"Will they put him on trial?"
"This is almost certain."
"Will they execute him?"
"I don't know."
"He'll get the firing squad, won't he?"
"This is not correct to assume."
"That's the way it's done, isn't it? They shoot them here."
Smiling. "Not so much anymore."
"Let me talk to him."
"Not a good idea."
"I could lecture him on the virtues of life in the Soviet Union. Making radios for the masses."
"The masses need radios so they won't be masses anymore."
"I have an idea I've been thinking." He paused to assemble the dramatic words. "I want to go to Patrice Lumumba Friendship University."
"A wonderful place no doubt. But it happens to be in Moscow and I don't think this is the right time for you to live here."
"Alek, how do I get ahead? I want to study. The plant is dull and regimented. Always go to meetings, always read the propaganda. Everything is the same. Everything tastes the same. The newspapers say the same things."
"All right, this much. We will think about further schooling for Lee H. Oswald."
"I will wait to hear from you. I depend on it."
"Tell me, personally, for my own enlightenment, is Francis Gary Powers a typical American?"
It occurred to Oswald that everyone called the prisoner by his full name. The Soviet press, local TV, the BBC, the Voice of America, the interrogators, etc. Once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used. You were officially marked, a chapter in the imagination of the state. Francis Gary Powers. In just these few days the name had taken on a resonance, a sense of fateful event. It already sounded historic.
"I would say a hardworking, sincere, honest fellow has found himself in a position where he is being crushed by the pressure exerted from opposite directions. That makes him typical, I guess."
He spoke these words in Russian and saw that Alek was impressed.
From the Historic Diary.
The coming of Fall, my dread of a new Russian winter, are mellowed in splendid golds and reds of fall in Belorussia plums peaches appricots and cherrys abound for these last fall weeks I am a healthy brown color and stuffed with fresh fruit.
my list birthday see's Rosa, Pavil, Ella at a small party at my place Ella a very attractive Russian Jew I have been going walking with lately, works at the radio factory also.
Finds the approach of winter now. A growing lonliness overtakes me in spite of my conquest of Ennatachina a girl from Riga
New Years I spend at home of Ella Germain. I think I'm in love with her. She has refused my more dishonourable advanis
After a pleasent handin-hand walk to the local cinima we come home, standing on the doorstep I propose's She hesitates than refuses, my love is real but she has none for me. (I am too stunned too think!) 1 am misarable!
He talked to his friends about Cuba, surprised to find they weren't passionate on the subject. Cuba was a situation he could easily get heated about and it was steady news in the English-language Worker, on local radio and the BBC. Mikoyan signs a trade pact with Che Guevara. Russia sends heavy arms. Ike breaks diplomatic relations.
Chocolate was expensive. These people had a vicious sweet tooth. Always a crowd at the local confectionery. Life was small things. Chocolate, a record player, a meal at the automat.
His friends had trouble with his name. They didn't feel comfortable saying Lee. It sounded Chinese or just didn't fit right on the tongue.
He told them to call him Alek.
Postcard #4. Washington, D.C. It is January 21, 1961, the day after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, and Marguerite Oswald is in Union Station looking for a telephone. She has just traveled three days and two nights on a train from Fort Worth, borrowing on an insurance policy to pay for the ticket, wiping out her bank account to buy a pair of shoes, traveling all this way sitting up-not enough cash for a roomette in the sleeping car. This is an angry, tired and frustrated woman. Letters to her congressman unanswered. Phone calls to the local office of the FBI unreturned. Telegrams to the State Department. Letters and calls to the International Rescue Committee. The State Department talks to the International Rescue Committee but nobody wants to talk to her. Is it really so strange that she uses the word conspiracy? She is only trying to analyze a whole condensed program of things that are not correct.
The White House switchboard tells her the President is in conference.
She throws another coin down the slot.
The State Department switchboard says Secretary Rusk is not available right now but anything they could do for her, etc. etc. The operator is a Negro woman and Marguerite used to live in a mixed neighborhood of Negroes and whites on Philip Street in New Orleans when she was growing up, and played with Negroes, and lived next door to a lovely Negro family, so she finally gets connected, after a lot of back and forth, to a man who seems to be talking from an office instead of a switchboard. There is a silence around him and he says he is an aide and asks her politely what the trouble is.
"I have come to town about a son of mine who is lost in Russia."
She tells the man she is not the sobbing-mother type but the fact is she is getting over a sickness and she doesn't know whether her son is living or dead. He is somewhere abroad working as an agent of our American government. He has the right to make his own decisions, she says, but there is a good chance he has become stranded by his government and cannot get out.
The man says the Weather has predicted a terrible snowstorm and they have orders to leave early.
Marguerite is wary of conspiracy.
She says into the phone, "I cannot survive in this world unless I know I have my American way of life and can start from the very beginning. I have to work into this, starting from the time he was determined at age sixteen about joining the Marines, which we bickered back and forth, living in the French part of town."
She says, "He read Robert's manual day and night. He knew Robert's manual by heart. And now he is unheard from in over a year, which I am convinced is not completely of his doing, however agents operate overseas. I am here to demand the substance of where he is."
The man at the State Department says they are all leaving the office due to this predicted storm. It is apparently bearing down. The Weather says it could hit any time.
Marina loved hearing English spoken. It was exciting, an adventure of a sort. She hadn't even known there was an American in Minsk. This was something fairly remarkable. The thing that people felt about America never went away.
She danced with Alek on the vast floor of the Palace of Culture. He was polite and neatly dressed, told her how pretty she was in her brocade dress and upswept hair. He spoke English to some of the other boys but only Russian to her, of course. She'd rarely heard English, didn't know a word except song lyrics, Tarzan, Spam.
Marina herself had arrived in Minsk like snow off the roof, her uncle Ilya said. She was illegitimate, she was an orphan, she was drawn to people who were different. Ilya told the American she had breezes in her brain.
She saw Alek often. They seemed to shine together at the center of things. They made things theirs. A certain bench in the park, near the chess players, ordinary things, not unusual in any way. They fell in love the way anyone does. They were from different worlds, totally different cultures, but they were brought together by fate, Marina believed. Her heart began to beat in a different way.
They flattered each other, made each other seem unique and marvelous. It is the lie everyone accepts about being nineteen, which was Marina's age when she met this unexpected man.
She threw over Anatoly, who looked like an actor in the movies, and she threw over Sasha, who was wonderful in every way and therefore not for her.