Living My Life - Emma Goldman [220]
The thought of Helena was the only cloud on my birthday sky. Her daughter Minnie had come all the way from Manila to help her mother over their great loss. But my sister was wrapped in her precious dead, and the living could do nothing to loosen its hold. Helena alone had failed me on the day she had always filled with her love before. But I understood. [...]
On August 28, 1919, Sasha and I had completed twenty months of our two-year sentence. Wicked anarchists though we were, we had earned four months each for good behaviour. We had done our bit much longer than many of the boys in the dug-outs. We should have been honourably discharged from service and allowed to return from the prison front. But Judge Julius Mayer had willed it otherwise by placing a high valuation on our heads. Twenty thousand dollars’ fine! A United States commissioner was sent to the penitentiary to question me about my financial standing. He looked incredulous when I told him that anarchist propaganda is a pleasure and not a paying business. He grew still more dubious when I explained that the Kaiser, having been unseemly hurried in his departure from Germany, had neglected to make provision for our welfare. The commissioner decided to “look into the matter.” Meanwhile Berkman and I would have to serve an extra month in payment of our fine, he declared. Two months for twenty thousand dollars! When did Sasha and I ever expect to earn so much money in so short a time?
Only thirty days. Then release from the hateful shop, the control, the surveillance, the thousand humiliations prison involves. Back to life and work again—with Sasha. Back to my family, comrades, and friends. An alluring fantasy, soon dispelled by the immigration authorities. Ellis Island was waiting for the two distinguished guests. I wondered who would compete for my favours next. Would it be Russia, the long-awaited, or America, my old flame? In our uncertain fortunes only one thing was certain: Sasha and I would meet the future as we had always met it in the past. [ ... ]
Saturday, September 28, 1919, I left the Missouri penitentiary, accompanied by my faithful Stella, who had come from New York for the occasion. Only technically free, I was taken to the Federal Building to make an affidavit that I possessed no real estate or cash. The Federal agent looked me up and down. “You’re dressed so swell, funny you claim to be poor,” he commented. “I am a multimillionaire in friends,” I replied.
The fifteen-thousand-dollar bond demanded by the Government pending inquiries by the Immigration Bureau was secured, and I was at last at liberty.
CHAPTER L
In St. Louis we were almost mobbed by friends, reporters, and camera-men who had come to meet us at the station. I could not bear to see many people and I was eager to be left alone.
Stella grew uneasy on hearing that on our way east I intended to stop off in Chicago, where Ben was living. She implored me to give up the idea. “You will only lose the peace you have gained through months of struggle to free yourself from Ben,” she pleaded. There was no need for anxiety, I assured her. In the isolation and loneliness of the cell one finds the courage to face the nakedness of one’s soul. If one survives the ordeal, one is less hurt by the nakedness of other souls. I had worked my way through much anguish and travail to a better understanding of my relation with Ben. [...] Erotically Ben and I were of the same earth, but in a cultural sense we were separated by centuries of time. With him social impulses, sympathy with mankind, ideas, and ideals were