"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (41 page)

Again, life came to resemble an elaborate chess game. What appeared simple, obvious blunders were sophisticated feints.

On March 16 Lee moved into his Kalinina Street apartment, he appreciative of the exquisite columns on building number N4's exterior. These allowed for a high-tone appearance. So much the better if Lee should bring girls here. Also appealing was his view of the twisting Svisloch River from the private balcony.

Each day, Lee took a trolley to and from work. People got to know him and, in time, Lee was invited to parties at the home of Don Alejandro Ziger, a thick-necked, furrow-browed, curly-haired emigree from Argentina. This fellow's wine, like his spirited conversations, proved splendid.

Also, Lee appreciated the intellectual university crowd he met here. He joined some on outings to theatre Central, which played imported movies from all over the globe. The smart set enjoyed their complex visions. Then, on to Café Vesna for cake, coffee, and heated discussions of any particular film's merits.

“But Fellini is so decadent. All style, no substance.”

“I beg to disagree. His very style is his substance.”

“I prefer Rossellini, with his crude use of camera. This allows an audience direct immersion in his political agenda.”

“A movie must not be judged by what it has to say. If film is an original art form, the aesthetic for criticism must be the manner in which a filmmaker employs his camera to communicate.”

At work, Lee found himself situated near Ella Germann, “a silky black-haired Jewish beauty with fine dark eyes, skin as white as snow, and a beautiful smile,” in Lee's words. It was love at first sight: Rima and Rosa, whom he missed terribly at first, flew out of Lee's mind once he and Ella began to talk and take lunch breaks together. Ella intrigued him; she hailed from a theatrical family. Also, as a free thinker, she dared question her government's anti-American propaganda.

“I know, Ella. Some of my enthusiasm for Soviet citizenship has been severely strained by inequities I see in the system.”

Always remember: She may be yet another spy!

At twenty-three, Ella proved more mature than most of the other girls. She balanced daily work at Horizon with night school classes at Minsk University, determined to get ahead of her current status. This revealed an ambitiousness that struck Lee as essentially American. One class dealt with the English language. Ella mentioned this to Lee, guessing he would offer to help her with such studies.

“I feel your pain, Lee. Open up. You can talk to me.”

As a Jewish girl, Ella knew that what was best for herself would be an eagerness to prove her loyalty to the motherland. Her people experienced discrimination still, if nothing so arch as in the old days. A half-century earlier, Cossacks would boldly ride through the narrow streets of a Pogrum. The flamboyantly costumed cavalrymen would playfully employ their long, curved blades to slice off the heads of Jewish women and children as they, terror-stricken, attempted to scurry away and hide. Beneath huge, hanging black mustaches, the Cossacks would loudly laugh at the sight of what appeared to be large balls rolling down the alleyways. Here was a sport they relished practicing on random occasions, particularly when bored and drunk.

That was then; this, now.

Anti-semitism, over the decades, grew more subtle. Certainly, though, it had not gone away. If a Jew hoped to succeed in the modern Soviet Union, then, it was necessary to prove oneself to those in authority. So as to the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, Ella perceived him strictly as prey, cultivating the relationship in hopes of scoring points for herself.

“You are so vague about your motivations for leaving the United States. I so want a better sense of you as a person.”

Together at his apartment, the couple remained chaste on her insistence. She claimed to be a virgin, saving herself for marriage. On May 2, they sat side by side, spellbound by radio reports concerning the shooting down of an American spy plane that had been illegally circling the Ural Mountains. An anti-aircraft missile slammed into the U2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers. He parachuted down into a gap between the rugged Asian steppes and the Soviet Union's easternmost European perimeters.

“He and his plane, both captured?” Lee gasped.

Ella noticed that Lee's mood changed during the course of listening. He began silently wandering around his room as if a stranger there. He stepped out on the balcony, gazing off into the distance.

“What's bothering you? Tell me ...”

If only I could. But I can't let myself trust you, even if I'm falling in love. Are you ‘you'? Or merely a ‘legend?'

Their relationship altered. Instead of suggesting marriage, and the beginning of a life together in Minsk, now Lee, clearly enamored of the pretty girl, would suddenly blurt out statements like “If I were to go back home, would you agree to go with me?”

After months of platonic dating, Lee now complained that perhaps he deserved a kiss goodnight. But Ella was not willing. Then, it dawned on him: She does not find me attractive, yet goes out with me. There can be only one explanation. She is a plant, here to coldly discover what she can for her own benefit.

Without warning, Lee broke off the relationship, refusing to see Ella again, much to the young beauty's surprise.

For the better part of a year, Lee did not date, so furious was he at her attempt to turn him into a patsy, the last thing in the world he ever wanted to be reduced to. Lee now once again disappeared into the darkness of movie theatres.

To his delight, Lee learned that the Mir movie house would be showing a film called
Babette Goes to War
, a comedy about a beautiful French girl who joins the Resistance to fight the Nazis. She was played, naturally, by Brigitte Bardot.

The best thing about women in movies was that they cannot betray you as so many do in real life. They are frozen onscreen like the maidens on that Grecian Urn in a poem by Keats. What did the poet write? ‘Heard melodies are sweet; those unheard, sweeter ...” How true! Bebe, perfect forever on film ...

So near and yet so far ... wondrously frustrating.

A few nights later he went to see the film again, though it had been mediocre. No matter: Just the opportunity to look up at the blonde for ninety minutes, with that hair flying across her face, momentarily obscuring the overly made-up eyes ...

*

On March 17, 1961, several friends insisted that Lee join them for a pre-spring celebration. That night Lee was introduced to Marina, the only local woman—at eighteen, a girl really—who dared to style her hair in the manner of Bardot.

Not surprisingly, Lee fell in love with her at first sight.

“Not even Marina knows the real reason why

I've returned to the United States.”

—Lee Harvey Oswald to Marguerite;

Friday the Thirteenth; July 1962

 

A little voice inside Lee had told him that were he to marry Marina they would, as if in a fairytale come true, live “happily ever after.” That phrase, though, hardly described their existence once the two made their way to the U.S., settling in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Their very living conditions revealed the extreme contrast which Marina (or the woman playing a part called ‘Marina') experienced between her earlier existence in Minsk and current situation in Texas.

In the U.S.S.R., everything was supposed to have been functional, non-luxurious, anti-decadent. Yet she'd resided in an elegant (at least by Russian standards) suite with her ‘uncle and aunt.' Marina moved into Lee's smaller but pleasant rooms.

Coming to America turned out to be a revelation and shock to her system. As it turned out, the land of plenty, at least for the Oswalds and their baby daughter, proved anything but.

One person who visited them often, G. De Mohrenschildt, described a visit to one of the Oswalds' living place: “the atmosphere of the house and neighborhood (are) conducive to suicide. The living room was dark and smelly, the bedroom and kitchen facing bleak walls ... the place spruced up by lovely photographs of the Russian countryside.” These were taken by Lee during his travels through thick forestlands adjoining Minsk.

The photos, De Mohrenschildt decided, constituted a visual plea for help; an admission of the mistake she made; evidence of her dream to return to Russia, at any cost, by any means.

De Mohrenschildt decided on the spot that he would do all he could to facilitate that unarticulated request. Yet while he served the KGB, and had been assigned as this beautiful spy's contact, De Mohrenschildt had trouble grasping whether such nostalgic melancholia came from the created-character called ‘Marina' or the woman who had been assigned to play that part.

In truth, Marina herself could no longer be certain where the one left off and the other began.

*

This G. De Mohrenschildt had sought the Oswalds out soon after their arrival in Texas on June 13, 1962. In actuality, plans for Lee's return to the U.S. began on May 2, 1960. Lee then still hoped to win the mysterious dark-haired Ella. On that day when Gary Francis Powers had been shot down, Lee made some feeble excuse to leave Ella and proceed to the local bakery.

“Hello, Mr. Oswald. Fascinating news, yes?”

“That, Yuri, is putting the situation mildly.”

This was, like the butcher shop he entered on his first day in the city, one more of those “safe places” where Lee could secretly slip a message off to George.

“What now?” Lee demanded. Everything he and George had planned extended from a single conception: a) The KGB had to learn everything about the U2; b) the CIA must make certain the Russians happened upon such information so its existence could serve as a deterrence to atomic war; c) American security could not be allowed to appear lax; d) an individual traitor could, owing to a ‘coincidence' of his past military experience, offer the KGB such details; e) the Russians would detain such a person in the provinces until convinced of his sincerity; f) if this were decided in his favor, he would then be brought back from Minsk to Moscow, serving there as a secret agent.

Overnight, all that was ruined. The Soviets had in their possession an actual U2 jet, as well as the pilot. Listening to news reports about a wild card—the weak link in the plan that George, despite his genius at espionage, had somehow missed—now rendered Lee's function in Russia largely irrelevant.

“Change in legend,” George replied. “L.H.O. disenchanted with Russia, longs to return home.” With that, Lee had to now rewrite the fictional character who shared his actual name.

“If I should decide to return to the U.S.,” he asked Ella, “would you consider coming along?”

That bitch! She never loved me ... If I could, I'd like to wring her pretty neck with my bare hands...

Trusting Lee implicitly to fill in the blanks as to details George left everything open except the grand finale: Home-word bound, where another assignment, Lee trusted, would be waiting.

The first thing to do was create a fake diary in which he re-imagined everything, viewing events he previously accepted as positive in the most unflattering manner to provide a basis for his about-face. Here, Lee hesitated. One way to achieve this would be to express a growing distrust of Marxist ideals. That, he decided, was too simplistic; too likely to be questioned as suspicious when he filed papers requesting his release.

I'm too good at this spy game now to trap myself with such a feeble cover. This must be more complicated, more convincing.

Quickly, his nimble mind seized on another, more believable approach. The problem was not Marxism per se, which Lee actually did find impressive in its purest form. The problem: Lee (the ‘real' Lee) found some of those ideas attractive, if as a CIA plant (a ‘legend') he was supposed to reject the Red way.

Constantly, he told himself that he did. But another of those little voices inside questioned whether that remained true. The ideal of human equality, he could not deny, was most appealing. That poor people, like he and his mother back home, ought to be regarded as society's spine rather some ugly appendage, struck him as valid. Of course, that was not the way things worked around here. Pompous party officials lorded it over the working class.

Lee was, then, able to maintain his loyalty to his sworn cause—America and all it stood for—owing to his contemptuous feelings for the despicable realities in contemporary Russia.

That's it, then! My new legend will incorporate much of what I truly do believe. The problem here is not that Marx, or Lenin, or Engels were wrong. Only that the Soviet Union, living and breathing those values during its first decade of existence, tragically fell into Stalin's hands.

A country, any country, is only as good as its current leadership. Khrushchev is as bad as Stalin. The premise itself from Marx through Lenin was enlightened. Yet I despise the results once a lofty dream passes from the greatness of a libertarian like Vladimir into the hands of lesser, self-serving men.

Yet how will George react to all of this? I know he will take delight in reading my faux journal of a gradual defection from belief in contemporary Russia to disparagement. What might be the case, though, if he were to learn this is not very far from what I, the real me, have come to believe?

That communism, if and when fairly implemented, is not the natural enemy of democratic capitalism but a likely ally?

“I become increasingly conscious of just what sort of society I live in,” Lee wrote that night. “Mass gymnastics, compulsory after work meeting; usually political information meeting. Compulsory attendance at lectures and the sending of the entire shop collective (except me) to pick potatoes on a Sunday.” The communist Party secretary at the Factory, whom Lee had always found friendly, he now described as “a fat, forty-ish no-nonsense party regular” who forced Lee to attend “fifteen meetings a month ... always held after work time.” Such insistent regimentation must “turn to stone all except the hard-faced communists with roving eyes looking for any bonus-making catch of inattentiveness on the party of any worker.”