Nick Cherniavsky Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Nick Qlemiavsky 116
There ma sanu3 sort of a breakdown in carrmvlications at the dispatcher's
office at mtor pool, and so they sent tm jeeps to pick re up, and my
rmther ms not hare--that ms during the time when my wife and I were
staring with my parents in their apartlnent-when the jeep arrived on the
scene, picked m up and brought me to the mtor pool. And nobody else a s
in the apartment as I -timed. But shortly after I had left the aparmt,
my mther and a mmm friend of hers arrived fran their shopping trip, and
wre in the apartmmt when the other jeep arrived. mother was totally
at a loss. SZle knew that I was not h the apartment and so she presumed
that I, ddch was the case, that I wm already at mrk. Nevertheless, she
tried to carrrunicate with the Chinese chauffeur with total lack of any
progress. He ws saying srmething in Qlinese and she ws saying somethbg
in a very strange and all of her m mixture of Russian and English.
Samhere in the process of all this she had a brainstorm, and she bdiately
recalled that a very good friend of my dad's, who ws wsking with my dad
years bfore that at the Shan&ai kter brks Canpany, ms now a chief
engineer on bard of another WWtA LST ship and he was expected any day to
cam to ShaqzJai. And it w also apected that he was going to bring
samething In the way of sore delicacies. I thhk that it m s fran Canton
that he as coming.
So she Miately got the idea that this jeep was not my jeep frm the
mtor pool kt a jeep fran U'NRR4 sea fleet, and so she asked the driver,
'Wlolalai?" vihich was the narc of this friend of theirs, and the driver
made s m
kind of proper noises which she decldd to take with affimity.
She said, 'hlalail bholalai." And the driver, you know, just did not
deny the fact that it ms not klalai. So, being very carmanding in her
person, and in her carrying on, my mther instructed her lady friend to
climb in the back seat, climbed in the jeep herself, and told the driver,
'Wlolalai! " And off they mt .
And so about mty minutes later, as I was standing by the gate of the
wtor pool, there drives in this jeep with a totally flabbergasted azinese
chauffeur, who irmwliately started making Indian signs to m with his
hands, and my mther calling to me, 'Wy did this Chinese driver bring
us here? bk went to go see klalai." And it took a little while for m
to cum to the ground floor of this whole &-up, ht this perhaps more
than anything else that I could say wuld describe the my my man behaves
on occasim, and the my her imagination has, an a mber of occasians in
her life, put her in a mst uthlievable situation.
Q: Spe&tng of mix-up in languages, what language m ld your father speak
on this ZST with an international crew or how did they cdcate?
A: Mstly In English--and my dad, thr- the years of mrk at Shaq&ai
kter trJorks Caanpany, had built up not only a very advanced knowledge and
understarding of variaus machinery bolved in this type of wrk, ht also
a rather siezable vocabdary of technical tenis. So it was entirely
possible for him to camanzicate to--whether his superiors or to those dm
=re mrkbg below him--in hglish. It is actually the general cdcation
or social type of ccmwnications in English that presented a problem in
which he is not nearly as fluent in the Ehglish language.
Nick Cherniavsky Memoir, vol. 2 - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS