The Boy at The Top of the Mountain

Eva Braun is preparing to have a birthday party at Berghof. Pierrot goes to Berchtesgaden with the intention of inviting Katarina, but he stumbles and falters when he tries to talk to her at the stationary shop her father owns. He feels nervous and jealous of other couples his age, and he does not understand why Katarina brushes him off when he feels so important. While Pierrot talks about being in the Hitlerjugend, Katarina mentions people from the area who have been persecuted and taken away, presumably to terrible fates. She directly refuses his invitation to the party. When her father overhears and asks what is going on, he fearfully says they would be delighted to go, and that it would be “a great honor” while Katarina mocks his fear of the Nazis (220).

At the party, many people are present, including several high-ranking officials. However, most of the attendees look either fearful or uninterested. A woman name Leni roams the party, filming it. When she runs into Pierrot, she treats him as though he is immature and mocks his obvious interest in Katarina. Hitler even calls Katarina Pierrot’s girlfriend, prompting embarrassment.

Pierrot follows Katarina around the party, attempting to talk to her and failing miserably. He finds her looking at paintings hanging in Berghof, which she criticizes. He nervously scolds her and tells her to never say that again, revealing that Hitler himself created the paintings. In one of the mansion’s rooms, Pierrot attempts to kiss Katarina. She resists, and when he says she should consider it an honor to be with someone as important as him, she replies “[y]ou’re the little boy in the lederhosen who comes in to buy ink for the Führer’s fountain pens. How could I possibly underestimate your value?” (230), infuriating Pierrot. He persists, prompting Katarina to slap him on the cheek, drawing blood. Enraged, he pushes her against the wall, forces a kiss, and gropes her. Emma storms in, throws Pierrot down, and holds a knife against his throat, insisting he never bother Katarina again. He tells her “[y]ou’ve made a big mistake,” but Emma is unperturbed (231).

Pierrot is 16 and still at Berghof, although there are clear signs that the war is ending. The mansion and grounds are strangely silent. Most of the servants and soldiers have left; only Herta remains. The Holzmanns and others from Berchtesgaden have also left. Hitler himself has not been at Berghof in two months, and during his last visit, he seemed a shell of his former self, paranoid and unstable. Finally, even the last few soldiers and Herta leave. In their last moments, the soldiers mock Pierrot for still not being a real soldier. Before she departs, Herta advises Pierrot to escape, warning him that he will not want to be found at Berghof. Distraught, he asks her “will there be any forgiveness for me?” (239), and she advises him the only way to make amends is to take ownership of his wrongdoings.

Nevertheless, Pierrot remains at Berghof, alone. Newspapers continue to arrive at the mansion, and so Pierrot learns that Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after killing their dog, Blondi. Now realizing it is inevitable that he will have to leave Berghof, Pierrot feels crippled with nowhere to go. Involuntarily, he thinks of Paris. American soldiers arrive at Berghof, and Pierrot hides from them inside a closet. Inside, he amazingly finds his old copy of Emil and the Detectives that he had ordered Herta to get rid of years before. The soldiers break into the closet, and reach “into the darkness,” pulling “him back out into the light” (244). 

In the epilogue to The Boy at the Top of the Mountain, American soldiers escort Pierrot to the Golden Mile Camp near Remagen as a member of “disarmed enemy forces” (248). Upon arrival at the camp, Pierrot immediately makes the decision to speak to no one and to pretend to be deaf, using the bits of sign language he can recall from his youth spent with Anshel. Life in the camp is rough; fights break out regularly. When Pierrot steals a loaf of bread to eat, for example, another prisoner attacks him and takes it away.

As prisoners circulate into the camp, they bring bits of news about the aftermath of the war. Leni (the photographer at Eva’s party) has been captured, for instance, along with the Obersturmbannführer (who stepped on his hand on the train platform), and other Nazi elite. The Allies have liberated the concentration camps, revealing to the entire world the horrors they contained. The Golden Mile Camp is itself eventually released, leaving the detainees to figure out where to go and what to do.

Unmoored and devastated, Pierrot spends the next several years travelling from place to place. In Antwerp, Belgium, he gets a job as a dockworker, where he befriends a man named Daniel, the first person he has gotten close to in years. Other dockworkers tease Daniel for always wearing long sleeves, even in hot weather. One night, he mentions to Pierrot that his parents and sisters are dead, while rubbing his arm. Pierrot instantly realizes that he is signaling the concentration camp number that all prisoners were branded with, and the reason he always wears long sleeves. Horrified, given his connection to Hitler and Nazi Germany, Pierrot quits his job the next day and moves on.

He becomes a teacher in Amsterdam, where he one day is surprised to see Katarina playing violin under a tree. Katarina sees Pierrot as well and locks eyes with him, showing a look of utter contempt. Once again shamed, Pierrot leaves Amsterdam and heads for France, deciding, “[i]t was time to go home” (254). He first visits the site of the orphanage in Orléans, but it is largely destroyed after being occupied during the war. In desolation, Pierrot writes to Ernst’s sister to apologize for his role in the events leading up to Ernst’s death. He is shocked when she replies to say that she considers Ernst a traitor to Germany and a disgrace to their family. Pierrot realizes that even after the truth of the horrors of the Nazi regime have been made clear, some people refuse to move on.

Finally, Pierrot makes it back to his hometown, Paris. Passing by a bookstore one day, a novel catches his eye. When he picks it up, he is amazed to see that Anshel is the author. Pierrot arranges a meeting for the two to catch up. At that point in The Boy at the Top of the Mountain, the novel’s point of view switches from a third-person focus on Pierrot to the first-person voice of Anshel. He describes how the two old friends reconcile. Pierrot is ashamed and scared to tell his story, but Anshel accepts it and agrees to help him, signing simply “Let us begin” (260). In retrospect, it is clear that the entire novel has been Pierrot’s story as told through Anshel.