by Anne Holm
“Where did you learn to set a table, young man?”
David looked at her. “I like it to look pretty — I mean beautiful, when I eat,” he said seriously.
“I beg your pardon. I’d no intention of being nosy, and you’re perfectly right: what one does every day should be done beautifully. It’s very sensible and proper.”
Yes, she was a clever woman. She had noticed that he had not given her a direct answer.
David was gradually growing to like her better and better. They talked of many things while they ate, food and furniture and colours, and she never once seemed surprised by anything he said. And she spoke to him all the time as if he were a person who understood what she was saying. David decided to ask her all the things he wanted to know. He would not tell her where he came from, but it no longer mattered if he aroused suspicion … and it would be a good thing to risk asking questions, just for once, without wondering if he were giving himself away.
But no matter what David asked about, she just told him what he wanted to know without asking him anything in return. Finally David said, “Is there a king in Denmark?”
“Yes, there is. I must see if I can find a picture of him. How did you know I was Danish? Of course, you probably live down in the village.”
“No. I didn’t know you were. I only wanted to know whether there was a king.”
“Well, I am Danish, anyway. My name’s Sophie Bang.”
“I’m called David.”
The woman had not asked him, but he thought it was only right that she should know who he was when she had told him who she was herself.
“David?” said the woman. “One rarely hears that name, outside Britain.”
“Do you think it’s a British name?”
“No, it comes from the Bible — most names do originally. It’s found in many places, but I’ve only known one person of that name myself — and him I never even saw …”
David looked at her with interest and waited for her to tell him more, but she said hastily, “But there’s no reason why I should tell you about that: it was a very sad story, a story of great wickedness.”
So they spoke of other things. She showed him a magazine with a big picture on the front cover, a photograph of the king and queen of Denmark. David examined it closely. The king was wearing a uniform with epaulettes on his shoulders and many orders on his breast, and the queen was dressed in a long sleeveless gown. On her head she wore a sort of large piece of jewellery.
“Well, do you think it’s a good photograph?” asked Signora Bang.
“I don’t know what a king and queen ought to look like,” David replied. “But they don’t look like people who would break their promises or think they had a right to take other people’s lives or freedom away from them. So they must be all right … Thank you for showing them to me.”
David lay in a bed again that night. Signora Bang had told him he could stay overnight if he had nothing else to do and then spend the next day with her. David had told his tale of the circus. He did not like telling it, but what else was he to say? And he had to say something when she asked if he were expected anywhere.
It had been interesting to talk with her. If it had happened before he had decided life could never be worth living, his meeting with her would have given him a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. He was beyond caring now. But she had beautiful things around her and it was beautiful by the lake, so he might as well spend the day there. She had to go to Rome the next day, she had told him.
David found it difficult to go to sleep. He was not quite so miserable any longer. After all, he had always known it did not matter whether you died or not: it was only after he had made his escape that he had come to think he really did want to live. But he could not get back to his old habits. He went on turning things over in his mind, and could no longer think of nothing as he had trained himself to do in the concentration camp.
When he woke the next morning he could hear the signora talking to someone and he decided to stay in bed until she was alone again. they were speaking in French, and the other person was a man who wanted her to go out sailing with him. She told him she could not because she had a visitor, a boy she was painting. The man asked if it were one of the youngsters from the village and the signora said no, he belonged to a circus. But she did not add, as David expected, that he “was a strange boy”. She said, “Someone’s broken his spirit.”
The man said a boy’s spirit was not so easily broken, and the signora replied that she did not think it had been done easily but they had succeeded in the end.
The man thought she ought to do something about it. If the child were really wretched, he said, and was wandering about by himself, it was their duty to inquire into his circumstances and help him. But the signora only said, “What can one do to help a broken heart? And as for his circumstances, I’ve no right to interfere. He could be given money so that he could go by train to join his circus and wouldn’t have to walk, but neither you nor I have any money to spare, Pierre, and it won’t do the boy any harm to walk. Anyway, I gather he thumbs lifts most of the way … that’s what they generally do these days.”
When the stranger had gone, David went downstairs and found the signora had breakfast ready for him. Then he sat for her again, and while they were resting after lunch, she said he could look through her books.
He did not settle down to reading anything, however. There was a large photograph-album on the bookcase. There were photographs from many countries and some of them had names of the places written underneath. There were photographs of people as well, and in some of them he could recognize the signora. Some of the pictures lay loosely in the album, and from the back of the book one bigger than the rest fell out.
David did not know how long he had been sitting with it in his hand when the signora came in.
“Who’s that?” he asked as he saw her, and showed her the photograph.
“That’s a friend of mine. She’s called Edith Hjorth Fengel.”
“Will you tell me about her?”
“What for?”
“Because her eyes look as if … as if she’d known a great deal, and yet she’s still smiling.”
“You’re a sharp boy, David. Her story’s mostly a sad one. She lived abroad with her husband in a country where … where the political situation made it necessary to be very careful. And her husband wasn’t … It’s a very grown-up story, David, which I hope you’re still not old enough to understand. One night the police arrested them — all three of them, her husband, herself and their little boy who was then only a year old — he was the one who was called David just like you, and whom I never saw … They killed her husband and the child, and Edith only got away because one of the guards knew her and was in love with her. He got papers for her and smuggled her across the frontier, and now she lives at home in Denmark and is as … well, as well as you can be when you’ve once been through great unhappiness. All suffering has an end, David, if only you wait long enough. Try to remember that. Sorrow has its life just like people. Sorrow is born and lives and dies. And when it’s dead and gone, someone’s left behind to remember it. Exactly like people.”
7
The wind was blowing icy cold and the snow was falling so thickly that David could not see his hand in front of him. He knew he had very little strength left, and yet he struggled on step by step. He was determined not to die. He would go on and on until he came to Denmark and found the woman whom he knew must be his mother. He would let nothing stand in his way now. Neither snow nor cold nor mountains could stop him. He was David, a boy on the run, but one who knew where he was going to.
The day before he had had a lift in a car from Lugano. But when they reached a place called Faido, the driver would not go any farther. The weather was bad, he said, and the pass would be closed. David had slept in a stable outside the town, and that morning he had trudged on, the road climbing up and up and the air growing colder and colder until at last the snow ca
me.
The Danish woman had told him he could go back to her when she returned from Rome. She had said he was to ask if there were any way in which she could help him, and she had added that if he did not care for the circus and had no near relatives to go to she would have him to live with her. But David had only half listened to what she was saying.
Fortunately he was well used to hiding his thoughts and feelings. He had answered politely and remembered to thank her, and had behaved just as if nothing had happened. And he had told her he had an uncle in the circus who was very nice to him. He had told her all the lies he could lay tongue to, and he no longer felt it was wrong of him. He had to get to Denmark, and he would have to lie himself out of any situation that stood in his way or might lead them on his tracks. Hadn’t the Frenchman talked about investigating his circumstances? Nothing and no one should stop him now. Yet he knew himself that the Danish signora would have understood if he could have told her.
He had asked her the name of the camp guard, and it was the man. David understood everything now … or nearly everything. The man had saved the woman’s life because he liked her, in the way grown-up people liked those they wanted to marry. He had not saved her husband because he hated him for being her husband. He had saved David’s life because he was her child. He had not told her the child was still alive, however, perhaps because he could only get papers for one, though David did not think that could be the whole reason. They always wanted revenge. Because the woman did not care for him, the man had got his revenge by turning David into a boy from a concentration camp … Yes, that’s how it was. And yet the man had seen to it that he did not die. He had given him milk and vitamins and had always insisted that “the boy knows nothing”.
David began to understand a lot of things now. they had let Johannes starve and freeze and made him work, even when he fell ill, but apart from that they had not ill-treated him as they had the other prisoners. And David had believed that they could not lay hands on Johannes when he looked them straight in the eye. But he now saw that that was not the only thing … The man had seen to it that Johannes should be there to look after David.
Johannes said that the older one grew, the more complicated and involved one’s feelings became, and sometimes they were quite opposed to one another, as, for example, when you would like to stay awake but felt at the same time that you wanted to fall asleep. that was how the man had felt. He had hated David on account of his mother who would have nothing to do with him, and at the same time he had looked after him, also on account of his mother.
And that was how David himself felt about the man. No one had bribed the man. There was no one to do it since nobody knew of David’s existence. And if you knew anything about them, then you knew, too, the danger the man had risked in letting a prisoner escape. And yet he had done it.
David’s steps grew slower and slower. He had lost all feeling in his feet now and he was soaked to the skin. The snow continued falling. He felt an irresistible urge to lie down, if only for a moment. But he dared not give way — he might die of cold out in the snow. He could no longer follow the road. Everything was covered in snow, and he could see nothing at all through the thickly falling flakes. There had not been a signpost for a long time.
At last his mind grew numb, and as on the road to Salonica, his feet carried him along quite unconsciously.
Suddenly there was nowhere in front of him to set the foot. David threw himself backwards, fell and rolled over. A precipice! He had nearly walked over the edge! Before he had become so exhausted he had been well aware of the danger. Before the snow had begun falling he had seen how easy it was to miss one’s footing and go hurtling down the mountainside.
Not for one second could he afford to relax his attention. He no longer dared to walk, so he crawled onwards on all fours, feeling his way carefully with his hands to make sure he was not near the edge of the precipice.
He did not know how many hours passed in this way. He ached all over, and the snow continued to swirl about him in a howling gale that seemed to cut right into his head. He was blinded and deafened, and the pain of his aching body grew so intense he felt he could not last another minute. It was worse than anything he could think of … worse than the camp, worse even than them. And he could not call on God to help him, for the words were blown away inside his head, swept away into the howling gale and the blinding white hell all around him.
There was no way out but to die. David struck his head against something hard. He fell, and then it snowed no more. A voice cried, “What kind of a young thief’s this staggering about in this sort of weather?” With difficulty David opened his eyes sufficiently to realize he had come across one of them.
Then he knew no more.
That winter was the longest David had ever experienced.
The farmer was an evil-hearted man. David had escaped from the wind and the snow only to be a prisoner in this man’s house. It was the stable-door he had struck his head against, and that stable became his shelter for the winter — and no very good shelter either. All day long he had to work and slave as hard as he could, and a bit harder if possible. The farmer was just like one of them. He used threats to force David to work, and said he would hand him over to the police if he did not obey.
David had now learned how the members of a family spoke to one another, pleasantly and smilingly. There was nothing like that here. The farmer was cold and brutal even to his wife and two children, but David could not feel any particular sympathy for them, for the wife was a clumsy, silent woman with a sharp edge to her tongue, and as for the children — David had never thought it possible for anyone who was still a child to be so evil.
The boy was the younger, and he looked just like his father. He had stiff, straw-coloured hair and very pale blue eyes, and when he played he either destroyed something or got into mischief. He was cruel to the animals, though he knew he would get a hiding if he were found out — not that the farmer had anything against violence as such, but the animals were worth money and so they must not be ill-treated. Yet the boy could not keep his hands off them: his greatest pleasure was causing pain to a living creature.
Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person’s way of making himself felt, because it was easier to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to a problem.
Nevertheless it made David feel sick to see the boy’s cruelty. And the girl was not much better. True, she was not cruel to the beasts, but she was not kind either. When David considered that she was about the same age as Maria, he was shocked at the difference between them. Maria with her ready smile, full of affection that she lavished on everyone, grown-ups, children, animals — even on a runaway boy … and then this girl who did nothing to please anyone — not even her own mother!
They all treated David like a dog. They threw his food to him and called him names. But they did not lay hands on him. They left him lying in the stable until he had recovered, and then they put him to work. But when during one of the first days he spent there the farmer had been about to strike him, his wife had told him to let the boy be. She had said, “You’re always so stupid, Hans! He can work — I’ll not meddle with that — and the stable’s good enough for him. A young thief like him knows which side his bread’s buttered and he’ll not make a fuss about that. But if you lay hands on him, he’ll murder us all in our beds. You can tell by the look of him! And the youngsters’d do well to keep out of his way if they don’t want to get beaten up, that you may be sure of! You’ve got free labour for the winter, and that’ll have to do. Then we can hand him over to the police in the spring.”
David thought they were all stupid — evil, but stupid as well. If they had touched him, he would have been forced to go out into the snow again and freeze to death, but he would never have used physical violence against them. He hated them, and he would rather have let himself be killed than be like them.
In a way
it was amusing. Yes, “amusing” was the right word. Apart from hitting him, they intended to see to it that life was made as wretched for him as they could make it, and yet it was still to his advantage!
He knew now that he could never have lasted through the winter tramping the roads. He would have died of hunger and cold. At least he had shelter here, and food every day.
The stable was cold, and sometimes the snow was blown into drifts until it lay as high as the roof outside. But as it hardened, the stable grew warmer inside, and the animals added a little to the warmth.
He was not given much food, only dry bread or cold scraps, yet he had more to eat than in the camp, and it tasted no worse — sometimes, in fact, a little better.
They thought they were making him suffer by leaving him to sleep alone in the dark stable, but night was his pleasantest time!
David was not afraid of the dark. There were only common everyday objects about him, and the animals asleep. It seemed quite natural: the darkness altered nothing. What he was afraid of was people.
At night-time the stable was his. In the camp he had never been alone, and David liked to be left by himself to think in peace.
Then the dog came.
David had always thought of dogs as enemies — their tools. It was one of their pastimes to make the dogs bite the prisoners. Since his escape into Italy he had of course noticed that good people kept dogs too, but he had always given them a wide berth, just in case.
But shut up in the stable, he could not avoid the dog. It came one night when it was snowing hard and a gale was howling outside. David lay quite still and much against his will let it sniff all round him. the farmer and his family spoke a peculiar kind of German: perhaps that was the reason David spoke to it in Italian.