Oswald's Tale

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

An Appreciation

A Note on Style

Volume One: Oswald in Minsk with Marina

Part I: The Adventures of Valya

1  Volchuk

2  Zyatouk

3  White Nights

Part II: Oswald in Moscow

1  King’s English

2  The Idiot

3  Rosa, Rimma, and Richard Snyder

4  What’s My News?

Part III: Oswald’s Work, Oswald’s Sweetheart

1  Igor

2  Developer

3  Alyosha

4  Oswald at His Bench

5  Echoes from a Ghetto

6  Twice a Hero

7  Parties at the Zigers’

8  In Love with Ella

9  Ella and Lee

10  Zdradstvy

11  Razbitoye Karito

Part IV: Marina’s Friends, Marina’s Loves

1  Yanina and Sonya

2  Neighbors

3  Larissa

4  Misha

5  Leonid

6  Inessa

7  Kostya

8  Yuri Merezhinsky

9  Anatoly

Part V: Courtship and Marriage

1  Alik

2  A Little Bit of Conquering

3  The Wedding Night

4  Honeymooners

5  Early Married Days

6  Back to America

Part VI: A Commencement of the Long Voyage Home

1  Remarks from the Author

2  Correspondence

3  Bureaucratic Soundings

4  Return to Moscow

5  French Champagne

6  Traveler’s Qualms

7  On the Observation of Intimate Moments

8  Doing the Floor

9  The Queen of Spades

Part VII: Fatherhood and Motherhood

1  Cruel but Wise

2  A Bomb Scare

3  The Good Boy, the Good Man

4  On the Turn of the Year

5  Pen Pals

6  An Addition to the Family

7  “There Are Microbes in Your Mouth”

8  Second Thoughts

9  “His Impertinence Knows No Bounds”

10  Farewell to Ella

11  Leave-taking

Part VIII: In the Anteroom of History

1  Across the Briny Deep

2  Homecoming

3  A Visit to the Organs

Part IX: Shock

1  Limbo

2  Veracity

3  The Most Degrading Moment in Her Life

Volume Two: Oswald in America

Part I: Early Years, Soldier Years

1  On Becoming an Usher

2  Mama’s Boy

3  Indian Summer, New York

4  Youth House

5  Macho Teenage Marxist

6  The Loose End

7  The Man Who Would Take Over the Team

8  Return to Moscow and Minsk

9  Maternity House

Part II: Charity in Fort Worth

1  Honeymoon

2  In the China Closet

3  Deep in the Heart of Texas

4  The Well-born Friend

5  Not in a Million Years

Part III: Dark Days in Dallas

1  Evenings in Dallas

2  Oswald’s Kampf

3  “I Refused to Tell a Lie”

4  Christmas and Red Caviar

5  Grubs for the Organism

6  Trouble at Work

7  In Order to Feel a Little Love

8  Hunter of Fascists

9  Stoicism, Majestic in Purpose

10  Waiting for the Police

11  Telescopic Sight

Part IV: The Big Easy

1  “A Terrifically Sad Life”

2  “He Walks and Talks Like a Man”

3  Forbidden Strings

4  Love, Heat, and Grease

5  Fair Play for Cuba

6  Atheism and Morality

7  Out of Omens Come Events

8  Fair Play

9  Picking Up the Pieces

Part V: Protagonists and Provocateurs

1  Protagonists and Provocateurs

2  Right-wing Adventurers

3  An Inexplicable Visit

4  A Nimble Solution

5  Mexico

Part VI: Denouement

1  The Road to Domesticity

2  The Shadow of the FBI

3  Pigeons Flew Up from the Roof

4  An Afternoon at the Movies

5  The Hour of Panic

6  The Return of Marguerite Oswald

7  The Octopus Outside

8  A Black Pullover Sweater with Jagged Holes in It

9  “He Cry; He Eye Wet”

Part VII: The Amateur Hit Man

1  The Amateur Hit Man

Part VIII: Oswald’s Ghost

1  The Punishment of Hosty and the Death of the Handler

2  In the Rubble of the Aftermath

3  Evidence

4  Character

5  The Widow’s Elegy

6  The Third Widow

Appendix

Glossary of Names

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

By Norman Mailer

Praise for Oswald’s Tale

Copyright

T
O
N
ORRIS, MY WIFE,
for this book and for the other fourteen that have been written through these warm years, these thirty years and more we have been together.

REPRESENTATIVE BOGGS
. Why did your son defect to Russia?

MARGUERITE OSWALD
. I cannot answer that yes or no sir. I am going to go through the whole story or it is no good. And that is what I have been doing for this Commission all day long—giving a story.

REPRESENTATIVE BOGGS
. Suppose you just make it very brief.

MARGUERITE OSWALD
. I cannot make it brief. I will say I am unable to make it brief. This is my life and my son’s life going down in history.

—from Marguerite Oswald’s Warren Commission testimony,
February 10, 1964

AN APPRECIATION

to Larry Schiller, my skilled and wily colleague in interview and investigation, for the six months we labored side by side in Minsk and Moscow, and then again in Dallas, feeling as close as family (and occasionally as contentious); and to Judith McNally, my incomparable assistant, whose virtues are so numerous it would weigh upon one’s own self-regard to list them—yes, to Schiller and McNally, a full and unconditional appreciation. Without them, there might have been no tale to tell.

A NOTE ON STYLE

The definite and indefinite articles are not employed in Russian. Nor is the verb “to be.” One would not say, “The man is in the room,” but rather: “Man in room.” (Which is why those Russians who do not command much English invariably sound brusque.) On the other hand, a construction like “Man in room” does tend to make you aware of the man and the room both.

One was tempted, therefore, to dispense with articles and the verb “to be” during the first half of this book, for it would have given an overpowering Russian flavor to the prose. A full effort in that direction would, however, have tortured the English language beyond repair, and so only a suggestion of this difference is present. Let me, then, wish you good reading and happy accommodation to small liberties taken with King’s English.

V
OLUME ONE

OSWALD IN MINSK WITH MARINA

PART I

THE ADVENTURES OF VALYA