Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  Oswald instantly seized on the analogy between Hitler and Walker to argue that America was moving toward fascism. As he spoke, he seemed to grow more and more excited about the subject.

  Schmidt could see that he had finally got through to Oswald. As he listened to Oswald define more closely his political ideas, he began to work out his “psychological profile,” as he called it. Oswald seemed to be a “totally alienated individual,” obsessed with political ideology and bent on self-destruction . . . a Dostoyevskian character impelled by his own reasoning toward a “logical suicide.”1

  Like most psychological judgments, it is too comfortable for the judge. Oswald’s aim in life was to achieve greatness. For that, he believed, he was uniquely destined. If he had to take a few enormous chances to arrive at his goal and those chances would result in his death, well, that was one logical outcome of serious danger, but he had not chosen suicide.

  All through February and March he prepares himself to strike at Walker. The notion that the General was a Hitler in the making was key to choosing him for a target. The soft underbelly, however, of so lofty a notion—stop the second Hitler before he arises—comes in large degree because of Oswald’s concealed sense of himself—even from himself!—of also being a putative Hitler. A physical resemblance between the two men had to be, consciously or unconsciously, in Oswald’s mind. One need only pencil in a mustache on any photograph of Oswald in profile to feel the force of the resemblance. In his fantasies, would Oswald have refused a Faustian pact? Allow him to steal Hitler’s powers of ascendancy, and he could convert them to his own vastly more idealistic vision. But first he must kill a minor god. When it came to available deities, General Edwin A. Walker was the nearest one to be found.

  So each night in his dreams Oswald must have entered that chimerical castle of high intent where our most dangerous scenarios are played out in nocturnal dungeons and moats. He would have been testing himself. Would he find the courage to repel each terror that leaped out at him from every unexpected corner of his psyche?

  The verdict of his dreams must have been negative; through all of February, he was, according to Marina, in a foul mood and grew progressively more violent. There is a logic to small acts of physical abuse in marriage—at least, if one is ready to advance the ignoble proposition that most people contain more meanness than they can express with friends or strangers. So, for cowards, marriage is an ideal solution, since quarrels are permitted to become ritual: Each mate’s psychic excrement can be evacuated with full mutual understanding that the process, like all acts of elimination, is healthful, a veritable zero-sum economy of aggression.

  In Minsk, Oswald’s quarrels with Marina were classics of this fashion. They quarreled constantly, but at a temperature that was all but thermostatically regulated for them to regain quickly a little love for each other. In America, however, Oswald no longer enjoyed the curious respect that many Russians had felt for him as a special case. In Texas he was, to the contrary, seen as a dead-beat. Worse! He was anti-patriotic. So, the ante went up in the daily wars of their marriage. “Quantity changes quality,” Engels once wrote, three words to capture the nature of process, and they apply here. Oswald was beginning to beat her up regularly:

  McMillan: No longer did he strike her once across the face with the flat of his hand. Now he hit her five or six times—and with his fists. The second he got angry, he turned pale and pressed his lips tightly together. His eyes were filled with hate. His voice dropped to a murmur and she could not understand what he was saying. When he started to strike her, his face became red and his voice grew angry and loud. He wore a look of concentration, as if Marina were the author of every slight he had ever suffered and he was bent on wiping her out . . .

  Marina could defend herself only with words. “Your beating me shows your upbringing,” she said on one occasion.

  “Leave my mother out of this!” Lee cried, and struck her harder than before.2

  In Fort Worth, at the beginning of such marital violence, there had been no more than two slaps, a very formal two slaps, as if a mother were punishing a child by saying: “There, you’ve done it again, two slaps for you!” Now, she was in legitimate fear of what he might do next. Sex became abrupt as well. He had come a distance from the patient swain who never made a pass at Ella Germann. Now he would “bark at her, ‘Stop washing the dishes. Lee’s hot!’ and try to force himself upon her. He insisted on having sex any time he felt like it . . .”3 He has acquired the athlete’s externality. He speaks of himself in the third person—“Lee’s hot!”—a force. It is further proof, if we need it, that he has become his own project.

  By the middle of the month she knows she is pregnant again, but the beatings do not cease. He obviously feels trapped. He tells Marina that she must go back to the Soviet Union. She is consumed with suspicions that it is not typing lessons but an affair that keeps him from getting home until eight o’clock each night.

  Indeed, he is taking typing lessons at Crozier Tech High School—there are witnesses to confirm that he comes in for class sessions three evenings a week after work, but then he is late getting home all five nights each week. Odds are that he cannot forgive Marina for her abortive message to Anatoly. The fathomless rage of the future leader of legions of humankind is in his heart—such a leader must have absolute fealty. They can quarrel in the privacy of the home, even be violent, but she must not have another fellow on her mind. He has the right to dispense with her if need be, but not she with him.

  If authoritarianism is the cohort to murder, that is underlined here. The average man of mild demeanor—which is how Oswald was generally perceived in Minsk—can reach the state of murder, and continue to live in its livid high focus, only by pumping up the authoritarian in himself. To add to the turn of the screw, he does not even have a weapon. The pistol he has ordered still refuses to arrive. Nearly every day he goes to his post office box, but the notice is not there. It is like getting ready to make love without knowing if your phallus is in accord. His irritability carries over to work:

  MR. GRAEF. . . . I began to hear vague rumors of friction between him and the other employees . . . Flareups of temper or an ugly word . . . very few people liked him. He was very difficult to get along with.4

  The Dallas Morning News features General Walker on February 17. The John Birch Society is becoming respectable; it has a human face, and that face belongs to General Walker. And Oswald learns as well that Walker is now going away on a five-week tour beginning February 28. Oswald has but eleven days to get him and still no pistol.

  A letter from Valya, written on January 24, 1963, but weeks late, arrives around this time:

  My dear Marinochka, we received your letter and greeting card. Thank you very very much for not forgetting us. I wept wholeheartedly when I received your letter, the way you did when you received mine . . . We are very pleased that Alik is such a decent fellow. You know we liked him and now I liked him twice as much as before in my thoughts. The photograph is beautiful. You look fine; little Marishka has grown a lot. I wanted so much to hold her in my arms. She does not look like you; she seems to be the very image of Alik.

  We were very glad to get your photograph. I look at it every day and it seems to me that you are here, next to me. I will preserve it. You know that I love you too, although I did scold you sometimes; but in my heart I was sincere. For me you took the place of a daughter and a friend. We are very sorry that you went so far away, but what can one do? Now we wish you only the best in life. Now you have an heiress growing up; someone to live and work for . . .

  During the school vacation, we had Aunt Musya’s [daughter]. She spent about four days with us; she is growing into a very interesting girl—intelligent and determined. She asked me, “Aunt Valya, show me the picture of Marina; I will look at it again and remember it forever.” . . .

  We hug and kiss you.

  Kiss my “granddaughter” for me.

  Aunt Valya and Uncle Ilya5

 
On February 17, at Oswald’s insistent urging, Marina writes to the Russian Embassy. It is a flat letter and will break no bureaucratic hearts, but if she was determined not to go back to Russia, Valya’s letter may have softened some of that resolve:

  Dear Comrade Reznichenko!

  I beg your assistance to help me to return to the Homeland in the USSR where I will again feel myself a full-fledged citizen. Please let me know what I should do for this, i.e., perhaps it will be necessary to fill out a special application form. Since I am not working at present (because of my lack of knowledge of the English language and a small child), I am requesting to you to extend to me a possible material aid for the trip. My husband remains here, since he is an American by nationality. I beg you once more not to refuse my request.

  Respectfully,

  Marina Oswald6

  MR. LIEBELER. The Commission has been advised that some time in the spring of 1963, you, yourself, either threatened or actually tried to commit suicide. Can you tell us about that?

  MARINA OSWALD. Do I have the right now not to discuss that?

  MR. LIEBELER. If you don’t want to discuss that, certainly, but I really would like to have Lee’s reaction to the whole thing. But if you don’t want to tell us about it, all right.

  MARINA OSWALD. At my attempt at suicide, Lee struck me in the face and told me to go to bed and that I should never attempt to do that—only foolish people would do it.

  MR. LIEBELER. Did you tell him that you were going to do it, or did you actually try?

  MARINA OSWALD. No; I didn’t tell him, but I tried.

  MR. LIEBELER. But you didn’t want to discuss it any further?

  MARINA OSWALD. No.7

  She had thrown a wooden box at him. It contained, such as they were, pins and cuff links and jewelry. When it struck him, he threw her on the bed, took her by the throat, and said, “I won’t let you out of this alive,”8 at which point the baby began to cry, and he let go of her and took June into the next room while Marina lay on the bed alone.

  It was then she went into the bathroom, stood on the john, tied a clothesline to a rod high on the wall, and wound the other end around her neck. She had been depressed for a very long time and now she felt abandoned. She was not wanted, and there was no way back. She was so depressed that she did not even think about June. If Lee loved the baby, he would take care of her. It was very selfish, she knew, but she wasn’t worth anything to anyone. Suicide was best. It was certainly easier than the road back to Minsk.

  At that moment, before she could jump, he came in, slapped her, and made her get down. She was surprised that he had come in. She could not believe that someone wanted to care about her:

  McMillan: They both began to cry like babies. “Try to understand,” he begged. “You’re wrong sometimes, too. Try to be quiet when you can.” He started kissing her as though he were in a frenzy. “For God’s sake, forgive me. I’ll never, ever do it again. I’ll try and change if only you will help me.” . . .

  They made love the whole night long, and Lee told Marina again and again that she was “the best woman” for him, sexually and in every other way. For Marina, it was one of their best nights sexually. And for the next few days, Lee seemed calmer . . . 9

  By the end of the month, Walker left on his tour, and Lee was calmer. That lasted for a few days.

  Then their fights started up again. Mr. and Mrs. Tobias present the community reaction in this small brick building of poor apartments on Elsbeth Street.

  MR. TOBIAS. . . . I tried to talk to him several times and all I could get out of him was a grunt. He was the kind of a guy that wouldn’t talk to you at all . . .

  MR. JENNER. How did your other tenants feel toward Oswald?

  MR. TOBIAS. . . . They didn’t like the way he beat her all the time. [One tenant] told me, he said, “I think that man over there is going to kill that girl,” and I said, “I can’t do a darn thing about it.” I says, “That’s domestic troubles . . .”10

  Mrs. Tobias amplifies her mate’s comments:

  MRS. TOBIAS. . . . they always kept their blinds down, you know, the shades was always pulled.

  MR. JENNER. They were?

  MRS. TOBIAS. Oh, yes—day and night, you never seen any shades up over there, their shades was always down . . . they fought so much . . . and the tenants would come and tell my husband that they kept them awake and the baby cried so much and he could hear them falling down as if Mrs. Oswald was hitting the floor . . . and we had one tenant over him . . . and she came over and she said, “Mr. Tobias, I think he has made a new opening down there.” She said, “I think he’s put her right through there.” And he did break a window, my husband had to fix that . . . they knocked it out—I guess from fighting—we don’t know.

  MR. JENNER. You weren’t there?

  MRS. TOBIAS. No, [the tenants] said they could hear glass falling and evidently [Oswald] had put a baby blanket there—a baby blanket was over it, tacked down over the window . . . so my husband told them if they didn’t straighten up . . . other people had to rest too, that he was sorry, but they would have to find another place.

  MR. JENNER. And it was shortly after that that they left?

  MRS. TOBIAS. Yes; shortly after that they moved in over on Neely.11

  The apartment on Neely Street, just three blocks away, is on the second floor, has several small rooms and a scabby old wooden balcony. It also contains a very small room that Oswald appropriates for himself as a closet-sized studio. In it, through the month of March, he will do the writing and complete the research that will accompany his now developing effort to terminate Edwin A. Walker on the General’s return to Dallas early in April.

  8

  Hunter of Fascists

  McMillan: . . . Lee devoted his first two evenings on Neely Street to fixing up the apartment. He was handy at carpentry, building window boxes for the balcony and painting them green. He also built shelves for his special room and moved in a chair and a table, creating his own tiny office . . . “Look,” he said to her . . . “I’ve never had my own room before. I’ll do all my work here, make a lab and do my photography . . . But you’re not to come in and clean. If I ever come in and find one single thing has been touched, I’ll beat you.”1

  Having his own workplace seemed to be conducive to the sybaritic:

  McMillan: When he took a bath, he would ask her to wash him. First he stretched one leg in the air. When she had finished and was ready to do the other leg, he would say No, the right one wasn’t clean yet. He made her wash one leg four or five times before he would consent to raise the other. “Now I feel like a king,” he would say beatifically. But he cautioned her to be more gentle. “I have sensitive skin, while you have rough, Russian ways.”

  Next, he would refuse to get out of the tub, his complaint being that the floor was cold, and he told her to put a towel down for him. When she had done as he asked, she would say, “Okay, prince, you can get out now.”2

  By March 10, he takes the equivalent of a deep breath and goes out on reconnaissance. He scouts the alley behind Walker’s home, which is a two-story house on 4011 Turtle Creek Boulevard, and with his Imperial Reflex camera he photographs the backyard and rear wall of the place, presumably to familiarize himself with its windows, then proceeds to take snapshots of some railroad tracks seven hundred yards away. His motive here would hardly be comprehensible if one does not assume that already he is planning to bury his weapon in some particular clump of bushes near the tracks and needs the photographs to orient himself. One more advantage of working at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall—he need be the only one who develops his negatives and prints.

  Two days later, having estimated the possibilities, he comes to the conclusion that he needs a rifle, not a pistol, and so orders a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm carbine from Klein’s Sporting Goods Company in Chicago—can he have any idea that this will become the most notorious rifle in history? The gun costs a total of $22.95, with a four-power scope mounted, postage and handling
included. A few days later, on March 15, he writes to his brother Robert, who has just been promoted and is going to buy a larger house: “It’s always better to take advantage of your chances as they come along, so I’m glad for you.”3

  It is the basic maxim of the man of action. He has been following it, sometimes well, sometimes badly, for a good part of his life. It certainly gives us one more understanding of his readiness to lie: Mistruths tilt the given and create openings—one can dart through them. “Take advantage of your chances as they come along . . .”

  The second quality of the man of action—the ability to see his situation in the round—is sadly lacking. When it comes to assessing his own situation, Lee has tunnel vision. In the same letter to Robert he writes: “My work is very nice; I will get a rise in pay next month and I have become rather adept at my photographic work.”

  MR. GRAEF. . . . I was working at my own desk one time and I looked over and . . . Lee was reading a newspaper, and I could see it—it was . . . not a usual newspaper and I asked him what he was reading and he said, “A Russian newspaper.” . . . and I said, “Well, Lee, I wouldn’t bring anything like that down here again, because some people might not take kindly to your reading anything like that.” . . . of course, I know how people are and [him] causing suspicion and so forth, by having that newspaper or at least running around with it, flaunting it, we’ll say.4