Mosaic by Diane Armstrong

Author:Diane Armstrong [Diane Armstrong]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730400592
Publisher: HarperCollins

A long shadow fell across the little girl tracing patterns in the dirt with a stick. After watching her for a few minutes, the stranger asked, ‘What’s your name, little girl?’

Without looking up, she replied, ‘Danusia Boguslawska.’

‘But what was your name before that?’ he insisted.

Henek, who was standing by the open window, froze when he heard the last question. Instead of rushing outside and grabbing the child to prevent her from answering that insidious question, he was struck dumb and stood there helplessly awaiting her reply on which all their lives depended.

The child looked up, stick poised in her hand, and stared at the man’s ingratiating smile. ‘That’s always been my name,’ she said with a touch of impatience.

Henek breathed out in relief. This time there had been a reprieve, but what would happen next time? For the rest of the war, however long it lasted, their lives would hang in the balance of every single word they uttered.

Thinking back on this incident today, I don’t know whether I’d simply forgotten our original name or whether I knew that it must never be mentioned. My mother’s strained white face and my father’s relentless patience as they repeated our new name over and over must have impressed me with their gravity. But whether it was my good memory or bad memory that saved our lives on that occasion, it’s a revelation that our survival depended on me, as well as on my parents.

‘Not long after we arrived in Piszczac, you said something that made my blood freeze,’ my mother suddenly recalls while reminiscing about the war years. ‘We’d just passed a Jewish woman in the street and you pointed at her armband and said loudly: “Look, Mummy! You used to wear one of those!” I nearly died!’ We sit in silence looking at each other, balancing the horror of my innocent comment with the miracle that no-one had overheard it.

Several years ago in Sydney I attended a workshop based on reclaiming and healing the child within. During a guided meditation, I saw a little girl of about three or four crouching behind a door, watching me with eyes in which I sensed fear, apprehension and mistrust. This was a child who lived suspended between knowing and not knowing, who stifled feelings and suppressed reactions. Without understanding the significance of the situation, she knew that one wrong word from her would cause disaster, that there were secrets she must never tell because their lives depended on them.

For the first time in my life I came face to face with the child who still lives deep inside me.

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