I Am David (7 page)

And manage he did during the following weeks. Only two days later, in a town called Naples, he found a mirror. A woman walking along the street dropped it. A corner broke off, and she pulled a face and left it there. David waited till she was out of sight and then picked it up: you could still see yourself in it, anyway. Clutching it in his hand, he walked on till he came to a place where there were trees and dried grass right in the middle of the town. There was a seat, and there David sat down and held up the mirror.

At first his hand shook so much he could not see properly, but very soon a face appeared clearly in the mirror — his own!

It did not look ugly. No, he honestly could not see what would be wrong with it. It was thin, but so were many people’s faces. The colour of his hair perhaps was not quite right: maybe it should have been a darker brown. He held the mirror close to his face to take a good look at his eyes. Johannes had had blue eyes. Here in Italy they all had dark brown or black eyes. But you could have other colours. David strove to recall what the eyes of the men in the camp had looked like, but all he could remember clearly was that they were dull, whereas his own now looked as bright as eyes should do. Was there something wrong with dark grey eyes? Perhaps there was a touch of green in them if you looked carefully. He still could not understand in what way they were strange, so he dismissed the thought. He would just have to turn away when anyone looked at him for any length of time.

Many times a day during the days that followed he took out his mirror and practised smiling, but he could not get it right: he could not make it look the way it did when other people smiled, and in the end he gave it up.

He continued as far as he could to go northwards. Not that he wanted to do as the man had told him, but he obviously had to go somewhere, and that was the direction the English people had taken. Without being fully aware of it, David had some idea at the back of his mind that he might perhaps go to England.

During his first days of freedom he had had but one thought from morning to night: when he woke up it had taken the form, “If they haven’t caught me by this evening …” and as he lay down to sleep, “If they don’t catch me tomorrow …” He now began to believe that he might remain free for a long time to come — perhaps until winter overtook him. And as he opened his eyes in the morning to the warmth of the sun, he would sometimes feel sure that he would reach a country where he could live in safety.

The idea of earning some money had bee a good one. He had earned no money in Naples, but he had fetched coffee for people who sat eating in a restaurant and the waiter had given him a loaf of bread for his pains. And in a small town farther north he had been given money by some strangers who were afraid of having their luggage stolen from the car while they went into the church. He realized afterwards that he did not know what he would have done if anyone had attempted to take the bags, but fortunately nobody had tried and he had been given so much money that he was able to buy enough bread for two days.

David’s chief difficulty was that people asked so many questions, but as he gained in experience from all he saw about him, he was gradually able to improve upon his story of the circus. The Italians did not ask so many questions, but it was easier to earn money from the tourists who were on holiday from other countries, so David embroidered his tale until he thought it sounded absolutely genuine. When he was asked where he was going to rejoin the circus, he would invent a name so that however suspicious his questioners might be afterwards they would not be able to trace him.

The sun continued to shine with a pleasant warmth day by day, but it was now beginning to grow cold at night time. David was quite determined, however, never to enter a house. Houses were dangerous places: you never knew but what someone might be standing in the doorway barring your exit the very moment you wanted to slip away.

Every time he came to a town, he would walk round till he found the church. He promised himself that if he were not caught and came to a country where he could live in security, he would go inside one and see what it looked like. Not that he really expected that he would be able to preserve his freedom long enough for that: it was best not to hope too much. But sometimes when he had had enough to eat and found a comfortable place to sleep in and sat gazing at the hills and valleys and the sun shining on the distant mountains, he could not help feeling that perhaps he might be lucky.

It was now a long time since he had seen the sea, but there did not seem to be one dull or ugly place in the whole of Italy. All his life David had seen nothing but the same ugly, flat, grey scene, and now he never grew tired of tramping through the ever-changing countryside. Every time he came to a bend in the road he was afraid the beauty would disappear, but each time a new beauty was revealed in the green and undulating hills and valleys. David had now learned what some of the trees were called. There were olives with their gnarled trunks and pale grey-green leaves whispering and quivering in the lightest breeze as if they were alive, and there were cypresses, tall and slender, pointing straight up into the sky. Best of all were those places where a river flowed through the valley. There he could sit for hours on end wondering where the river came from and where it ran to.

There, too, he could wash. His piece of soap had grown quite small now, although he did not use it every day. He dared not wash in the towns when he filled his water-bottle at the pump, for he had never seen anyone washing there and it might be forbidden.

It was Sunday today, the day the people were most full of laughter but the shops shut. But that did not matter today since David had not earned any money for two days and could not have bought bread anyway. He had found a bunch of grapes, however, and he was used to doing with very little food. It would soon be evening, and he was sitting by the roadside thinking over a plan he had had in mind since the day before. He could not make up his mind whether he dared try it. The day before he had seen a man walking along the road and when a car came along he had held up his hand and stopped it. The driver had put his head out and asked if the other wanted a lift, and the man who had been walking said yes please he did.

But you had to say where you were going — and suppose the driver became suspicious? If he did you were caught: you could not get out. David trembled at the thought but still could not quite give up the idea. A car travelled at an immense speed, and if he kept going in the same direction he must at some point leave Italy behind. It was very beautiful there, but as the days went by David seemed to prize his freedom more and more. When he had first arrived and was living on the rocks by the sea, his freedom had not meant so much to him since he had not expected it to last above a day or two. But now he could no longer think of giving it up.

David wondered whether it were always like that — whether when you had something you not only wanted to keep it, but wanted something else as well … It seemed greedy, but he could not help it. Freedom and a country where he could live in safety: David wanted both. “But nothing more,” he told himself. “Just those two things and that will be enough. Johannes said greedy people can never be happy, and I would so much like to know what it feels like to be happy. Johannes said that when you very much want something you haven’t got, you no longer care for what you have got. I’m not sure that I understand, but I suppose he meant that things are only worth having if you think they are.”

David tried to forget that he also wanted a new piece of soap. If he could preserve his freedom and reach a free country, he must be satisfied with that. And if he could bring himself to ask for a lift, he would get to another country all the more quickly. If only he could find out the whereabouts of those other countries! He dared not ask anyone, for if you said you belonged to a circus then you would be expected to know your way about.

David’s thoughts were disturbed by the sound of a car. It sounded wrong, as though the engine were not running properly. He lay flat down in the grass and watched it crawl along at no more than a walking pace. It was American, not Italian: he had long since taught himself the meaning of the letters on number plates.

Americans were most likely good people, for they were the ones they hated most. All that was wrong with them, David thought, was that they spoke English very badly and always acted as if they were proud of possessing so much.

There was one thing, however, that these two Americans did not possess: they had no petrol, and that was why their car would not go. David stood up and took a step towards them.

The woman was talking in a loud angry voice that did not sound at all pleasant, and David was rather more nervous than he usually was before speaking to someone. But she stopped when he asked the man if he could help by fetching petrol for them.

They were both very glad to accept his offer, and David suggested that he should take their can and go to the village farther up the side of the hill. “But I haven’t any money to pay for the petrol,” he said as he took the can.

As the man was about to take some money out of his pocket, the woman said quickly, “He’s nothing but a young beggar, Dick! You can be quite sure if we give him money we shall never see him again! He can fetch help from a garage up there …”

She did not of course intend David to understand what she said. He wondered if they thought he was stupid; they certainly seemed to think he could understand them only when they spoke very slowly.

The man asked him whether he could not get a mechanic to drive down with the petrol. “The can’s a bit heavy for you to carry,” he said.

David turned his back on the woman. “The people here don’t like doing very much on Sundays, and so I can’t be sure I can find anyone willing to drive down,” he explained politely. “But I’ll see if I can get the petrol by promising to pay for it later. Unless, of course, your wife thinks I want to keep your can.”

The man looked uncomfortable. “Rubbish, boy,” he said, “then you’d have to go twice! My wife was only thinking you might drop the money in the dark …”

As David took the note he was offered, he looked the man straight in the face: “Will you look after my bundle while I go? Then I can carry the can better …”

Both the man and the woman went red in the face, and David set off without waiting for an answer. they were ashamed of themselves, and that was all David wanted. He had never taken anything which he knew belonged to someone else — only fruit growing on trees and bushes and things he found. One had no right to take other people’s possessions: that he was sure of … Suppose somebody took his bundle!

When they heard up at the filling-station in the village that it was an American car that had run out of petrol, they insisted upon sending one of the garage-hands down with enough to fill the tank, and as David had to return anyway to fetch his bundle, the man gave him a lift on his Vespa.

David handed the American his unused note and taking his bundle turned to go.

“Wait a bit, boy, you must have something for your trouble.”

David would have been only too glad to earn something: he was in desperate need of money to buy a loaf of bread for the next day. But he could not bring himself to take it now. He did not want to earn it from someone he did not like.

“No, thank you,” he said firmly. “I like to earn money sometimes, but only when I want to. I don’t need any today.”

That was not true, but it felt good to say so. It was like saying, “I am David and I belong to myself, and no one has any right over me.”

He ran off in the darkness away from the road and pretended not to hear the American calling him to come back.

He was very hungry when he woke the next morning. He was in need of water, too, for he had only a few drops left. He had left the village of the evening before some way behind him, but he could see another, bigger one, down in the valley. He might be able to earn some money there, but he was by no means certain of it. The evening was the best time to earn money, and the best time to be in town, too, because he could then escape quickly into the shelter of the darkness.

But this time he would have to go into town in daylight: he could not wait until evening to get more water. He opened his bundle to drink what was left.

At the bottom of his bundle he found a strange box, the sort used for cigarettes. And in the box there was money — more money than David had ever seen: two thousand lire!

One lira was not very much: you could get practically nothing for one lira — but two thousand! Apart from the money there was something written on a slip of paper. A letter … David had never had a letter, and he almost wished he had not got one now for he found it very difficult to read handwriting, and he had never tried reading English.

But he would not give up. After an hour he was fairly sure he knew what was in the letter. It was the American who had written it, and he said he was quite sure David would not accept money and so he had hidden it in his bundle. He also said they were sorry they had thought he might steal. “Not all strange boys are honest, you know,” wrote the American, “but we are sorry we suspected an honest boy. We did not mean you to understand what we said, and we would be glad if you would make use of this money to show you have no hard feelings towards us.” And then came a name that David could not read.

David’s first thought was that he would now be able to buy a new cake of soap. He had money for bread for many days, and there would still be enough for soap — and perhaps a comb, too!

He told himself that he must not be greedy. Johannes had not liked people to be greedy, and it would be sensible to keep some of the money by him for more bread later on. He would buy soap, and perhaps one or two other things, but no more. And he would not be in a hurry: he would first consider carefully what he most needed.

The result was that he bought a loaf of bread, a cake of soap and a comb. Combing his hair was painful, for no one in the camp had had a comb for a very long time and David’s hair had not been combed since. He looked into his mirror to see what he looked like: his hair looked as if it were growing lighter in colour. And it was very long.