As baffling as his anger were his repentances, for sometimes his fury departed quickly. Then he would burst into tears and beg Marina’s forgiveness. At the sight of his tears, she, too, would burst into tears, and the two of them would cling to one another and cry. Marina, of course, saw that Lee was in terrible inner turmoil. She had no idea what was causing it and told herself that perhaps he struck out at her because he had to hold himself in at work and she was the only person he could get angry at. She also told herself that she was to blame, that she brought on many of their quarrels, and that her punishments were the least she deserved. She continued to beg for affection—he had none to spare.
Marina, too, was at the breaking point, and her tongue lost none of its acerbity. Lee warned her to watch out, begged her not to egg him on. “You know my terrible character,” he pleaded with her after one of their fights. “When you see I’m in a bad mood, try not to make me mad. You know I can’t hold myself in very long now.” But Marina continued to lash out at him. Her sharp words probably brought on a few beatings, but they also helped keep her intact, helped her feel that she was still a human being in spite of humiliations that imperiled her fragile self-respect.
“You weak, cowardly American,” she would say to him, bitter at the choice she had made. “What a fool I was! I was afraid to marry a Russian because Russian men beat their wives. You! You’re not worth the soles of their feet. How I wish I had woken up sooner!”
Lee, of course, hit her. “I’ll make you shut up,” he said.
“Of course you can shut me up by force. But you’ll never change my mind. It’s better to be a drunkard than what you are. When a drunken man beats you, it’s one thing. When a sober one does it, it’s something else.”
Marina survived Lee’s beatings, she struggled to survive them, but what did not survive was her respect for Lee. She went on loving him, in a way. But she was beginning to see him as a sick man who needed help.
The crisis came on February 23, General Walker’s last Saturday in Dallas. Lee did not go to work. He was gone the whole day; his whereabouts and activities are unknown. He may have been spying on Walker, but he was not stalking him—the revolver had not arrived.
Before going out that morning, Lee has asked Marina to fix him something special for dinner, a Southern dish called red beans and rice. Marina had never heard of it. But Hungarian dishes have a good deal of rice, so she took her Hungarian cookbook off the shelf and pored over it. She found nothing helpful there and fell back as usual on Mother Russia. She put everything in a skillet and cooked it with onions.
Lee started scolding her the second he got home. He told her that she ought to fix the rice separately and then pour the beans over it.
“What on earth difference does it make?” she asked. “You mix the whole thing into a mess on your plate anyway.”
“I work,” Lee complained. “I come home, and I find you can’t even do a simple thing like this for me.”
“And of course I sit home all day with nothing to do but spit on the ceiling,” Marina threw down her cooking spoon, told Lee to fix it himself, and stomped out of the kitchen.
Lee came after her and ordered her to fix his dinner.
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll force you to.”
Marina stomped back into the kitchen and threw the whole dinner out.
The next thing she knew she was in the bedroom and he was about to hit her. “You have no right,” she said. “If you lay a finger on me, I’ll throw this at you.” She was holding a pretty wooden box, a present from a friend in Minsk. It was heavy with jewelry: Lee’s cufflinks and watch and all Marina’s beads and pins.
He hit her hard across the face, then whirled and started to leave the room. Marina hurled the box as hard as she could, and it grazed Lee’s shoulder. He spun around and came at her white with rage. His lips were pressed together, and he had an inhuman look of hate on his face. He hurled her onto the bed and grabbed her throat. “I won’t let you out of this alive.”
Just at that second the baby cried.
Lee suddenly came to his senses. “Go get her,” he ordered.
“Go get her yourself.” Another second, Marina thinks, and he would have strangled her. She had never seen him in such fury.
Lee went to the baby and sat alone with her in the next room for a long time while Marina lay on the bed and sobbed. She was shocked and ashamed. Why go on living if Lee would not spare her even while she was carrying his child? And why bear children to be witnesses of such a life? Lee did not treat her like a human being. For five minutes he was kind to her—then cruel. Why on earth had he brought her to America if he only meant to send her back? A hundred thoughts went through her head, then turned to apathy. The baby cried, and she scarcely heard. She went into the bathroom, glanced into the mirror, and saw bruises all over her face.
“Who on earth needs me?” she wondered. “The one person I came to America for doesn’t need me, so why go on living?”
She picked up the rope she used for hanging the baby’s diapers, tied it around her neck, and climbed onto the toilet seat.
Lee came in from the living room. A glance at Marina and his face became horribly twisted. Even at that moment he could not control his rage. He hit her across the face.
“Don’t ever, ever do that again,” he said. “Only the most terrible fools try that.”
“I can’t go on this way, Alka. I don’t want to go on living.”
Lee lifted her off the toilet seat and carried her gently to bed. He went back to the baby in the living room, with the door open so he could watch Marina. Then he sat beside her on the bed and tenderly stroked her hair.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do what I did. It’s your fault. You saw what a mood I was in. Why did you make me so mad?”
“I only tried to do to myself what you tried to do to me. I’m sick of it, Alka. Every day we fight, and for no reason. We fight over things so tiny, normal people wouldn’t speak of them at all.”
Lee lay down and took her in his arms. “I never thought you’d take it so hard. Pay no attention to me now. You know I can’t hold myself back.”
They both began to cry like babies. “Try to understand,” he begged. “You’re wrong sometimes, too. Try to be quiet when you can.” He started kissing her as though he were in a frenzy. “For God’s sake, forgive me. I’ll never, ever do it again. I’ll try and change if you’ll only help me.”
“But why, Alka, why do you do it?”
“Because I love you. I can’t stand it when you make me mad.”
They made love the whole night long, and Lee told Marina again and again that she was “the best woman” for him, sexually and in every other way. For Marina, it was one of their best nights sexually. And for the next few days, Lee seemed calmer, as if his attempt to strangle Marina had been a substitute for killing Walker. In conflict over his plan, frustrated by the failure of the gun to arrive as the day approached when Walker would be leaving Dallas, Lee had taken out his rage on Marina.