Oswald's Tale

by Norman Mailer

3

  Deep in the Heart of Texas

  It was Oswald’s misfortune that he landed in Fort Worth. He would have been better received in Austin. By 1962, a couple of hundred blacks and whites were rooming together at the Community of Faith and Light at the University of Texas. Radicalism, posed against the profound conservatism of most Texans, had real luster in the Southwest in those early years of the Sixties, and Oswald might have found some friends; radicalism was even elegant in its stand against the rabid and raucous conservatism of Texans. It was raucous for a reason: People who had been poor but a generation ago were now wealthy. Like Arabs, they owed it to oil—which was like owing it to the devil. Brought up as good Christians, and for the most part still clinging to the fragments of a strict upbringing, a lot of newly rich Texans were uneasy with such quick-gotten gains. Of course, they were also greedy for more, and their anxiety about possessing such an un-Christian appetite made them search for justification of the way they lived. Anti-Communism satisfied that quest altogether. Americans in general, and Texans even more so, had profound faith in anti-Communism in the 1950s and early 1960s. Red-baiting solved just about every moral and spiritual problem at hand. Now, they could be good Christians without having to brood on the contradictions between washing the feet of the poor and gobbling up all the goodies in the bowl.

  To be wholly opposed to Communism became all the philosophy that was needed by the power elite of Texas. We need not be surprised, therefore, if such a world-view trickled down to the prosperous middle class inhabiting all the suburbs within the spread of Dallas and Fort Worth. This was especially true of the local Russians (whom we may as well refer to as the émigrés). They are generally depicted as “generous, outgoing, and warm.”

  McMillan: While they embraced wholeheartedly the American ethos of individualism and hard work, they had also kept the values they had brought over from Eastern Europe: the spirit of community, of sharing, of the responsibility of each for all.1

  What comes across, however, in the Warren Commission testimony of the émigrés sounds more like fear, pride of possession, untrammeled patriotism, and a fair share of the human desire to control others. Oswald, sensitive as always to any attempt by outsiders to manage his life, saw how much of the émigrés’ generosity depended on gaining power over Marina. To him, that was a declaration of war. As a husband, he knew how difficult it was to obtain any kind of power over her, and he was damned if these émigrés with—as he saw it—their dirty track record were going to seduce her allegiance by way of their gifts.

  If it be asked, What was their “dirty track record”?—it was that many of them in the early years of the Second World War had, like Valya, been swept up by the German Army and taken to work in Poland and in Germany. The difference is that Valya went back to the Soviet Union with Ilya. They didn’t. By the end of the war, they managed to make their way over to the Americans, and not all of them can be said to have had an absolutely clear conscience about wartime associations with the Germans. Dr. Johnson is always there to remind us that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and the émigrés certainly competed with one another in the size of their slavish adoration of America and American capitalism. The reasons may not be so mysterious: Certain native lands are more difficult to leave than others. Russia, for whatever myriad reasons, has a call upon its expatriates which even seems proof against the legitimate detestation many of the émigrés were holding for the Soviet system. If some of them had no record of collaboration with the Germans, if their conscience at defecting to America was relatively clear, their hearts were nonetheless pocked with unadmitted anguish at quitting their native land. Ergo, they did not wish to hear anything even remotely decent about Sovietism.

  Shadowed by dubious conscience, it is hardly surprising that they soon came to detest Oswald. He had not only chosen to live in the Soviet Union but now, on his return, looked down upon them as traitors; the curl of his lip said as much, and they reacted to that as to effrontery.

  MR. LIEBELER. Why did the Germans take you from Russia, do you know?

  MRS. MELLER. . . . I stay in country and worked for Germans for piece of bread so I wouldn’t die of hunger because Russia was in bad shape, and then that very place, hospital, was retreated back. I went with, or I had to stay and die of hunger. That way, I was brought piece by piece further deeper into Poland and Germany.2

  ALEX KLEINLERER: I have always been very grateful to America. Americans have been very kind to me and I think a good deal of this country. It upset me when Oswald would say things against the United States. I did not argue with him because he appeared to me to be dangerous in his mind and I was frightened. I once said to him that unlike him, I had come to this country for freedom and not to look for trouble by criticizing the United States.3

  MRS. FORD. . . . books like Karl Marx open in front of him, just lying there on the table, and he didn’t even hide it when someone came in, and then someone else said there was a book laying there of How to Be a Spy, laying right open there.4

  MR. JENNER. . . . it’s your viewpoint that if any American goes to Russia with the intention of living there that we ought to leave them there?

  MRS. DYMITRUK. That’s right.

  MR. JENNER. And not encourage him to return to the United States?

  MRS. DYMITRUK. Not encourage—or if he ask to come back, just let him stay there.5

  MRS. VOSHININ. . . . we were expecting, rather to hear from Oswald publicly some anti-Communist declaration, some, you know, reports, lectures, or a couple of articles in the newspapers, you know, we expected from him to behave like a person who got disappointed in Communism, came here sincerely—like people we know. For example, Eugene Lyons . . . So, his behavior after he came here, from what we heard about his behavior, was unnatural . . . Now, wouldn’t that be natural for an intellectual person to get his living from lecturing against Communism?6

  MR. RANKIN. Did he tell you why he did not like your Russian friends? . . .

  MARINA OSWALD. Well, he thought they were fools for having left Russia; they were all traitors . . . he said they all only like money, and everything is measured by money. It seems to me that perhaps he was envious of them in the sense they were more prosperous than he was . . . he did not like to hear that . . . 7

  Was he beginning to realize that when it came to political values, he and Marina were facing each other across a divide? She loved middle-class values.

  In Russia, he could not have sensed this so clearly. Despite every altercation between them, she had nonetheless committed herself to going to America; indeed, she disliked her Soviet system in much the way he had come to find it disappointing, dull in its privileges, corrupt, second-rate. Now, Marina’s attraction to the values of the émigrés left him feeling betrayed.

  It is a wholly unexpected turn for him. In Minsk, they had been able to see themselves as a married team—much in need of improvement, but a team. They were positively married, at least to some degree. They would go to America together with their beloved baby. They would manage despite all obstacles. She was following him. With every tug of fear for each relative she might compromise, still she would follow him. They shared important beliefs.

  Now, with the Russian community charmed by her and taking to him not at all, now that Marina was enraptured by the dazzling if, to his eye, morally blind face of American commodities, he had to feel that she was turning against the project of his life—which was to give no quarter to the resplendent superiority of the moneyed enemy, but to stand proud, partisan, and a guerrilla fighter—if, for the most part, only in the privacy of his mind.

  We must not leave Marguerite in exile. She has been relegated to the sidelines, but her keen nose informs her that demons of social opprobrium are gathering against her son.

  Marguerite might not be wholly welcome, Marguerite might be jealous of the marriage and ready to drive her spike into the wedding tree—she was a mother-in-law—but then, she was also a mother; she would save the mar
riage. Not for too little had God given her god-like gifts as a sleuth. Just as she had been first to pick up the investigative trail when her husband Mr. Ekdahl had been acting oddly enough to suggest marital peccadilloes, so it did not take long for Marguerite to become suspicious of Marina. One day, going to visit her daughter-in-law on Mercedes Street, Marguerite discovered that she was not at home.

  MARGUERITE OSWALD. . . . I sat in the car on Montgomery Ward’s parking lot, where I could see the house, because I wanted to see who Marina was going to come home with . . .

  I sat in the car all day long. She didn’t show up.

  Finally, I went home, had my supper, left my apartment, and on the way going back to the house Lee was leaving Montgomery Ward.

  Now they did not have a phone. I am just assuming—this is not a fact—that Lee went to a telephone trying to locate his wife . . . He got in the car with me, and we had about a block to go. I entered the house with Lee and I said, “Lee, where is Marina?” Of course, I knew that she wasn’t home because I had stayed in the car all day.

  He said, “Oh, I guess she is out with some friends.”

  “Would you like me to fix your supper?”

  “No, she will probably be home in time to fix my supper.”

  So I left. I am not going to interfere in their married life . . . Two days later, I went to the home and my son was reading, he read continuously—in the living room and Marina was in the bedroom. I could not see Marina. And I said to Lee, “Tell Marina I am here.”

  Marina made no appearance.

  So I went into the bedroom, and she was nursing June with her head down. And I started to talk. And she still had her head down. And I came around to the front and I saw Marina with a black eye.

  Now, gentlemen, I don’t think any man should hit his wife, [but] I will say this. There may be times that a woman needs to have a black eye. I am not condoning the act. But I strongly am saying that this girl was not home. And this man was working. And I saw, myself, that this man came home and didn’t have any food. This couple doesn’t have a maid or anyone to give this working man food. And I think it was her duty to be home and have his supper ready.

  This is a little thing, maybe. But to me it shows the character of what I am trying to bring out . . . I have worked in these very fine homes, and have seen very fine people fight. I have seen a gentleman strike his wife in front of me. We know this happens. It is not a nice thing to do. But it happens in our finest homes. I am not condoning the act. But I am telling you that there probably was reasons, we will say . . . 8

  That black eye was the first order of gossip in the Russian community:

  MRS. MELLER. One of these times we came to Marina’s house and husband was still not at home, she has a terrible blue spot over her eye and I said to her, “What’s the matter?” Marina was shy little bit. She’s shy little, a little bit in nature, I think, too. She said, “I have to get up during night and quiet baby and I hit the door and hit my head here,” and it was very blue.9

  MR. BOUHE. . . . she had a black eye. And not thinking about anything unfortunate, I said: “Well, did you run into a bathroom door?” Marina said, “Oh, no, he hit me.”10

  MR. LIEBELER. Did you ever see or hear of Marina making fun of Oswald in front of other people? . . .

  MRS. HALL. Oh, yes; she would do it.

  MR. LIEBELER. Can you think of any specific examples?

  MRS. HALL. She was always complaining about him. He was not a man. He is afraid. I don’t know, not complete, I guess, or something like that. Not complete man.11

  MR. BOUHE. I . . . made a point of it never to be in Marina’s house without somebody else being there.

  MR. LIEBELER. Now, can you tell us why you took such care in this regard? . . .

  MR. BOUHE. Because he was a peculiar guy and I am not a fighter. I am an expert fighter with the word but not with the muscles. And by his smirking appearances or other expressions on the face, [he] indicated that I am not welcome and I am persona non grata, because apparently he was jealous that I filled the icebox once . . . 12

  Here in these first three months in Fort Worth their marriage suffers grievously from these episodes, and what may be an irremediable set of blows—and he withdraws from her, turns into himself and the dank pit of the ugliest part of himself—that coward who had found no stature in the eyes of other men. Now, from time to time, he will indulge a crucially expensive portion of his rage by striking his wife.

  4

  The Well-born Friend

  If there is any place where a narrative of Oswald’s life is bound to take on the seductive ambiguity of a spy novel, it is with the entrance into Lee’s affairs of Baron George De Mohrenschildt,1 a tall, well-educated, powerful, handsome fifty-one-year-old with an incomparable biography.

  McMillan: . . . born in Mozyr, Belorussia, in 1911 . . . he was . . . fond of pointing out [that] he was . . . a mixture of Russian, Polish, Swedish, German, and Hungarian blood . . . the Mohrenschildts traced their ancestry back to the Baltic nobility at the time of Sweden’s Queen Christina—the proudest nobility in all Russia. The men of the family had a right to be called “Baron,” but such were their liberal opinions that neither George’s father, Sergei von Mohrenschildt, nor his Uncle Ferdinand (first secretary of the czarist embassy in Washington, who married the daughter of William Gibbs McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law and Secretary of the Treasury), nor George himself, nor his older brother Dmitry, ever made use of the title.2

  Gary Taylor, who had been married to De Mohrenschildt’s daughter, Alexandra, offers a good description of the Baron:

  MR. TAYLOR. Uh—he is a rather overbearing personality; somewhat boisterous in nature and easily changeable moods—anywhere from extreme friendliness to downright dislike—just like turning on and off a light.

  MR. JENNER. What about his physical characteristics? . . .

  MR. TAYLOR. He’s a large man, in height only about 6′2″ but he’s a very powerfully built man, like a boxer . . . And he has a very big chest which makes him appear to be very much bigger than he actually is . . .

  MR. JENNER. All right. Give me a little more about the personality of George De Mohrenschildt . . .

  MR. TAYLOR. I would say that he has an inflammable personality. And he’s very likable, when he wants to be . . .

  MR. JENNER. Is he unconventional? . . .

  MR. TAYLOR. Yes; oftentimes wearing merely bathing trunks, and things like this, that—for a man of his age, which is about 50 to 52—is a little unusual . . . In fact, during the time that I was married to his daughter, I have not known him to hold any kind of a position for which he received monetary remuneration. So, as a result, why, he could spend his time at his favorite sport, which is tennis. And this could be in 32-degree weather in the bathing shorts I mentioned [any] time during the week. They have always owned convertibles and they would ride in them in all kinds of weather with the top down. They are very active, outdoor sort of people . . .

  MR. JENNER. Is [his wife] unconventional at times in her attire in the respects you have indicated in regards to him?

  MR. TAYLOR. Yes; very similar.

  MR. JENNER. She, likewise, wears a bathing suit out on the street, does she?

  MR. TAYLOR. Yes, quite a bit. And usually a bikini.3

  Inasmuch as Jeanne De Mohrenschildt was blond and agreeably overweight, she too had her impact on observers. The Warren Commission was, naturally, interested in her, but they were fascinated with De Mohrenschildt. His testimony would fill 118 pages of close print. Virtually half of this extended contribution was devoted to his biography, but then, so various were the details of his life that it was difficult not to wander afield:

  MR. JENNER. . . . the records show [that your brother Dmitri] was naturalized November 22, 1926, in the U.S. District Court at New Haven, which is where Yale University is located . . . do those facts square with your recollection?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; approximately the right period. I remember
he went to Yale with Rudy Vallee—they were roommates.4

  When it came to name dropping, De Mohrenschildt had credentials. He was the only man in the world who had known both Jacqueline Kennedy when she was a child and Marina Oswald when she was a wife and a widow, and you could count on him to speak of that. He looked to the moment in conversation. Twitted by Warren Commission counsel Albert Jenner for arriving bare-chested at a formal dinner party—or so Jenner had already been told by a good number of witnesses—George was asked if he didn’t have a taste for shocking people.

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, it is . . . amusing to get people out of their boredom. Sometimes life is very boring.

  MR. JENNER. And get you out of your boredom, too?

  MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Maybe my boredom also.5

  He had, in fact, lived in so many countries, worked at so many occupations—cavalry officer in the Polish army, lingerie salesman in Belgium, moviemaker in New York, and petroleum engineer in Dallas—and had accumulated so many adventures and married so often (so cynically and so idealistically, sometimes for money, sometimes for love, having once been as wealthy as a gigolo who had hit on double-zero in matrimonial roulette, but reduced by 1962 to living on what Jeanne, his fourth and last wife, was making as a fashion designer at Nieman-Marcus) that boredom could easily have been one of his afflictions: Too much experience can prove as dangerous to maintaining a lively interest in life as too little.

  We will learn a good deal more about him, however, if we take a close look at his writings and his testimony. The two are separated by thirteen years: He gave his testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964 and wrote his manuscript about Oswald in 1977—it would be printed in the twelfth volume of the House Select Committee on Assassination Hearings—but we might start with the manuscript, for De Mohrenschildt gives an interesting description there of meeting the Oswalds. Having heard about the new arrivals from the other émigrés, he claims he was curious to know more, and so, sometime in the first or second week of September, he set out to visit them. A window now opens to banish the stale and unanimous verdicts of the other émigrés. Odd currents blow in.