Mr. Jenner. She was?
Mrs. De Mohrenschildt. Absolutely—see people, how nice they are? And she is always telling me—the people are nice, giving all these things, and he is insulting them for it. He was offensive with the people. And I can understand why, and maybe I was the only one that understood him, while he was offensive, because that hurt him. He could never give her what the people were showering on her. So that was very difficult for him, no matter how hard he worked—and he worked very hard. He worked overtime, he used to come in at 11 o'clock, she said, at night, and when he come home, he started reading again. So he was not running around.
He didn't drink, he didn't smoke. He was just hard working, but a very difficult personality.
And usually offensive at people because people had an offensive attitude to him.
I don't think he was offensive for that, because of the things we did, he could have killed us.
Mr. Jenner. What did you do?
Mrs. De Mohrenschildt. Well, you see, he mistreated his wife physically. We saw her with a black eye once.
Mr. Jenner. And did you talk to him and to her about it?
Mrs. De Mohrenschildt. Yes; we did. I called him just like our own kids, and set them down, and I said, "Listen, you have to grow up, you cannot live like that. This is not a country that permits such things to happen. If you love each other, behave. If you cannot live with each other peacefully, without all this awful behavior, you should separate, and see, maybe you really don't love each other."
Marina was, of course, afraid she will be left all alone, if she separate from Oswald—what is she going to do? She doesn't know the language, she had nobody to turn to. I understand they didn't get along with Oswald's family.