Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/321

Rh my sister, whom the doctors had ordered abroad for a cure. My mother knew that her second child, her son, was also ill—ill of soul from longing and from struggling with his thoughts, and she consequently could not go away for an extended trip without seeing him and saying good-bye to him. She came for one day only, after having spent twelve in the train and being compelled to leave the same night to recommence the long journey across all of Asiatic and European Russia.

I spent the whole day with her, for, owing to the leniency of the Commandant, I was allowed to take her to my cell. When she entered it, she could not master her feelings and wept with uncontrolled and deep emotion, as only mothers can weep. Finally her trembling lips formed the words:

"And why? Why?"

Ah, mother, I could not at that time explain to you why two of the best years of my life were taken from me, because I myself did not then know and did not understand. I calmed her as I could and as I best knew how.

She shared with me our prison dinner, to which I added tomatoes and other vegetables from our garden. I gave her tea and told her all about the course of the Revolution and about the life of the prisons, trying to make clear to her that this period was not without very definite profit to me, as I strove much morally and completed many pieces of work which had been held in abeyance under the pressure of normal life and might never have otherwise been finished. I showed her my new literary and scientific manuscripts and sketched to her all my plans for the future.

My mother listened to me but busied herself the whole time about my cell, making it look as attractive as she