Libra - Don Delillo [91]
“From the bars perhaps. The nightclubs.”
“I don’t recall him at all.”
“Did you know they had flights from Peshawar?”
“Where is that?”
“Pakistan. Where this flight originated.”
“No.”
“Powers is telling us many lies. What do you think?”
“He’s confused. I think he’s mainly truthful. He wants to survive.”
“He says sixty-eight thousand feet, maximum altitude. You say eighty thousand, ninety thousand.”
“I could be wrong.”
“I don’t think you’re wrong.”
“I could definitely be mistaken.”
“You sounded very sure. You described the pilot’s voice. There is reason to believe you were correct.”
“Eighty is pretty damn high. Maybe I thought I heard eighty but it was sixty-eight. I think Powers is telling the truth, based on the type fellow he seems to be.”
“What type is that?”
“Basically honest and sincere. Cooperating to the best of his ability. What will happen to him?”
“Too early to say.”
“Will they put him on trial?”
“This is almost certain.”
“Will they execute him?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’ll get the firing squad, won’t he?”
“This is not correct to assume.”
“That’s the way it’s done, isn’t it? They shoot them here.”
Smiling. “Not so much anymore.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Not a good idea.”
“I could lecture him on the virtues of life in the Soviet Union. Making radios for the masses.”
“The masses need radios so they won’t be masses anymore.”
“I have an idea I’ve been thinking.” He paused to assemble the dramatic words. “I want to go to Patrice Lumumba Friendship University.”
“A wonderful place no doubt. But it happens to be in Moscow and I don’t think this is the right time for you to live here.”
“Alek, how do I get ahead? I want to study. The plant is dull and regimented. Always go to meetings, always read the propaganda. Everything is the same. Everything tastes the same. The newspapers say the same things.”
“All right, this much. We will think about further schooling for Lee H. Oswald.”
“I will wait to hear from you. I depend on it.”
“Tell me, personally, for my own enlightenment, is Francis Gary Powers a typical American?”
It occurred to Oswald that everyone called the prisoner by his full name. The Soviet press, local TV, the BBC, the Voice of America, the interrogators, etc. Once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used. You were officially marked, a chapter in the imagination of the state. Francis Gary Powers. In just these few days the name had taken on a resonance, a sense of fateful event. It already sounded historic.
“I would say a hardworking, sincere, honest fellow has found himself in a position where he is being crushed by the pressure exerted from opposite directions. That makes him typical, I guess.”
He spoke these words in Russian and saw that Alek was impressed.
From the Historic Diary.
The coming of Fall, my dread of a new Russian winter, are mellowed in splendid golds and reds of fall in Belorussia plums peaches appricots and cherrys abound for these last fall weeks I am a healthy brown color and stuffed with fresh fruit.
my 21st birthday see’s Rosa, Pavil, Ella at a small party at my place Ella a very attractive Russian Jew I have been going walking with lately, works at the radio factory also.
Finds the approach of winter now. A growing lonliness overtakes me in spite of my conquest of Ennatachina a girl from Riga
New Years I spend at home of Ella Germain. I think I’m in love with her. She has refused my more dishonourable advanis
After a pleasent handin-hand walk to the local cinima we come home, standing on the doorstep I propose’s She hesitates than refuses, my love is real but she has none for me. (I am too stunned too think!) I am misarable!
He talked to his friends about Cuba, surprised to find they weren’t passionate on the subject. Cuba was a situation he could easily get heated about and it was steady news in the English-language Worker, on local radio and the BBC. Mikoyan signs a trade pact with Che Guevara.