Oswald's Tale (20 page)

January 3

I am miserable about Ella. I love her, but what can I do? It is the state of fear which is always in the Soviet Union.

January 4

One year after I receive the Residence document, I am called into the Passport Office and asked if I want citizenship (Russian). I say no—simply extend my residential passport, [they] agree, and my documents are extended until January 4, 1962.

EXTRA PAGE
(not included in formal diary)

Nellya, at first, does not seem to warrant attention since she is rather plain looking and frighteningly large, but I felt at once that she was kind and her passions were proportional to her size, a fact to be found out only after a great deal of research. After a light affair lasting into January and even February, we continued to remain on friendly but conventional terms throughout 1961 up till May when after being married, we no longer met.

This extra page is our only concrete evidence of his sexual life in Minsk before he meets Marina two and a half months later, on March 17, 1961. For the first fourteen months of his stay in Minsk, Inna Tachina and Nellya seem to be the only women with whom he went to bed.

Whether he was ever with men during this period is a matter that the KGB was not ready to discuss except by indirection, but then Stepan and Igor’s separate references were often contradictory, as indeed they might be, since one was interviewed in Minsk and the other in Moscow, and more than thirty years had gone by.

In response to a question about bisexuality, Igor Ivanovich said that Lee was not a clean man, and he did not refuse any situations that offered themselves to him. He had sexual contacts when he could find them, which was not often.

According to Stepan, however, Oswald didn’t exhibit any deviations. That was Stepan’s forthright statement. Before his marriage to Marina, they had observed that Oswald would “meet with a girl sometimes and take her home, and God knows what they did there. Sometimes he took her only to the nearest tram stop.” In that respect he led a normal, ordinary life, at least as they understood it by Soviet ways. If he was attracted to a lot of girls, that just meant he had what it takes—he was a guy. Otherwise, girls would have rejected him. “Besides, a homosexual reveals himself in his behavior,” said Stepan, “and in his interests, in his voice. Usually a homosexual has a thin voice, something feminine to it, and then, such a fellow is only interested in women in a formal way, but his eyes start blazing when he sees a man, especially—excuse me for saying it—when his butt is big. He is constantly showing up at public toilets, and often they perform their acts there. So a homosexual has certain constant, distinctive traits which can be used to flush him out, and we didn’t observe such traits in Oswald. I spent all this time thinking about traits because, before this, I had a case involving a homosexual and I knew a thing or two about such matters.”

PART IV

MARINA’S FRIENDS, MARINA’S LOVES

1

Yanina and Sonya

At work, there were people who were not without love for Marina. Yanina Sabela had been in the pharmacy at Third Clinical Hospital on Lenin Street for ten years when Marina moved from Leningrad to Minsk, and Yanina saw her as a very attractive girl, with a rich internal world, and well brought up. Strong-willed, yet quite open. Yanina had entered the pharmacy in Third Clinical Hospital when she was very young and so the difference in age between them was just a few years—Yanina was twenty-four and Marina eighteen—but all the same, Marina was very professional, and Yanina saw her as sophisticated despite her age. As for herself, Yanina felt she lacked a lot of social knowledge, like how to introduce yourself to people—there were gaps in her development. She’d been brought up in a provincial place in the Mogilev region of Byelorussia, but Marina, being from Leningrad, had had a different development. Even schoolchildren from Leningrad seemed to know more than people from anywhere else. There were so many museums in that city. All the same, Yanina was close friends with Marina and they shared a lot.

Later, after Marina had been working in their pharmacy for about six months, she and Yanina spent a weekend together out of Minsk with friends; perfectly all right—girls slept together in the same bed, so nothing wrong there—and they got close; they talked a lot. Yanina remembers hearing about how Marina’s stepfather used to scream at her. If he called her a prostitute, she was not; she was a normal nice person. Yanina could understand such situations because her father had also been very strict and sometimes screamed dirty words at his children, but Yanina just ignored such tirades. You know, among Russian men in small provincial places, you hear nasty rude words; so such accusations didn’t impress Yanina. She knew Marina better.

Sonya was born in Zabolat, a village 150 kilometers from Minsk, and her father was in charge of a farm; her mother had been a milk-girl on that farm. Of eight children, Sonya was born first, and her family, being Byelorussian, had her baptized, but then, in these villages people were always being baptized in an Orthodox church, and sometimes even with a ceremony. What it really meant was that guests were invited to your house afterward and you laid out a special table of food and then neighbors and relatives were invited to celebrate. A Party member wouldn’t show up unless he or she was also your relative. Actually, they didn’t pay too much attention to whether there had been an actual baptism or not. Main idea: If a baby is born, let everybody come and celebrate.

In her late adolescence, after her secondary technical education, Sonya got an assignment to the pharmacy at Third Clinical Hospital, in Minsk. It was there that she met Marina, and Sonya recalls that Marina always dressed a little better than others. She was receiving a salary no larger than anyone else’s, but Marina’s aunt provided her with food, and Marina certainly spent her money on clothes. All the same, she was kind, not greedy. She had a ruble, okay, someone wants to borrow money, she would give it—she was not greedy. If you asked her, she wouldn’t think, “Oh, maybe I’ll need it later.” She would just offer it. She was straight: She would tell you the truth to your face rather than whispering it behind your back. She was even not afraid to talk directly to people above her. She would just say, “I need this for my job.”

Pharmacy work was from nine until four, and there were about fifteen girls on duty, assigned to different specialities. Sonya, for example, would do everything that needed high sterilization; Marina dealt mostly with eye prescriptions; but each could do another’s job if there was a need for that in a given day. Marina was a good worker, very good on such matters.

2

Neighbors

Ilya had a fellow officer in MVD, Mikhail Kuzmich, a doctor, who lived across the hall from Ilya and Valya, and when it came to singing arias at parties, there were not many who had a better voice. Misha Kuzmich was full of energy as a young man. He received splendid marks in medical school. When not yet twenty years old he was already a military doctor and was sent to the Western front in the Great Patriotic War.

Afterward, he was both a professor and an academician—a little of everything, he said. Since he was speaking loudly to his interviewers, Misha’s wife, a full-faced, good-looking blond lady named Ludmila, also a doctor, began to tease him gently. “He is being so lively,” she said, “because Misha thinks that when he raises his voice, you will be able to understand Russian.”

Ludmila is the older sister of Larissa, who was Marina’s dear friend when Marina and Larissa were young adolescents and Marina would come to Minsk for visits. These sisters, Ludmila and Larissa, had a father who had been repressed in 1937. He was arrested on Ludmila’s birthday, the second of February. Once, years later, she received a postcard on that date from Yalta, sent by her brother to congratulate her. He added, however: “I remember everything connected with this date.” So did Ludmila. It had left her open to other people’s feelings.

Sometimes when she visits her brother, she asks to read her old letters. He has kept a large album of such correspondence, with snapshots, and when she goes through the book that concerns 1937, she begins to cry. At that time she had three older brothers. She was a fourth child, born after the three boys, who would all love her dearly, and while Ludmila’s parents usually celebrated everyone’s birthday, hers was considered special. On the second of February, guests came—children, then grown-up people—and they were all waiting for her father to come back from work on this day in 1937, but he did not arrive. At night, there was a knock on the door, her mother opened it, and here was her father under arrest, accompanied by men from the militia. Her father apologized in front of everybody for having to make such an entrance.

At that time he was in charge of a huge meat factory in the far east, a very high position. Nonetheless, these militia-men began their search while everyone was still present—moved furniture at will, opened drawers. Their guests disappeared.

In prison, her father was not tortured, but neither was it easy. He may have been mistreated less than others since he was a well-known person, yet they would still put him on his knees in a corner and he would have to remain there through a night, or they would throw tobacco dust in his eyes. Nonetheless, it was not equal to that severe attitude with which they dealt with other people in this same prison. Mostly petty humiliation.

It developed that some people still respected him. So, a message was delivered to her mother at one o’clock one night, to tell her to visit the prison. Her husband had a message to give. His note said: “In a few days they are going to take me to my meat factory, where they want to prove I’ve committed certain acts, and I need the following documents to defend myself . . .” He had been accused of sending out a boxcar load of spoiled meat.

Fifteen months after his arrest, they not only allowed him to go home, but put him back on his job and he worked hard for many years, and then Marina’s friend Larissa was born in 1941, fourteen years after Ludmila, and the war with Germany began.

Despite his high position, her father was not a Party member, although he knew what was going on. Ludmila remembers that whenever he heard a piece of propaganda on their radio which he found impossible to listen to, he would say to her, “Hi, darling—get me our potato masher.” It was his way of saying, “If we could only smash such nonsense to bits!” He hated the war, but then, Ludmila’s father was so much in love with his three boys that on the day war commenced, he began to cry, and said to her, “I’m going to lose my sons.” He had become established again as an influential man, and so was able to keep his youngest boy, who had just graduated from high school, out of induction, but that son went voluntarily, and in four months was killed in combat. When the notice arrived, Ludmila’s mother was so upset that she didn’t tell her husband. Whenever she could contain her grief no longer, she would go over to her neighbors in order to weep so that at home she could behave as if nothing had happened. But Ludmila’s father grew worried: Why for four months had there been not one letter? Yuzik was this son’s name, and Ludmila’s father went to his Party Secretary at work and started to complain: “Why are there no letters?” And that Party Secretary replied, “What do you mean, no letters? Don’t you know about Yuzik?”

Her father came home and had a heart attack, and in four months he died. Then another brother was sent to the front and was killed too. Ludmila’s mother had now lost two sons and a husband. Two sons and a husband lost within a year and a half. Difficult years.

More than four decades ago in Minsk, when Misha, then age twenty-nine, had already become an expert in radiology, he was asked to come in at two in the morning to the office of the Deputy Minister of Health. Stalin did not sleep at night; ergo, there was a rule that government offices also stayed open and only ceased working in accordance with when Stalin went to bed. So, 2:00
A.M.
was not an unusual hour to be asked to appear. Misha had no idea why he had been summoned, but once he arrived, he soon encountered a special expression. It went: “There is an opinion that exists that you should . . .” Whichever official you were seeing would then state the details of this opinion that existed. Of course, you never knew who was behind such a suggestion. It might even be a Minister of the Republic, but in any case the particular high official that you are talking to only says, “There is an opinion that exists . . .” It is as if your entire country has come to the conclusion that they must adopt this opinion. All you can be certain of is that it has come from persons higher than yourself. In this case, the opinion that existed was as follows: “We wish you to become the head of our Medical Department in Ministry of Internal Affairs, Byelorussia.” Which meant, of course, that Misha would now be moved over to MVD.

He was, as far as he was concerned, too young for such a job. It needed someone with more experience in organizing matters. So Misha tried to tell the Deputy Minister that he didn’t want such an assignment; he was a doctor and wished to remain one. He didn’t want to be a boss. The Deputy Minister said to him, “We’ll give you an apartment.” Misha said, “I’m not asking for an apartment. My wife and myself, we have a room, fifteen square meters, downtown.” But this Deputy Minister of Health said, “You’re a young family. You’re going to have children.”

When Misha still didn’t agree to take this job, the Deputy Minister said, “Dr. Kuzmich, why don’t you want to be promoted? We’re promoting you.” Misha repeated: He just wanted to follow his profession, be a doctor. The Deputy Minister said, “Since you are a very independent person, you can organize your life so you can do both, organization
and
research.” He spent forty minutes trying to talk Misha into it.

Now, sitting next to this Deputy Minister was a man in charge of all personnel, and at last, he was told: “Try to see who is available for this job. If there’s anybody in Byelorussia better suited than Misha, I’ll offer it to him. If no one is better, don’t even come back to me. Misha will be appointed.”

After the interview, Misha took the personnel man aside and said, “Try to find somebody,” but he replied, “I’ve looked through all my lists already; I’m not going through that again. It’s easier for me to draw up the papers. You’re going to be appointed tomorrow.” Thereby was Misha drafted into MVD, and by 1953, he was working with Ilya Prusakov.

Misha could inform the interviewers that Prusakov was the department head in charge of furniture production by prisoners, which meant being able to coordinate the availability of work gangs in the local gulags with the arrival of materials, and that was a real task, considering how timber came from one part of Russia, paper from another, and he had to bring in these materials on schedule so that every day when his workers came on, the necessary materials would be there for them—paint, timber, glue. To have it all in place was an achievement.

Since Misha and Ilya had what amounted to equal rank in MVD, it was not extraordinary that they ended up living in apartments approximately equal in floor space and situated across the hall from each other. In addition to his being a neighbor, however, Misha liked Ilya; he considered him a special person. How to put it?—he was not like others. One could respect him. Ilya never talked too much, knew his value, was tall, thin, dignified, educated. Not snobbish, but very intelligent. He had a long fine nose. Knew his value. Misha would say that Ilya was proud of his job, and never late for it, a professional officer. In his Army career, he had won many medals, and not just for good behavior, no, Ilya had bona fide combat medals, an Order of Lenin, a Red Star Order, which is very high; he had even been nominated to be a Hero of the Soviet Union for participating in a major assault on the Scree River. Indeed, at Ilya’s funeral in 1989, his Combat Red Banner had been carried in on a pillow. It was a Soviet custom for the last rites of a military man who had been awarded a fine medal.

Ilya in person, however, never put his medals on his jacket. And he was ready to contest the decisions of his bosses if he felt they did not obey proper principles.

Of course, there was no question who was boss of his household. Misha could give one good example: On a hot summer day, after they’d finished work and were on their way home, Misha had said to Ilya, “Let’s go and buy a watermelon,” but Ilya replied, “Oh, Valya will buy it.” Since Valya didn’t work at a job, he wasn’t about to tote a watermelon home.

Of course, there were sides to his friend that Misha never came to know too well. At this period of time in their Ministry of Internal Affairs, most bosses were simple people; having returned with decorations after the Great Patriotic War, they were given high positions. But Ilya was not only well educated; he even had a copper plate on which was engraved
ENGINEER PRUSAKOV
. Before the Revolution, many people used a professional title and put it up on their door, but when Ilya did that, people didn’t like it. They mocked him behind his back, until he obtained a sense of the general feeling and took his nameplate off his door.

Living across the hall, Ludmila saw Valya frequently, and she could see that her neighbor did not have an easy life. She took care not only of Ilya but of his sister Lyuba, who also lived with them, as did Ilya’s mother, and those relatives acted just a little superior. Valya was not a person to complain to her neighbors, but Ludmila did hear about it—her apartment was that rare place where Valya could be open about unhappy matters.

What offended Valya most was that she was treated like a
domrabotnitza,
a woman you hire to keep your house in order. Most often, Ilya was not tender with her, or warm, and it was clear that Valya suffered. Years later, it changed. When his mother died and Marina left, Ilya realized then how much older he was than Valya; in his last ten years, he became very ill, and then they were a good deal closer. He came to realize how important this woman was to him and how she took such fine care of him, went to such lengths to buy food that was especially good for him.

All the same, all through those earlier years, Valya took pains to keep herself in good form; she even looked secure and self-confident; she was, in fact, confident that her family was not going to fall apart. She was never afraid Ilya would leave her for anyone else.

At that time, in the early Fifties, there was no TV, so generally, their two families would gather by a round table in the evening and Misha would read books aloud. Tatiana was often present. She usually wore dark clothes and was always decently dressed, a very religious person who went regularly to church and kept an icon in her room. Ilya might be a Party member, but he never objected to that, because this icon was just for her room, her private domain.

Tatiana’s funeral took place at her church, a special service. Valya organized everything, and of course, Ilya was there, and Tatiana’s daughters Lyuba and Musya. Tatiana had been friendly with a young priest, with whom she had a deep spiritual relation; when she was dying, she invited him to her home for a talk. Nothing happened to anyone because of this. In fact, Ludmila and Misha also went to this church on this day, and were not afraid to enter. But Ludmila cannot remember anyone else being buried in such a fashion.

All of Ilya’s friends from the Ministry of Internal Affairs came—everybody, in fact, but the highest bosses. There must have been thirty people at this funeral. No one cried or showed emotion. Maybe they couldn’t believe they were there in church.

After Tatiana’s death, slowly but definitely, Valya came to be in charge of everything. When Ilya gave parties, they were good parties, with exceptionally good food cooked by Valya; she was certainly his hostess. But Valya did confess once to Ludmila that while there were very nice people at her gatherings, she could never get quite the same nice people who came to Ludmila’s parties, as, for example, the Minister of Culture of Byelorussia. More or less, she had the same guests each time; Valya would even end up wearing her one best dress every time—maybe try to put a new flower on it.