Then Sings My Soul (12 page)

EARLY SUMMER 1904

Tokaj, Austria-Hungary

CHAPTER 20

The woman named Zsófia winked as she set the borscht in front of Peter and Jakob.

“Dyakuyu,”
*
Peter said for both of them.

“Proshu.”
†
She smiled and tousled Jakob's hair.

The farther they traveled, the better Peter had become at finding warm homes of kindly people who agreed to take them in for a night and a meal, and this woman was no exception. Each town they came to, Jakob pressed against his chest the family
kiddush
cup and the aquamarine wrapped carefully inside. He may have been a coward before, and he may have almost lost it, but he knew if it came down to it, he would forfeit his life before giving that away. Thankfully he hadn't had to worry about that yet. When Galya needed new shoes, Peter found a blacksmith. When they needed new shoes, he found a cobbler. Plump-waisted babushkas tucked worn but quite usable clothes into the boys' sacks as they left a home before dawn. There were still many times they rode for two or three days before finding food and a place to stay. But somehow they always found homes where kindhearted babushkas wearing bright scarves like Mama and Luda took them in and fed them warm stew or porridge, sourdough bread, and port, on occasion, to warm them and help them sleep. Many times the people they stayed with insisted Peter and Jakob eat first, before they and their children did.

Eventually, in early summer, the boys made it across the Carpathian Mountains to Tokaj on the eastern edge of Austria-Hungary. The hillsides, emerald with new growth, were covered with rows of emerging grapevines as Peter and Jakob made their way into Tokaj, where Zsófia and her husband, Makár, ran a local stable. Peter had chosen them purposefully, since this is where they would have to sell Galya to buy their first train tickets.

Luckily, Zsófia, head covered in a lavishly embroidered, floral print scarf, knew enough Ukrainian for Peter to communicate their plight to her, and she had enough mercy to feed them. She even gave them new socks and mended their torn clothing as they slept. And Makár was merciful enough to give them exactly the amount of money they needed for Galya, plus a little extra for their train tickets.

The couple escorted them to the train station, where Zsófia gave both Jakob and Peter a pocket-size, three-bar, Orthodox wooden cross. Jakob would not forget Zsófia's hazel eyes, rimmed in black, wrinkled skin downturned with concern, when she placed the piece in his hands. She searched his eyes for understanding as she explained in broken Ukrainian that Messiah Yeshua was with them in their journey.

Jehovah-Shammah.

Makár promised Peter the two of them would at least be safer in Hungary. He said Budapest was full of Jews, many respected and prosperous, and there they could buy tickets to the Wien Westbahnhof train stop, which would lead them to Rotterdam and the ships to America.

The planks of the station platform creaked as they walked toward the gigantic engine, which snorted, coughed, and steamed as they boarded. It would have been enough to terrify any young boy, but not Jakob. Men, he knew, could do far more harm to humans than any machine. Besides, the small compartment with the hard, wooden seats was a warm comfort, confining the ache in his heart that felt too wild in the wide, open spaces they'd wandered for weeks. And as the train crawled then pushed full throttle through mountains and hills, farms and fields, villages and larger towns of Austria-Hungary, the blur lulled him into a shalom the likes of which he couldn't remember feeling since before what happened in Chudniv.

When the train stopped in Budapest, Peter and Jakob opted to stay on board even though they could have explored the town for a couple of hours. They'd need to buy another round of tickets, but they didn't have to switch trains. Still exhausted from their weeks of travel, they watched the many new passengers boarding. Their lightness of step and laughter was an awkward contrast to the devastated countenances of Peter and Jakob and most everyone else who'd boarded from the east.

“I'll be right back.” Peter tugged his fur hat tighter over his ears, gave Jakob a pat, and set off to speak with the conductor about payment for passage to Wien Westbahnhof. He was gone a long while, and Jakob began to worry as the train filled to near capacity and grew warmer by the minute. He unfastened his coat and took a moment to peek at the aquamarine tucked deep in the inside pocket. The stone glinted, despite the darkness of the pocket.

“Whatcha got there, boy?” A man with a gold front tooth and two rotting teeth on either side of that leaned over the seat from behind him. His rancid breath overwhelmed Jakob, who couldn't help but cough in the man's face.

Jakob did not reply except that he pulled his coat closed tight.

“Sure about that?”

Jakob felt something cold and hard being pressed against the side of his throat, the same place the man in the barn had held a knife against Peter's neck.

“Get off the boy, Gergo,” another man said from behind him.

“He's got somethin' in his pocket we might be interested in, this one does,” Gergo said, not moving what Jakob figured must be a knife.

“He has nothing, and you'll sit down,” a third voice boomed from behind.

As Gergo pulled the knife away, Jakob sighed with relief. He turned to see a second conductor coming down the aisle, a man who had to be a giant, as tall and enormous as he was.

“Now give me that knife,” the conductor said to Gergo.

“I told you not to be stupid,” Gergo's companion snorted.

Jehovah-Shammah
, Jakob thought.

The conductor knelt beside Jakob's seat. “Are you all right, little one?”

Jakob nodded.

“Are you traveling alone?”

Jakob shook his head as Peter returned with their tickets.

“Everything okay here?” Peter asked, his face flushed.

The conductor stood and offered Peter his huge hand. “'Tis now. I made sure of that. See to it that you let me know if these two behind you give you any trouble, hear?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Peter handed the conductor their tickets.

Jakob would not remove his hand from over the top of his coat, where the stone lay beneath, warm and safe. He rested his head back against the seat, only to lift it again when Peter explained what took him so long.

“The tickets were very expensive. I had to give him both the ruby and the sapphire.” All they had left to sell for food and passage to America were a few smaller sapphires, a small bag of rough amber, and Mama's cameo. That might still not be enough for the tickets, Peter explained.

Like all Papa's work, the cameo was exquisite. The woman, carved into the white layer of agate against a deep-blue background, looked just like Mama—the slope of her nose, the soft curve of her lips, the swirls of hair falling against her neck, and a braid pinned above her ear with a flower. Even the details of a pearl necklace lying against her collarbone were perfectly etched.

Jakob folded his arms tight across his chest and felt his heart beating thin and bird-like against the hard outline of the silver cup and Papa's aquamarine within. As difficult as selling the piece would be, though, the aquamarine was off-limits. Even if they had to stay in the Netherlands he would never give that up. He and Peter would find work there and forget about America. Forget running.

When the boys finally arrived at the shipyards of Rotterdam, though, Jakob reconsidered. The air of urgency among would-be immigrants created a near panic among the crowds. More than once, Jakob saw mothers and fathers trading young daughters for tickets, yelling over the girls' petrified shrieks that it was the only way, and promising them they would send for them once they got to America, though Peter and Jakob both knew their fates would be more like Raisa's—if they were lucky. Jakob's constant fear of being lost or trampled or held at knifepoint again, along with the stench of unbathed, travel-weary bodies, kept him not more than an inch from Peter's leg at all times. Peter pulled the cameo out of his pocket, and Jakob knew that meant he needed to sell it.

Jakob hugged Peter's leg as Peter negotiated for their ship passage. Finally when he set the cameo in the hand of the steamship salesman, Peter received two tickets in return.

“They would've wanted us to sell it,” Peter said, resigned, as they turned to push through the crowds again. “Mama and Ilana, Papa and Tova, Zahava and little Faigy—they would've wanted us to get these tickets and start a new life.”

Any images of Mama would have to come from memory now.

As Jakob stood on the cold boarding platform in the Netherlands, the Atlantic Ocean felt more like a grave than a way to freedom.

While Peter recited the Shema, all Jakob could do was stare into the salty wind.

EARLY 1995

South Haven, Michigan

CHAPTER 21

Christmas came and went without much celebration, since, without her mom, Nel couldn't bring herself to pull out a lifetime of holiday memories packed in boxes. Besides that, Jakob wasn't able to come home from Lakeview, and Christmas decor can feel desperate, even strangely eerie, without anyone around to enjoy it. So Mattie, David, and Nel had brought Christmas to Jakob as best they could, joining in the celebrations Lakeview offered and bringing Jakob a basket full of home-cooked food, a photo album Nel made of favorite pictures of Catherine over the years, and a new cardigan sweater. Nel had attended church with Mattie and David. She hadn't minded when David had reached over and held her hand during the candlelight singing of “Silent Night.” And even though the service at her hometown church had changed little over the years, the predictability of the songs, the liturgy, the message filled her with a sense of grounding, even assurance that though she wandered, she wasn't completely lost.

Nel had rolled the car windows down a smidgen to inhale the scent of spring that sneaks into the air between late-winter snowfalls. She was headed for the local library, where she'd been doing as much research on Ukraine, the Russian Empire, and her father's genealogy as she could between jewelry orders. She played with the cameo around her neck and felt the fine outline of the sparrow beneath her fingers. She'd forgotten about the piece but found it, along with old journals and trinkets from years spent attending and helping with church summer camps, while she was rummaging through an old drawer in her bedroom. Jakob had made the piece for her when she turned sixteen, and she had watched him work on it many times. He'd shown her the raw, uncut piece of blue agate and explained how the layers formed in holes in the earth, how water bubbled through the rock over the ages, depositing silica, which turned into quartz, which hardened into the variegated layers.

“When you etch away the top layer of the stone, you create a raised image called a
relief
that contrasts with the different-colored layer of stone beneath,” he'd explained.

Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
1
She wasn't proud of the fact that she couldn't recall very many scriptures, but because of the necklace, she often remembered that one.

A low-hanging mist hugged the blueberry fields and dips in the landscape on the outskirts of town, and white church steeples rose high above newly barren branches. The last of orange and yellow leaves contrasted with the lustrous sky. In town, storefronts with crisp blue-and-white nautical displays beckoned tourists inside as they made their way toward their obligatory stop at the red lighthouse at the end of the South Haven pier. Bait, tackle, and marine outfitters made it obvious the lake wasn't far. But the displays would be relatively unnoticed, since it was still several weeks before the start of the tourist season. And the beach would be nearly empty, except for perhaps a woman walking a dog or a gaggle of preschoolers with their moms watching them collect stones to skip.

Inside the library, Nel caught the scent of new and old book bindings that reminded her of all the times her mom took her there as a child, even as a teen. Growing up she must've read every book in the youth and young-adult sections, and then some, and her mom must've read every book from the gardening and hobbies collection. Nel took her time wandering up and down the stacks knowing she could search the catalog for what she was looking for but choosing instead to take her time and thumb through titles on her own.

When she reached the 947s section, she pulled out every selection available on Russia and Ukraine. Her pile grew higher when she reached the 973s and pulled out several books on Eastern European immigrants. And when she reached the 739s, she was thrilled to find three books on Russian jewelers and artisans. She'd learned enough about world history to know that the land and people of Ukraine had been in a political tug-of-war for generations, so information about anyone named Maevski could be in nearly any resource that referred to the Russian Empire or Ukraine.

She stacked the references around her at a large study table and dug into the books. She'd had no idea that millions and millions of immigrants, Jewish in particular, had escaped severe persecution and genocide well before World War II, and at precisely the time Peter and Jakob had arrived in New York City. She'd also had no idea what the Pale of Settlement was, and how difficult life had truly been for Jews and non-Jews alike living in shtetls all across the Ukraine region of the Russian Empire. She had to stop reading some accounts of the forms of torture and murder techniques used on innocent women and children, who were hacked open and cut apart and buried alive, and whole villages of people brutalized, then immolated, in endless and unimaginable ways.

As if that wasn't enough, she read about Babi Yar, when tens of thousands of Jews were slaughtered in Kiev and thrown into a ravine; about waves and waves of immigrants who fought and died trying to escape what seemed to be unending uprisings and genocides from the 1600s through World War II; about forced famines in the 1930s; about Stalin and Lenin … It was too much to take in, the horrors that never seemed to end in that land. If these were some of the things her dad had lived through, particularly the genocide in the Pale of Settlement, then no wonder he didn't want to speak of it.

But not everything she read held such darkness. She learned about missionaries like Stuart Hine from Britain, who in the early 1900s preached the gospel to villages all across the Carpathian Mountains, the beauty of which inspired him to translate and set to music “How Great Thou Art”; about Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, the head of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, who saved thousands of lives of Jewish refugees during the turn of the century and up until World War II, when he was murdered by the Nazis. And as she flipped through pictorial accounts and glossy travel guides of the region, she had a hard time fathoming how such horrific events took place in such a breathtakingly beautiful land. No wonder missionaries were inspired to write hymns when they were there. No wonder, as many accounts described, the people they ministered to soaked up the gospel so willingly. What else besides faith in Someone bigger, Someone above and beyond all that pain, could have given them hope in the middle of all that death?

Nel pushed the history and geography books aside and turned to the books on jewelers and artisans from the region. Some of the greatest designers and faceters had lived in the Russian Empire as it advanced and ebbed across Eastern Europe over the centuries. One book in particular,
Gemstones of the Tsars
, consumed her. Page after page detailed the stones and faceting designs of artisans who'd worked on the imperial collections creating fabulous and intricate designs for stones inlaid in scepters and orbs, crowns and sabers, and Fabergé eggs. She lingered over pages full of items adorned with tens and hundreds of diamonds and emeralds, tourmalines and sapphires, rubies and pearls, and every precious gem and mineral in between. She was so caught up in the brilliance of all she read that she almost forgot why she'd come to the library … until she got to the appendixes. There, faceting designs and explanations and origins of many of the larger imperial stones were described in detail, including diagrams and measurements—triangles and round cuts, cushion and navette, marquis and recoupe-rose, baguette and heart, star brilliant and briolettes. She stopped when she got to the section featuring aquamarines. She ran her finger across the columns of the names of artisans who'd perfected or contributed to imperial gem designs, and there it was.

Maevski.

Josef Maevski.

From Chudniv, Zhytomyr Oblast.

Could this be a relative? The chances were minuscule, so she couldn't let herself get too worked up about the possibility. Her dad might not be able—or willing—to recall enough of this to confirm or deny anything about this Josef fellow. Although Jakob was getting better, stronger and more lucid each day, she still hesitated to bring up anything that might upset him. Seeing him in a state of acute delirium or worsening dementia was hard enough without drawing attention to something he couldn't remember, or didn't want to remember. But again, she considered that maybe there was a good reason her mom had been doing the research. Catherine loved Jakob, so she wouldn't have started researching and delving into Jakob's ancestry if she hadn't either been really interested in it or onto some bit of history that was important enough to pursue. Anyway, what harm could come from investigating?

The copy machine clicked and whirred into action as she laid the page with the Maevski name on the glass. She tucked the photocopy into the front of one of the dozen or so books she checked out and hurried out to her car. She had told David she'd be at the house that afternoon so he could look at the eaves and roof and other exterior parts of the house to figure out what needed renovations.

Already parked out front, David waved as she pulled into the driveway. She regretted how unaware she'd been of how hard it had become for Mom and Dad to keep up with maintaining the house. Even at her advancing age, Mattie managed to keep her pale-pink stucco home freshly painted and looking alive by comparison. The bird feeders Jakob so loved to keep full dangled crooked and empty, and corncobs sat bare on feeding posts he'd crafted especially for the black squirrels. She made a mental note to fill them later.

Nel pulled into the garage, grateful (again) she hadn't scraped the sides of the giant car on her mom's old bicycle with the basket on the front. She intended to fix it up so she could ride in to town on warmer spring days.

“Thanks for coming, David.”

He ambled up the driveway toward her and eyeballed the stack of books she lugged out of the backseat. “You've been busy.”

“Yeah. I was there at the library all morning. I had no idea of the horrible history of Eastern Europe.”

“Learn somethin' new every day, right?”

She rolled her eyes at him, trying to veil the flush she felt rise to her cheeks every time he came around. “You are still
such
a dork.”

“Some things never change.”

“And full of clichés, too, I see.”

“Here, let me help you.” He grinned, then gathered a half-dozen books that had fallen onto the floorboards and carried them into the house behind her.

“Would you like a soda or something? There's a bunch in the fridge by the back door. Take what you'd like.” She grabbed one of Catherine's old windbreakers off a hook by the back door and pulled it over the thick, cable-knit, wool fisherman's sweater she wore, which she'd had since high school.

Out front, Nel looked at the black stains along the eaves, the gutters bent and hanging in places from the weight of leaves, and the roof, which sagged where the edges of the gables met. David stuck a finger between a window casing and the siding, and with barely any effort, he displaced a long, rotted piece of wood that tumbled to the ground. His eyes drooped with apology.

“I have a feeling this might end up being a big project.” She sighed.

“Nothing I haven't seen before. Doesn't take long for these homes to get worn down. Even if they'd kept it up until a couple years ago, a couple years is all it might take for the lake to get at it.”

Did he sense the guilt she felt about not being around? Even if he didn't, she appreciated his reassurance. The lake was hard on homes.

“I can do some things if the weather cooperates,” he continued. “Some of the window casings, siding, and such. But the roof … that might have to wait until late spring, once the threat of snow is gone. No telling how much of that needs replaced until we get started, and if there's a lot of problems, snow would make them impossible to get to.”

“One thing I know I need are ramps to all the doorways.”

“Are you bringing your dad home soon?”

“The doctors say just a few more weeks. He still has times when he's pretty loony, but overall, he's improving.”

“Can't be easy for a guy his age.”

She thought about the things she'd seen and learned at the library earlier. “I'm beginning to realize life's not easy at any age.”

After David left, Nel settled down with the piles of library books and compared the stone specifications in
Gemstones of the Tsars
with the one on the handwritten piece of parchment and was stunned to see they matched exactly. That they were the same could not be a coincidence. She scoured through the books to find as much as she could about the village of Chudniv, the village where Peter and Jakob and the gem artist were from. Details were sketchy, even in the well-researched books, most likely because of the Iron Curtain. Current information about the region was either sketchy or glossy and ad-like because of the decades of Soviet communications lockdown.