‘Hello, Shmuel,’ said Bruno.
‘I wasn’t sure if we’d ever see each other again – with the rain and everything, I mean,’ said Shmuel. ‘I thought you might be kept indoors.’
‘It was touch and go for a while,’ said Bruno. ‘What with the weather being so bad.’
Shmuel nodded and held out his hands to Bruno, who opened his mouth in delight. He was carrying a pair of striped pyjama bottoms, a striped pyjama top and a striped cloth cap exactly like the one he was wearing. It didn’t look particularly clean but it was a disguise, and Bruno knew that good explorers always wore the right clothes.
‘You still want to help me find Papa?’ asked Shmuel, and Bruno nodded quickly.
‘Of course,’ he said, although finding Shmuel’s papa was not as important in his mind as the prospect of exploring the world on the other side of the fence. ‘I wouldn’t let you down.’
Shmuel lifted the bottom of the fence off the ground and handed the outfit underneath to Bruno, being particularly careful not to let it touch the muddy ground below.
‘Thanks,’ said Bruno, scratching his stubbly head and wondering why he hadn’t remembered to bring a bag to hold his own clothes in. The ground was so dirty here that they would be spoiled if he left them on the ground. He didn’t have a choice really. He could either leave them here until later and accept the fact that they would be entirely caked with mud; or he could call the whole thing off and that, as any explorer of note knows, would have been out of the question.
‘Well, turn round,’ said Bruno, pointing at his friend as he stood there awkwardly. ‘I don’t want you watching me.’
Shmuel turned round and Bruno took off his overcoat and placed it as gently as possible on the ground. Then he took off his shirt and shivered for a moment in the cold air before putting on the pyjama top. As it slipped over his head he made the mistake of breathing through his nose; it did not smell very nice.
‘When was this last washed?’ he called out, and Shmuel turned round.
‘I don’t know if it’s ever been washed,’ said Shmuel.
‘Turn round!’ shouted Bruno, and Shmuel did as he was told. Bruno looked left and right again but there was still no one to be seen, so he began the difficult task of taking off his trousers while keeping one leg and one boot on the ground at the same time. It felt very strange taking off his trousers in the open air and he couldn’t imagine what anyone would think if they saw him doing it, but finally, and with a great deal of effort, he managed to complete the task.
‘There,’ he said. ‘You can turn back now.’
Shmuel turned just as Bruno applied the finishing touch to his costume, placing the striped cloth cap on his head. Shmuel blinked and shook his head. It was quite extraordinary. If it wasn’t for the fact that Bruno was nowhere near as skinny as the boys on his side of the fence, and not quite so pale either, it would have been difficult to tell them apart. It was almost (Shmuel thought) as if they were all exactly the same really.
‘Do you know what this reminds me of?’ asked Bruno, and Shmuel shook his head.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘It reminds me of Grandmother,’ he said. ‘You remember I told you about her? The one who died?’
Shmuel nodded; he remembered because Bruno had talked about her a lot over the course of the year and had told him how fond he had been of Grandmother and how he wished he’d taken the time to write more letters to her before she passed away.
‘It reminds me of the plays she used to put on with Gretel and me,’ Bruno said, looking away from Shmuel as he remembered those days back in Berlin, part of the very few memories now that refused to fade. ‘It reminds me of how she always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you’re pretending to be, she always told me. I suppose that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it? Pretending to be a person from the other side of the fence.’
‘A Jew, you mean,’ said Shmuel.
‘Yes,’ said Bruno, shifting on his feet a little uncomfortably. ‘That’s right.’
Shmuel pointed at Bruno’s feet and the heavy boots he had taken from the house. ‘You’ll have to leave them behind too,’ he said.