Libra - Don Delillo [96]
“I went all over. The ministries, the departments, a total run-around. They are hopeless people, Marina. They read my mail, so I complain to my brother in my letters about their hopeless bureaucracy.”
“You are writing to him and to them. Two letters for the price of one.”
“We’re saving a fortune,” he said.
“Where is Texas actually?”
He washed the coffeepot in tepid water.
“It’s where General Walker lives. The head of all the ultra-right hate groups in America. The Worker had a headline today. GENERAL WALKER BIDS FOR FUHRER ROLE. He resigned his army command so he won’t have any military restraints when he tries to lead a far-right takeover.”
“Should I learn English now?”
“Later, when we get there.”
These days and nights were a revelation to him. He was a domestic soul, happy in the home, a householder who did the dishes, chatted with his wife about the wallpaper. It was wonderful to discover this. He had a chance to avoid the sure ruin. It seemed so safe in these small rooms with Marina near him to talk to and touch, to make this Russia seem less vast and secret. So many angers waned, as he sat under a lamp reading, reading politics and economics, his wife always near, in a loose dress, pregnant, with street-lights shining on the river.
That night they heard the rumble in their sleep. Two, three, four hollow booms, like some power in the sky, deep-rolling across the night. He lay still, eyes open now, waiting for her to speak, knowing what she would say, word for word.
“What is it, Alek, thunder?”
He heard the last slow rumble.
“They’re blowing up the statue of your leader.”
Tishkevich, the personnel chief, told Citizen Oswald that his performance as a regulator was unsatisfactory. He was not displaying initiative. He was reacting in an oversensitive manner to helpful remarks from the foreman. He was careless in his work.
He said he was writing a report. He would state all these things and would add that Citizen Oswald takes no part in the social life of the shop.
No trace of Alek. No word. Not a single sign he even knew Oswald was alive.
His mother found him. She wrote a letter telling him that the Marine Corps had given him a dishonorable discharge.
He wrote to his brother to ask whether the government might be planning to take action against him.
He wrote to the U.S. embassy to ask for a government loan so he and his family could travel to America.
He wrote to his mother to ask her to file an affidavit of support on Marina’s behalf.
He wrote to Senator John Tower of Texas and to the International Rescue Committee.
The whole process of paperwork channels, endless twisting systems, documents in triplicate—an anxious labor for him to decipher these forms and fill them out.
He was writing to John B. Connally Jr. because he thought that Connally was Secretary of the Navy. He was actually the Governor of Texas.
Marina walked in, carrying the paperback Dr. Spock a friend of hers had sent from England. She sat next to him and he translated passages into Russian. She told him that giving birth is a woman’s secret, like something that happens on the ocean floor, in dim light and silent water, the one mystery no one can solve even when we know the biology involved.
Dr. Spock wrote, “Don’t be afraid of your baby. Your baby is born to be a reasonable, friendly human being.”
Marina looked at him when he translated these lines. She seemed to be asking for the first time, What kind of place is America?
He went back to his letter. Could he tell the Secretary that he was a false defector? He wanted to repair the damage done to him and his family. He knew his rights. He wanted his honorable discharge reinstated. But could he tell the Secretary, the way his mail was constantly intercepted, that he’d been sent by Naval Intelligence to live in the USSR as an ordinary worker, observing the system, photographing areas of strategic value and making note of the details of everyday life?
He saw himself sitting next to a tasseled flag in the Secretary’s office, talking to the Secretary, a square-jawed man with