Читать книгу Storm in My Heart - Helene Minkin - Страница 7

My Father, My Sister, Me, and Emma Goldman

In 1888, that is about forty-four years ago, a young man arrived in America with two almost-grown daughters. The elder of the girls was sixteen and the younger fifteen. The elder was named Anna Minkin, the younger Helena Minkin.13 I am the Helena Minkin about whom Emma Goldman wrote in her book. I am now a woman approaching sixty. My whole life, from its beginning to now, seems to me like a bad dream. This bad dream began a long time ago already, and yet…

Often when I sit in my room in the attic and look back on my life, I cannot remember everything that I have gone through up until now, but I can certainly feel it, sense it, and see it again. I can see clearly before my eyes every corner where the many dramas and tragedies of my life and of the lives of those near and dear to me took place. The whole procession marches before my eyes like a circus parade. Oh how bitter, painful, and hateful many of those things were! It is very difficult for me to express everything I have endured in my life. I have often had the desire to write everything down before I leave this beautiful world and then I ask myself “to what end?” Who would understand me and who would benefit from it? And also, I didn’t want to tear open my wounds and let the blood flow again.

But now, when the famous Emma Goldman has come out with her book, in which she allowed herself to drag in other people and offer incorrect facts in an often wholly unsympathetic and partisan light, I feel it is my duty to not be silent and to reveal the other side of the story. Why wasn’t Emma satisfied with her own life experiences? Why drag in other people who had the misfortune to come into contact with her and play a part in her life? Why does she write whatever her heart wants about these people? Her heart does not want to write the truth. It suits her better to portray these people in an unflattering light, while she portrays herself in a pleasing one. And she can feel confident in her depictions, since some of the people about whom she writes are no longer among the living, and they cannot defend themselves. For example, my father, whom she slanders, is no longer living.14 Most, whom she drags from his heights and through the mud of her story—he is also no longer living. And me: she thinks that I am already as good as dead; but I have not yet died. She writes that my sister was sickly. But Emma knows well that this is not true, and that my sister was a healthy, blossoming, developing girl when they first met. Emma knows that it is her evil conscience that speaks when she says that my sister was sickly.15 Yes, Emma knows very well that it’s because of her that my sister became sick and suffered throughout her life, ultimately passing away while still very young. I was the sick, pale, undeveloped one when we met. I suffered from weltschmerz16 and headaches, while my sister was filled with a lust for life.

Intersection of Norfolk and Hester Street, Lower East Side, New York, 1898.

(Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, www.zeno.org)

When I first met Emma, in Sachs’ restaurant (where the Jewish anarchists used to gather), I lived in a small two-room flat with my father and sister.17 Anna had taught herself how to make clothes and cut material soon after we arrived in America. Emma told us that she was a garment-maker, so she and my sister decided to go into business for themselves. My father and I were happy that my sister wouldn’t have to go to work in a shop, and since Emma had just arrived from Rochester and didn’t have anywhere to stay, we took her into our home.18 My father moved in with a neighbor in order to make room for her. Emma brought her sewing machine, and she and my sister began to make clothing.

My father would visit us every day. I think it’s extremely hateful of Emma to say that my father didn’t look at my sister with the eyes of a father, but rather as a man looks at his wife, and that he hated me, his youngest daughter. My father loved my sister more than he loved me, that’s true, but it’s absolutely disgusting and untrue to say that his love for my sister was sinful or sexual, and that he hated me. My sister was the firstborn: a beautiful, healthy, cultivated girl with a sweet and pleasing voice; she would always sing so sweetly and delightfully. My father himself had a very fine voice and he sang beautifully.19 It is therefore no wonder that he loved his elder daughter and looked at her with fondness and love. Only Emma could interpret my father’s feelings toward my sister negatively, as she did in her book.

I recall that when I was very young, I used to listen to how my father and sister sang so beautifully. I loved them both so much because of it. Deep in my heart I love their singing, even to this very day. I myself cannot sing because I am hoarse. As a young child I caught a very bad cold, and at that time science in general was not very advanced and medicine was also very backward. The doctors knew very little about how to save a child from a chronic cold, and parents didn’t know how dangerous it was to ignore a cold. I fell victim to this general ignorance and indifference and was left with chronic bronchitis and hoarseness, as well as a strong love for singing and for listening to singers. In my soul, I am forever singing with my father and sister, so I would cry in silence about not being able to sing with them.

I remember certain events when my sister and I were both grown women, just after our time in the commune (when I say “commune,” I mean the time when Emma, Berkman, “Fedya,” and I lived together in one house—I will elaborate on this later).20 I felt anxious, bitter, and upset at that time. I used to ask my sister to sit in the rocking chair, and I would turn down the gas, sit on the ground, and lay my head in her lap as she sang quietly, sweetly, and sadly the songs that we both loved so much—songs of the Russian revolutionary movement, the songs of the Russian prisons, the songs of the revolutionaries who had been sent to Siberia, songs from the heart and soul. In my heart, I would quietly sing with her, and cry, and in doing so I’d have much spiritual enjoyment. It’s therefore no wonder that my father had so much love for my sister, for I myself liked my sister better than I liked myself at the time.

Emma Goldman in 1892.

(Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis [Amsterdam])

It was also not necessary for Emma to say that my father didn’t want to work. If Emma didn’t want to explain, or couldn’t psychologically, that he was helpless because of the education he received and because of the circumstances in which he lived, she didn’t have to bring it up. It was completely unnecessary to include it in her memoirs. I’d like to dwell more extensively on my sister and her illness. But first, I must go back and tell you in detail about the commune, which really led to Anna’s illness.

When Emma Goldman lived with us and sewed clothes with my sister, we were all good friends—we even used to go to meetings together. During that time, I worked in a corset factory and was a very frail girl. Our financial situation was not very good; we simply couldn’t support ourselves well. I used to come home from work crushed and exhausted, and very rarely would I find supper. Tailoring brought in very little. But all of this didn’t trouble me much; my spirit was occupied entirely with other things.

Johann Most, 1890s.

(Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan Library)

My Acquaintance with Most

Even before Emma came into our lives, I was familiar with Johann Most—I had read a short excerpt of his life-story—and had attended his meetings.21 The gentlemen at Sachs’ restaurant had told me a few things about Most’s life, and once he had even spoken to me. That was soon after I had arrived in America, shortly after Chicago’s terrible Haymarket tragedy, where five anarchists were hanged and three imprisoned with no evidence of their guilt.22 This isn’t the right place to take up that story—enough has been written about it. I mention this incident in the American labor movement, in passing, in order to explain how I got involved in the movement, and how I would meet Most.

I began to read short pamphlets about the movement and also about its patriarch—the father of the anarchist movement in America, Johann Most—and I would go see him and hear his lectures. From the beginning, Most made a very good impression on me, though he wasn’t very attractive, with a disfigured face. I already knew about his bodily defects, and I didn’t much mind his physical appearance. I immediately noticed his big blue eyes, which looked to me like two great, beautiful stars in the sky. In my eyes, Most looked like the crucified Jesus with a crown of thorns on his head. He spoke German, and though I didn’t understand much German at the time, I understood enough of his speech to be extremely enthusiastic. I took off my hat and listened to him with my entire soul. He noticed me, the little figure and her enthusiasm. I thought to myself: the Messiah who will save the suffering humanity has arrived.

One time Most finished a speech, descended from the platform and started to come my way. I was shocked and overwhelmed when he stopped beside me, Helene Minkin! I wasn’t used to people stopping by or taking an interest in me.

“Well, little girl, did you understand my speech?” he asked. I didn’t know what he wanted with me, and my knees began to shake.

“Oh, a little bit,” I answered. “I don’t understand enough German.”

He smiled at me and said: “Oh, it will come. I’ll teach you German and help you.”

A whole group of gentlemen had gathered around us. They were astonished to hear what was said, and smiled. I was in seventh heaven. My feet didn’t touch the ground on the walk home, and from then on, with great diligence, I studied the “worker question,” the movement, and the bitter struggle between capital and labor. Always hovering before my eyes was the image of Johann Most with his big sparkling blue eyes and his enthusiastic voice, which thundered and calmed at the same time. In this mood, I became very friendly with Emma Goldman, especially when I found out that she was also interested in the “worker question.”

Emma and Her New Friends

At that time, Emma had become acquainted with Alexander Berkman and Fedya, who was a painter (his name was actually totally different, but since Emma didn’t call him by his real name in Living My Life, I’ll use the name she did). Emma also got to know Most. Since I was short of stature, everyone considered me a child. I was actually younger than them by several years, and I looked even younger than I was.

Soon after, Emma, Berkman, and Fedya became close friends and established a commune. At that time, my sister Anna and I lived in a furnished room and worked. We were under a lot of pressure, financially, since Anna often didn’t have work, and I didn’t earn enough and often didn’t have work either. I was sick and overworked much of the time. I lived poorly, didn’t eat enough and also didn’t sleep enough, because after work I would attend meetings until late at night. So I was overtired, overexcited, and couldn’t sleep. I aspired to take on a more active role in the movement; I wanted to give my life meaning. In general, I was very nervous, restless, and unhappy with my life—with everything and everyone. Often when I hadn’t gone to a meeting and my sister wasn’t home, I felt what is called in English “blue”—kaletutne, in simple Yiddish. I would throw myself on the bed and cry. Just like that, I’d cry for no a reason.

My sister was preoccupied with herself at that time: she belonged to a choir and a drama club, and she was out every evening. I wasn’t interested in any of this, because I couldn’t sing, and I wasn’t interested in joining the drama club because I was very shy. I was often too tired to read, rarely understood and didn’t have anyone to help me understand what I did read. I wasn’t used to spending time with people, and I felt very insecure. I didn’t speak with Most after that first evening since I avoided him, not wanting him to think that I was throwing myself at him.

Once, when I was alone in my room reading on the bed and crying, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman came in (they would often visit us and this strengthened our friendship and acquaintance). Emma sat down beside me and took me in her soft, warm, maternal arms.

“What is it with you, Estherke, my dear child?” I felt as if I were lying in the arms of a devoted mother. I clung to her tightly and cried some more. I answered that I didn’t know why I was crying and felt so depressed. I didn’t enjoy life; it was so sad to live in this world.

Emma kissed and stroked me as one does a sick child and, with a smile, she glanced at Berkman who answered with a cynical smile. Naturally, I didn’t understand his smile at that time, but later, much later, I began to.

I went to a café with them, where we met other folks. We spoke about the movement, about Johann Most, and I became a little livelier. Afterwards, we went back to their commune. Emma suggested that I live with them in the commune and work in the movement with them.

There was always something to be done for the movement: helping to arrange meetings, passing out pamphlets, selling literature. I joined them in the anarchist commune.

The Commune

The commune was on 13th Street. We had three rooms: a bedroom, where Emma and I slept; a living room, where Berkman and Fedya slept on a sofa bed; and a kitchen.23 I worked at a corset factory, and each week gave Emma an envelope with my wages. Berkman also worked (I no longer remember what he did, but he didn’t earn much). From time to time, though not often, Fedya would sell one of his paintings. Emma looked after the house, though of course, we all helped with the housework. At night we would wash the dishes, do the shopping, and sometimes I would also help with the laundry, which I had never done before until Emma taught me how to rinse and hang it up on the line.

My sister Anna wasn’t happy that I had gone to live in the commune because I was still so young; she feared that it would have a negative impact on me and affect my character. But I didn’t need anyone to protect me because I was blind to everything except the interests of the movement. At that time, I read a lot, and Most would bring books to us at the commune. I would read them and often talk with him about them and he would help me with things I didn’t understand.

Johann Most and Emma Goldman

I knew that Emma and Most were intimate with each other, but it didn’t interest me much, although some things were not very clear to me. About certain things I asked myself: is this right, is this good and moral? And I would answer myself that I wasn’t yet able to understand and judge. Mainly I didn’t want to think that Most would do something that wasn’t appropriate. He was still the great Johann Most, who had experienced so much in his life, had sacrificed so much for his ideal, and spent so many years in different jails—if he loved Emma and she afforded him a little joy in his difficult and lonely life, whose business was that?

I didn’t think she loved him as a wife loves a husband to whom she devotes herself, but I was convinced that Most was certainly dear enough to her that she could make his life a little happier, could beautify his bitter and grueling struggle. I felt towards him as a little girl feels towards her uncle, and I was happy that Emma was enough to make him happy. I didn’t judge her, because I sought and found the good in their behavior. I never felt that I should block their way or disturb them when they wanted to be alone. And so time went on. I was never really able to understand this kind of relationship between a man and a woman, but I didn’t want to judge them.

I couldn’t quite understand Berkman and Fedya. Sometimes I actually thought that the three of them (including Emma) were just comrades. When I arrived at their commune, Emma said that the world must be shown that men and women can live together respectably, even when… When Most would come over, he would usually find me sitting in a corner reading or writing. Aside from saying hello, I didn’t socialize with them. When the other “boys” weren’t at home, Emma and Most would often go to another room or out somewhere together.

One time, Most approached me and had a look at what I was writing. It was in Russian, about my childhood and the period after my mother’s death, what I experienced when we had to leave our home and live with our grandmother and grandfather. I also wrote about what I’d read in the banned booklets and pamphlets from the Russian underground movement and those from the students who gave their lives for the people, for which they were sent to Siberia or to live in misery in Russian prisons. Most couldn’t read Russian, and asked me what I was writing, so I translated it into German for him. It was written like a novel. I knew that I couldn’t write properly, and that I didn’t have enough [training?] or technical knowledge. But some kind of internal force urged me to record what was in my memory and my heart.

“Miss, you have talent,” Most said. “You can achieve something with your writing, and I’ll help you. Of course,” he went on, “you can’t read your own stories aloud, because your voice is too weak, but you must write.”

And Emma said to me: “Words drop from your lips like pearls. Continue reading, not everyone has to be a public speaker; you can be a writer.” I was overjoyed. I hoped there would come a time when my life would have meaning and a goal, and it seemed like I would succeed in my desires and efforts.

After having lived in the commune for some time, I began to understand that Berkman and Fedya were both Emma’s lovers. In my innocence, I couldn’t even understand how this was possible. Emma didn’t deny it and explained that great individuals with large, open hearts and broad life experience have the right to this kind of life. The average, insignificant individual with his small, narrow heart and small soul can’t understand it.

So I considered this and thought that maybe she was right. And odds were that I was one of the little people with their small, narrow hearts and souls, because I wasn’t drawn to this sort of life. I didn’t long for it. And I decided that, because of that, I didn’t have the right to judge. They lived as they liked, and they weren’t doing anyone any harm. Perhaps it was truly possible to love two people at the same time. I thought to myself that if a woman can love two men, and a man can love two women, it’s also possible that two men can be in love with the same woman without being jealous, without any hard feelings for each other.

When I brought these ideas to Emma, she said, “Yes, it’s all possible, but not for regular people,” only for those like Sasha “Alexander,” Fedya, and herself. My whole disposition was shaken; I began to feel restless, irritated, and unhappy. It was good that I didn’t have too much time to think about the issue, which I really couldn’t comprehend.

I wasn’t physically strong, and I was working at the sewing machine all day, helping out at home in the evening, going to meetings, reading and writing, and sometimes sewing and mending because there wasn’t enough money for new clothes. With all that, I was too tired to think about the whole issue. It occurred to me: perhaps Yekaterina, the great Russian czarina,24 was one of these great people, because, as history tells, she had whole regiments, officers and soldiers, as lovers.

I wanted to ask Emma if someone can love three people or even more at a time, but I told myself that I mustn’t ask. She’d just find a way to explain it to me so that she turned out to be right. So I asked myself, why does it bother me? Whom does it hurt? A great writer once said—I can no longer remember who it was—take no example from my deeds, only from my words. Emma Goldman worked on behalf of the movement and the masses, and for the ideal that was dear to me. She had the talent of speech and I, who so badly wanted to serve my ideal, didn’t have the gifts. So I was happy for what Emma did for me.

Emma, Alexander Berkman, and Fedya—How I Understood Them at That Time

It’s very difficult for me to recall now what kind of impression Emma Goldman, Sasha Berkman, and Fedya made on me some forty years ago. At that time I was a young girl; I barely understood the world, and even less so people.

However, I’ll try to remember. As I mentioned earlier, I first became acquainted with Emma in Sachs’ restaurant, where the Jewish anarchists used to congregate. In my eyes, Emma was not very different physically than many other women her age.25 In terms of appearance, she wasn’t unattractive. I liked her a lot, with her beautiful blond hair—almost like gold—her beautiful blue eyes, and her pleasant, friendly smile. She was short and heavyset. There was only one thing about her looks I didn’t like: the corners of her mouth were slightly turned down. She was very friendly towards me, and I quickly became attached to her.

During the time we lived together in our two-room flat, where she and my sister Anna sewed clothes (when they had sewing work), I was rarely at home because I was working in the corset factory. At Sachs’ restaurant, Emma had gotten to know Sasha (Berkman), and through her, Anna and I also became acquainted with him. Berkman and Emma were soon close friends, but I rarely saw him, because I wasn’t home during the day and we’d all go to meetings in the evening. There, we as good as disappeared from each other, because we were all preoccupied with the speakers.

Emma and Berkman were always together, and my sister Anna was often with them, so I would often find myself alone at meetings. But we’d all go home together, and Emma would draw me close to her, like an older sister would a much younger one. In general, they related to me like a young child. This hurt my feelings, so I pulled away from them a bit.

At that time I didn’t find Berkman very different from the other young people I knew, though I must say that he was very serious when he’d speak about our ideal and the movement. Even then, he was advocating that one must relinquish body and soul for the ideal and for humanity, and be ready to make the greatest sacrifices. I was in complete agreement; I felt the same.

Alexander (Sasha) Berkman around 1892.

(Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan Library)

However, I couldn’t imagine then that Berkman would actually be ready to do something that demanded a huge sacrifice on his part. I must admit that, as I said earlier, as a fifteen-year-old I generally didn’t understand people and life. Later I learned that I’d been mistaken in my perception of Berkman, and quite the opposite was true. No, I couldn’t then imagine that this pale, lean young man with the ever-present sarcastic smile on his thick lips, would soon play such a huge role in our struggle; that he would be so courageous and so ready to make the greatest sacrifice—his young life. That he didn’t pay with his life for shooting steel magnate Henry Clay Frick during the historic Homestead, Pennsylvania strike doesn’t matter: he sacrificed his life.

My interactions with Berkman were friendly, but also very cold and restrained. Something of a wall stood between me and all three of them: Berkman, Emma, and Fedya. I still don’t know who put up this wall. Perhaps I did it myself.

Fedya was also very serious in his beliefs, and gave the impression that he was ready to do anything for his ideal. Emma used to call Fedya “Rakhmetov,”26 which was the name of the hero in Chernyshevsky’s famous novel, What Is To Be Done? The character, Rakhmetov, was a Russian nihilist with a strong, heroic character. I couldn’t see this kind of heroism in Fedya, but Emma had such a strong influence on me that I began to see it. Fedya was quiet, and his intense, near-sighted eyes made him seem a strange person who kept his ideas inside and who thought a lot more than he spoke. I imagined that he was thinking about the great deeds he was ready to do with the same heroism as the Russian nihilists, but it now occurs to me that he was more of an artist than an idealist. I think that he was more interested in Emma the woman than in Emma the idealist who was a strong influence on him. It turned out that he really wasn’t built from the same stuff as Berkman, since at the first opportunity, he turned away from the movement and surrendered himself solely to his art—his painting—and to his private family life.

Both Fedya and Sasha were students of the Russian gymnasium, children of more-or-less aristocratic parents. The free spirit of the American republic, which reached across the ocean, all the way to despotic Russia, drew them here like it did so many other educated young men and women during the great wave of immigration.

• •

I’ll now return to our commune. As the reader already knows, we, that is, Emma, Sasha, Fedya, and I, founded the commune. We lived according to the principles of communism—as we at that time understood communism, of course. Each of us contributed to the commune as much as he or she could. I worked in the corset factory and brought my earnings to the commune, Berkman worked and brought in what he made, Fedya earned very little because he rarely sold a painting, but he also contributed what little he earned. Emma ran the house because she was a much better “housewife” than the rest of us. She had already been married and ran a household with her husband in Rochester.

The bond between Emma and Most grew with each day. He recognized that she had the talent of speech and took it upon himself to help Emma develop as a speaker. He gave her many opportunities to participate in discussions, as well as the necessary books, so she was very busy with reading and studying. The rest of us at the commune saw that she needed to have more time, so we helped her with a lot of the housework. I was overjoyed that Emma was going to speak to the people; she would help the movement in the greatest, most important way. I didn’t feel that I had the talent of speech, so I was happy that others would do what I was incapable of doing. Thus was life in our first New York commune on 13th Street.