“No,” Marina answered. Then, fearful lest she burst into tears, too, she took the baby and quickly left.
They had a great deal to do. Anticipating their departure, they had tried to hand over their apartment to Tolka, the friend who lived with Colonel Axyonov, and his bride-to-be, Lyalya Petrusevich. But much to Alik’s annoyance, they had been rebuffed by the officials of the Minsk Radio Plant, who were in charge of assigning apartments in their building. Nevertheless, they did succeed in registering the apartment in Tolka’s name, and he would move in when the Oswalds left. He managed to stay only one week. The factory threw him out and awarded the apartment to someone else. Tolka did not marry Lyalya.
Alik and Marina sold their furniture, including the baby’s crib. Before leaving their apartment, they had another piece of unfinished business. Throughout their married life they had had the company of an unbidden presence: a tiny meter, or schyotchik ticking away on the wall, even at night when the other electrical devices were switched off. The Oswalds assumed that it was a bugging device and had long promised themselves that before they left the apartment for good, if they ever left for good, they would set aside an hour or so for absolute forthrightness. They would tell the “schyotchik” exactly what they thought of everyone they knew, who was an informer and who was not, to deny the KGB the satisfaction, as Marina puts it, of “thinking it had us fooled.” And so, before they left, they told the faintly ticking, scarcely visible companion of their married life their true opinions about everyone they knew.
On the day before their departure, Alik went to call on Erich Titovyets. He meant to tell Erich—for the first time—that he was leaving. Erich was not at home. He did not learn of his friend’s departure until after the Oswalds had actually left.5
One of Alik’s final duties was to visit OVIR, the Office of Visas and Registration, to have the exit visa stamped in his passport. He showed the visa to Marina and remarked, “I wish I could give it to Ziger.”
The Oswalds spent their last night in Minsk at Pavel’s. The next day, May 22 or 23, they boarded the train for Moscow. Russian-fashion, their closest friends, including Pavel and all the Zigers, came to the station to see them off. But even there they noticed that they were being watched by a man who was standing, half-hidden, behind a pillar.
“Listen in if you like,” Eleonora Ziger practically spat in his face. “We have no secrets here.”
Her sister, Anita, added: “I simply loathe people who eavesdrop.”
Marina kept glancing anxiously around the station looking for Ilya and Valya. Finally, she saw them standing way off by themselves in a corner. Their faces were forlorn, and they looked as if they were fearful of being seen by the KGB.
Marina hurried over to them. “Why didn’t you join us?”
“We didn’t want to be in the way,” Valya said. She turned to Alik: “Take care of Marina. She has nobody now but you.” She was on the edge of tears.
“Be sure to write,” Ilya broke in, his stoical front intact. Then to Alik: “You heard what Valya said?”
“I promise,” Alik replied.
“It’s time to go,” said Valya, no longer trying to hold back her tears. She kissed the three of them goodbye, lingering longest over the baby. Ilya, too, kissed Alik. Then, for the last time, he kissed Marina.
Mrs. Ziger, for her part, was uninhibited. “We’ve seen so many off,” she lamented. “When will it be our turn?” She spoke to Marina: “No matter how hard it is there, never, ever, come back here. But remember the birch trees, the people, our Russian countryside. Think well of your homeland always.”
Marina and Alik boarded the train. They stood at the window as, very slowly, the train started up. Marina’s friends Olga and Inessa threw flowers. They were narcissi, the flowers Marina had carried at her wedding.
“Come back if you are not happy there,” Pavel called after them. The Zigers shouted at them to write.
Marina heard someone cry, “We’ll see one another some day.” Then she saw Ilya and Valya. They were huddled together, desolate, looking as if their world had fallen apart.
The last sight Marina saw was their friends Olga, Inessa, and Pavel running along the platform, reaching out to touch the train. They ran a very long way.
For a few minutes, in the compartment, both Alik and Marina were silent. She started to cry. He stroked her as if she were a kitten. “I hope these really are better times,” he said. “I hope Uncle Ilya won’t lose his job or his pension.”
When they reached Moscow, they felt like a pair of carefree children. For three days they stayed at the Hotel Ostankino, on the outskirts of town; then they moved to the Hotel Berlin in the center of Moscow. They went to the American embassy several times, and Alik showed no fear of being arrested. They felt so relieved that just for the fun of it they smuggled a girlfriend of Marina’s, now living in Moscow, into the embassy, past a pair of bewildered militiamen. She sat delightedly inside, in the very citadel of capitalism, poring over the shiny magazines while the Oswalds went about their tasks.
Alik had his passport renewed, and the baby had her photograph taken and attached to her father’s passport. Marina was given her American visa, and the embassy made reservations for them on the Maasdam, a Dutch passenger ship sailing from Rotterdam for New York on June 4. The embassy loaned Oswald the entire cost of the tickets, $418, and arranged for him to pick them up in Rotterdam. Officials of the embassy also suggested a cheap hotel, or “pension,” where they could spend a clean and comfortable night in Rotterdam, and either Oswald or the embassy made the reservation. The embassy helped Oswald pay the railway fare from Moscow to Rotterdam. He contributed 90 rubles ($90), and it contributed $17.71.
Oswald had paid for the train trip from Minsk to Moscow, and he was paying for their hotel room, about 8 rubles a day, and meals in Moscow. He would also buy food during the railway journey to Holland and pay $7 or $8 for the pension in Rotterdam. So his out-of-pocket expenses for the journey home would come to between $200 and $300. Oswald left the Soviet Union owing the United States government $435.71.6
Marina was given a medical examination by the embassy doctor, Alexis Davison, a slender, pink-faced young naval officer who spoke impeccable Russian. The son of a Russian woman and a distinguished physician from Atlanta, Georgia—his parents met when his father was on an aid mission in Russia during the 1920s—Davison had a style that was humorous and irreverent, as breezy and American as his strawberry blond crewcut. Marina liked him immediately. He treated her with exactly the right combination of seriousness and levity, reassuring her that life in America was far better than in Russia. He urged Marina to look up his mother in America—Natasha Davison, now a widow, a grande dame in the Russian manner and one of the reigning spirits of Atlanta.
Alik liked Davison, too. He enjoyed the navy doctor’s jokes and was grateful to him for cheering up Marina at a moment when his own hands were full and his wife’s anxieties substantial. Later the Oswalds came across Davison’s name again. In the summer of 1963, the Soviet government accused him of being the go-between for Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a highly placed Soviet official who was tried and shot as a spy for the United States. For his alleged espionage, Davison was expelled from the USSR.
The Oswalds had other errands to run. They went to OVIR and to Gosbank, the State Bank, where Alik changed most of the rubles he had saved into dollars. Since they were to cross Europe by train, they had also to pay visits to the embassies of Poland, East Germany, West Germany, and the Netherlands to obtain transit visas. The errands required much sitting and waiting in anterooms, and Marina sometimes stayed behind at the hotel. Alik was happy as a lark. Late one afternoon he burst into their hotel room exhausted but elated. “My, I’m tired!” he exclaimed. “But I wouldn’t mind doing this for a year. It’s better than working in a factory!”
Their last evening in Moscow was a memorable one. They spent it at the apartment of Yury and Galka Belyankina; Galka had been a friend of Marina’s in Minsk, and
the party ended with many farewell toasts. When the Oswalds pulled out of Moscow’s green-tiled Belorussian Station late the following afternoon, June 1, it was Galka Belyankina who saw them off. She was the last friend they were to see in Russia.
Their route lay through Minsk, where they were due to arrive early the next morning. Marina had wired Valya, begging her to come to the station, and she was in high excitement as the train pulled in, hoping for another glimpse of her aunt. She and Alik bounded onto the familiar platform, raced up and down, and searched everywhere. But Valya was nowhere in sight. Feeling crushed and trying not to show it, Marina said, “We’re breathing Minsk air for the last time.” She was in tears when they returned to their compartment. “Don’t worry. Don’t cry.” Alik held her tightly around the shoulders. “Everything will be all right.”
Next morning they were due at the border town of Brest. Alik had been puzzling over a problem: what to do with his Diary and the other things he had written in Russia. He had no intention of giving up his precious papers to a customs officer. An hour or so out of Brest, he hit upon a solution. He strapped the sheets of paper around his waist under his clothing. He did not seem specially nervous as he did it, but he told Marina to watch out for one of the conductors, a woman, whom he (and Marina, too) suspected of working for the KGB. The woman was too well educated to be a conductor, he said.
The pair presented a homely tableau as their train drew puffing into Brest. They were sitting in their myaqky (“soft” or first-class) compartment, the husband—composed but bulging a little around the waist—filling out customs declarations, the wife and baby surrounded by swaddling cloths that she had rinsed out and hung up to dry. Both were sipping tea in the Russian style from glasses.
Marina, who had expected to be questioned and perhaps searched, was astonished at how simple it turned out to be. A pair of nice-looking officers came into the compartment. One of them opened a suitcase and snapped it shut again without even looking inside.
“Have you any gold or other valuables or foreign currency?” he asked politely.
“Yes,” Marina answered, pointing to the baby.
At this the officer broke into a broad grin, saluted, and wished them a happy journey.
The Oswalds hugged each other as the train carried them over the bridge into Poland.
“I can’t believe we’re on foreign soil,” Alik said.
Marina looked back. “It’s only a bridge,” she thought sadly, “but it cuts you off from your country.” She stole a look at Alik. His face was so happy that she did not tell him what she was thinking.
That day they crossed the Vistula River into Warsaw. There they got out, changed a few dollars into zlotys, and bought beer. At each stop Alik clambered out and took photographs. The Polish countryside was flat, like Belorussia, and the people, too, looked poor, except for a stylish lilt to the way the women wore their cotton dresses. Poland was a good deal like what Marina was used to. But that night, waking briefly in Germany, she noticed that there were two Berlins, the “democratic” one, which was dark, and the other, which was brightly lit. Then the next morning, in Holland, she could not believe her eyes. It seemed to her that she was in a fairy tale tableau. They rattled through village after village, each one prettier than the last and so clean that they looked as if they must be inhabited by dolls. It was Sunday. Entire families were walking to church. And between villages, the meadows were dotted with grazing cows.
When they arrived in Rotterdam, they went straight to the pension the embassy had recommended. The landlady gave them lunch, and then the Oswalds went walking. Never had Marina seen such shops. She floated from window to window, thinking she must be in a dream.
“Alka!” she exclaimed. “When your mother sent us those magazines, I never dreamed you could actually buy those things in stores!”
He was watching her, grinning.
“And look,” she said. “Everything’s so cheap!”
“It’s a whole lot cheaper in America,” Alik said. He bought her a Coca-Cola, her first. It was a touch of home he had been pining for. “See,” he boasted again, “in Holland you drink American Coca-Cola.” It was the only thing he bought her, for it was Sunday and all the shops were closed.
In the pension that night, the sheets were so clean that Marina was afraid to lie down.
They had only that one day in Holland.7 The next morning, June 4, 1962, they boarded the Maasdam bound from Rotterdam to New York.
The voyage marked the beginning of a change in Alik’s behavior, and in his relationship with his wife. It was not a change for the better.
On the first day out, the two of them went on deck, struck up a conversation with a Rumanian girl, laughed, and had a fine time. But after that, Alik hardly took Marina out on deck at all. He got seasick there, and she did not. It did not occur to her to go alone.
She spent most of the voyage in their cabin with the baby. Taking several sheets of writing paper with him, Alik would vanish upstairs to the library and remain there for hours. Marina supposed he was writing letters. Often, at night, he went alone to the movies, leaving Marina and the baby behind.
He came to fetch her for meals, and it seemed to Marina that the other passengers were staring and laughing at her. She became self-conscious about her appearance and her clothes, unaware that it was the baby, swaddled from her waist to her toes, that was the object of so much attention. They had never seen swaddling before.
They had a charming waiter, a handsome young man whose name was Pieter. Half Russian and half Dutch, he knew a few words of Russian and wanted to know all about Marina. But Alik was suspicious of him. “Don’t tell him anything you don’t have to,” he warned Marina. “It’s no accident that they gave us a Russian-speaking waiter.”
Marina ignored this warning. To the extent their languages would allow, she chatted away openly with Pieter, and she discovered that his last name was “Didenko,” or something close to it. “Where,” Marina asked herself, “have I heard that name before?” Then, with a thud of recognition, she remembered. It was the name of her own, natural father—at least the name her stepfather had shouted at her once in a terrible moment of wrath.
Marina did not know what to make of the change in Alik. Whenever he took her anywhere, it was plain from his expression that he was doing it only out of duty. It was not that he was making other friends. Marina saw no sign of that. She concluded that he was ashamed of her because, as she put it to herself, she looked like “a little Russian fool.” Alone much of the time in the cabin, she sank into low spirits. Everything she knew and loved lay behind her; ahead, everything was unknown. Clearly, Alka neither loved her nor cared for her. Why on earth was she going to America?
Finally, she said to her husband, “Alka, are you ashamed of me?”
He did not reply.
“There’s a beauty shop on the boat. The girls come out looking princesses.”
“Oh, is there?” That was all he said.
Marina grew angry. She had given Alik 180 rubles in Minsk, payment for her maternity leave and money from the sale of their furniture. He had changed all of it into dollars, and she knew that he still had it. Yet he had refused to buy her anything when some boatmen rowed up to the Maasdam off the Irish coast with heavy wool sweaters to sell. There were shops on the ship, but he did not buy her anything there either. Nor did he pick up her hint that she should get her hair done. Marina was too proud to ask him for any money. The one thing she asked for was thread. Sitting by herself in the cabin, she sewed the heels of her wedding shoes.
“Don’t bother,” Alik said, when he saw what she was doing. “I’ll buy you shoes in New York.”
“I’ll sew these until you do,” came his wife’s laconic reply.
Marina’s unhappiness boiled over at a party they attended their last evening at sea. In spite of her attire—the red brocade she had worn the night she met Alik—she felt morose, and looked it.
“Wipe that expression off your face,”
Alik said. “People are staring at you.”
“I can’t look any other way,” Marina said.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve changed toward me. Because you don’t love me and I feel hurt.”
“If you don’t care for me the way I am,” Alik said, “go away.”
“Where am I to go?” Marina said. “There’s only one way to go. And that’s the ocean.”
“Okay. Go.”
Marina ran from the table in tears. It was rainy and cold on the deck, and below, the water was gray and forbidding. She did not know what to do. She walked around the deck, and finally, she thought of the baby, who was lying asleep in the cabin. “Junie needs me, even if Alka doesn’t.”
Alik found her in the cabin when he came in an hour later.
“You’re here, are you?” he said.
“Only because of the baby.”
He quickly went out again. But he returned, and they made up. He escorted her to the bar, bought her a liqueur and himself a Coca-Cola. He even allowed her to smoke.
The voyage to America was not a happy one for Marina. She thought that she was somehow responsible for Alik’s strange behavior. She did not know the real reason for his abstraction and indifference to her: as the Maasdam steamed toward New York, he was once again deeply concerned about what might happen to him when he reached America.
Oswald thought that he would be met at the dock by newspaper reporters. He expected to be asked a series of questions designed to incriminate him with the FBI; and trying to prepare himself, he covered page after page of Holland-America Line stationery with a list of questions and answers. Then, dissatisfied, he wrote out a second draft, one which was more politic, less candid, and, apparently to his mind, more successful, since he ended it with the newspapermen exclaiming, with one voice: “Thank you, sir, you are a real patriot!”8
The questions Oswald allotted to the newspapermen reveal his central concern. He was still afraid that by one or more of his acts he had broken laws of the United States. And he was fearful that his answers might incriminate him. Indeed, the questions he sketched out are accusatory, the answers defensive. He was even prepared to deny that he was a Communist. In response to the question, “Are you a Communist?” he drafted two replies. (In the excerpts that follow, errors of spelling and punctuation have been corrected.)
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