The John Birch Society, based in Massachusetts, had risen to national prominence while Lee was out of the country. But he had read about it, and about Walker, in the news magazines his mother had sent to Minsk. He talked frequently about the “Birchers” and the “Minutemen” with Gary and Alexandra Taylor when he first moved to Dallas. And the fact that Walker, who seemed to carry about in his very person the threat of “fascism” in the United States, actually lived close at hand in Dallas seems to have stirred Lee a good deal. He and George had endless discussions about the Birchers, Walker, and the danger of fascism. George was well aware from their conversations that Lee “disliked,” even “hated,” General Walker, and by his own remarks George may not only have helped fuel Lee’s hatred but, in an odd way, may have given his approval.
The fundamental bond between Lee and George, then, was politics; and despite the differences between them as human beings, their political views were strikingly alike. Both were rebellious and contumacious toward authority. Both were seekers. Unknown to either of them, however, what they were seeking was not a better world that lay ahead but a better world that lay behind, buried in the past of each. For each had lost his birthright, had lost something he considered rightly his. George had at one stroke lost his country, his mother, and his place in a secure social order. And the effect on him was magnified by the fact that the father he loved was suffering the very same losses. In later life George was to wander from country to country and never really feel at home in his adopted land, the United States. Yet his loss had at least been palpable, measurable, while Lee’s was infinite. For Lee had never known his father. He even attributed his character to this one fact and had written that his father’s early death had occasioned in him “a far mean streak of independence brought on by neglect.” What George and Lee had in common, then, was not just their politics but something deeper that they shared—a lifelong drama of dispossession. It was this that gave depth to their relationship, this that gave consonance and resonance to everything that passed between them.
Politically each was a sounding board for the other, but any account of the echoes that bounced back and forth is incomplete without reckoning in the wives, each of whom was likewise a sufferer in the drama of dispossession. Jeanne’s father had been killed by Communists and, in exile from her homeland, China, she had taken first a French and then an American identity. Marina was illegitimate, had never been at home in any of her Russian “homes,” and, like the other three, had left the country of her birth. All four were rebels. Thus the influence that George had on Lee may have been amplified by the women and especially by Jeanne, who was far out and vociferous in her opinions and was the only woman whose political views Lee respected.
But the differences were crucial, too. George, for example, had innumerable avenues through which he was able to express the central drama of his life, that of yearning to be “in,” yet having to be thrown out. He and Jeanne had countless harmless ways in which they could shock and outrage. As for Marina, she abhorred “politics.” It was Lee who was different. Unlike the de Mohrenschildts, Lee had no hobbies, no eccentricities, no minor ways of expressing himself. His only outlets were major ones. He had already expressed his political ideas on a grand scale twice, by abandoning first America, then Russia, all before he had reached the age of twenty-three.
One pair of onlookers spotted the critical difference between George and Lee, and that was Declan and Katya Ford. Their perspicacity was curious, for they liked George and disliked Lee. But it was Lee they respected. Lee was a “serious seeker,” and “idealist,” while George only wanted to be “a commissar,” wanted to be “on top” himself.15 George was a talker. What the Fords saw about Lee was that he was capable of acting on his beliefs.
Everyone who knew them agrees that Lee looked to George as a father. Marina says that her husband was slightly afraid of George and that for George alone, he might even go so far as to amend his political opinions. Gary Taylor thought that Lee would do anything George told him to do. He would even take his advice on such matters as what time to go to bed, where to stay, and whether to get a new job. Whatever George’s suggestions, Gary says, “Lee grabbed them and took them.”16 George himself has said that “he was clinging to me. He would call me. He would try to be next to me.”17
It did not occur to George what effect his political talk might have on Lee. Marina sensed that her husband was merely “the latest exhibit in George’s collection of friends,” and that George thought, “It would be interesting to see how he turned out.” George himself said that “he is just a kid for me, with whom I played around. Sometimes I was curious to see what went on in his head. But I certainly would not call myself a friend of his.”18
Such condescension, no matter how artfully concealed, must have been maddening to Lee. It was seldom that he looked up to anyone. And now he, who set the distances of all his relationships and kept nearly everyone at arm’s length, was himself being kept at arm’s length by the one man he longed to be close to, the one man whose esteem he coveted.
As the winter of 1963 began, the idea seems to have taken shape in Lee’s mind that by a single, dramatic act whose political thrust George would approve, he might compel George’s respect.
Lee Harvey Oswald (front row, third from left) in grade school in Texas.
Marina (bottom left) at the age of twelve, with classmates in Leningrad.
Mr. and Mrs. Edwin A. Ekdahl (Marguerite Oswald), Lee’s mother and stepfather, after their marriage in 1945.
Marina at the age of fourteen and about to enter pharmacy school, in the woods outside Leningrad.
Lee at the Hotel Berlin in Moscow, at the time of his defection in 1959.
Lee in a photograph taken at the Minsk Radio Plant in mid-January, 1960.
Lee in the summer of 1960 relaxes in the courtyard of the Minsk Radio Plant with some of the men who taught him Russian.
Lee on a picnic in Minsk with Eleonora Ziger and a friend in the summer of 1960.
Lee’s birthday, October 18, 1960, with his best friend, Pavel Golovachev, and Ella Germann (upper right), the girl who refused to marry him.
Marina in the spring of 1961, at about the time she met Lee.
Lee just before his marriage.
The Oswalds’ apartment house in Minsk. An arrow indicates the apartment Marina identified as theirs.
Marina on the balcony.
Lee in the summer of 1961.
Marina and Lee with her Aunt Lyuba Axyonova on a picnic in Minsk in the early autumn of 1961.
Marina and June Oswald in the spring of 1962.
The Zigers see the Oswalds off at the Minsk railway station in May 1962.
Lee and Marina say goodbye to Minsk on the first step of their journey to America.
Marguerite Oswald in her uniform as a practical nurse, in a photograph she sent to Lee and Marina in Russia.
Marina, Lee, and June squeezed into a photo booth at the Greyhound Bus Station in Dallas, en route to Robert Oswald’s home in Fort Worth, Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1962.
Lee posing with his rifle and pistol, holding copies of the Militant and the Worker, in a photograph taken by Marina in the backyard of their apartment on Neely Street in Dallas, March 31, 1963.
Lee in a photograph taken in September 1963, probably in New Orleans.
Marina and the author in Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 1964.
— 21 —
The Revolver
On December 28, Lee and Marina climbed into the back seat of George’s big gray convertible and drove to the Sanger-Harris department store to pick up Jeanne. “Her former husband is in a mental hospital,” George said, and he told them of Jeanne’s success designing clothing in New York. She had so much drive that she always got what she wanted. Plainly George was proud of the woman he had married. When they reached the department store, he fairly leaped out of the car to fetch her.
Lee and Marina talked it over. “He’s probably lying about his
Jeanne and how much money she makes,” Lee remarked. “She probably makes a lot but not as much as he says.” In fact, Lee liked Jeanne for being able and willing to support her husband.
They were on their way to a combination Christmas and New Year’s party at Declan and Katya Ford’s. It was Jeanne who had arranged the evening.1 She was worried about the Oswalds’ being alone over the holidays and had telephoned Katya to ask if she might bring them to the party. Katya, who hoped she had seen the last of the Oswalds, gulped a little and said yes. Jeanne also arranged for a neighbor to babysit. It was the first time the Oswalds had been anywhere without June.
The Fords’ sprawling modern house on Brookcrest Drive was brightly lit for the occasion. A fire was blazing in the huge stone fireplace in the living room. The guests, many of them Russian, were astonished to see the Oswalds. Like Katya, they thought they had seen the last of them.
The first person Marina saw was George Bouhe. She kissed him on the cheek and greeted him with embarrassed affection. Lee’s reaction was typical. “Why are you sucking up to him?” he said to her the first chance he got.
Lee spent most of the evening with Yaeko Okui, a young Japanese girl who had come with Lev Aronson, an émigré from Latvia and a well-known cellist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. They sat on stone steps at one end of the room, deep in conversation. No one had seen him so attentive to a woman before.
Relieved to be rid of Lee, Marina moved happily from friend to friend, ate heartily, and ended up with a group singing Russian songs at the piano. She was enjoying herself. As the Russian at the party most recently arrived in the United States, she was the cynosure of attention.2 She felt, moreover, that everyone was genuinely happy to see everyone else. She sensed a welcome absence of hypocrisy, of fake party manners, in the air. Watching her, however, George Bouhe and Anna Meller thought she was not looking well. Mrs. Meller wondered if she had enough to eat at home.3
Lee, too, was something of a sensation. He was obviously enjoying the company of Miss Okui. He had liked Japan and appreciated Japanese women. They talked about Japanese and American customs, and about ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, which Miss Okui was certified to teach. But Marina noticed that she spoke Russian and was drinking only Coca-Cola, nothing stronger. It occurred to her that Miss Okui might work for American Intelligence. During an interval in the kitchen, she cautioned Lee against talking politics and especially against praising Khrushchev. “Watch out,” she said. “That girl is pretty and very charming. Only, she may be a spy. Don’t be too frank with her.” Never before, and never again, was she to feel prompted to warn her secretive husband to keep his mouth shut.
One other person reacted to Miss Okui exactly as she did—George de Mohrenschildt. To all appearances he was busy chasing a couple of girls, but his antennae were out, and he remarked to Marina: “That Japanese girl—I don’t trust her. I think she works for some government or other, but which one, I don’t know.” Others at the party noticed that Miss Okui’s escort, Lev Aronson, was more than a little jealous of Lee. “My God,” they claim to have heard him say, “what an idiot that is!” Lee also made a strong impression on Katya Ford’s teenage daughter Linda. Toward the end of the party, Declan Ford played a record called “The First Family” in which the comedian Vaughn Meader gave a hilarious imitation of President Kennedy. While the others laughed, Lee stared at Linda with his large, solemn eyes wide open and never once cracked a smile. Linda felt so uncomfortable under that unblinking stare that afterward she could remember nothing else about the party. The Oswalds left about midnight with the de Mohrenschildts. They were not invited to the other Christmas parties given by the Russians in the next few days.
It was Marina’s first Christmas in America, and she longed for a tree. She begged Lee to buy her one as they walked home from the grocery store one night. “No,” he said. “It’s too expensive, because you have to buy toys and decorations. It’s nothing but a commercial holiday, anyway.”
Later that evening Marina slipped out on the street, found an evergreen branch, propped it up on their bureau in front of the mirror and spread cotton around it for snow. The next day she gathered up 19 cents that Lee had left lying about and made for the five-and-ten-cent store, where she bought colored paper and miniature decorations. She shredded the colored paper into tinsel; the decorations went on the branch. Lee was proud and surprised. “I never thought you could make a Christmas tree for only nineteen cents,” he said.
Lee’s reactions were often inexplicable. Around this time Marina lost a purse containing $10 he had given her for groceries, and she expected to be scolded or even beaten. When he hardly responded at all, Marina broke into tears. Lee tried to cheer her up by talking baby talk, then talking like a Japanese. He played games on the way to the grocery store, where he brought her red caviar, smoked herring, and other treats.
On New Year’s Eve, the biggest holiday of the Russian year, Lee, oblivious, or uncaring, went to bed about ten. When midnight struck, Marina was alone in the bathtub thinking of her friends in Russia and wondering how they were celebrating. She pretended that the bathtub was filled with champagne. In her imagination she could see corks flying into the air and her friends back in Minsk singing and drinking New Year’s toasts. By the time she emerged, tears of homesickness were pouring down her face. She was furious at Lee for going to sleep. She felt that he did not love her, that her marriage and her life with him in America were a fraud.
In that mood she sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a letter to Anatoly Shpanko, the medical student whose offers of marriage she had refused both before and after meeting Lee. Now that she was safely at a distance, thousands of miles away, her feelings for her rejected suitor came pouring out. She realized that she had cared for him deeply, more than she knew at the time, and she believed that, had it not been for Lee, she would have married Anatoly. With him she would have been happier.
This was Marina’s letter, as she remembers it.
Anatoly dear,
Very late, I am writing the letter you asked me for.
Late, I want to wish you a Happy New Year.
It is not for this I am writing, however, but because I feel very much alone. My husband does not love me and our relationship here in America is not what it was in Russia. I am sad that there is an ocean between us and that I have no way back.…
Alik does not treat me as I should like, and I fear that I shall never be happy with him. It is all my fault, I think, and there is no way of setting it right. How I wish that you and I could be together again.
I regret that I did not appreciate the happy times we had together and your goodness to me. Why did you hold yourself back that time? You did it for me, I know, and now I regret that, too. Everything might have turned out differently. But maybe, after the way I hurt you, you would not have me back.
I am writing because you asked me to write you the truth about my life here and because I hope we are still friends.
I kiss you as we kissed before.
Marina
P.S. I remember the snow, the frost, the opera building—and your kisses. Isn’t it funny how we never even felt the cold?
Marina was weeping as she finished.
She kept the letter three or four days, just as she always did. Then she took 25 cents’ worth of stamps from the drawer, stuck them on the envelope, and mailed it. A day or so later, on Monday, January 7, Lee came home from work waving an envelope.
“A letter for you,” he said. “Who were you expecting to hear from?”
“Aunt Valya?”
No, he said, and she suggested two or three others.
“Who did you write this to?” He shoved the letter to Anatoly in front of her, then quickly snatched it away.
She wanted to tear it out of his hands, but he hid the letter behind his back. “You’ve no right to read my letter,” she cried.
“You’ll read it aloud,” he said.
She jumped up and tried to run ou
t of the room, but he caught her and forced her to sit down. He sat facing her and began to read the letter. Halfway through, he stumbled over her handwriting and asked her what the rest contained. She would not tell him, and he slapped her twice across the face.
“It’s enough, what I read already.” He disappeared into the kitchen.
Marina snatched the letter and hid it in the drawer where their bed linens were kept.
“Is it true what you wrote?” Lee asked when he returned to the living room.
“Yes,” she said.
He slumped onto the sofa and sat there, his head in his hands, for a long time. Finally he straightened up. “Not a word of it is true,” he said. “You did it on purpose. You knew they changed the postage and that the letter would come back to me. You were trying to make me jealous. I know your woman’s tricks. I won’t give you any more stamps. And I’m going to read all your letters. I’ll send them myself from now on. I’ll never, ever trust you again.” He made her get the letter and tear it up under his eyes.
Marina says that there were times when she tried to make Lee jealous, but this was not one of them. The postal rates had not changed; Marina’s mistake seems to have been that the letter was overweight.
Again, Lee’s response was a good deal milder than she might have expected. After all, he frequently beat her for nothing. But this time he merely slapped her, and he did not have the mean, murderous look he generally had when he hit her. Marina even had the impression that he slapped her only because he felt he had to: “It was like a heroic gesture in the movies.” She considered it a “just reproach.” But she was baffled by the inappropriateness of his reaction. He practically ignored it when she did something dreadful, yet for a mouthful of sharp words or a bit of mulish behavior, he would beat her up.
Marina and Lee Page 39