Oswald's Tale

by Norman Mailer

  There was no father around, however, only a stepfather, named Alexander Medvedev, and at first he treated Marina very well, even after his first child with Klavdia, Petya, was born.

  As for Marina’s natural father, Valya was never sure what happened to him. He had disappeared in 1941, before Marina was born. Ilya never explained. He just said that Marina’s missing father was a nice man, and Klavdia’s sister Musya said she met him one time, and he was attractive, very attractive eyes, an engineer, whose name was Nikolaev. Nikolaev and Ilya had worked together building a small new city where before there had only been water and marsh, but now it exists, Severodvinsk, about fifty kilometers north of Arkhangelsk.

  As for Nikolaev, Valya thinks maybe they didn’t tell her any more about him because the Prusakov family did not want to disgrace themselves. Perhaps Nikolaev had been married to another woman and just made a baby with Klavdia and left. On the other hand, this all happened in Stalin’s time. So Nikolaev could have been deported. Valya remembers how when she was a child Stalin once said: “We have started to live better and we have more fun.” There had been a man in the crowd who heard this slogan and he added, “Yes, so much fun that you could cry.” He was taken to prison for that. It was a terrible time. So, people had the habit of not talking. In any event, Ilya always said that Nikolaev was a good man.

  Of course, Valya did not know much about such things. She lived at home and took care of things for her mother-in-law. Neither then nor later did she go to Ilya’s office. He had a job in MVD—Ministry of Internal Affairs—and he would always be in MVD; he never left. Nor did she know exactly what kind of work he did, whether he was an office manager or a production manager. She knew there were people who worked in factories and camps who’d been sentenced for things they did. Ilya never worked directly with such people; he was more like someone who controlled production. He dealt with people who were managing factories. He didn’t have the highest position, but he did have responsibilities in his job, and she would say he was happy with that. Certainly he never discussed anything negative with her.

  Despite all those years in Arkhangelsk with Ilya’s family, it was still a good life, because at least Valya and her husband had a separate room. They could make no noise, but still, one could live like that even if she couldn’t look forward to summer, because Ilya didn’t like to hunt for mushrooms. Mosquitoes were terrible in Arkhangelsk in summer, so you couldn’t say you were going out with your husband to search for mushrooms and get to be alone out there in fields full of grass.

  Arkhangelsk, in this period, was not yet a big city and didn’t have many roads. Most were mud, or made of logs, but their Dvina River was deep, and oceangoing ships could come in from the White Sea. Still, it was much too cold. Ilya had some kind of arthritis in his back and needed to live in a warmer climate. In 1951, therefore, they moved to Minsk, first Ilya, then a month later Valya joined him, and at first they had to share a kitchen with a strange family and only had one room, although later, because of his job, they would live better. But again, Valya did not know exactly what kind of work he did, because of his being in this special Ministry controlling production under both Military and Security. In fact, Ilya’s office was now in that same big building where KGB was located; MVD and KGB were both in a large yellow structure, five stories high, with columns in front—a government building, classical, with small doors, Valya remarked, for so large a place.

  Ilya was, of course, a member of the Communist Party, but he and Valya never talked much about it, and he never asked her to join. In fact, he never said a word about it. While he was not what you could call devoted, he was responsible, and he was loyal; he paid fees regularly and did what he had to do; on everything he was responsible. If all Communists had been like Ilya, then it would be a different world, because Ilya was very honest. Valya never met anyone more so than him.

  Valya had to like Minsk. It had been destroyed twice during the Great Patriotic War—once when the Germans came in and once when the Germans retreated back into Poland three years later. Ninety percent of Minsk had been leveled by all that. All the same, a decision was taken after the war to rebuild not in a different location, which would have been easier, but right over the ruins. That was in 1945. By the time Valya and Ilya moved there in 1951, Minsk’s town center had been rebuilt in a new style. The city didn’t look at all like it used to. Minsk had been a very large township of numberless small wooden houses all leaning against one another. Now it was stately. It had five- and six-story buildings with lots of yellow stone, like in Leningrad, and broad avenues, with good apartment houses that looked as if they’d been built a hundred years ago. Now, in 1951, it was a clean city, free of ruins, and food was everywhere: black caviar, red caviar, many different types of sausages and cheeses. She and Ilya didn’t have a lot of money, but enough, and they lived near the center, which had been very well built by German prisoners before they had gone back to their country. Even Ilya’s mother, who didn’t want to leave Arkhangelsk, because she had a good apartment with three rooms and didn’t pay a lot for it, was impressed when she came to Minsk. After she’d been there for a couple of months, she said, “Oh, here I feel as if I am in heaven,” and at about this time, they were able to move into two rooms, and went on that way for years, with Tatiana, Valya, and Ilya all living in one small apartment, sharing a kitchen with a neighbor who had three children and worked as a prosecutor. They got along with them well, and in fact, their neighbors were upset when they moved, and said, “We’ll never meet such nice people again.” Of course, their toilet was in the yard, and one had to go out there when it was zero and worse, but then Valya felt strong. Since childhood, she had been used to going about without shoes, yet now at night Ilya would wake up too and say, “Wear your shoes.” She was used to going barefoot in snow as a child, so it did not seem necessary to put on shoes to walk thirty meters to a toilet in their apartment-house yard.

  In this period, between 1955 and 1960, Valya knew that this production which Ilya oversaw was done with prisoners. Her husband never said anything to her, but sometimes when fellow officers came over for dinner and drinks, she would hear them talking, and she knew there was a plan to be fulfilled: People should work well, and deliver production according to plan. But they never discussed it as husband and wife.

  Valya could keep secrets. If you told her not to say something, she wouldn’t. Once Ilya was on a business trip and telephoned her and said that one of his colleagues would come over to their apartment, and she should give him a key to his safe.

  Shortly afterward, somebody knocked at her door and a man in civilian clothes entered and asked if he could have that key. She said to herself, “Maybe someone listened to my telephone conversation.” So she asked, “Can you show me your I.D.?” And not until he did would she give him the key.

  Later, he told Ilya, “You have such a wife! She demanded my I.D.!” Valya didn’t know what kind of secrets Ilya had in his safe, but if he told her to do something, she did it properly.

  Valya’s only trip to Leningrad occurred when Marina was eleven or twelve. Klavdia lived in Leningrad then with her husband, Alexander Medvedev, in one room with three children, and when Valya and Ilya and Tatiana arrived, it was difficult, all eight people in one room, a huge family for so small a space, even worse because Alexander Medvedev also had a mother who did not take to Klavdia, and didn’t like her son to be married to a woman who had a child by another man. This mother of Medvedev was a very intelligent woman, but mean and fat, a witch. So Marina’s situation was now different, and she was no longer at the center of her family.

  At this time, before Klavdia died, Medvedev did treat Marina and her mother properly, but still there were difficulties. Klavdia had an advanced case of rheumatism, and Ilya once told Valya: “You can see how sick she is.” Besides, Alexander’s attitude toward Marina had changed as his own two children with Klavdia grew older. Alexander now punished Marina a lot, and matters did get worse once Klavdia d
ied, just before Marina turned sixteen.

  Two years later, Marina wrote to Valya and Ilya in Minsk to tell them that it was very difficult for her to stay any longer with her stepfather, and asked if she could come to live with them.

  Such a request was not too welcome for Valya. She was tired of her relatives. She didn’t show it, but for all these years somebody in Ilya’s family had always been living with them. Tatiana even died in their home. In her last ten months, Valya had taken care of her so well that before she went, she said to Valya, “I have survived only because of you, Valya.” Ilya was in effect the father of his family, and that was fine, except that Valya felt he could give time to his wife only when they went to bed.

  Still, when Marina arrived at the train station, Valya saw that she had only one suitcase, and pitied her. The girl seemed so happy to be able to move to Minsk. She was shy and, for a while, very obedient. Just a sweet eighteen-year-old. Marina had a natural color to her lips and never used lipstick. She was attractive even if she was afraid to smile—one of her front teeth was a little in front of the other. It would all have been nice if Valya didn’t have to share her life with one more relative again.

  Of course, Marina didn’t know much about housework. If Valya asked her to do something, Marina would try it, but she couldn’t cook. She did wash her own clothes, and hardly knew how to do that properly. Then, when Marina got a place in a hospital pharmacy, for which kind of work she’d been trained in Leningrad, she was usually tired when she came back from her job, so she didn’t really have house duties. She was free to go to movies, to parties, to plays. Valya, after all, did not go out to work, so she was responsible for the apartment. Sometimes Marina washed floors, and sometimes she washed dishes, and certainly when she was eating alone, she never left dirty plates for Valya. And she had her job. People were needed in pharmacy work, and Marina liked her occupation. She told Valya and Ilya, “I’ll cure you,” because at that time she had access to medicine.

  The only trouble Valya could foresee might yet be with dates, although Marina was usually critical of them. If a boy said something wrong or bought something cheap, that was goodbye! She told Valya that she stopped seeing a man she had dated in Leningrad because he bought her cheap sweets. Of course, being that critical was an unusual matter for someone in her position. Girls like Marina, with no more than a vocational education, were not considered to be as outstanding as girls who went to an Institute or to Universities. So girls like Marina were not usually dated for serious relationships by the best young men in the best schools. But Marina only liked people who were educated.

  Valya never saw her go out with an average man. She had lots of boyfriends, students at an Institute or at the University of Minsk, and she went to their parties with her best friend, Larissa, and spent all her earnings for clothes. After all, Ilya and Valya were not going to take a part of her salary for food. Sometimes, if Marina wanted money for theatre or movies, she would make her own clothes.

  She was very industrious. She liked to sew, do embroidery, and she cut up Valya’s old fur coats to make hats for herself.

  She also read a lot, particularly Theodore Dreiser. Marina loved Dreiser, who was very popular at this time, but then, there were hundreds of books in their apartment, because Ilya had purchased complete sets of works by famous Russian authors, and Valya would read Chekhov and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov. Marina, however, chose Dreiser. Writers like Chekhov she was always having to get through in school.

  Taken on the whole, it was all right having Marina there. Valya never minded that she did not contribute to their living, because Marina had been so poor when she arrived that she didn’t even have underwear, and her salary was small. She needed everything—shoes, stockings, clothes from her head to her feet—and Valya pitied her, for Marina had had a very difficult destiny. Marina even told Valya that she loved her. Loved her a lot. Marina said Valya was the first woman to treat her decently and give her all this freedom, and in turn, Valya loved and pitied her.

  Ilya was much more strict. He worried till Marina came back at night from a date. Not everything went smoothly between them, either, for Marina had a quick tongue. On the other hand, there was one young man with very good manners that Ilya liked, a young medical student named Sasha, and Ilya even had coffee with him. And, of course, there wasn’t really all that much friction with Ilya, because Marina didn’t come home late all that often. Not when he was home. Marina saved her late nights for those times when Ilya was away on a business trip and Valya was alone. Marina had told Valya that in Leningrad her stepfather, Medvedev, didn’t allow her back into his apartment if she was late. She would have to sleep on the outside staircase. Valya cried when she heard that.

  Valya always wondered why, after Klavdia died and her stepfather mistreated her, Marina never asked any of her aunts or Ilya to take her in. “Why did she stay on in Leningrad so long—two more years?”

  Yet, Marina was full of envy when she finally arrived. She said, “Oh, what a paradise you two have here.” Valya never understood these remarks, because there wasn’t anybody to work for Valya. If it was as good as Marina described it, Valya was the one who worked hard to create it.

  Still, there was no real problem with Marina. Her room was always neat and there was never any difficulty with their bathroom, which was inside now, and in turn, Valya would never say a word to her when she did come home late, because she trusted her to be a nice girl. For that matter, Marina shared her secrets. So Valya now knew which boyfriend she liked and those about whom she felt most critical.

  Because of such knowledge, Valya pitied Sasha when Marina didn’t treat him well. Valya just couldn’t see people being handled so rudely. After all, Sasha came every time with flowers, and was so nice to Marina. And how Marina treated him!

  In fact, he was so much in love with Marina that Ilya and Valya had even started to call him “son-in-law,” but one day, feeling sorry for him, Valya told him that if you’re going to marry Marina, you have to understand that she had a very difficult time in Leningrad. Sasha said, “I don’t want to hear anything about that.”

  Marina came home about this time, overheard part of their conversation, took Valya into the kitchen to tell her how upset she was, then came out and said to Sasha, “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  It depressed Valya, but then you could say that Marina, living with her stepfather, Medvedev, had gotten used to being the boss of herself, anyway. No one could influence her, Valya decided, because Marina was accustomed to taking serious decisions without a mother, without a father. Valya knew, for example, that Marina was smoking. In Leningrad, somebody had introduced her to cigarettes that came in a pretty box. They were slender and slim and feminine. Valya knew she was smoking, because a neighbor saw Marina doing it in a restaurant and told Valya. It was fortunate Uncle Ilya was away in another city on business. And Valya had a toothache that time, so she said to Marina, “I took medicine; it doesn’t help. I’m hurting. Give me one of your cigarettes.” Marina was flabbergasted. She said, “I don’t have any.” Valya said, “Come on, don’t lie to me. Go get it from your purse.”

  Marina said, “Did you check my things?” And Valya said, “I know you’re smoking, so give me for my toothache. You know, nicotine, painkiller.” After Marina passed one to her, Valya said, “You better stop doing it. If you don’t quit, I’m going to tell Uncle Ilya.”

  But she wouldn’t quit, Valya knew. Marina liked smoking. It was Western, adventurous. Like Italian cinema. Marina loved Fellini films so much.

  Those movies certainly gave her ideas. Once, Marina even told Valya that in her opinion, Ilya was not for her; officers were always marrying educated women. Valya still remembers; it hurt so deeply.

  Valya had been faithful to her husband, but Marina didn’t understand why. She wanted Valya to have an affair. She even urged her. Since Valya couldn’t have a baby with Ilya, why didn’t Valya make a baby with someone else? �
�Why should you suffer because of him?” And Marina said that if Valya had a man over, she, Marina, could even sit at the entrance and watch to see if Ilya was coming. “You could have your affair, and then you could have a baby.” To which Valya said, “No, I couldn’t. If Ilya found out, he would kill me.” Of course, Ilya was sometimes very strict with Marina. And Marina didn’t like that. No one could offend her without being paid back. Once Valya and Marina were marinating cucumbers and needed leaves from a berry bush to flavor them, so they went to a theatre where there were many flowers outside, and a berry bush, and they started to pick leaves. There was a woman in charge of this park who began to scold them and said, “How do you dare? Don’t you know why we put bushes and flowers around? Don’t you know that we want to look beautiful so all of our city can enjoy it? And you come here and destroy such beauty?” But Marina said, “You know what we’re going to do? Pickle cucumbers. Come visit us and you will have some cucumbers too. What are you doing, after all? We’re not doing anything wrong.” If it were not for Marina, maybe Valya would have been fined, but Marina could always stand by her decisions and feel that whatever she did was right.

  One night in March of 1961, Ilya was away on a business trip and Marina went to a dance at the Trade Union Palace and then came back later that night and woke up Valya and whispered to her that she’d been dancing, and then she said, “Valya, get up. Show how cultured you are, because I have brought home an American. I brought you an American. Make a good cup of coffee.” Marina was happy and said, “I would like for you to act educated.”

  Of course, Valya got scared. She almost shivered in bed. If Marina had come through the door with an American ten years earlier, back in Stalin’s day, they’d all be in prison. Now, in 1961, there was a big difference in feeling—they had gone from Stalin to Khrushchev—and so Valya remembers that she was not very worried and she got up and made coffee for the American, who was nice, very nice, and dressed very neatly. His name was Alik because, as she learned later, nobody could say Lee—it sounded like Li, that is, Chinese—and so it was a while before she learned his full American name was Lee Harvey Oswald.