My introduction

I am Danielle Ryszka, the 19 year old daughter of an Italian father and a Ukrainian mother. In early 1988, an Italian university student met my mother whilst he was travelling the Soviet Union. My mother, a 15 year old from the village of Rykhtychi, fled after becoming pregnant by him. She spent the next six months living in Lviv, barely getting by on the meagre wages she got paid cleaning train compartments. It was here that she was found by an English man, who for the purposes of this story I shall call Benjamin, a writer researching Ukrainian political history. He offered to take her back to England and provide for her and her unborn baby in exchange for domestic service to him. For the sake of her unborn child, she accepted.

Back in England, and for the remaining three months of her pregnancy, she kept a journal about her new life here. She didn't speak a single word of English, and I speak no Ukrainian so have spent years translating the pages of the book into words I can understand. She was expected to be a maid to the writer who had brought her back from Ukraine, but he did not make her start work while she was pregnant. Instead she had her own quarters in the grounds of the large estate he lived in, and had food and living essentials provided for her. She was an illegal immigrant so she did not expect to leave the grounds, but she did have the freedom of them and would often walk the gardens during the summer of 1988. In particular she would sit up against a huge old Ash tree in the shade and look towards the pond and fountain to write her journal, relishing the peace and tranquility that surrounded her. A far cry from the busy, smog filled, over populated slums of Lviv she had endured just months before.

Entries into the journal stop on September 27th 1988, two days before I was born. I do not know what happened exactly, but as I understand it she was in labour for nearly 30 hours before I was finally born. She gave birth in the main house, delivered by a doctor friend of Benjamin's.

She died from complications during the delivery no more than a few minutes after I was born, having never even set eyes on me. I do not have a picture of her, nor do I know where her remains have been placed. All I have is her journal, and her name - Karynja Ryszka, The few facts I know about Karynja are pieced together from the journal, and from what I have been told by Benjamin.

After my mother had passed, I was raised by Benjamin. He named me after his former fiancee who had died many years earlier (I do not know how she died, I believe it hurts Benjamin to talk about it even now). He schooled me, kept me clean and fed, clothed me, and provided the things I needed. Never once did he pretend to be my natural father and has always been honest with me about where I came from. He speaks of my mother with genuine regret over her death.