Oswald's Tale

by Norman Mailer

  OSWALD: (VO)

  The door of Henry’s lunch counter opened and two men walked in. They sat down at the counter. “What’s yours?” George asked them.

  TITOVETS:

  I gave him . . . pieces to read and these happened to be Shakespeare, from Othello, Ernest Hemingway—

  OSWALD: (VO)

  They sat at the counter and read the menu. From the other end of the counter Nick Adams watched them.

  NARRATOR:

  Titovets also interviewed Oswald in mock dialogue. This is the first time these tapes have been heard publicly. In one interview Lee played the part of a killer.

  TITOVETS: (VO)

  Would you tell us about your last killing?

  OSWALD: (VO)

  Well, it was a young girl under a bridge. She came in carrying a loaf of bread and I just cut her throat from ear to ear.

  TITOVETS: (VO)

  What for?

  OSWALD: (VO)

  Well, I wanted the loaf of bread, of course.

  TITOVETS: (VO)

  Okay. (pause) And what do you think, take to be your, your most, most famous killing in your life?

  OSWALD: (VO)

  Well, the time I killed eight men on the Bowery, on the sidewalk. They were all standing there, loafing around, and I didn’t like their faces so I just shot them all with a machine gun. It was very famous; all the newspapers carried the story. (laughter)

  TITOVETS:

  We were just having a great time and, actually, we were laughing our heads off.

  Igor would not exclude the possibility that Oswald’s English-speaking tapes had been gone over carefully to determine whether his Southern accent was bona fide; his Russian-speaking tapes were also studied to explore any possibility that he was concealing a better knowledge of their language than he pretended to have.

  Stepan added: “It’s important that information from a source can be double-checked. We always tried to combine surveillance with reports from human sources, plus what we could learn from other technical possibilities. That way, trust in our human sources can be built. However,” he went on, “to create an artificial situation, to set up an experiment to determine whether a person gives ground for suspicion, is risky. The person might show interest by accident or out of curiosity, and that would still pique Counterintelligence’s concerns. Thereby, we could lead ourselves astray.” Stepan considered it fortunate that he had an opportunity to study Oswald in a natural manner. “If, for example, it had become known to us that Likhoi was taking steps to meet a scientist in a certain field, then we might have arranged such a meeting.” But Oswald made no such efforts. So, they studied the incidents that arose naturally, monitored them thoroughly, and generally found little that was suspicious. He never made attempts to make special acquaintances or to penetrate some secret military object; he didn’t exhibit such desires. Not yet, at any rate.

  November 15

  In November I make the acquaintance of four girls rooming in the Foreign Languages dormitory in Room 212. Nell is very interesting, so are Tomka, Tomis, and Alla. I usually go to the Institute dormitory with a friend of mine who speaks English very well. Erich Titovets is in the fourth year at the Medical Institute. Very bright fellow. At the dormitory, we six sit and talk for hours in English.

  As Pavel saw it, maybe some girls at Foreign Languages Institute were more available, sexually speaking. Their psychology was different. They dealt with other languages, had to think a little in a different culture, and so wanted to explore more. They could see foreign films. In general, these woman were more relaxed—they smoked, they drank, they read literature. Erich Maria Remarque was very popular, and Hemingway wrote about women being free before marriage in The Sun Also Rises. So maybe they were trying to take on such an image. Some of them.

  Inna Pasenko, not to be confused with Oswald’s friend Inna Tachina, was in her first year at Foreign Languages Institute, and she was mad about English. Anytime she heard somebody speaking, she was happy just to stand and listen. (She was also mad about swimming and was, at that time, champion of Byelorussian swimming in freestyle and butterfly.)

  On a given Saturday, she went with her friend Galya to the Philharmonic Society, and during the first concert break, they heard two men conversing in English. One of them was dark-haired and dressed in a gray jacket, the other was in a dark suit, the first, Oswald, as she learned later, and the second, Erich Titovets. Inna went to Titovets and said, “Excuse me—am I right or wrong: You, sir, are just Russian speaking English, and you are a real Englishman or—I don’t know—American?” And Erich said, “We are both British,” and Oswald said, “No, no, no, don’t believe him.” It was obvious he didn’t want to be mixed up in this “we.” He had his own identity. Inna said, “Don’t tell me lies,” and Erich said, “No, no, we are both”—but she could hear his accent, because phonetics was her favorite subject. She even did a Ph.D. in English Phonetics later.

  They all started speaking, and Inna said, “Let’s meet after this concert,” which they did, and walked from Philharmonic to Victory Square, near the Foreign Languages Institute. Her house was just five minutes’ walk away. She gave her telephone number, and Erich said, “Certainly we will phone you and we will come and see you.” And she and Galya were excited at the fact that they had spoken in English for half an hour. Galya roomed at her Institute dormitory, but Inna lived in her father’s apartment, where she and her mother and her entire family still dwell at present.

  Next day, Sunday, Erich phoned and asked if they could come around, and Inna arranged for Galya to be there as well. She had one difficulty, however. Inna’s father was a high Party figure, and a Colonel. A very patriotic man. He would not have put up with anyone from abroad being in his house. Even listening to a radio caused suspicion. But her mother was at home, not her father, so Erich and Lee came over that afternoon, and Galya joined them.

  On introduction, Lee happened to say zdradstvy to Inna’s mother instead of zdradstvuytye and her mother took Inna into her kitchen and said, “Where do you find such rude boys, who don’t even know how to address grown-ups?” and Inna said, “Mother, he’s not a Russian; he’s an American.” Her mother became pale, then said, “Take him away because Father will be home soon.” But Inna said, “Mama, no, that will not do. We will stay on the first floor. We will not make noise. We will look through our dictionary and listen to some music.” And her mother said, “All right, but only for a little while before Father comes home.”

  And so they did listen to music and had tea and spoke a good deal. She remembers that she asked how he had come here and he said that he had chosen Minsk because it was a nice city. At first he wanted to go to Leningrad but then decided otherwise. “It’s quieter here, the climate is better. I wanted Minsk.” When they asked where his apartment was located, he said it was also off Victory Square, and added, “Why don’t you come to see my apartment? I’ve got a lot of English books.” Galya and Inna said, Yes, of course. And managed to get their visitors to leave before Inna’s father came back.

  Lee had wanted Inna to visit alone, but her upbringing was such that she could not go to anyone’s place in that manner. She said, “I’ll bring Galya,” and he agreed, and so they went a few days later.

  She remembers they had walked over before dark, and she still recalls her excitement. She had thought, “Here I am coming to a place that will be full of English books”—indeed, that was her main reason for seeing him, since he didn’t produce any other sort of vital impression on her. She was expecting to find Hemingway and Faulkner in his bookcase, or something forbidden, some knowledge that wasn’t easily obtainable, but she remembers so well that when he opened the door and they entered, there was just a small kitchen plus a small room to their left, and in a corner of this second room was a little—you couldn’t call it a bookcase, but a few planks of wood. Its lowest level had some newspapers, the next shelf was empty, and the top level held Karl Marx and Lenin, both in English. That was all. His b
ed almost filled the room, a military bed of iron covered with a gray blanket that had white stripes. Since the girls were just standing there, they finally sat down on his bed, and he made tea. He did have good tea, that she remembers, and he put it on a little stool in front of his bed.

  After a while, she asked, pointing to Marx and Lenin, “Is this what you read?” and he said, “I find it really interesting, don’t you?” She said, “We studied all this in Russian—why should we read it in English?” and he said, “Well, I haven’t read it before, and I find it very interesting.”

  He was neat. She recalls there was no mess scattered around. He was wearing gray slacks and a blue tie and a striped shirt, and he was so pleased with the apartment, said he paid only 7 rubles for it. She, of course, was less impressed, because her family lived in a large, fine apartment, with three rooms for four people.

  All the same, their visit did impress her. For the first time in her life she had seen a real American, and Inna was fascinated with all these variations in accent between American English and British English. This American, in turn, was paying a lot of attention to Inna. Even Galya said as much later. Inna, however, had no real interest in the man. She was fascinated but not attracted, and when he complained that he was lonely and didn’t have anything to do, Inna said, “Let’s go to my place once again,” but he replied, “Your father’s too strict.” She remembers him adding, “No, no more at your house.” Then he said to Galya, “I’d like to visit your Foreign Languages Institute.” That pleased Inna, because she would now have more practice in English.

  Taking him to Galya’s dormitory, while it would certainly be seen as bringing back a prize, would also present a problem. At that time, you had to produce your identity card, and this was true even for Institute students who didn’t live in the dormitory. It was certainly not routine. Girls who studied at Foreign Languages Institute were treated like young ladies in a convent. Their ideological upbringing was very important. After all, they were being introduced to Western literature and movies, and were allowed to listen to foreign broadcasts.

  In this case, however, Galya got Oswald into her dormitory by telling him: “Be quiet. Be silent.” She told her doorman that he was a relative. Galya was taking a chance. If she had been caught, she would have been deprived of her monthly stipend for a period. She took him in safely, however, and after that it was almost routine.

  Inna recalls one occasion: There was Oswald with six girls, the center of attention in that dormitory room. He was sitting at a table with a couple of girls close to him and they were all playing a game. He would open the dark brown English book they offered him, Miller’s English Dictionary, and pick a word at random, then somebody would offer a translation. Whoever was the girl sitting next to him would check it, and there was a lot of laughter while they played their dictionary game. He had a little Southern accent, and one girl, to everyone’s amusement, even corrected his pronunciation.

  Over the next month, he would visit often, and sometimes they would want him to go home, but he would stay. Several girls were scared that someone would catch him, so they kept their door locked. And they didn’t make noise. Their laughter was not loud, more smiles than laughter. Her recollection was that he seemed glad to be accepted. She also felt that part of his interest in being there all the time was to get away from Erich. Her guess is that maybe Oswald wanted to make his own set of friends.

  In any event, he was not wholly at ease, even though he was the center of attention. Of course, it was a special kind of interest. Girls would say, “Oh, we haven’t seen him for three days,” and Inna knew whom they meant. They were not only afraid to mention his name but reluctant to be alone with Lee—what if someone reported that one of them was alone with a foreigner? That was their first consideration. It was not that he was the sort of fellow one had to be afraid of—if anything, he was timid with women. The only girl who was at all adventurous was Nellya Korbinka, whom Inna did not know very well.

  Soon enough, as Inna saw it, the Institute girls grew tired of Lee. They had become used to him, and would pay hardly any attention to him as a man. At this point, he had nothing new to say. He would talk about his family and tell jokes, but they were stupid stories. There was not much discussion. He did tell Inna how much he respected his mother, but Inna suspects that because she respected her own parents so much, he was ready to speak warmly of his mother.

  Then, after a while, Oswald dropped out of sight. It was not noticed that much. Some girls used to gossip that his only reason for coming to the Institute was because no one else wanted to date him.

  EXTRA PAGE (not included in formal diary)

  Nellya Korbinka.1 Large, 5 ft., 11 inches, 150 lbs., built proportionately, large upright breasts, hips wide and lovely but very pleasingly proportioned, from a village near the Polish border, of strictly Russian peasant stock. Gentle, kind, womanly, and understanding, passionate in heart, stubborn in both. She combined all the best womanly features with the kind, sizable Russian heart. I met her through one of her roommates, Tomka. Nell and Tomka together with three other girls lived in a room at the Foreign Languages Institute Dormitory in Minsk near the Victory Circle. I began to notice Nell seriously only after I parted ways with Inna Tachina.2

  11

  Razbitoye Karito

  Whenever Lee wanted to talk about their future plans, Ella would try to avoid that topic. To discuss such a subject might mean she was getting ready to marry him. Her reluctance to show interest may have upset him, but he was not aggressive. Yet, even so, he became a little more pushy.

  He said, “Do you want to know why I came here?” But she never asked him many questions. She was afraid he would think of her as someone who was trying to get information from him. It was part of how she grew up: Women didn’t ask questions. It was considered bad style. So, he started to give information. And he also got a little pushy.

  They might commence with a light conversation, nice and full of humor. They would see a movie and discuss every joke afterward. It was fun. They would talk nonsense. Once, they got into a discussion of how frogs talk. She insisted a frog says “qua.” In Russian, a frog always says “qua.” And his answer: “No, a frog says ‘frok.’” It was funny.

  But later, he began to discuss serious matters. For example, he didn’t want to live in Minsk. It was, he said, a provincial city. He had lived in New Orleans; that was big. He asked her to share a dream. He said, “Maybe I will move to another socialist country. For example, Czechoslovakia.” He said, “Shall we go to live in Prague?”

  He was a very proud man. He didn’t want to be rejected by Ella. She believes that’s why he never asked directly. He would say, “How do you do things here? In America we have an engagement ring, a silver ring that’s exchanged for a golden ring. But how do you do it here?” Perhaps he was waiting for her to ask, “Why are you interested in how marriages are made in Russia?” but he never said directly, “I would like you to be my wife.”

  One time, he showed his Russian residence papers, and he said, “Soon I have to make a decision. You’re the one who’s going to influence it. Do you want to live in Prague? Because if you do, then I won’t take Soviet citizenship. But if you want to live here, tell me if you want that, and I’ll take it—this all depends on you.” And in December he showed her that his papers terminated on January 4, next year, just a few weeks away. He had to make a decision what to do with his life before 1961 was four days old.

  But that was a big question for her: Why had he come here, and why did he now want to move? He told her, “You don’t understand. In our country, we travel, we change places—you don’t understand.” But she didn’t trust him. Besides, Lee was not really to her taste. She liked men with bigger shoulders.

  FROM KGB OBSERVATION

  PERFORMED FROM 08:00 TO 24:00 ON DECEMBER 23, 1960

  At 11:30 Likhoi left his house, came to bus stop Ploshchad Pobedy, got on bus N5, reached stop Komsomolskaya, got off and entered GUM. At hab
erdashery department, he bought safety razors, then tried on hat at hat department, but didn’t buy it and entered bakery department. There he had glass of coffee with cake, and went out toward Glavpochtamt. On his way he visited a number of industrial goods stores, then came to Glavpochtamt, came to Soyuzpechat kiosk, looked at papers but didn’t buy, came out and got on trolley N3, reached Tsentralnaya Ploshchad. At square, Likhoi got on trolley N1, reached Ploshchad Pobedy, got off and entered café-automat, had lunch, came out and stopped off at home at 12:45 . . .

  At 20:45 object left home and came east to house N22, apt. 2 at Lavsko-Naberezhnaya St. After 10 minutes he left place together with contact “Dora” and they together, talking about something, were walking along embankment of Svisloch River, and at 21:15 came to apartment of object.

  At 23:10 Likhoi and “Dora” came out of his apartment and slowly walked along embankment of Svisloch River, talking with each other. On the way Likhoi was periodically taking “Dora’s” hand and embracing her. At 23:40 they came to house N22 at Lavsko-Naberezhnaya Street, where they said goodbye and parted. “Dora” walked into said house and Likhoi came home at 23:55, and at that point surveillance was stopped until morning.

  When he kissed her, he was not unpleasant—he was nice. But because Ella was not in love with him, she was not excited. All the same, he never scared her as a man. In that aspect, he was perfect. He was so tender. She was never scared. Yet, all those months she went with him, from May to January, she did not trust him. Some people told her that he was an American spy. And she thought, “Maybe he wants to marry me so he can stay in this country. When he says he loves me, he doesn’t love me at all.”