Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  The snags in the way of the Oswalds’ return had been cleared away on the Russian side; both had been granted permission for their exit visas, and Marina now had permission to receive a passport to go abroad. But the delays continued on the American side. First of all, there was the question of money. In addition to his other demands, Alik had informed the embassy that he could not afford the fare to the United States. He could contribute $200, and he expected the embassy to give, not loan, him the rest, preferably $800 or $900, enough to travel by air. The Department of State attempted, unsuccessfully, to raise the money from private relief agencies and asked Marguerite Oswald to help. When Alik learned of it, he was outraged. He had written his mother that he did not want her to contribute, and now he told her to ignore the State Department. To the embassy he wrote: “I request that solicitations toward my relatives be stopped.”12 The embassy, however, had found another solution. It was authorized by the State Department to loan Oswald the amount necessary to cover the costs of the least expensive means of travel back to the United States. As they did for many others whom they considered trapped in Russia, the embassy and the State Department bent over backward to help Oswald.

  In Marina’s case they did the same. Her problem was her entrance visa. For proof that she would not become a public charge, embassy officials, surprisingly, accepted an affidavit of support from Oswald himself. They did so on the grounds that he had a place to live, with his mother, and that in the Marine Corps he had been trained in a trade, radar technician, that made him readily employable. The embassy was taken off the hook, however, when Marguerite Oswald’s employer later filed an affidavit of support for Marina.

  As the wife of an American citizen, Marina was entitled to an entrance visa, if other conditions had been met. But her husband was not just any American. He was a defector. The State Department had no objections to the Oswalds’ reentry. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the Justice Department did. Its field officer in San Antonio, Texas, after investigating Oswald’s history, recommended that Marina be denied a visa because there was doubt as to Oswald’s loyalty to the United States.

  The State Department intervened. In the opinion of the Office of Soviet Union Affairs, “We’re better off with the subject in the US than in Russia.”13 Its ruling was based on a policy that held that it was potentially less embarrassing for the United States to have its unpredictables and malcontents at home than drifting about in foreign parts. In short, the State Department was not acting solely for humanitarian reasons. If Soviet authorities had granted Marina an exit visa partly to be rid of Oswald, American authorities were prepared to give her an entrance visa partly to get him back and out of harm’s way.

  The State Department made its position clear by its handling of the one legal technicality that remained. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, United States consuls abroad are forbidden to issue immigrants’ visas inside any country that resists the return of nationals whom the United States wants to deport. The USSR was considered such a country. It was a technicality that was easily surmounted, for Marina could obtain a visa from the American consular office in another country, and the embassy in Moscow had already made arrangements with the embassy in Brussels. Once again the State Department intervened. It requested a waiver for Marina. Oswald was considered an “unstable character, whose actions are entirely unpredictable.”14 Like the Soviet authorities, the American authorities were afraid that he might do something politically embarrassing.

  By mid-March of 1962, Alik was informed that Marina had been granted a visa to enter the United States, and it was now only a matter of weeks before he and his family would be able to leave Russia. But as late as April, neither he nor Marina had said a word to Ilya or Valya, who were still convinced that the young couple had not received permission to leave from the Soviet side—and would never receive it. The deception was the more remarkable since Marina had quit her job at the pharmacy and now spent part of each day with the baby at Ilya and Valya’s apartment.

  One day Valya casually asked whether Marina had news of her exit visa, and Marina answered falsely that she had not. Valya had often pointed out that Marina’s going might mean trouble for Ilya. “He has so little time left until his pension. He’s done so much for you. What a blow if he loses it because of you!” Now she added something new, a letter from Marina’s Aunt Polina in Kharkov that she had been withholding lest it upset Marina during her pregnancy.

  Valya read a fragment aloud. “I’ve never been inside a church in my life,” the passage began. “But the day Marina goes to America I’ll go to church. I’ll light a great big candle and pray that her soul may rest in peace. I’ll say a prayer for the dead. Then she’ll be dead to me. I’ll forget that I ever had a niece. As for her, she can forget that I was ever her aunt.”

  Marina knew that Polina’s letter reflected cowardice over her husband’s job and position. Still, she was profoundly upset. She went home and told Alik about the letter. Marina, like her mother, was superstitious. To her it was as if her aunt’s prayer for the dead, her wish that she were dead, truly had the power to kill her. After brooding a while, she announced: “Alka, I’m not going with you to America. My relatives have done so much for me. I just cannot do it to them.”

  “Okay,” he said. “If that’s how you feel, if you care more for them than for me, you can stay.”

  Bitterly hurt, Marina picked up the baby, grabbed some swaddling cloth, and ran out the door. Alik did nothing to stop her. He sat on the bed and watched her go.

  She went to Ilya and Valya’s in tears, announced that she had had a fight with Alka and had left him. She did not say what the fight had been about. Valya was sympathetic. Ilya was not; he told Marina she could spend the night, but she was not to come to him any more when she and her husband had a fight. He was not going to help.

  That night Marina lay awake thinking for a long time. She had had three blows that day: Polina’s letter, the fight with Alka, and now it seemed that Ilya did not love her either. She decided that she would not go to America. “Alka doesn’t love me,” she thought, “and what if something happened to Ilya and Valya on our account after we go?” But in the morning she changed her mind, for she felt that underneath her other emotions, she did love Alka after all. Encouraged by Valya, she set off toward home. She met Alik coming down the street in the other direction.

  They returned to Valya’s to decide what to do, and there they found Marina’s Aunt Musya. She had been angry with Alik for months. Now she had a chance to vent her wrath. She scolded him for being cruel to Marina and trying to take her to America. Alik grew very pale. Finally, he asked Marina to come home with him. When she refused, he said, “Okay, stay if you want. But at least let me take the baby.”

  Marina grabbed the baby. “You’ve no right to take a child from its mother,” she cried.

  Alik went into the next room and stood there, crying quietly by the window. Valya ran back and forth trying to make peace. Alik’s tears softened her heart, and she urged Marina to go back to him. “Look what you’ve done,” she said. “He’s pale as a ghost by the window. The tears are streaming down his face. I even heard him say, ‘What have I to live for? What am I to do now?’ ”

  At last Marina agreed. She had wanted Alik to suffer, and she wanted proof that he loved her. His tears seemed to be the proof she needed. And she had no more right to take the baby away from him than to hurt her relatives.

  The tears were still streaming down his cheeks as Valya led him into the room. “You don’t love me,” Marina said. “I won’t go with you.”

  “I do love you,” he said, and oblivious of Musya, Valya, and his own tears, he kissed Marina and the baby.

  That was that. It was the end of Marina’s wavering over America. They returned home together, and when they reached the apartment, Alik unswaddled the baby. “Bad Mama,” he said, kissing her hands and feet. “She wanted Papa never to see his good girl again.”

  — 12
—

  Departure for America

  It was as well that Marina’s doubts were at an end, for events were picking up momentum. On April 12 Oswald wrote his brother that he expected to be able to leave Russia within a month or two. But then he added a sentence that betrayed both ambivalence and apprehension about his return: “Now that winter has gone, I really don’t want to leave until the beginning of fall, since the spring and summer here are so nice.”1

  Oswald hated the cold weather in Minsk. It was one of the reasons, he said, for his decision to leave Russia. But that spring he still complained in his letters home that the American embassy was as slow with its formalities as the Russians had been with theirs. He made several telephone calls to the embassy, and a secretary in the consular office who spoke with him when the consular officers were out grew to dislike him indelibly. Oswald was very impatient about the delays and complained, in particular, about travel arrangements. He had been authorized a loan only large enough to cover the cost of the least expensive means of transportation back to the United States—train and ship—but he behaved as if it was his birthright to be wafted home by jet aircraft or, as a veteran, albeit an “undesirably discharged” one, to be flown home on a government transport.

  Throughout the long bureaucratic process of his return, Oswald corresponded regularly with both his mother and his brother, and his letters to the two members of his family who were closest to him are revealing in their contrast. To Robert, Oswald was friendly, open, frank. He shared a few of his problems, his small adventures in Minsk, even his political ideas. There was no sharing in his letters to Marguerite.

  The striking thing about Oswald’s letters to his mother is that, although they are empty of concern or affection, they are filled with requests. Of the seventeen letters he wrote to Marguerite between the resumption of their correspondence in June 1961 and his departure from the Soviet Union nearly a year later, fourteen contained a request or a reminder of some earlier request. At first the favors he asked were simple enough: Time magazine and books for himself, fashion magazines for Marina, pennies for friends who collected American souvenirs. But it was not long before the errands he asked of his mother, an older woman with a job, were substantial.

  It fell to Marguerite to do some of the paperwork for her son’s return, including obtaining an affidavit of support for Marina from her own employer. Marguerite even suggested that she raise money for his return through a public appeal. Oswald vetoed the idea; at that moment the very last thing he wanted was publicity. But he instructed her to try to get money from the Red Cross or the International Rescue Committee. Any gifts—not loans—would be welcome. But above all, she was not to send her own money. And concerned about both his military status and the reception he was likely to receive in America, Oswald also asked his mother for his Marine Corps discharge and old newspaper clippings about his defection to Russia.

  Oswald asked Robert for favors, too, but they were direct requests, as his criticisms of some of Robert’s actions were also direct. With Marguerite he was indirect. He praised, he cajoled, he condescended to let her help him, and he made it plain that it was not for her to offer him advice. Oswald respected his brother, but he seemed to fear his mother and the prospect of any closeness between them. He manipulated Marguerite, always with the twin purposes of exploiting her, yet at the same time keeping her at a distance.

  Marguerite’s reward was meager. In one letter Oswald told her that there was no need for her to meet him in New York on his return to America. In a later letter, however, he hinted that he and Marina might come to her: “I cannot say exactly where we shall go at first probably directly to Vernon.”2 Marguerite was living in Vernon, a small Texas town thirty miles northwest of Fort Worth. But having dangled that prize in front of his mother, Oswald quickly snatched it away. In a letter written the very next day, he said that he would visit both her and Robert, but “in any event I’ll want to be living on my own and probably will finally live in Fort Worth or New Orleans.”3

  Oswald was playing emotional hide-and-seek with his mother: Now you’ve got me, now you don’t. He used her, he depended on her, and then he pushed her away. Not surprisingly, his correspondence with the American embassy reflected this same attitude. He had walked out on his country, just as he had walked out on his mother. Now he expected the embassy, like an indulgent mother, to forgive, forget, and go to extraordinary lengths to bring him back, without any thought of a return.

  On May 10 an official of the embassy wrote Alik to inform him that it was ready to issue Marina’s visa in Moscow. The final impediment had been removed, and the Oswalds could come to the embassy as soon as they got their affairs in Minsk in order. It was the word Alik had been waiting for, but by this time it was as if he no longer cared. He had, after all, proved his point. He had a right to leave Russia if he chose, and to take a Soviet citizen with him. It was now the bureaucratic momentum on both sides that carried him forward, rather than any very positive desire to go home.

  Alik and Marina started to get ready for their journey. Knowing, or suspecting, that they would soon be leaving, one or another of their friends came by for a visit every night. With the thrill of vicarious adventure, they rejoiced over Marina’s miraculous good fortune. Every one of them longed to see America, to travel freely back and forth across frontiers. Not many, however, would have done what Marina was doing: leave family and country forever, without hope of ever seeing them again.

  One day Marina had a memorable encounter. In a shop down the street from the apartment, she ran into Anatoly Shpanko. He had heard the news by the grapevine.

  “Take me with you,” he said in jest. Then, more seriously: “Write. Let me know where I can find you. One day I’ll get to America, too. You’ll have money over there. You’ll come back for a visit. Some day we’ll see one another again.”

  Marina was uneasy: “I’ve got to go. I have to get home to feed the baby.”

  “Baby?” Anatoly was astonished. “Where on earth did you get a baby?”

  “I really do have one,” Marina said.

  “But I saw you three months ago, and I saw no sign of it then.”

  “You didn’t see right,” said Marina, who had in truth, three months before, wrapped her coat carefully around her so that Anatoly would not see that she was pregnant.

  Such was Marina’s farewell to the man who had wanted her to be his wife.

  As for Alik, he had told almost no one that he was going, only Alexander Ziger and Pavel Golovachev. He also seems to have told another friend at the factory, who exclaimed, “Attaboy! I wish you could take me, too. There’s nothing to stick around for here.”

  Alik gave the factory two days’ notice. On May 16 he handed in a statement to the director of the Minsk Radio Plant. His wording was formal and laconic: “I ask to be released from work as of May 18, 1962. I expect to be leaving.”4

  It was a happy time for Alik. He had conquered two great bureaucracies, and as with so many of his other achievements, he accomplished it alone. While it was the victory over the Soviet bureaucracy that yielded the sweeter satisfaction, he was carried forward on the momentum of his double triumph. His old misgivings receded. He showed no sign of second thoughts and tried to encourage Marina. If she was unhappy over there, he said, she could always come back. Marina was doubtful. She would be ashamed to return after struggling so hard to get out.

  “I used to think that, too,” Alik said. “I threw my passport down and told them I didn’t want to be a citizen any more. When, after all that, I didn’t like it, I was so ashamed. I said to myself, I’d rather die than ask to go back to America. But time changes the way you look at things. There’s nothing wrong with making a mistake and thinking better of it later. People do.”

  The hardest part was telling Ilya and Valya, an ordeal Marina put off until a week or so before they were to leave Minsk for Moscow. It was painful to be with them after that, painful to speak of parting, yet impossible to speak of anythin
g else.

  Ilya had found occasion earlier that spring to say to Marina what he chose not to say to her husband: “Forget America. You never know how it will go. He’ll have a better life here. They’ll give him a bigger apartment. He can study to be an engineer. He’ll never have any worries. So long as Alik stays in this country, he’ll always be met halfway.”

  Another time Ilya spoke out again. “He flits from side to side,” he said of Alik, “and is unhappy everywhere. Maybe he’ll go back and not like it there, and then he’ll want to come back here. But he’ll never be allowed to come back. People are tired of nursing him over here.”

  Ilya’s last utterance about his nephew-in-law, delivered shortly before the Oswalds’ departure, had the tone of prophecy. “He is,” Ilya said to Marina, “a man who has lost his way.”

  Valya did not voice any judgment, only a touching request. She begged Marina to leave baby “Marinka” behind. “You don’t know what will happen,” she implored. “There’s unemployment in America. Alka may have trouble because of having lived over here. You can have other children. I never will. She’ll be happy with us. I’ll take good care of her. I’ll love her more than if she were my own.”

  Marina knew that Alik would never allow it, but trying to make amends for leaving, she promised to try.

  “Are you crazy?” Alik said. “Have you gone out of your mind? Do you think I’d give up my baby? Never!”

  Marina had another painful farewell. Carrying the baby with her, she stopped by the laboratory where Aunt Musya worked. Musya cradled the baby in her arms. Marina saw tears in her aunt’s eyes.

  “She’s a good baby,” Musya said. “But the spitting image of Alka.” Then, hopefully, “You haven’t changed your mind?”