The Journal of Nicholas the American

Book 93: Gateway Essentials

by Leigh Kennedy

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

College student Nicholas Dal shares the family talent, or curse - he is an empath, a man who experiences the emotions of other people. Too-powerful emotion can induce seizures, so to stay sane he must live alone and dull his senses with vodka. This, in itself, would be enough for anyone to bear, but Nicholas ias also haunted by a secret from his family's past in Russia. Now someone is looking for him and he fears the worst. To further complicate things, a relationship is forming with a young woman, Jack, and his feelings for her threaten to break through his isolation. Will Nicholas risk his love, his sanity - his life - to be with Jack?

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 182

Sample

17 February 198—

Papa visited me last night. I am thinking that I may have to hide now.

Once again, someone has discovered us – he’s looking for the family, looking for the pozhar-golava. When I was small, a man came looking for old scandal. He didn’t know that dealing with Fyodor Nicholaevich was like trying to fool yourself. Grandfather (my Papa told me once) had him figured out in a moment; he knew he could lie to him, and he did. No, the Dais were city people, from Petrograd – oh, no, we must call it Leningrad now, eh? The man was a refugee from the Hungarian Uprising in 1957, still new to America. Grandfather snowed him with political talk, but if he had been from the Soviet Union, all the lies would have been transparent.

The search for pozhar-golava was forgotten – obviously our family had nothing to do with strange powers and bloody nights.

When I got home from class yesterday, I knew that Papa was in my apartment, I felt him there as I wheeled my bicycle into the garage. I picked up the vodka bottle that I had tossed down onto the grass from the top of my steps last week when I’d been drinking. My landlady never seemed to notice such things, but I felt guilty.

As I got out my key – I don’t know why I always pretend ignorance about my father’s presence – he was already saying hello in his way.

“Papa,” Is said, and set my texts on the bookshelves inside the door, then carried my package to the kitchen.

“How are you, Kolya?”

“Fine, fine.” I opened the cupboard in my tiny kitchen and took down two glasses.

My father stood in the doorway. “Can’t we talk first?”

I could feel him probing into me. I’ve never been resistant to him, and didn’t want him worming through me. He was lonely. He was afraid of me. All as usual. I couldn’t bear even half an hour of this.

“Please. Drink with me,” I said. I balled up the paper bag and threw it against the wall. He knew I was angry. I’ve told him so many times to warn me about his visits, but, no, he will never learn American manners. I poured us each a glass of vodka and handed him one.

He sighed and took a long swallow. I saluted him. He smiled and returned the salute. We drank and I refilled the plastic glasses. It was warm, I could feel it begin to scrub me clean.

“Have you seen Grandmama lately?” I asked.

“How are your studies?” From his evasion I understood that he hadn’t been home for a long time.

“Some day I’ll finish. Let’s go sit.”

My father and I sat on my bed – or, rather, the mattresses on the floor. I noticed a parcel sitting on the pillow, but didn’t ask about it. He looked tired. Sometimes when I look at him, I think I see the flour of his bakery in the creases around his eyes, in the temples of his hair, but it is only age. My father looks old and tired now.

We drank for a moment, and relaxed.

“Have you been drinking a lot?” he asked.

“No. This is the first time since last week. I have to study, so I stop during the week. It’s quiet here, anyway. The landlady,” I pointed downstairs, “is a mouse. She doesn’t disturb me. I feel good now, things are working out. Maybe next spring I’ll start graduate school.”

“Good,” Papa said vaguely.

“And you? Any new lady friends now?”

“Had one. I think I told you about her. She was too – wild,” he said, using the English word. He laughed a little and drank. “I am not as young and handsome as you, Kolya.”

“Pah,” I said, waving him off. “I don’t have time for that.”

Papa sighed. “Will I never have grandchildren?”

“Listen, all the world needs is more of us.” I didn’t mean to be irritable, but he asks too much. I constantly disappoint him.

“I brought you something.” Papa reached behind and picked up the parcel from the pillow.

I opened the bag and looked in. It was a small book on jade. The covers and pages were slick: inside were black and white photographs, and in the middle, four pages of colour plates. “It’s beautiful, Papa.” I sat and sipped my vodka, looking at each piece illustrated. It wasn’t in this book, either, but Papa knew that. He would buy me every book until we either found it, or were satisfied that we would never glimpse it again, even in a photo.

I went to the kitchen and brought the bottle back. Papa was resigned, he lifted his glass for more. “Do you want to stay tonight?” I asked, feeling glad to have him with me after all.

“Yes, Nicholas, I think I should.”

And the seriousness of his face frightened me. He had brought news – Grandmama? I pulled a cigarette from my shirt pocket and lit it with a book of matches that lay on the floor.

“What?” I said impatiently.

“There is a man looking for us.”

“Oh.” I pulled in a breath of air, I don’t know how. My chest felt crushed. “Who?”

“A psychiatrist, I guess. He called Mama and talked to her.” Papa took another long drink. “She didn’t tell him anything. He didn’t talk to her long, but he asked if he could visit her and she…”

“Wait, don’t tell me anything for a minute.” I reeled when I stood. I hurried to the bathroom and stood over the john and heaved into it. I felt better, but still sick. I washed my face and hands. When I looked in the mirror, Papa was there, outside the bathroom.

“I’m sorry, Kolya.”

“Pour me another.”

“You still have some.”

I returned to the mattresses and stretched out. Suddenly, I was cold. Papa put my jacket over me.

“You see, he was clever. She’s afraid she may have said the wrong things. He wants to visit her.”

“No, not Grandmama. She’s as clever as he is, I’m sure,” I said. I pictured her in her chair, and this man (all I could see was a navy blue suit and a conservative tie) on the sofa. She would be doing needlework, and drinking a glass of hot tea.

“You’re probably right,” Papa agreed. “She worries more and more as she gets older. She said that the man wasn’t sure who he was looking for – the Dal family, but she said she knew no other Dals, that she had never heard of Mikhail Nicholaevich.”

“He knew about Mikhail?” I said.

“Yes, Kolya.”

I wanted to get up and be sick again, but I lay still. I stared at the ceiling for a long while, and soon the sky went dark and also my apartment, and I fell asleep. When I woke the next morning, my father was trying to leave quietly. I didn’t open my eyes to say goodbye to him.

23 February

I must do better. I realized today that my studies have been sinking. Have missed too many classes in past weeks. Well, I attended most of them, but I slept through one and a half last week. I think my literature professor has had enough of me; perhaps it was an over-sensitivity that made me take personally his comments on alcoholism. He was talking about writers when he said, “Not a pretty sight.” And someone in class looked at me. I’ve also lost money by taking a day off from work at the library.

We are already talking about the end of the Wars of the Roses in English history; I don’t remember much about the middle Plantagenets.

Richard the Third came up today. Of course, there was controversy. Dr Estes paced back and forth (oh, today she was gorgeous in corduroy, how I wish I could touch her) and I could sense that she liked having her students argue.

Anti-Richard: that pasty fellow who nearly wet his pants when Dr Park said a kind word about Mao in Far Eastern Civ. last semester. He is consistently anti-royalty, anti-government, so no surprise there.

Pro-Richard: Jack, the Jack who got her grade changed on the first exam when Dr Estes realized that Jack is a woman. At least, that is my suspicion of what they talked over that time after class. A preppie sort, though casual, she dresses in jeans, oxford shirts and loafers. I was surprised to see her being so emotional about something in class. But as soon as Dr Estes mentioned Richard, I looked over at Jack because I felt her snap. She sits right across the aisle from me, has borrowed pens, and once picked up a book I dropped.

Idealists, both of them, but I have to admit that I can smell the blood when I look at a painting of Richard. And his big brother, Edward! Did they really have faces like that then?

Here’s what happened. Dr Estes was speaking in her soft voice, it was sunny and the windows were open. I was rolling my pencil under my palm, idly attempting to stay awake.

“… the traditional history is that Richard had his two nephews murdered, thereby making his way clear to the crown…”

That’s when Jack seemed to jerk, and I felt that she was distressed. Strange, when I looked at her, I noticed for the first time that she had grey hairs in her black ones, and I focused on that for a moment. I have been attracted at times during the semester to her, but she is beyond me in so many ways that I let those feelings pass.

“But Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More, and others in the Tudor era did have an interest in making him a villain…” Dr Estes went on.

The Maoist raised his hand here, and Dr Estes nodded to him. “But, he probably did it. All this garbage about him being a good guy is just romantic bullcrap.”

“Oh, not really!” Jack said, and she looked a little surprised herself that she’d spoken up like that. “Have you read a book called The Daughter of Time? It’s a detective novel that proves Richard couldn’t have done it.”

A detective novel? The woman had courage, but still it was like admitting that you only know of literature from television plays. I was amazed that anyone would say such a thing. Well, that Jack would say such a thing, because I had thought her more sophisticated than that. And then she didn’t even seem embarrassed about it. I was; I was terribly embarrassed for her.

Another student said, “It’s hard to improve your reputation when Shakespeare and a saint write nasty things about you.”

So, everyone seemed to know about Richard but me. I had been slow in reading the text. I felt left out of the argument, though I never say anything in class anyway. I have yet to raise my hand.

“But it was Morton,” Jack said knowingly. “Bishop Morton wrote it, More just transcribed it, and they thought he wrote it. He was just a boy when Richard died.”

“So what?” said a faint voice from the other side of the room. Another giggled. I felt sorry for Jack, but obviously she knew what she was talking about.

“And history has just been carrying it on for centuries.” Jack looked at Dr Estes and her voice was a little quieter. “I read a book that had changed Richard’s motto to make him sound more mercenary. Can’t remember what the motto was, about loyalty or something, and they changed it to make him sound power-hungry. And this was a real history book, warping the words that Richard lived by, not even checking up on it.”

I hadn’t cared a whit about Richard the Third until this afternoon. I had hardly paid much attention to him other than as a fictional character in a play. In fact, I’d never read that one – only seen Olivier’s version on the public broadcast station years ago.

Poor, sick Richard must have been mad to murder his nephews, and I felt this conviction as if someone who really knew was whispering through time into my ear – guilty, guilty, guilty.

Oh, it doesn’t matter now, does it? Who cares? Jack does, and a few other buffs, but the screams of the children are so long past…

I don’t know why I am even thinking about this. I don’t want to.

Perhaps I am thinking about Jack. Felt something in her today. Something strong and lost, and it was like waking up confused after a long sleep. I have been thinking only of myself too much lately. Again.

27 February

English history class again, much quieter today. Dr Estes ticked off dates on the blackboard with a nub of chalk. Richard is in our past again. Now we start on the oddly disquieting Tudors, and I miss the Plantagenets. It seems that the fun is missing from Henry, sickly Edward, Mary, and even to a certain extent Elizabeth. How can the Armada compare with the Crusades? Or Sir Francis Drake with Robin Hood? No more Lionhearts, Lacklands, or Eleanors.

I wish I had been sober the past few weeks. I think I missed something important, and can’t quite figure it out.

It’s all important. I have to remember the time that I first told Grandmama that I was going away to college. She hated that, but I promised her (and myself) that I would make her proud.

I remember that she stood at the window, rubbing a wet circle in the frost and looking out at the snow. It was a good spring blizzard in the Rockies. That’s when she told me that particular story about Mikhail. But at first, she just said “away?” as if that had been the only word Pd said. “Away, Kolya?”

I told her that I didn’t want to work in a factory all my life. I wanted to do something else, such as teaching, something quiet and bookish.

She said, “When it snows like this in Denver, I miss the old house. At home, the family didn’t leave. The old never had to live alone.”

I wanted to go away, yes, not because I didn’t love her, but because I loved myself most of all. I couldn’t stay. When I got up from the chair she knew what I was doing and told me not to get a drink.

“I want you to feel what I am feeling,” she had said, looking away from the winter outside. “I want you to understand what it’s like to be left behind. Come closer and listen to what I feel!”

I hadn’t been able to move. She immobilized me with her anger.

I told her that the university had accepted me, they were going to give me money, and a student job in the library, and it was all planned. I reminded her that we had discussed it long ago.

“I’ll call you. I’ll visit. It’s only a few hours away.”

“That’s what your father said when he left. And he lives right here in Denver. You ever see my Sasha here for dinner, even on Sunday? No.”

“I’ll be better,” I promised.

“Why can’t you go to college here?”

“Because it isn’t what I want.”

“You’re a boy, Kolya.”

“No, I’m not. This is America, and I’m a man now. Just because I don’t have a farm and a wife doesn’t mean that I’m not grown up.”

She laughed at me. How long ago it seems now that she laughed at me, and I was so young that it still hurt for Grandmama to think me foolish. Then she stared out the window again. I remember how cold it was that day; the snow spat out of the sky, hard and bitter.

“Nicholas Alexandrovich,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m afraid for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you … sometimes … you’re so much like Mikhail. You’re so lonely and brooding and you drink too much. Mikhail wasn’t a bad man. The sensitivity ate at him more than the others. He thought about what he knew of others’ feelings instead of just brushing them off, like the others did. I remember that he used to hide Jews in the barn. I don’t know how they knew to come to him, but he always took them in. Nicholas Pavlovich chased them out sometimes if he saw them, but he didn’t always look, even if he suspected they were there. Mikhail would take a chicken to the rabbis to be freshly killed, help them make their beds in the straw.”

I was surprised to hear Grandmama speak nicely of Mikhail. It was like a heresy. No one talked about him when Grandfather was alive. My father had told me about my great-uncle on a camping trip. Later, I realized that it was planned for the telling of family secrets – under the pines, next to a cold Colorado stream. I was only about five years old. My father told me about us.

“Imagine, Kolya, if very few men could smell. Only you, or your family, could smell all of the many things in this world. You would sometimes smell roses, and sometimes dung. But, just because you are the only one that is smelling them doesn’t mean the odour belongs to you. People will give you their emotions without knowing it; remember that you are not them, that they don’t know that you know. Do not confuse yourself with the other people around you.”

He told me about the fire in the head. I had no real idea of what he was talking about. Thinking back on it, I wonder if Papa ever knew the fire himself. He was so mild, but he built boundaries, something I never learned to do. Something most of the family never learned to do; my Papa was different. It took me a long time to understand what happens to us around other people – that day I was much more excited about catching a rainbow trout than hearing awful tales about dead relatives.

I was used to hearing stories about life in Russia. Some are interesting, and I wish I had tape recordings now of my grandfather telling them. Grandfathers Uncle Vanya died while working on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Some say he fell and broke his neck, but a friend of the family told my great-great-grandfather that he had starved to death because he drank rather than spend all his pay on the three bowls of thin cabbage soup they served to the workers. The cabbage was usually rotten.

And there was a cousin who fought in the Great War. He had wandered out in the woods for a breather from his troop and encountered a German soldier, lost, and more frightened of the Russian winter than the enemy. The cousin traded his boots for the German soldier’s gun, shot the German after the trade and took his boots back. That’s how wars are won.

They talked of bad winters and eating famine bread; they talked of good harvests and prosperous times. They remembered little things and kept some of the culture alive in our house, which was a quiet, isolated bit of the old world in the middle of Denver, Colorado.

As I grew older, there was one person I became more interested in, whom I could never ask about. His name was never mentioned until after my grandfather died. Now I had this chance to question my grandmother. “Did you know him well?” I asked her.

She smiled. “I was so young, then. Only seventeen when I was a bride.”

“Did you like him?”

“Oh, yes. He was like a real brother to me. And Fyodor loved him, too.” Grandmama sat down on the sofa, remembering. “Just before your grandfather died, he spoke of Mikhail. Once he caught an old tramp stealing eggs. Then the tramp picked up a shovel and hit Mikhail on the shoulder with it. It hu. . .