Oswald's Tale (7 page)

As they passed the market, Eddie said, “I want to buy you flowers,” and he picked up a bunch, and they went skipping through wet puddles. Their city was so cheerful. But all of a sudden, she saw her stepfather walking toward her, and she had to run into the nearest entry of an apartment house.

She told Eddie that if her papa had seen her, what would he think? He would not know it was the next thing to innocent. With Eddie it was play and caressing, petting, never any more than that. But she was ashamed of what her stepfather would think. He would probably believe she was a streetwalker. All those flowers, and out with a man so early that morning.

So she tried to go home and sleep, but Alexander came in and said, “Still in bed? Get up!” Then he said, “Get out of here!” And called her a whore. Then she was sure he had seen her. He said, “I do not want you in this apartment. Get out of my life.” And she said, “No, you cannot throw me out.” And he said, “You have relatives in Minsk. Just go.” Marina said, “I don’t want to leave. I’m going to complain to the city militia that you are cruel and rude and sending me away against my will.” He said, “Okay, see your militia, and I’ll tell you who your real father was.”

At that moment, he stopped himself and went out the door. That was it. She never did learn any more about her real father.

All this while, she kept seeing Eddie, who worked for a film studio in Leningrad, Eddie, from Soviet Georgia, who was dark and had a mustache. She liked him. She did not see him every day, and she had other boyfriends. But there was nothing big going on. She was very choosy.

Of course, she also had rough dates who would take her out for dinner, but at the end, she would manage to avoid them—so far. She just felt lucky to have a meal. Even excited. It was like you were balancing the meal against future trouble. You eat first, then you hold the man off afterward—a hard way to earn a meal. But she was so hungry, and yet was still a virgin. And she was still thinking of a white prince, a red carpet and flowers. It didn’t happen. It was always a roughneck.

Eddie’s last name was Dzhuganian, and he was very nice. She went over to his apartment one day to leave him a note, but when she asked for him, someone said, “Is that a man with a little boy?” So she found out that he was married and living in Leningrad with his wife. And she didn’t know what he did to excuse himself—maybe he told his wife that he was shooting a movie all night long. Maybe he was free this summer because he had sent his wife and boy out to a
dacha
and so he owned summer for himself. He was playing with her, and she wrote him an angry letter, and wouldn’t see him.

After that, she certainly felt too lazy to work. That was when she was staying with Irina, who took her out one night on a double date with a client, an Afghani, who tricked Marina into coming up to his hotel room. He said he was going right out again; would she come with him just for a minute and a bite to eat while he changed clothes. Then, he raped her. He took her by force, and that was how she lost her virginity. Afterward, he said, “I didn’t know you were a virgin. I want my money back.” That was how she found out he had paid Irina in advance. After this Afghani had put her out of his room, Irina said, “Well, what do you expect? Do you think you can go around with me forever, and eat, and do nothing for it?” And then Irina’s mother spoke to her as well.

She felt she was a fallen woman. Yet, that summer she also met some boys who invited her on picnics, and they spent time tramping through forests outside Leningrad, a big group with musicians and a fire. They would sing through the White Nights. Some of these musicians would hire prostitutes, but she stayed with the nice naive kids. One night, there was even a wild orgy at one end of this picnic, but she just sat and talked with the nice kids, and when morning came, everyone went for a swim—just a little kissing, that’s all. She spent an entire weekend like that, Saturday and Sunday, and when she came home she found herself thinking about her grandmother and how she was dead, and she had not even been writing to Tatiana before she died because she had felt so guilty about how she was living, but she had been receiving money from her pension and hadn’t written to thank her. Even in a letter, she couldn’t face Tatiana. She had failed her. It was horrible. She felt like a prostitute because she had been taking meals from men on dates. Now, out of stupidity, she had lost her virginity to that Afghani, and she didn’t have a job; she didn’t want to have a job—she wanted a good time. It was not what she wanted her grandmother to see. She wasn’t worthy of her love. Now Grandmother was gone, and she couldn’t even go to her funeral. She looked at herself in a mirror and asked, “What has become of me?”

So, when Irina’s mother shamed her for not bringing anything in, she decided that she must put herself together again. She found a job in a school cafeteria. She would clean tables and sweep floors after recess. One day, three or four boys came running in who hadn’t yet eaten, but she was still sweeping. They looked at her—they were younger than her, just kids, but wearing good uniforms, spoiled kids from elite parents—and they said, “What a pretty girl. And, look, she has a broom in her hand.” That howled through her mind. Here were these boys making fun of her. She wasn’t born to sweep floors. So, she switched to work in another school, and the principal there, a Mr. Nieman, liked her and took an interest in her and got her a job in a pharmacy, and she was enrolled again in a night school for pharmacists. She couldn’t believe how much had happened to her all in one spring and summer, but now was the time to live quietly, and for her last winter in Leningrad, now that she was working and back in school, she saw a good deal of a family named Tarussin and their boy, Oleg, who was an exceptionally gentle young person. She thinks she would have made a good wife to Oleg Tarussin, except that she liked his parents more than she liked him. Of course, she did like him, and very much, although not in a way where you could feel crazy about the fellow. But his parents loved her. She was the daughter they had never had. For the first time since her mother’s death, she felt loved again and time went by half peacefully compared to the summer before. Yet, when she graduated from pharmacy school, she wondered whether to go to Minsk. It would be too easy to marry Oleg Tarussin, and she did not think she could stay in Leningrad, not when memories were sharp knives. Besides, she was still seeing Eddie and he told her to go. She fell in love too easily, he said, and he feared she would get herself into real trouble if she remained. Soon after, another soccer player tried to rape her, and she didn’t get home until nine in the morning. She borrowed the ten additional rubles she needed for train fare, packed a bag, and left to go live with Valya and Ilya. It was true, she had decided. Leningrad was not the right place for her.

PART II

OSWALD IN MOSCOW

1

King’s English

From Oswald’s diary
¹
:

October 16, 1959

Arrive from Helsinki by train; am met by Intourist Representative and taken in car to Hotel Berlin. Register as student on a five-day Deluxe tourist ticket. Meet my Intourist guide Rimma Shirakova. (I explain to her I wish to apply for Russian citizenship.)

Rimma loved to speak English. Rusty now, she could say, but she would conduct, if you will, every word of this interview in English, and she could tell the gentlemen who were speaking to her now that back then, for the Soviet people, 1957 had been an exciting year. After much preparation, Moscow had opened at that time a festival to establish human relations between foreigners and Russians in Moscow. It was the greatest event for changing life in the Soviet, she explained. Rimma was twenty in 1957, a student at Moscow Foreign Languages Institute, and she met a number of new people and spoke to foreigners and taught English to children.

Freedom was very great in that year, you see. There were so many young foreigners and young Russians all together. Foreigners heard about it and wanted to come for visits. So, in 1959, Intourist was started to arrange all the work for tours and visas, and Intourist took on many guides, which is how Rimma would say she got into it.

First of all, new employees took courses on how to become good at their work. That was connected to studying relevant material that guides should use. For example, Rimma took examinations on how to show their Kremlin Treasury. That was in June of 1959, and those who passed were offered a job in July; most of them were her fellow students at their Foreign Languages Institute.

In September, most of these people, to use King’s English, were sacked. Only those like herself, who showed excellent retention of facts, were accepted for permanent work.

Come autumn and winter of 1959, there were few tourists, but in general, through 1959, there had been a good number of Americans, and a big business exhibition came and went in August. Rimma had worked with seventeen “boys.” That was how they introduced themselves: “boys.” They were governors from seventeen Southern states of America, seventeen big boys, all of them with cameras. And Russian people in those days had a picture of Americans never being without their cameras.

Rimma was slender then and had blond hair and was good-looking. Besides English, Rimma spoke Arabic, and one time she worked with a high delegation from the United Arab Republic. They were pleased with her, high ministers, very high level, all of them, and they kept telling her how she was very good.

At the end of this United Arab Republic tour, she took them one evening to see the Bolshoi, and their evening ended at eleven, time for Rimma to go home. Time for those Arabs, too! But suddenly they began asking where they could go next. She was shocked. “What do you mean?” she said. “Evening is over. You go to bed.” But they began saying maybe there were some restaurants (some late restaurants with women). She began to reprimand them: “How bad of you. You have shown me pictures of your wives, your children, you have such wonderful wives, and now you want to go somewhere with women—shame on you!” They might be high ministers from Arab countries—still, she scolded them and said, “We have nothing like this. What do you think of my country and of me?”

Next day, next morning, none of them spoke to her. Didn’t even say good morning to her. Her boss scolded her. “How could you dare? Do you know what kind of people you deal with?” What could she say? Was it in her character to say yes to such matters? She was young and she was blond and she could have been very good-looking but for a small growth like an eraser tip of a pencil on one side of her nose, what you call in English a wen!

Now, as part of her regular work, each morning she would report to Central Administration in the National. There, at that hotel, guides would be given a list of tourists coming to Moscow. One day in October of 1959, October 16, Rimma was given the name of a man she was now assigned to take around in Moscow for five days. When she met him, however, she was surprised. He had not only arrived by Deluxe class—but he was taking his whole tour Deluxe. Only rich people travel in such a class. The most wealthy! How many can come alone Deluxe to Moscow for five days? So, she was expecting quite another kind of fellow, some gentleman who would be like an equal maybe to her governors of seventeen Southern states, and they had not even been Deluxe. Only first class. Deluxe was two rooms to yourself, a suite. Naturally, she was expecting a middle-aged man who would be impressive. A
dandy
!

When she went, however, to the assigned section of the Berlin Hotel lobby to meet him, there was only a boy, slender, of medium height, wearing a dark blue three-quarter autumn overcoat of inexpensive material and military boots with thick soles. Ordinary boots. From her point of view, someone traveling Deluxe should not look like this, certainly not! And this boy was pale, very pale. She would say he looked gloomy and nervous—yes, nervous, very nervous. He wasn’t calm.

She introduced herself and gave a preview of the program. Intourist had group plans for people on excursions, but now there was only Rimma and this Deluxe boy, who was to have everything private. So she offered him a sightseeing tour. He spoke quietly, but at first it could have been a closed door between them. He didn’t seem to know a single word in Russian, so Rimma spoke to him in English, about obtaining tickets to this or that theatre, and she went down a list of what to tour with him, but he showed no interest in excursions. This first morning they went in a Volvo with a driver on a sightseeing tour around Moscow, and made stops. Their last one was Red Square, but the initiative for all of one hour and a half had been Rimma’s. He did not interrupt any of her tour stories; he asked no questions. Such an odd Deluxe tourist.

Then, their morning tour was over and he returned to the Berlin Hotel and had his mid-day meal alone. Rimma just said she’d see him a little later. She was planning to take him to the Kremlin that afternoon. There was something about him, something maybe unusual, but he was nice. He was polite and getting more natural.

Rimma was an only child, a native Muscovite, proud of it. She was born in Moscow, and her mother had been born there in 1904, even her grandfather, so on. So maybe she looked forward to showing this boy her city. Maybe to Tretyakov next day and she could describe the paintings there. But that afternoon, this first day, he began speaking about himself. They did not go to the Kremlin after all. He wanted to talk.

Naturally, she didn’t go to his suite: She would never do that. It wasn’t allowed. So they went out. It was warm, and they sat on a bench, and he repeated, “If you don’t mind, I don’t want to go on a tour.” Now, this was not against their rules; it was allowed, but it wasn’t considered a good idea.

Anyway, he began to say a few words about himself, that he was from Texas, had served as a U.S. Marine, and had decided to go and see this country, Russia. He had read, he told Rimma, that Soviet people lived good, useful, and very peaceful lives.

Now, in those days, Rimma was a great patriot, a very great one, she would say, so she was quite sure she agreed with him. She told him, Certainly ours is the best country, and you were right to come. She also felt that he was trying to get closer to her, because she was someone he could exchange information with. Not serious information, just talk about life. She was very enthusiastic that he liked her country, but she had never expected him to speak like this.

He started talking about how war was very bad because innocent people got killed, and as he talked he became more friendly, and she understood that he wanted to tell her so many things from his point of view.

Then he said that his real idea was that he didn’t want to return to the United States. There was no sense in his going back, he told her. He had already settled that in his mind. He was going to stay here. He gave reasons. To her, they sounded like good ones. He said that his mother had remarried and had another husband, practically had another family, so his mother was not interested in him. Nobody was interested in him there. And when he had served in the Far East, he had seen so much suffering, so many deaths, for which he blamed the United States. His country fomented unjust wars, he said, in which he did not want to take part. He gave her an impression that he had actually been in combat, fighting for his country, definitely gave her this impression, and he was sympathetic and believable to her. She thought he was quite right. It was certainly very strange that there was an American like this, but she was sure he was quite right. So she told him she shared his opinion, that there should not be unjust wars—certainly, it was unnatural to kill people. He said again he wanted to stay here. This was a proper country from his political point of view.

Rimma was surprised. Even shocked. It was not a simple situation. Not routine at all. Nobody in training had ever spoken about something like this. So she helped him to write a letter to Supreme Soviet and she had it delivered. Nobody asked her to; it was her young wish to help him. But later, when she spoke to her boss, a woman, and told this story, her boss was not happy. Her chief said, “What have you done? He came as a tourist. Let him be a tourist.”

Rimma was a little upset because she felt her chief was taking the easiest way. That was bureaucracy. For sure. But Rimma knew her people. In general, most people were slow. They did not want to be energetic. They would say, “My job is not a wolf, it won’t run away into the forest, so why should I hurry?” That was one prevailing attitude. But Rimma was also sure that her chief would get in touch with someone above her and they would know what to do.

I explain to her [Rimma] I wish to apply for Russian citizenship. She is flabbergasted, but agrees to help. She checks with her boss, main office Intourist, then helps me address a letter to Supreme Soviet asking for citizenship.