Living My Life - Emma Goldman [222]
Sasha had been kept in an underground dungeon for protesting against the brutalities practised on the other inmates. The cell was too small to move about in and fetid with the bucket of excrement that was emptied only once in twenty-four hours. He was allowed only two small slices of bread and one cup of water a day. Later on, for interceding for a coloured prisoner, he was again punished by the “hole,” which measured two and a half feet by four and a half, and where he could not even stand up straight. The “hole” was provided with double doors, one iron-barred, the other “blind,” thus entirely excluding all light and air. In that cell, known as “the tomb,” one is subjected to gradual suffocation. It is the worst punishment known in the Atlanta penitentiary, and it is designed to break the prisoner’s spirit and force him to beg for mercy. Sasha refused to do so. To keep from suffocating he had to lie flat on the floor with his mouth close to the groove where the double doors fit into the stone casing. Only thus could he keep alive. Released from “the tomb,” he was for three months deprived of his mail privileges, allowed no books or other reading-matter, and not permitted any exercise whatever. After that he remained continuously in solitary and isolation for seven-and-a-half months, from February 21 to the day of his discharge, October 1. [...]
On my return from Jefferson City I found destroyed what we had slowly built up through a long period of years. The literature confiscated in the raid had not been returned to us, and Mother Earth, the Blast, Sasha’s Prison Memoirs, and my essays were under the ban. The large sums of money raised while we were in prison, including the three thousand dollars contributed by our old Swedish comrade, had gone for appeals in cases of conscientious objectors, in the political-amnesty activities, and in other work. We had nothing left, neither literature, money, nor even a home. The war tornado had swept the field clean, and we had to begin everything anew.
Among my first callers was Mollie Steimer,1 who came accompanied by another comrade. [...] Mollie and her escort informed me that they had come as delegates of their group to ask me to write for their Bulletin, which they were publishing underground. Unfortunately I could not comply with their request. Even if I were not already overburdened with too much work, I could not ally myself with secret activities. I told them that I had thought of continuing Mother Earth sub rosa, but had discarded the plan because of the hazard it involved for others. I was not afraid of danger if I could meet it in the open, but I did not want to be trapped by spies and informers, who are always found in secret revolutionary bodies. [...]
An additional disagreement between us was due to my attitude to Soviet Russia. My young comrades thought that the Bolsheviki, representing a government, should be treated by anarchists like other governments. I insisted that Soviet Russia, the object of attack by the combined reactionists of the world, was not at all to be considered as an ordinary government. I did not object to criticism of the Bolsheviki, but I could not approve active opposition to them, anyway not until they should be in a less dangerous situation. [...J
I found a cozy apartment, and soon Minnie arrived with her mother, and the three of us moved in. For a while it seemed as if Helena would get herself in hand. She was busy attending to the ménage, sewing and mending. To afford her more work, I used to invite many friends to dinner. Dutifully my sister would prepare the food, serve it attractively, and charm everybody with her personality. But soon the novelty wore off and the old woe was again upon her. It was no use—her life was crushed, she kept on saying; it had lost meaning and purpose. Everything in her was dead, dead as David in the Bois de Rappe. She could not continue, she insisted, she must make an end of it, and I must help