“In the name of God, Amen!
“To my son:
“You are a little less than two years old; I, your father, am dying. I
shall be dead before your birthday. That will be the 6th Cheshvan. It
is now the 2nd Ellul The physician gives me till some time in Tishri
to keep possession of my faculties. I am dying before my time. I
have something yet to accomplish in this world. has willed that it be
accomplished. He has willed that you accomplish it in my stead. I am in
my bed as I write this, in the bed from which I shall not rise again.
Through the open door of my room I can hear you crowing in your
nurse’s arms. Ah, would that you could understand by word of mouth
from me now, what I am compelled to write. There is so much that a man
can not but forget to put down, when he is writing. Yet will illumine my
mind and strengthen my trembling fingers. It will not allow me to forget
any thing that is essential. When this is completed, I shall put it into
safe hands, that it may be delivered to you at the proper time. I have
no fear. I am sure it will reach you. It will reach you sooner or later,
though all men conspire to the contrary. has promised it. He will render
this writing indelible, this paper indestructible. He will guide this
to you, even as He guides the river to the sea, the star to the zenith.
Blessed be the name of forever.
“My son, before you read further, cover your head and pray. Pray to
for strength. Pray that the will of your father may be done. Pray that
you may be directed aright for the fulfillment of this errand of justice
with which I charge you.
“You have prayed. I also have laid aside my pen for a moment, and,
summoning your nurse to bring you to my bedside, have prayed with my
hand upon your head. will be with you as you read. Read on.
“My son, you do not, you will never know your mother. You do not love
her; you hear not the sound of her voice; it is forbidden you to gaze
into the lustrous depths of her eyes. Ah, my son, you little guess how
much you lost when you lost your mother. But you must learn the truth.
“Your mother was younger than I by seven years. I am thirty. Your
mother would be three-and-twenty had she lived. She was nineteen when I
married her. It was in Savannah, Georgia, going on five years ago. Ah,
my Ernest, I can not tell you how beautiful your mother appeared to me
when I saw her first. I can not tell you with what great love I loved
her. Suppose that you had never seen a stone more precious than a pebble
such as may be picked up in our back garden, and that all at once a
diamond were shown to you, a diamond of the purest water: would you
not distrust your eyes, crying, ‘Ah, so fine, so wonderful! Can it
be?—So was it when I saw your mother. I had seen pebbles innumerable,
ay, and mock diamonds too. She was the first true diamond I had ever
seen. I loved her at the first glance.—How long, after the sun
has risen, does it take the waters of the earth to sparkle with the
sunlight? So long it took my heart to love, after my eyes for the first
time had met your mother’s. But how much I loved her, how every drop
of my life was sucked up and absorbed into my love of her, it would be
useless for me to try to make you understand.
“And yet, loving her as I did, I hesitated to bespeak her for my wife.
Why?
“In my eighteenth year my own father—your grandfather, of holy
memory—had died. On his death-bed he called me to him. He said:
‘When you have become a man you will meet many women. To one of them
your heart will go out in love. You will desire her for your wife. But I
say to you here on my death-bed, beware! Do not marry, though your love
be greater than your life.
“‘In the fourth generation back of me our ancestor was betrayed by
the wife of his choice. So great was his hatred of her on this account,
that he wished his seed, contaminated as it was by having taken root in
her womb, to become extinct. Therefore he forbade his son to marry. And
to this prohibition he attached a penalty.
“If, in defiance of his wish, his son should take unto himself a
woman, then should he too taste the bitterness of infidelity within the
household, then should he too be betrayed and dishonored by his
wife. And this penalty he made to extend to the seventh and eighth
generations. Whosoever of his progeny should enter into the wedded state
should enter by the same step into the antechamber of hell.
“‘But his son laughed as he listened; and within two years he was
married. But within two years also the laughter froze upon his lips. For
behold, the curse of his father had come to pass!
“‘Thus ever since. Each of our ancestors, despite his father’s
caution, has taken a wife. He has been betrayed and dishonored by her
even as I have been betrayed and dishonored by your mother. He has
repeated to his own son the family malediction even as I am now
repeating it to you.—Let that malediction then go down into the grave
with me. Do not marry, as you wish for peace now and hereafter.’
“It was in this wise that on his death-bed my father had spoken to me.
I remembered his words when I found that I had begun to love a woman.
It was for this reason that I hesitated to ask your mother to become my
wife.
“Ah, but, my son, of what avail is hesitation at such a moment?—when
you are gazing into the eyes of the woman you love? With sails set and
a strong wind behind it, can the ship hesitate to speed across the sea?
Thrust into a bed of live coals, can the wood hesitate to kindle and
burn? With the sun beating hot upon the earth above it, can the seed
hesitate to sprout and send forth rootlets? How long then could I, with
the light of your mother’s face shining upon my pathway, how long
could I hesitate to say, ‘I love you. Be my wife’.—We were
married.
“You, my son, will never know how happy it is possible for a man to
be. A woman such as your mother is born only once in all time. You will
never meet with her like. You will never know the supreme joy of having
her for your wife. Her breath was sweeter than the fragrance of the
sweetest flower. The song of the nightingale was less musical than her
simplest word. All the light of heaven was eclipsed by the light that
glowed far down in her eyes. Her presence at my side was a foretaste of
paradise. Only to take her hand into my own and stroke its warm, satiny
skin, was an ecstasy which I can not describe, which I can not remember
even at this extreme moment without a quickening of the pulse. For
three, yes, for four years after our marriage we were so happy that we
cried each morning and each evening at our prayers, ‘Lord, what have
we done to merit such happiness?’—I, my son, laughed as I recalled
the dying words of my father. ‘The family curse in my case,’ I
said, ‘has gone astray. I have no fear.’—Alas! I took too much for
granted. I congratulated myself too soon. Our happiness was doomed to be
burst like a bubble at a touch. The family curse had perhaps gone astray
for a little while: it was bound to find its way back before the end.
The will of our ancestor could not be thwarted.
“The first three years of our married life we passed at Savannah,
dwelling with the parents of your mother. There you were born—as it
seemed, in order to consummate and seal with the seal of our perfect
joy. Then, when you were still but three months old, it became necessary
that I should return and take up my residence again in New York. We were
not sorry to come to New York.
“Nicholas had been my closest friend for many years. Boys together at
Breslau, we had crossed the sea together, and had started our new life
together here in America. Before our wedding I had described Nicholas to
your mother, saying, ‘Him also must you love;’ and to Nicholas I had
written, bidding him include my wife in his love of me.—This was
why we were not sorry to leave Savannah and come to New York:
because Nicholas was here, because we wanted to be near to our best
friend.—Nicholas met us as we disembarked from the sailing vessel that
had brought us hither. It made my heart warm to greet my old comrade and
to present to him my wife and my son.
“I was a true friend to Nicholas. After your mother and you, he was
first in my heart. I would have shared with him my last drop of water,
my last crumb of bread; and he, I believed, would have done the same by
me. My purse was always open for Nicholas to put in his hand and take
out what he would, even to the last penny. I thought Nicholas was pure
gold. I trusted him as I trusted myself. I said to your mother, ‘No
evil can betide you so long as Nicholas is alive. If any thing should
happen to me, in him you will have a brother, in him our Ernest will
have a second father.’ It gave me a sense of perfect security, made
me feel that the strength of my own right arm was doubled, the fact that
Nicholas was my friend.
“Good. After my return to New York the intimacy between Nicholas and
myself increased. He was constantly at our house. We were always glad
to see him. A place was always laid for him at our table; it made our
hearts light to have him with us, so bright, so gay, withal so good,
so sterling, such a trusty friend was he. I delighted to witness the
friendship that rapidly sprang up between your mother and Nicholas. He
entertained her, told her stories, made her laugh.—She would often
exclaim, ‘Dear, good Nicholas! What should we do without him?’ I
replied, ‘That is right. Let him be next to your son and your husband
in your affection.’ I do not think it is common for one man to love
another as I loved Nicholas.
“But after we had been in New York a little more than two months,
your mother’s manner toward Nicholas began to change. She was cold
and formal to him; when he would arrive, instead of running up with
outstretched hands and crying, ‘Ah, it is you!’ she would courtesy
to him and say without smiling, ‘How do you do?’—She laughed no
more at his stories, she appeared to avoid him when she could; when she
could not, she was silent and morose. I could see no reason for this.
I was pained. I said, ‘Bertha, why do you behave so toward our best
friend?’ Your mother pretended not to understand. ‘Don’t deny
it,’ I insisted. ‘You are as distant, as polite to him, as if he
were a mere acquaintance.’ Your mother answered, ‘I am sorry to
distress you. I don’t know what you mean. I was not aware that I
had been discourteous to your friend.’—’Has Nicholas done any
thing?’ I asked.—’No, he has done nothing.’—I blamed your
mother severely. I besought her to subdue what I took for her caprice.
Yet every day her conduct toward Nicholas grew colder and more formal.
Every day I reproved her more and more earnestly. This was the nearest
approach to a quarrel that your mother and I had ever had. It grieved me
deeply that she should adopt such a manner toward my friend. I was all
the more cordial to him in consequence. I hoped that he would not notice
the turn affairs had taken.
“Thus till almost a year ago. You lacked but a fortnight of being one
year old.
“Business had kept me down town till late. At last I made up my
mind that I should not be able to go home at all that night. So I told
Nicholas to visit Bertha and let her know. ‘Spend the evening with
her,’ I said. ‘Explain how it is that I am compelled to remain here.
Tell her that I will come home to breakfast. Be sure to entertain her. I
don’t want to think of her as lonesome.’
“Next morning I hurried home. I stole softly into the house, to
surprise your mother. Ah, my son, my son, I need not give you the
details.—The house was empty. There was a brief letter from your
mother. As I read it, my head swam, a mortal weakness overpowered me, I
sank in a swoon upon the floor.
“When I recovered from my swoon, I was lying undressed in bed. There
were people round about. I remembered every thing. What! I was lying
idle in bed, and Nicholas still alive? I started up to be upon his
track. I fell back, impotent. ‘What has befallen me?’ I asked. I was
informed that I had had a hemorrhage of the lungs.
“I need not tell you what I suffered. My suffering was great in
proportion to my love. The shame, the disgrace, were nothing. But at one
blow to be deprived of wife, child, friend; to have my love and my faith
and my happiness shattered at one stroke: it was too much. Yet, let this
be impressed upon you, that not for one instant did I blame your mother.
I realized that she, like myself, was but the helpless victim of the
family curse. It was my fault. I had defied the inevitable. The keenest
agony of all was to lie there, unable to rise, and think of Nicholas.
Ah, a thousand times in imagination I tore his heart bleeding from his
breast! I hated him now, as much as I had formerly cherished him. And
yet, I believe I could in the end have forgiven him, if—ah, but of
what use to say, ‘If’. Listen to the truth.
“It was a short four months afterward—four months that had seemed,
however, a thousand years to me—and I still lay here dead in life,
when the good Dr. Hirsch, (to whom now in my dying hours I commend you,
my son), came to my bedside and said that he had seen your mother. He
believed that if I would take her back, she would be glad. If I would
take her back! ‘Bring her to me,’ I cried. And I thanked for this
manifestation of his mercy. ‘You must prepare for a sad change
in her,’ said Dr. Hirsch.—’Bring her, bring her,’ I cried
impatiently.
“Not even to you, my son, can I reveal the secret of that first hour,
of that deep hour, when your mother sat again at my side and received
my pardon—nay, not my pardon, for it was her place to pardon me. If
before that it had been possible for me to forgive Nicholas, it was so
no longer. For your mother’s face was deathly pale, her cheek hollow,
her eye bright with fever. Nicholas had—what? Petted her for a month;
for a month, ignored her; for another month, ill treated her; in the
end, abandoned her, it might be to starve. Nicholas had done this
Nicholas whom I had loved and trusted. As I saw your mother pine away,
grow paler and more feeble beneath my sight, my hatred of that man
intensified. On the day your mother died, I promised her that I would
get well and live and force him to atone for his offense in blood. My
great hatred seemed to endow me with strength. I believed that would not
let me die until I had once again met Nicholas face to face.
“But this delusion was short-lived. A second hemorrhage threw me
back, weaker than ever, upon my bed. The physician told me that I had
absolutely no ground for hope. It was evident that had willed that the
chastisement of my enemy should not be wrought out by my hand. ‘But’
is just,’ I said. ‘He will not allow a crime like this to go
unavenged.’
“It was then that my thought turned to you. And all this time, what of
you? You too were lying at the point of death. Of you too the physician
said, ‘He can not survive the winter.’ You, my single hope,
threatened at any moment to breathe your last. ‘But no,’ I cried,
‘it shall not be so. My Ernest must live. As is both just and
merciful, Ernest will live.’
“I watched the fluctuations of your illness, divided between hope and
fear, between faith in the goodness of and doubt lest the worst might
come to pass. Ah, that was a breathless period. Day after day passed
by, and there was no certainty. Constantly the doctor said, ‘Death is
merely a question of a few days, more or less.’ Constantly my heart
replied, ‘No, no, he will not die.” has decreed that he shall
live.’ I prayed that your life might be spared, morning, noon, and
night. My own strength was ebbing away. But that was of little matter. I
wanted to hold out only until I should know for good and all whether my
son was to survive.
“Blessed be the name of forever! At the moment when the physician
said, ‘He will die within an hour,’ lo! the God of our fathers
touched your body with his healing wand. There was a change for the
better. The physician himself could not deny it. He maintained that it
was but transitory. ‘Nothing short of a miracle,’ said he, ‘can
save this baby’s life.’
“‘We will see,’ said I aloud. To myself I said, ‘The miracle has
been performed.’
“I was right. Two days later the physician confessed that your chances
of recovery were good. Two days later still you were out of danger.
had heard my prayers. The God of Israel is a righteous God! Oh, for the
tongue of the prophets to sing a sufficient song of thanksgiving to . He
has snatched you from the clutch of death for a purpose. He will see to
it that you fulfill that purpose, though your heart be burned to ashes
in the task. He will make you to be great like Ephraim and Manasseh. (Y
si me ha Elohim k’.phraim v’chi Manasseh!)
“Again I have summoned your nurse, to bring you to my bedside. Again I
have laid down my pen, to place my hand upon your head and bless you in
the name of Again, before reading further, pause for a space and pray
that the breath of God may make strong your heart.”
“My son, I allow you one-and-twenty years to become a man,
one-and-twenty years to gain strength of arm and firmness of will. I
allow you one-and-twenty years of youth, one-and-twenty years in which
to enjoy life, free of care. On your twenty-first birthday, if the good
and reverend Dr. Hirsch live, he will put this writing into your
hands. Should he be dead, others will see that you receive it. On your
twenty-first birthday you will be a boy no longer. You will recognize
yourself for a man. You will ask, ‘What is to be the aim, the
occupation of my life?’ You will read this writing, and your question
will be answered. Your father on the brink of the grave pauses to speak
to you as follows:—
“In the name of , who in response to my prayers has saved your life,
who created you out of the dust and the ashes, who tore you from the
embrace of death and restored health to your shattered body for one
sole purpose, in Ins name I charge you: Find my enemy out and put him to
death. He is still a young man. He will scarcely be an old man when you
have become of age. It is a long time to wait, a long time to defer my
vengeance, one-and-twenty years, but so I believe has willed it. After
you have reached the age of one-and-twenty years, let that be the single
motive and object of your days: to find him out and put him to death by
the most painful mode of death you can devise. Do not strike him down
with one blow. Torture him to death. Pluck his flesh from his bones
shred by shred. Prolong his agony to the utmost. Thus shall you
compensate in some measure for the one-and-twenty years of delay. And
again and again as he is writhing under your heel, cry out to him,
‘Remember, remember the friend who loved you and whom you betrayed,
whose honey you turned to gall and wormwood.’ But, if meanwhile from
other causes death should have overtaken him, then shall you transfer
your anger to his next-of-kin; then, I charge you, visit the penalty
of his sin upon his children and his children’s children. For has not
decreed that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children
even unto the third and fourth generations? The blood of Nicholas must
be spilled, whether it courses in his veins or in the veins of his
posterity. The race of Nicholas must be exterminated, obliterated from
the face of the earth. As you honor the wish of a dying father, as you
dread the wrath of , falter not in this that I command. Search the four
corners of the world until you have unearthed my enemy or his kindred.
Empty his blood upon the sand as you would the blood of swine. And
think, as he is calling out to you for mercy, think, ‘At last my
father’s revenge is wreaked! At last my father’s spirit can rest
content. Even now my father is in transports of delight as he witnesses
this fruition of his hope. At each thrust of my knife into our enemy’s
flesh, the heart of my father leaps with satisfaction. At each scream
of pain that escapes from our enemy’s throat, the voice of my father
waxes great with joy.’
“Ah, my son, at that mighty hour, whether I be confined in the bottom
fastnesses of hell or exalted to the mountain tops of paradise, I shall
know what is happening, I shall fling myself upon my face and sing a
song of praise to for the unspeakable rapture which he has permitted me
to enjoy.
“My son, I trust you. You will not falter. You will remember that has
saved you from death for this solitary purpose, that you have no right
to your own life except as you employ it for the chastisement of my foe.
I have no fear. You will hate him with a hatred equal to my own. You
will wreak that hatred as I should have wreaked it, had my life been
spared.
“I have no fear, no distrust, and yet—all things are possible. My
son, I warn you. In case you be faint-hearted, in case you recoil from
this mission you are charged with, or in case by any accident—though
will allow no such accident to happen—in case by any accident this
writing should fail to reach you, I shall be prepared. From my grave I
shall watch over you. From my grave I shall guide you. From my grave I
shall see to it that you do not neglect the duty of your life. Though
seas roll between you and him, I shall see to it that you two meet.
“Though your heart be bound to him as to your own flesh and blood, I
shall see to it that you swerve not. And if he be dead, I shall see to
it that you are brought face to face with his kindred. Man, woman, or
child, spare neither. Young or old, able or feeble-bodied, let it matter
not. In case your strength desert you, in case your courage weaken, I
shall be at your side, I shall nerve your arm. If you hesitate, remember
that my spirit will possess your body and do what must be done in spite
of your hesitation. There will be no escape for you. As certainly as
the moon must follow the earth, so certainly will and must you, my son,
accomplish the purpose for which your life is given.—But falter not,
as you cherish the fair name of your mother, as you honor the desire,
as you fear the curse, of a dying father, as you hope for peace for your
own soul.
“I have done. I think I have made every thing clear. Farewell.
“Your father, Ernest Neuman.
“I have written the above during my moments of strength for the last
four days. Now I have just read it over. I find that it but feebly
expresses all that I mean and feel. But will enlighten you as you read.
It is enough. I find also that I have omitted to mention his full name.
His name is Nicholas Pathzuol.”