Then one day on a picnic they made love. It was a luminous day in June, cloudless and hot, with daisies and wildflowers in bloom. Alik was certain there would be a child after that. And a week later, standing at one of the marble-topped tables in the Café-Avtomat, Marina crumpled to the floor in a faint. It was the signal he had been waiting for. When they got back to their apartment building, he carried her tenderly upstairs and lowered her gently onto the bed. Sitting beside her, the tears streaming from his eyes, he told her for the first time that he loved her.
The next day he made her go to a doctor for confirmation. But the doctor threw up his hands and said it was too early. Shortly afterward, however, when he learned that Marina’s menstrual period was overdue, Alik took her in his arms and danced gleefully around the room. “My girl is pregnant. I told you so. I promised. I’ll be a father now.”
Marina did not know it, but her husband had been twice treated in the Marine Corps for gonorrhea.[5] Perhaps that is why he suggested it might be his fault when she showed no sign of pregnancy in the early weeks of their marriage. Perhaps, too, the fear that he might be unable to have a child played a part in his elation.
Once she knew that she was pregnant, a change came over Marina. She had enjoyed making love before, but now she was repelled by it. When Alik approached her for a kiss, she had to summon up strength not to push him away. She thought she had made a mistake getting married. By this time she had learned about the existence of Ella, and all her confused emotions burst out in the first serious quarrel.
It was an evening later in June, and Marina and Alik were strolling through the park. A band was playing. They were standing beneath a tree, and Alik asked for a kiss. She refused. He wanted to know why.
“I don’t know, Alka,” she said. “Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I don’t love you after all.”
“Do you want a divorce?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she replied noncommittally.
“I ought to have married Ella after all,” Alik said. “She at least loved me. Do you remember the morning after we were married—May Day? I went out on our balcony, and there was Ella on the street outside. She was crying. She left as soon as she saw me.”
“A fine proof of love she gave you,” Marina taunted. “Between you and her parents, she chose them. Poor Jewish girl. She was only crying out of jealousy, because someone took her little American away. She thought no one would have you.”
Marina sat on a bench, shaking with sobs, while Alik went off by himself and paced among the trees. When he returned, he said: “Look, it’s too late now. Suppose we did want a divorce; we’ve still got the baby to think of. Come on now. Let’s go to a movie. That’s enough of making each other miserable.”
But the movie was sold out and they ambled home through the park. People were dancing in a pavilion. “Let’s dance,” he suggested. Marina refused.
“You don’t know what you want,” Alik said, trying to reason with her. “People get that way when they’re pregnant. You’re not used to it yet. Things look bad to you right now. But you’ll get over it.”
Marina was unmollified. “You’re not even pregnant, and you think you made a mistake, too. You’re sorry you didn’t marry Ella.”
“I don’t care about Ella,” he said.
“Then why did you say you saw her from the balcony that day?”
“You hurt me, and I wanted to hurt you back.”
He spent the rest of the evening placating her. “I told you before that I used to go out with her. I even asked her to marry me. But she was scared. She hurt my pride. But I’m not in love with her. She’s gotten so fat it’s awful. She’d have gotten fat as a barrel if I’d married her.”
Marina was ready to make up. All she wanted was reassurance. “How did you know I wouldn’t get fat?” she inquired as she tumbled into bed. He reassured her, and the two of them made up.
— 8 —
Journey to Moscow
Less than three weeks after his marriage, in a letter postmarked May 16, 1961, Lee Harvey Oswald wrote for the third time to the American embassy in Moscow.[1] “…I wish to make it clear,” he said in the demanding tone of his earlier letters,
that I am asking not only for the right to return to the United States, but also for a full guarantee’s that I shall not, under any circumstance’s, be persecuted for any act pertaining to this case…. Unless you think this condition can be met, I see no reason for a continuance of our correspondence. Instead, I shall endeavour to use my relatives in the United States, to see about getting something done in Washington.
Oswald repeated his reluctance to come to Moscow for an interview: “I do not care to take the risk of getting into a [sic] awkward situation unless I think it worthwhile.” And he informed the embassy that he had gotten married. “My wife is Russian… and is quite willing to leave the Soviet Union with me and live in the United States.” He said, moreover, that he would not leave Russia unless arrangements were made for his wife to leave at the same time. “So with this extra complication,” he wrote, “I suggest you do some checking up before advising me further.”
At least two events may have crystallized Oswald’s resolve to return to the United States. Early in May, just after his marriage, he received a letter from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow rejecting his application for admission. It meant to Oswald that the road to a higher education in Russia was closed to him. It spelled the end of his hopes of escape from the dreary, provincial town of Minsk. He was doomed to remain a factory worker forever. So keen was Oswald’s disappointment that he did not tell Marina about the rejection until months later, and when he did tell her, he was still so disappointed that she got the impression that the wound was fresh.
On May 5, probably on the same day he learned that his application to attend Lumumba University had been denied, Oswald wrote a letter to his brother Robert in Fort Worth. He announced matter-of-factly that he had married but said nothing about wanting to come home. Nevertheless, Robert rightly took the letter as a signal that his brother had tired of life in Russia. He wrote a letter in reply, and they resumed their correspondence. In a later letter Oswald confided that he wanted to return to the United States but doubted that it would be possible. He also wrote a letter to his mother, the first in a year and a half.
A second disappointment came two weeks after his marriage when Oswald was excluded from the bus excursion to Leningrad. He often complained to friends about the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union. Apparently, he now felt that the many privileges he received as a foreigner were outweighed by the restrictions that were placed on him, for only a day or so later, he resumed his correspondence with the American embassy. As in the case of Ella Germann, a rejection seemed to demand an act of rejection in return. It was a response by Oswald that was to recur again and again.
Alik still had said nothing to Marina about his desire to return to the United States, despite the statement in his letter to the embassy that she was willing to leave Russia with him. It was, under the circumstances, an irresponsible statement for him to make. Fearful of what the Soviet and the American reactions to his request might mean for him, he was unconcerned about what such a declaration, made through the open mails where it could be seen by Soviet officials, might mean for Marina—pressure on her and perhaps even danger for her family. In fact, he did not tell Marina of his intentions until five or six weeks after he wrote to the embassy.
5
Testimony of Marine Captain George Donabedian, Vol. 8, pp. 311–315, and Donabedian Exhibit No. 1, Vol. 19, pp. 601–605.