Oswald's Tale (15 page)
During the Great Patriotic War, his father had been a Captain, a fighter-pilot with his one-seat plane, a Cobra, and most of his missions gave cover to bomber planes, but when Pavel read logs of his father’s flights, he saw that four or five times his father had chosen to go out just to enjoy “free hunting.”
A pilot was recommended for his first gold star as Hero of the Soviet Union if he shot down fifteen German planes. To get your second award, to be decorated Twice a Hero of the Soviet Union, you had to perform some extreme kind of heroic deed, something extra-dimensional. For example, one Captain, when he saw that one of his men had to make an emergency landing in a field, managed to bring his plane down alongside his buddy’s crippled vehicle, and then he held off some German infantry long enough to carry the wounded pilot back to his plane and take off. For this he received Twice a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Pavel’s father had been winning an aerial fight, at eleven thousand feet, but ran out of ammunition. Still, he succeeded in downing his opponent’s plane by chopping up its tail with his propeller. Then, damaged himself, he managed to get back safely. That brought him a second gold star.
His father had become a Party member. It was necessary as a patriotic duty during World War II, but afterward, Pavel never knew whether his father felt disillusioned by the Party or was proud of it. He never talked of this. Of course, there were not many family conversations on such matters. Given their one-party system, one did not quit membership in the Party. One might as well quit everything and go straight up to heaven.
On the other hand, his father told Pavel to join Komsomol. You lived with wolves, you howled like a wolf. So Pavel’s father was not a dissident, and did not want Pavel to be one. But there was never any political activity indoors. His parents’ attitude was: Read for yourself—don’t talk about it.
While his father did not like to give him pocket money, he never restricted expenses for technical hobbies. So, Pavel built airplane models and ship models, and his father would purchase anything good for his technical development. He certainly never felt deprived of his father’s love, or his mother’s.
Still, his father, being a military man, had his family moving all the time. In ten years, Pavel changed schools eleven times. He was in Monino, then Riga, then Tukums; then to the Kolski peninsula, and in Allakurti, Monino, Allakurti again, then Moscow by spring of 1957. In ten years, eleven schools. Upon completion of the tenth grade, he moved away from his family and came back to Minsk. Ever since, he had been on his own.
To his father’s unspoken disappointment, he had not been interested in a military career. In 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, TV showed Russian bodies cut into parts by Hungarians. But two years afterward, in 1958, in Moscow there lived on the same floor of their apartment house another General, whose son had served in Hungary, and this young officer told Pavel how he was driving a tank during the uprising and, having been surrounded by a Hungarian crowd, had to move his tank quickly to get out, and later had the guts of people on his treads. When this young officer came back to Moscow, he was exactly the same color as a white bird, a dove. He was not a close friend, but he changed Pavel’s life for sure.
Pavel did have discussions with his father about a military career, because at one high school he had taken first place in a shooting competition, and his father, naturally proud, wanted him to go on into the Air Force, but in his family nobody forced you to do things, and what settled matters for Pavel even more than the tank treads was that there was a good apartment in Minsk open to him. His father, as one of the Byelorussian republic’s national heroes—and there were only four Byelorussian-born soldiers who had become Twice a Hero of the Soviet Union—had been given his own cottage as a special honor; Pavel’s parents had then exchanged that house for an apartment just off the grand circle of Victory Square, a gracious four rooms in a building designed for the Minsk elite. The ceilings were high.
When Pavel went to live there, it was occupied already by his mother’s sister, who of course remained with her two sons. But there was ample space for Pavel.
He was interested in radio technology, and so work at Horizon was closest to his interests. Still, he found the factory kind of primitive. Real knowledge could only be obtained at a higher engineering school. He did want a more advanced technical education. While a well-qualified worker would earn higher wages than a person with an advanced degree (which to Pavel was a typical disproportion of their Soviet system), still, one’s education could extend one’s horizons.
Pavel had seen a French film,
The Wages of Fear,
about an engineer arriving in a far-off village where people were afraid of spirits. This engineer was supposed to set up an explosion for a dam. But everybody was afraid to lay in the dynamite, because of angry spirits. So this engineer had to do it all by himself.
Pavel wanted to be such an engineer, a man who could do things not only on paper but with his hands. He was working hard. He had three semesters where he not only had to do his factory work but was attending Minsk’s Polytechnic Institute; seven factory hours each day, six days a week, and an academic program four nights a week. So, when it came to sex, he had to wait for summer. At that time, he and friends his age would be sent out on agricultural assignments and could be free of parents. Sex came not in the backseat of an American automobile, remarked Pavel, but out in a field while picking mushrooms. Of course, in those days, he still had golden hair and a wonderful apartment, one full room to himself, but working so hard, he did not see much of girls, especially not in winter, not on the kind of cold night when a fellow like Stepan, his KGB man, would be waiting for him.
It was a wild country, and you never knew how your parents would react. Peter the Great once tied a peasant to a bear and threw both into a pool. Everyone stood around and laughed. Pavel was tempted to tell his father about his KGB visitor, but decided not to. Pavel’s father could be as impulsive as Peter the Great.
March 16
I receive a small flat, one room, kitchen, bath, near the factory, with splendid view . . . of the river, almost rent-free. 6 rubles a month. It is a Russian’s dream.
It was an exceptional move, thought Stellina, to give him an apartment. His factory, like every other industrial enterprise and plant, had people on a waiting list, so how did you jump to the head? This waiting list included veterans of wars, invalids, families with many children, and also took into account how many years you worked at Horizon.
Then, after he moved, Stellina hardly heard from him. In fact, there was no word for more than a year, not until April 1961.
For example, Stellina didn’t find out about his wife until then. Alyosha came to visit her one full year later, and said, “Ma, I’m getting married,” and she said, “How can that be? You don’t know Russian well enough. How can you communicate to this person? Does she know English?”
Alyosha smiled and said: “Two phrases: ‘Switch off the light,’ and, ‘Kiss me, please.’”
Igor stated that Oswald received his place through factory decisions; nothing to do with the Organs. Of course, it was not easy to find apartments, but since this was an American seeking political asylum, the highest authorities decided to give him very good conditions. It was felt that Soviet institutions should show humanity to him.
There had also been a directive from Moscow Center to Minsk KGB to “point Oswald in the right direction.” What did that mean? Igor replied, “When we check out a person, whether it is for suspicion of espionage or anti-Soviet dissident activity, we never put aside our capability to make a person of him, so to speak. Certainly, when Oswald came here to get knowledge about Communism and our socialist way of life, this side of the problem also had to be considered. Because, if indeed he came here to participate in improving socialism, then we had to direct him in this matter. That’s why Lee was given an extra monthly allowance from Red Cross, equal to his salary, and an apartment and a job. It was to enable him to find his place in our socialist regime. We did not wish to think only in negative terms. Give him some real possibilities to go in the right direction.”
His lack of desire to work did, however, cause suspicions. “Labor is necessary for us, and absence of such a desire would take away his credibility that he was interested in our country,” said Igor.
All the while that Oswald remained at his hotel, he never invited Pavel there. Their most memorable personal contact in such early days was when Oswald received his apartment in the middle of March, and Pavel and a couple of other fellows helped him move in some furniture. An interpreter from Intourist named Tanya came along. Pavel was not particularly surprised that Lee was given an apartment with a balcony and a beautiful view. “Below the waist,” as they say, they had given it to him, but that had nothing to do with Pavel. After all, his own living conditions were far more satisfactory.
Oswald’s kitchen was small, and his living room was not five meters by three. You couldn’t get much more than a bed in there. A factory bed. For that matter, his table and chairs were also provided by his factory. Of course, he didn’t pay much. A rent so low, judged Pavel, that it was symbolic. And he did have a small balcony, with one of Minsk’s finest views. Four stories below and across Kalinina Street were lovely green banks. The Svisloch River, a meandering stream appropriate to a fine park, so nice and tranquil a river it deserved to have swans in it, ran along the bank of Kalinina Street. Thereby, Oswald’s apartment house was elegant, even grand from the exterior; it had high columns on its facade, framing the balconies, and was situated, like Pavel’s apartment, in your very best part of town. It just wasn’t much inside.
7
Parties at the Zigers’
Pavel, as he said, would not go out often that year, but Lee did bring him over to meet some Argentinians that he knew named Ziger.
Pavel enjoyed visiting their apartment. The Zigers treated you with coffee, and would offer a glass of wine in a most gracious manner. On a tray. They did not behave like Russians. The atmosphere was relaxed. Besides mother and father, there were two daughters and their boyfriends and other young people. A joyful and interesting atmosphere, although the first time that Pavel tasted table wine at the Zigers’ it was so dry that every Russian there was twisting his mouth. In Minsk, most wine was sweet.
Later that summer, Ziger’s daughters used to sunbathe in their bikinis on the balcony of their apartment, which shocked their neighbors. It was a scandal throughout the entire building. The Zigers were not only foreign but Jewish, thereby doubly scandalous.
According to Pavel, Lee never went out seriously with either of the daughters, but then, the Ziger girls weren’t his type. Anita was too big, too wide-boned, and the older Ziger daughter, who might have been a right match for Lee, was already married. Eleanora was her name. In Pavel’s opinion, Lee liked girls who were microminiature, full of air and grace. Later, there would be Ella, then Marina, both thin and delicate, elegant girls.
For a time at the Zigers’ parties, Lee seemed to have some interest in Albina, a big girl, always around the Zigers, but then Pavel recalled that when they were all young, back in 1960, Albina was not huge as she is now, nor was her hair colored to its present wild-orange; no, she was tall and slender and blond, with a powerful young bosom, so she was attractive to many.
Now, Albina and her family had had a hard time in the war and were poor afterward, with many hardships, but by the late Fifties life had bettered itself a little, and Albina was working in Minsk’s Central Post Office, which is where she met Anita Ziger. Young people, said Albina, always mocked Anita for her way of dressing. She wore high-heeled shoes and slacks, and being Argentinian, Anita looked like she could do a tango, which she could.
Albina had met Don Alejandro Ziger and his wife first, then Anita, through her post office. These Zigers received parcels from Argentina, and Albina was there to help them process such items through postal customs, postal declarations, other bureaucratic procedures. She must have done it well, because the Zigers invited her to visit them and gave Albina their address, even said, Come visit this Sunday. But Albina didn’t go. She didn’t have enough money to buy them a proper gift. In Russia, you come with something when you are invited, but she was too embarrassed to buy a cheap present. So she didn’t go.
When Anita came again to the post office, she invited Albina to see a movie. They went to a German film, just two of them alone, and Albina was uncomfortable because Anita was much better dressed than herself, yet Anita was also a merry person, with jokes, lots of jokes. Afterward, she invited Albina to her parents’ apartment, and it was nothing unusual. Like a common apartment that everybody had, one room. At that time, it was still very difficult with housing. So, there was one bed in the only room, and one in the hall, and that’s where Anita slept, in Ziger’s hallway. Nothing special. Ziger’s second daughter, Eleanora, didn’t live with them at that time. She was married and stayed in a town, Petrovsk, where, Albina thinks, her husband’s relatives treated her badly. So, Don Alejandro managed to get a two-room apartment and visited Petrovsk and took Eleanora back with him. She never returned to her husband. She got her divorce while remaining in Minsk, a slender good-looking woman with a nice voice.
This new apartment was decorated differently from Russian apartments. “Latino-American interior,” said Albina. “Their bed was big. They brought such a bed from South America, because Russians don’t produce big beds for people. Very beautiful bed.” At that time, there was a shortage of everything, and these Zigers were very practical people. They also brought their mattress from Latin America, and it, too, was beautiful, with bright threads and embroidered roses, other flowers, everything. They also knitted sweaters, and sold them to Russians they knew. They had come with very big trunks made of natural leather, and they cut up those trunks and sold pieces of leather to shoemakers. Don Alejandro was a man of resources.
In their apartment was a brown piano, and Anita could play everything—“Moonlight Sonata,” “Barcarole,” Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, and a lot of Latino-American melodies, tangos included. Also, the Zigers had a combination radio set with gramophone. This was Albina’s first time in a home that had so much music, records, life, vitality, such fun. Albina decided there was another person in her, some other human being inside who was curious about the world outside, and she decided she would like to travel and communicate with people.
These Zigers had friends who were also immigrants from Argentina, and at parties they would go into recollections of fine shops in Buenos Aires and lovely streets they used to walk on. How they missed their country! Since Anita Ziger went to a musical college in Minsk and would bring friends from there, the family’s parties were always musical and filled with such interesting people. One of them turned out to be Lee Harvey Oswald, whom everybody called Alik. Don Alejandro had invited Alik over from that radio factory where they both worked, and Albina got to like this Alik more and more. He was alone, he was a young man, and by March he had a nice apartment. When he took her to see it, she was even a little bit upset, because she herself never had anything like that in her life. So, he had a lot to feel spoiled about, and maybe that was why, at his job, he was never enthusiastic. But then he did tell her once, “All those girls like me. When I cross the yard, they are all sitting around, saying, ‘Alik, Alik.’”
Albina wouldn’t admit whether it was more difficult to have said no to him than to other men, but she certainly could admit that Alik had not liked being refused. When she did say no to him in his apartment, he had clicked his fingers and said, “Dammit!” In English. “Dammit!” She knew that word. It was not anger he expressed so much as being upset. He touched her and said, “Oh, stupid, you don’t know your happiness,” which is a Russian expression—“Stupid, you don’t know what happiness is.”
Maybe she didn’t, because she certainly lost him later. And not even to women. She felt as if she lost him to a man. Not as in a romance, but because this man could offer him other parties, other people. Or maybe it was because he could speak English so well.
It was her friend Ernst Titovets—if he was a friend. She had gone to high school with Ernst, who was also called Erich, and it was through her, Albina, that Erich met Alik. That was because she had known Titovets since he was fifteen, and sometimes in school they would even share desks together.
She had always thought Erich was a little strange, and nothing about him was fun, but he was all right. Some students used to speak of him as
manerniy—
full of mannerisms. So, nobody liked him much, but then he always wanted to show people he was better. And he certainly was interested in English. Of course, everyone should know such a language, because half of the world spoke it. To be an intelligent person with a cultural background you had to be able to speak at least one other foreign language, but Titovets always wanted to impress people that he was not average, and so he always did things by himself. He didn’t chase young women; he was mostly involved in his hobbies; he played chess, he was interested in music, and he was going to medical school about the time Albina introduced Erich Titovets to Alik. In those years, when the Zigers were a very bright part of her life, Albina would feel sorry that she had made such an introduction, because Alik used to come to their house often and he spent a lot of time with her, but now Ernst had captured him, and took him to other places. Finally, one year later, Ernst even brought him to a place where Alik met his future wife, and then Albina’s love was over forever, vanished.
She remembers right after she met Alik in January, she was walking with Anita and other Argentinian friends and then, not far from Victory Square, they suddenly ran into Erich. He came up to her and said, “Hi, what are you doing, how is your life, who are these people?” That was because he could hear these Argentinians speaking a foreign language, Spanish, and Albina said she didn’t speak it but just listened, and then he said, “Oh, who’s that person? It’s an American, isn’t it? Can you introduce me to him?” She said, “Why do you want that?” And he said, “You know I’m very much interested in some practice for English. My English teacher, I go to him and ask questions, but it isn’t always convenient for him.” So she said, “Excuse me, I have to ask other people first if they want to be introduced. I don’t feel like I could do it here in front of everybody just like that.”
So then Anita, very happy, so open, had to say, “Who is this young man?” And Albina said, “A man who’s going to be a doctor wants me to introduce . . .”
Anita said, “Okay, invite him to one of our parties and we’ll dance and we’ll talk.” They were without fear at the Zigers’ home. Maybe that’s why later they had such a problem getting an exit visa back to Argentina. They always said what they thought. And sometimes they spoke badly about Soviet life.
May 1
May Day came as my first holiday. All factories, etc., closed. Spectacular military parade. All workers paraded past reviewing stand waving flags and pictures of Mr. K., etc. I followed the American custom of marking holiday by sleeping in in the morning. At night I visit with the Zigers’ daughters at a party thrown by them [and] about forty people came, many of Argentine origin. We dance, play around, and drink until 2
A.M.
when party breaks up. Eleanora Ziger, oldest daughter, 26, formerly married, now divorced, a talented singer. Anita Ziger, 20, very gay, not so attractive, but we hit it off. Her boyfriend Alfred is a Hungarian chap, silent, brooding, not at all like Anita. Ziger advised me to go back to USA. It’s the first voice of opposition I have heard. I respect Ziger, he has seen the world. He says many things, and relates many things I do not know about the USSR. I begin to feel uneasy inside, it’s true!
F
ROM
KGB O
BSERVATION
P
ERFORMED FROM
07:00
ON
M
AY
1, 1960,
TILL
01:50
ON
M
AY
2, 1960
At 10:00 Lee Harvey came out of house N4 on Kalinina Street, came to Pobedy Square where he spent 25 minutes looking at passing parade. After this he went to Kalinina Street and began walking up and down embankment of Svisloch River. Returned home by 11:00.
From 11:00 to 13:00 he came out onto balcony of his apartment more than once. At 13:35 Lee Harvey left his house, got on trolley bus N2 at Pobedy Square, went to Central Square, was last to get off bus, went down Engelsa, Marksa and Lenina Streets to bakery store on Prospekt Stalina.
There he bought 200 gr. of vanilla cookies, then went to café
Banner of Youth
>, visited bakery for second time, left it immediately, and took trolley bus N1 to Pobedy Square and was home by 14:20.
At 16:50 Lee Harvey left his house and came to house N14 on Krasnaya Street. (Residence of immigrant from Argentina—Ziger.)
At 1:40 Lee Harvey together with other men and women, among whom there were daughters of Ziger, came home. Observation was stopped at this point till morning.
