May 6, 1961
Found us thinking about our future. Despite the fact I married Marina to hurt Ella, I found myself in love with Marina.
Maybe a week after their marriage, Aunt Valya said, “Let me see your pampered, manicured hand,” and all Marina could show were Polish fingers: Her nails were broken from cleaning stone walls on her balcony and washing their floor. For that one moment, she had said to herself, “Is this what married life is about? Broken nails? Oh my God!”
But for the first couple of days, since that was all they had off from their jobs and couldn’t have a honeymoon, they would stay in bed and not get up until late afternoon. A honeymoon was sexual; you explored. Marina felt as if now she was free to do what she wanted to do. She didn’t think about their problems in sex, and she didn’t want to talk about that, really. You expected fireworks, and it didn’t happen, and you thought maybe it’s supposed to come later. It never did. That was all right. But she didn’t know if what little was happening to her was all that was supposed to happen, and so in bed everything was a problem. She didn’t know what to do, and Lee was always eager-beaver. Later on, when Marina was tired or in a bad mood, she didn’t avoid him, just told him, “No, I don’t want to make love to you, because I feel used one more time. What for? Something there for you, maybe, but nothing for me.” Even if that was kind of insulting to him, he would try to handle it. “Come on,” he would say, “you know I love you.” He would play that he was a little boy and make jokes. Sometimes she would give in. She thinks he really liked sex, but she resents talking about it. “Nobody asks Jacqueline Kennedy what Jack Kennedy was like in bed.” And here she has to discuss such private things as what it was like to have a person inside you. There is nothing dirty about sex unless you let people watch—then it’s degrading. But she would say that no matter what their difficulties, people ask if Lee was a homosexual and she would say she never had any sense with Lee that he’d be partial to a man, never. Maybe he could be gay somewhere else, but not around her.
Lee liked to stand in front of his mirror and admire himself, that was true. “How unbashful he was,” said Marina. “He would admire himself. He was not tall, but he was well proportioned. He had beautiful legs. And he knew I liked them, so he would flirt. ‘Don’t you think I have gorgeous legs?’ he would say. Just begging for compliments. Kind of a joking relationship. Private, but of the sort people do have.” Her understanding: He really liked women. That was her interpretation.
When told how Lee went for months without trying to seduce Ella, never forcing her, Marina asked if it was possible that Ella was embarrassed to talk. “You know, I’m holier right now than I was then, know what I mean?” And then she thought, “Maybe he liked her so well that if she didn’t want him that bad, he wouldn’t push.”
Lee did tell her, and with a lot of admiration, about that beautiful Japanese girl who had been the first woman he knew. Marina was left with an image of a lovely Oriental blossom whom Lee still longed for. It made her jealous. Of course. There in his mind was a lovely woman. Was that to influence her? So that she would pay more attention to all kinds of sex? And learn new ways? She wanted to compete when Lee—always with great admiration—described all the sexual things this Japanese girl did to him, this unknown beauty.
5
Early Married Days
Valya thought Marina now a dama, not a girl but a young woman. When you get your position in society in Russia, you’re a dama. Once, after she was married, Marina said to Valya, “My husband may do factory work, but I never see him dirty. He comes back from his job as if he’s an engineer.”
Valya wanted Marina and Lee’s apartment to be just as neat as he looked, so she often came to help. Once, Valya even went over to wash their balcony, a hard job and dirty, a long job, and she had been at it for three hours when Alik came home from Horizon to have lunch. Marina was cooking, and put food on the table for him, but did not invite Valya to sit down. Later, she said to Marina, “I’m not hungry or poor, but it’s a tradition when you clean up for people to be offered something. Yet, there are some who sit and eat and don’t offer anything, okay, please!” Marina must have told Alik, because after that, whenever Valya visited, Alik was all over her saying, “Valya, do you want this? Would you like that?” Maybe they had been looking for an hour alone that day, but still, after you wash their balcony, you shouldn’t be treated like a servant.
From Marina’s narrative: May was our honeymoon month . . . Of course we were both working but we had evenings after 5 o’clock and Sundays entirely to ourselves. We ate in restaurants, in the first place because I did not have time to cook dinner . . . and in the second place because I did not know how to cook properly . . .
He and I loved classical music. We had many Tchaikovsky records, as he was Lee’s favorite composer, and also Grieg, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schumann. Lee’s favorite opera was the Queen of Spades. In Russia, a film was made of this opera, a beautiful film. Lee went to it four or five times and at home I even came to be jealous of this opera. After work he would immediately start playing the record, not once but several times. [Also] we often went to the opera, theatre, the conservatory or the circus . . . and many of my friends envied the way we lived. Lee was very anxious to have a child and very grieved when the honeymoon was over and there was no sign of a baby.1
They wanted her to be pregnant right away. For the first month, nothing happened, and Lee and Valya were equally disappointed. Valya even said, “We were hoping you would have a child, but you’re probably going to be like your uncle, won’t be able to.” Said it after one month! Lee wanted to have a boy. He was going to call him David. Their boy, he assured Marina, would someday be President of the United States. And then, whenever Marina would go to the bathroom, at least when her period was approaching, he wouldn’t let her shut that door. He wanted to know for sure whether she was having a period. When she asked him why he didn’t trust her, Alik said, “Well, you work in a hospital. If you don’t want to have a child, you could have an abortion. So I want to know.” It didn’t hurt her feelings; she wanted a child too: She thought he was being stupid, but she brushed it off. She even said, “Well, leave the door open”—took it like a joke. She said, “Lee, I want a child as much as you. I’m not going to do anything foolish.” So, it was not such a big deal. It wasn’t like he stood there and said, “You must pee-pee in front of me”—no, it was more gentle. After all, late spring had come, and her mood was, “I’m going to have a child and I’m going to have a family right here,” and she wanted them to be as young and happy as they could be.
May
The transition of changing full love for Ella to Marina was very painful, especially as I saw Ella almost every day at the factory, but as the days and weeks went by I adjusted more and more to my wife men tally . . . She is madly in love with me from the very start—boat rides on Lake Minsk, walks through the park, evening at home or at Aunt Valya’s place mark May.
During the first weeks of their marriage, Lee would meet her at the pharmacy entrance and walk her home, and when evening came, Alik would go out on their balcony and look at sights far off with his binoculars. At night, he would wash the breakfast dishes, and on days when they had hot water, he would do their laundry. When Marina would climb up their entryway from Kalinina Street, she could hear him singing “Volga Boatmen” from four flights down. He wouldn’t be one for a choir, but he could sing with zest. A pleasant voice. And he was washing his own work clothes. He just didn’t want her near his dirty things.
One day, he was hammering a piece of furniture together and hit himself on his finger. She knew it hurt—would you believe it?—she was physically hurt for him. She really went all the way. She felt their souls touching in his pain. Of course, he also liked to be pampered. He had been like a little boy when she put that bandage on his finger.
She soon learned that he didn’t enjoy his job. He claimed that they resented him and his privileges. But she didn’t know how tr
ue it might be. Lee played with people. That she soon learned. Maybe he even played with her.
A few weeks after they were married, some letters arrived from America and in one was a picture of Marguerite Oswald. She was in a white nursing outfit, just sitting in a chair. “That’s my mother,” he told Marina. He studied the picture and said, “She’s gained some weight. As I remember her, she wasn’t that plump.” That was it. Marina said, “You told me your mother was dead.” He said, “Well, I don’t want to talk about my mother.”
She did not know how to accept that. He had said he was an orphan. Now, she thought to herself, “Stupid me! There I was believing late at night that it was a sign and God sent me an orphan like myself.”
From Marina’s narrative: Sometime in the middle of June we were out on Lake Minsk . . . lying in the sun and swimming. That was a wonderful day [and] Lee told me that he was sure that . . . we would have a baby. I did not believe it, but a week later we were eating in a café and I fainted. I think this was the first sign . . . It was a great joy for us and for my aunt . . . but the doctors told me that I might lose the baby since I have Rh negative blood. Lee was very upset by this, but when he had his own blood checked, it turned out that he was also Rh negative. Only a very small percentage have Rh negative blood, and this very unusual coincidence—in which husband and wife were both Rh negative—pleased us very much.2
Good signs are important. They enable you to forgive. You could call Rh negative fundamental. Maybe God had chosen Lee for a certain girl from Leningrad.
June
A continuation of May except that we draw closer and closer now and I think very little now of Ella . . .
6
Back to America
After she became pregnant, Lee showed her Dr. Spock’s book one night. She didn’t know whether he had owned it all this time or asked his mother to send it. But every day he translated passages for her until Lee, courtesy of Dr. Spock, was informing Marina how their embryo would develop. He was very proud. He played doctor with her, and she felt him come closer. His Russian even got better. He was making progress.
He had a habit she liked. He could always put everything else aside. Nobody could push him when he was reading. His spelling was horrible, but that could be forgiven. Russian—it’s a hard language. Many Russians do not spell it well. And he did not know grammar. But for speaking, yes. He applied himself. He would stumble only occasionally. His vocabulary was not large, but his pronunciation was good.
However, she was pregnant—“an entirely different language.” Sometimes she felt distant from him. Then, with each week of pregnancy, more and more. Maybe such a condition was normal. “You still love me,” he would say. “It’s just a chemical imbalance.” But she felt a little distaste for him. Now that she had got to know her husband better, Marina decided that he was stingy. They had an apartment that she wanted to fix up, and he kept putting a stop to that. “No,” he would say. “We have everything we need.” Well, sure, but she wanted some feminine touches, and there he was in charge of all their money.
She didn’t like that. She gave him what she earned at work and now she didn’t have money of her own. It wasn’t like they each had their own little drawer. He had it all.
Before they married, she felt there was no need for either one of them to control the other, but then, she didn’t know much. She thought she could be her own person and so had no idea that he was going to tell her what to do. Now, she would bristle when he took a domineering attitude. During courtship, she had been in control; since marriage, the rules were being changed. All the same, there were still lots of times when she would be pleasantly surprised. They would listen to an hour of classical music on their radio, and he would know which composer was playing. Very often they would start a game: She would say it was one composer, he would say another; many times he was right. That was great. He could recognize whether a piece was by Bach or Chopin or Wagner.
Also, Lee taught her to play gin rummy. Her grandmother would not allow cards in their house in Arkhangelsk. Card games were there to please the devil. So Marina had never been interested, but now she played gin rummy with Lee. He beat her, usually. He would enjoy winning: “See, I won again!”—it was important for him. But nothing to her. Somebody had to lose.
Sometimes she would get a glimpse—if only for a little while—of what was in him. Then he would lift his shield again. He was embarrassed to show vulnerability. Only in intimate moments could he be himself, this little boy who wanted attention. Then he would pretend that he didn’t need anything. “He would isolate himself,” said Marina, “and play games with people. Treat them like they were not people.”
Once, on a day when everyone was supposed to vote for some Presidium or something, election workers started knocking on their door at 7:00 A.M. Lee told them to go away—it was too early. They came back again, and Lee wouldn’t open up. He kept yelling, “This is a free country.” He gave them lectures while they stood outside. She doesn’t remember whether she went to vote, but Lee kept telling her that the Soviet constitution said it was a free country. They were not supposed to drag you out to vote. So she received a speech on politics early that day. Of course, she had never studied that stupid Soviet constitution. That is, she had studied, had even passed her exam, but now she couldn’t recall any of it. So, he had to teach her about her own system, and told her how they were not practicing their constitution properly.
He also liked her to be at home when he arrived. If she came in even ten minutes after him, he’d be upset. “Where were you?” he’d ask. “How come you’re late?” She thinks maybe that’s how his control over her began. Lee’s factory hours were always the same, and hers too, but sometimes she might stop by a store, so how could you know who would come home first?
Pregnant, she was now very sensitive to odor. Their walls seemed to smell; even her balcony seemed rank when she opened its door. She was always sniffing somebody else’s cooking. Nor could she eat. And then there was Lee. If you boiled him in water, he would still have his special body odor. So, by the second month of pregnancy, when he started being not so nice, she began to look for fights. And she had second thoughts—had she made a mistake? Maybe she didn’t love this man.
Soon enough, she learned that Lee not only had a mother but a brother, with a wife and children. All of a sudden, Lee was part of a family—he kept getting more correspondence. Since she didn’t read English, she could not know what these letters were about, but then, one Sunday morning, she found out. Lee woke up and said, “If I have a chance to go to America, would you go with me?”
“You’re joking,” she said.
He said, “No, it’s a possibility. I don’t know for sure, but would you go with me?”
That gave her a feeling that he truly loved her. And she said, “I don’t know. I’m kind of scared.” She took a breath, and added, “Okay. I’ll go.”
It wasn’t that short a conversation—maybe it took an hour, maybe it took three days—but by its end, she said okay. He said, “I told them at the American Embassy that I was giving up my passport. So maybe they won’t allow me to go back. There might be complications. I’ll have to write a lot of letters. And my mother will help. Will you go?” When she finally said yes, he said, “I don’t want you to tell Aunt Valya or any of your relatives. And nobody at work. Not yet. Because maybe it won’t go through.”
Marina did not believe it could happen. Later, when she had to fill out her own applications, she still didn’t believe it. Her dream of marrying a foreigner had not included leaving her country. It was just finding a man who had an apartment. She didn’t want to huddle in somebody else’s corner. That was the largest thing about marriage: your own apartment. To meet and marry a foreigner was, in addition, flattering to her, and adventurous. Sometimes she dreamed, Boy, wouldn’t it be great to work in Czechoslovakia for a couple of years? Or East Germany? Buy a sporty coat, look nice. Having married an American, she could tell the girls at work:
“See what I got? You just have your Russian nothing.” They answered: “Isn’t your husband a worker?” She told them: “It doesn’t matter. He’s still a foreigner. He’s Oswald, not Vanya.”
But now it was scary. Going to America! It gets scarier if you don’t tell your relatives and keep it to yourself at work. Then in July, Alik said he might have to take an illegal trip to Moscow in order to visit the American Embassy. She wondered if the KGB would come for her then, or would they call her in from work?—she didn’t know how the KGB got in touch with you.
What Marina also did not know was that her husband had been in correspondence through half the winter with American officials in Moscow. More than a month before he even met her, back in early February 1961, he had already sent a letter to the Embassy, requesting the return of that same passport he had left on Richard Snyder’s desk in late October 1959. Snyder had mailed an answer back to Minsk, suggesting that Oswald take a trip to Moscow so they could discuss the matter. They had been in communication since. Oswald was to tell his wife many a lie over their years together, but no single deceit may have been as large as his decision not to inform Marina or Valya or Ilya before the marriage that in his heart he was already on his way back to America.
PART VI
A COMMENCEMENT OF THE LONG VOYAGE HOME
1
Remarks from the Author
Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery Page 22