It started off nicely enough. There was a garden directly beneath Bruno’s window. Quite a large one too, and full of flowers which grew in neat orderly sections in soil that looked as if it was tended very carefully by someone who knew that growing flowers in a place like this was something good that they could do, like putting a tiny candle of light in the corner of a huge castle on a misty moor on a dark winter’s night.
Past the flowers there was a very pleasant pavement with a wooden bench on it, where Gretel could imagine sitting in the sunshine and reading a book. There was a plaque attached to the top of the bench but she couldn’t read the inscription from this distance. The seat was turned to face the house – which, usually, would be a strange thing to do but on this occasion she could understand why.
About twenty feet further along from the garden and the flowers and the bench with the plaque on it, everything changed. There was a huge wire fence that ran along the length of the house and turned in at the top, extending further along in either direction, further than she could possibly see. The fence was very high, higher even than the house they were standing in, and there were huge wooden posts, like telegraph poles, dotted along it, holding it up. At the top of the fence enormous bales of barbed wire were tangled in spirals, and Gretel felt an unexpected pain inside her as she looked at the sharp spikes sticking out all the way round it.
There wasn’t any grass after the fence; in fact there was no greenery anywhere to be seen in the distance. Instead the ground was made of a sand-like substance, and as far as she could make out there was nothing but low huts and large square buildings dotted around and one or two smoke stacks in the distance. She opened her mouth to say something, but when she did she realized that she couldn’t find any words to express her surprise, and so she did the only sensible thing she could think of and closed it again.
‘You see?’ said Bruno from the corner of the room, feeling quietly pleased with himself because whatever it was that was out there – and whoever they were – he had seen it first and he could see it whenever he wanted because they were outside his bedroom window and not hers and therefore they belonged to him and he was the king of everything they surveyed and she was his lowly subject.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Gretel. ‘Who would build such a nasty-looking place?’
‘It is a nasty-looking place, isn’t it?’ agreed Bruno. ‘I think those huts have only one floor too. Look how low they are.’
‘They must be modern types of houses,’ said Gretel. ‘Father hates modern things.’
‘Then he won’t like them very much,’ said Bruno.
‘No,’ replied Gretel. She stood still for a long time staring at them. She was twelve years old and was considered to be one of the brightest girls in her class, so she squeezed her lips together and narrowed her eyes and forced her brain to understand what she was looking at. Finally she could think of only one explanation.
‘This must be the countryside,’ said Gretel, turning round to look at her brother triumphantly.
‘The countryside?’
‘Yes, it’s the only explanation, don’t you see? When we’re at home, in Berlin, we’re in the city. That’s why there are so many people and so many houses and the schools are full and you can’t make your way through the centre of town on a Saturday afternoon without getting pushed from pillar to post.’
‘Yes …’ said Bruno, nodding his head, trying to keep up.
‘But we learned in geography class that in the countryside, where all the farmers are and the animals, and they grow all the food, there are huge areas like this where people live and work and send all the food to feed us.’ She looked out of the window again at the huge area spread out before her and the distances that existed between each of the huts. ‘This must be it. It’s the countryside. Perhaps this is our holiday home,’ she added hopefully.
Bruno thought about it and shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said with great conviction.
‘You’re nine,’ countered Gretel. ‘How would you know? When you get to my age you’ll understand these things a lot better.’
‘That might be so,’ said Bruno, who knew that he was younger but didn’t agree that that made him less likely to be right, ‘but if this is the countryside like you say it is, then where are all the animals you’re talking about?’
Gretel opened her mouth to answer him but couldn’t think of a suitable reply, so she looked out of the window again instead and peered around for them, but they were nowhere to be seen.
‘There should be cows and pigs and sheep and horses,’ said Bruno. ‘If it was a farm, I mean. Not to mention chickens and ducks.’
‘And there aren’t any,’ admitted Gretel quietly.
‘And if they grew food here, like you suggested,’ continued Bruno, enjoying himself enormously, ‘then I think the ground would have to look a lot better than that, don’t you? I don’t think you could grow anything in all that dirt.’
Gretel looked at it again and nodded, because she was not so silly as to insist on being in the right all the time when it was clear the argument stood against her.
‘Perhaps it’s not a farm then,’ she said.
‘It’s not,’ agreed Bruno.