranged a party for all the officers serving at Out-With and a great fuss was made to prepare for it. Every time she sat down to make more plans for the party, Lieutenant Kotler was there beside her to help, and between them they seemed to make more lists than could ever possibly be needed.
Bruno decided to make a list of his own. A list of all the reasons why he didn’t like Lieutenant Kotler.
There was the fact that he never smiled and always looked as if he was trying to find somebody to cut out of his will.