Living History (67 page)

He has a great heart and can always make me laugh. Of course, he has a reputation for being unpredictable, and as is often apparent, he enjoys a drink or two.

I was usually seated next to Yeltsin at official dinners, with Bill on his other side and Naina next to Bill. He did not speak English, but a simultaneous translator sitting behind us conveyed his words to Bill and me in the same deep, raspy voice and with all of Boris’s inflections. Boris rarely touched his food. As each course was set before us, he’d push it away or ignore it while continuing to tell us stories. Sometimes the food itself became a story.

When the Yeltsins hosted us at the brand-new Russian Embassy in Washington in September 1994, Bill and I were seated with them on a dais before dozens of tables filled with luminaries from Washington society as well as Russian and U.S. officials. Suddenly Yeltsin motioned Bill and me to lean toward him. “Heel-lary” he said. “Beel! Look at those people out there. You know what they are thinking? They all are thinking, ‘How could Boris and Bill be up there and not us?’ “ This was a telling comment. Yeltsin was smarter than some of his adversaries understood, and he was well aware of the whispering campaign from the Kremlin to the State Department that he was not acceptable or polished enough. He also knew that some of the same people disapproved of Bill’s exuberance and looked down upon his Arkansas roots. We smiled and picked up our forks, but Yeltsin kept going. “Hahhh!” he laughed and turned to the President. “I have a treat for you, Bill!”

A whole stuffed piglet was laid out on the table in front of us. With one swipe of his knife, Yeltsin sliced off an ear and handed it to my husband. He cut the other ear for himself, raised it to his mouth and bit off a piece, gesturing for Bill to do the same.

“To us!” he said, holding up the remainder of the ear as though it were a glass of fine champagne.

It’s a good thing Bill Clinton has an iron stomach. His ability to eat anything put in front of him is one of his many political talents. I do not share his intestinal fortitude, and Yeltsin knew it. He loved to tease me, and this was one moment when I was glad that a sow has only two ears.

Years later, toward the end of Yeltsin’s and Bill’s terms in office, we had one final dinner together in the Kremlin. It was held in the domed St. Catherine Hall, one of the loveliest of the ornate dining halls in the old palace. Toward the middle of the meal, Yeltsin said to me in his rumbling, conspiratorial voice, “Heel-lary! I will miss seeing you. I have a picture of you in my office, I look at it every day.” There was a mischievous gleam in his eye.

“Well, thank you, Boris,” I said. “I hope we will still see each other from time to time.”

“Yes, you must come to see me, you must promise to see me.”

“I hope I’ll get to see you, Boris.”

“Good!” he said. “Now, Hillary I have a very special treat for you tonight.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not going to tell you! You must wait until it comes!”

We sat through course after course and toast after toast and finally, just before dessert, a waiter set bowls of hot soup in front of us.

“This is it, Hillary, your special treat!” said Boris, grinning as he sniffed the pungent steam. “Mmm! Delicious!”

“What is it?” I asked as I picked up my spoon. He paused dramatically. “Moose lips!”

Sure enough, floating in the murky broth was my own set of moose lips. The gelatinous shapes looked like rubber bands that had lost their stretch, and I pushed them around the bowl until the waiter took them away. I tasted a lot of unusual food for my country, but I drew the line at moose lips.

The Denver meeting was a success, but building good relations with the Russians was a long-term project that carried over to the NATO summit in Madrid in July. Bill and I traveled to Europe a few days ahead of the conference for a visit to the Mediterranean island of Majorca as guests of King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain. Once there, we met up with Chelsea and Nickie Davison, her best friend from high school, who were traveling together.

I always looked forward to spending time with Juan Carlos and Sofia, who were great company, warm, witty, down-to-earth and always fascinating. In 1993, we met the King and Queen and their son, Felipe, who attended Georgetown University in Washington. I particularly admired the King’s courage in resisting Fascism in his country. He became head of state at age thirty-seven, after Franco’s death in 1975, and immediately declared his intention to reestablish democracy in Spain. In 1981 he single-handedly thwarted a military takeover of Parliament by appearing on television to denounce the coup leader and to order his troops back to the barracks. Sofia, a Princess of Greece when she married Juan Carlos, is a trained pediatric nurse and as charming and accomplished as her husband.

A great philanthropist, she championed microcredit programs years before most people had heard about the concept.

We continued on to Madrid, for the summit of NATO members. Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Marfa Aznar and his wife, Ana Botella, hosted a private dinner in the garden of the Moncloa Palace, their official residence, for the NATO leaders and spouses. Bill’s commitment to expanding NATO finally came to fruition when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were asked to join. The next night the King and Queen hosted a large dinner at the neoclassical palace in central Madrid to celebrate this historic expansion.

We first saw the palace in 1995, when the King and Queen hosted a small dinner. The real fun started after we’d eaten, when the King gave us a tour. He confessed that he had no idea what was in most of the rooms, so he would make up stories as he opened doors.

Pretty soon we were all telling tales about imaginary events that might have happened.

Both the King and Queen have a marvelous sense of humor, and my favorite sight was Bill and the King eyeing the longest dining table I’d ever seen (it looked as though it could seat a hundred guests) and discussing the merits of running and sliding down its length. Now two years later that same long table accommodated heads of state and government from all over Europe, at a formal dinner.

After our official duties were over, Sofia and Juan Carlos took Bill, Chelsea and me to the Alhambra Palace in Granada. When Bill and I had first started dating, he told me that the most beautiful natural sight he had ever seen was the sun setting over the Grand Canyon, and the most beautiful man-made one, the Alhambra Palace lit by the rays of the setting sun as it sank over the plains of Granada. When I shared the story with the King, he insisted that I must see it for myself. We toured the castle and then ate dinner at a restaurant in a centuries-old house with a stunning view of the palace. We watched the sun go down, painting the walls a rusty pink. As we lingered into the night, we saw the palace’s own lights come up, equally stunning.

After such an evening, I felt I could levitate to my next destination: Vienna, where I was keynote speaker at a forum entitled “ Vital Voices: Women in Democracy.” Conceived and organized by Swanee Hunt, our Ambassador to Austria, and nurtured by Melanne Verveer, this meeting of one thousand prominent European women was the official launch of the U.S. government’s Vital Voices Democracy Initiative.

The project was close to my heart, a prime example of the Administration’s efforts to incorporate woman’s issues into foreign policy An outgrowth of Beijing, the Vital Voices initiative brought together representatives of our government, NGOs and international corporations to promote progress for women in three areas: building democracy, strengthening economies and working to achieve peace. In too many countries, women were still denied the right to participate in the political arena, derive an independent income, own property or enjoy legal protections from abuse and violence. With help from the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, the Inter-American Bank and other organizations, Vital Voices provides technical assistance, skills seminars and networking opportunities that give women the tools and resources they need to advance civil society, free market economies and political participation in their own countries.

I thought personal attention to political and individual development was missing in our own diplomatic rhetoric about democracy and free markets. Women and children suffered disproportionately during the difficult transition from communism to capitalism and democracy because they no longer could rely on fixed incomes common to centralized economies or on free education and health care provided by the state. Vital Voices encourages women’s entrepreneurship in places as diverse as South Africa and the Baltic states, supports efforts to involve women in the political sphere in Kuwait and Northern Ireland and galvanizes women to combat trafficking of women and children in Ukraine and Russia. Through an effective, nonprofit global partnership, the organization continues to educate and train women around the world, many of whom have become political leaders in their own countries.

Our hectic schedule finally slowed down enough for us to return to Martha’s Vineyard in August for summer vacation. It was a place where we felt comfortable and relaxed.

One day, I was persuaded to try a round of golf with Bill, whose leg had healed enough to permit a return to his favorite pastime. Frankly, I don’t like golf. And I’m a terrible player. I side with Mark Twain: “Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

I can trace my aversion to the sport back to an incident that took place the summer before ninth grade, when the only way I could convince my mother to allow me to date a certain high school boy was to let him take me golfing in the middle of the afternoon. I was blind as a bat, and of course I was too vain to wear my glasses. I couldn’t see the golf ball, but I decided to hit anything white. So I took a mighty swing and the ball exploded into powder. I’d hit a big white mushroom. Two rounds of professional lessons and corrective contact lenses didn’t improve my game. I preferred reading and swimming in the surf while Bill perfected his swing with Vernon Jordan and his other golfing buddies.

On the last weekend in August, Bill and I were attending an evening beach party when a staff member murmured something in his ear. I watched from a distance and saw the shock register on Bill’s face. Then I heard the news too. Princess Diana had been in a terrible car crash in Paris. Like everyone else in the world, we were in a state of disbelief.

We left the party and immediately called our new Ambassador to France, Felix Rohatyn, who replaced Pamela Harriman after her untimely death earlier that year. We stayed up most of the night calling London and Paris to find out what had happened. It was still hard to accept that such a beautiful and vibrant young woman as Diana could die so suddenly.

I had last seen Diana two months earlier. We’d met at the White House, where she talked passionately and intelligently about two of her chief causes: banning land mines and educating people about HIV/AIDS. She seemed much more self-assured since her separation from Charles, and I sensed that she was finally coming into her own. We talked about her upcoming trip to Thailand for AIDS awareness and to Africa for land mine eradication. She told me that she hoped her boys might study in America someday, and I offered to be a resource for her and them. She was clearly looking forward to the future, which made her death all the more tragic.

Early the next morning I received a call from a representative of Diana’s family, asking if I would attend the funeral in London. I was honored. During the service in Westminster Abbey, where I was seated with the Blairs and members of the royal family, my heart went out to Diana’s sons, whom she had cherished. The venerable cathedral where Diana’s motherin-law had been crowned Queen forty-four years earlier was packed, and more than one million people gathered in the streets outside, listening to the service over a public address system. Hundreds of millions of others around the world watched on television. When Diana’s brother, Charles, delivered his eulogy, he took some famous swipes at the royals for their treatment of his sister, and I could hear the applause from the audience outside the church. It sounded like a thunderclap miles away that rolled over the crowd and gained intensity as it rumbled through the streets, through the Abbey’s doors and down the stone center aisle to the front of the cathedral. Everybody in our section seemed to freeze as the applause echoed. Elton John played “A Candle in the Wind,”

with new lyrics that captured the poignancy of the Princess’s fragile, fleeting life.

The day before Diana’s funeral, the world lost another of its most compelling personalities when Mother Teresa died in Calcutta. Aside from the obvious differences, each of these women had a talent for spotlighting the most vulnerable and neglected people and using her celebrity in calculated ways to help others. Poignant photographs of Diana and Mother Teresa together convey the sweetness of their relationship, and both had spoken to me of their affection for one another.

I flew back to Martha’s Vineyard from Diana’s funeral, then turned around a few days later to fly to Calcutta for Mother Teresa’s. The White House had asked a distinguished delegation of Americans who knew or supported Mother Teresa to accompany me.

Among them was Eunice Shriver, who had recently been ill. She overrode her doctor’s objections and came along, sitting up the whole way, which she said was more comfortable than the couch I urged her to use in the front of the plane. She said her rosary and prayed with the Missionaries of Charity who were representing Mother Teresa’s flock in America. I was grateful I could represent my husband and country in honoring a woman who had touched the world with her unshakable faith and down-to-earth pragmatism.

Mother Teresa’s open casket was carried through the crowded streets of Calcutta into an indoor arena packed with people. The service went on for hours because the leaders of each national and religious delegation were called, one at a time, to lay a wreath of white flowers on the funeral bier. I had lots of time to reflect on my brief but enriching relationship with Mother Teresa.

We first met in February 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast in a Washington hotel ballroom. I remember being struck by how tiny she was and I noticed that she was wearing only socks and sandals in the bitter winter cold. She had just delivered a speech against abortion, and she wanted to talk to me. Mother Teresa was unerringly direct. She disagreed with my views on a woman’s right to choose and told me so. Over the years, she sent me dozens of notes and messages with the same gentle entreaty. Mother Teresa never lectured or scolded me; her admonitions were always loving and heartfelt. I had the greatest respect for her opposition to abortion, but I believe that it is dangerous to give any state the power to enforce criminal penalties against women and doctors. 1 consider that a slippery slope to state control of reproduction, and I’d witnessed the consequences of such control in China and Communist Romania. I also disagreed with her opposition―