Читать книгу A Sharp Intake of Breath - Джон Миллер - Страница 11

By 1933, when Emma Goldman moved to Toronto, my sister Lil was eighteen years old and in her first year of university. Lil had been encouraged in her schooling by a man named Irv Charney, who had begun to court Bessie the year before. Irv was going into his last year of pharmaceutical studies, and Bessie had taken a job at a local factory. Lil was working part-time in our parents’ store because they were more flexible with her need to study. I still worked in the store too, and hated every moment. I could’ve worked the cash, but Ma had me sweeping, carrying boxes, and wrapping purchases, all the uninteresting jobs. Even though I had proved how useful I might be with the inventory, she put Lil in charge. Meanwhile, Lil also got to talk to customers and make sales.

When Irv started courting Bessie, she complained to him about Lil’s radicalism, but her pride in her younger sister’s academic accomplishments peeked through, and Irv was shrewd enough to ignore the sibling rivalry. Lil’s success at school was an exciting curiosity in our family. Except for in arithmetic, Bessie’s marks had been mediocre. As for my parents, they never had the chance to go past grade eight. Irv took Lil under his scientific wing and encouraged her academic pursuits, and his encouragement was just the push she needed. In her last year at Harbord Collegiate, she applied to and was accepted into biology at the University of Toronto. With the money Bessie had helped earn by working in the factory, our family scraped together enough to pay for Lil’s tuition.

Irv Charney graduated as a pharmacist the next May, and in August he married Bessie, moving her out of our parents’ place on St. Patrick Street and in with him in a rented flat above a dry goods shop on Spadina Avenue. Irv went to work for Mr. Rothbart, and being a good provider now, chipped in to help pay for Lil’s tuition. The decision was clear: Bessie would quit her job at the factory. We didn’t know then what a mistake that would be, how that decision was another switch on the tracks, diverting our lives to a course we couldn’t reverse.

Lil took her studies seriously, but if there was a choice between school books and politics, activism took priority. All those years since we’d heard Emma speak, Lil had been learning about anarchism, going to meetings, making new friends who shared her political leanings. Furthermore, she’d devoured everything there was to know about Emma herself, read everything she could get her hands on.

In December of ’33, Emma swept back into Toronto with almost fifty years of hardship and social struggle carved into the lines on her face, and I thought Lil would explode from excitement. Emma wasn’t just visiting Toronto, she was moving here. Since Lil considered Toronto a dreary backwater town, she was amazed that someone with Emma’s past, someone who’d travelled to all the major cities in North America and Europe, would choose to live here. Born in Lithuania in 1869, Emma immigrated as a teenager, with her family, to Rochester, New York. She married young but left her first husband because he was impotent, and moved to New York City, where she worked in a garment factory, became active politically with local anarchists, and quickly distinguished herself. After training as a nurse in Austria, she returned to New York and worked with the residents of the Lower East Side, even helping women to seek safe abortions. She was a masterful organizer, a keen thinker, and a clear and declarative writer, but she was best known, and most hated, for her public speaking.

When I learned about Emma’s life, I felt an odd kinship with her that she would surely never have understood. I realized that she too had discovered how speech was a knife cutting both ways. It could draw people in, move their souls, but then, depending on what you said or how you spoke, fickly, it could provoke terrible retribution or crushing exclusion. Of course, Emma was more in control of when that happened than I ever was. She mastered the English language, which I believe was her sixth, after Lithuanian, Yiddish, Russian, German, and French, and she spoke it with barely any accent. The world knew Emma because she wove her words into unforgettable, sometimes shocking tapestries, and people were afraid of their powerful message.

She was ahead of her time and she paid for it. Hounded and imprisoned several times by the American government for her unorthodox views, she was eventually tried and deported to Russia in 1917, just after the October Revolution. There, she met with Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders, and quickly became disenchanted with the authoritarianism of the new Russian leadership. Before long, she denounced the Bolsheviks, left Russia, and took up residence in England and France, with numerous lengthy stays in other countries, including Canada.

Essentially, from 1926 to 1940, she moved back and forth several times between Toronto and the South of France, with a few years in London somewhere in the middle. After my family heard her speak in ’26, she went to St-Tropez, then a sleepy village of artists and fishermen on the Mediterranean. It was cheaper to live there, and she rented a cottage found for her by patron of the arts and socialite Peggy Guggenheim. The next year, Guggenheim gave her the money to purchase it. Emma named her little sanctuary hopefully. She called it Bon Esprit—Good Spirits—and she installed herself to write her autobiography, Living My Life, which was published in 1931.

Lil read Living My Life cover to cover, all one thousand pages of it. Captivated by Emma when she’d heard her speak on Ibsen’s The Doll House, Lil had set about to devour every idea that Emma had put to print. The most compelling to Lil was the call to critical thought. While the communists were busy talking about the bonds of capitalism, Emma was more concerned with the bonds of the human mind. She decried the shackles that convention and uncritical thinking can place on a person, communist, capitalist, anyone. Her experience with the Bolsheviks in Russia had confirmed to her that even communists could become tyrants and that even if the means of production had been changed, the proletariat could be duped if they didn’t first free their minds.

EMMA HERALDED HER ARRIVAL in Toronto by launching a speaking tour at Hygeia Hall. I remember Lil’s face brightening when she read the news—it meant not only that she might get to meet her idol but also that Rupert MacNabb’s not-so-secret efforts to thwart the tour hadn’t fully succeeded. MacNabb, a wealthy industrialist, had somehow discovered that Emma’s comrades were scouting locations and was determined to erect as many roadblocks as he could. He called potential venues and raised the spectre of bad publicity from riots and police raids, urging them to turn Emma away. His connections and influence on the editorial board of both the Mail and Empire and the Globe ensured those newspapers ignored her visit, but he failed with the Daily Star, which wrote a favourable editorial a few days after the first lecture. And, though he couldn’t get the tour cancelled, MacNabb caused just enough frustration that he inspired a lust for payback in many people. Most did nothing about it, but it drove Lil to actions we’d later regret.

MacNabb’s opposition to Emma wasn’t personal in nature. She’d never targeted him either publicly or privately; he merely detested her for what she espoused. Lil said that unlike the general public, MacNabb probably knew that anarchism wasn’t about people setting off bombs, or mobs running wild and foaming at the mouth. That it didn’t mean looting and fornicating in public. He knew that while anarchists criticized government, they didn’t preach chaos. Lil suspected that MacNabb had actually read Emma’s ideas and that what bothered him most was her belief that we should routinely question those with power and influence. Unlike the general public, MacNabb actually had power and influence.

Nonetheless, Emma wasn’t as concerned with him as her supporters were. To her, MacNabb was a gadfly that she brushed away with a wave of the hand. Her mind was always on the bigger picture, overseas or south of the border, or on her own writing. She let others take care of the details while she prepared for her lecture.

On the opening night of the tour, my parents had another commitment, so Lil decided to go with friends. When she asked if I wanted to join, I agreed, but half-heartedly. I had a reputation to maintain as a surly seventeen-year-old, but I was secretly intrigued by Emma’s notoriety and also simply looking for something to do on a Monday night in January. In the summer, I might’ve gone out to hang around in the park smoking, but in the winter, there weren’t many places to congregate and do anything that I considered fun. My parents often suggested I have friends over, but that was out of the question. I didn’t have friends, or not the kind you’d invite home, anyway. I couldn’t imagine the guys I knew, who were this close to thugs, sitting on our living room couch while Ma served tea and Pop interrogated them. What an unmitigated disaster that would’ve been.

I went that night with Lil and her classmates. Emma’s speech was “Germany’s Tragedy and the Forces That Brought It About.” For the rise of Hitler, she blamed the heavy industrialists and the landed gentry, the Social Democrats who didn’t dare touch them, and the Communists who spent more time attacking the Social Democrats than the Hitlerites. When someone asked if the German Evangelical Church should be praised for its stand against tyranny, she lamented that they had stood by while the Jews were persecuted and only began to speak out when they were targeted themselves.

After the speech, a crowd gathered around the podium, and Lil announced that she wanted to go to the front to see if she could meet Emma. Her friends declared that she’d never get near her and that they didn’t want to wait. I felt the same way but had to hang around because she was my sister. As Lil pushed her way forward, her copy of Emma’s autobiography clutched in a sweaty palm, I followed a few steps behind. I stood on the outskirts of the gathering and craned my neck to see through. Lil hung back for a while, but then she saw an opening and shoved her way to the front.

I saw her stick out her hand. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Miss Goldman, I’ve been a very big fan of your writing for many years.”

At first, Emma was warm and gracious, shaking Lil’s hand and smiling generously. She looked her up and down and said, “Not that many years, by the look of you. You can’t be more than twenty.”

“I’m almost nineteen, but I heard you speak when I was eleven. I’d like to get more involved in the struggle and I wonder if you could tell me how I can help.”

Emma held Lil’s arm, up near the shoulder. “Read. Listen,” she said, giving Lil’s arm a shake with each word. “Then think for yourself. Question everything! The key to liberation is to first free one’s mind,” she said, tapping her own temple. Then she took Lil’s copy of Living My Life, signed it without being asked, returned it, and turned her back to greet other admirers.

Lil searched for me in the crowd. She was annoyed, and I couldn’t tell at whom. I moved towards her, but when she couldn’t locate me, she turned back to Emma and tapped her on the shoulder.

“All right, Miss Goldman,” she said. Her voice trembled, but she spoke loudly enough to interrupt others who had already started to talk. “I have a question: Is this how you treat someone who might just be a new ally? A sister in the struggle? By dismissing her with platitudes? With all due respect, I’ve been reading and thinking and questioning and trying to free my mind ever since I first heard you speak here in ’26. I’m ready for more.”

A hush came over the gathering. Emma did not turn around.

When there was no answer, Lil added, nervously, “And I’m not afraid of hard work.”

Emma remained with her back to her for a few more seconds. Then, slowly, she turned around, fixed Lil in the eye, squinting through her round spectacles, and brushed aside a strand of grey hair. She was not smiling this time.

“What is your name, dear?” she asked. The people around them shifted about, glancing to the side, maybe checking out the nearest exit.

“Lillian Wolfman, Miss Goldman,” Lil said, more feebly than her initial volley.

“Miss Wolfman, hard work is one thing, but courage is in short supply, and I can see you have that in spades. Or at the very least, you have chutzpah, and for now, that will do.”

Lil’s face flushed. “Yes, Miss Goldman. Thank you.”

Emma took a pencil from behind her ear and wrote something down on a piece of paper she fished out of the pocket in her cardigan. “Come to this meeting. I am raising money for the anarchists being forced to flee repression in Germany, but shortly thereafter, I will be leaving Toronto for the United States. They have finally let me back in, if only for a few months. We need people to carry on the fundraising while I am gone.”

“Yes, Miss Goldman, I’ll be there. You can count on me.”

“Call me Emma.”

“In that case, you can call me Lil,” she said, braver than she’d ever felt, I’m sure.

At that, Emma gave an explosive cackle, and said, “All right then, Lil. You and I are going to get along just fine.”

Lil rushed back to find me and dragged me out of Hygeia Hall, talking incessantly all the way. You’d have thought she’d seen the Messiah; that was how elated she was. We went straight home, and Lil ran ahead. She burst through the door to tell our parents about her encounter, but shortly into her story realized that Ma’s eyes were red and she was waiting for Lil to stop talking.

It was then that we noticed Bessie sitting in the living room, weeping in Pop’s arms.

When you greet the morning like any other, rubbing sleep from yours eyes, it’s hard to imagine that a day can flip over like that. Like a dog lying on its curved back, belly up, tongue out, paws slack, suddenly disturbed and leaping to its feet. One dog will flip over and be tail-wagging happy. The other, hackles raised. It was like that the day Lil met Emma and Bessie lost her new husband. Same day, two very different dogs leaping up at them.

Ma told us the awful news: Bessie’s Irv had been killed in an accident. He was running to catch the trolley, crossing the street in front of it, and he slipped on a patch of ice. The trolley conductor tried to stop, but the wheels locked and slid, just enough to crush him under the front bumper.

The shiva lasted all week and was held at Irv’s parents’ house, a few blocks over on Bathurst Street. Bessie moved home. She spent most of the shiva with her face in Lil’s shoulder. Lil held her close, patting her back, taking handkerchiefs from others and pressing them against Bessie’s nose, warding off acquaintances who seemed only to want to gouge out a piece of Bessie’s grief and take it home clutched to their chests. One girl made it through the protective wall. She was small and fair-skinned, with a pretty face and a kind smile. Instead of blocking her, Lil urged her forward. She sat down beside Bessie and put her arm over her shoulder, then drew a finger across her own bangs, uncovering a port wine stain on her forehead, just above her right eye. Its ruddy roughness mesmerized me for a moment, not to mention that it was sticking out there for all to see. Did she mean to uncover it, or was she so preoccupied with Bessie’s grief that she’d forgotten she had it? I’d never seen a girl with a facial disfigurement before and wished I could’ve asked her about it, but that was impossible. A few minutes later, she made her apologies and left. I was too embarrassed to ask Lil her name.

Though Lil carried on protecting Bessie, by the third night of the shiva her face began to betray an uneasiness, a slight embarrassment. I thought it was because she was so unused to consoling anyone, especially her older sister. I’d never seen Lil be so tender before, so protective. When people tried to come to speak to Bessie, Lil continued to wave them away, and Ma, Pop, and Irv’s father took them aside to receive their condolences.

That night, after the prayers had been said, Lil waited until our parents were in the other room, then dislodged Bessie from her shoulder, held her face in her palms, and said, “I have to go out for a little while, Bessie; I’ll be back later.”

“What? Where are you going?”

“There’s a meeting I promised someone I’d go to.” Her eyes flickered once in my direction. It was then that I understood. What I’d mistaken for uneasiness was really just impatience. Lil had promised Emma she’d attend that fundraising meeting.

“You’re going to one of your political meetings? Lil, this is Irv’s shiva!” She’d raised her voice a little and people turned to look.

“I have to, Bessie. I made a promise. I’ll be back as soon as it’s over.” Then she turned and quickly left before Bessie could protest further and before our parents had a chance to stop her.

The comfort Lil provided that week apparently receded in Bessie’s memory. As an older woman, she would tell people of how Lil chose politics over family. Everyone had come to expect such behaviour of Lil, she said. “Running out on me in my darkest hour to go to a meeting was only one instance of my sister’s topsy-turvy priorities.”

This one-sided version of those events lived on because it elicited no protest from Lil. She took her beating again and again. “That was only the first of many mistakes,” she’d admit.

After I met with the prison classification board, I assumed I’d be transferred immediately to Collins Bay, given that its chief keeper was present at my interview, but instead I spent the first eight months in the main jail, Kingston Pen. Also, despite the talk of construction work and my request for the carpentry shop, I was sent to work on the farm. Every morning, a whole crew of us were marched through town escorted by guards. Townspeople would clear the roads to let us pass. Women stood on the sidewalks and held their children close, but the men largely walked on without stopping. Once we’d reached the outskirts of Kingston and arrived at the fields, which were, in actual fact, right by Collins Bay, we’d work from eight in the morning until five at night with a half-hour lunch break.

They operated the farm to provide produce for the two prisons—to reduce their operating costs. We cultivated hay, oats, buckwheat, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions, and tomatoes. The crops all ended up in prisoners’ mess kits or in the bellies of the horses they kept for use by the guards and in the farm work itself. When Ma came to visit me in August and found out they were teaching me to be a farmer, she wept, remembering her back-breaking labour as a girl in New Liskeard.

The field supervisor was Mr. Corey, an older man with a leathery face and a raspy voice. Overseer Jagninski had hired him from the Guelph Prison Farm, where Mr. Corey had worked for twenty years, ever since the bank had fore-closed on him and appropriated his family’s land. They said his wife left him for a daguerreotype operator in Toronto, taking their son with her. Mr. Corey didn’t speak much, but he was nice enough to those of us who worked hard.

I didn’t know a thing about farming, but I learned fast. I’d missed planting season, but I was put to work with the others tending the fields or looking after the animals through the summer until the harvest. When it came time to pull in the crops, the most satisfying were the onions, potatoes, and cabbage, because they were weighty and it felt like you’d really grown something.

Even though the work was exhausting, I was glad to be outdoors. It would’ve been entirely bearable had there not been a couple of fellows who decided that I was an easy mark. They were the sort who had bitterness and cruelty sewn up inside of them, who were overstuffed with it. I knew, when occasionally they lapsed into periods of mercy, that nastiness would soon push out through the seams. The guards rarely did anything, and out there in the fields, Mr. Corey’s attention was pulled in too many directions.

The worst offender was Red Humphries, a guy even uglier than me, only he didn’t recognize it. He had no deformities, but his face was pocked and puffy and his ears stuck out farther than mine. He had a pear-shaped body on which the hard work in the fields had no effect whatsoever, but he was about six foot two and, because of his sheer bulk, I wasn’t anxious to tangle with him. His red hair was shaved close (like all of us), revealing a lumpy skull, which I suspected came from being dropped on his head a few too many times.