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he left. Later that day I was talking on the phone to my sister who lives in New York and who kindly commiserated as I lamented the fact that propel at the State Department seem to think I can produce such quotes on demand. Without skipping a beat, she did just that. She launched into a dramatic recitation in Ukrainian of Shevchenko's very rousing patriotic call to throw off the yoke of oppression and rise up against the Muscovites. Right then and there I heard, in its entirety, "Subotiv" which ends with the stirring "Вста не Україна... і помоляться на волі невольничі діти". I had my quote! The speech writer was happy as was the high-ranking US diplomat. All this, thanks to my sister who has absolutely nothing to do with inter national politics, diplomacy or Ukrainian literature. But she is a life-long student of Pani Lida's Ukrainian Dramatic Arts Studio. And at that very time (luckily for me) Pani Lida was preparing her students for a dramatic presentations of a series of poems by Shevchenko, among them "Subotiv". Once again, Pani Lida had saved the day. While on the subject of Shevchenko quotes, I once got help from the most unexpected of sources. During one of the many trips that former US Secretary of Defense William Perry took to Ukraine, we were scheduled to fly down to Pervomaysk, south of Kyiv, where Ukraine was dismantling its nuclear silos. This was being done in accordance with Ukraine's interna tional obligation to become a non-nuclear state. Dr. Perry was a great supporter of Ukraine in this en deavor and traveled there often to witness various milestones in the nuclear disarmament process. It was early January and the weather had turned nasty. We were sitting in a cramped Ukrainian military aircraft in Boryspil airport waiting to take off for the short flight to Pervomaysk. The pilots were attempting what I thought was a dangerous take-off on an icy runway. All around me were representatives of the Ukrainian armed forces — mostly generals with colonel or two thrown in for good measure. Dr. Perry was scheduled to give a short speech upon arrival at Pervomaysk and I had been given an advanced copy of his remarks as we were taking off. Glancing at it, I realized it contained -- what else! -- a quote from Shevchenko. The quote was in English with no nota tion of its source. I panicked. In less than an hour, if we made it to Pervomaysk alive, I would have to inter pret this into Ukrainian and it was highly unlikely that there was a Kobzar on board. And even if by some miracle a Kobzar was found, how would I ever find the right poem with the right quote. With nothing to lose, I got the attention of the Ukrainian general di rectly across the aisle from me, introduced myself and asked if he could possibly help me. I gave him a few clues, a couple of words, a rough translation from English into Ukrainian, admittedly not much to go on. He thought about it for a while, then poke his seat- mate, also a general, in the ribs with his elbow. "Sa sha," he asked in Russian, "Do you know this?" In a loud back and forth, he and Sasha consulted for a few minutes and then started reciting some lines from Shevchenko, hesitantly at first, but gaining in enthusi asm as the poem went on. At about the fourth couplet, their third seatmate joined them. Then the colonel sit ting behind them joined the chorus and soon I had three rows of high-ranking Ukrainian officers reciting Shevchenko for me in unison, in beautiful, flowing Ukrainian. It was a surreal moment, and yet, somehow very natural: Ukrainian generals, a snowed-in airport, a tight Soviet-era prop plane and a desperate US gov ernment interpreter all united by Ukrainian poetry. As they say in Ukraine, "normal'no". And then there are those moments which truly catch me off guard. In these cases I have only myself to rely on — no echoes from my childhood, no divine intervention in the form of Shevchenko-reciting Ukrainian generals. I call these my "sink or swim" situations. My aim, obviously, is to "swim" — that is to express myself in elegant, literary Ukrainian. Some times though, to carry the analogy to its somewhat silly conclusion, my "swimming resembles an awkward doggie paddle rather than a smooth butterfly stroke. Such was the case during a recent official dinner in honor of Ukrainian Minister of Defense Kuzmuk and his wife Ludmyla which was hosted by Secretary of State William Cohen and his wife Janet. Somewhere between the appetizer of scallops in champagne-cream sauce and the main course of lobster and steak served in the ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel, Secretary Cohen got up to deliver his toast. I was interpreting and things were going very well until the Secretary de cided to stray from his prepared remarks and ad lib a little story involving (I am not making this up) a Su preme Court Justice and artichokes. The story is much too involved to get into here, but suffice it to say I had no idea how to translate artichoke into Ukrainian, never having coming across this vegetable in Ukraine or in the presence of Ukrainians in any other part of the world. As you might imagine, vegetables, and ex otic ones at that, rarely figure into official conversa tions between American and Ukrainian VIP's. In other circumstances, I might have ignored the word or talked around it; in this case, such a ploy was not an option НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 1999 19
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