Have you ever closed your eyes and wished with all your heart that when you open them your life could be different? As Tatiana Pavlovna Novikova flees Russia to escape the dangers in her life, she knows her troubles may follow her to America, but she never expected this. Without a word being spoken or a single touch, simply being close to Joe triggers her deeply buried emotions to reawaken. This mysterious bond entangles their lives together, and Tatiana has a decision to make. Can she trust him, not only with her secrets, but also with her soul?
Joseph Carleton, haunted by his past, distances himself from those around him. It’s the only way to keep his guilt in check and prevent himself from betraying promises sworn on his mother's grave. But when Tatiana’s explosive feelings invade his carefully compartmentalized world, he’s unable to shut her out. The feeling that she's in danger overrides his rationales, because if something terrible happens to her that he could have prevented his photographic memory won’t ever let him forget. Yet can he help her, stay detached and keep his pledge of secrecy?
Tatiana, age six
As I slip into the room, I peek over at the couch. Mama is still lying there. Her headaches are lasting longer now. My brothers blame me. They say she didn’t have headaches before I was born. Slowly, I inch in closer and closer until I am right next to her.
“Mama, Mama.” She doesn’t move.
I sit on the floor and flatten out the now-crumpled picture that she gave me last week. As I look into it, my pet water bear stares back at me. Papa says we can’t have “real” pet bears, but Mama says Tatty is real, she’s just too small to see. That’s why she gave me the picture. My brothers say Tatty is ugly, but I think she’s cute.
“Mama, Tatty and I want to play with you.”
“Quiet, Tatiana, let your mama rest.” Papa has just walked in. He’s home early from work. His footsteps are soft as he comes over to the couch and bends down to give Mama a kiss. Instantly, he bolts up. “Katya! Katya!” he yells. Papa is scared, very scared.
Mama doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even flinch at his yelling.
“Why Katya? Why?” Papa shouts even louder.
My head! Papa’s pain! Papa’s terrible, terrible pain is inside my head, and it won’t go away.
Tatiana, age twenty-one
Monday morning, September 17, 2012
Carleton College, Northfield, MN
Do you ever close your eyes then wish with all your heart that when you open them, your life will be different?
I do, all the time, because I live under a veil of isolation through which I view joy and sorrow, sadness and happiness, love and hate from a distance, like a spectator in the nosebleed seats of a stadium. Emotions are undecipherable strangers lurking in the shadows, and I don’t think I’ll ever know what it feels like to be loved.
In the prolonged silence of the dead of the night, I often spend long moments reflecting. Sometimes I hear it—the music of the stars. The faint tune whispers to me and I whisper back, “Why isn’t my soul allowed to sing?”
My name is Tatiana Pavlovna Novikova, daughter of Pavel Vladimirovich Novikov, ex- commander of the Russian Federation Air Force, and granddaughter of Vladimir Ivanovich Alliluyev, former officer of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the KGB. I am strong, yet I am weak. I am impenetrable, yet I am vulnerable. I am Russian, I am Tatiana, but now I am Anna, Anna Alkaeva in America.
Pizdets! America, the land of new beginnings, the land of opportunity. I don’t belong here, still I want to fit in here. Breathing deeply, I clench and unclench my tight muscles as the insightful, inciteful song lyrics I heard earlier in the day echo in my ears. Needed to escape there, so I ended up here. Why can’t you understaaand meeee? Why is it so—
“We’re skipping ahead to page seventy-two, platonic solids,” the instructor announces, effectively shooting down my melodic reverie and plummeting me back to Principles of Chemistry, Mudd Hall, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. And this is where, at the beginning of my sophomore year—which is already dramatically different than my first year of college in Russia—I first encountered Joseph Earl Carleton. He sits three rows down and two chairs left of me, so I can’t see him clearly, yet I know anyway.
He exists within a world of isolation.
Like the permafrost on the Siberian tundra, he has a layer that’s permanently frozen. I, too, exist within a glacial realm. My ice age formed early in my childhood, right after my mama’s death, when my father’s raging despair inexplicably crashed into me like a tidal wave. His hideous demons became my hideous demons and his excruciating torment became my excruciating torment. Trapped inside his endless agony, barely clinging to reality, I slipped deep into the depths of his living hell. Hitting bottom, I did the only thing I could; I curled up into a tiny ball and completely shut myself off from everything.
My disconnect was absolute.
Minute blended into minute and hour into day, all the colors of life were fading away. Then through the vastness of the suffocating space surrounding me, I somehow felt my mama’s presence. Child, don’t give up. Fight back, take control. Valiantly I tried, but my father’s grief was too powerful. This world was spiraling away, and I was becoming lost to another.
Time stretched out … time seemed to stand still … time ceased to exist.
I have no idea how long I remained in that solitary state. It could have been days or weeks. Then the emotional connection with my father was suddenly and miraculously severed. I cautiously peeked out and stared around. Everything looked the same, yet it felt different; it felt … empty. For not only had all of my father’s feelings been swept away, but all of mine as well. I’d been stripped of the inner workings that make a spirit whole and left feeling nothing except for my cramped muscles. My soul could no longer sing.
The only companion that stayed with me, my lone friend that survived “the change” was my pet water bear, Tatty. More than likely, it was due to the fact that even in the most frigid caverns of our universe at temperatures of -423°F, water bears survive by slashing their metabolism to one one-hundredth of one percent of normal. In that netherworld, connected yet unconnected to what’s around them, they cling to life in conditions never dreamed possible, seemingly dead yet alive. Just like me.
Kaboom! From out of nowhere, wrenching heartache tears into me. Grief, remorse, regret and guilt pummel me from all sides. My long-dormant emotions—they’re back! Like Icarus being drawn toward the sun, I’m hopelessly caught, only I’m being pulled toward a bottomless hellhole. Nooooo! I can’t live through that again. Focus, Tatiana, Focus.
Whorls of English scientific terms spewing from the chemistry instructor careen past me overhead. Three-dimensional space, whizzz, vertex of a polyhedron, whizzz. My quasi-translator, Ms. Mizuikova, oblivious to my looming apocalypse, continues vigilantly transcribing the lecture on her computer while every bit of my body clenches up and every ounce of my energy pours into tamping down the terrifying fear. Don’t let the emotions get control of you, Tatiana.
Fixating my retinas to the white board, I focus on a formula, attempting to block out everything else. Somehow I manage to make it to the end of class. Unlocking my vision, I frantically scan the room, desperate to find a reason for this cataclysmic upending of my world. My gaze almost instinctively zeroes in on Joe as he quickly gathers his things in a rush to leave. He’s three steps gone, when he abruptly stops and twists back.
His eyes, those breathtakingly beautiful blue eyes of Siberia, lock with mine and search deep inside of me. Motionless, I sit transfixed as his penetrating stare pulls me into the depths of his being. Bewilderment, amazement, trepidation, and most incredible of all, empathy flow through me. Why? How? Why now? It’s been over fifteen years since I experienced any emotions.
“Anna!” Ms. Mizuikova’s sharp, penetrating voice shatters the connection. “Why are you still sitting there?”
Because of breathtakingly beautiful Siberian blue eyes. Lake Baikal, nicknamed the Blue Eye of Siberia, is the deepest and oldest freshwater lake in the world. Like Joe, it’s remote, mysterious and filled with risky, unexplored regions.