Nobody’s fool, de Duran put two and two together, guessing that this grinning character had some sort of a hidden agenda.
“I will try and hurry this through at once,” she lied.
“Thank you for that,” Lee sincerely replied.
As he supposedly hoped to travel to Cuba so that there he could make plans to relocate himself and his wife and children in Russia, she told Lee to have photographs of himself taken.
“When you return with them, the process can begin.”
Lee shuffled off whistling, assuming things were going his way. Senora Duran reached for her phone and began placing high level phone calls, the first to her contact at the Mexico City Soviet consulate, explaining the situation. That consul in turn placed calls to Russia while she did the same to Cuba.
An hour later they spoke again.
“It is possible that Oswald is what he claims to be,” the Soviet consul said. “More likely, he’s a double or even triple agent, with an agenda so complex it defies description.”
“In that case, my strategy will be: stall, stall, stall.”
Everyone treated Lee with the utmost politeness. But other than extending sweetly insincere smiles and offering their best wishes, Lee quickly realized he had run into a brick wall that he could not crash through. When he returned, in great spirits, at the Cuban Embassy with the photos, de Duran explained she had contacted the local Soviets in hopes of speeding things along.
The embassy there had informed her that as Lee didn’t already have an entry visa to Russia, achieving one that would allow him to travel from Cuba to that country might take months.
“That’s alright,” he, gathering his wits, replied. “I’ll go to Cuba and wait there.” That was, after all, his chief plan. Returning to Minsk was back-up for him, Marina, and the children.
“But, as it turns out,” she continued, pursing her lips, “that too will be more involved than I originally believed.”
She then began to list a series of small, ridiculous issues that the woman spoke as if by rote. As she did, Lee felt one of his rages overcoming mind and body. He insisted that she stop talking and bring him to her superior. She led Lee down one more of those lengthy couriers he had spent so many minutes of his life passing through on his way to confront people of importance.
The chief consul, Eusebio Azque, formally accepted Lee into his office. Despite (perhaps because of) the tirade to follow, he insisted that while Lee certainly had the right to request a visa, and that he and Senora Duran would be “willing” (he did not say ”happy,” Lee noted) to initiate the process, nothing in the New Orleans portfolio warranted any “special consideration” for a speeded-up visa. Nor could he assure this panicky-looking man that he would receive a visa to Cuba, much less Russia.
“In addition to your own portfolio,” E. Azque concluded, retrieving a manila folder from his drawer and shoving it across the desk toward Oswald, “we have to consider these.”
Knowing what was coming, Lee inspected the contents. Here he found one after another report about his activities in the anti-Castro movement, including evidence that Oswald had been one of three CIA agents who in 1961 attempted to kill Castro.
“Yes, yes,” Lee sighed, pushing them back across the desk. “But I’ve undergone a radical change. Now—”
“Perhaps, Mr. Oswald, you like a pendulum shift back and forth so often that no one can ever know your true position?”
Unable to form coherent words, Lee shouted something about Azque being a narrow-minded fool. He roared out of the building, hurrying back to his sordid hotel room, collapsing in confusion on the stale-smelling bed.
On a visit to the Soviet Embassy Lee fared no better. For three days he lay on the rumpled sheets of his cot-like bed, sweating, waiting, thinking. He’d brought a book along, Kafka’s The Trial, which he’d attempted to read when Johnny Rosselli had handed him a James Bond book at the resort-like ’hospital.’
That feels like a lifetime ago now! How appropriate Ian Fleming had been for reading material there. Apparently I’ve come full circle. Kafka’s right on target today, particularly the tale of poor K., put on trial in some surreal version of our world for a supposed crime no one will even reveal to him.
That’s me. Not James Bond. I’m the underground man. I started that way. I’ll end that way. A face in the crowd.
Still, the phone did not ring. On the fourth day, at his wits end, Lee barged back into the Cuban embassy. He confronted Duran again, with no success. At her suggestion he ran back across the way to the Soviet embassy where he fared no better.
I’m trying to save the world and no one will help. George would of course know my every move. He may be working against me. Putting up road-blocks at every corner I reach. Forcing me back to Dallas to do his dirty work: kill Kennedy.
Alright, then. Two can play that game. But I’ll checkmate him. Go to Dallas but not see the assassination through.
*
Having finished The Trial, and with no time to pick up anything else to read, Lee spent the return bus trip rolling over the situation in his mind. He was certainly not going to kill JFK for the CIA, the Mob, whoever else might be in on that deal now. Nor had he been able to create the Kennedy-Castro link he had a week earlier believed himself born for.
What now, then?
Marina. I see her face so clearly. Recall the things she said when I let her leave New Orleans. All she wanted was a normal life. With me! Our little girl and the child to be.
Let’s follow that trail. Go back, back, back to time long before I ever came to believe I might be worthy of greatness.
What was it I most wanted then?
To be ... normal. The very thing I’d been denied. They didn’t let me in the scouts. I didn’t have a girlfriend in junior high, not even a homely one, much less a pretty girl.
Now? I’ve got everything I want. The package. How could I not have seen it? Perhaps as it was so close before my eyes.
“One more chance,” Lee begged Marina.
“The little boy no longer wants to play hero?”
“Please don’t be sarcastic.”
“How else can I respond? All your grandiose dreams—”
“Turned to dust.”
“So now you are a man without a purpose in life?”
Weeping, Lee approached her. “But I do have a purpose. You and the babies. Being the best husband and father I can be.”
She allowed him to gently press his hand against her tummy, feeling the life readying to burst forth. “Someday the call will come again from George. When it does, you will—”
“No! I swear. George seems a great Satan to me now.”
Now it was Marina’s turn to cry. “I wish I could believe you.” She gripped him tightly, both her hands clawing at Lee’s shoulders. “I want so little today, as compared to the brat who was too beautiful for her own good.”
He cradled her, firmly but gently. “You, me, and the kids. That’s all. But ... That’s everything! When you’ve been denied normalcy all your life, it turns out to be what you want the most. We can have that. One more chance, Marina?”
“Of course, Alik. I cannot say no.”
He breathed in deeply. “Not Alik, though. Ozzie.”
“Your Marine nickname?”
“Yes. But also ‘Ozzie’ on TV. You’ve seen The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet since living in America?”
“Yes, of course. Everyone watches it.”
“When I was a child, I hated it. Because I thought that was only an absurd dream of the way things are supposed to be.”
“And now?”
“I know better. From now on, we’ll enjoy The Adventures of Ozzie and Marina. With our own two children to raise.”
“You used to want to be James Bond in a spy movie.”
He laughed. “Now? The guy next door on a TV show.”
They left the living room, proceeded along to her bedroom. Alternately weeping, laughing and kissing, they spent the night
in each other’s arms. Owing to her condition they did not engage in sex. Still, Lee and Marina made love, if in a spiritual sense.
*
All that Ozzie needed now to complete his transition to domestic normality was a decent job. Magically, one appeared.
Lee hadn’t received that typesetting position. The employers, running a routine check, became aware of his previous communist ties. Any bitterness dissipated when what certainly seemed like serendipity occurred. Through a friend of a friend of a friend, Ruth Paine learned that a Mr. Truly, manager of the book depository, needed to fill a slot. She passed this on to Lee during one of his weekend visits. Continuing the pattern of his youth, Lee had changed addresses, now living at a rooming house temporarily managed by Earlene Roberts on North Beckley. Ruth offered to let Lee move in now that things were normalized between him and Marina. But Lee insisted this would be too much of an imposition.
As soon as he found work and put a little money aside, he’d rent a place where his family could truly become a family, creating the beginning of an American Dream come true.
“You’re a former marine? I do like to support servicemen.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m a family man; my wife is about to have our second child. I can guarantee you an honest day’s work.”
“Do understand, essentially you’ll be a shipping clerk.”
“Sir, just give a chance. You won’t be disappointed.”
Truly rose from behind his desk even as Lee, sensing that the interview was concluded, did so as well. “Can you start at eight a.m. sharp next Monday morning?”
Lee excitedly called Marina with the good news. She wept. Everything appeared to be falling into place, as Truly mentioned one of Lee’s co-workers often drove over to Irving after work.
“He’s offered to give me a lift on Fridays, bring me back early Monday morning. I won’t even have to hitch-hike.”
“Everything’s turning out ... perfect.”
But the world, as I’ve learned, abhors perfection even as space does a vacuum. There’s got to be a catch somewhere...
Yet things kept getting better. When he arrived at the Paines' house on Friday, October 18, with three days work behind him, he—wondering if in all the confusion anyone would recall this was his 24th birthday—knocked on the Paine’s door at seven p.m.
“Surprise!” Marina, cradling June in her arms, appearing ready to burst with child, cried out. She, the Paines and their children had readied a birthday celebration. They wore silly paper hats, threw confetti in the air, blew on plastic whistles and proffered inexpensive, wonderful little presents: a cheap tie, a plastic shoe-horn, a bottle of Old Spice shave lotion.
“I’ve never had such a fabulous birthday. Not ever!”
Maybe it’s going to be alright now. He seems so sincere in his desire to conform. That’s what every non-conformist most wants. He took the other route only because no one gave him the chance to fit in. Now, he’s finally been allowed that ...
As if for a final gift, Marina felt her first pangs of labor on mid-afternoon, Sunday. As Lee still could not drive, Ruth took Marina to Parkland Hospital while Lee remained behind, watching over her two children and June. On Monday morning at six, minutes before Wesley Frazier swung by to pick Lee up, Ruth called to say that Marina had given birth to another girl.
“Oh, Mama. You’re wonderful!” Lee cooed later that day, visiting his wife and new child in the hospital.
“Lee,” Marina giggled. “You never called me that before.”
”Well, that’s who you are from now on. Mama!”
Oh, God! Please don’t let him confuse me with Marguerite.
They decided to name the baby Audrey Marina Rachel, but always they called her ‘Rachel.’ People at the book depository noticed that their fellow worker not only did his job diligently but excelled as if hoping for an eventual promotion. Mr. Truly held Lee up as a model of responsibility.
He’s good. So very good. Which is fine. Still, something’s not quite right. He’s better than good. It’s as if the perfect worker showed up. Could he be too good to be true?
Lee arrived early for work and left late, though no extra pay compensated him for that beyond the rigid $1.25 an hour for filling textbook orders. Arriving at the Paines’ each Friday, he would hug his wife, cuddle June and Rachel, then get down on the floor and play with little plastic cowboys and Indians beside the Paines’ boy Chris, in a way Michael failed to do. If Michael Paine felt uncomfortable with domestic duties, Lee reveled in them.
On Sunday afternoons, Lee stretched out on the carpet of the Paines’ living room and watched football. Michael Paine, visiting his estranged wife, had to literally step over Lee.
“I never thought I’d see a radical spend a full day in front of the TV grooving on sports,” he said sarcastically.
Momentarily, Lee grew sullen. “That side of me is gone.”
One Saturday evening, Lee said to Marina: “Let’s take in a movie.” They headed for the drive in, the children in the car with them. There, they feasted on fresh popcorn and stale hot dogs, watching a ridiculous piece of junk called Cuban Rebel Girls, enjoying every minute of their time together.
Lee seems quite taken with the blonde girl playing the lead. She is very pretty. He has always been fascinated, obsessed even, by beautiful women. Particularly blondes.
Now, though, he’s riveted by her in a way I’ve never seen before. As if there’s a personal connection ...
How like a man! We women notice everything. Particularly when it concerns our husbands and other women ...
“That girl, Marina? She almost got to play ’Lolita.’”
“Really? But, Lee. How would you know that?”
“Oh! Uh ... I ... read it in a magazine.”
By the time they reached the Paines’ home, whatever had consumed her husband had passed, he ‘the new Lee’ again.
*
“Hello, Lee.”
“Hello, yourself. Who’s this?”
A stunned silence at the other end, followed by: “George.”
Shit! I had willed him out of my mind, so completely and intensely wanting him gone that I allowed myself to forget that he even exists.
I pretended that if I forgot him, then he would forget me too. But it doesn’t work that way. Except in a mind as strange in its strategies as my own. Now, reality again intrudes ...
“Oh!”
“Lee? Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes. Of course. Forgive me. I ... got confused.”
“That’s understandable. How many times have we shifted your ‘legend’ in the past two years? Anyone would.”
“Something must be important or you wouldn’t call me here.”
Lee was at his rooming house. He’d finished work, eaten dinner at a simple cafeteria, and was preparing to call Marina, as he did every evening at around seven. L.H.O.: Norman Normal.
“Lee! 11/22/63. Right?”
“Oh, yeah. Right, right.”
“Man! I can’t believe how easy it was to get you set up at the Book Depository. The motorcade will have to come close to stopping in front of your building. Should be an easy shot.”
Everything is clear to me now. I’m working at the book depository not because I made it happen, or destiny did the job. I’m there because George moved his pawn across the chess-board.
In my idiotic way—what did Marina call it once, my inconceivable innocence?—I believed if I simply failed to show up and do the killing that day, then it wouldn’t happen.
“Of course,” Lee mumbled, barely aware he still spoke to George, half-believing he was only thinking out loud. “The president’s motorcade will approach the building as it comes down Houston. Then there’s that sharp left onto Elm.”
“It’s important you do the job from the sixth floor.”
“I work on the second and third. Take lunch on the first.”
“The sixth, Lee. That’s imperative.”
“Whatever you say.”
>
“Lee, it sounds as if you’d forgotten all about this.”
“No. Not really. I just had another baby. Or Marina did—”
“I’m very much aware of that. Congratulations.”
“A little disoriented, that’s all.”
“From this moment, you must focus on the shooting. Nothing else can matter. Nothing. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good boy. Be assured, we’ve got you covered. It’s best if we don’t talk again until that day. There will be a support system to spirit you out of town moments after the shots are fired. Don’t worry. All will go like clockwork.”
They hung up. Lee, shivering and sweating worse than ever in his life, could not bring himself to call Marina. Nor did he go into the lounge and watch television. He lay still as he could on his bed, staring up at the ceiling as he’d done many times before.
Everything will be alright. I’ll simply not show up. The motorcade will pass as it’s supposed to. The shot will not be fired. It’s possible that George may haunt me for the rest of my life after I fail to pull the trigger. What do I do about that?
I’ve got it! I’ll write a tell-all journal, drop it off at some safe place. The FBI! That’ll be perfect, as they hate the CIA. I’ll label it ’to be opened only in the case of my death.’
Then, immediately after the Motorcade passes by without incident, I’ll call George, tell him I’m out. But that he had better not go after me in any way, or ever try to harm JFK again, as that journal is in FBI hands now.
I’ll swear to keep my mouth shut, so long as the Company leaves me and my family alone ... What can he do about that?
The President will not die by my hand. He’ll live by it.
A normal life for me at last. God knows, I’ve earned it!
*
Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald Page 42