Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  McMillan: Michael was at home and had occasion to step over Lee while he was lying stretched out on the floor. Michael felt a pang of self-reproach. He thought he was being rude, stepping over Lee that way without even trying to make small talk . . . He did not resent Lee lying on his floor, watching his television, and crowding his house a bit. But he did feel that for a man who professed to be a revolutionary, Lee had an awful lot of time on his hands . . . To lie around watching television all day, Michael said to himself, “is one hell of a way for a revolutionary to be spending his time.”

  Late in the afternoon Ruth gave Lee his third driving lesson—backing, parking, and a right-angle turn. She thought Lee really got the feel of parking that day.5

  Two days later, on November 5, a Tuesday, Hosty came again. His second visit with Ruth was even friendlier than the first:

  MR. JENNER. . . . Have you now exhausted your recollection on the subject?

  MRS. PAINE. I think one other thing. Agent Hosty asked me . . . if I thought this was a mental problem, his words referring to Lee Oswald, and I said I didn’t understand the mental processes of anyone who could espouse the Marxist philosophy, but that this was far different from saying he was mentally unstable or unable to conduct himself in normal society.

  I did tell Lee that this question had been asked. He gave no reply, but more a scoffing laugh, barely voiced.6

  There is some question whether Marina spoke to Hosty that second time or not. The FBI man has no recollection of that, but Marina insists she did and had a nice conversation with Hosty.

  Since Marina, like Lee, was not incapable of going in opposite directions at once, she had also managed to slip outside long enough to memorize the color and shape of Hosty’s car, and the license-plate number, which details she proceeded to jot down on a paper as soon as she got back to her bedroom.

  McMillan: Later, she and Ruth discussed whether to tell Lee about the visit. Ruth thought it might be better to wait until the weekend and Marina agreed. Each time he called that week (he called twice a day, during his lunch break and at 5:30 in the afternoon), he started by asking: “Has the FBI been there?” Each time Marina said No.

  No sooner had he arrived on Friday than Lee went outside where Marina was hanging diapers and asked: “Have they been here again?”

  Marina said Yes . . .

  “How on earth could you forget?”

  “Well, it upset you last time . . .”

  “It upsets me worse if you keep it from me. Why must you hide things all the time? I never can count on you . . .”7

  “I never can count on you!” It is the barbaric yawp of every husband and wife who have half of a good marriage and can’t begin to gain a foothold up the wall that separates them from the other half.

  McMillan: “He’s such a nice man, Lee. Don’t be frightened. All he did was explain my rights and promise to protect them.”

  “You fool,” said Lee . . . “He doesn’t care about your rights. He comes because it’s his job . . . I trust you didn’t give your consent to having him defend your ‘rights’?”

  “Of course not,” said Marina, “but I agreed with him.”

  “Fool,” he said again. “As a result of these ‘rights,’ they’ll ask you ten times as many questions as before. If the Soviet Embassy gets wind of it and you agreed to let this man protect your ‘rights,’ then you’ll really be in for it . . .”8

  The only item that ameliorated his mood was that she had taken down the license-plate number. First thing Saturday morning, November 9, he asked to borrow Ruth’s typewriter. Then, in a highly secretive posture, covering up a page of handwriting that he was now copying, he worked away on something of obvious importance to him—nothing less than a letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington:

  Dear Sirs:

  This is to inform you of events since my interview with Comrade Kostine in the Embassy of the Soviet Union, Mexico City, Mexico.

  I was unable to remain in Mexico City indefinitely because of my Mexican visa restrictions which was for 15 days only. I could not take a chance on applying for an extension unless I used my real name so I returned to the U.S.

  I and Marina Nicholeyeva are now living in Dallas, Texas.

  The FBI is not now interested in my activities in the progressive organization FPCC of which I was secretary in New Orleans, Louisiana, since I no longer live in that state.

  The FBI has visited us here in Texas. On Nov. 1st agent of the FBI James P. Hosty warned me that if I attempt to engage in FPCC activities in Texas the FBI will again take an “interest” in me. This agent also “suggested” that my wife could “remain in the U.S. under FBI protection,” that is, she could defect from the Soviet Union.

  Of course I and my wife strongly protested these tactics by the notorious FBI.

  I had not planned to contact the Mexico City Embassy at all so, of course, they were unprepared for me. Had I been able to reach Havana as planned, the Soviet Embassy there would have had time to assist me. But of course the stupid Cuban Consul was at fault here. I am glad he has since been replaced by another.9

  It was a bizarre letter and could serve no conceivable purpose with the Soviets in Washington. They would have to be wholly mistrustful. Either Oswald was out of his normal, manipulative powers of mind—such as they were!—or he wrote the letter on the assumption that it would be read by the FBI and so would cause havoc between its formal and covert echelons—a COINTELPRO action improvised in this case by Oswald. Let us remind ourselves that it was not Ian Fleming but the FBI that chose the name COINTELPRO.

  The question we have to ask once more is whether Oswald was indeed working with COINTELPRO or some analogous group. To ask this much, however, is to encourage another question: Was Oswald trying to escape from such a group, or was he looking to embarrass it? Or had he begun to go mad from the pressure of trying to live like other people?

  In any case, his extreme reaction to Hosty may reflect the pressure he was being subjected to by any group that was paying him a stipend. If, by hiding in Dallas, he has felt free for a little while, Hosty’s arrival, even if it is in the relatively innocent line of duty as an FBI professional, could kick off Oswald’s somewhat justifiable paranoia. He would, after all, not know who was communicating with whom in the FBI.

  There is, of course, a rational explanation for why he is so upset. It is that if he agreed to be a working provocateur for what he considered to be an FBI group, then he had been promised that there would be no FBI visits at home or at work. Now the rules of the game had changed.

  In any event, two days later, on November 12, during his midday break, he went up to the main FBI office on Commerce Street, which was not far from his job at the Book Depository, and with “a wild look in his eye,” as described by the receptionist,10 he gave her a note in an unsealed envelope for Hosty. The FBI man was out to lunch.

  We are left with no more than Hosty’s recollection of the contents. That is hardly certified to be trustworthy inasmuch as Hosty was told to destroy the note on the orders of his superior, Gordon Shanklin. According to Hosty, for what such testimony is worth under the circumstances, Oswald’s note told Hosty not to visit or bother his wife, and then suggested that if Hosty did not desist, he, Oswald, was ready to take action against the FBI. Whether that action would be legal or was a personal threat could not be determined.

  According to Hosty, he received comparable unsigned notes all the time, so he did not even know whether this had come from Oswald or someone else. He just filed it in his work box. Such indifference, however, does not square very well with the fact that Hosty knew Oswald had been in Mexico City and had visited the Russian Embassy twice and had been in conversation there twice with a KGB agent who was conversant, according to the FBI, with “wet jobs.”

  In the meantime, Ruth was having her own flight of paranoia. On Sunday, November 10, while Lee was typing the letter to the Russian Embassy, he left his handwritten copy on Ruth’s desk. She, inflamed with curiosi
ty she could not quite admit, finally read the first couple of lines and was so agitated by them—“Comrade Kostine” indeed!—that:

  MRS. PAINE. I then proceeded to read the whole note, wondering, knowing this to be false, wondering why he was saying it. I was irritated to have him writing a falsehood on my typewriter, I may say, too. I felt I had some cause to look at it.11

  Her buried sense of property is coming out. This is one of the very few remarks that Ruth Paine makes in hundreds of pages of testimony which suggests there may be other forces at work in the universe than reason, sweet reason.

  MR. JENNER. Did you ever have any conversation with him about [the letter]?

  MRS. PAINE. No. I came close to it . . . He was sitting up watching a late spy story, if you will, on the TV, and I got up and sat there on the sofa with him saying, “I can’t sleep,” wanting to confront him with this . . . But on the other hand, I was somewhat fearful, and I didn’t know what to do.

  REPRESENTATIVE FORD. Fearful in what way?

  MRS. PAINE. Well, if he was an agent, I would rather just give it to the FBI . . .

  MR. JENNER. Were you fearful of any physical harm?

  MRS. PAINE. No, I was not . . . though I don’t think I defined my fears. I sat down and said I couldn’t sleep and he said, “I guess you are real upset about going to the lawyer tomorrow.”

  He knew I had an appointment with my lawyer to discuss the possibility of divorce the next day, and that didn’t happen to be what was keeping me up that night, but . . . it was thoughtful for him to think of it. But I let it rest there, and . . . then I excused myself and went to bed.12

  On Friday the fifteenth, when Lee called at mid-day to talk about his next weekend trip to Irving, Marina suggested that Ruth and Michael might need some time to themselves. Of course, Marina might also have been seeking a little rest from Lee. His intense reaction to Hosty’s second visit had left her exhausted, and that could hardly be good for her milk. She did not say as much, but then, he readily accepted her suggestion, said that it was all right; he had things to do over the weekend in Dallas.

  No one knows what, other than work, he did do in Dallas between Monday, November 11, and Wednesday, November 20. On the twenty-first, a Thursday, the night before President Kennedy would come to Dallas, Oswald went out one night early to Irving, and his time is accounted for that evening, but the gap of those ten days from November 11 to November 20 is marked only by his unsuccessful visit to FBI headquarters on November 12 to see Hosty.

  Gerald Posner made a large point of quoting Earlene Roberts’ statement that she never saw Oswald go out at night, but omits her subsequent remark to the Warren Commission: “If he did, it was after I went to bed, and I never knew it.”13

  His room, small and narrow, was on the ground floor, but it had low windows on the outside wall, so he could have slipped out whenever he wished. This is not to insist that he kept late hours but to point out—one can never do it too often—that many a hard fact cited with authority is about as hard and as longstanding as an eggshell.

  Certainly, by Sunday night, November 17, after Lee, as agreed, had not come to Irving for the weekend but had not called either, Marina was feeling uneasy:

  McMillan: . . . when she saw Junie playing with the telephone dial, saying, “Papa, Papa,” she decided impulsively, “Let’s call Papa.”

  Marina was helpless with a telephone dial, so it was Ruth who made the call . . . and a man answered.

  “Is Lee Oswald there?” Ruth asked.

  “There is no Lee Oswald living here.” . . .

  The next day, Monday, November 18, Lee called as usual at lunchtime. “We phoned you last evening,” Marina said. “Where were you?” . . .

  There was a long silence on the other end. “Oh, damn. I don’t live there under my real name.”

  Why not? Marina asked . . .

  “You don’t understand a thing,” Lee said. “I don’t want the FBI to know where I live, either.” He ordered her not to tell Ruth . . .

  Marina was frightened and shocked. “Starting your old foolishness again,” she scolded. “All these comedies. First one, then another. And now this fictitious name. Where will it all end?”

  Lee had to get back to work. He would call later, he said.14

  Marina was now feeling no small rage that he was using a false name. To her, it was equal to concluding that he would never give up his larger ideas; with considerable justice from her point of view, she saw his political commitment as poison to their marriage. His ideas were equal to his need to lie.

  She would not forgive him for this alias—O. H. Lee. She kept refusing to forgive him. It would even ruin their last night together. Her timing, as is true of most mates’ in marriages that work by half, is, at the least, askew.

  Then Lee made the mistake of calling her later that Monday evening, November 18, and getting into a fight. He commanded her to take his number out of Ruth Paine’s telephone book. She was to do this so that the FBI could not get hold of it. Marina told him she would not touch Ruth’s property.

  “I order you to cross it out,” said Lee. His voice was so ugly that she said, “I won’t,” and hung up on him.

  He did not call her Tuesday or Wednesday. On Thursday, November 21, he approached Wesley Frazier during work hours:

  MR. FRAZIER. . . . I was standing there getting the orders in and he said, “Could I ride home with you this afternoon?”

  And I said, “Sure. You know, like I told you, you can go home with me anytime you want to, like I say, anytime you want to go see your wife that is all right with me.” [Then] I come to think it wasn’t Friday and I said, “Why are you going home today?”

  And he says, “I am going home to get some curtain rods.” He said, “You know, put in an apartment.”

  . . . I said, “Very well.” And I never thought more about it . . .”15

  Oswald has come, by now, to a serious decision. It is still preliminary to his final determination, but he has decided to take his rifle to the School Book Depository on Friday, November 22. All week, the talk at work has been concerned with President Kennedy’s visit. The route has been published in the newspapers. The official motorcade will pass by the Texas School Book Depository on Elm Street. Our man, who has spent half of his life reading books and now works in a place that ships out textbooks to the children and college youth of America, may be preparing to engage in an act that some huge majority of the people who read books devotedly would be ready to condemn.

  MR. RANKIN. Did he tell you he was coming Thursday, [the 21st]?

  MARINA OSWALD. No . . .

  MR. RANKIN. And the assassination was on the 22nd.

  MARINA OSWALD. This is very hard to forget.

  MR. RANKIN. Did your husband give any reason for coming home on Thursday?

  MARINA OSWALD. He said that he was lonely because he hadn’t come the preceding weekend and he wanted to make his peace with me . . .

  MR. RANKIN. Were you upset with him?

  MARINA OSWALD. I was angry, of course [and] he was upset . . . He tried very hard to please me. He spent quite a bit of time putting away diapers and playing with the children on the street.

  MR. RANKIN. How did you indicate you were angry with him?

  MARINA OSWALD. By not talking to him.

  MR. RANKIN. And how did he show he was upset?

  MARINA OSWALD. . . . He tried to start a conversation with me several times, but I would not answer and he said that he didn’t want me to be angry with him because this upsets him [and] he suggested that we rent an apartment in Dallas. He said that he was tired of living alone and that perhaps the reason for my being so angry was the fact that we were not living together, that if I want to, he would rent an apartment in Dallas tomorrow . . . He repeated this not once, but several times, but I refused. And he said that once again I was preferring my friends to him and I didn’t need him.

  MR. RANKIN. What did you say to that?

  MARINA OSWALD. I said it wou
ld be better if I remained with Ruth until the holidays . . . because while he was living alone and I stayed with Ruth, we were spending less money, and I told him to buy me a washing machine, because with two children it became too difficult to wash by hand.

  MR. RANKIN. What did he say to that?

  MARINA OSWALD. He said he would buy me a washing machine.

  MR. RANKIN. What did you say to that?

  MARINA OSWALD. Thank you, that it would be better if he bought something for himself, that I would manage . . .

  MR. RANKIN. Did this seem to make him more upset . . . ?

  MARINA OSWALD. Yes. He then stopped talking and sat down and watched television and then went to bed. I went to bed later. It was about 9 o’clock when he went to sleep. I went to sleep at about 11:30, [and] it seemed to me that he was not really asleep, but I didn’t talk to him.16

  He has gone from demoralization in Mexico to a subtler set of defeats. Marina, living with Ruth, is now relatively liberated. She no longer needs him to survive. We can deduce from the petty tyrannies he has exercised upon her since their marriage just how deep is his lonely and fearful conviction that if she did not need him, she would never have anything to do with him. So his need for love (as opposed to his ability to love) was profound. Love was a safeguard against physically attacking the human species itself. If Kennedy was at the moment the finest specimen of the American species available, Lee’s anxiety over Marina’s love or lack of it was bound to be large on the night before Kennedy arrived. Kennedy was the kind of man any woman (most certainly Marina) would find more attractive than himself. So, yes, he was agitated by whether she had any real love for him. No pit was so deep for Oswald as the abyss of unrequited love.