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Your Story: The Kaleidoscope of Youth |
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We began attending church regularly and there I ran into trouble. To take Communion, as a Catholic, I had first to go to confession. The problem was that I only spoke Polish and had a smattering of Rumanian that I had picked up in a prison camp. The priest understood neither language. My predicament was shared by other people and a system of confessing by numbers was devised.
Danusia, (centre), with her parents in Linlithgow, Scotland, 1942.
© Danusia Trotman-Dickenson |
The principle was simple enough. All that one had to do was to hold up the appropriate number of fingers for the commandment that one had broken. That was all very well, if one was sure of the order of the ten commandments. I was somewhat vague on the numbering and as one was not supposed to talk about one’s confession, I did not feel I should ask. I remembered enough to be sure that I did not have to worry about the commandments at the beginning and at the end. I had not made a graven image and had no intention to make any such thing. Also, I did not covet my neighbour’s ox, and could not really see why one should want one, let alone the neighbour’s wife.
I decided that it was the commandments somewhere in the middle that I was most likely to have broken. As it happened, the number that I plumped for turned out to be for adultery. This I went on confessing for several weeks to the priest’s evident dismay. It surprised me. At last, in desperation he wrote on a piece of paper ‘not adultery’ and told me to take it to my mother. That much I understood. I asked her what the message meant. She looked a bit blank and said we would have to find an English-Polish dictionary.
When my mother eventually managed to buy one, I looked up ‘adultery’. The dictionary defined ‘adult’ as a grown-up person and ‘adultery’ as acting falsely. This, I thought, could stretch to cover not telling the truth and nothing but the truth. So I went back to confessing adultery. Faced with such persistence on the part of an eleven year old, the priest must have accepted this as one of the things that were sent to try him. He no longer protested.
Words: Lady Danusia Trotman-Dickenson
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