And thereupon did I commence to instruct my young wife from the ancient texts and the myriad examples of death that have come down to us from olden times. And every day she came unto me, often in the company of a relation, to sit for hours and there to listen and reason together and exchange views, until such a time had passed as she did feel that she had fully penetrated my understanding and had taken it unto herself in such a form and thoroughness as to be able to convey it to our children, who, because of the corrupting nature of the prison, were not permitted to visit me during those years. (Later, when the two oldest grew large enough to pass as adults, they were to come unto me, and I will soon describe their visit.)
DURING the period of my wife’s instruction, there grew within me, in the secret manner of a tumor, a quickly rising desire for fleshly contact with women, that at the start would as quickly, after I had become aware of its presence and had with mild horror rebuked it, weaken and droop back upon itself. This abominable longing would steal upon me and catch me unawares, even as I was deeply immersed in the teachings of the patriarchs and matriarchs or in discussion of theological history with my wife or her cousin (a young woman who sometimes accompanied my wife to the prison), or even when, for we then frequently resorted there, we three would each face a place in the tiny cell where two walls came together and, folding ourselves in our own arms, attempt to pray. These eruptions of lust knew no bounds of decency or decorum, honored no categories of thought, argument or inquiry, nor would they share the stage of my thoughts and sensibilities with any other player. Thus it was only with an enormous effort of will, frequently supplemented by quantities of anger (at my weakness, my own, no demon’s strength, no dark deity’s), that each time I was able to yank that player off the stage and replace him with the legitimate one.
I cannot deny this depraved interlude, that it existed, that I fought it, to be sure, and that, in the end, I was overcome by it. Nor can I lay the blame at anyone’s feet but my own. I confess my transgression against the spirit of the dead, which by its glory and infinitude demands our entire devotional attention. I confess it because I wish to let myself serve as a warning and a lesson to others who may in some future time during a similar period of connubial deprivation find themselves afflicted as was I. Therefore, I beg the reader’s indulgence and understanding of the presence, to follow, of certain descriptions that in a less somber, less deliberately instructional work would be reprehensible, if not morally disgusting. And let the prurient minded be warned: there will be nothing of interest for you here, for all that follows is woe and deprivation, and what may appear on the surface to be the glitter of sensual gratification, at bottom is but the enlightening muck and mire of self-disgust.
In those months of her instruction, which was the winter-time of my first year of imprisonment, my wife grew wan and sickly, as a consequence of her sufferings from the birthing of the child born dead the previous spring, and also from the sufferings wrought by the poverty of her life without the presence of a husband able to earn a living in the world. I do also fear that her daily journey to the prison, which was often a damp and chilled place, despite my efforts to warm the cell with the brazier that my new jailor had kindly supplied me, exacerbated her condition somewhat. So that by the middle of December she had gone to a pathetic thinness and her skin had come to be cracked and chafed by the wind and cold, and she was beginning to cough. Even so, each noontime when she arrived at my cell, often bearing freshly baked cakes or bread, she would smile cheerily and fill me with news of our dear children and the lives of our brethren in the faith, most of whom, by having watched me be overwhelmed by the power of the state, had either made their practices of worship invisible to the state or had chosen self-banishment and had gone out of the nation. (This was but one of the reasons why it was then so difficult for me to obtain a new coffin to replace the one I had made over to my saintly jailor, John Bethel.) However, many was the day when, at the arrival of my wife, I peered into her gray eyes and saw the suffering hidden there, and the sight, despite all my efforts against it, often brought me to tears.
After a short time my wife began to see the effect her wretched state was having on me, and so she struggled all the more bravely to disguise it, even to the extreme measure of wearing dresses that exaggerated and pointed with innocent directness to the few remaining curves and rises of her body. She took to wearing a dark blue wool dress that I gathered she had knitted herself during the long evenings alone in our cottage after the children had gone off to bed. This dress, unintentionally provocative, was designed to fit snugly around her hips and buttocks and to lift and round her small breasts so as to make her seem to me more healthy and jocular than in fact she was. I cannot say it forcefully enough, but let it be known to all that my wife in no way was attempting to encourage in me the lust that her presence in that knit dress soon began to provoke. So did I then believe, and so do I believe today. Let this account in no way besmirch her pure and devoted life, her noble death, and the majesty of her present and everlasting existence among the dead. Let it merely serve as a warning to those who, desiring to bring comfort and good cheer to the living, inadvertently wreak havoc and establish depression among them instead. We cannot provide solace for the living, no more than can we avenge ourselves upon the dead. Presence evades attention, absence invites it, and there is no choice, for there is but the acceptance of what is possible, or the denial. (Trib., iv, 13.)
If, then, my dearly beloved wife erred, she erred in this way, and given the brevity of her previous period of instruction in the faith, she was no more to be condemned for her actions than was my jailor John Bethel for his. And to be sure, if anyone is to stand condemned, let me be the one, for I was the only person, in both cases, who could be said to have been responsible for their instruction in the faith, for in both cases did I myself undertake their instruction. Yet I had mistrusted John Bethel’s pleas for the name of a coffinmaker, so that he could in life have practiced the uplifting rite of prayer, which would have opened him sufficiently unto the wisdom of the dead so as to have forbidden him from supplanting my death with his own that day in court. The result therefrom must be blamed on me. And I did pridefully assume that my young wife’s proximity to me day and night for the two years of our marriage prior to my arrest was sufficient instruction for her to know at once that whatever device she used to provide me with less pity for her, if it awakened in me appetites that drew my attention away from the dead and toward the living, then the device, regardless of her kind intent, was diabolical. No, I am the one who must be blamed for these two errors in faith. I am the one who has failed the terms of his calling and who, therefore, must beg forgiveness of the dead.
It thus happened that one particularly sour and chilled December noontime, when my wife came unto me and entered my cell, and when the jailor had left us alone and had returned to his post below, the close heat of my cell swiftly brought a blush to her face and encouraged her to unwrap her scarf and shawl, which revealed in the glow of the brazier and my reading candle an illusory fullness through her hips and breasts, an illusory healthy roundness to her arms, and great warmth of illusory color in her throat. I declare it illusory simply because I well knew that the woman had long been ill and pinched by pain and that in my absence she had been forced frequently to deprive herself so that the plates of my children, her step-children, could be filled. Further, I declare it illusory so that it may be known abroad that she did in no way provoke me or otherwise draw from me lustful ambitions. They existed prior to her arrival that noontime and they merely used her presence as an occasion to arise and make themselves known to us. The woman lived purely. She wished no more than to let me beget a new child upon her, a child of her own who would be able someday to tender proper mercy to her when she herself had joined the blessed dead. I, I was the one who had no pure thoughts that day, no thoughts of an unborn child coming to life so as to bless me in death, I was the one whose lust had no ambition other than its own satisfaction, a means with no end, a cause with no effect.