Oswald's Tale (41 page)

PART IX

SHOCK

1

Limbo

Katya remembers shock. For everybody at Horizon. She couldn’t believe it had happened. He was just a young boy with a running nose. When it was cold, you could always see his running nose. And suddenly he killed this American President? Other men in her factory were stronger than him, much stronger. He was like that, small.

At Horizon, people did speak about it a little, but it was something that happened far away, and in a few days, representatives from the Organs came over and told them it was best not to talk about Oswald. Forget him. Best to forget him. Best for all.

Back in Moscow, when Yuri and Galina Belyankin heard that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald was suspected of killing Kennedy, they didn’t pay any attention. They didn’t know him as Lee. It was only a few days later, when
Izvestia
published a photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald, that Yuri, taking his newspaper out of his mailbox downstairs, saw it, ran upstairs, came in on his mother and Galina, and said, “Girls, I think this is our acquaintance.” And he recalls very clearly his mother crying out, “Alik, Alik, Alik.”

As he puts it, “By a strange twist of fate, I went that night to shoot Mikoyan’s departure for Kennedy’s funeral,” and he remembers, “My friend and I worked together, and we did Mikoyan’s departure. It was late at night at Vnukovo Airport.” As they were driving back, his friend said to him, “That was your last shot. Now, the Organs will pick you up.”

At that time, Yuri’s name was on a special security list. There were only a few cameramen allowed to go to Red Square for parades and other occasions where they could photograph people like Khrushchev. Yuri would say that no one in Russia would believe that Kennedy could be killed without the cooperation of security forces—it’s not possible.

After the assassination, Stellina’s mother gathered together every last photograph that Lee had taken and tore them up. It was an awful time for Stellina, something terrible. She couldn’t believe it. She sobbed. Her husband said, “See what happens? You shouldn’t work in Intourist. Now our whole family’s going to have to pay for it.”

In fact, no one ever approached her. Not in thirty years did anyone, official or unofficial, ever ask her to talk about Lee Harvey Oswald. But in December 1963, she and her family were overcome by an immense fear that something terrible would happen, that she had gotten herself tangled up in some sort of horrible international affair. They didn’t even stay around Minsk long enough to hear rumors and gossip about Oswald. “We have an expression in Russian,” said Stellina. “When we are very much surprised, ‘we even sit down.’ So when my mother and I heard this news on our radio that John Kennedy was killed and Lee Harvey Oswald was involved, we sat there in our armchairs. We didn’t move. I still remember that great fear. It captured me and my family. Then came further information that American witnesses to this assassination were in accidents and bad things happened to them. So my family lived for a long time in this great fear.”

Although it was not easy for Stellina to leave, since she had spent her whole life in Minsk—was even there through the German occupation—she was afraid a lot of fingers would be pointed. People would say, “She was walking around with Oswald, she was friendly.” If there had been any women in his life, he had done all that behind closed doors, but she had walked openly with him through public streets.

Only in 1977 did Stellina return to Minsk, and then only after she had buried her husband. She thought, “Well, you know, it’s probably quiet. It’s fourteen years.” Besides, in 1976, her daughter had enrolled at Minsk University. But for all that interval, they had lived in Vitebsk, where she worked as a teacher. She tried during those years not to think about it and was afraid to ask herself the question, “Could my Alyosha have killed Kennedy?”

She had an answer: “I saw his goals. He was interested in women, he wanted to achieve everything easy, he didn’t want to invest time or go through hardship. For example, he didn’t want to study. I even went to the Institute of Foreign Languages and negotiated with their President and made certain efforts to help him, but he was never really serious, just wanted attention.

“In Czech there’s a saying that you can find good in anything—you can even find good in a car crash, because at least you’re somewhere in the newspapers. It’s better to be spoken about badly than not be spoken about at all. I think even if he was told he had to kill President Kennedy, he would never stop to think what it would bring to the world, how it would influence his life and the future of his family—he would just say, ‘Oh, I’ll kill Kennedy and I’ll achieve this attention.’”

Rimma had always known she could hurt his feelings and so she never did. “I could paint a portrait of him as someone who thinks too much of himself but doesn’t work to become the person he wants to be. You should know what kind of person you are. The most important thing for Alik was that he wanted to become famous. Idea number one. He was fanatic about it, I think. Goal number one. Show that he was different from others, and you know, he achieved this goal.”

Rimma felt that Alik was connected somehow with the crime, but never killed the American President. He was only somehow connected with it.

The permanent effect of knowing Lee Harvey Oswald, she would say, is that ever since 1963 she has been afraid to visit the United States. No longer is her motto
ad astra per aspera—
through adversity we reach the stars.

Sasha’s impression of Lee Oswald is that he could never have assassinated Kennedy. He was a person who would not kill a fly. When Sasha heard about the event, his emotional reaction was: “It cannot be this man. It was some manipulation.” He thought that because Oswald came from the Soviet Union, somebody in America used this fact and manipulated him, but Oswald was a decoy. Really, it was more interesting to talk about Marina.

Now, thirty years later, thinking of his life experiences, and how he has lost his hair and is almost bald, Sasha sees his own past differently. He thinks women can keep many secret lives, but at that time he was a blind kitten, blinded by love, and saw no black holes. But he would like to say: “If you see Marina, give her my regards. I have the best feelings for her, despite all the bad.”

Albina thinks that maybe the Zigers did not play so nice a role in Alik’s life. He’d been treated with curiosity and respect when he came to the Zigers’ home, but he was always hearing negative thoughts promoted about Russia. She thinks that influenced Alik, even though he had an apartment, free medical services, privileges, and everything good. So, she thinks that had it not been for these Zigers, maybe he wouldn’t have even thought about leaving her country. Maybe he would have stayed. She can’t say that she thought he was a happy person, because he obviously had secrets and they were hidden, but all the same, when that assassination took place, she couldn’t believe it was Alik. Even now, inside herself, she cannot believe it. She certainly wouldn’t say whether she thought he was a spy, because she can’t say—he was just an acquaintance. Didn’t know him, really, because he was strange. They were still friends, but he never called her, and never told her he was going to get married. Didn’t even invite her to his marriage, didn’t stay in touch. That was strange for her. She wouldn’t say, however, that she felt jilted. There’s a song in Russia that says: “If your bridegroom goes to another bride, you never know who’s lucky.” She laughed. She had been thinking, actually, about another kind of life with him. She had an aunt in Crimea who lived in a warm place by the Black Sea, and she and Alik had talked about going there to live with her aunt so that they could lie in warm sun by the seaside with fresh fruit to eat. She believes if that had happened, he would never have gone to America, and would never have killed President Kennedy. And maybe they would have had a bigger apartment later on—you never know what will happen.

After the assassination, they were all worried at the pharmacy. “What will Marina do, being so lonely and with two children? How is she going to live financially; how will she manage?” They were certainly worried.

Pavel was offended when this Warren Commission presented Lee as an underdeveloped mentality. Very offended. Pavel didn’t like the idea that somebody who was not stupid was being shown to the whole world as if he were.

What with the time difference between Dallas and Minsk—eight or nine hours!—Pavel happened to be out with young students at a large dancing party. He had been acting as the disk jockey. He had his tape recorder, and was putting on different kinds of music; then, suddenly, information came over their radio—Kennedy was killed. He listened to the Voice of America and it said that Lee Harvey Oswald, a person who lived in Dallas, was being arrested.

For years, Pavel kept collecting all kinds of different articles on this subject. He could never accept it as a fact. Reading more and more about it, however, he decided that one person could always make another do anything. You can break a person, and you can certainly change a person by force. In Pavel’s opinion, Lee Harvey Oswald is not Kennedy’s murderer but was somehow involved in a plot. Because, after all, Lee was no angel. He could be a part of somebody’s plot.

After Lee was killed by Ruby, Pavel mailed a letter to Marina giving his condolences. Next morning, KGB was at his door. That was November 26, 1963. He was taken to their office by trolley bus. He was not so important a criminal that they were going to send a car. He remembers that he had on a Chinese blue coat, a scarf and cap, and both men who came for him were dressed in regular street clothes, but then KGB people only wear their uniforms when on parade, or in a coffin.

They went through a side entrance, up crazy stairs to the second floor, and from there he could look out a window and see a bookstore. He didn’t know whether he’d ever get back to that street outside. Maybe it was the worst emotional moment in his life. His letter to Marina had sympathized with her feelings; now, he was a criminal. Only later did he understand that by writing such a letter he had truly scared the Organs. His letter might influence international relationships: Somebody in Russia was sorry for the wife of this man who had killed Kennedy.

They let him sit in a chair. They were very polite; they didn’t beat him. They were KGB, after all. He was sitting in a room with a big table, and there were a lot of officers and bodyguards around, maybe seven people.

They started by telling him: “In our country, only representatives of the people can send sympathies. You are not a representative of our people. You have no right to express sympathy. That’s one thing. You have lost your political vigilance. You have become politically short-sighted. If you don’t want somebody to write the laws of our country on your back, if you want to see some sky again, then stop doing stupid things. Speaking of that, how are you related to Marina Oswald? Did you sleep with her?” They would ask him other questions, then go back to that: “Ever sleep with Marina?” For some reason that interested them. They might accuse him once more of losing vigilance, but that was only an excursion. Then they would come right back with something like, “Why did you write this kind of letter if you didn’t sleep with her? Are you crazy?”

They went with him to the post office, and he had to fill out a document saying that he wanted his letter back. So, Marina never received his last communication to her. In fact, he thinks KGB already had it, but needed him to request it back in order to give formal proof that they were properly honoring the Geneva Convention.

Before they let him go, they told him not to speak on this subject. That became Pavel’s largest reason for leaving Minsk and going to study at Tbilisi, in Georgia. Half of the radio factory knew, after all, that Lee Oswald was his friend, so how was it possible that he wouldn’t talk about it if he stayed? In fact, one or two people actually said, “We hope you didn’t mention our names while you were interrogated.”