SISTER SUSAN STORIES

I have a sister, ten years younger than I am who has always done and continues to do, intriguing things that few women do. Sister Susan is bright, a university graduate with a sting of degrees longer that most. She majored in languages, has a PhD in 17th century French, minored in Russian, at age 43 received a Law degree and worked for an internationally focused law firm in New York for several years. She is now a professor of International law at a University in California.

All this activity, no doubt, occurred because of Susan's attitude. She seems to see life's road as a series of mountains to climb, and then proceeds to surmount each and every one. Of course, no mountain appeared to block her way, she created one, just to keep in shape. Almost daily, she will climb a new literary and figurative mountain and rarely fails or backslides at anything she attempts.

Our life paths diverged many years ago, but now, when we do meet, we still laugh together and enjoy each other's company better than most brothers and sisters. And while perhaps Susan enjoys the sizzle of her life, I savor the steak of mine by writing these sister Susan stories.

There are three stories here. One tale is particularly relevant in our geopolitical world today.

Boris Yeltsin And Susan

After she bagged her law degree, Susan worked at a very prestigious New York law firm. She spent most of her time on the telephone with (very boring, her words) corporate executives in French overseas colonies and, by the way, making lots of money for both of them. As she drove home from work she would sometimes telephone me from her car to tell me some unusual event in her day. One call went like this:

"Remember, my dear brother, the day the President of Russia, Boris N. Yeltsin, came to New York to convince the American banking community that there was value in investing in the "New" Russia. He came just after the breakup of the old Soviet Empire. He spoke at my old law school, and their Public Relations Department needed an American who could speak or understand Russian. That person would represent our university and sit on the dais with Boris and his retinue.

"Well, they found me by checking their yearbooks and you won't believe what happened next....."

The line began to sputter and finally went dead as often happened with Susan's car phone calls, and she never completed that phone call nor the story. But several months later, I was invited to her law firm's Christmas party and over drinks, had a casual chat with her boss. He was a friendly sort named Fred something or other, and he told me the rest of that story.

It began, Fred said, at a press briefing in a break-out room off the main lecture hall, just after Mr. Yeltsin's talk.

"With cameras flashing and their Mini-Cams rolling, President Yeltsin, through an interpreter, spoke to the press with all the proper sound bites they needed for their eleven o'clock news. I watched Susan as she stood at the other side of the room, intently waiting for the initial press crush to die down. Then, her eyes fixed on Boris, she made straight for him. Having never laid eyes on him before that morning, Susan came up into his face like they were old friends.

"Speaking extemporaneously and in fluent Russian, Susan said:

'I think, President Yeltsin, that you are the greatest thing that has happened to Mother Russia since Catherine the Great. And I believe that you alone can pull Russia out of its present economic crisis better than any one alive in Russia today.'

"By then the TV cameras had been turned off (most sound bites need to be in English, usually from some interpreter) and thus none of this exchange was ever made public. But it was clear from Yeltsin's face that he was very pleased.

"Waving his interpreter aside, he offered Susan a glass of champagne and began to speak rapidly to her, as if they had been buddies for years. They quickly exchanged addresses and soon Boris's handlers experienced some difficulty pulling the big man away. They were trying to encourage him to speak directly with the press or to several bankers who had just arrived. Susan retreated to her perch across the room but clearly maintained eye contact. Nothing more happened that day, but much followed."

Fred, devoured some passing hors d'oeuvres and then continued:

"After almost a year had passed and on a Tuesday, I believe, just before lunch, I walked into Susan's office without knocking."

"Looking a bit surprised and sounding her usual snarky, she said:"

"Thanks for recognizing the privacy of my closed door!"

"I shut her door behind me and said:

"What are you doing the day after tomorrow? That's Thursday afternoon... Not much I hope, because Boris Yeltsin's office just called. He wants to see you in Moscow on Friday morning to look over the contracts before he signs them. That is the contracts for the new telephone system they are supposed to be installing throughout Russia.

"I clearly remember Susan's response. It was almost nonplussed."

`OK Fred, what's the joke?'

"No joke, Susan," I replied, "his office called, asked if you still worked here. I was given the call, because you left that `not to interrupt' message with the receptionist. The guy on the phone,said he was their office person. And by the way, he spoke such good English that I also thought it was a put-on. Well, anyway, he said that you had met Yeltsin at that law school some time ago and he remembered that you were a corporate lawyer and that he needed your advice.

"I remember you meeting Yeltsin that day, but how well do you know him? Did our firm negotiate any telephone company contracts for him? Who's the phone company? Is this billable time, or is someone pulling my leg?"

"Susan smiled and said:

`Yes, of course, I've met him. No, I did no contract work for him, nor the Russian Government. I've not seen nor heard from Yeltsin since that meeting. And maybe this is not a joke, because I think I remember reading something in the Wall Street Journal about this Russian phone thing.'

"Two days later Susan and I," Fred continued, "were on an Aeroflot plane to Moscow. There, after a very short review, the contacts were signed the same day. Susan and Boris drank lots of Vodka, while I, mostly stood around looking dumbfounded while snacking on some black caviar. Susan and I returned to our New York offices by Monday morning. We flew back aboard Yeltsin's private jet and with our earphones on we each fell asleep to the stains of Tchaikovsky.

"With billing dreams of lots of "sugar plum fairy" dollars dancing in my head, I slept well. Susan probably did too, but I can't be certain, because when she awoke, she told me the following joke, which she felt was relevant to the situation."

"As best I can remember it...there was this mother cat and her several kittens walking down the street," Susan began.

"Just as they turned the corner, mother cat spied this big ferocious dog, and at the same moment the dog spotted them. Dog began to growl loudly and by leaps and bounds began to run as fast as he could toward the cat family.

"Kittens become frightened, but mother cat brought her brood behind her and sat down calmly until the dog was almost upon them. In an instant, mother cat stood up, arched her back, and just as the large dog came up in her face, said `Woof,' as loud as she could. Dog slid to a halt right in front of mother cat, totally confused. Again, Mother cat, said and, as loud as she could, `Woof.' Dog panicked and turned tail and ran away. Mother cat turned to her kittens and said, `See the advantage of a second language!'"

Fred and I drank a champagne toast to his extraordinary employee as he continued the rest of his tale.

"So, meanwhile back in Moscow, within six months, the small telephone company that was to install the new system went bankrupt and never installed a single phone. We never made dime one on this Russian deal but I got to fly to and from Moscow in really classy style, and these things can only happen because of your sister."

Now, I wish I could have heard Susan's version of this Yeltsin story but that day her car phone went dead. I suspect it might have been a bit different. But I liked Fred's better.
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Tennis Rules the Court

After several years of working at the Law, Susan did a 180 degree turn and went back to teaching. But this time she taught French and Russian at a private high school so that her children could attend there, free of charge.

To hear Susan tell it:

"Both the high school and the students idolized me, but I did not feel fulfilled."

Thus she took a job, during her summers, teaching, in French, a class in international contract law. She did this in the south of France for an American Law school.

Susan explained to me that the school wanted to get about 20 rich, foreign international lawyers to pay bags of money to attend an American master class taught by very prestigious teachers including Susan. Susan was simply required to fly to the south of France for two summer weeks....find those prestigious lecturers, also to direct the program, teach several of the courses, and also play lots of tennis. Her surgeon husband, would also spend part of his own vacation playing tennis there too. All of this so that Susan might be better "fulfilled."

That first summer Susan, by some magical method, much too complicated to explain, convinced one of the two women Justices who now sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, to go abroad and lecture to her class. But as Susan told it:

"She was not such a good tennis partner, so the following summer I arranged for another U.S. Supreme Court Justice to do it.

"But for now, dear brother, I'd like to keep their names private, but you can be assured that they both sat on that high bench Despite this particular second justice's views and opinions, with which I strongly disagree, I understood his tennis game to be pretty good.

"Now," she continued, "it turned out that this good jurist was a much better tennis player then any of us ever imagined and that got us into a bit of trouble. You see he was very competitive and did not like to lose. But unfortunately, as the summer wore on, my husband had begun to beat him, a bit too often. That's when we got the call from a Dean, back at my university at home."

The Dean simply said: "I've heard about your tennis matches, and I suggest you find a way to let that good Justice win more often."

"That," Susan said, "was when my husband developed the worst case of tennis elbow, or a rotator cuff or maybe it was Carpel Tunnel, I'm not certain which, and was forced to give up tennis for the rest of that summer. How fortunate for all of us. Don't you agree?"

Well, the rest of the summer apparently passed uneventfully and all returned home from Europe refreshed and perhaps somewhat "fulfilled."

Then one autumn day at home in their apartment in New York, Susan received an unexpected phone call from their tennis playing jurist friend. I learned of this via one of sister Susan's car phone calls.

She said, "He phoned me saying....

'I've just come up from Washington DC to visit my old Aunt in New York, and wondered if we might get together tonight for a simple dinner.'

Nothing, however, is ever simple with Susan, for that very evening they had tickets to the Metropolitan Opera, and before she could tell him that this might cause some difficulties, the good Judge said he'd be happy to go along.

Their major difficulty was that this particular Met performance had been sold out for months and not another seat was available. Thus, having not climbed a mountain in some time, this opportunity was one that sister Susan considered, a delightful challenge!

Thus, after several unfulfilled tries at the box office and phoning all the scalpers Susan knew in town, she telephoned the General Manager of the Met.

How she got through, I'll never know, but she did. To him she said:
"I explained why I called, what I needed and for whom I needed it. I also told him that this jurist, was an avid opera fan, had sung in a small choir himself and probably knew almost every thing about this particular production of Turandot and several others that have been performed at the Met in the past 30 years."

After an "inordinately long wait," Susan said, the General Manager invited the three of them to view that evening's performance from his private box at the Met and, during the intermission, to have tea with him in his private tea room. "He's really a nice guy," Susan recalled.

"But the really exciting news," Susan continued, "is that he, the jurist that is, has invited us down to sit-in on one of his Supreme Court sessions next week. Something about some Rodney King person. Do you know who he is? Well, unfortunately, my dear husband will be operating that day, on God, and I'll have to go alone."

"On God?" I interjected, not really certain I wanted to know.

"Yes, you know, that ultra orthodox Jewish group in New York, have got this old rabbi That his believers say he's the messiah and they call him God. Don't you read the papers, brother?

"But that Supreme Court session is what I'm really excited about. Isn't that neat? Pretty good for a dumb kid from the Bronx, eh?" she squealed.

"I'll have to go to Washington this week because I'm off to France next week to teach another course. Oh yes, I bagged the high school teaching this semester, now that my kids have all graduated.

"Now I've got to think of who I can get as a guest lecturer. I wonder if Hillary knows anything about international law and how her tennis game is lately?"

That's when Susan's car phone apparently went dead, as so often happens.
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THERE'S NO HOT WATER IN MINSK

This event may have really taken place when the U.S.S.R. was at it's height, but just before its ultimate collapse.

"That is correct, Madam. There is no hot water in Minsk today."

Replying in her best Russian, and with all the self-control she could muster, considering the events of the past few hours, Susan said:

"No, you don't understand, Vasily. Minsk is a large city. What you meant to say is that there is no hot water in this hotel. Therefore, all you must do is change our hotel and all will be fine. We can be packed in a few moments. We have been on the road in that unbearably horrid bus from Warsaw for many, actually too many, hours and we must have a hot bath to refresh us."

"I am terribly sorry, Madam, but it is you who do not understand. The facts are that today is Tuesday, and on Tuesday there is no hot water in all of Minsk. And if you think that is strange, you should go to Odessa in the south, where there is no cold water almost every day."

Vasily smiled that obsequious Intourist smile, they use when they wish to impart some piece of information that is not, strictly speaking, on their itinerary.

"Don't be absurd, Vasily"...Susan replied. "Why, more than sixty years ago, when my mother was ten years old, she emigrated to America from Odessa. All the rest of her life she took endless delight in telling and retelling us, her children, and our father (her Crimean husband, whom she had met and married in America, but who was a country boy from Feodosiya, on the Black Sea) that `... even then, when she was a girl, we had flush toilets in Odessa.'"

"Yes, Madam, but that was before the Revolution," Vasily countered. "And as you well know, Madam, the progress we have made since our glorious revolution has been immeasurable."

Then Vasily winked that sycophantic wink that told much more than he was telling, as he suspected this hotel might still be bugged.

But let me back-up a bit. You see, while she was a law professor Susan and her surgeon husband, along with perhaps twenty others who live and work in that international academic maelstrom, were participants in yet another, whirlwind tour of seven 'Newly Emerging East European' countries in fourteen days.

At the dinner table in the hotel later that evening, the room air evoked an odd mixture of Russian beets and Parisian perfume. The earthy scent of the borscht was in constant combat with that age-old formula used to cover up the lack of a hot bath. But that struggle took a back seat to the battle of wits (if you could call it that) among several members of the group who were deep in discussion of the recent day's events.

"I cannot believe what Vaclav said yesterday. I certainly hope the plays he writes are better than his politics ...." one political scientist remarked.

"And did you really understand what that young Komsomolnik Kielbasa said about the Polish economy, or was it that Magyar Molnar fellow from Hungary? I really have trouble keeping those little countries apart. Are we going to go back to Paris at all dear?" The folk dance teacher from Des Moines asked her economist husband.

These gurus, who grant today's American JD's or MBA's, filled the air around their dinner table with pithy, professorial abstractions. They sounded little different than those Druckerite savants did, twenty years before, after devouring and spewing forth, his wondrous "How To" books on Japanese and Pacific Rim business success.

Susan and her husband's late arrival and their American sweat added yet another scent to the borscht battle. Another physician at their table, in between pulls on his pipe, stage whispered to all within earshot, and with a bit of a twinkle in his voice:

"Can't you guys ever get anywhere on time? Were you perhaps doing a surgical procedure on Susan upstairs in your room?"

Trying to deflect his embarrassment for their tardiness, he countered with, "I'd like to do a procedure on that damned air conditioner we have in our room. What this hotel lacks in hot water, it pays you double in providing heat in August. It must have been over a hundred up there."

And so the table chitchat continued until, determining that everyone was present, Vasily lightly taped his wine glass with his fork to gain everyone's attention. It took a number of tries, as the conversations were so "intellectually intense", but Vasily persevered and finally almost everyone quieted down.

He took a deep breath and marshalling his best English began.

"As this is our last night together before you all go to Albania, (a country with which we have had little recent contact) I would like to propose a toast with our new wine product exclusively grown and bottled in our Mother Russia. We hope you will all enjoy this product and report back to your people at home that much of our country is most suitable for wine production and that we have a large, willing and as of yet unexploited (I hope I'm using the correct English word) labor force as well as the available technology to meet all of your requirements...."

Vasily droned on like a bass aria from "Boris Godunov," while Susan made the mental note to tell her potential investors not to think too much about this `Mother-Russian new wine product'. From its bouquet alone, it was perfectly obvious that our worst American `product' is light years ahead of their Russian bilge.

"Whatever happened to their vodka franchise?" Susan whispered across the table to a male colleague, a bit smug about her choice, to have taken that NYU International Marketing course, rather than Environmental Law.

"Has their forty year failure with a planned economy somehow killed their potato crop too?", that colleague replied after his taste test. "Apparently, Boris Yeltsin will do almost anything now to enter a free market economy, but this is too much."

Susan turned off Vasily's voice and brought her thoughts to more pragmatic subjects. She speculated that perhaps if they could (on Tuesdays, and only in Minsk) heat their new wine product and run that through their taps, that this might go far toward alleviating their hot water problem.

Ah well, Susan pondered, I wonder if I brought my white sweater? The mountains of Albania might be a nice change in August. Let me try to remember... were there any mountains in Albania?