It was some weeks later that she learned his mother was not dead.

Some of the boys from the plant told Marina that he was a good enough fellow but always kept to himself, always the loner, not really part of things, not at all like a Russian in temperament and feeling-not straight from the heart, in other words.

The day they were married Castro won the Lenin Peace Prize. This was two weeks after the Bay of Pigs.

He wrote in Spanish in his notebook the numbers one to seventeen, leaving out five and six.

"The other girls I knew here, why did they want to go out with me, just like you?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Because I'm American. That's the funny thing. I left my country out of protest against the conditions there and now I'm the all-American boy to everyone. Except I'll tell you this. When I wanted to marry that girl from the factory, Ella, she turned me down flat for the same reason she went out with me in the first place. I'm an American. Sooner or later I'd be arrested as a spy, she said. Her family thinks I'm a spy. She probably thinks I'm a spy. It's the state of fear of ordinary life in Russia. I saw her the other day. Fat as a barrel now."

Interesting, Marina thought, how much writing he seems to do on those large new pads. What are those photographs he keeps on the top shelf of the closet, behind the suitcases? What is this pencil sketch that looks like a ground plan of the radio factory?

He told her he was writing his impressions of Russia.

And what is that thing on the wall, the little fixture near the sofa bed that seems to have no earthly use? Is someone listening to what we say?

Even now, after Stalin, she wasn't sure who to trust. Her own uncle Ilya was a colonel in the MVD. In his uniform he was like a painted hero of the Great Patriotic War. Alek wanted her to find out everything she could about Ilya's rank, his salary, his duties. She knew his position had something to do with the timber industry. A sensitive post but not at all related to spies or counterspies. He was Head of Timber or something similar. That was her impression.

Alek told her to find out more. It was for the sketches he was writing of Russia.

Sometimes Alek rented a boat alone and let it drift along the river past their building. He would shout her name, call repeatedly into the wind until she appeared on the balcony to wave. His return wave was like a child's, a deep and excited delight. He seemed in his little boat to say, "Look at us, a miracle, so true and sure."

Two years earlier, on a vacation trip to Minsk when she lived in Leningrad, Marina had noticed a handsome apartment house with balconies overlooking the river. One terrace was bright with flowers and she'd imagined how lovely it would be to live there. She was certain this was the balcony she stood on now, hers and Alek's, waving, as the boat moved slowly past.

Destiny is larger than facts or events. It is something to believe in outside the ordinary borders of the senses, with God so distant from our lives.

Some people don't believe in God but they color eggs at Easter just to change the pattern of their days.

Postcard #5. A foldout number. "Scenes of Minsk." Oswald is photographed at the Victory Monument, the Palace of Culture, Stalin Square. He is a cheerful enough subject, smiling squarely at the camera, but in fact there is little to be happy about right now.

His application to study at the Patrice Lumumba University of the Friendship of Nations has been turned down. He takes the news hard. It makes him feel small and worthless. The Chief of Student Welcoming writes that the school was created exclusively for youths of the underprivileged countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Lee wonders how they can think he is privileged. It is part of the general stupidity about life in the U.S.

What else? Well, he has written to the U.S. embassy in Moscow to ask for his passport back. He's a little nervous about this, considering he dumped the passport in their lap, practically forced them to take it, and then said some things he wishes he hadn't about military secrets. Would they want to prosecute him if he returned?

What else? There's this funny little device on the wall of his flat and it's not a socket, a light switch or a thing to hang a picture from. Not only that. He keeps seeing a car marked "Driving School" going up and down his street. Maybe his street is the site of the final exam, he thinks, except there is never a student in the car.

He believes they are watching him because they think he is a false defector sent by the Office of Naval Intelligence. He easily sees the possibility that ONI is waiting to get him out of here so he can tell them what he's learned.

He knows someone is intercepting his mail because right after he wrote to the U.S. embassy, his monthly payments from the so-called Red Cross suddenly disappeared, cutting his income in half. He took the money in the first place because he was hungry and broke and there was snow on the ground in Moscow. He didn't want to think about the true source of the funds. They were paying him for defecting, for answering questions about his military service. Now that he wants to go home, the money stops coming.

No sign of Alek. Not a word. Total silence.

Maybe this is all Alek. It is everything Alek. It is get the goods on him. It is pin him to the wall when all I want to do is study.

/ sfi'// haden't told my wife of my desire to return to US.

His friend Erich introduces him to some Cuban students and he likes talking to them, likes exchanging complaints about the dreariness of Minsk. The Cubans have a talent and a flair. There is an integrity in the Cuban cause, he believes. It is an underdog effort, Here, people use the party to get ahead. The party is an instrument of material gain.

He is photographed one more time, wearing dark glasses.

Near his building was a five-hundred-foot radio tower enclosed in barbed wire and patrolled by armed guards with the usual snarling dogs. Not far away were two smaller structures, just as well guarded. These were jamming towers, designed to interfere with high-frequency broadcasts _vfrom Munich and other Western cities.

He saw himself writing this story for Life or Look, the tale of an ex-Marine who has penetrated the heart of the Soviet Union, observing everyday life, seeing how fear rules the country. Chocolate is four times more expensive than in the U.S. No choice, however small, is left to the discretion of the individual.

He has taken photographs of the airport, the polytechnic institute and an army office building, just to have, to save for later.

"A strange sight indeed," he would write, "is the picture of the local party man delivering a political sermon to a group of robust simple working men who through some strange process have been turned to stone. Turned to stone all except the hard faced communists with roving eyes looking for any bonus-making catch of inattentiveness on the part of any worker."

He saw himself in the reception room at Life or Look, his manuscript in a leather folder in his lap. What is it called, morocco?

He got his friend Erich to give him lessons in German.

When Marina told him she was pregnant he thought his life made sense at last. A father took part. He had a place, an obligation. This woman was bringing him the kind of luck he never figured on. Marina Prusakova, herself born two months premature, weighing two pounds, from Archangel on the White Sea, halfway round the world from New Orleans. He took her face in his hands. Fair-haired wispy girl. Full mouth, high neck, blue-eyed flower girl, his slender pale narcissus. Let the child look like her, even that little sulky curl of the mouth, her eyes showing fire when she is angry.

He danced her around the room, promised to take better care of her than anyone ever had. She would be the baby until the real baby came.