Living My Life - Emma Goldman [107]
Hippolyte Havel proved to be a veritable encyclopædia. He knew everybody and everything in the movement of the various European countries. I detected bitterness in his tone when he spoke of certain comrades in the Autonomie Club. It affected me unpleasantly, but on the whole he was exceedingly entertaining. It was already too late to catch a bus, and Havel hailed a cab to take me home. When I offered to pay the driver, he became incensed. “Just like an American, flaunting your money! I’m working, and I can afford to pay!” he protested. I ventured to suggest that for an anarchist he was strangely conventional to object to a woman’s right to pay. Havel smiled for the first time during the whole evening, and I could not help noticing that he had beautiful white teeth. When I shook his hand, still encased in the glove, he gave a suppressed groan. “What is it?” I asked. “Oh, nothing,” he replied, “but for a little lady you do have a strong grip.”
There was something strange and exotic about the man. He was evidently very nervous and ungenerous in his estimate of people. Still, he was fascinating, even disturbing.
My Czech comrade came frequently, sometimes with his friend, but usually alone. He was far from gay company; in fact, he rather depressed me. Unless he had drunk a little, it was difficult to get him to converse; at other times he seemed tongue-tied. Gradually I learned that he had come into the movement when only eighteen and that he had been in prison several times, once for a term of eighteen months. On the last occasion he had been sent to the psychopathic ward, where he might have remained had he not aroused the interest of Professor Krafft-Ebing,4 who declared him sane and helped him back to freedom. He had been active in Vienna and expelled from there, after which he had tramped through Germany, lecturing and writing for anarchist publications. He had visited Paris, but was not allowed to remain there long, being expelled. Finally he had gone to Zürich and thence to London. As he had no trade, he was compelled to accept any kind of job. At the time, he was working in an English boarding-house as an all-round man. His duties began at five in the morning and consisted in lighting the fires, cleaning the boots of the guests, washing dishes, and doing other kinds of “degrading and humiliating work.” “But why degrading? Labour is never degrading,” I protested. “Labour, as it is now, is always degrading!” he insisted vehemently; “in an English boarding-house it is even worse; it is an outrage on all human sensibilities, besides the drudgery it involves. Look at my hands!” With a nervous jerk he tore off his glove and the bandage underneath. His hand, red and swollen, was a mass of blisters. “How did it happen, and how can you keep on working?” I asked. “I got it from cleaning filthy boots in the early morning chill and carrying coals and wood to keep the fires going. What else can I do without a trade in a foreign country? I might starve, sink into the gutter, or end in the Thames,” he added. “But I’m not just ready for it. Besides, I’m only one of the many thousands; why fuss about it? Let’s talk about more cheerful things.” He continued conversing, but I hardly heard what he said. I took his poor blistered hand, conscious of an irresistible desire to put it to my lips, in infinite sympathy and tenderness.
We went about together a good deal, visiting the poor quarters, Whitechapel and similar districts. On week-days the streets were littered with foul rubbish, and the smell of fried fish was nauseating. On Saturday nights the spectacle was even