I Am David

by Anne Holm

  2

  For a long time David continued to sit and gaze upon the beautiful scenery that lay before him. He looked again and again upon the blueness of the sea, upon the coastline curving along its shore: he saw the colours of the landscape, its many kinds of green intermingled with gold and red, fade into one another towards the horizon until everything melted into the blue of sea and sky far away over the mountains.

  David looked down at his own hand lying in the grass and knew at once what he was going to do first. The grass was green although summer was far advanced; there must be water not very far away.

  He looked first at the sun, then at his compass, and then at the sun again: it was very early … he still had a good hour before he need find a hiding-place for the day. He took hold of his bundle and jumped up. And there was water: a lazy little brook glinting in the sunlight in the midst of a much wider riverbed which wound among trees and bushes where he could hide if anyone came along. David had his clothes off in no time: he had only a shirt and a pair of trousers kept up with string. He laid his trousers in the water and put a stone on top to prevent them from floating away. Then he soaked his shirt thoroughly and opened his bundle.

  He stood there a moment, soap in hand. Sometimes when they first arrived in camp they were quite white and clean all over with no smell about them … He hardly dared try — then he made an attempt, beginning with his hands.

  It worked … almost. David scrubbed away until he was in a sweat; he picked up his shirt to rub himself with and then he got on much better. He really thought dirt was much more difficult to get off. Then he remembered the sea: being wet through all night must have helped considerably. His head was a bit of a problem, but David would not give up: he was going to get all that dirt off, all that reminded him of the camp and smelt of it.

  He lay right down, dipping his head in the water so that his hair was thoroughly wet, rubbed soap all over it until his arms grew tired, then ducked again and rubbed away with his shirt until his hair no longer felt sticky. He turned cold but he took no notice; his one thought was to be quite, quite clean. His shirt gradually took on a brighter colour, and then he set about his trousers as well. They, too, became brighter. Finally he sat down with his knife and whittled away at a twig until he had a sharp point of clean wood. He pricked himself a couple of times in the process, but in the end even his toenails were clean.

  The sun glistened on a drop of water as it fell from his hand to his knee. David wiped it off but it left no tide-mark: there was no more dirt to rub away. He took a deep breath and shivered. He was David. Everything else was washed away, the camp, its smell, its touch — and now he was David, his own master, free — free as long as he could remain so.

  David took a look round — it would not do to go on sitting where he was. A little higher up the hill he caught sight of a house among the trees, and a little farther down lay the road. There would soon be people about and he must first find a safe hiding-place.

  He followed the stream a little way, then turned off and went straight down towards the coast. The going was steep, but David’s thick soles were used to finding places where he could get a good foothold, and his body was lithe and quick and he found no difficulty in keeping his balance. Just before he came to the road he stopped irresolutely: he could hide in the undergrowth down there. But that meant he would have to lie flat all day, and when he was not sleeping it would be very irksome to lie in roughly the same position all the time.

  Now that he was close to the road, he could see that there were houses at regular intervals along both sides of it — not right on it, but a little above or below with gates leading on to it. Beautiful houses, pink and pale yellow and white, with gaily painted doors and green trees and climbing plants growing on their walls. But where there were houses there were people.

  A little farther on the ground fell away so steeply from the road that there were no houses for some distance … it looked as if he would have to cross over.

  His heart began to beat quickly. The road wound among the hills and you could not see much of it at one time because it kept bending sharply round the spurs. Even if he were certain the road was clear at the moment, someone might come along just as he began to cross. Not cars, nor people walking on the hard surface, for David’s hearing was good; but he would not be able to hear anyone walking on the grass verge until he was right on top of him. Was it all to last only a single morning, all the beauty, all his desire to live? Was it all to be taken from him again by a single stranger, now or in half an hour’s time?

  But if he stayed where he was his danger would be just as great. Among the trees something was growing low on the ground in long rows: it must have been planted there to grow in such straight lines, and someone might come along to tend it. Something brightly coloured, not yellow nor red but both at once, caught his eye in the green grass. It was round and rather soft. David picked it up without thinking and walked the last few yards to the road.

  The morning was still young and everywhere was quiet in the sunlight; there was no one to be seen. He crossed the road. Not slowly, nor hurriedly. Afterwards when his heart had stopped beating so fast, he realized that his decision had changed everything. Ever since the night he had found the bundle lying under the tree as the man had told him it would be, his feet had carried him along, deciding the way for him.

  This time it was he who had made the decision. His feet had not wanted to take the risk of crossing the road, and he had mastered them and forced them to do it. The thought gave David a good warm feeling of strength and freedom. From now on he would think for himself and make his own decisions, and his feet and hands and body would be his servants to do his bidding.

  Right down by the edge of the water he was sheltered from the road, and the nearest house was some way off. David did not think anyone would be able to see him from there, but he was not sure — and it was necessary to be sure. If he could get over to that rock, he would be in a kind of cave with two walls and a bit of a roof. But it was too far for him to jump across. David put his bundle down and stretched his leg over the edge, feeling about with his foot for some support; but it was very steep and slippery. Only a yard separated him from the best hiding-place he had ever seen!

  “I will get over!” he said to himself. It must be possible, there must be some way … Perhaps he could find a big stone and drop it into the cleft so that he could clamber across? But struggle as he would, he could not budge the only boulder that looked big enough. If he had a rope … but there was nothing he could make it fast to on the other side, and the only thing he had that at all resembled a rope was the bit of string round his trousers.

  Then something brown caught his eye a little farther down on his side of the cleft. A wooden packing-case — or rather a bit of one: a plank.

  David suppressed his excitement. It was not big enough, he told himself. But he ought to try, just to make sure. When his heart was beating normally again, he set off after it. The plank was long enough! He could lay it across like a bridge, and lift it away after he had crossed over it so that no one could follow him!

  But was it stout enough? He found two smaller stones and laid them one under each end of the plank: then he stepped carefully on to it. It creaked a little, but it would take his weight.

  It was very bare on the other side. Bare but safe, and there was room enough to lie down; and owing to the formation of the projecting rock, he would be in shadow most of the time. He could see a short stretch of the road above from where he was without being seen himself and he could see the whole coastline towards the east.

  David took his wet trousers off and spread them and his shirt out to dry in the sun, and then he unpacked his bundle and arranged his possessions neatly by his side — his compass, his knife, his bottle, the bit of bread the man on board the ship had given him, and finally the round yellow thing. He held it firmly but carefully while he scratched it with his finger-nail and bored his finger right through the skin. It w
as moist inside. He sniffed his finger and licked it — it smelled good and had a bitter-sweet taste. So he took the peel right off and pulled the inside apart. It was quite easy to separate into small pieces, each like a half moon. He was hungry, and he had a bit of bread as well. He wondered if that round thing were fit to eat.

  Taking a bite, he chewed and swallowed and waited to see what would happen. But nothing happened, nothing except that it tasted good. It did not make him ill.

  David ate half the pieces and chewed a bit of bread. Then he tried the orange-coloured peel, but that tasted sharp and unpleasant. He tried to push the thought away but it kept returning: “I don’t know anything! How can I stay free when I don’t know what everybody else knows? I don’t even know what’s good to eat and what’s poisonous. The only food I know about is porridge and bread and soup.”

  For a little while he lost courage. Why had he not talked to the others in the camp, listened to their conversation and asked about the world outside? Not about food, of course, for there was a rule in the camp that no one might talk about food: for once in a way, it was not one of their rules, but one made by the prisoners themselves. When you had nothing but bread and porridge, and not enough of that, you did not want to talk about the kind of food you used to have when you were free. But there were other things he could have asked about. As long as Johannes had been with him, he had asked questions all the time, but he was only a little boy then and had asked about all sorts of things he had no use for now.

  He looked out over the blue sea and down along the coast full of bright colour and sunshine, and clenched his teeth.

  He must think about Johannes and try to recall all they had talked about. He must think, too, what he had heard the other prisoners say before they had been too long in the camp to say anything more and merely let the days drag by.

  Sometimes he had discovered that they were trying to escape: they laid their plans, carefully weighing the pros and cons, calculating what they thought was possible, and making sure they knew where the worst dangers lay. Their attempts at escape were never successful, but that was not their fault: it was because their chances were too slender.

  David decided to follow their example. He would make a plan of action, weighing what he knew against what he did not, and carry it out without allowing himself to be depressed by doubts or misled by hope.

  On his side was the fact that although he was very thin he had strong, tough muscles. He had sharp eyes and ears, and he was used to doing with very little food.

  He stopped. Was there anything else to his credit? Yes, he was prepared for them: he knew their methods, the traps they set, the sudden crafty friendliness which meant they were hiding something, their pointless brutality. He was familiar with treachery, and he knew what death looked like.

  But what advantage was his knowledge of death when he was now determined to live? David frowned. Then he thought of another point in his favour: he could understand what people from different countries were talking about. Learning to do that had been a great help to him in the camp. When he could no longer pass the time thinking of mealtimes and the changing of the guard, there were various languages he could learn. David reckoned up how many he knew. First of course what they spoke — he could read that, too. Then he knew French … that was what Johannes had spoken. And besides that, German and Italian and English. He knew some Spanish and a bit of Hebrew.

  Being able to talk to the sailor who had found him on board the ship had been a great advantage … and now that he was in Italy, his knowledge of the language would be a very good thing. David felt greatly encouraged — perhaps he would recall other things he knew as he gradually grew accustomed to thinking again.

  However, there were plenty of things he knew nothing of. He knew there were maps, but he had never seen one and he was quite ignorant of where the various countries of Europe lay or where their boundaries ran. He was not at all sure which of those countries were free: he thought there could not be many, and he had better reckon with the possibility that they were everywhere … even in free countries.

  Then there was the business of food — he would have to live on what he could find, and every time he would have to risk eating something poisonous in his ignorance or passing by what was edible and going hungry.

  Worst of all, there were people. If he wanted to preserve his freedom, he would have to keep right away from them. But at the same time he realized he would have to get to know something about how people lived outside a prison-camp, since an unknown danger was more dangerous than one that could be reckoned with beforehand.

  And so David took another decision. When it was dark he must go into the town that lay farther along the coast down by the sea. In the darkness he could always slip into a gateway or round a street corner, as he had discovered in Salonica; but he would have to go while there were people about the streets so that he could find out how they lived; and perhaps a boy among a crowd of people would appear less suspicious than a boy quite alone in a town where everyone was asleep.

  In any case, it would not be as dangerous now as it might be later, for no one could yet know where to look for him. Perhaps they would not look for him at all?

  Here again David ran into the blank wall of his own ignorance. He did not know who he was, did not even know what country he came from. He had always lived in the camp, and even Johannes, who knew so many things, had not been able to find out anything about him for the simple reason that no one knew anything.

  David wondered what he looked like. In the man’s hut there had been a mirror, but it was hung too high. David had thought at one time that perhaps he was Jewish … As a rule, the people they imprisoned were those who wanted to decide for themselves what they should believe and be free to write books and articles about it. But that could not apply to him. Jews, on the other hand, were sometimes imprisoned just because they did not like Jews … They said they did, but it was not true.

  But Johannes had said he was sure David was not Jewish.

  One could not always find out why they had arrested people, and if someone had happened to find him somewhere and taken him along to the camp when he was quite small, then it might be that he was not of sufficient consequence for them to make any particular effort to recapture him. But he could not be sure of that … it would be safer to assume that it was important for them to find him again.

  David realized that he must have a story. He knew from his experiences in the camp that it might be a matter of life and death to “have a good story” and stick to it however much one might be questioned. In the evening, when he had seen the kind of life people lived, he might perhaps be able to hit upon a story he could make use of if anyone questioned him. Not that he intended that anyone should speak to him if he could avoid it, but it was best to be prepared.

  *

  No one took any notice of him. While he was on the road, a man had turned round to look at him, but David had told himself, “You mustn’t look as if you’re afraid!” and had gone on his way quite calmly. And down here in the town no one at all turned to look at him. It was a small town, not like Salonica. The streets were small and narrow and very hilly. There was talk everywhere — people walking along with baskets and parcels, people standing in shops where the lights were lit, all were talking. The first time David was aware of it he could hardly bring himself to move on — almost everybody was laughing! It was not the ugly laughter he was used to when they laughed at the prisoners … it sounded pleasant, even beautiful, as if they were all content, and felt friendly towards one another.

  David knew of course that it could not be true, but perhaps there were not so many of them here in Italy, or perhaps there just were not any in this town. And the people were beautiful! David had seen good-looking people before — they were often good-looking when they first arrived in the camp, but only Johannes had preserved beauty in his face right up to the time he died. And the few women David had seen looked quite different from those here … the
y had been hard of face, as they always were, and … and … yes, as if there were scarcely any difference between them and the men.

  But here they were beautiful, their hair long, black and waving, many of them with smooth, sun-tanned faces, and all dressed in beautiful clothes of many colours, like the sea and the trees and the golden fruit.

  David saw the same fruit again, a whole pile of it in a great basket outside a shop. “Arancia”, it was called. David translated the word into German: “apfelsinen” — he had heard of it after all. If only the letters were not so difficult to read! Johannes had taught him the shapes of the letters they used in other countries, but that was so long ago. If only he had a book so that he could practise reading those letters!

  Going down into the town had been a good move. No one took any notice of him, and he could learn a lot by looking in the shops. He could find out what food looked like, and many other things, too, that he had never seen before and did not know the use of. they had an enormous number of possessions, these people …

  David felt quite dizzy with looking at so many things, and he stopped a moment. In front of him a man and a woman were walking along, and as they talked and laughed together they were eating something they had bought from a shop. When they finished, the woman threw away the paper they had been eating f. His heart beating faster, David picked it up in the dark: there was often something printed on the paper things were wrapped in.

  He hurried on to the nearest light — yes, there was printing on it, something he could practise reading! Tomorrow when it grew light … He dared not stand still too long outside a brightly-lit shop: besides, he did not feel too well, he had a headache and felt sick. He had better go back to his rock.

  He looked up and discovered he was standing in a large square. At first he was frightened, for he felt much safer in the narrow streets, but then he forgot his fear as he saw in front of him on the other side of the square a very big building with a cross on top.