Then Sings My Soul

by Amy Sorrells

  Jakob waved away David’s hand as he offered an arm to steady him and instead fell heavily into one of the dining room chairs.

  “What’s the note say?” David prodded.

  She hesitated. “Dad … do you remember I told you Mom had been researching your past?”

  He nodded, not moving his eyes from the doll, still running his fingers across every detail.

  “Well …” She hadn’t told him about her research and letters to the church in Ukraine. She truly didn’t think at that point anything would come of it, or that they would ever hear anything back; it had been so many months. Besides that, so much weight had visibly lifted from his shoulders when he told her about his past, she hadn’t thought it mattered anymore. “I did a little more of my own research.”

  Jakob did look up then, and the emotion in his eyes overwhelmed her. Was he angry? Please, Lord, don’t let him be angry with me. Let this be something good. Let this be something that will help Dad see that You work all things together for good.

  Mattie nudged her. “Maybe it will help if you read the note.”

  “Okay. Yes. I think it might.” She cleared her throat and began to read:

  Dear Miss Stewart,

  My name is Ira Levchenko. I run orphanage near Chudniv, and receive your letters. I knew your aunt, Faigy. She started this orphanage with help from the church. The things in box will explain how we know she your aunt. The diagram and photo of the stone you sent matches Faigy’s stone. And we found records of Josef and all your brothers and sisters, and your father, Jakob, in our church records. Copies of these papers are in the box, along with pictures of Faigy and Sasha and the orphans. We did not know what to do with her things when she die. She thought all her family die in pogrom. But now we know. And now you know too.

  Maybe you visit us sometime? See where your father from. See the children in orphanage.

  (Forgive my English is not so good. I had help of translator.)

  With love,

  Ira Levchenko

  By the time Nel finished, Jakob had started sifting through the stack of photographs.

  “Sasha,” he gasped.

  “Sasha? The priest you told me about?”

  Jakob nodded, his eyes fixed on a photo of a bearded man in black robes with a little girl standing beside him.

  Nel knelt beside Jakob, put her arm around him, and searched every detail of the photo he held. The girl appeared to be three or four. She had the plump little wrists of a toddler, round cheeks, and dark braids in her hair. The man stood tall and appeared stiff, but a kindness in his eyes softened his whole countenance. His robes appeared thick and heavy, except for a white collar at his neck. “Dad, you said a man in black robes took her—could it have been Sasha and not the pogromshchik?

  He set the photo on the table and began to sob, years of shame pouring out of him. His shoulders shook as he buried his face in his hands. “Faigy. My baby bird. Forgive me.”

  Nel embraced her dad with both arms. “Dad, it looks to me like there was nothing ever to forgive.”

  He sobbed harder, and Mattie joined in the embrace.

  “Guys …,” David said gently. “Sorry, but I think there’s something else here you need to see.”

  Jakob pulled a handkerchief out of his pajama shirt pocket and blew his nose, then wiped his face as David handed him a wooden box painted shiny black and detailed with exquisite, colorful flowers. He opened the lid and the facets of a large aquamarine beamed from within, reflections dancing across the room.

  Nel hurried to retrieve the aquamarine in the old kiddush cup on their worktable, by then, her own tears falling as she compared the Star of David pattern on the crowns of both gemstones. “Look, David, Mattie … Dad, they’re same.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Jakob woke early the next morning, still smiling from the images of Faigy and Sasha in the old photographs, how she’d grown strong and beautiful. Jakob thought Faigy resembled their mother when she’d become an adult, especially in photographs of her playing with the orphans she so clearly adored.

  The four of them had stayed up until the early hours of the morning sorting through the photos, flipping through the journal (although none of them could read Cyrillic—they would have to find someone to translate that), and laughing as he told more stories of Sasha the priest’s visits and all he could remember about his family.

  Sasha had come back.

  Faigy had lived.

  And she had lived well, saving the lives of children who had no homes, who’d lost parents and brothers and sisters, just as she had. Of course, she would have assumed he and Peter died. In hindsight, they should have, two boys wandering without so much as a compass through across the Carpathian Mountains and Eastern Europe. He thought again about all of the people who’d helped him and Peter. Of all the times Yahweh never let them go.

  Who are You, indeed, Abba, that You’ve been mindful of me all these years? The springs and components of the hospital bed cracked and groaned almost as much as his joints as he rose and made his way to the bathroom. He shuffled to the kitchen, where he scooped heaping tablespoons of coffee into the filter and held the open can to his nose to smell the earthy, bittersweet grounds. The morning paper thudded against the front door and silenced the songbirds for a moment, as did the squeak of the screen door as he scooted himself out to retrieve the paper, then took it to his recliner, where he ran his fingers along the brown-and-orange, matted-down plaid fabric of the arms. He’d worn the right side down markedly more than the left from all the evenings he’d reached across it to the couch to hold Catherine’s hand as they watched TV. How many times had they watched Ed Sullivan, Father Knows Best, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, I Love Lucy, and later Lassie, Perry Mason, and Andy Griffith as they took turns letting Nel fall asleep on their shoulders? And who could forget Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone and Ronald Reagan Westerns? TV had to be the best invention of the century, he thought.

  He opened the paper to the weather, then the op-eds, then the obituary section. Used to be a time when he recognized at least one name every day of someone who’d kicked the bucket. After he turned eighty-five or so, familiar names didn’t show up so often. And now he rarely recognized a name, except an occasional adult child of an old friend or neighbor. Even so, Catherine and Mattie had always kept him from feeling lonely, as had the comfort of filling the bird feeders; tending to the squirrels; soaking in the subtle changes in buds and leaves, trees and grass; watching the shift of the tides and the patterns in the sand as the lake resculpted it every night.

  He wondered if his grandfather Dedus had felt the same way as he plodded through the billowing wheat fields of Chudniv with a cow’s lead in one hand and a scythe in the other, his deeply creased, sunburned face worn like leather. He could taste the thick milk Dedus had ladled out of the bucket for him on hot summer days, even as he pulled gently on the great beast’s teat.

  Thank you, El Shaddai.

  Thank you, Messiah Yeshua.

  Jehovah-Shammah.

  Jakob shuffled to the kitchen and plunked a couple ears of corn and a bag of suet and sunflower seeds, and another bag of thistle seed, in the pouch of his walker. Outside, a black squirrel and her three babies ran across the yard as he lumbered toward the feeders. They were placed close, but not too close, to the house, so Jakob could see them all from the windows, except for three bluebird houses on high poles on the southwest corner of the property. The bluebirds took care of themselves and preferred to be left alone.

  One black squirrel, in particular, had been coming to the feeders for corn so often, he didn’t scurry away from the tree as Jakob approached. Nel had helped him mount the stands decades ago, and a long, rusty nail held the cob in place. Another one of their father-daughter projects, Jakob had suggested they build the stands one summer when she, sullen and distant, was home from college. Seemed like nothing
at the time, looking back to that summer, but well, maybe those feeders had meant a lot to her. Maybe that’s why she always kept them full since she’d been home. It’s a grand shame most of us don’t know the impact of what we’re doing with a person until it’s too long past or too painful to revisit, Jakob thought. Then again, maybe it’s better not knowing and having done the thing anyway.

  The black squirrel chattered as Jakob moved between the feeders. He sprinkled sunflower seeds on the seat of a flat feeder that hung from the old sweet-gum tree. Then he filled two more hanging feeders on the pole nearby with thistle. The back of his head began to throb, but he tried to ignore it as he poured the fine seed, then glanced up at the window where Catherine used to watch him and wave while she washed dishes at the kitchen sink.

  “Peace and a song” is what Catherine had said about the birds. That’s why she’d wanted them close to the house too. Sometimes she sang to the mourning doves, and she’d laugh and laugh as they sang back.

  One of them cooed as darkness seeped across the field of vision in Jakob’s left eye. He figured it’d pass like all the other times. But instead, his left leg buckled. He lost his grip on the walker. Felt himself crumple to the ground. The world felt blazingly hot and icy cold all at the same time. He tried to holler for help, but all that came out was a weak cry.

  Adonai, help me.

  Jakob tried to cry out again, but no sound came from his thickened throat. Not even a movement from his lips.

  The rest of the world grew black.

  Jakob smelled familiar chemicals and heard beeps of the IV and hissing of oxygen in the hospital room.

  “Slova zalyshylysya u Vashomu sertsi, Yakob, tak?”* Peter sat at the foot of his bed.

  “Yes. Yes, they did. But it took me a while to believe them.”

  “Vy zavzhdy viryly. Vy til’ky tikaly. Vin znaye, chomu vy tak dovho tikaly.”†

  “I don’t want to run anymore. Will you forgive me? Will Yeshua, will Adonai forgive me?”

  “Dad, I’m here. It’s Nel. Can you hear me?”

  “Nel?”

  “Yes, Dad. It’s me. Please don’t leave me.” She tried and failed to stifle a sob. “I need you.”

  “No.” Jakob’s tongue hardly budged and felt thick and dry as an old rag in his mouth. “You don’t … you … need to love … love and let … yourself … be loved.”

  “No, Dad.”

  He felt her wet cheek pressing against his.

  The thick scent of honeysuckle overwhelmed him, and he found himself walking on a dirt road he’d seen long, long ago. Beside him, fat carpenter bees and wide-winged butterflies bobbed along a vine-covered fence, fields of sunflowers billowing as far as he could see below the sapphire sky. A family with four young children passed by him, the father pulling an oxcart, and the mother smiling hello.

  Beyond them where the road began to bend, a man waved, and Jakob could hardly wait to greet him. The man’s eyes enraptured Jakob. And when they at last reached each other, the man’s embrace, swift and fierce, intoxicated Jakob with joy.

  “Welcome home, My child. All is grace. All is forgiven. Welcome home.”

  “Yeshua.” Jakob sobbed and laughed at once, soaking the shoulder of his Savior’s shirt.

  “Laskavo prosymo dodomu, brat.”‡ Peter came up beside Yeshua, and Jakob clung to their hands as together they crossed a great river, the light of the place shining, reflecting against the ripples of the water like millions of diamonds stretching to the opposite shore. As the three men crossed over, thousands of people along the riverbank waved and sang hymns. And in front of them all, waiting for him, stood Catherine and Mama, Papa and Zahava, Tova, Ilana, and Sasha the priest.

  And next to them stood his sister Faigy.

  Jakob stood on the golden shore in the arms of Yeshua and his loved ones, and he sang.

  He sang, and he sang, and he sang.

  * The words remained in your heart, Jakob, yes?

  † You always believed. You have just been running. He knows why you ran for so long.

  ‡ Welcome home, Brother.

  … a little more …

  When a delightful concert comes to an end,

  the orchestra might offer an encore.

  When a fine meal comes to an end,

  it’s always nice to savor a bit of dessert.

  When a great story comes to an end,

  we think you may want to linger.

  And so, we offer ...

  AfterWords—just a little something more after you

  have finished a David C Cook novel.

  We invite you to stay awhile in the story.

  Thanks for reading!

  Turn the page for ...

  • Book Club Questions

  • The Inspiration Behind the Story

  • Notes

  • About the Title and Cover

  • About the Author

  • Suggested for Further Reading

  • Acknowledgments

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  1. In this story, we are privy to an overview of Jakob’s nearly century-long life. In what ways did Jakob change or not change over the decades? What things prevented or contributed to his ability to change?

  2. Nel, on the other hand, was less than half a century old and received the benefits of a safe upbringing. In what ways did she change after going home to South Haven? In what ways did she stay the same? What were the contributing factors to these changes (if any)?

  3. Many Americans find themselves part of the “sandwich generation,” caring for aging parents while at the same time trying to care for their own children. Are you able to identify with Nel’s struggles to understand and care for her father of deteriorating health? In what ways?

  4. Nearly twice as many Jews as were killed in the Holocaust—some estimates are as high as eleven million—were massacred in Eastern Europe and especially Ukraine in the decades leading up to World War II. How do you think the pogroms did or did not eventually contribute to the Holocaust?

  5. As the group ISIS invaded the Middle East in the summer of 2014, heinous reports emerged about the genocide of Christians. Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia are other regions where people groups have been targeted over the last century for genocide based on their ethnicity, religion, or both. How has society learned—or not learned—from history as it relates to the advancement or prevention of genocide?

  6. Which character in this novel do you identify with most? Why?

  7. Many references were made to Jewish traditions throughout Jakob and Peter’s escape to America. Did any of these traditions resonate with New Testament teachings and practices?

  8. How do you see the promises of the Old Testament reflected in Jakob and Peter’s journey? Do you think Jakob saw evidence of these promises by the end of the story? Why or why not?

  9. Nel was so preoccupied with her own busyness that she didn’t fully realize the decline in her parents’ health. Share a time when your own preoccupations prevented you from being as “present” as you wish you had been.

  10. Mattie was a lifelong family friend. How did her own life story help Nel and Jakob?

  11. The metaphor of how rocks and minerals are discovered and shaped runs throughout the story. How have you seen this process unfold in your own life? Can you think of another hobby or tangible process that parallels the way God works in our lives? If so, share it with the group.

  12. Think of an event in history—your own, your ancestors’, or humanity’s—that you’ve learned from.

  13. Nel eventually became more open to a relationship with David. What factors contributed to these changes in her?

  14. Read Isaiah 43:18 and Deuteronomy 4:9. Compare and contrast what God says about memories in these verses. Are there other scriptures that you have
turned to when faced with guilt and shame or the fear that God has abandoned you?

  15. Read Psalm 13. Describe the differences in the author’s thoughts between the first and last stanzas. What does this tell you about how we can talk with God?

  16. This novel begins with a quote from Charles Spurgeon about “Jehovah-Shammah.” How has this novel impacted your belief—or disbelief—in the characteristics of this name (one of many) for Yahweh?

  THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE STORY

  Ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.

  Andre Dubus, “A Father’s Story”

  Three important parts of my life inspired this story, the first of which is an organization called Mission to Ukraine (www.missiontoukraine.org). Through our interest in and support of Mission to Ukraine, in 2009 my family began to sponsor—and fall in love with—a boy in Ukraine named Peter Predchuk. As we learned through blog posts of friends who live near and travel to Zhytomyr, Peter was like many thirteen-year-old boys—happy, funny, tenderhearted, and kind. He loved cars and he liked to sing. But Peter was different too. Abandoned by his mother because she could not care for him and his degenerative muscular dystrophy, he was alone, filthy, and regularly beaten in an orphanage. He was losing hope and growing weaker by the day. But God had special plans for Peter. He was rescued and adopted by a man named Yuri Levchenko (who has nine biological children and a tenth on the way as of this writing). Peter was deeply treasured and loved until he passed away July 1, 2014. Peter was a hero to many, and I had the privilege of finally meeting him in January 2013, in what has been proven to be one of the most pivotal moments of my life.

  The second inspiration for this story was my paternal grandfather, Joseph Kossack, a savant hobby lapidarist who died at the ripe young age of ninety-four, a month shy of his ninety-fifth birthday. Up until a month before he died, he was vibrant. He lived in his own apartment, enjoyed life with his friends and neighbors, told the same stories over and over again, and yes, he still drove a car. I discovered through genealogy research that his grandparents—my paternal great-great-grandparents—were Jewish immigrants who escaped to the United States from Eastern Europe—most likely near the edge of Ukraine near Belarus, from what I can tell from my research—during the first waves of pogroms in the Pale of Settlement that occurred in the 1880s. This is where his last name (and my maiden name), Kossack (a variation of “Cossack”), originated. The story goes that my great-great-grandfather’s true last name was too difficult for the Ellis Island intake administrator to figure out how to spell, so they assigned him a new one: Kossack.