The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne Read Free Book Online Page B

anything, he might have to go too, so instead he turned away and looked out of the window, closing his eyes once again, and started to doze.
    When he awoke, the compartment door was being opened and the woman and the boy were taking down their bags.
    ‘Where are we?’ he asked.
    ‘Germany,’ she said, smiling for the first time. ‘Finally away from all those awful French people!’ She pointed towards a sign that, like Pierrot’s lapel, said
Mannheim
. ‘This is where you get off, I think,’ she added, nodding towards his jacket, and he jumped up, gathered his belongings and made his way out to the platform.
    Standing in the centre of the station concourse, Pierrot felt anxious and alone. Everywhere he looked, men and women were hurrying along, brushing past him, desperate to get to wherever they were going. And soldiers too. Lots and lots of soldiers.
    The first thing he noticed, however, was how the language had changed. They had crossed the border, and everyone was now talking in German instead of French, and as he listened carefully, trying to understand what people were saying, he was glad that Papa had insisted on him learning the language as a child. He tore the
Mannheim
label off his jacket, threw it in the nearest wastepaper basket and looked down to read what the next one said:
    Munich.
    An enormous clock hung over the arrivals and departures board; he ran towards it, crashing into a man walking towards him, and fell backwards onto the ground. Looking up, his eyes took in the man’s earth-grey uniform and the heavy black belt he wore across his waist, the calf-high black jackboots and the patch on his left sleeve that showed an eagle with its wings outstretched over a hooked cross.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Pierrot said breathlessly, looking up with a mixture of fear and awe.
    The man looked down, and rather than helping him up, curled his lip in contempt as he raised the tip of one boot slightly, pressing it down on top of Pierrot’s fingers.
    ‘You’re hurting me,’ he cried as the man pushed down harder, and now he could feel his fingers begin to throb beneath the pressure. He had never seen someone take so much pleasure from inflicting pain before, and even though the passing commuters could see what was happening, no one stepped in to help.
    ‘There you are, Ralf,’ said a woman, approaching him now, carrying a little boy in her arms as a girl of about five years old followed behind. ‘I’m so sorry, but Bruno wanted to see the steam trains and we almost lost you. Oh, what’s happened here?’ she asked as the man smiled, lifted his boot and reached down to help Pierrot up.
    ‘A child running along and not watching where he was going,’ he said with a shrug. ‘He almost knocked me over.’
    ‘His clothes are so old,’ said the girl, looking Pierrot up and down distastefully.
    ‘Gretel, I’ve told you before about making such remarks,’ said the girl’s mother, frowning.
    ‘They smell too.’
    ‘Gretel!’
    ‘Shall we go?’ asked the man, glancing at his watch, and his wife nodded.
    They marched away and Pierrot watched their retreating backs, massaging the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other. As he did so, the little boy turned around in his mother’s arms, raised a hand to wave goodbye, and their eyes met. Despite the pain in his knuckles, Pierrot couldn’t help but smile and he waved back. As they disappeared into the crowd, the whistles blew all around the station, and Pierrot realized that he needed to find the right train quickly or he might end up stuck in Mannheim.
    The board showed that his train was shortly to depart from platform three and he ran towards it, jumping aboard just as the conductor started to slam the doors. The next journey, he knew, would take three hours, and by now the excitement of being on a train had well and truly worn off.
    The train shuddered as it left the station in a cloud of steam and noise, and he watched from the open window as a