He’s blessed, who in his sole saved
Its most beautiful creations,
And from the people, as from graves,
For sense, didn’t wait their commendations!
-Aleksandr Pushkin
To tell the story of April, it is important that we begin before her beginning. Before her parents met. The story of April begins with a secret that would shape her life and the world.
In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev began to close sensitive towns across Russia in an attempt to protect state secrets. Referred to as “post box” cities, towns like Cheylabinsk-65 and Sillamae were removed from all official maps and knowledge of them became a State secret. On October 13, 1964, Leonid Brezhnev seized power from Nikita Khrushchev and greatly expanded the number of closed cities. As secretive as the closed cities were, there was one city whose existence was only revealed 30 years later through satellite photography.
Realizing that the cultural divide between Russia and the US made it difficult for Soviet spies to integrate seamlessly into life in America, Brezhnev built a perfect replica of a Midwestern American town in the middle of Siberia. The peninsula of Kamchatka was chosen as the staging point for what would become known as Russia’s “Little America”. Luring Russians who had lived most of their lives in America, Brezhnev filled his town with native English-speaking Americans of Russian descent whose loyalty was enforced by both isolation and the time-honored tradition of keeping relatives as hostages. The Americans helped train the Russian agents but it is only two of those agents who are relevant to this story.
Playing the long game, Brezhnev asked that his operatives have children and raise them as Americans to better serve their covers when they were placed. April Dawn Gosling, born in April of 1981, was delivered by her father in a delivery room that was better equipped and stocked than any other delivery room in Russia. She was driven home in an American car on roads that were kept up better than any other road in Russia. Her parents nestled her in a crib in a room in a house that would have made any Politburo jealous. April was now part of one of the most secretive endeavors in the Cold War.
The success of “Little America” is evident in the fact that April cannot pinpoint the moment when her life moved from Siberia to Michigan. The closest she can come is near her fifth birthday as that was when her mother took April and her siblings to get their social security numbers. Freed of the restraints of living in a closed city, Charles and Marti began working to give their children a life in America that they could have never had in Russia: sailing on Lake Michigan, camping in 4-Mile State Forest, watching American TV shows, and getting into the kind of trouble that only other small town Midwesterners would understand.
April was a quiet child, bookended by siblings who made up for her silences. She observed everything and everyone and the words that did not escape her mouth began to write verses that would eventually find their way into the world. While it was not obvious to her, her Russian heritage had begun to assert itself. Her soul felt the siren call of poetry and her heart followed.
At fourteen years of age, her mother took her on a trip to Egypt. For April, it was a chance to see a world that once was, to lose herself in the antiquity of limestone stacked upon limestone and of man’s desire to not fade from this earth. For her mother, however, it was a trip of promise. The KGB had been disbanded and the FSB had arisen in its place. No longer was the West considered an enemy who needed to be infiltrated and brought down. Capitalism had come to Russia and her leaders could finally be open about their business. Egypt, an ally of Russia during the Cold War and an important trading partner, had been wracked by sectarian violence. The violence was affecting Russia’s economic interest and so something needed to be done. Marti Gosling, wife to a small town doctor and mother of three vibrant children, would be given her freedom from the orders she had received twenty years earlier in a small, bare KGB office if she would travel to Cairo and deliver a message to Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya. A week after her message, a police sweep in Al Minya resulted in the arrest of a key leader of the IG’s military wing, who had been sought since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya, cut off from the support of their Russian allies began to close up shop and had tossed a high-ranking member to the authorities as a sign of good faith. Charles and Marti Gosling were now free of the terrible purpose that had lain in their shadows for decades.
April returned home, as buoyant as her mother if for a different reason. The journey was the spark she needed and her course was set. She attended the prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan and there began the true honing of her craft. Her writing brought her closer to her Russian heritage but she still did not recognize it as such. Mistaking the source of her dark poetic heritage, April spent time studying in Ireland. Home of James Joyce and Liam O’Flaherety, the Emerald Isle was able to sate her need. For a while. Several years later, she was in Prague to study and write. Closer to her heritage, the works of Egon Bondy and Jaroslav Durych mirrored the struggles she was facing in her own life. She returned to the States and her life carried on. There were good days, there were bad days, and everyone once in a while a poem found its way from heart to pen to paper and the world was enriched a bit more by this singular talent. She had relationships but she always felt like she was just passing time.
Then she found a picture of a guy online who had a monkey on his head, only she 
did not notice the monkey. She only noticed the smile. She sent this monkey wearing individual an email and asked he if would be willing to join her trivia team. He agreed to swing by for an evening and see how it went. She was only a couple of minutes late arriving at the Park Tavern that night and, as she made her way towards an open table, saw him step out of the bathroom. Their eyes locked and she knew that she was in trouble. Sure, he looked sheepish and was wiping his hands on his jeans (the Park Tavern is perpetually out of paper towels), but that smile was there and was just for her.
Her trivia team never showed up, so she and her new gentleman friend sat and talked through trivia. When that ended, they walked to an Irish pub and talked for a few more hours. When they parted ways that night, she was already trying to figure out when she could see him again. He beat her to the punch by offering to come help her clean her apartment. Then came over to help her clean her apartment again. He is hesitant to take all of the credit, but she got her entire security deposit back. It did not take for the two of them to realize that something special was present when they were together. And so they are together because the world is a brighter place when they are and because once a heart has known such happiness, there is no going back.