Oswald also stated that he was applying by letter rather than in person because he could not leave Minsk without permission. That permission might easily have been obtained, but the authorities would have been alerted that he intended to visit the American embassy. Oswald preferred not to tip his hand to the Russians until he was certain of his reception by the Americans. Actually, the letter did alert police officials in Moscow of Oswald’s intention, and his subsidy from the Red Cross was stopped immediately. But it was many months before the authorities in Minsk became aware that their American wanted to go home.
The embassy’s reply, dated February 28, 1961, asked Oswald to appear in person for an interview.6 But puzzled by Oswald’s reference to “legal proceeding’s,” the American consul, Richard Snyder, in a dispatch to the State Department the same day, inquired whether Oswald might have to face prosecution on his return, and, if so, could Snyder be frank and tell him so? If it became clear that Oswald had committed no expatriating act, Snyder added, he would be inclined to return the boy’s American passport to him through the open mails.7
Since the case was not an urgent one, Snyder had to wait for a reply. The answer, when it came, was that the department had no way of knowing whether Oswald might have violated some state or federal law and was in no position to issue guarantees. Nor was the embassy under any circumstances to return Oswald’s passport to him through the Soviet mails.8
Oswald was overjoyed by the embassy’s reply, and on March 12, five days before his first meeting with his future wife, he wrote a new letter.9 It was quite as impertinent as the first. “I find it inconvenient to come to Moscow for the sole purpose of an interview,” he wrote. Requesting instead that the embassy send him a questionnaire, he ended the letter petulantly. “I understand that personal interview’s undoubtedly make work of the Embassy staff lighter, than written correspondence, however, in some case’s other means must be employed.”
Snyder’s reply, dated March 24 and carefully drafted to enable Oswald to use it to obtain the necessary permission to travel to Moscow, again requested that he appear in person.10 And there, for the moment, the matter rested. Alik Oswald was caught up in his courtship and forthcoming marriage, a marriage that appears to have been incompatible with any firm desire to leave Russia. He was happier now and not so lonely. Perhaps he was wavering in his plan, but he had not forgotten.
— 7 —
The Wedding
Sunday, April 30, was sunny and clear. The drip, drip, drip of thawing icicles was forgotten, but the wind was icy and a lingering hint of winter hovered in the air. Marina rose early in the morning to find that her aunt had been up nearly all night putting the finishing touches on her wedding dress, a short white gown with a tiny green pattern, like miniature blades of grass.
At ten o’clock Alik arrived, rather pale. “You look so pretty today!” he exclaimed at the sight of his bride. He urged Aunt Valya to come to the registry office, but she, in high spirits, declined; she had a wedding feast to prepare. And so, accompanied only by their witnesses—Lyalya Petrusevich, who lived across the hall, and her current boyfriend, Valentin—the pair set off in a taxi.
At ZAGS they were received by the same old man who had handled their request to be married. Seated behind a large desk he greeted them gravely, with fatherly familiarity. The only ceremony was the signing of his registry book. Afterward he shook both of them by the hand. “It won’t be easy,” he told them. “Anything can happen in life, but it’s better if you support one another. You’re young, you’re high-spirited, but in marriage you must give in a little and make allowances for each other’s characters.” Then, in a lighter mood, he added: “Next year, if there’s a baby, come back and register it. A baby, by all means. But a divorce, no! I don’t want you back here for that!”
He turned with a solicitous air to Alik. “Do you really love this woman? Do you want to marry her? It’s for the rest of your life, you know.”
Alik emitted a nervous “Yes,” and with a bit of a flourish, the old man placed the marriage stamp in Alik’s passport. Then he admonished the bride: “Be a good wife to him, now. No looking at the other boys!” With that he affixed the stamp to her passport.
They departed in a lighthearted mood, and as they went out the door, Marina peered over Alik’s shoulder to inspect his marriage stamp. She noticed, with vague surprise, that his date of birth was 1939. Out on the street, with no one in earshot, she turned to him. “Why did you lie? You are only twenty-one. Why did you tell me you were twenty-four?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t take me seriously,” Alik said. “You made fun of Sasha. You said he was only twenty and you’d never marry such a baby.”
It was true she had wanted someone older. But the pang of learning that her bridegroom had lied to her and that he was, after all, only two years older than she, was buried in the excitement of her wedding day. “You are a baby,” she said to him. And she let the subject drop.
There were peals of laughter from the wedding party as they reached the Svisloch River. The bride and groom stood hand in hand on the bridge staring down at the water below. Alik picked a few narcissi from Marina’s bouquet and dropped the petals, one by one, into the sun-streaked river.
By the time they returned to the Prusakovs’, the early guests had arrived. Many brought gifts for the newlyweds. But before the celebration could begin in earnest, there was a job to be done; the bride and her belongings had to be moved to her new home. So Lyalya and Valentin gathered up Marina’s clothing, along with pillows and the homemade feather mattress which was Valya’s wedding gift to the couple, and bundled the whole lot, with the bride and groom, into a taxicab.
Marina blushed as they pulled up in front of Alik’s building. The mattress and pillows, to say nothing of her entire wardrobe, tumbled out of the cab, proclaiming to all the world that this was to be her wedding night. She was embarrassed, too, as Lyalya and Valentin placed flowers all around the bed in Alik’s apartment and, with a final loving pat, laid her nightgown on the pillow. At this, even Alik flushed. Then he joined the others in laughter. “Never mind,” he said. “When you get married, I’ll fix you!”
Back at the Prusakovs’, they quickly found that Valya and her sisters-in-law had outdone themselves. The dining table was piled high with a great variety of Russian zakuski, or hors d’oeuvres: red and black caviar, pâté, crab salad, and salami in a sauce of pepper and wine. There were stuffed Bulgarian peppers and shimmering fish in aspic. There was fruit, of course. And towering over all was the wedding cake. It had many layers, pink and yellow buttercream roses, and an inscription to the bride and groom: “To Alik and Marina—A Happy Life.” It had been made at the bidding of Aunt Lyuba in the kitchen of the Belorussian Council of Ministers where she worked.
As for the celebrants, they included Marina’s three aunts and their families—Valya and Ilya, of course; Lyuba and Vasily Axyonov; Musya and Vanya Berlov and their four children—and several of the Prusakovs’ neighbors. Marina had invited several colleagues from the pharmacy, but they all found an excuse not to come, apparently because the groom was a foreigner. Two friends of Alik’s were on hand: Erich Titovyets, whom Marina had already met, and curly-headed Pavel Golovachev, whom she was meeting for the first time.
The guests soon were seated before the table. Vanya Berlov struggled to his feet. “Valya,” he admonished his sister-in-law. “Have you forgotten how to cook? Things are usually tasty at your house but suddenly, today, they’re bitter.” The other guests took up the chorus, “Gorko, gorko” (“Bitter, bitter”), in keeping with the Russian custom that the wedding wine is bitter until sweetened by the kisses of bride and groom.
Marina reddened with embarrassment. At length, after much shrinking on her part and much shouting by the others, she relented. She and Alik stood in full view of the company, and he kissed her firmly on the lips. Only then did the guests resume their feasting. But every few minutes the raillery was renewed. Someone would shout: “Gorko!�
�� The chorus would grow louder, the bride and groom kissed, and the guests once again fell to feasting.
Before long, drinking gave way to dancing. Uncle Ilya, as always on such occasions, danced with all the ladies and gaily kissed every one. The bride, by contrast, was an enigma even to herself. She succumbed to some nameless confusion while dancing with Ilya and left him standing on the dance floor. “My God!” he groaned. “My own niece, and she won’t even dance with me!”
Marina played a trick on Alik. Because she wanted to flirt with the men at her wedding, she told him it was the Russian custom for the bride to dance with everyone. It was her last chance, after all. One by one the men politely asked Alik for permission. He very affably smiled and nodded his assent. Marina danced with all of them, while Alik spent most of his wedding party standing by himself in a corner.
Feeling pity for her new nephew, the kind-hearted Valya took him in hand and taught him how to waltz. The wedding guests then raised a chorus for Alik to dance with his bride. With his cheeks pink and his eyes glowing, he did a few turns with Marina as if he had been waltzing all his life.
When the guests asked him to sing an American song, Alik obliged with a Russian song instead, the popular “Moscow Evenings,” of which he had memorized every verse. Then he and his friends Erich and Pavel sang a trio, “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” Finally he sang his favorite, an Armenian drinking song with Russian words:
Where can I find the sweet words?
How can I say that I love you?
You have brought me so much happiness life
I sing to you and share with you my life.1
Soon it was approaching midnight. Valya led Marina into the kitchen and gave her a glass of vodka—“for courage.” Marina then vanished into the bathroom to dress, and when she emerged, she and Alik said their good-byes. “Good luck, my boy!” Ilya said, giving his own brand of gruff encouragement. The guests gathered on the stairway and waved to the bride and groom.
Alik and Marina walked the few blocks to his apartment. Suddenly, as they reached the door of his building, he swept her up in his arms, told her to hang on for dear life, and carried her the four flights upstairs. On his own threshold Alik paused, then gently lifted her across. He never told Marina that it was an American custom.
The two of them stood there bewildered. “Are we really married?” Alik said.
“Take a look at our passports,” Marina replied.
“You’re a sly one,” he said to her. “I didn’t mean to marry—you tricked me into it.”
“Yes, I am clever,” she agreed. “But we’ll divorce tomorrow if you like.”
“You’re tricking me again,” he said. “Tomorrow’s May Day and all the offices are closed.” Then, catching sight of her nightgown neatly folded on the pillow, Alik said: “It’s awfully pretty. I’ve never seen you wear it.”
“Oh—there’s plenty of time,” Marina said. And she insisted on dancing to the phonograph.
When it came to it, she knew nothing about sex after all. She tried to lie still and be quiet. “Careful,” she kept whispering and he, who was very gentle, would stop.
Finally he said to her: “If we stop each time you tell me to, it’ll be a year before we get anywhere. Just close your eyes and try to get through it.”
When it was over and the first light was coming through the window, he kissed her and remarked, very thoughtfully: “Thank you for saving yourself for me. Frankly, I didn’t think you had.”
Later, they were awakened by a knock on the door. Alik opened it, and there, to his utter bewilderment, stood Aunt Valya holding a white plate in her hand. Suddenly, she lifted the plate and hurled it to the floor.
“What’s that about?” Alik asked in astonishment.
“It’s for luck,” Valya said. “The two of you pick up the pieces.”
They dressed and went to Valya’s for breakfast. It was May Day, a gray, drizzling morning, and Ilya was on duty in Stalin Square checking passes for the big parade. In a buoyant mood the newlyweds decided to try to find him. They were going to pay a call across town, and maybe he would let them by without a pass. Ilya was easy to pick out. He was in uniform, eagle-like and very tall. To their great disappointment, he was abrupt with them and refused to allow them into the square. “But I’m your niece,” Marina pleaded with him.
“At home you’re my niece,” he corrected her. “Here, I’m on duty.”
Crestfallen, the bride and groom walked away. “What a bureaucrat he is!” Alik grumbled.
When they reached their destination, they received a warm welcome from Marina’s friends, an older woman and her husband. They plied the newly married pair with vodka, and the husband ran out several times for reinforcements. All day the four of them talked politics, an unlikely pastime for the bride. The hosts asked many questions about America, and Alik was happy to oblige. But what he really wanted to talk about was Russia. The older couple recalled the hardships of the German occupation of Minsk, and the terror and injustice of the Stalin years. But critical as they were of their country’s faults, they were utterly loyal to the Soviet Union.
Marina was pleased by this first day of her married life, grateful for her friends’ welcome and their open-hearted cordiality to her American husband. As for Alik’s steering the conversation toward politics and his rapt attention to everything that was said, she saw nothing surprising in that. She was not interested in politics herself. Politics were in the masculine sphere, and it was to be a long time before she woke up to the fact that her husband’s interest in politics was anything out of the ordinary.
The next evening, the evening of May 2, they paid a call on friends of Alik’s. They were Alexander Ziger, his wife, and two daughters, Eleonora and Anita, who had been like family to Alik from his earliest days in Minsk. Ziger, a black-haired, bushy-browed man of somewhat spherical shape, was deputy chief engineer at the Minsk Radio Plant. He had met Alik nearly a year and half before, during his first visit to the plant on January 12, 1960, and they had seen each other frequently ever since, both at the plant and in Ziger’s home. As the weeks and months went by, Alik had courted both daughters, especially the younger and livelier, Anita. Now, he wanted to introduce them to his bride.
At first, only Eleonora and Anita were at home. They greeted the newlyweds warmly, sat them down, and plied them with coffee. Marina took an immediate liking to Anita, a spirited girl who was constantly erupting into peals of laughter. But she detected something else in the dark and sultry Eleonora. That something was jealousy. When she asked Alik about it later, he conceded that Eleonora had wanted to marry him, but Mrs. Ziger warned him against her elder daughter on the grounds that she might try to use him. His choice then fell on the mettlesome Anita. But she rejected him in favor of a Hungarian.
When the Zigers returned, Mrs. Ziger, a short, plump woman, greeted Marina with great warmth and kissed her tenderly. “My dear child,” she said almost immediately, “consider yourself lucky to have married an American!” Thus, on only the second evening of her marriage, did politics again intrude on Marina’s life.
The Zigers’ story was an extraordinary one. Neither of them was Russian; he was a Pole and a Jew, she was a Belorussian and a Catholic. Both had grown up in eastern Poland, a territory annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939, but by that time the Zigers had abandoned their native land and settled in Argentina. There, in Buenos Aires, Mr. Ziger won an engineering degree and went to work in a factory. There, too, his daughters grew up, proved talented, and acquired musical educations. Only Maria Ziger, the mother, was unhappy. She was homesick for her native land, longed to hear the sighing of the birch trees, longed to be laid to rest in the Polish earth. But that soil was not Polish any more. It was Russian, and going home was out of the question.
Then, in the 1950s, everything changed. Stalin died, and Khrushchev, with aggressive acumen, launched a campaign to persuade people like the Zigers to return to Russia. His blandishments fell on credulous ears. The Zigers belie
ved—and came home.
They bitterly regretted their decision. Everyone in Khrushchev’s country was watched, they discovered, and none more closely than those who had chosen to live abroad. Eleonora and Anita suffered most. Both passed the examinations for the renowned Music Conservatory in Moscow. Yet neither was accepted—because they had lived abroad. A ceiling had been set on the Zigers’ lives, and whatever their talents, they could have no hope of going higher. Disillusioned, they applied again and again for visas to leave Russia. Their applications were ignored.
Mr. Ziger refused to give up. He told Marina and Alik: “In a year, or two years, or five, or ten, I believe I’ll get what I’m hoping for. Of course it’s going to take time. But we’ll get our visas some day.”
To Marina his remarks, and indeed the entire evening, were a revelation. Here was a family who had lived in the West and had concluded that life there was incomparably better than anything Russia had to offer. It was an idea contrary to everything Marina had been taught. She was startled, moreover, when Mrs. Ziger led her into the kitchen and said to her pointedly: “My dear child, if Alik ever has the slightest chance of leaving, you must by all means go, too.”
Astonished, Marina assured Mrs. Ziger that Alik had no thought of leaving her country. But later, it occurred to her that, at the time of her marriage, Mrs. Ziger already knew what she herself did not: that Alik Oswald intended to go home.
Marina and Lee Page 15