Oswald's Tale by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online

in Arkhangelsk. Marina wonders if it’s as lovely a wooden city as she remembers. But, of course, to a child, even birch trees smell good after a rain. When you are a child, you are closer to earth, so you are near to all those smells of flowers and herbs, and Marina remembers playing in a park on the day she met her stepfather, Alexander Medvedev. He came and said, “Hello, I’m your father.” She remembers it was just after the war ended in 1945, and she can still recall how happy people were and how happy she was.
    Yet, after this war she would have nightmares. And she remembers that her grandmother’s household was so strict. When she was five years old, she hated to go by herself to the bathroom, because God could see everything. “I was embarrassed. If I’m going to tee-tee—and God sees it—that’s not proper to do, you know?” When people used profanity, she would try to close her ears. She never could bring herself to repeat ugly words; it burned her ears.
    Grandmother was religious. For Marina, when she was young, everything good was with Grandmother, and everything outside was devil’s work. Komsomol and the Communist Party—garbage.
    Her grandmother used to say, “You know, if I want to keep an icon in my house, there will be an icon. Come and arrest me.”
    With her grandma, it was always what is best for Marina. Her grandma would tell her fairy tales and point out the moral. Grandma would teach her not to lie. “Maybe that’s what keeps me going,” says Marina now. “Not that I am always truthful, but I am not comfortable in lying—you can catch me like that. I betray myself very quickly.”
    When Marina would disobey her grandmother, she would be kept indoors for several days, and her mother never dared to interfere.
    Marina can no longer remember when she learned that her stepfather was not really her father, but she did not find out from her mother. A girlfriend had overheard Klavdia talking about it to her mother, so Marina came home and confronted Klavdia with what she had just learned, but her mother’s only answer was: “I don’t want to talk about it. Later.” Marina says: “I guess we think that later on a child will understand, but I felt hurt, and I rebelled against my mother. I punished her. I loved her, but I made her suffer deliberately. I was testing her: How far can I push to see if she loves me? My mother said, ‘When you grow up, I’ll explain to you everything, but now you’re just too young to know.’ I thought what she had done was sloppy, even dirty.”
    After her mother died, Marina found some papers. Her mother had been looking for Nikolaev. It was after Stalin died and amnesty was given to former prisoners. So her mother had been filling out papers, looking for Marina’s real father. Marina remembers that when her mother was close to dying, she still wanted to punish her. Klavdia was in a hospital, and Marina would bring her cruel messages from Alexander’s mother, Yevdokia. This mother-in-law didn’t like Klavdia. Some messages would even say that Alexander was fooling around—which he never did. His mother was lying, but Marina didn’t know—she thought Yevdokia had proof. Of course, she also knew it was going to hurt her mother. Marina would say, “Well, Papa is probably seeing someone healthier.” Her mother started crying. Then she said, “Don’t worry, Marina, it won’t be long. We’ll find out who really loved us.” That’s what she said. “Between love and hate,” says Marina, “is a thin line. I didn’t hate my mother; I wanted all her love. I didn’t want to share her. That’s how possessive I was of my mother, let’s put it that way. Yevdokia was cruel. She was evil enough to know that I would be a good messenger for her cruel words. You know how teenagers are.”
    After her mother’s death, Marina wouldn’t live by her stepfather’s rules about curfew. She felt he wanted a new woman in his apartment and Marina was in the way.