“I thought you’d forbid it.”
“It’s your right to do as you please,” he said to Marina’s astonishment. On the night following the baptism, Lyolya Hall was injured in an automobile crash and was in the hospital more than a week. But Marina was not left all alone. Gali Clark (Mrs. Max Clark) came by nearly every day and drove her to the grocery store, where she not only paid for groceries but also bought Marina a carton of cigarettes. A chain-smoker, starved for cigarettes by her disapproving husband, Marina was grateful. But she was intimidated by Gali Clark. Gali was a “society” person, from the “old aristocracy,” Marina commented later. Manners meant a lot to Gali, and at times Marina could not tell what she was thinking. Complicated as Marina might be herself, she preferred a proteletarian directness in other people. She wanted to know where she stood with them.
Alex Kleinlerer, a friend of Lyolya Hall’s, also came every day during his lunch hour to check up on Marina. At 1:30 in the afternoon he would wake her up by banging on the front door and ringing the bell. Inside he found chaos—dirty dishes in the sink and baby clothing everywhere. He did the cleaning and sometimes came back at suppertime. He and Marina took turns cooking; he would cook a Polish supper one night, she a Russian supper the next. Once or twice he took her and the baby out to eat.
Lee came by bus to Fort Worth for all or part of every weekend to see Marina and the baby. They missed each other, and their weekend interludes were comparatively idyllic. But Lee’s attitude toward Mrs. Hall’s hospitality was paradoxical in view of his own Spartan style of living. “This is your house. I give it to you—all!” he would announce to Marina, sweeping his arm grandly about the entrance hall upon his arrival on a Friday. “Isn’t this a fine house I bought you?”
Marina remembers that he was “always running to the icebox,” a thing he never did at home when he was paying for the groceries himself, to fix a Coke or a sandwich. “A full icebox!” he would exclaim delightedly before he pounced. He was fascinated by the kitchen gadgets, like the electric can opener, the sort of thing that Mrs. Hall and the other Russians thought he scorned. And at night he made love to Marina while watching another “gadget,” the bedroom television set, a distraction that helped slightly his problem of premature ejaculation. Afterwards, the two of them slept in separate bedrooms, a luxury that Lee said made him feel “like an aristocrat.”
Lee took an acute dislike to Alex Kleinlerer, a short, dark man of about forty who sported a black mustache, spoke with an accent, and dressed with European flair. The facts of Kleinlerer’s relationship to Marina were innocent, but it was no secret that he dropped by Mrs. Hall’s on weekdays when Lee was not there. Kleinlerer’s feelings for Marina were intensely, and obviously, protective. Lee was furiously jealous.
On Friday, October 26, Mrs. Hall returned from the hospital, and on Sunday Alix and Gary Taylor picked Lee up outside the Dallas Y and drove over for the evening in Fort Worth. The major topic of conversation was Cuba. President Kennedy had learned of the buildup of Soviet missiles on the island and demanded their withdrawal. The previous Monday the president had declared a naval blockade of Cuba, and for nearly a week the world had been teetering on the brink of thermonuclear disaster. Lee observed that in Dallas people were hoarding food in anticipation of war. Marina was certain that her country would never go to war over a tiny nation like Cuba, and Lee agreed. He had been to Russia, he said to Mrs. Hall, to Kleinlerer, and the Taylors, and he was sure the Soviet government would not start a war. When the missile crisis was over, Marina was greatly relieved, for throughout that ten-day period, she had felt torn between her own country, which she continued to love, and the kind Americans with their nice-looking president, Mr. Kennedy.
If Lee and Marina agreed about Russia, it seemed as if they disagreed about everything else. Mrs. Hall later said that Marina “was stubborn, and he was just cruel to her, and they would argue” over “nothing, just nothing and he would beat her all the time.”[7] Kleinlerer for his part thought that Lee “treated Marina very poorly. He belittled her and was boorish to her in our presence. He ordered her around just as though she were a mere chattel. He was never polite or tender to her. I feel very strongly that she was frightened of him.” Kleinlerer was also critical of the way Lee had dumped his wife and child on Mrs. Hall and failed to contribute to their support. Lee “did not express any thanks or evidence the slightest appreciation,” Kleinlerer said. “He evidenced displeasure and contempt. He acted as if the world owed him a living.”[8]
On Friday night, November 2, the telephone rang in Kleinlerer’s apartment. It was Marina, announcing that Lee had found them an apartment and she was moving to Dallas that weekend. Lee came abruptly on the phone. He “directed” Kleinlerer, in Kleinlerer’s words, to come to the Halls’ the next day to discuss the move, since the Oswalds’ possessions were in the garage and Mrs. Hall was away in New York.[9]
On Saturday, soon after Kleinlerer arrived, he witnessed a memorable scene. “Oswald observed that the zipper on Marina’s skirt was not completely closed,” Kleinlerer later recalled.[10]
He called to her in a very angry and commanding tone of voice just like an officer commanding a soldier. His exact words were “Come here!” in Russian, and he uttered them the way you would call a dog with which you were displeased in order to inflict punishment. He was standing in the doorway. When she reached the doorway he rudely reprimanded her in a flat imperious voice about being careless in her dress and slapped her hard in the face twice. Marina had the baby in her arms. Her face was red and tears came to her eyes. I was very much embarrassed and also angry but I had long been afraid of Oswald and I did not say anything.
By what appears to have been a bit of foresight on Mrs. Hall’s part, only Kleinlerer had a key to the garage. His presence during the removal of the Oswalds’ goods the following day was therefore a necessity. The Taylors drove over from Dallas to help, and Lee and Gary went off and rented a U-Haul trailer. But there was trouble when Lee started to load it, for Kleinlerer recalled that there were “several instances in which I had to intervene when Oswald picked up some of Mrs. Hall’s things to place in the trailer. I could not say whether this was deliberate or inadvertent, except that there were several instances.”[11] Lyolya Hall’s wariness had not been misplaced.
The apartment Lee had found for them was at 604 Elsbeth Street, in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Marina had not yet seen it, and when they arrived that afternoon, she and Alix Taylor reacted identically. “It was terrible,” Alix says, “very dirty, very badly kept, really quite a slum.” Outside, the place was “overrun with weeds and garbage and people.”[12]
Marina did not want to move in. She said the place was “filthy dirty—a pigsty.” Lee thought they could fix it up. They were still arguing when Gary and Alix left to return the trailer. It was their second drive to Fort Worth in behalf of the Oswalds in a single day, a round trip each time of nearly three hours. As they were leaving Lee thanked them for helping him with the move. “It was a very brief thank you, and that was that,” said Alix.[13] It was the only time she ever heard him say it.
On the first night in their new apartment, November 4, Marina stayed up till five in the morning, scrubbing everything in sight. Lee helped for a while. He cleaned the icebox, then left about ten in the evening. He had paid for a room at the Y, he said, and he might as well use it. But since the YMCA has no record that he stayed there after October 19, it is likely he spent a final night in whatever rooming house he had been living in for the last two weeks.