Oswald's Tale (26 page)

4

Honeymooners

Marina would say now that her main reason for getting married was to find someone to belong to, and to have a family. Marriage was holy. One entered it for life. So, of course, she wanted to come to her marriage with purity. Of course. In Russia it was a tradition that a man married a virgin, but with Americans she didn’t know how to read their feelings. Americans were a novelty. Maybe they wouldn’t care as much.

She could say this much again: Lee did like to laugh about how barbaric it was in peasant villages. Showing bloody sheets!

She remembers that in Leningrad, when she was fourteen years old, she would dream of getting married. Some white prince would come. No dirt, nothing. So, when she became—what would you call it?—a witness to life’s reality, she was not prepared. Probably, she said, it’s that way for every little girl.

After they were legally married at the license bureau, ZAGS, and a stamp was put on her passport, she happened to notice Alik’s date of birth. It was 1939. She realized then that he had been lying when he told her he was twenty-four. He was only twenty-one. She said, “If I knew, I wouldn’t have married you.” It was only a joke, but he said to her that he had worried whether she would take him seriously. After all, she had said that Sasha was only twenty and she was not about to marry babies.

For their wedding, Valya had prepared a feast: crab salad, salami, black caviar, red caviar, pâté. And then she had stuffed a fish with its own cooked meat, kept the skin whole and put all the fish meat back inside, but now, no bones. Not one. It looked like a real fish again. And yet you could slice it. Such a special effort.

Marina had already begged her aunt not to go through any Russian tradition of saying,
“Gor’ko, gor’ko.”
But as they sat around their table eating, somebody pretended to be choking on too much pepper, and so everybody started crying out:
“Gor’ko”
—which means bitter—and Marina turned red. In obedience to such custom, they now made her kiss Lee over and over every time somebody said,
“Gor’ko.”
Later, she danced with everyone, and then Erich Titovets and Pavel and Alik sang “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” Next morning, Valya walked right into their apartment and dropped a plate on the floor with enough noise to wake up ghosts. Then she said to Alik, “Russian custom.”

At her wedding, Marina had been embarrassed by Aunt Musya’s husband, Vanya, who got drunk. (Lee called him Wooser!) As usual, he couldn’t handle liquor. A Vanya! He crowed like a rooster, screaming away at the wedding party. Marina was embarrassed. “I thought, my new husband will ask himself: ‘What kind of family did you just marry into?’ It was very uncomfortable.”

That night, when they went back to his apartment, they discovered that Valya and Larissa had placed flowers all around their bed. Her nightgown was on a pillow.

They didn’t have a honeymoon. They just spent two days in bed getting accustomed to each other—what would you want her to tell? They were new. They couldn’t analyze everything. Talk a little, observe a little—bit by bit you go on; you don’t make any big issue. Little by little. When you read romantic books, it’s not enough; you want more. But sex was not romance. More like soiled clothes.

One thing: Lee was not bashful. He could walk around their apartment naked. As if it were nothing. That was surprising to her—that a man could be so comfortable before he got dressed. But she never said anything about it. For Minsk, however, he was some exhibitionist. She had just never experienced this American way. Lee was not even embarrassed to get up and go to the bathroom while leaving the door open. That was unusual. Marina was trying to find out what was expected of her. She did not know what her man wanted, so she had to learn.

Guys at Lee’s factory, she soon found out, were always talking about sex. Quite a big topic over there. That was why Marina never wanted to date factory boys—their mentality. When Alik would laugh at what they said, she would say, “Don’t tell them about our lovemaking. Don’t you dare.”

Alik’s first experience with sex had not only been with a Japanese girl, but he also said that he’d never had an American girl. Just Japanese and Russian girls. Marina wondered whether he felt that he was missing something. Maybe he should have had a girl from his own country first? No, Marina didn’t know what to expect during these first few days of marriage. She could say that she kind of lived in euphoria. Finally married, you know! And she had married an American. She had that stupid apartment she’d always dreamed about. God was smiling on her. Finally! A year or two before, she had been with Larissa and they’d been walking past this same apartment house. It was such a beautiful place from outside, with its high balconies between high white columns. Marina had pointed up to one and said, “I’d like to have that,” said it before she ever met Lee, even said to Larissa, “Do you know anybody who lives here?” Larissa said no.

May 6, 1961

Found us thinking about our future. Despite the fact I married Marina to hurt Ella, I found myself in love with Marina.

Maybe a week after their marriage, Aunt Valya said, “Let me see your pampered, manicured hand,” and all Marina could show were Polish fingers: Her nails were broken from cleaning stone walls on her balcony and washing their floor. For that one moment, she had said to herself, “Is this what married life is about? Broken nails? Oh my God!”

But for the first couple of days, since that was all they had off from their jobs and couldn’t have a honeymoon, they would stay in bed and not get up until late afternoon. A honeymoon was sexual; you explored. Marina felt as if now she was free to do what she wanted to do. She didn’t think about their problems in sex, and she didn’t want to talk about that, really. You expected fireworks, and it didn’t happen, and you thought maybe it’s supposed to come later. It never did. That was all right. But she didn’t know if what little was happening to her was all that was supposed to happen, and so in bed everything was a problem. She didn’t know what to do, and Lee was always eager-beaver. Later on, when Marina was tired or in a bad mood, she didn’t avoid him, just told him, “No, I don’t want to make love to you, because I feel used one more time. What for? Something there for you, maybe, but nothing for me.” Even if that was kind of insulting to him, he would try to handle it. “Come on,” he would say, “you know I love you.” He would play that he was a little boy and make jokes. Sometimes she would give in. She thinks he really liked sex, but she resents talking about it. “Nobody asks Jacqueline Kennedy what Jack Kennedy was like in bed.” And here she has to discuss such private things as what it was like to have a person inside you. There is nothing dirty about sex unless you let people watch—then it’s degrading. But she would say that no matter what their difficulties, people ask if Lee was a homosexual and she would say she never had any sense with Lee that he’d be partial to a man, never. Maybe he could be gay somewhere else, but not around her.

Lee liked to stand in front of his mirror and admire himself, that was true. “How unbashful he was,” said Marina. “He would admire himself. He was not tall, but he was well proportioned. He had beautiful legs. And he knew I liked them, so he would flirt. ‘Don’t you think I have gorgeous legs?’ he would say. Just begging for compliments. Kind of a joking relationship. Private, but of the sort people do have.” Her understanding: He really liked women. That was her interpretation.

When told how Lee went for months without trying to seduce Ella, never forcing her, Marina asked if it was possible that Ella was embarrassed to talk. “You know, I’m holier right now than I was then, know what I mean?” And then she thought, “Maybe he liked her so well that if she didn’t want him that bad, he wouldn’t push.”

Lee did tell her, and with a lot of admiration, about that beautiful Japanese girl who had been the first woman he knew. Marina was left with an image of a lovely Oriental blossom whom Lee still longed for. It made her jealous. Of course. There in his mind was a lovely woman. Was that to influence her? So that she would pay more attention to all kinds of sex? And learn new ways? She wanted to compete when Lee—always with great admiration—described all the sexual things this Japanese girl did to him, this unknown beauty.

5

Early Married Days

Valya thought Marina now a
dama,
not a girl but a young woman. When you get your position in society in Russia, you’re a
dama.
Once, after she was married, Marina said to Valya, “My husband may do factory work, but I never see him dirty. He comes back from his job as if he’s an engineer.”

Valya wanted Marina and Lee’s apartment to be just as neat as he looked, so she often came to help. Once, Valya even went over to wash their balcony, a hard job and dirty, a long job, and she had been at it for three hours when Alik came home from Horizon to have lunch. Marina was cooking, and put food on the table for him, but did not invite Valya to sit down. Later, she said to Marina, “I’m not hungry or poor, but it’s a tradition when you clean up for people to be offered something. Yet, there are some who sit and eat and don’t offer anything, okay, please!” Marina must have told Alik, because after that, whenever Valya visited, Alik was all over her saying, “Valya, do you want this? Would you like that?” Maybe they had been looking for an hour alone that day, but still, after you wash their balcony, you shouldn’t be treated like a servant.

From Marina’s narrative:
May was our honeymoon month . . . Of course we were both working but we had evenings after 5 o’clock and Sundays entirely to ourselves. We ate in restaurants, in the first place because I did not have time to cook dinner . . . and in the second place because I did not know how to cook properly . . .

He and I loved classical music. We had many Tchaikovsky records, as he was Lee’s favorite composer, and also Grieg, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schumann. Lee’s favorite opera was the Queen of Spades. In Russia, a film was made of this opera, a beautiful film. Lee went to it four or five times and at home I even came to be jealous of this opera. After work he would immediately start playing the record, not once but several times. [Also] we often went to the opera, theatre, the conservatory or the circus . . . and many of my friends envied the way we lived. Lee was very anxious to have a child and very grieved when the honeymoon was over and there was no sign of a baby.
¹

They wanted her to be pregnant right away. For the first month, nothing happened, and Lee and Valya were equally disappointed. Valya even said, “We were hoping you would have a child, but you’re probably going to be like your uncle, won’t be able to.” Said it after one month! Lee wanted to have a boy. He was going to call him David. Their boy, he assured Marina, would someday be President of the United States. And then, whenever Marina would go to the bathroom, at least when her period was approaching, he wouldn’t let her shut that door. He wanted to know for sure whether she was having a period. When she asked him why he didn’t trust her, Alik said, “Well, you work in a hospital. If you don’t want to have a child, you could have an abortion. So I want to know.” It didn’t hurt her feelings; she wanted a child too: She thought he was being stupid, but she brushed it off. She even said, “Well, leave the door open”—took it like a joke. She said, “Lee, I want a child as much as you. I’m not going to do anything foolish.” So, it was not such a big deal. It wasn’t like he stood there and said, “You must pee-pee in front of me”—no, it was more gentle. After all, late spring had come, and her mood was, “I’m going to have a child and I’m going to have a family right here,” and she wanted them to be as young and happy as they could be.

May

The transition of changing full love for Ella to Marina was very painful, especially as I saw Ella almost every day at the factory, but as the days and weeks went by I adjusted more and more to my wife men tally . . . She is madly in love with me from the very start—boat rides on Lake Minsk, walks through the park, evening at home or at Aunt Valya’s place mark May.

During the first weeks of their marriage, Lee would meet her at the pharmacy entrance and walk her home, and when evening came, Alik would go out on their balcony and look at sights far off with his binoculars. At night, he would wash the breakfast dishes, and on days when they had hot water, he would do their laundry. When Marina would climb up their entryway from Kalinina Street, she could hear him singing “Volga Boatmen” from four flights down. He wouldn’t be one for a choir, but he could sing with zest. A pleasant voice. And he was washing his own work clothes. He just didn’t want her near his dirty things.

One day, he was hammering a piece of furniture together and hit himself on his finger. She knew it hurt—would you believe it?—she was physically hurt for him. She really went all the way. She felt their souls touching in his pain. Of course, he also liked to be pampered. He had been like a little boy when she put that bandage on his finger.

She soon learned that he didn’t enjoy his job. He claimed that they resented him and his privileges. But she didn’t know how true it might be. Lee played with people. That she soon learned. Maybe he even played with her.

A few weeks after they were married, some letters arrived from America and in one was a picture of Marguerite Oswald. She was in a white nursing outfit, just sitting in a chair. “That’s my mother,” he told Marina. He studied the picture and said, “She’s gained some weight. As I remember her, she wasn’t that plump.” That was it. Marina said, “You told me your mother was dead.” He said, “Well, I don’t want to talk about my mother.”

She did not know how to accept that. He had said he was an orphan. Now, she thought to herself, “Stupid me! There I was believing late at night that it was a sign and God sent me an orphan like myself.”

From Marina’s narrative:
Sometime in the middle of June we were out on Lake Minsk . . . lying in the sun and swimming. That was a wonderful day [and] Lee told me that he was sure that . . . we would have a baby. I did not believe it, but a week later we were eating in a café and I fainted. I think this was the first sign . . . It was a great joy for us and for my aunt . . . but the doctors told me that I might lose the baby since I have Rh negative blood. Lee was very upset by this, but when he had his own blood checked, it turned out that he was also Rh negative. Only a very small percentage have Rh negative blood, and this very unusual coincidence—in which husband and wife were both Rh negative—pleased us very much.
²

Good signs are important. They enable you to forgive. You could call Rh negative fundamental. Maybe God had chosen Lee for a certain girl from Leningrad.

June

A continuation of May except that we draw closer and closer now and I think very little now of Ella . . .