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By Root 3144 0

God’s name give an ear to a mother’s pleas. I am worn out by the wicked insults and insinuations that have been wrongfully cast on myself by certain worthless people—including certain neighbors I have now cut myself off from, without any proof whatsoever. On the contrary with all the proof directed against you, and I beg you to clear the air up by a complete and candid confession. Although I admit your face, when I saw it in my household, didn’t look too Jewish, and maybe you really wouldn’t commit such a dreadful crime murdering a child and taking out his precious lifeblood if you hadn’t been egged on to do it by fanatical Jews—you know the kind I mean. Still you probably did it because they threatened you with death, although maybe you didn’t want to, I don’t know. But now I know for a certainty that it was these old Jews with long black coats and nasty beards that warned you you had to make the kill and they would hide my child’s corpse in the cave when you did. Just the same night before Zheniushka disappeared I dreamed of one of them carrying a satchel, with wild glaring eyes and bright red spots in his beard, and my former neighbor Sofya Shiskovsky told me she had dreamed the same dream that I had on the same night.

“I am asking you to own up because the evidence is all against you. One thing you might not know is that after Zheniushka confided to me you had chased him with a knife in the cemetery, I had you followed by a gentleman friend of mine to find out what other criminal activities you were engaged in. It is a known fact that you were involved in certain illegal acts in secretly dealing with other Jews in the brickyard who pretended they were not Jews, and also in the cellar of the synagogue, where you all met in the Podol District. You smuggled, robbed, and traded in goods that didn’t belong to you. Zheniushka found out all about this and other of your illegalities, and that’s another reason why you bore him such a violent hatred, and why you had him in your mind as the victim as soon as you were chosen to find one and drain his blood for the Jewish Easter. You also acted as a fence for this gang of Jews who broke into the homes of the Gentry as well as in certain commercial stores, and houses in the Lipki District, where the aristocratic houses are, and took out all sorts of loot in money, furs and jewels, not to mention other precious objects of different kinds. Also you paid your gang only a part of the real price the goods were worth because as the saying is, each Jew cheats the other. Which is nothing new to anybody because the whole world knows they are born criminals. A Jew wanted to lend a friend of mine money to build a house, but she went to the priest for advice and he began to tremble and advised her to take nothing from a cursed Jew, in Christ’s name, because they will defraud and cheat you because it is their nature and they can’t do otherwise. This priest said their Jewish blood itches when they aren’t engaged in evil. If it weren’t for that maybe you would have resisted the murder of a saintly boy when they egged you to do it. And I suppose you know there have been attempts to bribe me not to testify against you when your trial comes. One fat Jew in silk clothes offered me the sum of 40,000 rubles to leave Russia and he would pay me the sum of another 10,000 rubles, on arriving in Austria, but even if he and your fellow Jews had offered me 400,000 rubles, I would still spit in their faces and say absolutely no because I prefer the honor of my good name to 400,000 rubles of Jewish blood money.

“My gentleman friend also saw you spit on the ground one day when you walked around on the outside of St. Sophia’s Cathedral after spying out the school in the courtyard where Zhenia went. He saw you turn your head as though you might go blind if you didn’t, when you looked up on the golden crosses on top of the green domes, and you spat fast so no one should see you, but my friend saw you. I was also told you practice black magic religious ceremonies and certain cabalistic superstitions.

“Also, don