Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  McMillan: On the first night in their new apartment, November 4, Marina stayed up till five in the morning, scrubbing everything in sight. Lee helped for a while. He cleaned the icebox, then left about ten in the evening. He had paid for a room at the “Y,” he said, and he might as well use it. But since the YMCA has no record that he stayed there after October 19, it is likely he spent a final night in whatever rooming house he had been living in for the last two weeks.11

  Or, spent the night with whomever he had been seeing. The answer to that we may never know—he could have quit the new apartment that night from no more than the cold fury of recognizing that she felt no joy in being back with him and instead was buried in cleansing powder. Or, indeed, having returned to her, he may have regretted giving up his other life, even if it had amounted to no more than loneliness and privacy. In any case, they are far from reconciled. In two more days they will have a terrible fight that begins with what Marina sees as a small matter, a conversation with Mrs. Tobias, the wife of the building superintendent.

  MRS. TOBIAS. . . . I said to him, “What nationality are you folks?” . . . He said, “Oh, we are Czech.” . . . that’s all I got out of him that [first] night . . . Well, the first time she came in, I said, “Your husband says you are Czech,” and she began to shake her head . . . she was Russian . . . She said that in English, she said . . . “My husband told me if I said I was Russian, people would be mean to me,” . . . and I said, “Nobody will be mean to you . . . you are always welcome to come into my house . . .”12

  Lee was livid. Once again, she had disobeyed his instructions and, in effect, blown his cover. The quarrel grew, fed conceivably by the recognition that they were together again and miserable about that.

  She could live with the émigrés from now on as far as he was concerned. To covet the possessions of others, and make up to them, was just one more form of whoring, he told her. He was using the most insulting single word for whore in Russian, and Marina was not only wounded but incensed—he, who raided Elena Hall’s icebox and slept on her sheets, was calling her blyat. Half of her reason for marrying him had just been destroyed with that single word. She might just as well have wed a Russian who knew all the gossip about Leningrad. She was in such a state that she ran into the street.

  Weeping, shaking, and with a hundred words of English, she succeeded in explaining to the attendant at the nearest gas station that she wished to call Anna Meller.

  MRS. MELLER. Yes, yes, sir. It was in November, I think, on a certain Monday about 10 in the evening, she will call me and say that her husband beat her and she came from the apartment and reached the filling station and said the man—she did not have a penny of money, and the good soul helped her to dial my number and she’s talking to me if she can come over my house. I was speechless because to this time I didn’t even know they were in Dallas. To understand, sir, we went to Fort Worth two or three times to help Marina and then there was for certain period quiet . . . I came to my husband and I asked him if we can take Marina. He did not want to. We have one bedroom apartment and he said, “Do not have very much space.” I, like a maniac woman, started to beg and said: “We have to help poor woman, she’s on the street with baby. We could not leave her like that; we had our trouble and somebody helped us.” My husband said, “Okay, let her come.” She said to me she did not have a penny of money. I said, “Take a taxi and come here and we will pay the way.” So about 11 or 10:40 she came over [to] our house . . . with baby on her hand, couple diapers and that was all; no coat, no money, nothing.13

  George Bouhe brought several of the Russians together for a quick conference on the matter:

  McMillan: “I don’t want to advise or interfere,” he told Marina . . . “I can’t come between a husband and wife. If you leave him, of course we’ll help. But if you say one thing now and then go back, next time no one will help.”

  “I’ll never go back to that hell,” Marina promised herself.14

  She was now committed. She would stay away from Lee, and the émigrés, one way or another, would take care of her. If the speculation that George Bouhe had had a private relation with Lee is not entirely without foundation, then his extreme position on Marina’s separation suggests that he was not only fussy, balding, and opinionated but—assuming things had turned out badly with Lee—vindictive.

  Being the most physical man among them, George De Mohrenschildt is now deputized by the émigrés to talk to Oswald about the terms of the separation. It is agreed that Lee and Marina will meet at the De Mohrenschildts’ apartment to see if they can resolve their difficulties. De Mohrenschildt suggests that Bouhe be present at the meeting, but he demurs: “If he sticks his fists in my ears it will suit neither my age nor my health.”15 Then he adds, “I am scared of this man. He is a lunatic,” to which De Mohrenschildt replies, “Don’t be scared. He is just as small as you are.”16

  The site and time are established. The meeting will be on November 11 in De Mohrenschildt’s apartment. On that Sunday morning, June is left behind with Anna Meller, and Bouhe brings Marina over in his car, then leaves on the quick. Jeanne, Marina, and George wait for Lee, who comes in “obviously embarrassed to be having such a scene in front of the De Mohrenschildts.”17

  After an exchange of grievances which merely increases the heat between Lee and Marina, Jeanne suggests that they have a trial separation. George gives his account:

  At that, Lee [shouted,] “You are not going to impose this indignity on me!” . . . He was incoherent and violent. We never saw him in this condition before.

  “If you do this, you will never see June and Marina again. You are ridiculous,” [Jeanne] said quietly. “There is a law here against abuse.”

  “By the time you calm down, I shall promise you will be in contact with baby June again,” I interceded, knowing that Lee was afraid that someone would take the child away from him. And so he calmed down, promised to think the situation over, [and] assured us that there would be no more violence . . . 18

  Lee and Marina go into another room to talk. He wants her to come back; she speaks of divorce. He asks again whether she will come back; she tells him that she will only return to the Elsbeth Street apartment with the De Mohrenschildts, and will only stay long enough to pick up her clothes and leave.

  MARINA OSWALD. . . . I simply wanted to show him, too, that I am not a toy. That a woman is a little more complicated. That you cannot trifle with her.

  MR. RANKIN. Did you say anything at that time about how he should treat you if you returned?

  MARINA OSWALD. Yes. I told him that if he did not change his character, then it would be impossible to continue living with him. Because if there should be quarrels continuously, it would be crippling for the children.

  MR. RANKIN. What did he say to that?

  MARINA OSWALD. Then he said that it would be—it was very hard for him. That he could not change. That I must accept him such as he was . . . 19

  An impasse. She will not accept him as he is. Finally, he agrees that she can move out. The four of them, two De Mohrenschildts and two Oswalds, drive over to Elsbeth Street with Lee sitting silently in the backseat of the convertible. But when they enter the apartment, Lee has a change of heart:

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . Lee said, “By God, you are not going to do it. I will tear all her dresses and I will break all the baby things.”

  And I got very mad this time. But Jeanne started explaining to him patiently that it is not going to help him any—“Do you love your wife?” He said yes. And she said, “If you want your wife back some time, you better behave.”

  I said, “If you don’t behave, I will call the police.”

  I felt very nervous about the whole situation—interfering in other people’s affairs, after all.

  “Well,” he said, “I will get even with you.”

  I said, “You will get even with me?” I got a little bit more mad and I said, “I am going to take Marina anyway.”

  So after a little
while . . . I started carrying the things out of the house. And Lee did not interfere with me. Of course, he was small, you know, and he was a rather puny individual.

  After a little while, he helped me carry the things out. He completely changed his mind.

  MR. JENNER. He submitted to the inevitable?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. He submitted to the inevitable, and . . . we cleaned that house completely.

  We have a big convertible car and it was loaded . . . And we drove very slowly all the way to the other part of the town, Lakeside, where the Mellers lived, and left her there.20

  And there was Lee left alone in the half-empty apartment on Elsbeth Street. In his manuscript, De Mohrenschildt picks up on Lee’s lonely state:

  The next evening Lee was back with us, all alone. Again, he wanted to talk the situation over. He sat gloomily on our famous sofa and both of us tried to talk some sense.

  “I heard of love accompanied by beating and torture,” I said half-seriously. “Read Marquis de Sade or observe the life of the underworld—l’amour crapule, as they say in France. But your fights seem to be deprived of sex, which is terrible . . .”

  “If you think you are fond of each other, cannot you do it without scratching, biting, and hitting?” Jeanne tried another reasoning.

  Lee sat gloomily without saying a word . . .

  Jeanne kept on talking about a nice temporary home for Marina and the baby and the good care both of them will have. Naturally, we did not mention the name of the Mellers.

  “I promise you, Lee, that after a cooling off period, I shall give you the address and the telephone, so you can communicate with your child. Nobody should separate a child from her father.”

  Lee believed my promise because he knew that myself I had been a victim of a vindictive wife who prevented me from seeing my children . . .

  That night, we separated rather sadly. “You may hate us, Lee, or maybe you will be grateful to us one day for enforcing this separation,” I said. “But I don’t see any other way out under the circumstances . . .”

  Lee agreed but he was on the verge of tears. “Remember your promise. You will give me soon their address and the telephone.”

  We shook hands and Lee left.21

  In fact, Marina and June were not staying at the Mellers’ any longer but at the Fords’, who had a larger house. Katya Ford, however, had some hard-edged ideas about Marina’s real future:

  MR. LIEBELER. Was there any conversation . . . about the possibility of a divorce? . . .

  MRS. FORD. . . . she didn’t want to go back . . . but she wasn’t right for domestic help and I told her to stay with Lee, that is what I told her myself, and wait until she could be able to take care of herself . . .

  MR. LIEBELER. What did she say about that?

  MRS. FORD. . . . she didn’t say anything.22

  George Bouhe thought he had found a solution. He arranged for Marina to stay with still another émigrée, Valentina Ray, who could teach her English until she felt ready to go out on her own. Marina, however, must have been missing Lee, for she gave him the new number to call.

  McMillan: Within minutes of her arrival, he telephoned and begged her to see him. “I’m lonely,” he said. “I want to see Junie and talk to you about Thanksgiving.”

  Marina caved in. “All right,” she said, “come over.”23

  At this point, it is necessary to quote close to a full page from Marina and Lee. If it is ungracious to enter a cavil, it may nonetheless be necessary, for their dialogue has obviously been composed by Mrs. McMillan. Marina was speaking in Russian when she gave her account to Priscilla Johnson McMillan in 1964, and the author’s translation could be more responsive to her own sense of romantic dialogue than to Lee and Marina’s way of conversing with each other—at least if we have obtained any notion of how they spoke from the KGB transcripts.

  Nonetheless, this uneasiness admitted, it is also true that scenes of reconciliation between knotty, anger-filled people tend to be moving, and the author does not fail to produce:

  McMillan: Marina’s heart jumped when she saw her husband. They went into a room by themselves.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m sorry. Why do you torture me so? I come home and there’s nobody there. No you, no Junie.”

  “I didn’t chase you out,” Marina said. “You wanted it. You gave me no choice.”

  He loved her, he said. It wasn’t much, he knew, but he loved her the best he knew how. He begged her to come back to him. Robert, he added, had invited them for Thanksgiving and it would be terrible to show up without her.

  Marina realized that Lee needed her. He had no friends, no one to count on but her. Harsh as his treatment was, she knew he loved her. But she brushed him away when he tried to kiss her. He went down on his knees and kissed her ankles and feet. His eyes were filled with tears and he begged her forgiveness again. He would try to change, he said. He had a “terrible character” and he could not change overnight. But change he would, bit by bit. He could not go on living without her. And the baby needed a father.

  “Why are you playing Romeo?” Marina said, embarrassed at his being at her feet. “Get up or someone will come in the door.” Her voice was severe, but she felt herself melting inside.

  He got up, protesting as he did so that he refused to get up until she forgave him. Both of them were in tears.

  “My little fool,” she said.

  “You’re my fool, too,” he said.

  Suddenly Lee was all smiles. He covered the baby with kisses and said to her: “We’re all three going to live together again. Mama’s not going to take Junie away from Papa any more.”24

  In the written narrative that Marina would prepare for the FBI, she says, “We talked alone in the room, and I saw him cry for the first time.”

  By other accounts she has already provided, we know that she must have seen him weep on at least eight or ten occasions, yet she is still seeing him burst into tears for the first time. Is one entitled to think that such a reaction may be characteristically Russian? An adult’s open sorrow is, after all, a signal occasion. Just as each act of sex for blissfully accommodated lovers always seems to be a magical first event, so too would Marina react each time to his weeping. She waxes eloquent here:

  From Marina’s narrative: What woman’s heart can resist this, especially if she is in love? [Lee] asked my forgiveness, and promised me he would try to improve, if only I would come back. Do not think I am boasting—as if to say, Look how he loves her, and he is even crying. But . . . I felt that this man is very unhappy, and that he cannot love in any other way. All of this, including quarrels, mean love in his language. I saw that if I did not go back to him, things would be very hard for him [and] I felt for the first time that this person was not born to live among people, that among them he was alone. I was sorry for him and frightened. I was afraid that if I did not go back to him something might happen. I didn’t have anything concrete in mind, but my intuition told me that I couldn’t do this, [because] he needed me . . . What can you do when a person has been this way all his life? You can’t reform him at once. But I decided that if I had enough patience, everything would be better and that this would help him . . . 25

  A little later that night, after supper, Marina, Lee, and June were driven by their host, Frank Ray, back to their apartment on Elsbeth St. It did not take long for the other émigrés to hear. As one would expect, they decided that they had had quite enough of the Oswalds.

  MRS. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. . . . really furious. We wasted the whole day, so much aggravation, go through all that trying to do something for them and then she dropped the whole thing. So, why bother, you know? So, from then on, we were really disgusted . . . 26

  To the other émigrés it was an unmitigated disgrace. Bouhe announced that he was washing his hands of both of them. A story made the rounds among the émigrés, and suggests the tenor of their collective humor:

  McMillan: No sooner had the couple made up, the story went, tha
n Lee plucked the cigarette from his wife’s lips and snuffed it out on her shoulder. The Russians recalled that in the early days of the Bolshevik régime, officers of the Cheka, as the secret police were called, used to extinguish a cigarette on human flesh when they were trying to break a prisoner. Marina denies that her husband did any such thing to her ever. But the Russians believed that he did—stunning testimony as to how they felt about Oswald.27

  It is indeed stunning testimony, but it attests to no more than the essential nastiness of the émigrés. Lee may not have been off target in his assessment of them.

  From Marina’s narrative: For Thanksgiving we went to Robert’s house in Fort Worth. I liked this good American holiday, it is very agreeable to celebrate it. In the station Lee asked me if I wanted to hear the music from the movie Exodus. I did not know this movie but I liked the music very much. Lee paid a lot for this record, played it several times, and said that it was one of his favorite melodies. Now that Lee is no longer alive, I like this melody even more since it is associated with happy memories. Lee was in a very gay mood, we joked a lot, fooled around, photographed one another in the station and laughed at how silly we were getting. At Robert’s house everything was also gay and in a holiday mood.28

  We can quote here from Robert Oswald’s book Lee. His account is bland, but give him the benefit of the doubt: Some families cannot have a decent time if anything of consequence is discussed.

  John [Pic] and Lee had a lot to talk about, after ten years. They exchanged stories about their experiences in Japan, but Lee didn’t mention Russia. We didn’t bring it up either. It just seemed better to wait for Lee to volunteer whatever he wanted to say about it. He said nothing.