Oswald's Tale (23 page)

9

Anatoly

Anatoly Shpanko is a big lumbering man with large features who seems dazed—or is it preoccupied?—by the responsibility of his work. He is a doctor in southern Belarus near the Ukrainian border, and he deals with victims of Chernobyl—clouds of radiation passed over the bordering area of Belarus after that disaster. For this, or for other causes, he is drinking at ten in the morning and sings Russian songs to his interviewers in a heavy, slightly toneless voice, a bemused smile on his face.

His childhood was happier than events in these days. He had been very proud of his father, who drove trains in Siberia and, later, in Byelorussia. When Anatoly was still a kid, his father would take him along in the locomotive cab and let him pull the train-whistle and keep his hand on the engine throttle.

Years later, after high school, Anatoly and two of his friends wanted to become medical students and live in Minsk. So, they took exams there. In advance, they decided that if even one of them failed to pass, all three would go back to Gomel. And that is exactly what happened: One did get a bad mark; all three went home. Anatoly had a good test, but they had an agreement, so he observed it, and being out of high school, he was taken into the Soviet Army and served for three years—’57, ’58, and ’59. In his last months, he was stationed not far from Minsk and was allowed to take his exams again for entrance to Minsk Medical Institute, whereupon he received fives in all three exams, excellent marks, best marks.

His first memory of Marina is of a very, very pleasant woman, and he still remembers her this way. He would like to say that she never insulted him and he never insulted her. He usually treats women with great respect, but when a representative of the female sex is rude—and some can be very outspoken—he will just look at her and leave. With no notice. He can say that he likes kindhearted women and modest girls.

He was serious in his studies—super-serious, he could say—and he hardly ever wore a tie. He lived then in a small room, and he can tell you that in all of a week he allowed himself only two hours for walking. All his other free time was spent in study. It was easy in those days to rent a room—not an apartment, but many families in those days had a single room to offer—so he lived with a couple who had no children. In his second year, however, he lived in a private house near his Medical Institute—Konstantin’s house, in fact—and his time became more relaxed. He could socialize much more.

He didn’t date one girl but a number. At that time, women were not conservative—if you went out with a girl, she didn’t tell you, “Don’t go to a movie with any other girl.” But then, his relations with women were always individual. Not like a system where he had to be the exact same man with everybody. He might go to a movie with one, and it was understood—no kissing; then, another movie with another girl—lots of kissing. You could be found anywhere between petting and absolute; he didn’t have a system.

At his Medical Institute there were more girls than men, so male students usually had a large choice, but it was a tradition that students usually found their marriages inside the Institute. However, it was virtually excluded that you could have sex and live together while students. Especially for him. He was an officer in Komsomol. You could be accused at Komsomol meetings if you lived in such a way. They didn’t have a cult of Stalin any longer, but they certainly had their cult concerning Komsomol, and Anatoly was
komsorg
. That means he was in charge of half of his Komsomol organization. He was Secretary of the
potok.
If you had a thousand students, the
potok
made up a group of five hundred, and if you were their leader, that meant you could expect to receive some special appointment later. Upon graduation, students were usually assigned to miserable places far out in the USSR, but people who were high in Komsomol could choose first. You might even be asked, “Where do you want to go?” When they came to him, however, he said, “Where is there need for a doctor?”

As far as women go, he would say that if you lived openly with a woman, you could be discussed endlessly. So, you did things underground. Who would want to be some main topic of discussion at a Komsomol meeting criticizing improper sexual behavior? One’s biological need to have sex had to be satisfied, but you did it underground. Nobody had to know whom you were seeing that way.

Now, Marina was one of the first girls he met. His opening year of medical school had been so tough for him that he had hardly dated in 1959. But in the following year, Marina was one of the first, yes.

Speaking of Marina, he cannot say anything bad: She was just a simple girl, very simple, ordinary, positive. And he just treated her like a woman. All he can remember is that there was nothing negative from his side to her and nothing negative from her side to his.

Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s book,
Marina and Lee,
amplifies this spare account from Marina’s point of view:

. . . She consented to be Sasha’s date for New Year’s, but she promised herself that she would dance with anyone who came along . . . That evening she found herself in the arms of Anatoly Shpanko, a lanky fellow with unruly, dark blond hair and a wide, appealing smile. Tolya, as she soon called him, was a twenty-six-year-old medical student who had already served his term in the army. He was whimsical, yet deferential, to Marina, and from the moment of their first kiss—they were standing in a dimly lit courtyard, with snow swirling all around them and a lantern creaking in the doorway—she was deliriously in love with him. “He was a rare person,” Marina recalls. “He was honest in everything he did.”

There was only one drawback. Attracted as she was to Anatoly, Marina did not think he was handsome. Nor did she like the way he dressed. He simply did not fit the image she had created for herself of a girl who goes out only with handsome men. Not wanting to be made fun of, fearful that her friends might think less of her, she steered Anatoly along back streets when they were together as surreptitiously as if they were engaged in a clandestine affair. But she forgot her calculations when he kissed her. His kisses made Marina’s head spin. Finally he proposed, but there were obstacles. Anatoly had two or three more years in medical school, no money and, even more important, no apartment. Marina consulted Valya and Ilya. “No, my dear,” Ilya said. “Let him finish the institute first. He can talk about getting married then.”
¹

Anatoly does remember kissing in a dimly lit courtyard, but there was no snow coming down. The snow was already there. He remembers nothing special—it was routine, nothing special. You remember details when something was not ordinary.

Being told that Marina did remember his kisses, he said, “She appreciated it, I think, ha, ha, ha.” Then he added, “I am trying to be honest. I don’t want to invent. I am sorry if I can’t be helpful.”

When asked why Marina singled him out as being “a rare person . . . honest in everything he did,” he replied, “I think maybe she got this information from some of my friends. She didn’t get it out of my behavior, but something she heard from other people.” He would add, “That’s why everybody wanted me to be Secretary of Komsomol, because many of them were younger and had not been in the Soviet Army.” So when he would say, “This is fair,” people would often accept it. When asked if he was considered by most people to be honest, he replied, “Even today.” Asked about how he dressed in those days, he said, “I never worried about clothes. If someone said, ‘I don’t like this way you’re dressed,’ I’d say, ‘Okay, buy what you want me to wear and I’ll wear it.’” He would not get dressed up just to please a woman. His opinion: A woman should like a man’s soul, not some clothes he is wearing. “We have a saying here that you greet a person by how they are dressed, but by the time you say goodbye, you respect a person for how they are.”

As he recalls, nobody told him anything negative about Marina. Nobody ever said to him that Marina had some history in Leningrad. “People knowing me, like I am, never passed on rumors. You can’t come close to me this way.” He would tell them, “‘You want to talk about this person? Bring that person here and then say it, but don’t talk to me alone without this person.’ It was my rule.”

Besides, they didn’t have sex. He would say they didn’t achieve such a desire. He has no recollection of proposing to her, and if she gave as her reason for rejecting him that he didn’t have his own apartment, he would say that was not exactly true. Because he had an aunt in Minsk who did have a house with land, and on this plot was another small house that was empty. So, if he had really wanted to marry, he could have lived with his wife in that small house, although while still dating he would not bring a girl there, because he would never do such a thing to his aunt. It would be an insult.

When asked if he was more moral than others, he said, “In those days—our Khrushchev era—there were young men like me, but not many, not many.” As for a wife, he wanted a woman who was simple, average, very human. Marina would have fit his idea of whom to marry. If he did propose to her once and was turned down, he thinks he would have joked about it later.

He finds it hard to believe that on a night in March of 1961, at a long-forgotten dance, some Trade Union dance, Marina told him to meet her at ten o’clock outside the Trade Union Palace. He cannot see a possibility of that. He would not have waited more than five minutes for a girl. Maybe he’d give it another five minutes, but never more. When that much time has passed, he leaves—that’s it. Maybe he could have gone earlier, and popped out to look for her at ten, but to him it doesn’t make sense. At that time, he thought many girls were in love with him. He was not being egotistical, either. Minsk Medical Institute was a very high, privileged educational college, so women were attracted to students there.

When told that, according to Marina, they had a fight that night and he said, “I have to talk to you,” and she said, “I can’t talk now, can’t you see? Go away,” he would only say that he has no recollection of her speaking to him disrespectfully, but maybe it is true she walked out of his life and into another life—this man she would marry. So his response now would be, “Ah, she was lucky; she married her man and she is happy now. She was not waiting for me. She found another man, so that’s good for her.”

Of course, he is amazed that such a small love can create such a large interest. Even now, he is surprised; he is even shocked that interviewers from America have come to ask about a girl who didn’t marry him. In response to a hint of explanation, he asks, “Her husband is accused of killing somebody?” Then he adds, “Don’t forget to tell me, because I’m nervous. I’m nervous about who was killed.”

His interviewers assured him it would not affect his present life and that they would tell him later. With his agreement, they would like to go on with their interview.

They reminded him that he phoned Marina and asked to see her, but she told him that she was now having a serious relationship. He recalled that they had only spoken once more and that was when they met on the street and she said that she might be going to America. He had joked, “Come on, take me with you.” And, to the interviewers, he added, “I can joke like that. With my character, I can say, ‘Good, you have a good life. Take me with you.’”

Sasha said: “You know, even now, I admire her. If you notice, I respect women in general, and my principle is always that you should pet a woman along the fur and not against it. And you should love a woman.”

Yet, how does he feel about how it all ended? “Now, I can see she looked at me as just a young boy. I think if she had waited for me and had been patient enough, her life would be much happier than it was after she left for America. Because everything I wanted to devote to her, I have since devoted to my family. I think maybe now, deep in her heart, she is a very unhappy person. But if you see her, give her best regards from Sasha, and tell her that I’m not offended or insulted, although I had some unpleasant moments.

“I understood some of what she felt when I was dating her, but now it’s proved that she never shared my feelings, and this is the most difficult part. But at that time I was young. I suppose the best way for her was to marry a foreigner, and go to another country.”

After they broke up, he was very depressed. He didn’t study well. It was a hard time. But step by step—and it took a year and a half—he came out of it. Then he was introduced to his wife, and he has been happy all his life with her. So he could thank the interviewers for having been to see him. They had brought a little bit of entertainment into his provincial life, he said.

PART V

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE