A Father’s Gift

Even on his deathbed, a trickle of a smile played across his face. A contented man as he neared his last breath. The array of monitors, the specialists who followed each other in and out of the spacious hospital suite, the skyline views. All were testament to his wealth. Yet he had begun life abjectly poor, or so went the story he told.

‘The secret of my success is simple,’ he would say to his son.

But he had never revealed the secret and his son never asked. His father, after all, had always seemed to him like a god. Not to be questioned, but at the same time benevolent. Even loving.

‘Follow your dreams,” the father would tell him.

And his son did. He pursued obsessively his passion for art and his father spared him no expense. Private lessons, numerous trips abroad, two years at a prestigious London art school. These pursuits meant he had little interest in his father’s material position or how it was achieved. He had not wondered why his father never seemed to work. Why he was always pottering around in the gardens of their expansive home or studying in his library with its rare editions.

As the son moved restlessly from country to country in search of artistic perfection, their paths crossed less frequently: a year might pass before they saw each other in person. It was his father who kept in touch, always signing off their phone calls with "Follow your dreams”. And his son continued to do so, until he was summoned home. He went directly to the hospital where his father lay dying.

The son’s heart sank at the sight of the man who had shrunk to the size of a child. His father struggled to push himself up and slowly patted the edge of the bed. The son asked if he was comfortable. The father began coughing violently. Finally, he nodded and seeing the tears welling again in his son’s eyes, gave him a reassuring smile.

“I have something for you.”

He tried to reach the drawer of the bedside table. His son opened it and found only a small black book. A cheap Moleskin imitation. It was bound with a thin elastic band. He handed it to his father who appeared to weigh it before handing it back to his son.

"This is the secret of my success.”

The son began to slide off the elastic band. The force of the hand that grabbed his to stop him could scarcely be believed.

“No!”

His father's eyes flashed with a strange fierceness before he continued in a halting whisper. The book had been given to him by someone who had been like a father to him.

"He wanted me … to follow my dreams … he gave me everything".

“How did you meet him?”

He coughed out an answer but it was indecipherable. A nurse held an oxygen mask to this face and when his coughing subsided he resumed.

“When he died … he gave me the book … so I could …

He could barely utter what were his final words.

“Follow your dreams … it will serve you … well’.’

His breathing became a rattle and within a few hours he was dead. There was no funeral, just a brief service later that week in a hall near his father’s house. The son shook hands with the handful of people who attended but had no idea who they were. A short, stooped man introduced himself as the lawyer who had called him the previous day. They met the following Monday in the lawyer’s office.

When the lawyer read to him the obscure charities his father had listed as beneficiaries in his will, the son felt confused and angry. But the lawyer assured him the cheap-looking black book was far more valuable.

"All you need to do is to take it to the premises on this piece of paper."

The lawyer gave it him and the son unfolded it. On it was the address a large branch of a well-known bank.

"Then?"

“You will be given money”.

"How much?"

The lawyer shrugged.

"Enough".

The son took the black book from his coat pocket, looked at it, then at the piece of paper. When he started to slide the band from the book, the lawyer stopped him with the same bluntness as his father.

“You are forbidden to open it. Take it to the address I’ve just given you. When you do you'll be given another slip of paper."

"Another?"

The lawyer was growing impatient.

"It will list the name of the next premises for you to present the book."

“I really don’t understand.”

“I've told you all you need to know."

And with that, the lawyer stood up to conclude their meeting. Someone with more experience in the ways of the world would have regarded as very odd, if not fanciful, the arrangement he had just been told about. But the son's artistic life had obscured the line between practicality and whimsy and he took it on face value. It was, after all, his father's arrangement.

The next day, he went to the bank branch and asked for the manager.

“I’ve been told to give you this”.

The manager disappeared into his office with the book and in no time returned. “The transaction will be processed within the hour. Please check your account then”. He handed back the book together with a folded slip of paper.

The son sat on a bench across the street and read what was typed on the slip. An hour later he checked his online account and saw that $20,000 had been added to it. He had no idea what the amount might signify. He returned to his father’s house, dazed from events of the past few days and fell into a deep asleep.

The following week, out of curiosity as well as a sense of duty to his father, he went to the address on the slip of paper the manager had given him. It was a branch of another well-known bank. Within an hour an even larger amount of money appeared in his account. Over the next month, the folded slips of paper led him to more banks, accountants, large department stores as well as a few corporations. The amounts he received were mostly large. His account was soon worth more than half a million dollars.

The slips of paper also led him to places that seemed unlikely candidates to provide him money. Like the pet shop with the barking, caged dogs and the drunken owner who handed the book back, along with a piece of tightly folded paper, with the slurred words: ‘The requisite funds will be with you shortly".

A health food store, a restaurant specializing in Peruvian food, a backpackers hostel, a dental clinic, as well as a wholesaler of plumbing fixtures, to name just a few, were also among the non-descript premises he visited. No matter how lowly or unassuming the person to whom he handed the book, they all seemed to know what to do, assuring him that 'the requisite funds' (the favoured term) would be deposited in his account within the hour and then handing him a piece of paper typed with the next address.

As unworldly as he was, the son no longer believed this was an elaborate network of trustees set up by his father to provide him with funds. In fact, he was no longer sure if was his father’s wealth he was being given. Perhaps, he thought, the money was some sort of tax only he was eligible to collect. Or an offering of some sort. Even visits to small business concerns resulted in large amounts - sometimes very large - deposited into his account. He tried to contact the lawyer for an explanation but the phone number no longer connected and the office was shuttered.

In a few years, he became exceedingly rich. His wealth was channeled into numerous accounts and spread across many investments. As a result, he had little use for the book, although to see if the arrangement still existed (or perhaps to ensure that it did), he presented it every so often to the premise listed on the most recent slip of paper he had been given. Money would appear in his account without fail.

He was well into middle age when he married. Now that his youthful naivety was long gone, he was intent on ensuring his strangely begotten fortune provided not only his children with every material resource they would ever need, but his children’s children and so on.

His eldest son was determined from a young age to become a famous architect. And as there was no reason for him to be any more practical than when his father was a similar age, he became fanatical with designing structures that had little precedent in the architectural world.

Funding the construction of his son's fantastic designs would have been ruinously expensive, even for the significant wealth already had at his disposal, so the father resumed with vigor the arrangement with the black book. In fact, it became something of an obsession: the father wanted monuments not only for the son but himself. He had reached an age when he realised his own dreams had failed. A few paintings sold here, some mildly enthusiastic reviews there. It amounted to a very poor return. He knew if he was to salvage some sense of validation for his years on earth, he would remain captive to the notebook which he now carried with him everywhere.

His son’s buildings transformed the skyline of many great cities and he became one of the world's most admired people. But for his perceived failings of his own life, the father would have enjoyed his son’s success far more. Perhaps this was at the root of the terminal illness that he was diagnosed with, and when he rang his son to tell him, there was a long silence. Their relationship was now little more a business arrangement. It had been long time since the son, measuring those he once loved against the fame and adulation he was attracting, had spoken to his father in anything other than an offhand way. So the father was gratified when his son told him he would fly back immediately to be with him.

The father read again what he had read that morning, when he decided he had nothing to lose by opening the black book for the first time. In elegant handwriting on the first page were the words:

The bearer of this book will be gifted with riches

In return their soul will bear an eternal crime

Until they pass the secret on .

The notebook's pages were filled with the details of every deposit he had received.

When his son stood at the door of the plush hospital suite with its skyline views and blinking monitors, there were tears in his eyes. His father smiled. He held the black book as though he was weighing it.

“I have something to give you”.