Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  After GOLOVACHEV’s departure, his mother, who shared with me her fears about her son’s fate, expressed her regret that over four years he had been detached from his parents and was able to come under the influence of undesirable persons . . . MRS. GOLOVACHEV promised to spend more time on her son’s [political training]. She intends to come to Minsk more often in order to find out how GOLOVACHEV P. P. is behaving. Moreover, in the future she is going to limit GOLOVACHEV P. P. financially, giving him only enough money to cover absolutely essential expenses. According to her, GOLOVACHEV P. P.’s father made him promise to subscribe to and regularly read youth newspapers and magazines. They will try to monitor GOLOVACHEV P. P.’s faithfulness in carrying out these instructions.

  GOLOVACHEV P. P.’s mother also expressed her wish that representatives of the Organs periodically meet with her son, which, in her opinion, would have a positive educational effect on him. I explained to GOLOVACHEV’s mother that this was not necessary and expressed my certainty that they were themselves capable of influencing their son in a correct direction, so that he would be worthy of his parents and would take an active part in building Communism in our country.

  Stepan Vasilyevich Gregorieff

  Stepan would not see Pavel again until the period immediately following Kennedy’s assassination.

  As for that event, and Stepan could recall the date as if it were etched on his retina—November 22, 1963—he can say that when he heard President Kennedy had been shot and Lee Harvey Oswald was the leading suspect, his immediate thought was: “It’s impossible! This inconspicuous person who didn’t evoke any suspicion on our part. He commits this crime? It cannot be! It cannot be!”

  By the logic of our narrative, we have just come to the end of Volume One. It is obvious that whatever we have learned about Oswald in Russia is not enough to answer our basic question. For that we will have to follow his adventures in America. The changes in Oswald’s life have already been large and abrupt, and now we will have to accompany him on future adventures in Fort Worth, Dallas, New Orleans, Mexico City, Dealey Plaza, and the Dallas city jail. Since we have gone from Russia to America with a minimum of ceremony, and have just taken a quick visit back, perhaps we can obtain a more satisfactory farewell by observing the reactions of Oswald’s friends and acquaintances in Minsk after they encountered the news of Kennedy’s assassination.

  PART IX

  SHOCK

  1

  Limbo

  Katya remembers shock. For everybody at Horizon. She couldn’t believe it had happened. He was just a young boy with a running nose. When it was cold, you could always see his running nose. And suddenly he killed this American President? Other men in her factory were stronger than him, much stronger. He was like that, small.

  At Horizon, people did speak about it a little, but it was something that happened far away, and in a few days, representatives from the Organs came over and told them it was best not to talk about Oswald. Forget him. Best to forget him. Best for all.

  Back in Moscow, when Yuri and Galina Belyankin heard that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald was suspected of killing Kennedy, they didn’t pay any attention. They didn’t know him as Lee. It was only a few days later, when Izvestia published a photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald, that Yuri, taking his newspaper out of his mailbox downstairs, saw it, ran upstairs, came in on his mother and Galina, and said, “Girls, I think this is our acquaintance.” And he recalls very clearly his mother crying out, “Alik, Alik, Alik.”

  As he puts it, “By a strange twist of fate, I went that night to shoot Mikoyan’s departure for Kennedy’s funeral,” and he remembers, “My friend and I worked together, and we did Mikoyan’s departure. It was late at night at Vnukovo Airport.” As they were driving back, his friend said to him, “That was your last shot. Now, the Organs will pick you up.”

  At that time, Yuri’s name was on a special security list. There were only a few cameramen allowed to go to Red Square for parades and other occasions where they could photograph people like Khrushchev. Yuri would say that no one in Russia would believe that Kennedy could be killed without the cooperation of security forces—it’s not possible.

  After the assassination, Stellina’s mother gathered together every last photograph that Lee had taken and tore them up. It was an awful time for Stellina, something terrible. She couldn’t believe it. She sobbed. Her husband said, “See what happens? You shouldn’t work in Intourist. Now our whole family’s going to have to pay for it.”

  In fact, no one ever approached her. Not in thirty years did anyone, official or unofficial, ever ask her to talk about Lee Harvey Oswald. But in December 1963, she and her family were overcome by an immense fear that something terrible would happen, that she had gotten herself tangled up in some sort of horrible international affair. They didn’t even stay around Minsk long enough to hear rumors and gossip about Oswald. “We have an expression in Russian,” said Stellina. “When we are very much surprised, ‘we even sit down.’ So when my mother and I heard this news on our radio that John Kennedy was killed and Lee Harvey Oswald was involved, we sat there in our armchairs. We didn’t move. I still remember that great fear. It captured me and my family. Then came further information that American witnesses to this assassination were in accidents and bad things happened to them. So my family lived for a long time in this great fear.”

  Although it was not easy for Stellina to leave, since she had spent her whole life in Minsk—was even there through the German occupation—she was afraid a lot of fingers would be pointed. People would say, “She was walking around with Oswald, she was friendly.” If there had been any women in his life, he had done all that behind closed doors, but she had walked openly with him through public streets.

  Only in 1977 did Stellina return to Minsk, and then only after she had buried her husband. She thought, “Well, you know, it’s probably quiet. It’s fourteen years.” Besides, in 1976, her daughter had enrolled at Minsk University. But for all that interval, they had lived in Vitebsk, where she worked as a teacher. She tried during those years not to think about it and was afraid to ask herself the question, “Could my Alyosha have killed Kennedy?”

  She had an answer: “I saw his goals. He was interested in women, he wanted to achieve everything easy, he didn’t want to invest time or go through hardship. For example, he didn’t want to study. I even went to the Institute of Foreign Languages and negotiated with their President and made certain efforts to help him, but he was never really serious, just wanted attention.

  “In Czech there’s a saying that you can find good in anything—you can even find good in a car crash, because at least you’re somewhere in the newspapers. It’s better to be spoken about badly than not be spoken about at all. I think even if he was told he had to kill President Kennedy, he would never stop to think what it would bring to the world, how it would influence his life and the future of his family—he would just say, ‘Oh, I’ll kill Kennedy and I’ll achieve this attention.’”

  Rimma had always known she could hurt his feelings and so she never did. “I could paint a portrait of him as someone who thinks too much of himself but doesn’t work to become the person he wants to be. You should know what kind of person you are. The most important thing for Alik was that he wanted to become famous. Idea number one. He was fanatic about it, I think. Goal number one. Show that he was different from others, and you know, he achieved this goal.”

  Rimma felt that Alik was connected somehow with the crime, but never killed the American President. He was only somehow connected with it.

  The permanent effect of knowing Lee Harvey Oswald, she would say, is that ever since 1963 she has been afraid to visit the United States. No longer is her motto ad astra per aspera—through adversity we reach the stars.

  Sasha’s impression of Lee Oswald is that he could never have assassinated Kennedy. He was a person who would not kill a fly. When Sasha heard about the event, his emotional reaction was: “It cannot be this man. It was
some manipulation.” He thought that because Oswald came from the Soviet Union, somebody in America used this fact and manipulated him, but Oswald was a decoy. Really, it was more interesting to talk about Marina.

  Now, thirty years later, thinking of his life experiences, and how he has lost his hair and is almost bald, Sasha sees his own past differently. He thinks women can keep many secret lives, but at that time he was a blind kitten, blinded by love, and saw no black holes. But he would like to say: “If you see Marina, give her my regards. I have the best feelings for her, despite all the bad.”

  Albina thinks that maybe the Zigers did not play so nice a role in Alik’s life. He’d been treated with curiosity and respect when he came to the Zigers’ home, but he was always hearing negative thoughts promoted about Russia. She thinks that influenced Alik, even though he had an apartment, free medical services, privileges, and everything good. So, she thinks that had it not been for these Zigers, maybe he wouldn’t have even thought about leaving her country. Maybe he would have stayed. She can’t say that she thought he was a happy person, because he obviously had secrets and they were hidden, but all the same, when that assassination took place, she couldn’t believe it was Alik. Even now, inside herself, she cannot believe it. She certainly wouldn’t say whether she thought he was a spy, because she can’t say—he was just an acquaintance. Didn’t know him, really, because he was strange. They were still friends, but he never called her, and never told her he was going to get married. Didn’t even invite her to his marriage, didn’t stay in touch. That was strange for her. She wouldn’t say, however, that she felt jilted. There’s a song in Russia that says: “If your bridegroom goes to another bride, you never know who’s lucky.” She laughed. She had been thinking, actually, about another kind of life with him. She had an aunt in Crimea who lived in a warm place by the Black Sea, and she and Alik had talked about going there to live with her aunt so that they could lie in warm sun by the seaside with fresh fruit to eat. She believes if that had happened, he would never have gone to America, and would never have killed President Kennedy. And maybe they would have had a bigger apartment later on—you never know what will happen.

  After the assassination, they were all worried at the pharmacy. “What will Marina do, being so lonely and with two children? How is she going to live financially; how will she manage?” They were certainly worried.

  Pavel was offended when this Warren Commission presented Lee as an underdeveloped mentality. Very offended. Pavel didn’t like the idea that somebody who was not stupid was being shown to the whole world as if he were.

  What with the time difference between Dallas and Minsk—eight or nine hours!—Pavel happened to be out with young students at a large dancing party. He had been acting as the disk jockey. He had his tape recorder, and was putting on different kinds of music; then, suddenly, information came over their radio—Kennedy was killed. He listened to the Voice of America and it said that Lee Harvey Oswald, a person who lived in Dallas, was being arrested.

  For years, Pavel kept collecting all kinds of different articles on this subject. He could never accept it as a fact. Reading more and more about it, however, he decided that one person could always make another do anything. You can break a person, and you can certainly change a person by force. In Pavel’s opinion, Lee Harvey Oswald is not Kennedy’s murderer but was somehow involved in a plot. Because, after all, Lee was no angel. He could be a part of somebody’s plot.

  After Lee was killed by Ruby, Pavel mailed a letter to Marina giving his condolences. Next morning, KGB was at his door. That was November 26, 1963. He was taken to their office by trolley bus. He was not so important a criminal that they were going to send a car. He remembers that he had on a Chinese blue coat, a scarf and cap, and both men who came for him were dressed in regular street clothes, but then KGB people only wear their uniforms when on parade, or in a coffin.

  They went through a side entrance, up crazy stairs to the second floor, and from there he could look out a window and see a bookstore. He didn’t know whether he’d ever get back to that street outside. Maybe it was the worst emotional moment in his life. His letter to Marina had sympathized with her feelings; now, he was a criminal. Only later did he understand that by writing such a letter he had truly scared the Organs. His letter might influence international relationships: Somebody in Russia was sorry for the wife of this man who had killed Kennedy.

  They let him sit in a chair. They were very polite; they didn’t beat him. They were KGB, after all. He was sitting in a room with a big table, and there were a lot of officers and bodyguards around, maybe seven people.

  They started by telling him: “In our country, only representatives of the people can send sympathies. You are not a representative of our people. You have no right to express sympathy. That’s one thing. You have lost your political vigilance. You have become politically short-sighted. If you don’t want somebody to write the laws of our country on your back, if you want to see some sky again, then stop doing stupid things. Speaking of that, how are you related to Marina Oswald? Did you sleep with her?” They would ask him other questions, then go back to that: “Ever sleep with Marina?” For some reason that interested them. They might accuse him once more of losing vigilance, but that was only an excursion. Then they would come right back with something like, “Why did you write this kind of letter if you didn’t sleep with her? Are you crazy?”

  They went with him to the post office, and he had to fill out a document saying that he wanted his letter back. So, Marina never received his last communication to her. In fact, he thinks KGB already had it, but needed him to request it back in order to give formal proof that they were properly honoring the Geneva Convention.

  Before they let him go, they told him not to speak on this subject. That became Pavel’s largest reason for leaving Minsk and going to study at Tbilisi, in Georgia. Half of the radio factory knew, after all, that Lee Oswald was his friend, so how was it possible that he wouldn’t talk about it if he stayed? In fact, one or two people actually said, “We hope you didn’t mention our names while you were interrogated.”

  Soon after, KGB agents made that visit to Horizon when they told everybody to keep their mouths shut about Oswald. By then, Pavel was already in Tbilisi, but he heard that shop people were called in one by one, and the Organs had private conversations with them about respecting silence.

  Now, in Tbilisi, relations with his father were not warm. Pavel had gone down there in December of 1963, and he didn’t come back to Minsk until 1965. At first, he stayed in an apartment with his father while his mother went to a health resort. He was studying at Tbilisi University, and one day in the spring of 1964 he came home a little late and his father looked at him and said, “At your age, I was already flying an airplane.” Pavel said, “I understand . . .”

  He left and went to live at a student hostel, where they found a bed for him. He and his father never spoke again. Not even when his parents came to Minsk. Didn’t speak.

  Pavel’s father died eight years later of cancer. So Pavel felt twice as bad. He was serving then in the Army Reserve at a camp about a hundred kilometers from Minsk, and when he received this news that his father was on his deathbed, he asked if he could visit him, and his officer said, “Tomorrow morning we’ll consider your request.” But Pavel’s father died overnight. Then all these officers around him got to show their humanity. It was a weekend, and the officer in charge of their entire camp happened to be off fishing. To leave the camp, Pavel needed a special seal that only the officer in charge could provide, so they went out to where he was fishing and obtained his seal on the required papers. Pavel bought some flowers and went to his home, but his mother said, “It’s too late.”

  Anatoly Shpanko would say that he never felt any sensation that anybody in KGB had invaded his privacy. He never had any experience that he was under surveillance, never.

  Now, Anatoly is fifty-five, but he has never been interviewed by them. He would say
that since his biography is clean, why would you report on him? Anatoly insisted that he did not know what had happened to Marina. He did not know her history. When told her husband’s name and that Oswald was alleged to have killed President Kennedy, only to be himself killed two days later, Anatoly replied, “Somebody kills somebody and then is killed in two days—it’s very dubious if he really did it. There is somebody unaccused who is guilty. It’s very negative to me.”

  As he remembers, there was, in November 1963, no information in Minsk that this man Lee Harvey Oswald had lived in their city for two years. He never saw any stories in his local paper. Nobody talked about it. He didn’t know that was Marina’s husband, absolutely not. Maybe some people knew but kept silent. Today is when he learns. First time. Asked if it is a shock, he replies: “Approximately.”

  Sasha came by one day to knock on the door of Ilya and Valya’s apartment. There was no answer. He came another time, and even knocked a third time, and then some neighbor opened a door across the hall and said, “They don’t live here anymore. They left this place.” These neighbors said to Sasha that nobody knew where they had gone.

  Ilya suffered a lot from that assassination. It didn’t matter how many years he lived. All that had happened took life away from him. He suffered a lot because his life was in his career and now everything was in jeopardy and his situation took away some of his health. They didn’t fire him, but they didn’t promote him anymore. Ilya never talked much about the assassination except to say it was organized. Said that once. Killing Kennedy was organized. If they had used Alik, it was because he had been in the Soviet Union.