Living My Life - Emma Goldman [301]
Under pressure from the Swedish syndicalists Branting had extended permission for us to stay for another month. It was to be the last. Visas to other countries were not in sight, and Sasha and Schapiro decided to take matters into their own hands. The latter soon left and Sasha was to go next. A comrade in Prague had secured a visa for me to Czechoslovakia and I implored Sasha to allow our friend to do the same for him. But the mere suggestion of it aroused his wrath.
Sasha stowed away on a tramp steamer, but before the boat pulled out of Stockholm word reached me from the Austrian Consulate that a visa had been granted us. Sick with fear that the boat might leave before I should have the visa in my hands, I did not care if the chauffeur broke all speed limits. I found the visa ready for all three of us, but with it a demand of the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs that we give a written pledge not to engage in any political activities in his country. I had no intention of doing so, and I was confident that neither of the boys would consent to it. However, I could not disclose the clandestine departure of the one and the impending going of the other. I would consult my comrades, I told the Consul, and return with the answer the next day. It was not altogether a lie, as I still had time to reach Sasha. A blizzard had descended on the city, and the boat was held up for forty-eight hours. It afforded me the chance to send word to Sasha about the Austrian visa and the string attached to it. I did not expect him to accept it, but I felt he should be informed about it. A young Swedish friend, the one comforting association of my dismal sojourn in Stockholm, brought back word that Sasha had decided on his course and would not be swerved from it. I hovered about the neighbourhood of the wharf in the deep snow to be near our stowaway, whom fate had woven into the very texture of my life. [ ... ]
The next day, I found a letter from the German Consul. A visa for ten days had been granted me.
CHAPTER LIV
[...] Five months after our comrades had begun the campaign to enable me to enter Germany, I landed in Berlin, with no more hope that I should be more successful than they in securing a longer stay. [...] Much to everybody’s surprise, the Foreign Office made no difficulties about granting me a month’s stay. At its expiration I was informed that two more months had been secured for me. [...]
With this respite, I decided on a little apartment. I had been driven about so much that I felt bruised in every bone and I was in need of a rest under my own roof. I wanted some peace to collect my thoughts before beginning my book on Russia. I longed for my flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Swedish boy, whose tender devotion had been my mainstay in the three and a half months of my existence in Stockholm.1 I’d send for him and have two months of personal life in a lifetime that had never been my own. Vain hope! I realized it the moment I met my friend at the station. His fine eyes had not lost their friendliness, but the glow that had rekindled my soul was no longer there. They had come to see what I had known from the start, yet did not wish to realize—that he was twenty-nine and I fifty-three. [...]
There were various reasons why I could not tell him to go. He had avoided conscription and he had aroused the suspicion of the Stockholm police because of his attempt to help Sasha with some papers. He had no means and he would not be permitted to work in Germany. I felt I could not send him away. What if his love had died? Our friendship would still be sweet—my affection for him strong enough to be content with that, I reasoned. The rest and joy I had hoped for were turned into eight months of purgatory.
My misery was increased by Sasha’s lack of sympathy with my struggle, the more surprising because he had been kind and solicitous when I fought against the growing infatuation for my friend. He had ridiculed the silly conventions regarding difference in age, and advised