I Am David

For a moment David was tempted to think that perhaps there were no good people at all outside concentration camps, but then he reminded himself of the sailor and Angelo and the English people who might have been ignorant but were certainly not bad.

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 I understand, but I suppose he meant that things are only worth having if you think they are.

The way you spoke was a reflection of how you thought, and that could not possibly have anything to do with whether you were a tramp or whether you had somewhere to live and had many things of your own.

Joy passed, but happiness never completely disappeared; a touch of it would always remain to remind one it had been there. It was happiness that made one smile, then.

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 tidemark: 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.

Before he had come to the town he had known about nothing but death: here he had learnt to live, to decide things for himself; he had learnt what it felt like to wash in clean water in the sunshine until he was clean himself, and what it felt like to satisfy his hunger with food that tasted good; he had learnt the sound of laughter that was free from cruelty; he had learnt the meaning of beauty.

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."

Never let me hear you say it's someone else's fault. It often is, but you must never shirk your own responsibility ... You can't change others, but you can do something about a fault in yourself.

And it was most important to do what one knew was right, for otherwise the day might come when one could no longer tell the difference between right and wrong.

Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem.