I Am David

by Anne Holm

  He was confused with so many impressions that he could not grasp anything properly at first. The house was full of things, and there were women in black dresses and white aprons who must be maids. And there was a very beautiful woman who turned out to be the children’s mother, and she laughed and cried almost in the same breath, and it was very difficult to escape her caresses. Then they telephoned for a doctor, and David said he would like to wash, but they would not let him — not before the doctor had been, they said, for he must not get water on his burns, and it was no use David’s saying he did not think he was very badly burnt.

  Then the doctor came and said David was right. Maria had come to no harm at all because David had carried her so quickly through the fire. David could thank the thick soles of his feet, he said, that he had got off so lightly from his act of heroism. He was a little burnt about the hands and arms and legs, but it would not be long before he recovered.

  David knew that doctors were good men — they were seldom allowed inside the camp, and the other prisoners had always told him that doctors were there to help people when they were ill. So he submitted quietly while the doctor touched him and wiped the dirt away with something from a bottle. It hurt all the time, and then the doctor put something else on his burns, and that hurt, too. But the doctor explained that if he did not do it, the burns would be more painful the next day. David must just go to sleep now, and then he would feel better when he woke up again.

  The doctor was right, too. David did feel better. He felt fine, in fact, although his hands were still rather painful. He opened his eyes and remembered that he was lying in a bed! He shifted his position slightly, but the bed still felt wonderfully soft. He sat up to see what it was like, and the bed gave under his weight and gently rocked him. So that was what a bed was: a big box on legs, made of dark polished wood with … with pillows and sheets.

  Yes, it was going to be most interesting to see what a house looked like! And he thought of all the words he would now be able to use. He knew many words he had never used because he was afraid that not knowing the things they referred to he might use them wrongly and show his ignorance. Sheets. Fancy sleeping every night in a soft bed like that where you did not feel cold … and between soft white sheets, knowing everything round you was perfectly clean!

  Johannes had taught him always to remember to say thank you to people for anything he was given, and he had been very strict about it. He had insisted upon David’s saying thank you even to them — when they gave him food, for example. David had not wanted to … not to them. But Johannes had said, “Politeness is something you owe other people, because when you show a little courtesy, everything becomes easier and better. But first and foremost it’s something you owe yourself. You are David. And if you never allow other people to influence what you’re really like, then you’ve something no one can take from you — not even they. Never mind what others are like — you must still be David. Do you understand what I mean?”

  After that he had always said thank you when he was given food — not to make them think he did not hate them, but so they could see he was polite because he wanted to be.

  And if you wanted to be polite to people — even to them — then you could also remember to be polite to God. It would not take more than a minute, and he could examine the room afterwards.

  David stared hard at the sheet so that nothing in the room should distract his attention, and then said quickly, “God of the green pastures and the still waters, I want to thank you because I’ve learned about happiness and found out how to smile. And thank you, too, for being pleased I rescued the girl for you. I hope I can find something different to do for you next time, because that was very difficult and I was very frightened of the fire, and I would rather not do anything like that too often. Will you please let it do for the next three times I may need you to help me. I am David. Amen.”

  As soon as he had said amen, he was out of bed. On the floor was a large, patterned carpet, soft to walk on. Chairs and a table — those he recognized, of course, but he had never seen such magnificent ones — and a large wardrobe and a piece of furniture with drawers in it: it was not a writing-table … a chest of drawers, perhaps. And everything was elaborately carved in designs of leaves and fruit and animals’ heads. The window was wide and tall, and on both sides of it hung curtains of some soft thick material dyed the same colour as the leaves of an olive-tree.

  David moved noiselessly about the room, examining everything closely, touching and returning to look again. There was a bowl on the table, and two tall, slender objects which he pondered deeply over till he came to the conclusion that they must be candlesticks. They were shiny … silver? Yes, they must be silver. David repeated the word slowly to himself, enjoying the sound of it. Silver was something very rich and fine. They looked like silver, at least from what David had heard about it.

  His glance travelled upwards. There was a picture! Not the sort you saw pasted on the outside walls of shops and houses, but one that showed a beautiful scene. David stood on the bed and stretched up to see it better. It was a painting. He was sure of it. It was just like what the men in the camp had described to him.

  David sat down in bed quite overcome. If only he could remember it all! He had been so small when he had any curiosity about what the world was like outside the concentration camp. And Johannes had not liked the men to tell him too much about it. “What the boy doesn’t know, he won’t miss,” he would say. David had once heard him say that when they thought he had fallen asleep. They had always answered his questions, but they would leave it at that, and afterwards, when Johannes was dead, he had spoken to no one.

  He was lucky therefore to have learned at least something, and now it was up to him to remember all he could and keep his eyes open so that the children and their parents would not discover how little he really did now.

  He wondered whether he should stay where he was until someone came and said he might go downstairs. Or should he just get up and go down? But his clothes were not there, and he could not walk about the house with nothing on.

  Before he had time to consider further, the door opened gently, and the children’s mother peeped in.

  “So you’re awake,” she said smiling. “I’ve brought you some clothes in case you want to get up. You may stay in bed if you’d rather. Are your hands still painful? And your ankles — are they any worse?”

  David answered that his ankles hurt most, but he was not in great pain anywhere and would like to get up. “But they’re not my clothes,” he said as he saw what the children’s mother was laying across the chair.

  “No, they’re being washed. These are Andrea’s, but I think they’ll fit you.”

  David looked at them anxiously. “I might tear them on a branch,” he said.

  “My dear boy, and after all you’ve done for us!”

  David wondered if he should explain that he had not rescued the little girl on their account, but entirely for his own sake in order to repay his debt to God. He decided not to, however: perhaps she would not understand, and perhaps she did not know about his God of the green pastures and still waters. It was safer not to say too much.

  He put the clothes on — or rather, the children’s mother helped him to, for they were very fine clothes with both buttons and a thing called a zip-fastener which David was not at all sure how to manage. There were trousers, short brown ones like those the children had been wearing, and a shirt — not one like his own, but a proper shirt with buttons. It was green. There were stockings, too, and the kind of shoes they called sandals. David had never tried wearing anything on his feet before. And there were pockets in the trousers.

  David stood quite still, and his eyes began to feel hot as if he wanted to cry. He had never thought he would ever wear clothes like those, and he had an irrepressible desire to see what he looked like, to see whether he looked like an ordinary boy at last.

  The woman seemed to guess what was passing through his mind,
for she opened the wardrobe door, and there on the inside was a large full-length mirror.

  It was big enough for a boy to see himself from top to toe — or for a grown man, come to that. David regarded himself critically. He did not think there was anything odd about what he saw. True, he had not black hair, but otherwise he looked like any other boy who was not particularly fat. And he had grown quite brown from being in the sun so much.

  Without thinking, he said, “I look quite like an ordinary boy now, don’t I?”

  “Of course you do,” she answered, but she did not sound as if she altogether meant it. Then she added, “And you look a very handsome boy, and a brave one, too. Come, the children are impatient to see you, and you must be hungry.”

  She walked so quickly that David could not see anything properly. He was aware that there was furniture everywhere, and carpets and paintings, but he had no opportunity to see what they looked like. They descended a long broad staircase and came to other rooms. One of them had a door that led on to the large garden, and there they found the children and their father. Maria was looking rather pale, but her father said she had insisted upon getting up and coming downstairs so that she could see David again.

  David found himself smiling once more as he looked at her.

  “Drink your milk now, children, and then you can take David out to play — but not too roughly, mind: you must be careful of his burns.”

  They said he must stay with them for a while, at any rate until his arms and legs were quite well again, and he was welcome to stay even longer if he were not expected back with the circus immediately.

  David did not really know what he would rather do. He wanted to go, but at the same time he wanted to stay to learn all he could about the house.

  He looked up intently at the children’s father and mother: they were both smiling. “Can I go now, this very moment, if I want to?”

  The children’s father stopped smiling and looked disappointed. “Yes, of course, David, if that’s what you’d rather do. But we should all be very glad if you would stay with us for a while so that we could show you how grateful we are.”

  David considered. If only it were not too dangerous, he would like to stay with them a little and learn more about their way of life. “If I can go whenever I want to, then I’d like to stay for a bit,” he said at length. “Yes, thank you. I don’t have to join the circus just yet. But please don’t be so grateful, for you see I wanted to rescue the little girl from the fire, and you’ve already thanked me.”

  “Yes, but we shall continue to be grateful to you as long as we live, David. It’s something we shall never forget,” the children’s father said quietly.

  David felt very, very tired that evening. He was to sleep once more in that soft bed, and yet it was a long time before he fell asleep, so excited was he with all he had seen that day. He could not remember the half of it: there was not room in his head for so many new things at once. But he did remember the food. Never would he forget what it was like to eat in such a house — it was almost like listening to music!

  Johannes had once told him about it, and when he saw it he remembered. One of the prisoners had made some remark about eating like pigs, and so David had asked whether people ate differently outside the camp.

  But he had never been able to picture what it was like, and now he had seen for himself. You sat at a table covered with a cloth so white that it gleamed. And there were plates — one for each person — with flowers painted on them, and candlesticks with candles in them and flowers in a bowl. And the glasses you drank from were fine and delicate and tinkled if you happened to touch them with a knife or fork. And the knives and forks and spoons were all of silver, and everyone had his own, as well as a napkin to wipe his fingers on should they become greasy. David was afraid he would not know how to eat properly, but he watched the children’s father and mother first and then did as they did. It was lucky he was used to being careful in his movements, for otherwise he would certainly have spilled something. And there was more food than you could possibly eat at one time — all kinds of different things, and everything tasted wonderful. David dared not eat very much, for he knew the rich food might make him ill since he was not used to it.

  But to think of eating as something beautiful! Well, if that was how the prisoners in the concentration camp had been in the habit of eating before they were taken prisoner, he could well understand why they said they ate like pigs there.

  The food was all brought in by the servants and cleared away before the next course arrived and you were given clean plates and knives. And the children said they ate like that every day, and several times a day.

  The next day he would enjoy it all again.

  5

  David thought living in a house was very difficult. It was not the house itself — that was lovely to be in — but the people. They constantly seemed to expect him to say and do things he would never have thought of, and what appeared sensible and natural to him seemed to surprise them …

  Otherwise being in a house was lovely — quite wonderful. David contemplated the two words with satisfaction, repeating them several times to himself. He had been in the house many days now and was learning all the time. He had learned, for example, to use those two words — they meant something that was good. It was satisfying to know several words for the same thing for then he could describe exactly to what degree a thing was good. It was just the same with the word “beautiful”. You could divide it into three: if something were only a little beautiful, it was “nice”; if it were more beautiful, you said “lovely” and finally “beautiful”.

  Being able to use words properly was a great advantage, for the more words you knew the meaning of, the better you could think. And besides, people were not so surprised at what you said if you used the right words. The children’s mother had laughed when he saw the bathroom and said it was “beautiful and good”. He should have said it was “lovely”, of course.

  He would always remember the bathroom with its gleaming pale-green bath and all that clear, clean water that came when you just turned a tap. You could have as much hot water as you liked and sit in it right up to your neck. And there was soap, large pieces of it, that smelled much better than the two cakes he had bought himself. It rubbed into a beautiful soft lather that made you quite, quite clean. And when you had finished, there were large, soft, clean towels to dry yourself on. And there were little sticks to clean your nails with, and you could brush your teeth. David had never tried that before, and the first time he made his mouth sore doing it. But it was wonderful to be so clean.

  There were books in a house, too — not just one, but many. When he had first arrived, the children’s father had asked him if there were anything he particularly wanted. David had considered carefully and then said, “I think most of all I’d like a book to read”. He wanted to hear music again, too, but the book was more important. He said it must be a book published before 1917. The children’s father had smiled and asked why, but David had not dared to tell him it was because he wanted to be sure that what was in it was true and not something they had made up.

  The meals he had in the house delighted him, both because there was so much to eat and it all tasted so good, and even more because the table looked so beautiful with the glasses and the silver and the white cloth, and with a fine plate for everybody.

  But people he found difficult. They seemed to have no idea of what was good. The children’s mother was quite pleased that he liked the bathroom, but the children themselves hated it — at least, the boys did. Perhaps he was wrong, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not help liking it himself. He had nothing against being dirty: you got dirty in the course of the day. You just could not avoid it. But to be free to wash the dirt off whenever you wanted to — yes, that was wonderful! And yet the children did not seem to understand that, and he dared not tell them how disgusting it was when men who had been clean with clean shiny hair and clean teeth grew so m
atted and ingrained with dirt that everything about them smelt repulsive and looked loathsome.

  For if he told them that, then of course they might discover where he came from, and then they would be obliged to send for them.

  The children could not understand either why he was so anxious to read books. They always wanted him to go out with them, though he longed to be left alone to sit and read the books. There was no end to what you could learn from books if only you had time enough. He could read more rapidly now, but not really quickly. He had first to choose his books. If only he could read all of them! But David knew he had not very much time: he must go on before winter came. And so it was important for him to read books where he would find information that would be useful to him.

  It was because of the books that he had already stayed there for many days. The people, the children especially, made him nervous — and he hated being in the same place with Carlo. The house he could leave, though not without regret.

  He had learned that he could never become an ordinary boy. The knowledge was painful, but there was no point in deceiving himself. He would like to have learned to be a proper boy, to be as a boy should be outside the concentration camp.

  And yet … the children were so stupid David did not understand them at all. He did not understand why they did not like washing. He did not understand why they preferred to live without knowing anything. They did not seem to think it was necessary, as if there were no difference between a donkey and a human being. David was very fond of donkeys: they were — he sought for the right word — nice. But it was very much better to be a human being able to learn things.