Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  American citizen and have the U.S. passport . . .

  Robert Lee sounds like he is growing into a fine boy and Cathy is . . . already four years old. It hardly seems possible. I remember when Mother phoned me to say she was born, August 21 or 22. [My outfit was] getting ready to leave for Japan . . . A lot has changed since then!! . . .

  Keep writing.

  Your brother,

  Lee

  Enclosed are some views of Minsk.1

  TO: The American Embassy

  Moscow USSR

  Oct. 4, 1961

  Dear Sirs:

  I am hereby requesting the Offices of the American Embassy and the Ambassador of the United States, Mr. Thompson, to act upon my case in regards to my application to the Soviet authorities for an exit visa.

  This application was made on July 20, 1961, and although three months have already elapsed, I have not received this visa . . .

  I believe there is justification for an official inquiry, directed to the department of “Internal Affairs, Prospekt Stalin 15, Minsk,” and the offices of the “address and passport office,” Ulitsa Moscova, Colonel Petrakof, Director.

  Also, I believe it is doubly important for an official inquiry, since there have been systematic and concerted attempts to intimidate my wife into withdrawing her application for a visa. I have notified the Embassy with regard to these incidents by the local authorities in regard to my wife. These incidents had resulted in my wife’s being hospitalized . . . on September 22, 1961, for serious exhaustion . . .

  I think it is within the lawful right, and in the interest of, the United States government, and the American Embassy, Moscow, to look into this case on my behalf.

  Yours very truly,

  Lee H. Oswald2

  He has instincts on how to set one bureaucracy upon another. Since he can be certain that his letter to the American Embassy will be read first by the “local authorities,” he is allowing them to contemplate the consequences of a complaint by the State Department. Of course, if he is engaging in a war of nerves, it can be said that Marina is one of the first to suffer, and soon she decides to visit an aunt in Kharkhov during her three-week vacation from the pharmacy.

  Oct. 14

  Dear Marina,

  I was very glad to receive your letter today. I was also glad to learn that everything is all right with you at Aunt Polina’s.

  I hope you dress well because it is already very cold here.

  While you are in Kharkhov, of course I am very lonesome, but I see Erich often and I also go to the movies . . .

  Weather here is cold and wind is cold too.

  I eat at the automat after work or at the factory dining room.

  Well, enough for the present! Please write! (I received your telegram also on Tuesday.)

  I kiss you,

  Alik3

  His letter of October 14 may not be as cold as the weather but it is certainly lukewarm. On October 18, however, he sees his favorite opera The Queen of Spades, and Pushkin and Tchaikovsky succeed in bringing him back to love. He even jots down some Russian fragments of one aria. In the translation offered by the Warren Commission, the words come forth in impassioned bursts:

  Act 2 “Queen of Spades”

  I love you, love you immeasurably. I cannot imagine life without you. I am ready right now to perform a heroic deed of unprecedented prowess for your sake . . . I am ready to conceal my feelings to please you . . . I am ready to do anything for your sake . . . not only to be a husband but a servant . . . I would like to be your friend and keep on being one for always . . . But what is the matter with me, how little you trust me . . . I am sad with your sadness and I weep with your tears. Oh, I am tormented with this—passionately to you with all my soul I repeat: Oh, my dear! I love you.4

  Oct. 18, 1961

  Dear Marina

  Today I received presents from you. Thanks a lot. They are very, very nice and I shall always remember this day.

  Well, are you returning soon? I will be glad to see you again—I will love you so!!

  Well, again, thanks for the presents. You selected so well the records and books and frames which I will always hold.

  So long,

  Your husband,

  Alik5

  Larissa thinks that out of everyone Alik knew, she was probably that person to whom he related best. In fact, when Marina left to visit her aunt in Kharkhov, she asked Larissa to stop by and take care of Alik a little.

  She too recalls that Marina always said she would get married either to a Jew or to a foreigner. One could not eliminate one’s past, but perhaps the difficulties of such a past were less hard to live with when you were married to a foreigner. No matter what had happened, she loved Marina, loved her so much it is difficult to convey it. Marina was so good, so attentive, and she had an outstanding knowledge of literature. They had read so many books together when they were young; Marina was literally interested in everything. Larissa also understood why Marina liked Jews and wanted to marry one. She had seen how, among Jews, a woman was always respected. If, in a few Russian families, you could also find such agreeable treatment of women, it was only among the highest levels of the intelligentsia, like her sister Ludmila and Misha. “Today,” said Larissa, “perhaps our level of culture and refinement in Minsk has been raised somewhat among our working class, but Marina lived here nearly thirty years ago. And it is possible that her contact with foreigners in Leningrad had given her a new perspective on how women could be treated.”

  When Larissa first met Alik, however, she was puzzled why Marina had chosen him. He seemed a little colorless. Then, she spent some time with him and realized he could change in personality with different people. If you were educated, he sensed that immediately; if you were a worker, he approached more simply.

  Of course, Lee was an enigmatic person. Once, Larissa said to Marina in jest, “Is he an American spy?” and Marina just smiled. But when Marina left for Kharkhov and told Larissa to make sure to visit him while she was gone, Larissa would go by sometimes to ring his doorbell and there would be occasions when Lee did not answer for the longest time. Yet she knew he was there. From the street, she had seen a light in the windows. Then, he would come to his door and ask who it was, and only when Larissa identified herself would he open up. She always joked about that. “Are you hiding something in there? Are you broadcasting?” He would smile.

  She liked him well enough, but he was strange. Company might be at Lee and Marina’s apartment for an evening, yet at ten o’clock he would say, “I’m tired, I feel like sleeping.” That was not accepted behavior in Minsk. He would get up, and the others would also get up, but he would say, “Lyalya, stay a little longer with us.” After everyone else had left, she and Marina would still be talking. Then, he would say, “Now, we’ll take you home,” and he and Marina would put on their coats and walk Larissa back. But she must say that in company, he always showed respect for Marina; he was devoted. If Lee nagged her to clean up their house better, Larissa never heard that. Besides, their apartment was clean. Everything was clean. Marina went around wiping up with a rag all the time. She was an exceptional mother and a wonderful wife. Lee wanted her to use a brush rather than a rag when she washed dishes, but that was their only other difference.

  She thinks he was jealous of his wife because she stood out physically and was so lively and interesting. Of course, he was possessive. It would even bother him if Marina went for a walk alone.

  Oct. 22, 1961

  My dearest girl!

  Today I received your postcard; thank you, dear, only I do not like your talk that you have a feeling that you will lose me. You will never lose me and that’s all!

  Today also I received a letter from Mother. She sent me several books. She also tells me that you should learn to speak English.

  I wrote back and told her that you do not want to . . . I sent her regards from you.

  You can’t tell when you will return. Tell me as early as you can. The weather
is here cold and rainy.

  And our personal affairs: I went, but they say, “No answer yet.”

  But that’s all right. You will be home soon again. It will be so good to be with you. I am glad that the baby is so active; that’s good.

  Well, so long, write,

  Your husband,

  Alik6

  While in Kharkhov, Marina could not stop thinking of Valya and of Ilya. They had been trying to persuade her. They did not want her to go to America. Valya even told her that it would be very bad for Ilya. Marina, however, wasn’t sure this was so. Times were changing, and she was only Ilya’s niece. Now, with Nikita Khrushchev, young people were believing in freedom: It was not 1945; it was not Stalin. They weren’t going to prosecute Ilya just because his niece went to America. Of course, they might not promote him in his job. Valya told her that Ilya had worked honestly all his life toward his pension. Maybe he would even be denied that. Valya said, “God forbid, what if they send us to Siberia?”

  Ilya’s sister Aunt Lyuba was also disturbed. After all, she was working at MVD as a bookkeeper. Her job might be in jeopardy as well. Yet Valya never scolded Marina—she just opened her cards and spread them out. “You know,” she said, “you hold our lives in your hands. Maybe it is a kapriz to go to America.” Marina walked back from such conversations with a heavy burden. What was she to do? She wasn’t ungracious or ungrateful, but they were putting a heavy decision on her shoulders. It was not a kapriz, she decided. She was not capricious.

  So, yes, thinking about it now in Kharkhov, she would take a chance. Valya and Ilya would be all right. She was not going to destroy her family. Yet even Aunt Polina, in Kharkhov, was advising her not to go to America. Polina said: “Stay in Russia for the good of all.” When Marina would go for a walk with Polina’s son, she was so upset in her movements that he became concerned she might fall down. He was a lovely young boy, and he loved her, and he said, “Marina, don’t pay attention to my mother. Do what’s right in your heart.”

  She went back to work after these three weeks in Kharkhov, but things got worse.

  November 2

  Marina arrives back radiant, with several jars of preserves for me from her aunt in Kharkhov.

  PART VII

  FATHERHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD

  1

  Cruel but Wise

  In the later months of Marina’s pregnancy, Lee became careful. Dr. Spock’s book said: Don’t make love once a certain month is reached—now, she can’t remember which month. And Lee was protective, very protective of their unborn baby, and tender, very tender; he measured her stomach and he petted it.

  She wasn’t showing anything for a long time. Just a little belly. Once he asked, “Are you sure you’re pregnant?” He was afraid their baby might be too small. But he was excited when he heard the heartbeat for the first time—a nice quiet moment. He loved to lay his ear on her stomach and listen.

  All through their marriage, she would say, little by little, maybe their sex got better. Only one thing she would never allow—“what do you call it?—when people kiss feet—fetish?” She never heard about anything like that until she read of it. She would never allow men that, but Lee was not perverted in such a way. He was nice. When her feet felt wooden in the last months of pregnancy, Lee would massage them. And later, he was very kind about a few stretch marks she had after June was born. He would look at their baby and say, “Your mama did all this for you,” and he would stroke those stretch marks and kiss them. But, of course, they were never that bad. She never got that big.

  Now, at night, in their small apartment, as winter came on, he would write in a notebook. Since they were going to America, he had started a journal, and for a couple of nights he wrote so much that she finally asked him if he was a spy. Up to then, she had tried to respect his privacy. She didn’t believe marriage was a place where you have to smother each other. People must have their own lives. But she was curious. So she asked him what he was writing, and he told her it was his memories of Russian life. She said, “Are you sure you’re not a spy?” He said, “What if I were?” He stared at her. He said, “What would you do if I am?” She really didn’t know. She started thinking about it. When he saw how worried she looked, he said, “Don’t worry. I was joking. I’m not a spy.” So she trusted him. Still, she could see how he might be a spy. Who could love the Soviet Union? She didn’t. No admiration there at all. Why, she even smoked Belamor cigarettes. Her private protest. She could explain: Belamorski Canal had been built by political prisoners, whose bones were buried in the canal banks, and later, when they named a cigarette Belamor, people saw it as a symbolic memento of all the bones that were buried during Stalin’s period. “A great economic achievement—so many bones were buried there. Our system was such that you have to read between the lines. People knew what was happening even if they could not tell. We felt solidarity with people buried near Belamorski Canal. Even now, people won’t switch, even now. Belamor is not just a cigarette. If you buy it, you’re saying, ‘Thank you, brother. You died. I’m with you.’ So, Russians laugh when they smoke Belamor. They say, ‘My God, everything built in Russia is on the bones, you know?’”

  Lee kept writing in his notebooks. Sometimes he would ask her what a Russian word meant. It wasn’t that he wrote a lot of pages. As she remembers, it was a small notebook and maybe he would write in it twice a week, or sometimes for three days in a row, sometimes not for three weeks. Over many months, it must have come to fifty pages.

  She felt an outcast at work, however. When she walked into a room, others became quiet, like maybe they had been talking about her. She wasn’t invited to have lunch with them anymore.

  November 1, 1961

  Dear Sirs:

  . . . In regards to I and my wife’s application for exit visas, we have still not been granted exit visas and still have not received any answer to our application, although I have repeatedly gone to the officials in Minsk . . . They have failed to produce any results and are continuing to try to hinder my wife in relation to her application.

  In the future I shall keep the Embassy informed as to our progress . . . 1

  He keeps tweaking the KGB with his letters to his brother:

  November 1, 1961

  Dear Robert,

  . . . We heard over the radio today that the present Russian government has decided to remove Stalin’s body from the hall on Red Square. This is big news here and it’s very funny for me . . . when I listen to the radio or to some of the political commissars we have here, I always think of George Orwell’s book 1984 in which “doublethink” is the way of life also.

  In any case, everything over here is very interesting, and the people are generally simple and nice . . .

  Well, that’s about all the news from Minsk.

  Your brother,

  Lee2

  November–December

  Now we are becoming annoyed about the delay. Marina is beginning to waver about going to the U.S. Probably from the strain of her being pregnant. Still, we quarrel and so things are not too bright, especially with the approach of the hard Russian winter.

  She had not wanted to marry a Russian boy, because it was accepted that with 99 percent of them, you would end up being beaten by your man—slapped or struck, anyway. Now, all of a sudden, here she was married to a foreigner who was beginning to control her physically.

  In Russia, women would always tell you, “After your honeymoon, don’t let your husband dominate. What goes on in the beginning is how it will be later.” So, she and Lee both stood their ground. They would argue and slam doors. But there came a day when he hit her. She was so ashamed. She left Lee and went to her aunt. She doesn’t remember what their fight was about, but she thought, “I’m not going to take it.” She left. Lee had slapped her with an open hand on her cheek, and she went and knocked on Valya’s door—it was late at night. Her aunt asked, “Who is it?” and when Marina said, “Can I come in?” Valya said, “Are you alone?” Then Marina heard
Uncle Ilya say, “Tell Marina to go back home.” Her aunt stood up then to Ilya. She let Marina in. Her uncle said, “This is the first and last time you are coming here after you have a fight with your husband. Come here together once you patch everything up, but don’t come here alone. If you want a marriage, solve your own problems. Don’t visit this place every time you have something wrong.” At the time, Marina thought he was cold-blooded, but now she would say he was right. Ilya had been cruel but wise.

  When she went home the next day, Lee said it would never happen again, he was sorry, but she remembered how just before he got violent, he had turned very pale and his eyes had no expression, as if he were looking at her from very far away.

  In Minsk, he hit her only three or four times. That is not what she found degrading in Russia. It was that KGB was always bugging whatever they did, and then the FBI got into their act in America. Now, she was having to dissect her life for interviewers one more time. So, who was worth it, and what for? Why did she have to explain herself to anybody? She didn’t want to talk about Alik hitting her. Because that put him in a bad light. How could he defend himself from a crime she doesn’t think he committed if people have mental pictures of him beating her?

  FROM KGB REPORT

  During meeting on November 20, 1961, Mr. Prusakov, I. V., clarified that twice during this recent period he spoke with his niece Marina and her husband, Oswald, L. H . . . .

  As a relative of Oswald’s wife, Prusakov expressed an opinion that Oswald’s decision to return to America may turn out to be a mistake. Prusakov spoke to him of complications in international situation, also to a possibility he would be recruited into American army, problems of finding work in America, as well as some possibility of his arrest there. Oswald explained to Prusakov that he hardly thinks he will be called for military service, since he has already served his term . . . and concerning his possible arrest—he doesn’t think Embassy employees would lie to him. Nevertheless, Oswald promised to weigh all these obstacles concerning his return to America.