Living My Life - Emma Goldman [81]
My thoughts rushed on. Fedya, the lover of beauty, so fine and sensitive! And Ed. Ed—he had kissed to life so many mysterious longings, had opened such spiritual sources of wealth to me! I owed my development to Ed, and to the others, too, who had been in my life. And yet, more than all else, it was the prison that had proved the best school. A more painful, but a more vital, school. Here I had been brought close to the depths and complexities of the human soul; here I had found ugliness and beauty, meanness and generosity. Here, too, I had learned to see life through my own eyes and not through those of Sasha, Most, or Ed. The prison had been the crucible that tested my faith. It had helped me to discover strength in my own being, the strength to stand alone, the strength to live my life and fight for my ideals, against the whole world if need be. The State of New York could have rendered me no greater service than by sending me to Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary!
CHAPTER XIII
The days and weeks that followed my release were like a nightmare. I needed quiet, peace, and privacy after my prison experience, but I was surrounded by people, and there were meetings nearly every evening. I lived in a daze: everything around me seemed incongruous and unreal. My thoughts continued in captivity; my fellow convicts haunted my waking and sleeping hours, and the prison noises kept ringing in my ears. The command “Close!” followed by the crash of iron doors and the clank-clank of the chains, pursued me when I faced an audience.
The strangest experience I had was at the meeting arranged to welcome me on my release. It took place in the Thalia Theatre 1 and the house was crowded. Many well-known men and women of various social groups in New York had come to celebrate my liberation. I sat listless, in a stupor. [ ... ]
I got to my feet, walked to the footlights, saw the audience rise to greet me. Then I tried to speak. My lips moved, but there was no sound. [ ... ] Ed was near and he led me behind the stage into a dressing-room. I had never before lost control of myself or of my voice, and the occurrence frightened me. [ ... ]
Presently the sound of a beautiful voice reached the dressing-room. Its speech was unfamiliar to me. “Who is speaking now?” I asked. “That is Maria Rodda, an Italian girl anarchist,” Ed replied; “she is only sixteen years old and has just come to America.” The voice electrified me and I was eager to see its owner. I stepped to the door leading to the platform. Maria Rodda was the most exquisite creature I had ever seen. [ ... ] Maria proved a veritable ray of sunlight to me. My spooks vanished, the prison weights dropped off; I felt free and happy, among friends.
I spoke after Maria. The audience again rose, to a man, applauding. I sensed that the people were spontaneously responsive to my prison story, but I was not deceived; I knew intuitively that it was Maria Rodda’s youth and charm that fascinated them and not my speech. Yet I, too, was still young—only twenty-five. I still had attraction, but compared with that lovely flower, I felt old. The sorrows of the world had matured me beyond my years; I felt old and sad. I wondered whether a high ideal, made more fervent by the test of fire, could stand out against youth and dazzling beauty. [ ... ]
On the way to my room I spoke to Ed about Maria. To my surprise he did not share my enthusiasm. He admitted that she was ravishing, but he thought her beauty would not endure, much less her enthusiasm for our ideals. “Latin women mature young,” he said; “they grow old with their first child, old in body and in spirit.” “Well, then, Maria should guard against having children if she wants to devote herself to our movement,” I remarked. “No woman