I Am David (2 page)

He ran all the time, sometimes fairly slowly so that it took him hours to go a short way, sometimes so quickly that he felt his blood pounding. Every morning with the first glimmer of daylight he lay down to sleep. It was not very difficult to find somewhere to sleep in that sparsely inhabited district. David had no idea what the countryside looked like: for him it was only a place where he must run through the night and hide by day.

Two other incidents remained in his memory: they were moments when fear grew to a sharp-pointed terror that seemed to pierce him right through. The first happened just as it was growing dark one evening. David was awakened by something warm and hairy touching his hand. He lay still, tense with fear. It was some minutes before he could bring himself to turn his head, and then he saw — a sheep.

But it spelled danger, nevertheless, for where there are sheep there must also be people, and that evening David did not stop to recover his breath for some hours afterwards.

Yet he was glad enough to come across more sheep later that night. David was used to hard work and satisfied with very little food, and he had been as sparing as he could with the bread and water, but after two whole days the bottle was empty and the bread eaten. He could manage without bread but it was dreadful to be so thirsty. In the end he could think of hardly anything but water. But where was he to get it?

At that point he almost stumbled over two shepherds who lay asleep on the ground wrapped in their cloaks. His heart, which had been thumping so loudly all through the night, missed a beat, so terror-stricken was he. But he stopped himself just in time: bare feet make no noise and the two men had heard nothing.

David was about to step back, slowly and cautiously, when he caught sight, in the moonlight, of a bucket with a lid and the embers of a burned-down fire. Food! And where there was food, there was probably water, too!

That night David went no farther. He kept watch till daybreak, far enough off to give him a chance to escape should that prove necessary, and yet near enough to be back in a moment as soon as the two shepherds were out of sight in the morning. There was little doubt that this was their regular camping-place for the night, for they left their bundles and the bucket behind. Perhaps they would soon be back, but that was a risk David decided he must take. Without food, or at least without water, he would not be able to last many more hours. He was familiar enough from his experiences in the camp with what happened when a man was left without food and water.

What had nearly proved a catastrophe ended as a stroke of good fortune. There was some soup left in the bucket, and in one of the bundles he found a chunk of bread. He broke the bread unevenly, leaving a small piece behind, and then filling his bottle with soup he replaced the lid and knocked it off again with his elbow. He did not know whether sheep ate bread and soup, but he wanted to make it look as if they had been there.

After that night he took care to run at a more even pace and to stop more often, but for shorter periods, to recover his breath. He must not again risk being so tired that he saw nothing and stumbled on blindly.

David edged cautiously forward on his stomach. It was the second time he had found himself close to a town, and for the second time the compass was directing him to cross a main road. He dared not disobey it; it was almost as if some part of the man himself were travelling with him.

He ought to have asked how long it would take him to reach Salonnica. He had only two mouthfuls of soup left now and a single bite of bread.

And there were people about. That meant he had not nearly so much of the night at his disposal — he would have to wait until they had gone to bed. He told himself that he should have known all along that he would occasionally come across towns … He forced himself to lie absolutely still.

But he was not sleepy any longer, and when he was not sleepy lying still became almost unbearable, for then it was difficult not to think — and David knew that he must not think. He had learned that — then. The only thing to do was to take no notice: you could look and listen, but you must not let what you heard or saw penetrate your thoughts. You must not let your thoughts dwell upon anything more important than whether it would rain or turn out fine, whether you had long to wait for your next meal, or how long it would be till the guard was changed. And you must not be too interested in those things either — you must merely make use of them to fill your thoughts and prevent other things from slipping into your mind.

Since the evening of his escape, the things that had formerly occupied his thoughts were no longer there, and others had taken their place. He gave his mind to hurrying along as fast as possible during the night, to stopping as soon as the darkness began to lift so that he could find a good hiding-place before day broke, to looking after his bundle and avoiding the temptation of taking an extra bite or another drop to drink, to going in the right direction all the time so that the compass needle did not shift its position. These things served to fill his thoughts to the exclusion of other matters. But when it came to lying still and yet being wide awake — that was dangerous! So he began to think about a feeling he had had several times during the previous night — that the ground he was travelling over was changing, becoming more up-and-down … that mountains would bar the road to Salonica.

Don’t think, don’t think! David clenched his hands, gripping a tuft of grass. He mustn’t think at all, for if he did, there was only one thing to think about — that he would not be able to run any farther. Why had they not caught him the night he crossed the bridge? He could not swim, so the bridge had been his only way over the river, and he had been quite sure he would be caught there. Yes, that had been the only restful moment in all those long days and nights — crossing that bridge and feeling certain they would catch him.

But no one had come.

David’s feet were no longer part of him. When he himself cared no more, his feet followed their own path independently, stealing along noiselessly, confidently, guiding his body so that he kept to the shadows and avoided obstacles, stopping him in time, or urging him on whenever he felt he would rather lie down and wait till he was caught.

And his feet had carried him over the bridge.

He clenched his teeth. “Salonica!” he whispered and went on repeating the word over and over again to himself until it seemed to fill his brain. “Go south till you reach Salonica. Think of nothing else!”

At that moment the sound of a car pulling up caused him to stiffen. Was he far enough from the road?

Then he heard voices. He was so terrified he nearly jumped out of his skin. He was quite unused to the sound of voices by this time; the last he had heard were the guard’s and the man’s.

But these were different, and they were coming nearer! David relaxed completely so that he would make as little noise as possible, and as he did so he thought that in a moment all would be over — everything.

The men sat down a little way off and lit cigarettes, and it gradually dawned upon David that they were not looking for him at all. He began to listen to what they were saying. He found it difficult to follow them since their speech differed from the man’s, but after a while David was able to distinguish words that were familiar to him.

They drove a delivery van, like the men who brought supplies to the camp. They were arguing now, but with no great heat: one of them wanted to drive on, and the other wanted to visit someone first in the town David had seen nearby. In the end he got his way; the first man said he would go with him, but only for half an hour as it was a long way home.

Like an echo of his own thoughts, David caught the word “Salonica”!

The next thing he was fully aware of was that he was sitting in the van as it began to move off.

*

The men had driven towards the town, and David had allowed his feet to carry him mechanically after the van. It had stopped on the outskirts of the town, and when the two men disappeared into a house, David’s feet gathered speed until he reached it.

And now he had a lift! There had been lights in the houses but no one had seen him. The van door had not been locked, and although the back of the van was well filled with packing-cases, there was room enough for David to squeeze himself between two of them and squat on the floor. And now he was on his way … It was pitch-dark inside, both because it was night and because the packing-cases covered the little window in the partition that separated the back of the van from the cab where the men were sitting. Even if they opened the door from the outside, they would not be able to see David without moving all the packing-cases. It was a strange feeling, sitting quite still and being carried along. David had seen cars and lorries, but he had never ridden in one, nor in any other kind of vehicle, and just as it occurred to him that he had no idea how he was going to get out again, he began to feel sleepy — dreadfully sleepy. He strove to keep awake as long as he could, but the even purr of the engine and the swaying and jolting of the van proved too much. He was asleep.

He had no idea how long he slept. He woke because the engine sounded different, as if it were starting up. But surely it could not have been very long? He had lost the habit of sleeping at night. With infinite care, in almost imperceptibly small jerks, he pushed aside the packing-case nearest the cab where the men were sitting, until he had made a narrow opening through which, when he put one eye to it, he could see a strip of the little window. No, it was still night: it was dark where the men were sitting, too.

If he could only get out before it was day, before they opened the van and found him …

He suddenly knew what it felt like to be in one of the cells they had talked about in the camp — locked in, doubled up in inky blackness without being able to move, without being able to die.

“Johannes!” he whispered. “Johannes …”

Ever since he was small, for three whole winters and summers, he had known that he must not allow himself to think, and above all that he must never think about Johannes. And now he had done it.

David let his head sink upon his chest and tried to fight against the flood of memory that poured over him, the terror, the hatred, the frightening questions that burned like fire within him. And through it all, Johannes … Johannes smiling; Johannes who, if his voice had grown lifeless and grating like the others, had never changed inside himself; Johannes to whom you could say anything — and Johannes who at last had fallen to the ground and remained lying there, dead.

Never since that day had David thought about him. that night, when they were all in bed, he had gone out into the yard and looked at the spot where Johannes had fallen. He had been standing there for a long time when the man had come along and seen him.

“He died of a heart attack,” he said. “Clear off now and get to bed!”

Since that day David had never thought about anything but mealtimes and the changing of the guard. At first it had made him ill, but later he had grown used to it. Why should it have come back to him just at this moment when all that mattered was getting to Salonica?

The voice came from somewhere far away. “I’m going with you to Salonica.” David was not even sure it was Johannes’ voice, so far away did it sound; but he knew it must have been because he suddenly felt exactly as he had done when he was small and Johannes was with him.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

And after that it was easy. He found a packing-case that had not been properly nailed down. It contained some kind of food, round and firm, that tasted like a bit of cheese David had once had in the camp. He cut off a piece with his knife, as big a piece as he could get into his handkerchief. The men stopped the van while it was still dark and left it without opening the door at the back. So David jumped out and found himself in the middle of a large town, and, being careful to walk in the shadow of the houses — for there was no call to be foolhardy even if Johannes were with him — he had no difficulty in finding the harbour where the ships lay. There was a water-tap on the way, too: David watched a man turn it on and drink, and when he had gone and the street was quiet again, David was able to walk over to it and fill his bottle.

The ship he was to find needed no searching for either: it lay right in front of him and on its stern he saw the word “Italy” painted in large white letters. And it was made fast to the quayside with a great thick rope, ready for David to climb up as soon as the man on watch had gone to the other end of the ship. All David needed to do was to find a length of twine to tie his bundle about his waist while he was climbing. The watchman did not hear him; no one heard him, and down in the bottom of the ship there was a great dark room filled with so many packing-cases that he could barely squeeze himself in.

At first David was anxious to discover if there were any windows down there, but then he realized that he was now below the water-line and so of course there weren’t any … The time had now come for him to open the last of his treasures, his box of matches.

He took care to shield the flame with his hands as he had so often seen the camp-guards do, and to use no more than one or two matches, since he must be sparing with them.

He saw case after case, stacked right up to the deck above … and there were sacks as well. He found a corner where there were only a couple of sacks, and where he could stay well hidden even if someone came into the hold. But that was hardly likely to happen — not before they reached Italy. The sacks and cases were all clearly bound for Italy. Just as the second match died out, David caught sight of a large half-filled bottle standing on the edge of a case. He put his bundle down on the sacks, stretched on tiptoe to reach it, uncorked it and thrust his finger inside the neck. He sniffed his finger cautiously. Perhaps he could drink it. David took the bottle down and settled himself comfortably on his sacks. It would be a good thing to have if he were to be at sea for any length of time.