Chapter Fourteen "Bruno Tells a Perfectly Reasonable Lie"
has an example of both innocence and loyalty. When visiting Schmuel, Bruno innocently
insists on his desire to cross the wire fence and play alongside Schmuel. When Schmuel
responds, "I don't know why you are so anxious to come across here, anyway ... . It's
not very nice," Bruno innocently explains that his house hasn't got the five stories he
is accustomed to but only threem and he doesn't see how anyone can live comfortably in
such little space. He then asks:
"Don't you ever wake up in the morning and feel
like wearing something different? There must be something else in your
wardrobe."
Bruno isn't being
unkind or thoughtless, he has innocently forgotten what Schmuel said previously about
"eleven people all living in the same room together." Bruno's innocence renders it
impossible for him to fully grasp Schmuel's circumstance and to remember the elusive
descriptions he gives of it.
Later, on a rainy day, Bruno,
confined to the house by heavy persistent rain, is trying to read an adventure book when
a suddenly bored Gretel comes in to his room to ask, "What are you doing?" (She must
feel imposed upon, as Bruno thinks, by the rain as she does nothing but "rearrange" her
dolls anyway.) In a rare confidential moment, Gretel civilly says, "I hate the rain." It
is when Bruno decides to respond in kind with civility of his own instead with their
usual "instruments of torture" that he unwittingly gives away the existence of
Schmuel.
Suffering pangs of broken loyalty, Bruno goes to
great lengths to disguise his slip so as to redeem his loyalty to Schmuel. He succeeds
because at the end of his efforts the worst Gretel believes is that Bruno has an
imaginary friend. Bruno has stayed true to his deep loyalty to
Schmuel:
"Well, why don't you lie down and close your eyes
and have your imaginary friend read it to you," said Gretel, delighted with herself now
....
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