Oswald's Tale (25 page)

While he was still in the hospital, he told Marina that he wanted to be engaged to her and she should not see anyone else. “I promised, but I did not take this seriously.” She did not love Lee—not yet; she just felt sorry for him. Still, he was an American. You weren’t going to say no if an American said you should be engaged; not right away, in any case.

On the day he got out of Fourth Clinical Hospital, Valya had him over for dinner with Ilya.

She liked how Alik could handle himself with her uncle. Very dignified. He told Ilya he had come to live forever in Russia. He intended to work hard. Ilya said, well, if that was so, then he, Ilya, would be ready to help him organize his life. And Marina could see that Valya was thinking, yes, they could have a little guidance over him, because Alik didn’t have anyone in Minsk, and they would treat him well.

He charmed Valya. He was very tender. He kissed Valya on her good cheek after dinner and said, “Thank you, this meal was great.” Well, it was, but he also said it nicely.

After dinner, Ilya said: “Take care of this girl. She has plenty of breezes in her brain.” Wasn’t that awful? She was a serious person. She would have liked to have breezes in her brain—she certainly wanted to have fun—but she was always feeling responsible, or examining her conscience. She could never say, “Just wash it off!”—she never did. Maybe, from Ilya’s point of view, it was because she liked one guy this week, another guy the following week; but Marina would have told him, “I’m still looking. I meet somebody, and he’s an idiot. He takes me out to dinner and wants me to pay for it. Or, he’s always clearing his throat because he’s an opera singer. All evening long, that’s what my opera singer did.” Yes, she had known one; she had gone on a date with him. “He had a nice cashmere coat and scarf.” When they went to a restaurant that he chose, she thought, “Well, maybe he’ll show some culture here,” but he ate his dinner and said, “I forgot my wallet.” Then he said, “Pay for it. I’ll give you some tickets for my opera.” When she got to that, he turned out to be Soldier 29, back somewhere in the chorus—a real Enrico Caruso! Of course, she had to drop him.

No, she did not want to talk about her courtship with Alik. It was not that remarkable. All courtships are the same: Put your best foot forward. The trouble with courtship is that you never know the other person until you get married and live the first twenty-four hours with him.

Still, she was ready to talk to others about this courtship with Alik. And her girlfriends, especially Larissa, encouraged Marina. As Larissa saw it, this American boyfriend would distinguish Marina from other girls. Besides, he had an apartment. When Alik invited Marina to visit his place on the night after his dinner at Ilya and Valya’s, Marina came with Sasha, Yuri, and Larissa. Safety in numbers. But Larissa talked about him positively afterward. He had such good manners.

2

A Little Bit of Conquering

Sasha recalls that night at Alik’s place. The American lived in a grand building, but his apartment did not look cozy. It was what they call
kazyono,
that is, bureaucratic, lacking in home atmosphere.

Alik spoke good Russian. An accent, and his pronunciation was off, but he could speak. He put on Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, and as they listened, Alik told his life story. He’d been in his armed forces, served in Asia, didn’t like war, didn’t wish to be a part of war. So, he had decided to come to the Soviet Union for residence, and Moscow had sent him to Minsk. Now he worked at Horizon radio factory, “as an engineer.” They had a bottle of Russian champagne. Sasha liked him—thought he was cool, very balanced, no unneeded emotion. Oswald didn’t smoke, but enjoyed others inhaling their cigarettes—or so it seemed to Sasha. However, his apartment did look poor. “Iron dirt,” as they called it. And his table was
neobtyosoniy,
not polished properly. His chairs were ordinary, and his bookcase was put together out of a few boards.

He had many records, however, long-playing records, all classics. Maybe they spent an hour and a half there. It must have been ten o’clock when they left. And Sasha said to Marina, “Let me see you off because tomorrow morning early, I have to go to my job and you, too, have to wake up early.”

At this point, Sasha indicated that he wanted the interviewers to turn off the tape. He then told this story: When he arrived at his home, there was a car waiting outside which took him to the offices of KGB, where they played for him a recording of what he and others had been saying at Lee’s party. They did not explain why they were doing this, nor did they go into other details. They told him merely that they wanted him to report in whenever they asked him.

All this took place in a basement room of the KGB building, on Lenin Street, and he had been brought there in a car. He was allowed to walk home, a good few kilometers. When he arrived, his mother scolded him for hanging out with his kind of friends, too upper-class, too well established, members of the
intelligentsia—
Yuri, particularly, and Kostya Bondarin. She told him, “Look, you come from simple peasant folk. You shouldn’t be around people like that. You’re going to get into trouble.”

To his interviewers, he now said that after he stopped seeing Marina because she was going with Lee, he also stopped seeing Yuri and Kostya Bondarin, who, he assumes, were also called in. It was as if none of them wished to see the others in order not to have to report on one another. You could say that they shared a new language in which there was no need to have a conversation.

Neither Igor nor Stepan would admit to more than some early concern about Lee and Marina. When that romance developed quickly into marriage, it could be said, Igor admitted, that they did lose some sleep, and felt somewhat at fault that no steps had been taken to keep this courtship of Oswald and Marina Prusakova from flourishing.

When asked what such steps might have entailed, Igor’s response was deliberative, even delicate. There were girls, he suggested, some of them attractive, certainly, certainly, who at one stage or another could be called upon by the Organs. Perhaps one of them might have diverted Oswald. They also could have attracted Marina perhaps to some other person, some very attractive man qualified for such activity. They didn’t do that, however. It was a large move, after all. So that gave Lee and Marina a possibility to begin. Then came a wedding, with almost no warning. More problems to deal with. Would there now be any leak of information to Oswald through Marina? That was a possibility which could happen by way of her uncle, Lieutenant-Colonel Prusakov of MVD. To ensure themselves against such an outcome, they were obliged somewhat later to make personal contact with Ilya Prusakov.

That period, therefore, offered considerable stress, and it was a fact—Stepan didn’t always sleep too well. Nor Igor.

Close to three years later, Marina wrote her account of these early days with Lee:

Lee had a lot of classical records, and he loved to listen to them when we were alone. He did not like noisy company and rather preferred to be alone with me. I remember one of these evenings when we drank tea with pastry and kisses. Then (please excuse my vulgarity, due to youth) this tea was very tasty. I never again drank such tea or ate such pastry—ha ha! Lee told me that he wanted us to get married and stay here forever. He had a small darling apartment . . . with a separate entrance—quite enough for two, especially if they were young. I told him that I would become his wife (since I had already fallen in love with him) but that we should wait several months because it was a little embarrassing in front of our friends to get married so quickly. But Lee agreed to wait only until the first of May [and] planted some flowers on the balcony in honor of my agreeing to marry him.
¹

March 18–31

We walk. I talk a little about myself. She talks a lot about herself. Her name is Marina N. Prusakova.

April 1–30

We are going steady and I decide I must have her. She puts me off and so on April 15 I propose. She accepts.

All right, once Lee had gotten out of the hospital, they had started dating, she would tell her interviewers thirty years later. She didn’t see him every night; she certainly kept seeing Anatoly until she finally accepted Lee’s proposal. Then, no more of Anatoly.

It was not just that Lee was neat and polite. When people were clean, that was very attractive to her. She did like people who bathed and people who could think cleanly. She would admit it: She liked starch. Starch was in Lee’s shirts, and that made her feel free: She could walk out from seeing him anytime she wished. So she had thought. So, she kept seeing Anatoly. Although not to the point of intercourse.

“Ah, well,” she said to her interviewers, “number one, in Russia, you don’t have that many opportunities to be in somebody’s . . . inside. It was winter when I met Anatoly. So, mostly it was just kissing. And he was a good kisser. Put it that way.” She never felt she was what you call a “sexual person.” More like sensuous. Going to the very end in sex was not her goal. She wasn’t looking for climax. “It’s the part before that interested me.” But with Anatoly, for the very first time, she had wanted to go further. Only, it never happened.

On the other hand, Lee certainly wanted to sleep with her. Sometimes they would go to his apartment, and things would get to the point of no return. Once, he threw her out, said: “Okay! Stay, or get out!” She got out. But he wasn’t rough. What she liked about Lee, and about Anatoly as well, was the prelude, talking. It wasn’t just physical—grab, kiss, here we go. You talk, and gradually you warm up to it. “I think that was what I liked with Lee prior to marriage. A little bit of conquering.”

So, he might be gentle, but he was also a bit aggressive when it came to sex. “Why do you think we got married?” she would ask. She shook her head. “Well,” she said to her interlocutors, “dear President Ford told everybody that Lee was impotent and that’s the thing which is not true . . . People like that become President. I am sorry. I have no respect for Mr. Ford.”

From an FBI report on an interview with Marina Oswald on December 1, 1963:

MARINA
advised [that] her uncle and aunt did not disapprove of
OSWALD
and, in fact, were glad that she had reduced the number of her boy friends to almost one. They offered no objections to
OSWALD
and told her it was her decision to make . . . Permission for the marriage was granted [by the registrar] in seven days, and it was thereafter necessary to only wait three more days to fulfill the required ten-day waiting period. They were certified as married by the registrar on April 30, 1961, [and] her aunt and uncle had a reception for them in their apartment. Their mutual friends were invited.

She advised she was not interviewed by any official and that the only documentation necessary for this marriage was registration of intent and the certification of the marriage ten days later . . .
²

From Marina’s narrative:
. . . It was one of the happiest days in my life. Alik, too, I think, was very happy that we were allowed to get married. He only calmed down on the day of our marriage; before that he went every day to ZAGS [the marriage bureau] to find out if we were to get permission. Only after our wedding did he finally believe that what we wanted had really happened . . . I remember that [on our wedding day] Lee bought me some early narcissi, and we went to the ZAGS with our friends. We came back on foot; the sun was shining; it was a warm Sunday, and everything was beautiful.
³

3

The Wedding Night

One day, about a year after Lee moved from the Hotel Minsk to his apartment, Stellina heard that he had gotten married. A floor lady at the hotel said: “Did you know? That American married a Russian girl. One of ours.” But she added: “A woman who is spoiled goods. A Leningrad sidewalk prostitute.” That rumor had spread around Minsk. Stellina remembered that he had told her the girl had said: “Switch off the light and kiss me, please.” A respectable decent young lady wouldn’t talk that way. Respectable young ladies, if they knew any English, would know more than such a phrase. Russian girls were brought up, said Stellina, to take no initiative with men. Sex was friendship and caring, part of the big relationship. Many women were not even told about female orgasm. What for?

“Turn off the light and kiss me” was unheard of. Enough! She didn’t want to meet this young woman.

First, her aunt and uncle had thought she was going out with too many men. Now that she had it down to two, and wanted to get married, Ilya had to say: “Don’t be in a hurry. What are you getting yourself into? You should know this man better. Such a short period of time.”

On their marriage day, however, Ilya was nice. He said to Marina, “Maybe you are ready. Love each other. Now that you are married, you should live a peaceful life. Don’t put shame on yourself. Just live so that people see you have a beautiful life.”

At their pharmacy, Sonya first heard about Oswald when Marina started to say, “I was introduced to this American, Alik—Alka, I call him.” Then Sonya heard a little later that they began to see each other. So when Marina came to them and said that Alka had proposed marriage, the girls thought, well, Marina’s uncle has such a high position and we’re just small people. If he, in his high position, allows them to marry, who are we to decide no? When the girls did remark that he was a foreigner, Marina said, “He’s not going to America.”

Not one of the pharmacy girls was invited to her wedding, but then, it wasn’t a big party, just her uncle and aunt—not a regular wedding in a restaurant where many people were asked to come. Just close relatives, close friends.

During the period when Yuri Merezhinsky was friendly with Lee, Konstantin Bondarin noticed that whenever he was returning home from an evening at which Lee was present, a man was always following him. So, he stopped having contact with the American.

It was precisely for that reason that Kostya didn’t take part in Marina’s wedding. “Yuri and I talked about it. I said to Yuri: ‘We’re being grazed.’” There was a special word,
pasut,
which was used when you were clearly under surveillance. You were sheep and you had a shepherd watching you.

As for Marina, Kostya would say that she had a goal in mind and Lee was Victim Number One.

A victim, after all, is someone who is used as a means. That Marina wanted to get married was obvious to every man who ever had anything to do with her, but Tolya Shpanko would have been the most appropriate for her.

Inessa didn’t recall when she heard the name Alik for the first time, but there was a period when Marina seemed to disappear for a while and Inessa didn’t see her. So, Inessa was surprised to discover that she was getting married to an American.

Marina never told Inessa anything in absolute detail, but she did share some of her feelings. It gave Inessa a sense that Marina had dirt upon her, that it was creeping, maybe, toward her soul but hadn’t managed yet to sully it.

“You can be soiled on the outside, that’s my feeling, but in your soul remain honest and decent. No, those are the wrong words. How can I say it? Well, she’s dear to me, and I saw something in her,” said Inessa.

“She was confessing; she spoke with a great deal of pain, with a very great deal of pain, believe me. I am afraid of seeming self-assured, but it seems to me that she needed me. She approached the subject gradually. She would talk and talk and then afterward she did get more specific. It was before she got married that she told me all that. She felt entirely alone, as if nobody needed her.”

Inessa knew that, right before her marriage, Marina was worried that on their wedding night Lee would find out about her past. As she spoke with Inessa, she told her that she did know what to do with herself so that he wouldn’t find out. It was difficult to talk on this subject because it involved physical and medical matters, but afterward, Marina said everything was okay and Lee had thought she was a virgin. Something she did medically—yes, she did it.

Inessa said, “Of course, it shocked me, but I didn’t judge her.” Inessa hadn’t known how she had managed something like that, but Marina told her that she was in a pharmacy, after all, and there were one or two substances—when you put them in, you could give yourself strain and tension down there. When the bridegroom consummated the first night, you would have pain. You didn’t have to take acting lessons. Blood was not necessarily present, but the experience was uncomfortable enough to convince any new husband. “This is what I remember Marina telling me.”

After her wedding, Marina told Inessa that all had gone well and she was happy. This was not because he was such a great hero in bed, but because she had succeeded in convincing him she was a virgin.

After marriage, Marina became a good and decent wife, Inessa said. It changed her. She had always wanted to have her own home and now she had achieved that. Somehow, Marina settled down.

INTERVIEWER:
One person responded to a question by saying: You’re right, she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night. She was worried that Lee would find out, and she went to the pharmacy and got something. She was protecting her marriage.

MARINA:
Okay.

INT:
That’s exactly what was said.

M:
Okay. It’s true. So? So you are a sex pervert to spend five days to get somebody to talk about subject like this . . . I mean, isn’t it enough?

INT:
I’m telling you what happened in the course of the interviews. Pavel told us about an incident that happened at the radio factory, when guys came up to Lee and kidded him, and said: “Well, was your wife a virgin or not? How much blood was on the sheet?” We could never find out what Lee’s answer was.

M:
I don’t know.

INT:
Nobody seems to remember how he answered that question. So we don’t know whether that was something which bothered him. It’s of value to know whether every time he had a disagreement with you, every time he had an argument with you . . .

M:
Your guess is as good as mine.

INT:
We’re not interested in the sex by itself but in what knowledge he had of your past. How did it affect him? Your girlfriend said you were concerned about your marriage. She said it with a lot of emotion and feeling. That you were doing it to protect your marriage.

M:
At least I was serious about that.

INT:
Exactly right. That helped us understand that you were serious about the marriage.

M:
I wanted to have a family. I was damn serious about that.

INT:
Let me get it out, so we don’t have to feel anybody is hiding anything. Inessa told us in this same interview, in kindness, with great love and affection for you, that you, Marina, carried a great burden from Leningrad. And about how difficult your life was in Leningrad and with your stepfather, and that you had to live a life which you were not proud of.

M:
It wasn’t by choice.

INT:
Inessa explained how you felt very bad and were very much worried that you had had this life in Leningrad, and that you had to resort to things to survive, to eat, to find a place to sleep . . .

M:
I never once in my life was paid money.

INT:
I’m sure you weren’t.

M:
I was looking for love in some wrong places and sometimes I had to pay for that. I actually was raped by a foreigner.

INT:
What?

M:
I mean, I was trapped in a room. He locked the door. And you know how they have those
dezhurnayas
that sit over there in the hallways of hotels holding keys for people who are out? I couldn’t scream. I thought, what would this woman think of me? So I fought this man. He finally threw me against him. He said, “Well if I knew you were a virgin, I would not have touched you.” . . . Lee didn’t ask me, but on my wedding night, I pretended. I was terrified, I said to myself, When night comes, what am I going to do? I mean, what? It’s a clean-cut life from now on. I want to be serious, and I was terrified. But Lee did not ask me.

INT:
He never asked whether you were a virgin?

M:
He did thank me for it. So I thought, “Oh my God. I flew over that . . . now I’m holy again.”

INT:
Right.

M:
All my life that’s all I wanted to be . . . And then Lee came from the factory and told me about how guys there talk, and he laughed and he said how barbaric and awful. And I said, “Don’t you talk about us. I don’t want to be discussed.” And once, now I recall, we had an argument and he kind of mumbled: “Yeah, little virgin.” And I said, “Yes, I am.” I said, “Prove it that I’m not.” And he dropped the subject.

April 3

After a seven-day delay at the Marriage Bureau because of my unusual passport, they allow us to register as man and wife. Two of Marina’s girlfriends act as bridesmaids. We are married at her aunt’s home. We have a dinner reception for about twenty friends and neighbors, who wish us happiness (in spite of my origin), which was in general rather disquieting to any Russian since foreigners are very rare in the Soviet Union, even tourists. After an evening of eating and drinking in which Uncle Wooser started a fight and a fuse blew on an overloaded circuit, we take our leave and walk fifteen minutes to our home. We lived near each other. At midnight we went home.