DOES GORBACHEV POSSESS THE WRITE STUFF FOR THIS?

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 24, 1992                   TAG: 9202240030
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: EX-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
DOES GORBACHEV POSSESS THE WRITE STUFF FOR THIS?
I heard that Mikhail Gorbachev was going to write a syndicated column, and I began to write like Papa Hemingway again:
That winter, February was an easy month - like the Armenian girls who danced close and later became easy themselves - and the old man should have been happy.
But there was no snow on the Highfields Road, as the old man had seen it in the better years, and it saddened him. It was the kind of weather that makes generals think of offensives and infantrymen think of death.
The weather was false, like the women who came to Pamplona to see the bulls run, only to drink calvados and flirt, not caring at all for the bulls or the matadors.
He thought of the American named Roberto and of the woman called Pillar, who was a killer first and a woman second.
"That is the way it is," he said to the woman. "A man writes all of his life, and then some hombre who does not know his alphabet from a samovar makes mucho dinero because he has lost his country and his politics."
"I thought, viejo, it was the way the weather is in February that is giving you pain," the woman said patiently.
"Will he write hilariously of his life with Raisa, the woman who knows how to wear a pair of fur boots?" the old man asked, not hearing the woman.
"No, he will write of Boris Yeltsin. It will be brittle, mujer, like the ice crystals on Kilimanjaro."
"It is no concern of ours, guapito," the woman said. "Time has made us what we are, and we will be immutable until we cross the river and rest in the shade of the trees."
"But still, mi vida, it sticks a man in the heart to see this happen," the old man said. "At such times, is like a tired boxer who waits for the bell to give him a rest, and he has much thirst."
"Do not wound thyself with thy thoughts, hermoso," the woman said. "It will not matter in the end."
"He also will not write of how the people of the insurance hound a man when he is old, trying to sell him Medicare supplement policies that are past human understanding," the old man said.
"One wishes he had paid more attention to what a copayment is when one was younger, but the young conspire to be ignorant of mortality."
"Let us not get into the subject of mortality again, mi esposo," the woman said.
"Es verdad, mujer," the old man said. "We are put on this Earth along with hyenas, and we must play the game with what we have."
The old man was silent. He was ashamed of the thought, but he wondered how well the woman would wear fur boots.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB