Living My Life - Emma Goldman [129]
It was evident my prospects were not very bright. I knew it involved a desperate struggle to win new ground, but I was determined to start all over again. I would not submit passively to the forces that were trying to crush me. “I must, I will, go on, for the sake of Sasha and of my brother, who need me,” I told myself.
Sasha! I had not heard from him for nearly two months, and I also had been unable to write him. While under arrest, I could not express myself freely, and the last month had been too dreary and depressing. I was sure that of all people my dear Sasha would understand the social meaning of the Buffalo shot, and that he would appreciate the boy’s integrity. Dear Sasha! Since the unexpected commutation of his prison term his spirit had grown buoyant. “Only five years more,” he had written in his last letter; “just think, dear friend, only five years more!” To see him free at last, resurrected; what were all my hardships compared with that moment? In that hope I plodded on. Occasionally I was called to a case; at other times I had orders for dresses. I seldom went out. We could not afford music or theatres, and I dreaded to appear at public meetings. [ ... ]
I was again compelled to take piece-work from the factory. I had advanced in the trade; I was sewing gaudy silk morning gowns now. The many ruffles, ribbons, and laces required painstaking effort, affecting my lacerated nerves until I felt like screaming. [ . . . ]
The thought of a lecture or meeting had become repugnant to me. Even concerts and theatres had lost their attraction because of my fear, grown almost to an obsession, of meeting people or being recognized. Dejection was upon me, the feeling that my existence had lost its meaning and was bereft of content.
Life dragged on with its daily cares and worries. By far the greatest of them was Sasha’s reported condition. Friends in Pittsburgh had written that he was again being persecuted by the prison authorities, and that his health was breaking down. At last, on December 31, a letter arrived from him. No greater New Year’s gift could have come to me. Yegor knew that I liked to be alone on such occasions, and he thoughtfully tiptoed out of the room.
I pressed my lips to the precious envelope, opening it with trembling fingers. It was a long sub rosa letter, dated December 20 and written on several slips of paper in the very small script Sasha had acquired, each word standing out clear and distinct.
“I know how your visit and my strange behaviour must have affected you,” he wrote. “The sight of your face after all these years completely unnerved me. I could not think, I could not speak. It was as if all my dreams of freedom, the whole world of the living, were concentrated in the shiny little trinket that was dangling from your watch-chain. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, I couldn’t keep my hand from playing with it. It absorbed my whole being. And all the time I felt how nervous you were at my silence, and I couldn’t utter a word.”
The frightful months since my visit to Sasha had obscured the poignancy of my disappointment at that time. His lines again revived it. But his letter showed how closely he had followed the events. “If the press mirrored the sentiments of the people,” he continued, “the nation must have suddenly relapsed into cannibalism. There were moments when I was in mortal dread for your very life, and for the safety of the other arrested comrades.... Your attitude of proud self-respect and your admirable self-control contributed much to the fortunate outcome. I was especially moved by your remark that you would faithfully nurse the wounded man, if he required your services, but that the poor boy, condemned and deserted by all, needed and deserved your sympathy and aid more than the President. More strikingly than your letters, that remark discovered to me the great change wrought in us by the ripening years. Yes, in us, in both, for my heart echoed your beautiful sentiment. How impossible such a thought would have been to us in the days of a decade ago!