Bruno frowned and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. ‘But that’s what I said,’ he said.
‘No it’s not. Anyway, I’m not going to argue with you,’ said Gretel, losing her patience already, for she had very little of it to begin with. ‘What is it anyway? What do you want to know?’
‘I want to know about the fence,’ he said firmly, deciding that this was the most important thing to begin with. ‘I want to know why it’s there.’
Gretel turned round in her chair and looked at him curiously. ‘You mean you don’t know?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Bruno. ‘I don’t understand why we’re not allowed on the other side of it. What’s so wrong with us that we can’t go over there and play?’
Gretel stared at him and then suddenly started laughing, only stopping when she saw that Bruno was being perfectly serious.
‘Bruno,’ she said in a childish voice, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world, ‘the fence isn’t there to stop us from going over there. It’s to stop them from coming over here.’
Bruno considered this but it didn’t make things any clearer. ‘But why?’ he asked.
‘Because they have to be kept together,’ explained Gretel.
‘With their families, you mean?’
‘Well, yes, with their families. But with their own kind too.’
‘What do you mean, their own kind?’
Gretel sighed and shook her head. ‘With the other Jews, Bruno. Didn’t you know that? That’s why they have to be kept together. They can’t mix with us.’
‘Jews,’ said Bruno, testing the word out. He quite liked the way it sounded. ‘Jews,’ he repeated. ‘All the people over that side of the fence are Jews.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Gretel.
‘Are we Jews?’
Gretel opened her mouth wide, as if she had been slapped in the face. ‘No, Bruno,’ she said. ‘No, we most certainly are not. And you shouldn’t even say something like that.’
‘But why not? What are we then?’
‘We’re …’ began Gretel, but then she had to stop to think about it. ‘We’re …’ she repeated, but she wasn’t quite sure what the answer to this question really was. ‘Well we’re not Jews,’ she said finally.
‘I know we’re not,’ said Bruno in frustration. ‘I’m asking you, if we’re not Jews, what are we instead?’
‘We’re the opposite,’ said Gretel, answering quickly and sounding a lot more satisfied with this answer. ‘Yes, that’s it. We’re the opposite.’
‘All right,’ said Bruno, pleased that he had it settled in his head at last. ‘And the Opposite live on this side of the fence and the Jews live on that.’
‘That’s right, Bruno.’
‘Don’t the Jews like the Opposite then?’
‘No, it’s us who don’t like them, stupid.’
Bruno frowned. Gretel had been told time and time again that she wasn’t allowed to call him stupid but still she persisted with it.
‘Well, why don’t we like them?’ he asked.
‘Because they’re Jews,’ said Gretel.
‘I see. And the Opposite and the Jews don’t get along.’
‘No, Bruno,’ said Gretel, but she said this slowly because she had discovered something unusual in her hair and was examining it carefully.
‘Well, can’t someone just get them together and—’
Bruno was interrupted by the sound of Gretel breaking into a piercing scream; one that woke Mother up from her afternoon nap and brought her running into the bedroom to find out which of her children had murdered the other one.
While experimenting with her hair Gretel had found a tiny egg, no bigger than the top of a pin. She showed it to Mother, who looked through her hair, pulling strands of it apart quickly, before marching over to Bruno and doing the same thing to him.
‘Oh, I don’t believe it,’ said Mother angrily. ‘I knew something like this would happen in a place like this.’
It turned out that both Gretel and Bruno had lice in their hair, and Gretel had to be treated with a special shampoo that smelled horrible and afterwards she sat in her room for hours on end, crying her eyes out.
Bruno had the shampoo as well, but then Father decided that the best thing was for him to start afresh and he got a razor and shaved all Bruno’s hair off, which made Bruno cry. It didn’t take long and he hated seeing all his hair float down from his head and land on the floor at his feet, but Father said it had to be done.
Afterwards Bruno looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and he felt sick. His entire head looked misshapen now that he was bald and his eyes looked too big for his face. He was almost scared of his own reflection.