Living My Life - Emma Goldman [302]
I was in no state of mind for writing a book on Russia. [...] I had had no experience with publishers, our books in America having always been issued by ourselves through the Mother Earth Publishing Association. Albert Boni, representing Brainard and the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, did not find it necessary to enlighten me on their commercial methods. The result was that I sold to Mr. Brainard the world rights to my book on Russia for $1,750 advance against the usual royalties and fifty per cent for the serial rights. It seemed a very satisfactory arrangement to me, the most gratifying provision in the agreement being that nothing could be changed in my manuscript without my knowledge and consent.
My visa was renewed for another two months and the hope held out that I could have further extensions. My living-expenses were now also secured. I could proceed with my book. I had lived with it since Kronstadt and had worked it out in all its aspects. But when I came to write it, I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of my subject. The Russian Revolution, greater and more profound than the French, as Peter had rightly said—could I do it justice in one volume and in the limited time set? Years were needed for such a work, and a far abler pen than mine to make the story as vivid and moving as its reality. [...]
My immediate surroundings were anything but helpful. My young friend had got into the same slough as I. He had not the strength to leave, nor I to send him away. Loneliness, the yearning to be cared for in an intimate sense, made me cling to the boy. He admired me as a rebel and as a fighter; as a friend and companion I had awakened his spirit and had opened to him a new world of ideas, books, music, art. [...] But the difference, the ever present difference of twenty-four years, he could not forget. [...]
The arrival of my beloved Stella and Ian, my baby almost as much as hers, somewhat dulled my gnawing pain. I had not seen them for three years and I had longed for their coming. One week went by in sweet harmony with my own, in reminiscences of the past, with all its joy and travail, of what is admirable and what is hateful in my adopted land.
A dissonant note soon disturbed our idyll. Stella had always kept me on a pedestal. She could not bear to see my feet of clay. She had suffered through my relation to Ben, and now again my dear one resented that her adored Tante should “throw herself away.” My young Swede was quick to sense the disdain of my niece. He became more contrary and went out of his way to be particularly disagreeable to her.
Ian, a beautiful youngster of six, wild and unbridled as a young colt, found our apartment too small for his energies. He knew no German and he could not understand why everybody should walk as on glass because “granny’s” nerves were on edge. [...] Fortunately my sense of the ridiculous had not entirely forsaken me. I could still laugh at my own folly. But I could not write, or do as my Swede—run away!
He would go to the seashore for a few days, so that Stella and I could be with each other undisturbed, he said. I did not protest; I felt rather relieved. The two days lengthened into a week without a word to reassure me that all was well with him. My anxiety grew into an obsession that he had taken or lost his life. To escape the torturing thought I tried once more to start my book. As if by magic the load I had carried for months was lifted; the harrowing shadows disappeared together with the boy and my frustrations. I myself became dissolved into the picture that was taking form on the paper before me.
A storm began in the late afternoon and continued throughout the night. Thunder and lightning,