I Am A Patsy! I Am A Patsy!
		    by George De Mohrenschildt
		      edited by David Reitzes
		               1998






Editor's Note:

This is the manuscript that George De Mohrenschildt was writing at the time 
of his death. It has never been published, but the House Select Committee on 
Assassinations reproduced De Mohrenschildt's original typewritten manuscript
photographically in the twelfth volume of the Hearings appendices.(It's also
available for downloading at Deanie Richards' JFK Place.) 
It is not presented to support John Armstrong's theory, which it doesn't, 
particularly, but to offer an unconventional look at Oswald -- Harvey 
Oswald in Armstrong's narrative -- from a sympathetic point of view.

It has been edited for spelling and grammar, and occasionally copyedited
for clarity. The author's meaning has in no instance been altered, nor
has material been deleted, and only in rare cases rearranged for the
sake of form. Readers familiar with the original may be dismayed by the
lack of European flavor left in the writing. My intention was to present
the manuscript in as "professional" a form as possible without making
the sort of structural changes for which an editor would normally be
responsible; it has not, therefore, been "edited" in a professional
sense. Nevertheless, it should not be quoted for evidentiary purposes,
and pagination has not been maintained for consistency of source
citations. For the sake of Internet distribution, control characters
have been omitted, and author's emphasis is indicated with capital
letters in lieu of italics. The editor does not endorse the factual
accuracy of the material.


Preface in Haiti

I am a patsy! I am a patsy! These last words of my friend, Lee Harvey
Oswald still ring in my ears and make me think of the terrible injustice
inflicted on the memory of this "supposed assassin."

November 1963 was fairly uneventful in Haiti-no shootings and no
invasions. My young geologist Alston Boyd and I had worked in our office
located on Avenue Truman in the center of Port-au-Prince. Since we
started very early in the morning to avoid the infernal daily heat, our
daily chores were over at 2 pm. This office occupied a large room of a
Quonset building belonging to the Haitian government and we were kept
there virtually incommunicado since it contained government maps and
other "strategic information."

Alston and I drove to my house overlooking Port-au-Prince in the area
called Tonton Lyle and a block away from the presidential retreat, then
we ate and took a siesta like any self-respecting Haitian. Then later
the afternoon we dressed and went to the reception at the Lebanese
Embassy.

The usually animated streets of the capital seemed deserted. "I feel
trouble in the air," said my wife Jeanne. The air was balmy, the
soldiers and the tontons macoutes were absent and we could not hear any
shots. We greeted the Lebanese Ambassador and joined the crowd. George
Morel, head of the Pan-American Airways in Haiti came up to us
immediately. "Didn't you know your president was killed?" He asked in a
strained voice.

At first we thought he was talking about the President of Haiti, Dr.
Francois Duvalier who was my nominal boss in Haiti. Seeing our blank
expression, Morel explained. "President Kennedy was assassinated today."
I hoped that it wouldn't happen in Texas, especially in Dallas. But
Morel summarily explained the situation.

Gloomily we filed out of the Lebanese Embassy, where people did not seem
to be too badly concerned about President Kennedy's fate, got in the car
and drove away. "If he had his tonton-macoutes around, this would not
have happened," I said angrily, and this was my first serious criticism
of our services supposed to protect the President of the United
States.

We drove to the American Embassy, located near the sea-shore and not too
far from my office. The doors were wide opened and two marines stood
there on both sides of a book where the American residents would sign
their names as a gesture of reverence to the dead head of state. Having
signed our names, we were the first to have done it, we drove to the
house of an old friend of mine Valentin (Teddy) Blaque, an attache at
the Embassy.

Teddy's house was similar to ours, but more elaborate, with a large
terrace overlooking the sparkling bay of Port-au-Prince. Several mutual
friends stood around, looking at each other with stunned expression, and
seemed to ask the same question: "Why him?"

"For the fist time we had a president who was young and energetic. And
he was trying to solve the problems of the world," said Jeanne sadly,
holding back her tears. "And he had to go . . ."

The beautiful view seemed funereal to us as we stood there silently.
"And in Dallas," I mused aloud, "why there? A conservative and somewhat
provincial city, but successful and proud of its success. We knew the
Mayor -- a charming man --and many city fathers."

"But who did it?" I asked Teddy.
"I just listened to the radio and a suspect was arrested already," he
said.

Before he mentioned the name, I thought of Lee and his rifle with the
telescopic lens. Could it be Lee? No it was impossible.

And driving back home, in stunned silence, we thought of Lee and the
predicament he was in. But since the official version had it that Lee
Harvey Oswald was the main suspect, we made our deposition at the
Embassy. We did know him and we were aware of the fact he owned a rifle.
We would be happy to testify what we knew about him and about our
relationship with him and his wife. Be we did not believe he was the
assassin.

Then we learned that a letter was sent by someone influential in
Washington to the official of the Haitian government to drop me from the
payroll and to exile me as fast as possible. Fortunately I had good
friends and the latter did not happen. And later, little by little, we
were ostracized by the United States Ambassador Timmons, then by the
American businessmen and government employees, with whom we had been on
very good terms and, finally, came the news of the investigation of all
our friends and even acquaintances in the United States.

Then came the man with the white teeth and a flannel suit, an FBI agent
trying to scare us off. At last, after a long time, we were officially
invited to come to Washington and help the Warren Commission in their
investigation. Although we could contribute very little, we still
accepted to go to Washington and testify. Although our depositions were
supposed to remain confidential, all the three hundred paged of
irrelevant conversation were printed and promiscuously distributed.
Actually our depositions were longer than Marina's and Mrs. Marguerite
Oswald's put together! Why?

We assume two reasons -- to waste taxpayer's money and to distract
attention of the American people from the people involved in the
assassination of President Kennedy. All the gossipy, futile stuff
related to our private lives, half of it not relevant to Oswald --
boring and useless. And all this because my wife and I liked Lee Harvey
Oswald and tried to defend him, and because Lee said before he died, "I
liked and admired George De Mohrenschildt."

Getting to know Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife

Early in the summer of 1962 the rumors spread out among the Russian
speaking people of Dallas and Fort Worth of an unusual couple, the
Oswalds. He was supposedly an ex-marine, an unfriendly and eccentric
character, who had gone to Russia and brought back with him a Russian
wife. He had lived in Minsk where I had spent my early childhood. And so
I was curious to meet the couple and to find out what had happened to
Minsk.

Someone gave me Lee's address, and one afternoon a friend of mine,
Colonel Lawrence Orlov, and myself drove to Fort Worth, about 30 miles
from Dallas. We drove over the dreary miles which smelled like sewage
that separated the two cities. Texas does have lovely open spaces, but
here they were degraded and polluted. After some searching, we found a
shack on Mercedes street in a semi-industrial, slummy area near
Montgomery Ward.

I knocked, and a tawdry but clean young woman opened the door. I
introduced myself and the colonel, giving a reference the name of George
Bouhe, from whom I obtained the address. George was an elderly refugee,
very friendly, the father superior of all the Russians in the Dallas
Fort Worth Area. So this was Marina Oswald.

To Orlov she was beautiful, notwithstanding bad teeth and mousy blond
hair. I did not find her very attractive, although she had a certain
charm and she spoke beautiful, melodious Russian -- so different from
the language used by us who anglicized our language and bastardized it
with foreign intonations and words.

Marina offered us some sherry and said that Lee would be over soon. We
spoke, a little fooling around; she had a pretty good sense of humor,
but the opinions she expressed seemed trite to me. And then entered Lee
Harvey Oswald, who was to become so famous or so infamous. He wore
overalls and clean workingman's shoes. Only someone who had never met
Lee could have called him insignificant.

"There is something outstanding about this man," I told myself. One
could detect immediately a very sincere and forward man. Although he was
average-looking, with no outstanding features and of medium size, he
showed in his conversation all the elements of concentration, thought
and toughness. This man had the courage of his convictions and did not
hesitate to discuss the. I was glad to meet such a person and was
carried away back to the days of my youth in Europe, where as students,
we discussed world affairs and our own ideas over many beers and without
caring about time. Lee was looking tenderly from time to time at Baby
June. He loved her. We shook hands and left.

Driving back the colonel mused, "She is so charming and young!"

"But I found the ex-marine so much more interesting," I said. My friend,
the retired Air Force colonel, resented Lee and his offhandedness, his
ironic smiles, and especially his ferociously independent. spirit. All
his sympathy went to Marina, the poor Russian refugee.

We spoke English first and then, somehow, we switched to Russian. Lee
spoke it very well, only with a slight accent. Marina did not say very
much.

"Doesn't your wife speak any English at all?" I asked Lee.

"No, and I don't want her to know English. I want her to continue
speaking her own language. Russian is beautiful and I don't want to
forget it." And he added with deep conviction, "Russian literature is
marvelous and the people I met in the Soviet Union were so warm and nice
to me. Yes, I made many friends there," he added thoughtfully.
"And how about the Soviet government?"

"Well, that's another story. The trouble with me is I always look for an
ideal which probably does not exist."

"Maybe your friend does not understand Russian," said Lee, looking at
Colonel Orlov. "Let's speak English then. You know I was a Marine and
have respect for the brass," he smiled, and added a few kind words to my
friend.

And then it was time for us to go. "My wife speaks Russian also and she
would like to spend some time with you Marina, and the baby of course,"
I said.

"I would like to but it will depend on Lee," Marina answered humbly.

"I am sure Lee will let you go and will come himself." A bond of
friendship was already formed between the two of us.

First meeting with Lee

Lee called me a few days after our trip to Fort Worth. "Marina and I
will come over tonight, if you don't mind," he said.

"Maybe I could drive to Fort Worth and drive you?" I asked.

"No, thank you, we will come by bus," he answered laconically.

And here they were, Marina, Lee and the baby June. We lived at the time
in a pleasant area called University Park, a few blocks from the
Southern Methodist University, a conservative stronghold. Both my wife
and I were fairly free at the time and welcomed our guests, so different
from the local society. Jeanne liked Marina immediately and offered to
help her with her English. "Yes, I have to know the language," Marina
agreed, and then added unexpectedly, "People already asked me why I
liked Lee," and her eyes darted about the furniture and decoration of
our rather modest home, "and I answer them, why did Lee like me?"

Jeanne liked this humble remark and her sympathy for Marina increased.
In the meantime Lee and I sat on a comfortable sofa and talked all
evening. Naturally I do not remember the sequence, although I recorded
what I remembered a few years later; mostly I asked questions and he
answered them. Naturally I wanted to know what made him go to the Soviet
Union, and he answered me by telling me of his youth in New Orleans.
Ever since his childhood he had been keenly aware of social and racial
injustices. Instead of playing basketball or baseball, like any other
red-blooded American youth, he read voraciously. Among the books he read
was Marx's Das Capital which made a deep impression on him. Ironically,
he said he borrowed this book from the Loyola University library.

"What did you like in it?" I remember asking him.

"It made clear to me the intolerable fact of the exploitation of the
poor by the rich."

"But," I said, "Lee, you must have seen it all over the world: the weak
and the poor are exploited everywhere by the powerful and the rich.
Listen to this: Two dogs meet on the cross-point between East and West
Berlin. One dog is running away from capitalism, the other from
communism. The capitalist dog asks, 'Why do you run away!' 'Because I
can eat but I cannot bark. Why are you running away?' 'If I bark I
cannot eat,' answered the capitalist dog."

Lee laughed and answered with a joke he heard somewhere in Minsk. "As
you know," he said, "Russians grab all they can from the satellite
countries. So one day at the meeting of the Communist party in Rumania,
one of the workers stood up and said, 'Comrade Secretary, may I ask you
three questions?' 'Go ahead.' 'I want to know what happened to our
wheat, our petroleum, and our wine?' 'Well,' said the Secretary, 'it's a
very complex economic question. I cannot answer it immediately.'
"Well, a few months later the workers are holding the same type of a
meeting and another comrade raises his hand and says, 'Comrade
Secretary, may I ask you four questions?' 'Shoot,' says the secretary.
'I want to ask you what happened to our petroleum, our wine, our wheat,
and also what happened to the comrade who asked the three questions last
time?'"

We both laughed. "At least here we are not being sent to a concentration
camp," I said.

"You are wrong," answered Lee seriously. "Most of the convicts in
American jails are political prisoners; they are victims of the
system."

I later read similar opinions in several liberal books, and Lee was way
ahead in thought of all of them; this was over fourteen years ago. I
remember concluding this conversation by telling Lee, "If you want to be
a revolutionary, you have to be a fool or to have an inspiration. And
your actions will be judged by the success or failure of your life."
Lee agreed. What I liked about him was that he was a seeker for justice
-- that he had highly developed social instincts. And I was disappointed
in my own children for their lack of such instincts.

Incidentally, I remember some details pretty well because I made note of
them later, and also made tapes of my recollections fairly soon after
the assassination.

That night Jeanne served a Russian dinner which Marina found delicious
but Lee hardly touched. He was ascetic in his habits, was indifferent to
foods, and didn't like desserts. In the meantime, baby June slept
quietly in bed all wrapped up. Lee looked tenderly at her often. That
night we learned a lot about him -- he neither drank nor smoked and
objected if others, especially his wife did so. Since neither my wife
nor I smoked and we drank very little, he considered us on his side.
Jeanne was appalled finding out that baby June hadn't had any of the
injections usually given to a child. Also, Marina would pick up a
pacifier from the floor, then try it herself before putting it in June's
mouth. Unfortunately, she had infected teeth at the time, so the baby
was exposed also.

My wife had high ideas about hygiene, so she was outspokenly critical.

"Your infected teeth have to be removed as soon as possible," she told
Marina. When Marina objected that she didn't have any money and couldn't
speak English, Jeanne promised to help her.

After dinner Lee and I went back to the sofa and renewed our
conversation.

"I served in the Marine Corps not because I was a patriot, but because I
wanted to get away from the drudgery and to see the world," admitted
Lee.

"Did you like the service?"

"Not particularly. But I had time to study and to read, and indeed we
traveled a LOT."

"You told me you lived in Japan. How did you land there?"

"Just an accident of the Marine Corps duty. The military duty was boring
and stupid. But fortunately I moved around, and began visiting places
where youngsters meet and established contacts with some more
progressive-thinking Japanese."

"And this," said Lee thoughtfully, "is what led me to Russia eventually.
I also learned there of other, Japanese ways of exploitation of the poor
by the rich -- semi-feudal, industrial giants which act
paternalistically yet exploit the workers, proletarians. The wages in
Japan were ridiculously low," he added.

"Well, it's changing now," I said. "Say, Lee, it's in Japan that you got
your discharge from the Marine Corps?"

Lee did not like to elaborate on this touchy subject: "I had to work to
support my mother." But it developed later, as we all know, that he did
not go back to the USA to support his mother but changed his mind and
instead went to Russia. He obviously used the money obtained at his
discharge for this trip. He first went to Western Europe then drifted to
the USSR via Finland if I remember well. Later on, Lee's honorable
discharge was changed to undesirable, and he hated to talk about it and
considered it unfair to him. This explains his hatred of John Connally
who was Secretary of the Navy at the time of this change of Lee's
discharge. But that day he did not discuss this subject, and went on
talking about Russia: "I got to Moscow and stayed there until the
Russians had confidence in me and gave me a permit to work." He did not
mention that he tried to commit suicide in desperation and cut his
wrists.

Marina took part in the conversation. "Lee, you threw your passport in
the face of the American consul and you said that you denounced your
citizenship," she said.

Later Lee talked to me about his ordeal in Moscow but not this time. He
continued talking about his impressions of Minsk because he knew I was
interested in this subject. He gave me a general description of the city
I knew from my early childhood. "I was assigned to work there without
any particular reason, in a TV factory -- possibly because I had a
little electronic training in the Marines," he said.

"Tell me more about the countryside," I asked him.

"Swisloch river is pretty clean, we used to go by row-boats to the
nearby forest to picnic on weekends. The forests are beautiful there:
huge pine trees, clean grass, full of berries of all kinds."

I remembered the cathedral, several other picturesque churches, and the
main building -- GRU, NKVD, KGB, police headquarters, where my father
spent several months and where he almost died of starvation and was
finally sentenced to life exile in Siberia. But these were childhood
memories, and resentment on my part had disappeared. Lee have me a
perfect description of all these landmarks; they were still there,
unchanged. But there were many new factories built, one of them in which
he worked.

"Did you like your job?"

"Not particularly, but the pay was sufficient, about a hundred rubles a
month -- an average for the Soviet Union. I could live on it. My
apartment and all utilities were furnished by the factory for a nominal
fee, as well as medical insurance, etc."
He gave me the prices of bread, produce, milk, and such, which were
reasonable, and of clothing, which were outrageously high. "Sometimes I
used to run short of meat, but you know, I am not a big eater; it was of
no importance to me."

Marina listened in and gave more precise information, especially
complaining about clothing and shoes. She was a practical one.

"You must have been somewhat privileged," I said, "being a foreigner;
but how did the other workers live in Minsk, the Russians?"
"Not too well. Usually one roof for a couple, and community kitchens and
lavatories," he admitted. "This led to quarrels, gossip, jealousy -- a
rather dismal situation. But what does it matter if everyone is in the
same boat, if everyone suffers? No rich exploiters like here; no great
contrasts between the rich and the poor."

"Butter and meat were out of my reach," said Marina bitterly, "but you
foreigners could afford these luxuries." She was ready to continue
talking, but since she was from Smolensk, a town I was not familiar
with, I asked Lee to talk more about Minsk. To me his descriptions were
most touching.

That night Marina announced that Lee was going to be laid off from his
job in Fort Worth at Leslie Welding Company, if I remember correctly. It
was a poor job anyway -- minimal wages, long hours, unhealthy conditions
-- but Lee did not complain. He never complained; it was Marina who was
constantly dissatisfied. The air of American prosperity bothered her;
she was envious of other people's wealth or well-being. Lee's mind was
of a stoical, philosophical type. That's why, I guessed, he had gotten
along so well with the other Russians he met in the Soviet Union.
Russians do not mind to suffer, and even go hungry if they can spend
entire nights talking and speculating on some esoteric matters.
Next time the Oswalds came to visit us, we began speaking of Minsk
again. I reminisced that when I was five years old, my father used to
take me to the forest, and I helped him as well as I could in his
awkward efforts to cut down a big pine tree. It was a tough job for my
father, who had never been a physically able man, and he constantly hurt
himself. Once he jammed his finger so badly that the bone broke and the
finger remained useless for the rest of his life. Surprisingly, I grew
adept at that sort of thing and quite able with an ax.
"Is that lovely forest north of town still in existence?" I asked Lee
and explained exactly where it was.

"Yes, we used to go there frequently by bus with my fellow workers. We
took food along and spent the whole day talking freely. I explained the
United States to them and they informed me about life in Russia."
Lee generally did not complain about his life in Russia but Marina did
very frequently -- sincerely or not, I do not know. She considered me a
capitalist and tried to please me. I promised Lee that night to give him
introductions to a few influential people since I wanted him and his
family to move away from the gruesome Fort Worth slum. I hoped that the
other members of the Russian community would help him, and told him
so.

"Thanks a lot, I can take care of myself; I don't need those creeps; I
shall find something," he answered gruffly. This was an example of Lee's
independence; he refused help, objected even to my help. Rather than be
indebted to someone, he would rather starve on his own.
While Marina was usually a lot of fun -- she laughed easily but did not
say anything that would make you think -- Lee was serious and did not
take life as a joke. But if he happened to be in a good mood, he became
an excellent companion, remembered political jokes, told them well and
laughed at mine.

"Do you know the one about an American tourist carrying a small
transistor radio in Moscow?" Lee asked me.

"No, I don't know the story."

"Well, the Muscovite stopped the American and said, 'We make them much
better than you do. What is it?'"

We both laughed. Then I countered, asking Lee, "What is the difference
between capitalism and socialism?" Lee did not know. "Capitalism makes
social mistakes and socialism makes capital mistakes."

"A Russian Commissar is asked at the holy gates where he would like to
go --  to a capitalist hell or to a communist hell," said Lee.

"The Commissar answers, 'I would like to go to a capitalist hell; I am
so tired of communist hell."

Then I told Lee a few foolish jokes about Kennedy: "President Kennedy
tells a group of businessmen, 'The economic situation is so good that if
I weren't your president I would invest in the stock market right now!'
And the businessmen answer in unison: 'If you were not our president, so
would we.'"
We both laughed.

"Kennedy had a terrible nightmare. He wakes up Jackie: 'Honey, what a
terrible thing; I dreamed I was spending my own money, not the
government's."

Again we laughed, but without resentment, we both liked President
Kennedy.

So I finished my foolish jokes with this one: "John Kennedy runs to his
mother at night: 'Mama! Mama! Help! Bobby is trying to run my
country."

I think it was at that time that I told Lee that I had known Jacqueline
Kennedy as a young girl, as well as her mother, father and all her
relatives, and how charming the whole family was. I especially liked
"Black Jack" Bouvier, Jackie's father, the delightful Casanova of Wall
Street. Lee was not jealous of Kennedy's and Bouvier's wealth, and did
not envy their social positions; of that I was sure. To him wealth and
society were big jokes, but he did not resent them.

Now I want to tell something which my seem foolish to people who are not
dog lovers. At the time we had two lovely black Manchester Terriers:
Nero and his faithful wife Poppea. Nero had followed us on a long trip
over the mountains of Mexico and Central America and saved our lives on
several occasions; Poppea was bought for him upon our return to USA and
was a wonderful wife for him. I cannot tell how much intuition Nero
developed during our trip and how easily he recognized friends from
enemies.

Well, on the first evening our dogs did not express any interest in
Marina or in Baby June but they were fascinated by Lee. Nero especially
showed his complete confidence and affection for him. He seldom did it
to anyone even to our close friends. He snuggled up to Lee and looked at
him with affection. He sensed that he was an utterly sincere person and
was deprived of hatred. Poppea also licked his hand in a rare display of
affection. Incidentally, many of our friends and even our own children
complained that our dogs were either unfriendly or totally indifferent
to them.

Lee finally found a job at Taggart's Reproduction Company through the
Texas Employment Agency without help from anyone. I was a good job for
him as he had been interested in photography for a long time. I guessed
that he took a course at the Marine Corps. Anyway he brought a good
camera from the Soviet Union and took excellent pictures. Later he
showed me excellent enlargements he made himself. These were in black
and white he was not advanced enough to develop and enlarge color
photographs.

But Lee's job did not pay well and, as he began to trust me more, he
accepted an introduction to a successful businessman-banker, Sam Ballen,
who owned, among other companies, a large reproduction outfit for maps,
electric logs, and records. It was not a successful meeting; Lee and my
friend did not like each other. To the businessman Lee was a radical and
a maverick., and Lee considered Sam an ordinary bourgeois with no
redeeming features. Actually, both were interesting people; they just
did not appeal to each other.

Another conversation comes to my mind. One evening Lee was in a blue
mood and confided that he was not particularly pleased with his
reception in Minsk. Somewhat naively, he had expected to be treated as a
special person, a prominent refugee, and nothing happened; there was
little difference between his condition in Minsk and that of an ordinary
Soviet worker. And so he had become depressed. That evening Lee
expressed an opinion that he did not appreciate the Soviet type of
government.

"Why?" I asked.

"It is somewhat too regimented for me," he said. "We were obliged to go
to the meeting at the factory after work, dead tired, and listen to
inflammatory speeches. I was lucky if I was able to sleep.
Indoctrination of any kind is not to my taste."

I saw his point.

Our first evenings with the Oswalds were spent in conversation, and we
got to know each other very well. Now something else happened in our
relationship. Before Lee got his job at Taggart's, I asked my daughter
Alex and my son-in-law Gary Taylor to help the Oswalds move to Dallas.
The Taylors went to visit the Oswalds in Fort Worth, and right then they
offered to let Marina stay with them, and to keep the baby. Whatever
furniture they had could be stored in her garage. This generous
proposition was accepted; Marina moved to Dallas. Lee stayed for a short
time in the apartment in Fort Worth and then moved to a small room at
the YMCA in Dallas, close to his work at Taggart's. During Marina's stay
at my daughter's place, my wife helped her -- drove her to Baylor
Hospital where they pulled out her rotten teeth. Thus baby June was kept
healthy and well fed. But this short separation did not prevent Lee from
coming to see us, even alone.

Further conversation with Lee in 1962

At the time we knew Lee, nothing could be further from our minds than
that he might become such a historic figure. His visits were very
frequent -- sometimes he would come for a short time, sometimes he would
spend the whole evening with us. Some bits of our semi-bantering,
semi-serious repartees remain in my memory. "You are an extremely
sincere person, Lee," I told him. "You do not lie even to yourself. Most
of the people I know are the opposite of you. They put out a front, they
confuse, they deceive, they lie even when thinking."

"I guess it's dangerous to be that way. I know I make a lot of enemies.
But what the hell," he acknowledged, "my position is that I am afraid of
very few things in life. I am not cautious. I am not," he smiled, "a
turkey which lives only to become fat." And he showed me his nonexistent
belly. He was becoming very thin.

"Lee, your way of life is so un-American, it scares me to think what may
become of you."

"It is true," Lee said. "I am probably committing a sin in not being
interested in possessions or money. When a rich man dies, he is loaded
with his possessions like a prisoner in chains. I will die free; death
will be easy for me."

"Stop talking about death; you are only twenty-two. If you want to talk
about gruesome subjects, let me tell you this joke: A usurer is on a
deathbed. A priest gives him a crucifix to kiss, and the usurer says, 'I
cannot loan you much for it.'"

"Regarding your attitude on money and possessions," I said, "I couldn't
agree more with you. You would rather do something unusual than drive a
Cadillac. I am the same way."

"Life for me," continued Lee, "is like a hungry crocodile: I'd better
defend myself. I have to defend myself against the stupidity of this
would. It is enormous! Life must be the work of a perfect idiot. Or
maybe the stupidity, like breaking of the atom, is self-perpetuating."

Not too bad for a twenty-two-year-old American proletarian and a
high-school dropout, I thought. "Lee, you have a very original mind."
"Thank you," he said. "I do not often hear compliments. But let me tell
you more why I despise  the money-loving middle class. Such people are
simply stupid, not serious; they are curiously attracted by crooks and
adventurers. And so you hear how often they are sheared of their wool,
like sheep, by variousfinancial schemers."

"Diderot," I said, "thinks very much like you. "You have nothing and I
have very little now, so a real friendship is possible between us. We
are sincere with each other." Lee agreed.

"Another thing Diderot said," I continued, "He was very happy being poor
and living in a shack. When he achieved opulence and found a nice
apartment in Paris, he knew he was going to die."

"The philosophers talk, but you act," said Lee enviously. "This trip of
yours, what a freedom! 3,600 miles on foot on tough trails of Latin
America. This demanded a complete change in life -- willingly, suddenly.
For this you needed an extraordinary moral audacity."

"This time I want to thank you, Lee. But do not exaggerate; this was an
act of desperation rather than audacity, after the death of my only son.
In the end this trip was very satisfying to Jeanne and to me."
And so we chatted in an open and friendly manner, and I must say of Lee,
my opinion of this fellow changes completely and frequently, which
happens only with people who are close and important to me. I usually
judge the others superficially and label them once and for all.

But now I should explain the reasons why I had introduced the Oswalds to
my daughter Alex and to her husband. They were about the same age. Gary
was a scatter-brained, simple-minded but pleasant young man and, as most
of his financial schemes failed, he had plenty of time on his hands. His
fondest ambition consisted of rapidly becoming another Clint Murchison
or H. L. Hunt, and that was hard to achieve. Frankly, I hoped that my
daughter and her husband Gary would acquire some of the global interests
that Lee certainly possessed. His serious approach to life contrasted
sharply with the foolish flippancy of Gary's. I also hoped that Marina
would teach my daughter some interesting facts about Russia. When these
two were together, they were somehow able to communicate, as my daughter
is an excellent linguist.

But introducing people of such different backgrounds led to unpleasant
results. First of all we caused a separation between Marina and Lee. We
understood it was not their first separation, but we actually caused
this one. It amazed my daughter that Lee called Marina on the phone
infrequently and did not express much desire to be with her. But he
missed baby June. It was peculiar for a young husband, but I already
suspected that he was pleased being alone at the YMCA and was already
bored with Marina's company. Next, the personalities of Lee and of Gary
clashed. Lee considered Gary a spoiled, rich American, a foolish
youngster; and Gary looked down at Lee as a supercilious, impractical
lunatic with revolutionary ideas. My daughter's opinion of Marina was
low also; she was slovenly and didn't know anything about baby-care,
although she had obtained a degree as a "registered pharmacist" in the
USSR. My daughter's opinion of Lee was low also; he was not
good-looking, did not care about his appearance, and neither was he
inclined to make money. As for me, I regretted that Alex did not see any
of the qualities I liked in Lee -- the fact that he was socially
motivated, was a dreamer and a seeker of truth. But such people have a
very hard time in life, and that's why so many people consider him a
failure and a loser.

Maybe, had he lived longer, he would have fit better into the scheme of
American life; he would have joined the group of love-children, would
have grown a beard, and certainly would have been among the protesters
against the war in Viet Nam. It was probably Marina, dissatisfied with
my daughter's attitude, who made Lee hustle and find an apartment. Very
soon the Oswalds settled in their own ground-floor apartment on Elsbeth
Street in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. It was far away from us, while
we wanted them to live nearby. Lee probably wanted to be as far away as
possible from the other Russian refugees, whom he disliked. The
apartment was ten miles or more away from our place at University Park.
With Lee's job secure at Taggart's and away from the gruesome slum in
Fort Worth, Jeanne and I thought the Oswald family would be happy.
Jeanne registered the baby at a children's clinic for regular check-ups
and Marina, was treated almost gratis in the dental clinic of the Baylor
hospital. This involved long trips for Jeanne, driving back and forth,
but she did not mind. Staying so far away from anyone put Marina in a
condition of total dependence on Lee, since she could not communicate
with anyone around; we were the only ones she could understand. To have
the couple for dinner, we had to drive back and forth, almost forty
miles for a four-way trip.

Jeanne became quite close to Marina at the time, while Lee and I saw
each other frequently. Soon, however, these trips became difficult for
us as we both became busy in our professions; yet we wanted to continue
seeing the Oswalds. One solution would have been for them to buy some
second-hand car, but Lee did not know how to drive, nor did Marina, of
course. (I did not doubt Lee's word.) I mention this here because later
Lee's lack of driving ability became a controversial issue. I believed
him because I knew about the abject poverty of his childhood in New
Orleans. In these prosperous United States, Lee's family occupied a
position at the poverty line, similar to poor blacks and
Mexican-Americans.

Due to my wife's help, Marina's four spoiled teeth were removed and her
system was not poisoned by them anymore. Baby June became healthy also.
The Russian colony collected a small amount of money for Marina and the
care of the baby June. Lee did not know about it; he would not have
accepted any charity, so it was done secretly. I think Jeanne handled
the operation, and Marina spent nights in the house while the next
morning Jeanne would drive her to Baylor dental clinic or to the
childcare center.

An amusing incident happened on the way to Baylor, recalls my wife. We
had to drive by the predominantly black section of town, gaudy but
cheerful Hall and Washington Streets, with almost every decrepit house
lodging either a nightclub, strip-tease joint or dance hall, hookers and
flashy pimps strolling along the broken pavements. Suddenly Marina
excitedly attracted my wife's attention shouting in Russian to slow
down. She looked at the tall, muscled, black youngster standing proudly
at the corner, surveying the situation. "Look at him! Look!" She pulled
at my wife's sleeve in a frenzy. "What a handsome man!"

"Oh, yes," agreed Jeanne, "he is very handsome."

"No, he is fantastic, fantastic!" exulted Marina. Such an enthusiasm
surprised my wife. "He is so big and strong! What muscles he must
have."

As my wife related this incident, she observed that is was not a
question of an attraction of a Nordic woman to an exotic man of a dark
race, but was surprised that a young married woman with a child would
show such uninhibited admiration for a sexy male.
I drove her myself on the same street and teased her about her
attraction to black men. "Marina," I guessed, "you did not see in Russia
such uninhibited, natural men."

She laughed: "Neither Russians nor American whites can compare to such
beautiful men," she said candidly. "Maybe the Cubans I met in Minsk were
just as attractive."

The Oswalds in Minsk

The stories related by Lee and Marina about Minsk were especially
interesting to me. It seems that Lee was very unhappy at the beginning
of his stay there and he even tried to slash his wrists out of despair.
Since he was supposed to have done it already in Moscow, in order to
obtain a permit to remain in the Soviet Union, the wrist-slashing became
somewhat of a habit if not a subterfuge with him. Marina held a job of a
pharmacist in the hospital where Lee was treated, she took care of him
flirted with him very nicely and began conquering his heart. Later he
polyps problem so he kept on going to the some hospital. And that's how
the romance began and flourished.

Marina came from a fairly good family from our point of view, since her
father belonged to a former Czarist officer group. After his death her
mother married a man called Prusakov. Later her mother died and Marina
got tired of living with her stepfather and her half-brothers and
sisters. And so she decided to move from Smolensk to Minsk where she
received soon a degree of a registered pharmacist. I remember Marina's
amusing repartee when I asked her if she liked her half-brothers and
sisters.

"They were good, normal children, not like me. I was a bad one." And she
laughed, showing a good sense of humor and a great deal of charm.
After the hospital meetings, Lee and Marina began going out together to
dances and movies and eventually the relationship of affection and love
developed between them. "I remember looking at the new apartment
building near the river Swisloch," reminisced Marina, "but only high
technical and political personnel lived there, as well as some
foreigners, Lee among them." It was a wonderful setting for a Soviet
romance -- love, an American refugee, a river, and a new apartment
building. Actually the building belonged to the factory where Lee worked
at the time; his staying there was no particular favor. But for the girl
who had lived in crowded rooms with a stepfather and several children,
this new house seemed a real paradise.

And so they married and moved to that apartment building. Why did she
marry him? She could have cohabitated with him; this happened frequently
with young couples in Russia. The reasons are known only to Marina:
love, pity or desire to come to the United States; probably the latter,
as soon after their wedding Lee decided that he wanted to go back to the
United States. He traveled to Moscow without a permit, went to the
United States embassy, got back his passport, and borrowed $500 for the
return.

Each month while in Texas, he religiously paid the installments due on
that loan. Marina frequently complained that he was too punctual in his
payments -- but I ask you, where do you find another man in Lee's
position, on the verge of starvation, who would be in such a hurry to
repay a government loan, one which would be very difficult to collect
from a poor man like Lee. Lee felt this obligation very sincerely.
Another question still puzzles us: How come the Soviets permitted Marina
to leave her homeland so easily, while it was so hard for Lee to obtain
a permit to leave the USSR? They had to make another trip to Moscow to
arrange it, and he never explained to me clearly how he got the permit
to take Marina along. "Well, I managed," Lee smirked, "because all
bureaucrats, all over the world, are stupid."

Marina had an uncle, a colonel of the MVD called Medvedev; I think he
was her mother's brother. For some time she had lived with him, in
Smolensk I think, and Lee told me that this important man was dead set
against his niece marrying him. Later something made him change his
mind. We were not interested at the time in the whys and the wherefores
of this colonel's activities; now it is too late to ask questions. Maybe
it was simply for his own reasons the colonel helped his niece get out
of Russia. Possibly it was a good riddance of a Prusakova niece,
possibly something else.

The loyal decrepit Russian refugees liked Marina only because her real
father had been a pre-revolutionary officer or some czarist official. We
were indifferent to this matter and did not inquire further. But the
permission to leave USSR was puzzling to us, uncle or no uncle, because
we knew of many cases where Americans could never obtain a permit for
their Soviet wives to leave Russia. Personally I know of one case; one
of the reporters of the Christian Monitor successfully extracted his
wife from Russia at the time of Stalin.

One day Jeanne asked Lee a straightforward question: "Why did you decide
to go to the USSR; answer frankly! You risked never being able to return
to your country."

"I was looking for an ideal," Lee answered sadly.

"And why did you decide to return here?" Jeanne insisted.

"Because I did not find my ideal. Obviously utopia does not exist. I
could travel the rest of my life and never find it."

We liked this statement and agreed with Lee. We were becoming close
friends. From time to time my wife would prepare a special Russian or
French dinner for the Oswalds, always keeping in mind that both of them
were undernourished. And I would talk with Lee in the meantime, often
late into the night. Although he unquestionably had had some unpleasant
experiences, as the slashing of his wrists proved, Lee was never hostile
or upset about his life in the Soviet Union. He spoke of his co-workers
humbly and engagingly: "They were hospitable, friendly and sincere; they
invited me to their homes, fed me from their meager supplies, and we
discussed all subjects frankly as we do here."

"Did they tell you any jokes about their regime?" I asked.
"Here is one I remember," Lee said. "An American worker comes to the
Soviet Union and sees some big apartment complexes. He asks, 'To whom do
they belong?' 'To the state.' Then the Russian worker comes to visit the
United States. He asks, 'These huge factories, to whom do they belong?'
'To the capitalists,' comes the fast answer. 'Aha,' says the Russian,
'this is terrible!' Then he notices nice suburban homes with new cars.
He asks, 'To whom these belong?' 'To the workers,' comes an immediate
answer."

Then I asked Lee, "Did you ever hear that one about a Soviet worker who
was wandering from one factory to another asking, 'Is there a place that
would pay me as little as the little work I intend to do?'"

Lee did not laugh: "That is a rather vicious joke. Soviet workers work
almost as hard as we do here, and certainly they get paid much less."

Then he reminisced, "Nobody in the Soviet Union tried to intimidate me
or influence me. But I encounter such tendencies here. Nobody ever tried
to make a communist out of me. I was a sympathizer but I never joined
the party."

He is probably on the level, I thought. "And what were your living
conditions like there?" I asked.

"Not bad at all: ample meals, clean surroundings, good
companionship."

"And the pay?"

"Sufficient; the apartment cost me five per cent of my pay, and I don't
eat much, as you know. With Marina's additional salary we managed quite
well."

"And clothes?"

"Expensive but adequate; and I am not interested, as you know, in
stylish clothes. Of course, the Cubans dressed to kill," he smiled.
Marina must have missed good clothes there, I thought. "And how about
transportation? I asked.

"Of course I could not afford a motorcycle, but I like to walk, and the
public transportation was cheap and good."
"What was most annoying to you in the Soviet Union?" asked Jeanne, who
was listening in.

"Those endless, endless meetings we had to attend after work; listening
to those deadly, monotonous speeches. You were lucky if you were in the
back and could take a nap. We listened to those bureaucratic outpourings
half-dazed, like children during a very boring lesson. Then we voted,
rather indifferently, on various trivial issues. Later we would file
out, exhausted and would return home. "And," Lee smiled, "we never
received any extra pay for the hours lost, and we certainly deserved
it."

I approved of his attitude, nodding agreement. I would also hate to
waste my time on such meetings.

Lee spoke of other foreigners living there: some Cubans whose names I've
forgotten, one family of refugees from Argentina -- the father was an
experienced engineer and Lee had a great respect for him. More than once
he mentioned this family to me, talking mainly of the daughters who
"were so pretty" and so friendly to him. All in all Lee spoke frequently
to me of his interest in women and he even bragged amusingly and
somewhat naively of his conquests in Russia.

Here in the United States, Lee wasn't certainly a ladies' man; he felt
depressed and confined. I think he frequently regretted having left
Minsk. But there I can visualize him cutting a path as a Casanova among
the Russian women. And why not? He was a foreigner, he acted freely, he
looked pleasant, and his interest in Russian people was warm and
genuine.

Marina admitted herself one day, "He was something out of the ordinary.
He looked like an American, he was easygoing, loose and alert -- not
like the average guy." Lee was a perfectly normal and well adjusted
citizen of Minsk, Marina insisted frequently. "The only trouble with him
was his interest in books -- serious books -- serious books, politics,
discussions, rather than sex."

Maybe it is not nice to talk about confidential sex matters between the
Oswalds, but I might as well do it; they shed light on the personalities
of this interesting couple. Marina was close enough to my wife to be
completely open with her. "Lee does not have sex with me but rarely,"
she admitted, "very rarely, about once a month -- and he is in such a
hurry, poor fellow, that I do not get any satisfaction. It's most
frustrating." When Jeanne repeated this matter to me, I laughed and told
Marina a well-known Texas joke, translating it, probably for the first
time, into Russia.

"Mandy was a good-looking black prostitute. A handsome, tall black by
the name of Rastus came to see her. 'How much do you charge Mandy?' 'For
fifteen dollars I does it all, for ten we does it, for five you do it
all!' Rastus hadonly five dollars, so they agreed and went to bed.
But while Rastus began making love to Mandy, he turned out to be such a
formidable male that in ecstasy Mandy wailed: 'Rastus I shall do it all
on credit, you have such an honest face!'"

Naturally in Russian it did not sound very hot, but we all laughed and
possibly it was the beginning of Marina's ardent interest in our racial
minority -- the blacks.

But aside from such foolishness, we talked with Oswalds of their lives
in the Soviet Union. And soon we acquired a certainty that Marina wanted
a richer and materialistically more rewarding life then the one she had
at home and it was she who convinced Lee to go to the American Embassy,
to ask for the return of this passport and for money all this in view to
go with him to the United States. Another interesting fact: the first
time he went from Minsk to Leningrad or Moscow he did it illegally, but
the second time he obtained a legal Soviet permit to go there by train.
As a foreigner Lee was not supposed to leave town without notifying the
police and obtaining a permit. Not an easy matter for some of the people
who had tried to leave Russia.

I remember Marina telling me without any emotion that she had been
discharged at the time from the Komsomol, an organization of Communist
youth, and that it happened because she had married an American. In the
Soviet Union it was a disgrace, but she did not attach any importance to
it while in Minsk, because obviously she know she would leave her
country anyway. Both Lee and I laughed about her naive belief that the
streets of the United States were paved with gold and that the poor
people were the ones who had to wash themselves their Cadillacs. I
remember Lee telling us a joke, which circulated at the time among the
young Russian. Capitalism to them meant champagne, luxurious cars, jazz,
caviar for dinner and Gina Lollobrigida for a girlfriend. Marvelous!
Communism to them meant vodka, dirty tramway, balalaika, black bread and
their own mother! Marina laughed good-naturedly.

Very often people ask me with suspicion why I, a person with several
university degrees and of fairly good financial and social standing --
with friends among the rich of the world - became such a friend of that
"maladjusted radical,"  Lee Harvey Oswald? Well, I hope that this book
clarifies Lee's personality and endows him with a lot of most attractive
features. I already spoke of his straightforward and relaxing
personality, of his honesty or his desire to be liked and appreciated.
And I believe it is a privilege of an older age not to give a damn what
others think of you. I choose my friends just because they appeal to me.
And Lee did.

It never occurred to me that he might be an agent of any country,
including the United States -- although he might have been trained in
Russian for some ulterior motive. Lee was too outspoken, naively so. In
this way I was similar to him.

In 1946 when I was working in Venezuela for William Buckley's family
company, Pantepec Oil Company, I met the Soviet Ambassador there who had
been before world was one a roustabout for Nobel Oil interests, and my
uncle was a director of that outfit. So the Ambassador knew my name and
was extremely friendly to me. We spent many an evening talking and
drinking vodka. As a result he suggested that be would offer me a
contract to work in the Soviet Union. But after listening to me and my
outspoken opinions, he advised me, "My friend, you talk too much, you
criticize too much; you would be a babe in the woods in my country and
would end up in Siberia."

Also Lee was very interested in other people, in their work, he tried to
improve his own education by reading, observing and studying. Sometimes
he was amusing when he used long, difficult words in English -- words
like charisma, politicomania, extravaganzas, elitism -- the knowledge of
which he liked to display. We even laughed together about his use of
such words, the exact meaning of which eluded him. Occasionally Lee's
constant search for truth, for the answers to the mysteries of life,
seemed tragic and disturbing to me. But this proves also that it seems
highly improbable that any government would try to make an agent of such
a man. He own element of self-inquiry, self-denial and self-doubt, mixed
with instability worried Lee. But I told him not to worry, in my opinion
instability, doubt, constant search were elements of youth and were
indicative of exuberant life. I told Lee that I pitied people who did
not possess such characteristics, were living dead, they form the mass
of obedient slaves in all countries.

A strong desire for adventure was also one of Lee's motivations. That's
why he became a Marine, that's why he switched jobs just because he did
not like what he had to do so far. And routine was deadly to him.
However his last job at the printing company fitted him well and he
seemed fairly happy.

"Why didn't you stay in the Marine Corps?" I asked him one day.

"Oh, did not care for the military, not much fun being an underling; not
much adventure either."

"You could become an officer, you are intelligent enough," I
countered.

"Oh, no, to hell with being an officer. I don't like to command other
guys."

Often I was asked with suspicion, long before the assassination, "How
did you get along so well with Lee Oswald?"

"In my life I have done many things, I was often a promoter, an
originator of new ideas, so I liked now ideas, even if they seemed
strange and outlandish, I enjoyed meeting people of various types,
evaluated their thoughts, did not criticize them," I retorted.
Later on, when I was in the hot water because of my friendship with Lee,
a friend of mine testified: "George always liked stray dogs and stray
people."

Many people considered Lee a miserable misfit, an insult to the American
way of life, and completely disregarded him. A Russian refugee living in
Dallas told me once, "I am scared of this man Oswald, he is a
paranoid."

"Paranoid or not, he is as intelligent as you are. Listen to him, there
is a lot of sense in what he says," I would reply.

Probably to annoy Lee, the Russian refugees and some ultra-conservative
Americans showered Marina with gifts and gave her too much attention.
Since Americans could not communicate with her, their efforts were
wasted. But the gifts given his wife by the refugees annoyed Lee.
Unquestionably Marina added oil to the fire bragging about the gifts and
talking how successful some of the donors were -- owning their own homes
and two automobiles. He might have been wounded in his pride, although
he never complained to me.

At the time Lee did not want Marina to learn English. She could only say
yes and no and if she went to the store, he had to point out the
articles she wanted. "It's very egotistical on your part Lee," Jeanne
told him. "You have to let her study English so she can communicate with
other people than the Russian refugees. You cannot keep her a
recluse."

Sensing that Lee resented them, the members of the Russian colony gave
Marina some hundred dresses. Baby June received a new crib, a carriage
and a lot of toys. Unquestionably it annoyed Lee. The more people gave
Marina, the more it disturbed Lee. Disturbed is not the right word --
maddened. And so he declined invitations to these "benefactor's" homes,
he was often rude to them. That situation had very sad consequences for
this family.

As far as we are concerned, we continued our good relationship with the
Oswalds, even after the situation in Soviet Russian and in Minsk
especially have been thoroughly discussed. Instead of questioning them,
we became concerned in the welfare of this couple. Be nice to the poor
was always Jeanne's motto.

Seeing that Lee's situation was also gradually deteriorating, I became
even nicer to him. Never kick a man who is down; help him, was my
belief. Sometimes Lee's action and his sensitivities annoyed me, but I
did not try to show any resentment and attempted to find a solution for
him and his wife.

Contrasts between the Oswalds

One day Lee brought to me typescripts of his experiences in Russia. He
was interested in publishing them in a form of an article in a magazine
or possibly to develop them into a book. A few typed pages, and poorly
at that, in substance could not add much to what he had already told me.
And what he had told me was of interest only to me, because I was
familiar with the locale, but not to other readers. But it was important
for him to get my recognition since he knew that I published many
articles in Europe and in this country did some theatre reviews for the
Variety Magazine. And so Lee sat on the sofa and looked hopefully at
me.

"What do you think of this?" he asked.

"Remember I am not a professional writer, I was lucky enough to have had
some articles published, your story is simple and honest but it is very
poorly written. It is deprived of any sensational revelations and it's
really pointless. Personally I like it because I know Minsk but how many
people know where Minsk is. And why should they have interest in your
experiences? Tell me!"

"Not many," Lee agreed mildly.

I did not say, so as not to offend him, that his grammar was poor and
the syntax was abominable. And those long, pompous words . . . But that
was the result of his poor, formal education. And the only things in his
favor stood out -- his sincerity and his obvious good will to inform
correctly.

"If you add some sensational, detective story type details, a beautiful
female spy, depraved, masochistic policemen, if you depict all Russians
as degenerate monsters, then your script will be published.
"No, thank you," said Lee proudly. "I do not want to tell lies. My
purpose is to improve Soviet-American relations." And he added quickly,
"People here should know how decent and generous Russians are. How well
they treated me, a simple American ex-marine, with kindness and
generosity -- I did not find anything monstrous in Soviet Russia."
"I agree with you personally. Also you talk about some individuals you
met there. It's good and factual, they are decent people. But who is
interested in comrade this or that, in refugees from Argentina or in
some cheerful Cubanstudents? Correct?"

Lee agreed and I handled him back his pages.

The same typescripts were shown me later for identification by the
Warren Commission lawyer and they were printed in the Warren Commission
report. So Lee's wishes came true after his death.

This was a period of relative tranquility for Lee, as he was working for
Taggart's developing and enlarging photos, posters and maps and he
seemed to enjoy his work. But Marina was dissatisfied and complained to
Jeanne again. "He comes home tired, hardly talks to me, only to the
baby, then reads Russian books and is seldom tender and loving to
me."

Incidentally I never saw him interested in anything else except Russian
books and magazines. He said he didn't want to forget the language --
but it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorki,
Dostoievski, Gogol, Tolstoi and Turgenieff -- in Russian. As everyone
knows Russian is a complex language and he was supposed to have stayed
in the Soviet Union only a little over two years.

He must have had some previous training and that point had never been
brought up by the Warren Commission -- and it is still puzzling to me.
In my opinion Lee was a very bright person but not a genius. He never
mastered the English language yet he learned such a difficult language!
I taught Russian at all level in a large University and I never saw such
a proficiency in the best senior students who constantly listened to
Russian taped and spoke to Russian friends. As a matter of fact
American-born instructors never mastered Russian spoken language as well
as Lee did.

The fact that Lee reserved Marina as a perfect Russian conversationalist
for himself was foolish and selfish. Being in close relationship with
the Oswalds we noticed the signs of the coming disintegration of their
already fragile relationship. Lee seemed to be fond of Marina but he
mostly cherished baby June. Maybe he was too secretive a person to show
his affection and Marina's Slavic nature demanded more attention and
tenderness. But Lee never spoke badly to us about his wife, he never
criticized her but neither did he ever express any deep feeling for her.
Even in his typewritten memoirs he spoke very little of her.

Marina, on the other hand, annoyed and criticized Lee, due possibly to a
perversity of her Russian character. "He is so puny, so dull, he never
drinks, only works, tries easily, is only interested in books" she
complained to me and my wife. And she said that behind his back and
obviously to him directly when we were to there. Never did we hear from
her that she loved her husband. But there was nevertheless an element of
strong attachment which tied together these two so different people, but
we did not notice it at the time.

Lee was indeed all wrapped up in his work, books, his ideas on equality
of all people, especially of all races; it was strange indeed for a boy
New Orleans and Texas poor white family, purely Anglo, to be so
profoundly anti-racist.

"Segregation in any form, racial, social or economic, is one of the most
repulsive facts of American life", he often told me. "I would be willing
anytime to fight these fascistic segregationists -- and to die for my
black brothers."

He obviously intended to do just that, as we shall see from the later
chapters and from Marina's inscription on Lee's picture. Warren
Commission completely disregarded this unusual aspect of Lee's character
and eliminated mystatement from the report.

Otherwise, we seldom heard from Lee much talk about women, Marina, on
the other hand, spoke freely to Jeanne add to myself about her
pre-marital experiences, her admiration for strong, sexy men. She spoke
enthusiastically about the Cubans she met in Russia. "They were outgoing
and gay. Often they carried their guitars with them, sand their catchy
Caribbean tunes, danced so well. They were such fun!"

This was an indirect criticism of her husband who did not like music,
except Russian folkloric sad tunes, who did not play any musical
instruments and could not dance. And let's face it: he wasn't
particularly entertaining with her.

Here I want to dispel once more the impression I may have given that Lee
did not have a keen sense of humor. For instance I remember this one he
told me. "A Russian doctor had a parrot who was able to say 'how do you
do', 'good night,' etc. One hot evening the doctor left the parrot on
the windowsill to cool off. A Russian musician passes by and hears
parrot's greetings. He takes his hat off and says, 'Excuse me, comrade,
I thought you were a bird!'"

On American politics he expressed the following opinion. "Under
dictatorship people are enslaved but they know it. Here the politicians
constantly lie to people and they become immune to these lies because
they have the privilege of voting. But voting is rigged and democracy
here is a gigantic profusion of lies and clever brain-washing."
Also he said something about FBI which did not strike me at the time as
very clever, but history proved his judgment correct. "Knowledge is a
great power, especially if you know it about very important people."
Obviously J. Edgar Hoover's files must come to your mind.

Also he told me the joke which must have been circulating at the time in
the Soviet Union, "A strip-tease joint was opened in Moscow for the
tourists. It was decorated and run just like in Paris and lots of money
was spent on thisestablishment. Yet it did not attract much trade. A
state Economic Commission questioned the worried director. He explained,
'I did my best, hired the best decorators, imitated a place in Paris.'

'How about the girls?" asked a member of the commission. 'No trouble
with them, they are all at least for thirty years good, party
members.'"

Lee also liked jokes about southern hillbillies and rednecks but I
cannot recall any of them not. He subscribed to Krokodil a Soviet
satirical publication, somewhat similar to the New Yorker of to the
British Punch. Krokodil, which we often read together, featured mainly
Russian self-criticism in the form of short stories or cartoons. Animals
frequently featured local politicians, and in the manner of Krilov's
fables, emphasized the foibles of the Soviet bureaucracy. It also took
swipes at the bourgeois world quite sharply. Lee read Russian classics
and discussed some at length with me, especially I remember The Idiot by
Dostoievski, a psychoanalytical study. He understood the
pre-revolutionary life in Russia, which I did not know but heard about
from my parents. Russian classics belong exclusively to the
pre-revolutionary or early revolutionary days and modern Russians are
fascinated by those days of extravagant aristocracy, czarist power and
abuses of it, great wealth and great waste, ownership of slaves,
temporal strength of the Greek-Orthodox church -- these aspects of the
old days Lee observed with distaste but the elegance and the gaiety of
the certain occasions gave him a feeling of nostalgia, as he were
Russian himself.

Marina did not care about any of this, she was a super-materialist,
really destined by nature for the mediocre, middle class American life:
new clothes, new buildings, plastic, neutral surroundings, tall,
well-dressed men. "Lee, when shall we get a car?" She kept on nagging.
"Everyone here has one, even the poorest people!" And poor Lee even did
not know how to drive a car. And when Marina was talking to Jeanne he
said: "I never wanted a middle-class wife, mediocre, obscure,
money-loving who would have the taste of vanity, of luxury, of comfort,
of all that bourgeois nonsense."

Well, you have one, I thought. Marina liked wine, he objected to it. She
smoked, he detested the smell of tobacco. So whenever she was without
him she would become a chain-smoker, inhaling deep, asking for drinks,
enjoying these forbidden pleasures. He called Lee, a slender, ascetic
man, but by no means a weakling, a bookworm. He respected education and
knowledge, especially in others, she was just the opposite; she didn't
value her degree as a pharmacist.

"It must have been difficult not get it?" I asked her once.

"Not for me, I got by easily, used ponies and passed my examinations,"
she answered breezily. But she would remember some handsome fellows and
had met and shared bed with, of real soviet type orgies. She confided in
Jeanne. Those parties were organized in Minsk by richer sons of the
bureaucrats who disposed of comfortable apartments while their parents
were gone. The kids drank and slept together indiscriminately. "This was
terrific, "she reminisced. "And I also remember a handsome boy who
instead of joining us on holidays would take a book and would go all day
to the forest to study. Some people are crazy," she concluded.

In my conversations with Lee, I found out that he was an open and
straightforward agnostic. Religion did not interest him. He saw that was
probably since his early childhood. His agnosticism was on the type of
Jefferson's or Franklin's -- and it was fine. He was not an aggressive
atheist who wanted to impose his point of view with violence. He must
have read Toynbee and Bertrand Russell because his argumentation against
organized religion was solid. One day he said, "The doctor sees a man at
his weakest, the lawyer sees the man at his wickedest and the priest
sees a man at his stupidest," he chuckled. "I read it somewhere, it's
pretty good?"

Lee was always very humble with me and he really blossomed when I showed
some interest in what he had to say. But aren't we all the same way?
Only once, while discussing organized religion, he expressed his views
with cold disdain. "What I dislike," he said, "are the materialistic
aspects of the American type religion, to all, but the large
denominations with their ridiculously garish churches, their
tax-deductible tricks and finagling." Lee seems quite versed in the
matter. Here he was rather instructing me. And I had to agree with him
on the greedy aspects of our modern Christianity, so far removed from
the original teachings of poverty and humility.

I remember talking to my wife about Lee and she mentioned that we both
treated him on a perfectly equal basis, and never scorned him, while
other people who helped the Oswalds did it for Marina only or for the
child. And Lee did not like any help, especially that type. He was
occasionally rude to the people who interfered in their lives being
intrinsically a very independent, self-sufficient person. And so he
began refusing invitations which infuriated Marina.

Many local people, especially Russian refugees, resented Lee because he
had deserted these United States, the "country of the brave and the
free" and many considered him an outright traitor. And he, a hundred
percent, native-born American smiled and would say: "who are the real
Americans? Only the Indians, blacks and the Mexicans from the
South-Western states, to whom this country originally belonged."
We have a different attitude. We like young people who search to solve
some problems which bother them. He disliked many aspects of American
life and thought that maybe somewhere else it was better. Being with him
took me back to my young days at the University of Liege, when we spent
entire discussing various problems of life without any respect for the
rules or for the establishment.

It was not the first time that he mentioned that he was disappointed in
the Soviet Union because he did not find there his ideal of justice.

"Maybe it does not exist . . ." he said sadly one day. "And so I came
back."

The narrow-minded people condemned him without understanding his
motivations, without giving him a chance to explain himself. And later
on our Dallas police let him die without explaining himself and telling
the truth.

But we are talking of the year 1962 and of people he met then. Many
resented him -- and he answered in kind. And we were the only ones who
took interest in him and gave him a chance to express himself.

Since I had mentioned Lee's agnosticism, let's go back to Marina's
attitude towards religion. We were positive that at the time Marina was
also an agnostic, even an atheist, after all she was brought up in
Soviet Russia in purely communist surrounding. She did not have the
slightest idea of God, not any interest in anything divine -- or so it
seemed to us. But soon she realized that being religious in the United
Stated would help her, as it usually does.

And so she had her child June christened later in the Greek-Orthodox
church in Dallas during one of her separation from Lee. This exacerbated
their conflict.  He told her in our presence, "You double-crossed me,
you should have consulted me before doing this to my child. This is
unforgivable!" And so there was another element added to their
disputes.

Personally I do not criticize faith or religion, but these should be
true and profound feelings, not the outward manifestations. Lee's faith,
his strongest belief was - racial integration. He told me at many
occasions: "It hurts me that the blacks do not have the same privileges
and rights as white American."

And I agreed with him. This was the time when blacks had to sit at the
back of the bus, couldn't eat in restaurants or stay in the hotels and
motels reserved for the whites. It angered and annoyed me. At the time I
didn't have many contacts with the blacks, except with some artists,
teachers and preachers. But in my profession I couldn't afford to have
black friends often in the house, I would have been blackballed and
eliminated from the competitive field.

Fortunately now the situation changed for me and I am very happy. Lee
also resented the poor care of his child. This led to frequent quarrels
and recriminations. Gradually fights between the Oswalds became frequent
and vicious. Marina would arrive by bus with the baby and would complain
to Jeanne: "He beat me up again," and showed bruises on her body to
Jeanne and a black eye to me.

One day we visited them in their apartment on Elsbeth Street in Oak
Cliff. It was on the ground-floor of a dreary red-brick building, the
atmosphere of the house and the neighborhood conducive to suicide. The
living-room was dark and smelly, the bedroom and the kitchen facing
bleak walls. But Lee was proud of his own place and showed me his books
and magazines as well as some letters from Russia which we read
together. The place was spruced up by the lovely photographs of the
Russian countryside taken by Lee there and later enlarged by him. Trees
and fields, charming peasant huts and cloudy skies contrasted strangely
with the dreary walls and the lugubrious atmosphere. Some pictures were
framed by Lee, others unframed were assembled carefully in an album. I
also remember artistically taken pictures of Moscow and Leningrad,
especially of the river Neva which I also slightly remembered from my
childhood. He was happy to have access to elaborate photographic
equipment. "Look at these churches, look at these statues," he exclaimed
proudly. Indeed almost all his pictures had a professional touch, he was
justly proud of them.

While Lee and I were chatting on that moth-eaten sofa of his in the
living room, Marina invited Jeanne to come to the kitchen. There she
cried and showed an infected spot on her shoulder: "The son of the bitch
caught me smoking and he grabbed the cigarette and put it out on my bare
flesh." "This is terrible, this is terrible" shouted Jeanne, coming out
of the kitchen. "Lee what have you done to your wife?"

"Well, she smoked against my orders," he said sullenly.

"You lived abroad only two years and picked up those customs," Jeanne
attacked him. "You could not have picked up this brutality in Russia
where women are independent. And here you have no right to brutalize a
woman just because she smokes occasionally."
Right there we discussed with them very frankly their growing antagonism
and tried to find a solution to it. We came up with an idea of a
temporary separation but let it up to them. "Take it easy," I told Lee,
"and stop abusing your wife."

"But she enjoys brutality," he answered calmly. "Look at me. I am all
scratched up." Indeed, even in the darkish room we could see long red
marks on his face -- traces of Marina's fingernails. "She is provoking
me," he added sadly.

"Still it's no excuse," I said. "Your temperaments obviously clash --
it's another reason for separation."

The Oswalds remained silent, wrapped up in their misery.

"Do it," said Jeanne, "before you really hurt each other. And you Lee
are responsible because you are stronger."

"Man, that woman loves to fight," countered Lee seriously.

Marina and Jeanne went back to the kitchen where Marina cried on my
wife's shoulder. On the way home Jeanne related the complaints. "He is
cold and hostile," said Marina. "He goes to bed with me so rarely now.
Once in a couple of weeks. He makes me so god-damn frustrated.

Jeanne was amused by such frank revelation but could not find a better
solution for Marina than advising her to be more feminine, use some
perfume in the evening and occasionally put on a sexy, transparent
negligee. But before leaving I remember taking a close look at baby
June, laying in her crib, rather fat and not being able yet to say a
work. "She reminds me of someone, of some celebrity." I said. And then
the answer came to me. "Look at June," I shouted. "Look she is a baby
edition of Nikita Khrushchev!"

I did not mean it as an insult, just the opposite. I rather liked that
outgoing, earthy old man, and so did the Oswalds. So we all laughed and
assembled around the crib, examining the baby. "Same pinkish color of
the skin," observed Jeanne. "Same rare, fluffy hair," said Marina. "Same
round Russian face," agreed Lee smilingly.

And so we left that evening advising our young friends to talk over
their problems and to stop torturing each other. Whatever their decision
would be, we would be glad to help them in any way we could.
Driving back from the Oswalds we spoke of their problems and laughed
about the June-Khrushchev comparison. "Yes, the baby has the same
slanting eyes and the same belligerent expression," said Jeanne, "how
come I did not notice it before?"

Yes, June was not a pretty baby at the time but perfectly normal and
healthy. We have not seen her lately, for reasons I shall explain, but I
am sure she grew up to be a lovely young girl. She has a step-father and
knows probably little or nothing about her real father. And we remember
with sadness how much Lee was devoted to her. "He is an unusually loving
and tender father," I mused aloud while driving.

"And he has a very good heart," said Jeanne, "Look how much our dogs
love him."

"It's so touching when Lee kisses June and calls her "moia malenkaia
devochka." And never gets mad at her, I concluded while we approached
our house.


Increased animosity between Lee and Marina

Conflicts in married couples develop slowly like a cancer, and then from
the slow development the sickness attacks the couple with alarming
rapidity. In previous chapter we showed how slowly but insidiously the
animosity developed in the case of Oswalds. Looking back at Lee and
remembering his reactions, he became suddenly standoffish, sometimes
supercilious and spoke only to people whom he liked and trusted. And
there were not many of them. Lee was not close to his mother and seldom
spoke of her. But neither did he criticize her. He hardly spoke of his
brother Robert and not at all of his wife. Yet, the Oswalds stayed with
them for a short time upon their arrival in the United States.

As a matter of fact we never met any member of the Oswald family and we
are sorry not to have met Lee's mother. Even Marina spoke nicely of her.
Later we admired when Marguerite Oswald tried desperately to clear up
her son's name and reputation. We wish her the best of luck. One of the
reasons we agree with Mrs. Marguerite Oswald that her son was probably
innocent of Kennedy's assassination -- and we insisted on this during
the Warren Commission interviews (although it was never brought up
publicly) -- was the following: Lee actually admired President Kennedy
in his own reserved way.

One day we discussed with Lee Kennedy's efforts to bring peace to the
world and to end the cold war. "Great, great!" Exclaimed Lee. "If he
succeeds, he will be the greatest president in the history of this
country."

Kennedy's efforts to alleviate and to end segregation were also admired
by Lee, who was sincerely and profoundly committed to a complete
integration of blacks and saw it in the future of the United States. "I
am willing to fight for racial equality and would die fighting if
necessary," he told me once.

Because of his poor, miserable childhood, he probably compared himself
to the blacks and the Indians and commiserated with them. In this he was
so different and so noble compared with the Southern trash and rednecks,
whose segregationism stems from their fear of the blacks, of their
strength and of the possibility of their prominence in every field of
human endeavor. Education for the blacks was an anathema for them, while
Lee was full-heartedly for it. He loved black children and admired their
cute and outgoing ways. He also was fond of the black music and folklore
with which he as familiar from his childhood days in New Orleans.
Lee despised the reactionary groups, the white supremacists, the
so-called "hate groups" and did not hide his feelings. I naturally
agreed with him. Marina, on other hand was not interested in anything
except acquiring possessions. Her crass materialism, envy of other
refugees' success, compared to Lee's idealism, lead inevitably to
confrontations. Lee was rather neat and orderly, Marina was lazy and
devil may care about her household and herself. This unusual
Russian-American couple was too much for the average Anglo. Hence their
cohabitation with Robert Oswald and his family was short. It all became
clear to my wife as she had the opportunity of observing Marina more
than I did. This ex-Russian activist and member of the Communist youth
stayed in bed 'till noon or later and avoided domestic chores.  This was
what happened when she stayed in our house. The same opinion was shared
by my daughter with whom Marina stayed also for a while.

Marina was simply deprived of energy while Lee, capable of an effort,
was not, however, an average go-getting type of a person who succeed in
America. I often regretted that Lee did not get a better education, he
would have done well in the scholastic world and would have been a
useful citizen.

In the meantime Lee's relationship with Marina worsened as she became
more enticed by the American "luxuries". I was a sensuous joy for her to
wear my wife's silk nighties when she stayed with us and my daughter
said that she did the same when she stayed in her apartment.

As Marina was luxuriating, Lee was rending whenever he could his Russian
books (he had brought a lot from the Soviet Union) and his friends kept
providing him with new supplies of books and magazines.

Although I did not notice any special signs of jealousy regarding Marina
-- for obvious reasons, she could not communicate with Americans and the
Russian refugees were too old for her -- it annoyed him that his wife
kept corresponding with her boy-friend, or an ex-lover, in Russia. Lee
intercepted a letter from this man and became very bitter. I do not
remember whether he beat her up on that occasion, Marina did not
complain. But he told me that the letter contained reference of Marina's
plan to return to the Soviet Union without him. It could be that Lee
imagined it. Anyway, the situation became tenser. Lee obviously loved
Marina in his own way and did not want to lose her. Marina's smoking and
occasional drinking gave fits to Lee, he hated the smell of tobacco on
Marina's breath. Laughingly I told him to avoid this problem and to
approach Marina, when he was in an amorous mood, from the back. He did
not laugh this time.

Junie's upbringing also caused bitter disputes, Lee accused his wife of
not paying enough attention to his daughter, not to change her diapers
fast enough and to be tender enough with her. Actually Marina was not a
bad mother, but Lee was too much of a perfectionist and June was his
idol. In our opinion he spoiled the child too much and we told him
so.

The Oswalds quarreled in front of us bitterly but without physical
violence. But gradually the tempo of their fights increased and we saw
Marina more often with bruises and Lee with scratches on his face.
Jeanne tried to convince Lee to change his ways to be more tolerant
otherwise this confrontation would end in a tragedy. I did not believe
that Lee would seriously hurt Marina and laughed -- "even prominent
people occasionally beat their wives, the most important is not to maim
them."

My wife liked Marina and found her amusing and stimulating but we were
both annoyed to hear her complaints about "that idiot Lee who does not
make enough money."

"Why don't you try to make something out of yourself?" asked Jeanne. "I
came penniless to America, worked hard and became a successful designer.
Go to school, learn English, revalidate your degree." Marina was not
interested.

To encourage Marina and prevent her from bitching at Lee, Jeanne gave
her a series of records to teach Russian-speaking people English. They
were her own records, as she came to the United States from China,
without knowing the language well. But she learned fast and made a
superhuman effort to become independent and to give an excellent
education to her daughter. We also gave the Oswalds a phonograph. But
instead of learning English she played melancholy Russian tunes and did
not obviously cherish the idea of finding a job.

One day both of them were reading to us a letter from Marina's
girlfriend in Russia. "Marina," it read, "I knew you would make it, you
were destined to be great and your success in America is a proof of
it."

Lee smiled sadly: "Marina what were you saying to your friend?"
Ironically Marina did become famous after the assassination, was on the
cover of Time magazine, received a lot of money from charitable but
foolish Americans, and is now well off financially.

At the time it was pathetic to read such a nonsense. But it is possible
that Marina in her own strange way considered her arrival in America a
great success, maybe the hundred odd dresses donated to her turned her
head? . . . Who knows? One day she told Jeanne that she always wanted to
come to the United States -- at any price. All the foolish gadgets and
all the junk which clutter our lives in this country.

Idea of separation

We were appalled at the Oswalds' marital troubles which from being bad
became desperate. One day Marina came to our house without announcement,
crying, badly bruised all over and carrying baby June along. It would be
dangerous for her to leave. And so we discussed the situation with a
charming couple -- the Mellers -- very kindly people without children of
their own. He had been a professor in Eastern Poland and she a Soviet
displaced person. They met in a camp in Germany, fell in love, married
and eventually came to the United States. They met Marina and liked her
and at the same time they were not prejudiced against Lee. Not being
rich, they were generous, and they accepted to host Marina and the child
till the situation would clear up.

The same day I invited Lee to come to the house to discuss the situation
with him. We spoke very calmly and as a matter of fact of the need for
separation. Our dogs, Nero and Poppea, sitting snugly next to Lee were a
living proof that he was not either frantic nor nervous. When it came to
the last beating, result of Oswalds' desperate quarrels, Jeanne said,
"Separate as fast as you can. Stay away from each other. I will let you
know Lee later where Marina will be. But not before some time
lapses."

At that Lee became indignant, our dogs went into hiding, "you are not
going to impose this indignity on me!" He shouted. "I shall tear up all
of June and Marina's clothes and break the furniture." He was incoherent
and violent. We never saw him in this condition before.

"If you do this, you will never see June and Marina again. You are
ridiculous," she said quietly. "There is a law here against abuse."

"By the time you calm down, I shall promise you will be in contact with
baby June again," I interrupted, knowing that Lee was afraid that
someone would take the child away from him. And so he calmed down,
promised to think the situation over, assured us that there would be no
more violence and after a while we drove the couple back to the dreary
Elsbeth street apartment.

The next evening Lee was back with us, all alone. Again he wanted to
talk the situation over. He sat gloomily on our famous sofa and both of
us tried to talk some sense.

"I heard of love accompanied with beating and torture," I said half
seriously, read Marquis de Sade or observe the life of the underworld --
l'amour crapule, as they say in France. But your fights seem to be
deprived of sex, which is terrible."

Jeanne tried another reasoning: "If you think you are fond of each
other, cannot you do it without scratching, biting and hitting?"
Lee sat gloomily without saying a word.

"Separation will be a test for both of you," continued Jeanne, "you will
see if you can live without each other. If you can, Lee you will find
another woman and will be happier with her."

"If not," I laughed, "you will separate or divorce again. Look at me. I
did it four times until I found somebody who can stand me."
Jeanne kept on talking about a nice temporary home for Marina and the
baby and the good care both of them will have. Naturally we did not
mention the name of Mellers.

"I promise you, Lee, that after a cooling off period, I shall give you
the address and the telephone, so you can communicate with your child.
Nobody should separate a child from her father."

Lee believed my promise because he knew that myself I had been a victim
of a vindictive wife who prevented me from seeing my children. Jeanne
had called one of two families who knew the Oswalds and they
wholeheartedly approved of the proposed arrangement because they thought
that Marina would be better off alone than with Lee. And I personally
was sure that Lee would be happier without Marina. Since Marina had been
for this arrangement from the start, it was only Lee we were worried
about.

That night we separated rather sadly. "You may hate us, Lee, or maybe
you will be grateful to us one day for enforcing this separation," I
said, "But I don't see any other way out under the circumstances. This
is Saturday, we are free tomorrow and will come in the morning to help
Marina and the baby move out."

Lee agreed but he was on the verge of tears. "Remember your promise. You
will give me soon their address and the telephone."
We shook hands and Lee left.

The next day, a Sunday, we drove to Oswalds' apartment of Elsbeth
Street. Lee hardly said hello to Jeanne to who he has always been most
cordial. "This is not the end of the world, Lee," she told him. "Cheer
up!" And she went to help Marina.

I sat on the sofa with him and tried to talk to him. He was gloomy and
hardly said a word. He did not try to help us move the crib, baby's
belongings, but when it came to Marina's clothes, he became infuriated.
In the meantime our big convertible Galaxie -- which we kept for years
in memory of Oswalds -- was filling up high. Seeing all those
innumerable clothes, Lee grabbed a bundle of them and shouted: "I will
not permit it! I will not permit it! I shall burn all this garbage."
And so back we went into the apartment following Lee and the bundle of
Marina's clothes. "You cannot go back on your promise to be calm, Lee!"
shouted Jeanne.

Disgusted, I wanted to call the police for help. But Lee looked so
desperate that I sat on the sofa again, grabbed him by the arm and tried
to reason with him. "Brutality won't help you, Lee," I said. "If you
keep on with these tantrums, Marina and the baby will be gone anyway and
you won't see them again. So better submit and keep your word."
He sat gloomily not sure of what he was going to do.

"We are wasting our valuable time helping your kids, "I shouted losing
my patience. "To hell with you and your quarrels!"

And Lee calmed down and agreed to everything. He even helped carry
Marina's clothes, acquired from the hateful Russian-American
benefactors, and put them on top of our overloaded car. with all this
junk, our convertible sank almost to the ground and groaned.
And so we departed Jeanne holding up to all that stuff to prevent it
from falling out, Marina holding on to baby June. As I was driving I
laughed because we looked so obviously ridiculous. But fortunately this
was a Sunday, there were few people on the streets and I drove slowly,
avoiding main arteries from Oak Cliff, the far Western part of Dallas,
to the Lakeview area, in the eastern part of Dallas, a distance of some
fifteen miles.

And so we reached the apartment of that gentle couple, the Mellers, who
came out, greeting Marina and the baby and helped to unload all that
junk.

Little did they suspect that this kindly action would cause them so much
trouble after November 23, 1963 and that their gentle life would be
disturbed by the insane suspicions and crazy publicity following
Kennedy's assassination.

Marina complained for the last time about that stupid Lee and all the
trouble he had caused all of us. I was worried about him. "Let's get
over with it," I said gloomily, finishing the unloading. "And let's get
out of here. We have done enough for these crazy kids."

Separation and more trouble

Obviously the separation which we caused and worked so hard at was not
the right solution for the couple's problems. It was a heavy burden on
this charitable Polish-Russian couple - the Mellers - who were used to
their own ways and who had to share Marina's temperamental problems. She
would not help Mrs. Meller in her household chores and behaved like a
prima donna. And for Lee the separation was much worse. He missed Marina
and the child and came to our house daily, asking how they were, did
June miss him, were they well taken care of. In other words he
practically forgot that this separation was not a joke and that he had
caused it to a great extent.

Again we had a chance to talk together, in a less cheerful mood than
before.  "One can arrive at truth by trial and error," he said. "In my
case I commit so many errors and I still do not know whether I arrive at
truth."

"It is possible, Lee," I countered, "that you take things too seriously.
Don't do things which are unpleasant or uncomfortable because of some
great ideology you may have. You see all the mess you are in. You must
have read Arthur Koestler's book where he repents for his years as an
ideological communist revolutionary."
Lee remembered the book.

"Stop living miserably, do like a normal person does, live pleasantly
and keep your own ideology to yourself. Don't disclose yourself."

"You are right, of course," said Lee. "But this society we live in, it's
so disgusting and degrading. How can you stand it?"

"Well, my friend, that's why we have built in distractions, stupid TV,
moronic movies, rock and roll music for most of the people."

"And good books for us," concluded Lee, rather aptly.

"Lee, you are too straight, your back does not bend enough. One of these
days someone will break your back. You have to learn to bend, be
resilient."

"But look at the politicians here, most of them. They want to be praised
publicly of their honesty and good will. Connally, the governor of
Texas, for example. In reality they will do all the degrading actions
and yet try to appear in good light."

This was the first time he mentioned his loathing for Governor Connally.
What caused it, we shall show later.

"What you need, Lee, is a good walk in the jungle, like we did. That
would bring you back to the essentials of life -- survival."

"Marina is not Jeanne, she will not do anything of the sort. And we have
the baby . . ."

Later we were asked many times with great suspicion, "Why were you
wasting your time on this crazy Marxist and his unappealing wife?"
The answer is, first, to help a young couple in despair, and secondly --
a more complex answer -- I found Lee a most interesting and invigorating
individual, he never bored me. Maybe the reader will agree . . .

Talking to Lee was a balsam for his raw nerves, a sincere conversation
calmed him down and it wasn't bad for me either. Fortunately I remember
well so much of what he said. I remember distinctly that one of those
evenings together we talked of John F. Kennedy. Lee liked him and
certainly did not include him among those despicable politicians he
mentioned before. I showed him President's picture of the cover of Time
magazine and Lee said, "How handsome he looks; what open and sincere
features he has, and how different he looks from the other ratty
politicians."

I don't remember exactly the words but Lee spoke most kindly of the
gradual improvement of the racial relations in the United States,
attributing this improvement to the President. Like most young people he
was attracted by the Kennedy's personality but he also knew that JFK's
father was a rascal who made money off whiskey and being bullish on the
stock-market which is betting against this country's economy.

Lee often mentioned that the two party system did not work well, that
other points of view were not represented. He did not see the difference
between a conservative democrat and a fairly liberal republican -- and
in that I agreed with him. "Both republicans and democrats really did
not oppose each other," he mentioned one day. "They do not represent
different points of view, but they are both solidly against the poor and
oppressed."

But regarding JFK, Lee did not have such a gloomy attitude and he hoped
that after the Bay of Pigs fiasco Kennedy would accept coexistence with
the communist world.

As I mentioned before, he did not like Marine Corps and considered it
racist and segregationist. "Do you know that President Truman wanted to
abolish this Marine Corps and I would agree with him on that." Lee did
not like any militarists, Russian or American, he thought that some day
there could be a "coup d'etat" in this country organized by the
Pentagon, and that the country would become a militaristic, nazi-type,
dictatorship. Maybe this negativist attitude was the result of the
separation, these days he was gloomy and did not smile at my jokes. Yet
I tried my best.

I remember telling him about the meeting of four girls, French, English,
American and Russian. The French girl said, "My lover will buy me a
dress." The English girl said, "My husband promised to buy me a new
coat." The American girl bragged, "My boss will buy me a mink stole."
And the Russian girl concluded, "Girls, I am a prostitute also'."

One of those evenings Lee spoke for the first time of his discharge from
the Marine Corps. "I received an honorable discharge and then those
bastards in the Navy, changed it into an undesirable discharge, just
because I went to Russia and threw my passport in the face of the
American consul."

"Didn't they do it because you lied? You were supposed to go back to the
States to help making a living for your mother . . ."

"Oh, hell, that was just a crooked excuse," he said sullenly. "And
Connally sighed this undesirable discharge."

Those days Lee was bitter about religion, which he generally seldom
mentioned. He explained his avowed agnosticism: "Money wasted on these
innumerable churches, garish and costly, should be spent much more
usefully on hospitals, asylums, homes of the poor and elderly, on
eliminating slums."

But Lee did not like the Communist party either. "In Russia party
members are mostly opportunist, carrying their cards proudly in order to
get better jobs, or they forced into the party by the circumstances or
families."

Again I tried to cheer up Lee by telling him a joke I heard in
Yugoslavia. "An uneducated Montenegian communist arrives in Belgrade
where he sees for the first time changing lights in a main intersection.
'Comrade,' he asked a passer by. 'What are these lights for?' He asked
timidly. The answer was, 'The red lights are for the Communists to cross
over, the yellow for the Communist sympathizers, the green for all the
others.' And so the peasant tried to cross on the red light, almost got
killed, and was strongly admonished by a policeman: 'What kind of fool
are you?' 'I am a member of the communist party,' the man said, 'but I
didn't really wanted to join it, I was forced into it.'"

He did not laugh but conceded that the joke proved his point. "People
without any party affiliation were the nicest among those I met in
Russia, he concluded.

I remember that Lee did not like any political parties, anywhere. He was
just a native-born [sic] nonconformist. But he told me that when he used
to teach his co-workers English in Minsk, he tried to present United
States in the most favorable light and wasn't too popular with the
authorities because of that. In the USSR he defended USA, in USA he
defended USSR.

This type of attitude I like very much and I tried to do the same when I
worked in Yugoslavia in 1967. I remember deeply offending the secretary
of the Communist party of Slovenia comparing him to my ex-father-in-law,
ex-chairman of the Republican party of Pennsylvania and an extremely
rich man. Both of them, communist and a super-capitalist, were made in
the same mold.

When he heard this, Lee finally smiled.

And so Lee tried to create good feeling in two opposing countries, in
two opposing systems of government. This is not an attribute of a
violent man, just the opposite. I must say that I never considered Lee
capable of a truly violent act. Marina annoyed him, he beat her up, but
she scratched him back and hurt him worse. Lee regretted his acts but
Marina did not. Lee threatened to destroy toys and clothes but he did
not do it. Look how he accepted our intervention. I am not a very
violent person, but I would not stand for somebody else to take away my
wife and my only child, whatever the reasons were.

Unquestionably Lee was a very sincere person, he meant what he said,
even if it meant trouble for him. Marina, I remember, had the same
feelings regarding religion as Lee; she found all religions absolutely
ridiculous, a childish farce. But at the same time she had her baby
baptized - just in case. She knew it would create a favorable impression
among Americans and Russian refugees. She did it at the time of this
separation, we did not know about it, and she did it without Lee's
consent.

And so baby June was baptized in the Russian-Orthodox church, where the
priest, father Dimitri, was a good friend of mine. Being a neophyte
himself -- he had been a strong Baptist -- he was somewhat fanatical
about his new faith and considered this baptism a great achievement. And
he did well in the church and at present time he is bishop of
California.

When Lee heard of this baptism, he became infuriated and it led him into
more religious or rather anti-religious discussions, which I remember
well.

"You know all those theories of immortality cleave me cold," said Lee.
"And who would be this mysterious judge who would punish or reward me?
It's out of sight."

"Yes, I agree with you but becoming just gas after death seems too
simple to me."

"Eternity, immortality, what high-falutin' ideas," continued Lee.

"Anyway I have hard enough time in this short existence of mine," he
smiled bitterly. "What shall I do with immortality?"
"Somebody said," pursued Lee, "this man is not intelligent enough to
doubt -- he is a BELIEVER."

"My friend," I said, "hope and religion are a peculiar mixture. They
make lots of people happy but they also made Jewish people go to gas
chambers singing Hebrew songs, instead of fighting the Nazis."

"That won't happen to me," said Lee. "I don't need hymns to pep me up
when I die. And I don't know where I shall go after death and I don't
care. But I shall not be like a rich American -- who eats, sleeps,
drinks, amuses himself and then dies painfully leaving all his belonging
and a large bank account. I shall die poor and free."

I was frequently asked, was Lee a good husband? Now we have seen his
unpleasant characteristics. But he often helped Marina in the household
work. He gave her all the money he earned. Sometimes he complained that
she was too lazy, and he did the job himself, cleaning dishes, even
washing clothes. He was tender to the baby. As far as sex is concerned,
we have heard Marina's complaints but we know that the greatest mystery
in the world is what happens between the married couple at night, behind
the closed doors. And we never looked in the keyhole.

I don't remember Lee ever saying that he would go back to the Soviet
Union, even when his marriage was going on the rocks.

If Marina had any brains, she should have known that a man like Lee, who
was not a money-maker but a barely a wage earner, would never provide
her with all the luxuries, all those desirable items, that America
seemed to possess in such limitless quantities. She picked at him,
annoyed him, as if she desired a separation, which she finally achieved
through us.

This letter from Marina's ex-lover that Lee intercepted, why did she let
it drag around. Maybe she wanted to end this unsuccessful marriage?=09

What annoyed us also was that Marina liked to ridicule Lee. She called
him a fool, a moron. "You are always thinking of politics instead of
making money --you act like a big shot!"

Marina had a bad habit of constantly correcting Lee when he was speaking
Russian and that annoyed him and me. Lee, for a man of his background,
had a remarkable talent for Russian and Marina foolishly tried to blow
up his occasional mistakes or ridicule his slight accent. It's difficult
to know two languages to perfection and Lee's English was perfect,
refined, rather literary, deprived of any Southern accent. He sounded
like a very educated American of indeterminate background. But to know
Russian as he did was remarkable -- to appreciate serious literature --
was something out of the ordinary. He had affinity to the Russian ways
of life, customs, music and food.

Therefore to criticize this remarkable fellow was an act of nastiness or
idiocy, especially for Marina who knew only two English words -- "yes"
and "no." That's how she went around and did her shopping pointing at
the articles with her finger. Lee asked me once, "What is your
philosophy of life? You make me talk a lot but tell me jokes instead of
being serious."

"Well, jokes sometimes express more than thick, serious doctoral
theses," I answered. "Frankly I am not interested in politics, I lost
most of my relatives -- and so did Jeanne -- through various wars and
revolutions. What I believe in -- live and let live. But let the
minorities and the poor live decently, then I for that type of a
government. I had voted Republican so far but I am considering switching
to the Democratic party. there is a guy there by the name of Eugene
McCarthy whom I like. I also consider that each country deserves the
government it has, let the communists live the way they want, same goes
of the socialists or even dictators. For instance the Germans definitely
deserved Hitler."

Lee nodded agreement.
"This country has too many damn problems to bust into other countries
and impose our ways. We must solve our problems first."

The FBI later annoyed me to no end and intervened in my life.
Immediately after the assassination and Lee's declaration that I was his
best friend and the only one he respected, I became marked as a suspect
number one by the FBI and CIA. Various agents, in disguise and
officially representing their agencies invaded my friends and business
acquaintances asking, "Is he a communist, is he an anarchist, is he an
agent provocateur, what country is he working for?" Some even
intimidated that I was a hypnotist and that I held Lee under my spell.

Just imagine the effect of such massive inquiries -- and both my wife
and I had left Dallas for Haiti eight or nine months before the
assassination, working on the geological survey of that country. Some
moronic agent comes to your friend and asks: "Is George a potential
killer?" Then your best friend begins to worry. The same thing happened
to my wife, a famous designer, "Is she a Marxist? Why was she born in
China? Is she an agent of the Mao Tse Tung?" Stupid questions, but your
business contacts begin to worry and you lose them.

You have to investigate like the Scotland Yard does, or do it through
the private detectives, cautiously, not by innuendo, gossip or plain
brutal imposition. Finally, assembling of a bunch of such depositions
into volumes of gossip at a large expense to the taxpayer -- and that's
what the Warren Report is -- is the height of foolishness and a
bureaucratic nightmare. But we shall talk about these matters later.

What did Lee dislike about the United States?

Lee was frequently critical of the United States and this was
understandable considering his poor and sad childhood in New Orleans,
Texas and New York. But also there was some logic in his arguments:
"America is a racist society from its very origin -- the arrival of the
pilgrims and elimination of the Indians. The United States is a
dishonest country because it's based on the spoliation of its rightful
owners. This country is based on hate and intolerance.

"And finally," concluded Lee, "I think American Anglos hate this country
because they ruined it to such an extent. Just look around -- ugliness
and pollution.

"You exaggerate, Lee, " I argued, "There are lovely places in each
town."

"The plastic ghettos of the rich, you call them lovely," he answered
angrily. "In this country of great economic wealth, the jobs are hard to
find even in times of prosperity. In depression, it's awful."

"One thing you are right about," I said, "there are few happy people
here. I remember an old joke: 'In America the poor get poorer, and the
rich get . . . Porfirio Rubirosa."
He did not laugh; Lee probably did not know who Porfirio Rubirosa
was.

"What kind of a country this is, if an Alabama ignorant redneck calls a
black professor from Dillard University a 'nigger!"

And Lee continued angrily: "You like jokes, so listen to this one. 'Two
white policemen sit in their office somewhere in Mississippi. A voice
from outside calls, 'Sheriff, come over! A man is drowning!' The
fat-bellied sheriff rises, goes out and comes back shortly. 'Goddamit,'
he says, 'another nigger tries to drown himself; the bastard wrapped
himself in chains, cannot swim.'"

Yes, Lee could be justifiably angry. But he hated FBI most of all.
"Those SOB's annoy me and Marina constantly. They keep on inquiring
about me and her. They intimate that I am a suspicious character and
that she is a communist. And so I cannot hold a decent job."
"I agree with you, Lee, why don't you write FBI a letter and
complain?"

"I did that and promised to blow up their goddamn office," he said
angrily. As we know now, the existence of this letter was carefully
concealed by FBI from the Warren Commission.

A banker, friend of mine, to whom I introduced Lee, knew the situation
and shied away from him. He did not want investigators in his wardroom.
Lee could have moved away from Dallas, and he did already move from Fort
Worth here, but those lousy investigators followed him everywhere.
That's why the Oswalds moved to New Orleans, but this happened after our
departure to Haiti. I could have advised him to stay on his job.
The banker, I mentioned above, gave Lee an interview, on my insistence,
liked him, found him an independent, clear-thinking man, yet he did not
hire him. "I am afraid of getting involved with this guy," he told me
later. "He is a hot-head. The FBI will keep pestering him. And his
undesirable discharge . . . I am sorry."

This same friend of mine testified at Warren Commission that had I
stayed in Dallas, there would have been no assassination (if Lee was
involved) as I would have known what he was up to. And I am thankful for
this one intelligent remark, although at the same time the same banker
said some disagreeable things about me. But I am a Christian, so I
forgive him.

Some other good friends understood what we were trying to do for the
Oswalds -- trying to improve their position materially, socially and
emotionally. And had we been successful, Lee's animosity might have
disappeared or would become constructive criticism. and, God, we need
it!

Marina testified at the Warren Commission hearings that Lee had been a
different person in the Soviet Union, a friendly and compatible man, but
in the States he became resentful and a recluse. He disliked the life of
Russian refugees, comparing their bourgeois ways, soft and comfortable,
with the tough and ascetic life of their compatriots in Russia. He
considered them fools who did not understand the problem of the United
States, and even traitors to their own mother-country. Why Lee did not
resent our soft ways of life, I shall never know.

Lee disliked people who were lavish with Marina, and spoiled her. And
she foolishly bragged, "Look at this, look at that. They gave it to me.
They can afford it." Naturally it infuriated him.

And so, testified Marina, Lee became somewhat of a recluse, and all that
giving backfired, making Oswald's life miserable and empty. It could be
that this was intentional; some elderly lonely people are jealous of an
unusual couple,  seemingly in love, so they get mixed up in their
affairs.

Lee disliked and even despised bureaucracy in every form here or in the
Soviet Union. "Here they are nasty', he said to me once. "In the Soviet
Union they are naive and stupid." This outburst came out after I asked
him, "How the hell did you get out so easily out of Russia?"
"I outsmarted those Russian bureaucrats. Man! They are just an amorphous
[sic] bunch of people. They make a mistake and go to a concentration
camp like a bunch of sheep."

Comparing Soviet Union and this country, Lee told me one day, "Both
sides have made a lot of mistakes, enormous mistakes. But which side is
right and which side is wrong -- I shall be damned, I don't know."
And he added seriously. "I hope at least China will be right and will do
well."

Effects of the separation

Several interviewers and even good friends asked me constantly the same
question: "You belong to a different sphere of society; why did you get
mixed up with these 'low class' people, the Oswalds?"

Most of the reasons were explained in previous chapters but there was
another important explanation. In 1960, I lost my only son to a
congenital disease -- Cystic Fibrosis, CF for short. Although the fatal
issue was expected, when it happened it affected me so strongly that I
knew that I had to get "away from it all." I asked my wife Jeanne to
give her successful designing profession and join me on an expedition on
foot by the trails of Mexico and all of Central America. This effort
helped me immensely and then we met the Oswalds very shortly after our
return.

Lee understood the nature of my ordeal, and so did Marina, which was a
Russian way of going back to nature -- to be alone in the wilderness
with the image of the lost person in our minds. And so we experienced a
communication with a departed child. But walking among the poor and
dispossessed opened our eyes to the realities of life. Before that, like
most people in this country, we were hustling after our business, quite
successfully most of the time, and dismissed poverty and inequality from
our mind.

I became receptive to some of Lee's ideas, listened to them, discussed
them freely and came to look at his as a friend, almost a son. Our
experience of living with the poor people of Mexico and of Central
America interested Lee immensely and he kept asking intelligent
questions. Because of his childhood in New Orleans and his early contact
with Latin Americans, he understood complex, semi-feudal problems and
was searching for solutions. Marina was not involved in these
discussions. Thus, possibly I identified Lee with my lost son,
unconsciously, of course, an as far as age is concerned he could be my
son. Maybe this is the reason why Lee accepted our paternalistic in his
private life. Lee trusted Jeanne and I implicitly and felt that whatever
we tried to do would be beneficial to him.

I can think of another element of our closeness. At one period in my
life, I was an officer the Polish cavalry where I always prided myself
on excellent relations with the soldiers. Maybe I treated Lee also like
a soldier firmly but fairly. And on Jeanne's part there was the same
element vis-a-vis Marina, who was about her daughter's age. And do the
Oswalds might have considered us their foster parents.

After the forced separation, Lee came to our house every day. Once he
brought some visiting cards he printed for me at Taggart's -- a touching
gesture, and I still keep these cards. Lee obviously liked my impossibly
long name and spelled it correctly, but he printed the cards on shiny
bristol paper with fancy letters and black borders, as if they were made
for a funeral.

The evening he brought my cards he appeared completely despondent from
lonesomeness. "Give me Marina's telephone," he begged me. "I want to
talk to her and the child."

We consulted each other. By consensus we have Lee Marina's telephone and
address, against Marina's will. We just did not believe that she would
be afraid of Lee. Whether our decision was a right one, we don't know
but starting that evening Lee began calling his wife at all times of day
and night, disturbing everybody until this charming couple, the Mellers,
asked Marina to move out.

This time we had nothing to do with the move and it seems that Marina
refused to be with Lee and moved first to Mrs. Katia Ford's place -- a
Russian refugee married to an American geologist -- and later she moved
in with another family named the Rays. (She was also a Russian refugee
and he an American advertising executive.)

Eventually she returned back to Lee. But before that she gave Lee each
time her telephone and address. Marina returned to her domicile after a
tearful scene -- which we did not see. Supposedly Lee swore her his
love, stood on his knees and promised to make some money. Later on we
were told that Marina had moved away from Lee for a few days in Fort
Worth, and then went back to him.

The separation we were involved in so painfully was too short to have a
positive effect, I told Lee. He should have been more patient and we
were angry with ourselves for this intervention in their lives.
And life was catching up with us -- time became very valuable for both
of us. Jeanne had to finish some urgent designing jobs, and my long
awaited project of a geological survey of Haiti was coming to fruition.
At the same time I was chosen chairman of the local Cystic Fibrosis
campaign, which meant writing letters, seeing lots of people,
participating in various meetings and, above all, raising money. Jeanne
was most useful spending her energy most usefully, raising large amounts
of money from our rich neighbors and from the executives of the clothing
industry. The campaign was a great success.

And here is another coincidence: my ex-wife and I had started this
Cystic Fibrosis foundation on a small scale in Dallas and eventually it
became a national organization with headquarters in Atlanta. At the time
of our friendship with the Oswalds, Jacqueline Kennedy became an
honorary chairman of our Foundation for which, we all, afflicted parents
were profoundly grateful to her. Lee Oswald was aware of this fact and
out of friendship to me, he expressed several times how much he admired
our President's wife.

Our meetings at the end of 1962

Somebody familiar with things Haitian would know how difficult is to
organize anything worthwhile in that country. But I have always been
very fond of Haiti, and especially of people there. Fortunately my many
friends were helpful and we were assured now that my survey was
developing a firm base. Also I was trying to organize a company to help
develop the sagging economy of this impoverished but beautiful country.
So the time was short for us and we seldom saw the Oswalds.
One night Lee came alone and seemed very depressed.

"Lee, my friend," I told him."You like Tolstoy, don't you. He said many
clever things but his one applies to you: 'Man must be happy. If not he
has to work on himself to correct this misunderstanding which makes him
unhappy.' I think I know what your 'misunderstanding' is."

Lee nodded sadly. "My tragedy is," he said, "that my suffering is
inflicted on me by a person close to whom I want to be and from whom I
would want to find protection and consolation."
These words, which I remember distinctly, touched me greatly.
"You try to change Marina into your image. It's difficult, if not
impossible. You should like her for what she is, not for what you would
want her to be. Do you my point?"

"But she is becoming like an American middle-class wife," Lee fought
feebly. "She thinks only of foolish comforts. She is becoming like the
rest of them,talking of washers, dryers and other gadgets as if they
were the most important things in life."

"Lee, you are too demanding. She is new in this country and is affected
by it. Take it easy. Try to be friends with her. Somebody said,
'Friendship is a quiet and exquisite servant, while love is a ferocious
and demanding master.'"

"I am a fool and I am very unhappy," said Lee quietly. "But thanks for
your advice anyway. You are a very good friend."

When he left I thought, Here is a good fellow whose tragedy is a
complete misunderstanding of himself. He wants love from a woman who
does not understand him. And he himself does not face squarely the
issues. What is most important to him? In the meantime the despair is
like an organism which destroys him. He begins to lose hope.
And so Lee went back home and to his miserable life. But he seemed to be
resigned to unhappiness and we have not had any complaints from Marina
-- no black eyes and no burned cigarettes on her delicate white
flesh.

In the meantime a big party was to be given for Christmas of 1962 by
Declan Ford, the geologist, and his wife Katia, the Russian refugee, who
knew the Oswalds well but tried to steer away from them. They were
probably annoyed by Marina's stay with them; as far as Lee was concerned
they were rather indifferent. Being younger than most ex-Russians, Katia
was a relatively liberal person.

After we received the invitation, Jeanne called Katia and asked her
permission to bring the Oswalds, who were extremely lonesome as the
time. Katia was not too enthusiastic at Jeanne's suggestion but with a
little of arm-twisting she accepted, but asked specifically not to bring
the baby June. Or maybe the baby was just a pretext and Oswalds had no
money to hire a baby-sitter. So I got on the phone and said, "The
Oswalds are lonesome, isolated; nobody sees them except us and we are
not giving a party this year. We will not come without the Oswalds."

"Marina will not have anyone to speak to if we invite her to another,
purely American, party. At your party she will find some
Russian-speaking people. I have a solution, I shall find a baby-sitter
for June." Fortunately Jeanne's friend, an American-Italian lady, a good
Christian, volunteered for the job and stayed with June that whole
night.

That Christmas Eve both Marina and Lee were well dressed and looked very
elegant. Lee didn't always have to be a nondescript individual; he had
sometimes a very pleasant appearance and could dress well.

The self-appointed baby-sitter, Anita, liked June and took care of her
in a typical warm, Italian manner, and the Oswalds and the two of us,
chatting pleasantly, went to Ford's attractive house in North Dallas. It
was a clear, cold night and a slight layer of snow -- unusual for Texas
-- cheered all of us and gave the city a Christmas-like appearance.
Most of the guests had already consumed lots of drinks and they were
chattering excitedly in a dozen languages. The loveliest girl of the
crowd was a Japanese musician, Yaeko Okui, staying in Dallas for a short
time with her friends from Tokyo. She was a delicate, elegant,
sophisticated girl, restrained and dignified, a little lost in our
Dallas society of noisy, self-assertive, aggressive females.

Marina did not look too well, she seemed to be afraid of the crowds. She
looked to operate with men one-to-one, and appeared bashful, like a
country girl. Lee, on the other hand, blossomed, and was the hit of the
party. Naturally a good conversationalist -- if he wanted to be -- both
in English and Russian, he was outgoing and friendly. Possibly because
the people were more liberal than usual, his behavior was exemplary.
Serious, attentive and polite, he answered questions intelligently, if
the person who asked the question was serious. He reacted well to the
surroundings.

Somebody played Russian tunes on the piano and some good voices could be
heard. Marina unfortunately was not musical and Lee was engrossed in
conversations. I stayed around him and noticed that several women
flirted with him and displayed their charms. Some were quite attractive.
But Lee's greatest conquest was this Japanese girl, Yaeko, I had
mentioned before, and who I also found the most interesting woman of
all. He noticed her also and angled towards her, or possibly it was
vice-versa. Anyway, soon they were engrossed in a conversation.

Of course, Lee had served in Japan, and there he had learned a lot about
the country and the people. He had told me that he met there some
interesting leftist youngsters.

Maybe Yaeko had met GIs, whatever it was, but they were engrossed in
each other and I left them alone. Marina stayed around, but not being
able to understand. she fretted and did not know what to do with
herself. As far as I was concerned, I was delighted. How many times I'd
heard her call Lee a bore, a fool, a bookworm; how many times she
degraded his masculinity. And here the loveliest girl of all was in a
trance. Now Marina became just a jealous woman. She even forgot to smoke
cigarettes and to drink wine, which were free and plentiful. She just
watched Lee with narrow, jealous eyes. "We should go home," she muttered
to me. "It's getting late. I am worried about June."

"Don't worry, she is well taken care of. And we are having a good time,"
I answered, enjoying the situation sadistically.

And Lee this time was not to be budged. It was the first time that I saw
him truly shine in a crowd. He enjoyed the evening and insisted on
staying there to the end of the party.

The other Russians at the party, unknown so far to the Oswalds, like
cultured Russian Jews, were amazed by Lee's almost perfect command of
the language. He spoke very fast to an elderly lady and she said, "I
have lived here in America thirty years and I cannot speak English and
well as you, young man, speak Russian."
The party finally became boisterous and noisy. Lee and Yaeko lost track
of each other. But she found me and asked timidly, "What an interesting
friend you have. What's his name?"

"Lee Harvey Oswald."

"Oh, what a lovely name."

"I agree with you that Lee is an unusual and intelligent young man, but
many others, the majority, disagree with me. They don't seem to
understand him.

"I do," said Yaeko. "He had so many true things to say about Japan. He
is a very sensitive person and he understood my country. The new Japan
is very complex."

"Yes, Lee is not one of those GI's who believe that for a bar of
chocolate and a pair of stockings you can conquer a woman, and for a
larger stake, the whole country."

"Where does he work?" She asked bashfully.

I gave her Taggart's address and the telephone number and thought to
myself, "Hee hee! A real romance is in the making." At last something
good was happening to my friend Lee; new horizons were opening for him.
Unfortunately I cannot say whether this romance has materialized, as I
my life became hectic and I did not have much time for the Oswalds,
their conflicts and even Lee's love life. They did communicate however
and I wouldn't have known about it had it not been for Marina who came
over one day, furious, and told me, "Look what I found in Lee's pocket
-- this Japanese girl's address. What a bastard; he is having an affair
with her."

I did not say anything just smiled and thought, Good for him.
"That Japanese bitch," she cried bitterly. "We had a fight over her, and
look at the result." She sported a new black eye.

"She provoked me to a fight," Lee told me later, showing his scratched
face. "This time she fought like a mad cat."
The situation was normal again, they were at each other's throat.

Rare meetings in 1963

This last incident, due to Lee's romantic interlude, showed us that it
was up to only them to iron out their difficulties. We even began to
agree that the Russian refugees were perhaps right in eliminating this
unhappy couple from their lives. We did not show to Lee or Marina this
change of our attitude but our meetings became rarer. When we saw each
other we spoke mostly about Lee's job, our upcoming departure, and about
June's health.

Only one evening led to some serious discussion. I remember Jeanne
complimented Lee for his serious attitude towards life; she was tired of
people teasing her and did not enjoy this American pastime. My teasing
annoyed her also.

"Excessive vanity is related to jokes and constant teasing," she told
Lee. "People who tease are trying to be brilliant at others' expense.
That you don't do, Lee, neither to us or to Marina. The teasers and
constant jokers want to show themselves superior."

Lee was grateful for the compliment. He sat on that sofa of ours and
told us something very touching: "I think that I shall be moving away
from here after your departure. When my heart is heavy -- and it will be
when you are gone --it will be hard for me to remain in one
place."

"Don't impose new changes on Marina and the child; think of them," said
Jeanne. "If everyone works out well, we shall invite you to stay with us
in Haiti."

Then she gave the Oswalds this advice: "You seem to be still in love
with each other. Cultivate this love as you would cultivate a fire,
adding affectionate actions like little pieces of wood. Otherwise the
fire will be extinguished."

"Study, Lee" -- I had to add my piece of advice. "Study is the best
consolation against worst adversities. Some philosopher said that, it's
not my own idea."

"Kids," said Jeanne. "We shall miss you, although you have been giving
us a lot of headaches. We shall be basking in the sun of Haiti, drinking
the beauty of our favorite island and eating sunshine and mangoes."
"Maybe it won't be so pleasant," said I, not wanting the Oswalds to
think of their dismal lives on Elsbeth Street in Oak Cliff. "Remember
life in America is fun . . . fun . . . fun . . . and the