by Don DeLillo
The thinking in the Center was that Khrushchev would not reveal that Francis Gary Powers was alive and in custody until the American cover story was released in all its hopeful and pathetic variations. (An unarmed weather plane is missing somewhere near Lake Van in Turkey after the civilian pilot reported trouble with the oxygen system.) They would add or subtract details as need dictated. But they were counting on a dead man either way.
Then the Premier would mount the rostrum in the Great Hall, wearing a modest cluster of medals on the breast pocket of his business suit, and announce the interesting news, with photographs, with fitting gestures, his voice carrying in bursts over the delegates, Presidium members, diplomatic corps and international press.
Comrades, he would begin, I must let you in on a secret. The broad smile, the choppy gesturing hand. We have the pilot of the innocent weather plane you have all been hearing about. We have the wreckage of the plane. Shot down by our missiles two thousand kilometers inside Soviet territory. The shadow in the sky. Sent to photograph military and industrial sites. We have the camera and rolls of film. Waving the spy photos, making jokes about the air samples the plane had allegedly been sent to gather. Yes, yes, Francis Gary Powers is alive and kicking, safe and sound, despite the plane’s destructor unit, despite the poison meant to end his life, and the pistol with silencer, and the long knife. Pausing to drink some water. Seven thousand rubles in Soviet currency. Did they send him all this way to exchange old rubles for new ones?
Laughter, applause.
Alek looked forward to the theater that Khrushchev would make of the U-2 affair. The summit was scheduled for Paris in two weeks. Eisenhower’s moral leadership turns to shit.
But as the questions continued for hours, then days, he began to feel uneasy. The men in uniform, the GRU, kept coming back to the question of altitude. Didn’t they know how high the plane was flying when they hit it? Had it been an accidental hit with a haywire missile? Had he taken the plane down to reignite the engine after a flameout? Is that how they hit it? There were rumors they hadn’t hit it at all. Had the plane been sabotaged by the CIA to wreck the summit?
Francis Gary Powers repeatedly claimed he was at maximum altitude when he felt the impact and saw the flash. Sixty-eight thousand feet. It seemed the GRU thought he was lying. They believed U-2s went much higher and they knew Soviet missiles could not reach these altitudes.
Why would they believe the plane flew higher than the pilot contended?
Because Oswald told them? Surely they would have strong corroboration from other sources. In any case this affair tended to strengthen the boy’s claim to authority. He’d evidently been right about the extreme altitude the plane could reach. He was also the one person in the USSR who had inside working knowledge of the U-2, who was American like Powers, who could measure his coun tryman’s responses and telltale inflections, who could evaluate what he said about ground personnel, base security and so on.
Lee H. Oswald was taking shape in Kirilenko’s mind as some kind of Chaplinesque figure, skating along the edges of vast and dangerous events.
Unknowing, partly knowing, knowing but not saying, the boy had a quality of trailing chaos behind him, causing disasters without seeing them happen, making riddles of his life and possibly fools of us all.
Alek had never been to the United States. Everything he’d learned about the country made him wary of its impulsiveness, its shallow self-assurance. It is a nursery school of a culture, startled, dribbling, forgetful, compared to what we have here, the massive treasure of a history that endures in the souls of the people.
Cigarettes made him patriotic. He was smoking again after six years of nibbling tiny things.
At least Oswald looked American. Francis Gary Powers would eventually stand in the dock in the chandeliered courtroom of the Hall of Columns in his doltish haircut and ridiculous oversized clothes, or undersized clothes, looking like some woodchopper from the Balkans.
Citizen Oswald came to town wearing his dark tie, cashmere sweater and gray flannel suit. It was nice to be back in Moscow.
They led him into the room some minutes after the interrogation had begun. He sat against the wall, fifteen feet behind the prisoner, with a security man in plainclothes. He had a notepad and pencil.
The news, of course, was everywhere, dominating the press and the air waves. The U-2 was the biggest thing in years. A tremendous clamor of righteous Soviet voices, historic American lies, damaged relations. He listened to Francis Gary Powers trying to handle the questions of Roman Rudenko, who had been one of the chief prosecutors of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. He thought a prosecutor of Nazis was a slightly dramatic touch for someone like Francis Gary Powers. The prisoner sounded like an ordinary guy. A coal miner’s son from some hollow in the boondocks. Paid to fly a plane.
For three solid hours of questions and answers, Oswald stared at the back of the head of Francis Gary Powers.
Then he went to the Chess Pavilion in Gorky Park to see a display of the plane’s battered fuselage and tail section. The wings were mounted in the center of the room. The pilot’s survival gear, personal effects and signed confession were in glass cases. There were photographs of the pilot under a sign reading POWERS FRANCIS GARY THE PILOT OF THE SHOT AMERICAN PLANE. The crowd was in a holiday mood. Oswald wondered if Powers played chess. It would be a nice gesture if Alek let him into the cell to play a game of chess with Francis Gary Powers.
His plainclothes escort took him back to Lubyanka. Alek and a uniformed guard led him into the cell block. The floor was carpeted. Powers’ cell was on the lower level. The guard slid the cover off the spyhole on the door. Oswald looked into the cell. The prisoner sat at a small table, drawing lines on a piece of paper. Oswald thought he might be making a calendar. Men in small rooms, in isolation. A cell is the basic state. They put you in a room and lock the door. So simple it’s a form of genius. This is the final size of all the forces around you. Eight by fifteen.
There was something gentle about Powers. He was the type Oswald could get along with in the barracks. He raised his head a moment and looked directly at the spyhole as if he sensed someone watching. Paid to fly a plane and incidentally to kill himself if the mission failed. Well we don’t always follow orders, do we? Some orders require thought, ha ha. He wanted to call to the prisoner through the door, You were right; good for you; disobey. The prisoner wore a checked shirt buttoned to the top. He waved at a fly and returned to his piece of paper. He seemed to toil at those lines he was drawing. What is the Russian for firing squad?
Alek led Oswald to the interrogation room, where they sat alone in the faint stink of ground-out cigarettes.
“Now you’ve seen him as close as we can get you. Tell me. Does he look familiar?”
“No.”
“Do you know him from Atsugi?”
“They wear helmets and faceplates. There are armed guards around them all the time. I never got a good look at a pilot.”
“From the bars perhaps. The nightclubs.”
“I don’t recall him at all.”
“Did you know they had flights from Peshawar?”
“Where is that?”
“Pakistan. Where this flight originated.”
“No.”
“Powers is telling us many lies. What do you think?”
“He’s confused. I think he’s mainly truthful. He wants to survive.”
“He says sixty-eight thousand feet, maximum altitude. You say eighty thousand, ninety thousand.”
“I could be wrong.”
“I don’t think you’re wrong.”
“I could definitely be mistaken.”
“You sounded very sure. You described the pilot’s voice. There is reason to believe you were correct.”
“Eighty is pretty damn high. Maybe I thought I heard eighty but it was sixty-eight. I think Powers is telling the truth, based on the type fellow he seems to be.”
“What type is that?”
“Basically
honest and sincere. Cooperating to the best of his ability. What will happen to him?”
“Too early to say.”
“Will they put him on trial?”
“This is almost certain.”
“Will they execute him?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’ll get the firing squad, won’t he?”
“This is not correct to assume.”
“That’s the way it’s done, isn’t it? They shoot them here.”
Smiling. “Not so much anymore.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Not a good idea.”
“I could lecture him on the virtues of life in the Soviet Union. Making radios for the masses.”
“The masses need radios so they won’t be masses anymore.”
“I have an idea I’ve been thinking.” He paused to assemble the dramatic words. “I want to go to Patrice Lumumba Friendship University.”
“A wonderful place no doubt. But it happens to be in Moscow and I don’t think this is the right time for you to live here.”
“Alek, how do I get ahead? I want to study. The plant is dull and regimented. Always go to meetings, always read the propaganda. Everything is the same. Everything tastes the same. The newspapers say the same things.”
“All right, this much. We will think about further schooling for Lee H. Oswald.”
“I will wait to hear from you. I depend on it.”
“Tell me, personally, for my own enlightenment, is Francis Gary Powers a typical American?”
It occurred to Oswald that everyone called the prisoner by his full name. The Soviet press, local TV, the BBC, the Voice of America, the interrogators, etc. Once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used. You were officially marked, a chapter in the imagination of the state. Francis Gary Powers. In just these few days the name had taken on a resonance, a sense of fateful event. It already sounded historic.
“I would say a hardworking, sincere, honest fellow has found himself in a position where he is being crushed by the pressure exerted from opposite directions. That makes him typical, I guess.”
He spoke these words in Russian and saw that Alek was impressed.
From the Historic Diary.
The coming of Fall, my dread of a new Russian winter, are mellowed in splendid golds and reds of fall in Belorussia plums peaches appricots and cherrys abound for these last fall weeks I am a healthy brown color and stuffed with fresh fruit.
my 21st birthday see’s Rosa, Pavil, Ella at a small party at my place Ella a very attractive Russian Jew I have been going walking with lately, works at the radio factory also.
Finds the approach of winter now. A growing lonliness overtakes me in spite of my conquest of Ennatachina a girl from Riga
New Years I spend at home of Ella Germain. I think I’m in love with her. She has refused my more dishonourable advanis
After a pleasent handin-hand walk to the local cinima we come home, standing on the doorstep I propose’s She hesitates than refuses, my love is real but she has none for me. (I am too stunned too think!) I am misarable!
He talked to his friends about Cuba, surprised to find they weren’t passionate on the subject. Cuba was a situation he could easily get heated about and it was steady news in the English-language Worker, on local radio and the BBC. Mikoyan signs a trade pact with Che Guevara. Russia sends heavy arms. Ike breaks diplomatic relations.
Chocolate was expensive. These people had a vicious sweet tooth. Always a crowd at the local confectionery. Life was small things. Chocolate, a record player, a meal at the automat.
His friends had trouble with his name. They didn’t feel comfortable saying Lee. It sounded Chinese or just didn’t fit right on the tongue.
He told them to call him Alek.
Postcard #4. Washington, D.C. It is January 21, 1961, the day after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, and Marguerite Oswald is in Union Station looking for a telephone. She has just traveled three days and two nights on a train from Fort Worth, borrowing on an insurance policy to pay for the ticket, wiping out her bank account to buy a pair of shoes, traveling all this way sitting up—not enough cash for a roomette in the sleeping car. This is an angry, tired and frustrated woman. Letters to her congressman unanswered. Phone calls to the local office of the FBI unreturned. Telegrams to the State Department. Letters and calls to the International Rescue Committee. The State Department talks to the International Rescue Committee but nobody wants to talk to her. Is it really so strange that she uses the word conspiracy? She is only trying to analyze a whole condensed program of things that are not correct.
The White House switchboard tells her the President is in conference.
She throws another coin down the slot.
The State Department switchboard says Secretary Rusk is not available right now but anything they could do for her, etc. etc. The operator is a Negro woman and Marguerite used to live in a mixed neighborhood of Negroes and whites on Philip Street in New Orleans when she was growing up, and played with Negroes, and lived next door to a lovely Negro family, so she finally gets connected, after a lot of back and forth, to a man who seems to be talking from an office instead of a switchboard. There is a silence around him and he says he is an aide and asks her politely what-the trouble is.
“I have come to town about a son of mine who is lost in Russia. ”
She tells the man she is not the sobbing-mother type but the fact is she is getting over a sickness and she doesn’t know whether her son is living or dead. He is somewhere abroad working as an agent of our American government. He has the right to make his own decisions, she says, but there is a good chance he has become stranded by his government and cannot get out.
The man says the Weather has predicted a terrible snowstorm and they have orders to leave early.
Marguerite is wary of conspiracy.
She says into the phone, “I cannot survive in this world unless I know I have my American way of life and can start from the very beginning. I have to work into this, starting from the time he was determined at age sixteen about joining the Marines, which we bickered back and forth, living in the French part of town.”
She says, “He read Robert’s manual day and night. He knew Robert’s manual by heart. And now he is unheard from in over a year, which I am convinced is not completely of his doing, however agents operate overseas. I am here to demand the substance of where he is.”
The man at the State Department says they are all leaving the office due to this predicted storm. It is apparently bearing down. The Weather says it could hit any time.
Marina loved hearing English spoken. It was exciting, an adventure of a sort. She hadn’t even known there was an American in Minsk. This was something fairly remarkable. The thing that people felt about America never went away.
She danced with Alek on the vast floor of the Palace of Culture. He was polite and neatly dressed, told her how pretty she was in her brocade dress and upswept hair. He spoke English to some of the other boys but only Russian to her, of course. She’d rarely heard English, didn’t know a word except song lyrics, Tarzan, Spam.
Marina herself had arrived in Minsk like snow off the roof, her uncle Ilya said. She was illegitimate, she was an orphan, she was drawn to people who were different. Ilya told the American she had breezes in her brain.
She saw Alek often. They seemed to shine together at the center of things. They made things theirs. A certain bench in the park, near the chess players, ordinary things, not unusual in any way. They fell in love the way anyone does. They were from different worlds, totally different cultures, but they were brought together by fate, Marina believed. Her heart began to beat in a different way.
They flattered each other, made each other seem unique and marvelous. It is the lie everyone accepts about being nineteen, which was Marina’s age when she met this unexpected man.
She threw over Anatoly, who looked like an ac
tor in the movies, and she threw over Sasha, who was wonderful in every way and therefore not for her.
Alek had a small lovely flat and listened to Tchaikovsky on the phonograph. He took Marina boating on Youth Lake. They were the same as anyone, completely ordinary, saying what people say. Every fact about their lives was precious. Marina’s weight at birth was a little over two pounds. Alek was in awe of this fact. It was a private charm, something about her to hold dear. He gestured with his hands, trying to find a shape for two pounds of precious life. Her eyes were blue. Her childhood name was Spichka, or Matchstick, for her spare frame and her tendency to flare up, to speak in abrupt excited phrases. These things they told each other were like stories in a book that changes every day, giving their love a quality of never ending.
He told her his mother was dead.
They talked about everything, the sun and the moon, a fly on a pane of glass. He hid in doorways when the cold wind blew. There was a killer wind that blew along the river.
They were marked by fate to be married and they went to the registry office, with spring coming on, only six weeks after they’d met. Alek brought her a cluster of early narcissus and she wore a short white gown with a grass-blade pattern. That night he thanked her sweetly for being a virgin.
She came home from work in the hospital pharmacy to find him doing the laundry or mopping the floor. He would not let her wash his work clothes. He was ashamed of the grime and sweat and did not like thinking of himself as a factory hand, a manual laborer, slotted to do a certain eternal task.
He tuned in the Voice of America every night at ten.
They had matching scars on their arms, his left arm, her right, both scars near the elbow, the same size and shape. A sense of destiny, or mirrored fate. He told her he’d been wounded in action, in Indonesia, in an operation against the communists. He would say nothing to her about the other scar, the one on his wrist.
