Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  She was gratified and intrigued by something else. As they were walking down the hallway to the consular offices, she saw a whole row of glassed-in cubicles with Russian girls seated at the desks inside. Marina felt distinctly relieved. If anything went wrong here, if she was kidnapped or forced to sign some paper she did not understand, one of these girls would help her. Besides, it was good to see Americans and Russians working together in this fashion. But then another thought struck her. If those girls were working for the Americans, they must also be working for the KGB. Marina did not like that at all. Disgusting as it was for a man to be a spy, it seemed even worse for a girl. The very thought made Marina’s flesh crawl.

  When they reached the large office shared by the consul and vice-consul, Marina sat in the waiting room while Alik went inside. He was gone a long time, and Marina was able to compose herself and look around. She found the place a revelation. It was filled with gadgets, for one thing, and all of them seemed to work. Out on the street it was hot, but there was something whirring in the window, a fan or a ventilator or something, and inside it was practically cold. Everything seemed designed for simplicity and convenience: even the telephone wires appeared to be laid out differently from those she was accustomed to in Minsk.

  But the best was still to come. During her husband’s long absence, Marina had to go to the toilet. On the way she paused at the water cooler and had only to press a knob and cold water came cascading out. But the washroom itself—that was a work of art! It was immaculate and as fragrant as a garden. There was even real toilet paper. Marina had seen that, instead of small squares of newspaper, only once in her life before, at the Hotel Metropole in Leningrad. There were paper towels, too, and green liquid soap. Again, she had only to press a knob.

  The girl who took her to the toilet was also a revelation. She was one of the Soviet girls who worked at the embassy, although she was all dressed up like an American and might not be taken for Russian at all. Marina had been fearful that the girl would be suspicious of her motives or reproach her for wanting to leave Russia. But the girl chatted pleasantly with her and never once alluded to the touchy subject. Marina returned from the toilet in much better spirits, reassured that nothing bad would happen to her. Yet she was still stunned to think that she was here at all.

  Alik emerged from the consul’s office chewing gum and well pleased with himself. Since his case involved a decision by the State Department as to whether he had forfeited his American citizenship, his interview had been conducted by Snyder, the senior consular officer. Once it was over, Alik and Marina sat in the waiting room, and Alik began to fill out a long questionnaire. He was relaxed and playful. “I wish I could make the Zigers my relatives and take them out with me, too!” he commented as he poured over the questionnaire.

  Marina’s reply was tart. “Okay. Divorce me and marry Eleonora if you like!”

  Alik had done a favor for the Zigers when he entered the embassy. He had carried with him to Moscow a letter from Alexander Ziger to the embassy of Argentina, presumably a request to the Argentine government to bring pressure on the Russians to grant him an exit visa. Either Ziger was afraid to write to the Argentine embassy through the open mails, or he had already done so and because he had dual citizenship—Soviet citizens are forbidden even to have contact by mail with a foreign embassy—his letters had been intercepted. On a table downstairs in the American embassy there were two wooden boxes, one for outgoing and the other for incoming diplomatic mail of a routine nature, such as invitations. Alik dropped Ziger’s letter into the outgoing box. In a day or so it would be picked up by a US embassy chauffeur and delivered to the embassy of Argentina. It was one of the few occasions Marina remembers when Alik did a favor for somebody else.

  Elated by the way things were going for him at the embassy, Alik inquired about the fate of a young man named Webster who had come to the Soviet Union shortly before he did, fallen in love with a Russian waitress, married, and gone to work in Leningrad in a glassworks or plastics factory. He, too, was trying to go back to America and was having a difficult time.

  After he had completed the questionnaire, Alik handed it to an embassy typist, one of the Russian girls Marina had noticed earlier in the afternoon, so that she could fill out an application to renew his American passport, which, even if he received it back that day, was still due to expire on September 10. He then returned to Snyder’s office with the questionnaire and the renewal forms.

  Snyder inspected the questionnaire. Oswald’s responses were routine. The two of them had already had a long talk, and it appeared to Snyder that Oswald had done nothing to forfeit his citizenship. His Soviet passport, for one thing, was of the type issued to “stateless” persons. That, on the face of it, was evidence that he was not a Soviet citizen. Moreover, Oswald’s letters from Minsk had been delivered to the embassy; had he become a Soviet citizen, the letters would not have gone through. Oswald had also responded to Snyder’s queries with an air of frankness. He appeared to have nothing to hide.

  There was, however, one concern that seemed uppermost in Oswald’s mind. He confessed to Snyder that he was worried that he might face several years in prison in the United States for having chosen to live in Russia. What was Snyder’s view? Snyder advised him, as he later phrased it in a dispatch to the State Department, that he knew no grounds on which Oswald might have to face “punishment of such severity as he had in mind.” Oswald answered that he realized that Snyder could make no promises, but he was reluctant to return home if it might mean going to jail. He had refrained from approaching the Soviet authorities about letting him go until he “had this end of the thing straightened out.”6

  Oswald had not been arrested the moment he set foot inside the embassy, as he had feared. His fear was probably the reason he had appeared, unannounced, on a Saturday and why he had today taken the precaution of bringing Marina, although the embassy had not suggested it, nor was it essential for her to appear so early in the proceedings. But if Oswald was reassured by his reception at the embassy, he was still afraid that he would be arrested when he returned to the United States. In his own mind he had committed a catalogue of crimes against his country by coming to live in the USSR7 and accepting a job in a Soviet factory (working for a foreign state);8 and he was under the illusion that he had taken a formal oath of allegiance to the USSR.9 Moreover, he had offered the Soviet government any radar secrets that he might have learned in the Marine Corps, and he had granted an interview criticizing the United States to Radio Moscow for use in its propaganda transmissions abroad. Finally, from January 1960 until his desire to return to the United States became known to the Soviet authorities, he had received a subsidy from the Soviet Red Cross, which he believed had been arranged by the secret police as payment for the interview denouncing his country.

  Oswald had all of this very much on his mind. Nevertheless, up to this point every one of his fears was groundless, since they were based on acts he had either not committed or that were not crimes under United States law. As of lunchtime on July 10, he had done nothing for which he could reasonably expect to face prosecution on his return to the United States, much less arrest in the American embassy. The fears that haunted him, motivated by feelings of guilt and perhaps by his attributing to the government of the United States the anger toward him that he had felt toward it, were altogether unrealistic.

  But on this very day, Oswald altered his condition of juridical innocence. For the first time he did, in fact, commit what could have been construed as a crime. Several times that afternoon, he knowingly lied to Richard Snyder. He claimed that he had at no time applied for citizenship of the USSR, yet he had done so on October 16, 1959. He stated that he did not belong to the trade union at his factory, when at that very moment he was carrying a membership card in his pocket and could not have been employed without one. He claimed that Soviet officials had never questioned him about his life before his arrival in the USSR, and that, too, was probably false. Finally,
he dismissed the significance of his Radio Moscow interview and claimed that he had “made no statements at any time of any exploitable nature concerning his original decision to reside in the Soviet Union.”10 His own notes written later make perfectly clear that in giving the interview, and accepting his subsidy, he believed that he had “sold himself” and betrayed the interests of the United States.11

  The irony was that all his falsehoods were unnecessary. Even had he told the truth on every point, he would not have been subject to prosecution. Nor, apparently, would the truth have affected the ultimate finding that he was still an American citizen, for he had not crossed either of the Rubicons: he had not renounced his US citizenship nor become a citizen of the USSR. By telling these falsehoods he had, however, laid himself open for the first time to a criminal charge: that of knowingly lying to an official of the United States. And on the next day he would persuade his wife to do the same. But there is not a shred of evidence that he ever realized that these were crimes—and the only ones he had committed.

  Snyder, of course, did not know that the young man sitting opposite him was lying. Snyder had no sympathy for Communism or the Soviet Union and very little sympathy for those who were taken in by either. On the first meeting almost two years before, he had taken a harsh line, some said too harsh, toward this very same young man; he had even poked fun at his Marxist convictions.12 Still, Snyder’s record was replete with evidence that he had compassion for anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped in this inhospitable land. He had found Oswald “aggressive,” “overbearing,” “insufferable” during their initial interview, but now, as he would report to the State Department:

  Twenty months of the realities of life in the Soviet Union have clearly had a maturing effect on Oswald. He stated frankly that he had learned a hard lesson the hard way and that he had been completely relieved of his illusions about the Soviet Union at the same time that he acquired a new understanding and appreciation of the United States and the meaning of freedom.13 Much of the arrogance and bravado which characterized him on his first visit to the Embassy appears to have left him.14

  Snyder reread the answers to the completed questionnaire that Oswald brought in to him. He glanced at the application for renewal of Oswald’s American passport. Carefully, he signed both copies and placed a stamp, “Valid only for direct travel to the United States,” in the green document that Oswald had left with him nearly two years before.

  Then, in what must have been almost the last official act of his two long years in Moscow, Richard Snyder leaned across his desk and handed back his American passport to Lee Harvey Oswald.

  As he led her through the embassy gate back to the street, Marina could see that Alik was elated by their visit. He was overjoyed that Snyder had received him, welcomed him back to the fold, and even returned his passport. Alik was so reassured by his visits to the embassy that the following day, Tuesday, July 11, he and Marina returned, this time to initiate the steps that might enable her to enter the United States. Nevertheless, he was nervous as they again approached the building, and he coached Marina on what not to say. She was not to admit that she was pregnant; that could cause a delay. If anyone asked, she was to say that she did not know. Above all, on no account was she to admit that she belonged to the Komsomol. That might ruin things for good.

  They walked through the embassy gates without hindrance and headed for the consular office. “Go on in,” Alik said to Marina when her turn came. “Only don’t say anything about the Komsomol.”

  “How can I lie?” Marina said. “They’ll find out anyway. They’ll say I can’t have a visa for lying.”

  “It’ll help your visa if you shut up,” he replied.

  Marina was received by John McVickar, the vice-consul, whose job it was to handle applications by foreigners seeking to enter the United States. McVickar had brown hair, a round face, a gentle manner. Marina sat in front of him shaking like a leaf. He sat very straight in his chair, she noticed, and offered her chewing gum.

  “I don’t speak Russian very well,” McVickar began, smiling at her. “Please correct me if I make a mistake.”

  Here she was, Marina thought, talking to practically an ambassador or a minister of the American government, and he was asking her to correct his Russian! It was in keeping with the rest of this whole incredible journey. Marina liked McVickar immediately. He was simple and direct, and she was grateful for his lack of airs. The office, too, was wonderful. It was neat, compact, convenient. But Marina was feeling unwell. If she had one thing on her mind, apart from her extraordinary surroundings, it was the fact that she was pregnant.

  “Excuse me, are you feeling all right?” McVickar asked.

  “Oh, oh, yes!” she stammered, terrified that she had given her secret away.

  McVickar asked her to take an oath promising to tell the truth. Then he asked a whole string of questions: where was she born, where had she lived as a child, where did she go to school, were her parents alive, and so forth? Do you belong to the trade union, he asked, and Marina answered that she did. Finally, the question she was dreading: “Are you a member of the Komsomol?” Lying, she told him that she was not, trying to comfort herself, meanwhile, with the thought that she had, after all, never bothered to pick up her membership card. If there was one thing she did not like, it was Alik’s forcing her to lie. You have to support a husband and back him up, she knew, and Alik wanted to go home. But Marina would have preferred to tell the truth and take her chances.

  McVickar was having trouble understanding her, for she spoke rapidly, out of one corner of her mouth, allowing the ends of words and even sentences to trail away. He went to the waiting room door and asked her husband to come in to translate.

  “Have you relatives in the United States?” the questioning proceeded.

  “Oh, no,” Marina protested. It was a frightening thought.

  “She doesn’t understand,” Alik interrupted quickly. “She has a mother-in-law and a brother-in-law there.”

  Marina was puzzled, to say the least. For a Russian it could be a calamity to have a relative abroad. It was always cause for suspicion and sometimes even for arrest. Naturally, she had been quick to deny it. How could she know that for Americans it was just the opposite? It not only helps to have a relative in America, the authorities practically require it. Without one, you may fail to get into the country.

  Marina’s interview was satisfactory. McVickar filled out a visa petition for her to be allowed to enter the United States, and Alik signed it.15

  Afterwards, happy and hopeful, they returned to the Hotel Berlin and spent the day enjoying Moscow. On Wednesday night or Thursday, they returned to Minsk by air.

  — 9 —

  Marina’s Ordeal

  On her first day back at the pharmacy, Marina was greeted by icy silence. Word had spread that she had visited the American embassy in Moscow with her husband. That could mean only one thing, and the girls parted like a wave as she walked in, leaving her face to face with her superior.

  “Marina,” Evgenia Ivanovna said coldly, “you’re a foolish child. If I were your mother I’d take down your pants and spank you.”

  The next day Marina was called to the office of the head of the hospital. Assisted by the Communist Party organizer of the hospital and two junior doctors, he conducted a virtual inquisition. “You’re so young,” one of them said to her. “You hardly know your husband at all. Yet here you are, trying to go to a strange country with a man you scarcely know.” Urging her to do nothing hasty, her inquisitors suggested that she think it over, and Marina agreed.

  A day or so later she had a visit from the party organizer, a woman. Had Marina changed her mind? If not, the woman said, she would regret it the rest of her life. Next, a Komsomol organizer appeared at the pharmacy and told her that she would be summoned to Komsomol headquarters. Her colleagues at the pharmacy continued to treat her with such suspicion that finally, her temper growing short, Marina said: “Girls, don’t w
orry about a thing. There’s a big corridor in the embassy and nothing but Russian girls on one side. Our government knows every move I made. I didn’t do a thing, I didn’t sign a single piece of paper that isn’t legal. I’m a big girl. Maybe I’m ruining my life, but at least I’m not ruining yours!” The only note of sympathy and understanding came from two elderly cleaning women. “Where your husband goes, you go,” one of them told her. “Fish go where water’s deeper, man goes where life is better,” said the other. “Your husband has seen both. He can compare. He knows which is better.”

  At home Marina had never been so close to Alik as she was now. Never before had she needed him so much. After each of her ordeals, he was eager for every detail. When she told him of her session with the head of the hospital, Alik vowed: “If he calls you in one more time, I swear I’ll go talk to him. I’ll make him leave you alone.” Trying to encourage her, he said: “You’re very brave. Remember when you answer them back, I’m with you in spirit every second.”

  Marina felt he was proud of her—and he was. Two or three days after their return, he wrote the embassy about the pressures to which she was being subjected. Like a little boy boasting, he concluded: “My wife stood up well, without getting into trouble.”1

  To his brother Robert, he wrote:

  You don’t know what a trial this is.… The Russians can be crude and very crude at times. They gave a cross-examination to my wife on the first day we came back from Moscow, they knew everything because they spy, and read the mails, but we shall continue to try and get out. We shall not retreat.… I hope someday I’ll see you and Vada [Robert’s wife] but if and when I come, I’ll come with my wife. You can’t imagine how wonderfully she stood up.2