I Am David
I Am David
Important events in chapter 6
Important events in chapter 6
David walks for several days, living off money he has left over from the American (Chapter 3).
At one point, David goes into a beautiful church. There he encounters a friendly, gentle priest from whom he learns that there is only one God. The priest tells him that no matter how a person prays, "it's still the same God that hears our prayers".
David then hitches rides with a series of truck drivers, eventually being dropped off at a train station. There, he discovers how easy it is to earn money carrying luggage for tourists and/or interpreting for them. He also sees an advertisement in the paper, written to him by Giovanni and Elsa, saying that they want him to come back.
After avoiding a border checkpoint where guards check the identity papers of travelers, David discovers that, by walking across the unguarded frontier, he has in fact entered Switzerland. One day, while he is sitting by a lake, a woman asks whether she can paint a picture of him.
Noticing David's interest, she quickly changes the subject and shows David a magazine with a photo of the king and queen of Denmark on the cover. David tells her of his belief that kings are not people "who would break their promises or think they had a right to take other people's lives or freedom away from them," and narration comments that he now wants more than ever to get to Denmark.