Living My Life - Emma Goldman [135]
The doctor had worked frantically to revive Ed; but it was in vain. He died without regaining consciousness. [ ... ]
Funerals had always been abhorrent to me; I felt that they expressed grief turned inside out. My loss was too deep for it. I went to the crematory and found the ceremony over, the coffin already closed. The friends who knew of my bond with Ed lifted the cover again for me. I approached to look at the dear face, so beautifully serene in sleep. The silence about me made death less gruesome.
Suddenly a shriek echoed through the place, followed by another and another. A female voice, hysterically crying: “My husband! My husband! He is mine!” The shrieking woman, her black widow’s veil resembling a crow’s wings, threw herself between me and the coffin, pushing me back and falling over the dead. A little blond girl with frightened eyes, suffocating with sobs, was clutching at the woman’s dress.
For a moment I stood petrified with horror. Then I slowly moved towards the exit, out into the open, away from the revolting scene. My mind was full of the child, the replica of its father, its life now to be so different from what he had intended.
CHAPTER XXVII
Memories of my former life with Ed filled me with longing for what had again been just within my reach, only to be snatched away. Recollections of the past compelled me to look into the most hidden crevices of my being; their strange contradictions tore me between my hunger for love and my inability to have it for long. It was not only the finality of death, as in the case of Ed, nor the circumstances that had robbed me of Sasha in the springtime of our lives, that always came between. There were other forces at work to deny me permanency in love. Were they part of some passionate yearning in me that no man could completely fulfil or were they inherent in those who for ever reach out for the heights, for some ideal or exalted aim that excludes aught else? Was not the price they exacted conditioned in the very nature of the thing I wished to achieve? The stars could not be climbed by one rooted in a clod of earth. If one soared high, could he hope to dwell for long in the absorbing depths of passion and love? Like all who had paid for their faith, I too would have to face the inevitable. Occasional snatches of love; nothing permanent in my life except my ideal. [ ... ]
Sasha’s letters breathed a zest in life that carried me along and filled me with increased admiration for him. I, too, began to dream and plan for the great moment when my heroic boy would be free again and united with me in life and work. Only thirty-three months more and his martyrdom would be at an end!
Meanwhile John Turner1 had announced his coming to the States. He had been in America in 1896 and had lectured extensively during seven months. He was planning a new tour and wished especially to study the conditions of the men and women employed as clerks and sales-people in the United States. [ . . . ]
His opening address was on “Trade Unionism and the General Strike.” Murray Hill Lyceum was filled to the doors with people from every walk of life. The police were present in large numbers. I introduced our British comrade to the audience and then went to the rear of the hall to look after our literature. When John had finished speaking, I noticed several plain-clothes men approach the platform. Sensing trouble, I hastened over to John. The strangers proved immigration officials who declared Turner was under arrest. Before the audience had time to realize what was happening, he was rushed out of the hall. Turner was given the honour of being the first to fall under the ban of the Federal Anti-Anarchist Law passed by Congress on March 3, 1903. [...] When I announced to the audience that John Turner had been arrested and would be deported, the meeting unanimously resolved that if our friend had to go, it should not be without a fight. . . .
The Free Speech League had asked me to visit a number of cities in behalf of the John Turner fight, and I