A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

y fingers. .. . ' ' As always , Mairs ' revelations and transformations will tra

nslate more easily for some readers than others , but her resolve and her abilit

y to turn a once haphazard path into a clear evolution ( her own ) is an inspira

tion . `` This is the body , '' she writes , `` who works here . '' `` BALSAMROO

T : A Memoir , '' by Mary Clearman Blew ( Viking , $ 20.95 , 212 pp . ) Mary Cle

arman Blew , author of `` All But the Waltz , '' and two short story collections

 , is on many people 's best Western writing short list . Born and raised in Mon

tana , much of her writing ferrets out the Montana history and landscape in her 

own life experiences ; characters from her youth and ancestry are analyzed for t

he choices they made with an eye to the choices she 's making . In this book she

 ponders her relationship to a quickly aging and newly dependent aunt , as well 

as an estranged and angry daughter . Efforts to honor the family code : `` Never

 speak aloud of what you feel deeply , '' make these urgent tasks somewhat diffi

cult and a little frustrating for the reader . When you feel the urge to do grou

p therapy , it 's time to focus on the fine writing ; on the plant and animal li

fe in the book ; on the wonderful terse evocation of her maiden aunt 's one love

 affair . `` THE COAST OF SUMMER : Sailing New England Waters From Shelter Islan

d to Cape Cod , '' by Anthony Bailey ( HarperCollins , $ 23 , 368 pp . ) Unlike 

the other fantasies on this page , journeys backward , forwards and sideways , v

arying in expense and imagination , this is one that remains fairly well cloiste

red from reality . Sailing yachts along the coast of New England for entire summ

ers is not something you can recommend to people in an offhanded way . It seems 

even more difficult than moving your family to a village in Umbria . But it 's a

 culture , with a language , and the nostalgia is somewhat contagious , even if 

the yearning is downright unproductive . Don't let me burst your bubble , let 's

 let the author , in this comment about class on Fisher 's Island ( affectionate

ly known as `` Fishers '' ) do it himself : `` the local class structure is evid

ent in physiognomy , I decide ( perhaps quite unjustly ) . '' The very need for 

the parenthetical should clue you in . `` Messing about in boats '' needn't be s

o exclusive . FICTION `` Simple Prayers , '' by Michael Golding , Warner Books ,

 $ 17.95 , 304 pp . ) This delightful , exotic fable , part `` Tempest '' and pa

rt `` Decameron '' is so lavish , so dirt-rich and so colorful its like a meal i

n the open air , laid out on brocade , under the pine and cypress looking out at

 the ocean . Part of what gives the writing its infallible charm is the fact tha

t every fifth word is Italian , some names of places or food , some just sprinkl

ed generously over the meal . This may annoy some people but that would be churl

ish . `` Terra del Pozzo di Luna , campanili , mezzogiorno , Riva di Pignoli '' 

are hardly words to shut a reader out . The characters , all living side by side

 with their daily miracles and potions and transfigurations , are , for the most

 part , lovable gnomes and gargoyles ( the only really malicious character is th

e black death ) . Things start going wrong on the little island in the Venice la

goon , Riva di Pignoli , like objects tossed around before a storm , like the ru

mbling before an earthquake . This is a world in which climate and weather are a

ffected by the passions and disappointments of individuals , all of which are th

reatened by the approaching plague . Their prayers may be simple , but the cacop

hony of their daily lives is fascinating .

 WASHINGTON President Clinton 's health plan gained a second toehold in its clim

b toward the House floor Wednesday , as a House Education and Labor subcommittee

 approved a modified version on a 17-to-10 party-line vote . `` This is the pres

ident 's second win in a row , '' said a jubilant Rep. Pat Williams , D-Mont. , 

chairman of the labor-management subcommittee , noting that a Clinton-like bill 

also won approval in a House Ways and Means subcommittee a month ago . The Educa

tion and Labor subcommittee bill incorporates several key elements of President 

Clinton 's plan : universal insurance coverage , allowing people to continue pur

chasing private health insurance , a guaranteed choice of health plans , benefit

s provided through the workplace , and cost controls . But the Williams subcommi

tee has a far-larger liberal Democratic majority than most other committees and 

Congress as a whole , and the president 's bill is expected to experience toughe

r sledding in the future . Senior subcommittee Republican Marge Roukema , R-N.J.

 , said the Williams plan was unacceptable because of its heavy reliance on fede

ral controls and the high cost of the benefits added on by the committee . In on

e of the most dramatic moments in the month-long drafting process , Williams ' s

ubcommittee voted to retain Clinton 's requirement that health insurers pay for 

abortions . Then , over several days , the committee added preventive health ben

efits , mental health , adult dental care , new cancer screening and rural healt

h benefits to Clinton 's proposal . Williams said the net cost of the subcommitt

ee 's added provisions would be $ 6 billion a year . Some of the added costs wou

ld come from increasing subsidies to small firms that otherwise would face diffi

culty buying health insurance for their workers . The subcommittee lacks jurisdi

ction over taxes , and therefore , many of the toughest issues in health reform 

were not addressed . Under the Williams bill , employers would have to pay 80 pe

rcent of the cost of insurance premiums for their workers . However , small busi

ness groups are fiercely opposed to this so-called `` employer mandate , '' and 

the subcommittee voted to limit the premium for small firms . Employers with few

er than 25 workers and average wages of less than $ 12,000 a year would be requi

red to pay 2 percent of their payroll costs toward insurance for their workers ,

 rather than the 3.5 percent proposed by Clinton . A firm paying the minimum wag

e of $ 4.25 an hour , Williams said , would have added expenses of 8.5 cents an 

hour . Other small firms would also be helped by `` caps '' on their premium pay

ments . Federal subsidies would help cover the rest of premium costs . The bill 

includes insurance reform . Charging people more for insurance because of their 

health status or age or excluding them altogether would not be allowed . Imsurer

s would have to accept all applicants , and individuals with incomes under 200 p

ercent of the poverty line would receive special government subsidies to help co

ver any premiums due .

 WASHINGTON Iraq 's senior diplomat in Washington has been expelled from the Uni

ted States for repeated violations of the agreement that allows Iraq to maintain

 a diplomatic presence here , State Department officials said Wednesday . The di

plomat , Adnan Malik , attempted to lobby members of Congress , sent out news re

leases espousing an end to the United Nations economic embargo against his count

ry and hired and fired staff members without notifying the State Department , al

l actions that were specifically prohibited , the U.S. officials said . Malik 's

 expulsion was not announced , but the State Department confirmed the move when 

asked about it . Malik , who was transferred to Washington in February from Iraq

 's U.N. mission , began violating the rules within days of his arrival , accord

ing to a State Department official who monitored his activities . He routinely c

ircumvented regulations that his predecessor had scrupulously complied with for 

three years , the official said . `` He was attempting to function as a full-fle

dged diplomat '' but was permitted only to provide consular services , such as i

ssuing visas and renewing passports of Iraqis who live in the United States , St

ate Department spokesman Michael McCurry said . The United States and Iraq have 

not had diplomatic relations since the beginning of the Persian Gulf War in 1991

 . As is common in such cases , the two countries permit each other to maintain 

limited diplomatic missions under the flags of other nations . The United States

 has an office in Baghdad under the flag of Poland , while the three Iraqis stat

ioned here are under the `` protection '' of the Algerian embassy . Iraq and oth

er nations without embassies in Washington , such as Vietnam and Cuba , have ful

l-fledged diplomatic missions in New York . Their envoys there are allowed to op

erate freely , although Washington often restricts their travel outside the New 

York area . Once Malik arrived in Washington , however , he began `` within a we

ek '' to violate an agreement that is `` very explicit about what the Iraqi inte

rests section is allowed to do , '' a State Department official said . `` The se

cond day he was here I went over this with him line by line . I stressed that th

is was not a full diplomatic mission , it was a protecting power arrangement and

 he was specifically forbidden to engage in political activity , '' the State De

partment official said . `` He said , ` I understand , I am a professional diplo

mat. ' ' ' But he began within days to violate the agreement , leasing property 

without State Department approval , hiring and firing staff without notifying th

e department and attempting to communicate with Congress when the agreement spec

ified he could communicate only through three offices at State , the official sa

id . Malik 's wife and children have been allowed to remain in New York until th

e end of the school year , according to the State Department . Iraq is free to r

eplace him here but has not done so .

 WASHINGTON A sharply divided Senate Wednesday raked the lingering embers of con

troversy over the United States ' involvement in the Vietnam War two decades ago

 as it remained deadlocked over the ambassadorial nomination of former anti-war 

activist Sam W. Brown Jr. . For the second day in a row , Brown 's supporters fa

iled to break a Republican-led filibuster against giving ambassadorial rank to B

rown as head of the U.S. delegation to the Vienna-based Conference on Security a

nd Cooperation in Europe . They picked up two votes since Tuesday but , with the

 Senate dividing 56 to 42 Wednesday in favor of ending the delaying tactics , th

ey remained four short of the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture and force the

 issue to a vote . Sen. John F. Kerry , D-Mass. , who helped lead the fight for 

Brown 's confirmation , said another vote to end the filibuster is possible afte

r Congress returns June 7 from its Memorial Day recess . If at least one more Re

publican breaks ranks , three Democrats of the four who voted to sustain the fil

ibuster are prepared to switch and bring the issue to a vote , Kerry said . Demo

crats who voted Wednesday against ending the filibuster were Armed Services Comm

ittee Chairman Sam Nunn , Ga. , and Sens. J. James Exon , Neb. , Bob Kerrey , Ne

b. , and Ben Nighthorse Campbell , Colo . Sen. Hank Brown , R-Colo. , who led th

e opposition to Brown , said he believed another vote was unlikely because , eve

n if the filibuster is broken , the nomination is in serious trouble . He claime

d at least 53 `` clearly committed votes '' against confirmation . Sam Brown 's 

appointment as head of the U.S. delegation to the CSCE , which promotes security

 and human rights in Europe , is not subject to Senate approval . But , without 

Senate confirmation , he will not have status as an ambassador , a rank enjoyed 

by his predecessors and his European counterparts in the CSCE . If the Senate re

jects the nomination , Clinton would have to decide whether to keep Brown on the

 job without ambassadorial status , Kerry said . `` He can do the job without it

 , '' Kerry added . Wednesday 's debate echoed with many of the bitter feelings 

that characterized America 's debate over the Vietnam War , with Republicans att

acking Brown 's views and his lack of military experience and Democrats defendin

g his record as a principled crusader . Brown `` opposed actions to block commun

ism '' and should not now be put in a position to `` deal with the world after c

ommunism , '' argued Sen. Bob Smith , R-N.H. , accusing the administration of sl

ighting veterans in favor of war protesters . `` The United States Senate should

 not lynch a nominee on the basis of his exercise of his constitutional rights ,

 '' contended Kerry , describing Brown as someone who always worked `` within th

e system '' and eventually went on to become `` a full-fledged American capitali

st .. . the vice president of a shoe company . '' A key point of dispute which R

epublicans emblazoned in large letters on a chart for the television cameras was

 a 1977 interview in Penthouse magazine that quoted Brown as saying , `` I take 

second place to no one in my hatred of the intelligence agencies . '' Kerry quot

ed Brown as saying the quotation `` does not accurately reflect his views now or

 then '' and was made in reference to a controversy at the time over CIA involve

ment with the Peace Corps , which he oversaw as head of the ACTION in the late 1

970s . But Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison , R-Texas , denounced it as an expression o

f `` radical '' views , and Kerrey later told a reporter that the comment about 

intelligence agencies was a major factor in his vote against cloture .

 NAIROBI , Kenya Rwanda 's battered army in the capital , Kigali , regrouped Wed

nesday and exchanged heavy mortar fire into the evening with rebel guerrillas wh

o captured a strategic government position two days ago , U.N. officials reporte

d . The fighting , which shattered a truce declared for the visit of a senior U.

N. envoy , again prevented relief supplies from being flown into the capital and

 the U.N. officials expressed fears that shortages of food and medicine had beco

me critical . One of the mortar rounds , apparently fired by rebels of the Rwand

a Patriotic Front , hit a Red Cross hospital in the government-controlled sectio

n of Kigali , killing two Rwandan nurses , the officials said . Rebels also poun

ded army positions near the defense ministry while the army lobbed shell after s

hell on rebel forces on the outskirts of the city . On Monday , the Tutsi-domina

ted rebels who say they are fighting a war of liberation against the predominant

ly Hutu government had mounted a three-pronged attack and captured the Kanombe a

rmy camp overlooking the airport . The three battalions of defenders fled and so

me diplomatic observers in Nairobi believed that the rebels would soon win the b

attle for Kigali . But in other African wars in Liberia , Angola and Somalia , f

or example armies that may have wilted in the countryside have been willing to f

ight fiercely to defend their capitals . The reason is particularly clear in Rwa

nda : The government , the military , communications and transportation faciliti

es are centralized in the capital ; without the capital , the government would h

ave little left worth fighting for . The fighting Wednesday further delayed the 

arrival of a 5,500-man , all-African peacekeeping force under U.N. command . The

 United Nations ' special envoy , Iqbal Riza , is in Kigali trying to persuade b

oth sides to allow deployment of the troops and the United Nations to take contr

ol of the airport . But Riza 's talks may be premature because only three Africa

n nations Ethiopia , Ghana and Senegal have agreed to participate in the force .

 Their commitment totals only 2,100 soldiers . ( Optional add end ) Riza travele

d in an armored vehicle through the fighting on the western edge of the city to 

the seat of the interim government in Gitarama , 25 miles southwest of Kigali , 

in hopes of holding talks Thursday with the rebels in Mulindi , a rebel strongho

ld just south of the Ugandan border . Western diplomats in east Africa are not o

ptimistic about the chances for a lasting negotiated political settlement , beca

use rebel commanders appear to want nothing less than a military victory that wi

ll put them in position to bargain for a large share of power , even though the 

Tutsis amount to only 9 percent of the population . At the same time , most mode

rate government officials who favored conciliation between the majority Hutus an

d minority Tutsis had been killed and the surviving officials now at Gitarama re

present the extremist wing . This element appears to support the eradication of 

the Tutsis and is widely believed to be responsible for the widespread massacres

 that have claimed the lives of as many as 200,000 Rwandans , most of them Tutsi

s , since April 6 . The fighting is slowly turning Kigali into a ghost town and 

is depopulating the countryside . Only about 50,000 people from Kigali 's popula

tion of 300,000 remain , U.N. officials said , and wide belts of villages in eas

tern Rwanda have been abandoned . The United Nations has set up 15 camps in neig

hboring Tanzania , Uganda and Zaire for the estimated two million Rwandans who a

re now homeless .

 Jay Leno says he didn't realize , until he brought `` The Tonight Show '' to th

e Big Apple last week , that he has been aping Johnny Carson 's program and not 

being himself ever since he took over for the latter two years ago . `` I 've be

en doing Johnny 's show , '' Leno told NBC affiliates this week . So Leno , who 

came close to a first-place tie with `` The Late Show With David Letterman '' du

ring his week here , is having his Burbank , Calif. , set changed to look more l

ike the one he used in New York , where his set 's atmosphere approached that of

 clubs where Leno spent two decades doing standup comedy . The tinier set in New

 York 's `` Saturday Night Live '' studios packed a smaller audience closer to L

eno , who was practically next to musical director Branford Marsalis . `` The au

dience was half the size , but there was more energy , '' said Leno , and there 

was an easier give-and-take between him and Marsalis , who , in Burbank , is hal

f a huge stage away . In any case , the Burbank set shortly will be torn apart a

nd made to look like the one Leno used in New York . -0- In the end , it doesn't

 pay to be slip-and-fall artists . Those kind of folks , profiled by ABC News ' 

Chris Wallace on Thursday night 's `` PrimeTime Live , '' specialize in faking f

alls at supermarkets , convenience stores , fast-food restaurants and elsewhere 

. They try to bilk insurance companies with fraudulent injury claims estimated b

y the program to be as much as $ 20 billion a year . One of them on the air Thur

sday night is Garen Cooke , arrested last year in Colorado after putting in 71 c

laims in 16 states over 11 years . When Cooke was about to demonstrate some of h

is slip-and-fall secrets for the cameras , ABC lawyers insisted he sign a releas

e , which freed the network of any liability . The ever-hopeful Cooke asked , ``

 Is this for a settlement ? '' Wallace replied , `` This is so there is no settl

ement . '' -0- Beginning June 4 , there 'll be two late-night repeats of the hal

f-hour `` Mary Hartman , Mary Hartman '' every Saturday night on cable 's Lifeti

me Maybe such double exposure should be dubbed `` Mary Hartman x Four . ''

 WASHINGTON The magnificent retrospective of Willem de Kooning 's paintings at t

he National Gallery of Art throws the artist 's breathtaking achievement into hi

gh relief . More than ever , he is confirmed as the last great exemplar of a Eur

opean tradition of modern art , as altered and transmogrified by his loving enco

unter with his adopted home . De Kooning , a Dutch emigre to the United States ,

 transformed Parisian Cubism and European Expressionism , infusing them with a s

cale and a temperament distinctly American and particular to New York . Cubism a

nd Expressionism were writ large , in dazzlingly complex images of women begun c

irca 1949 and in luxurious , landscape-inspired abstractions that followed half 

a dozen years later . The retrospective , which brings together 76 paintings on 

canvas , paper and board , begins in 1938 with de Kooning 's peculiar figure stu

dies of men and women in indeterminate interiors . They seem to merge an affecti

on for the `` little brown paintings '' of Dutch old masters with a thoroughly m

odern , specifically Cubist interest in constantly shifting points of view . Tog

ether , these impulses are inflected by the salutary influence of painter Arshil

e Gorky , his great friend , mentor and fellow immigrant ( from Armenia ) . The 

show concludes in 1986 with the big canvases of loose , light-filled , open inte

rlaces of color darting through fields of tinted white . The best of them rank a

s an astonishing coda to an already astonishing career . The museum has mounted 

the retrospective on the occasion of de Kooning 's 90th birthday ; he was born i

n Rotterdam April 24 , 1904 , came to the United States illegally in 1926 and st

opped painting in the late 1980s , when the debilitating effects of Alzheimer 's

 disease ended his artistic life . National Gallery curator Marla Prather , Engl

ish critic and historian David Sylvester and Nicholas Serota , director of Londo

n 's Tate Gallery , have assembled a nearly flawless array of paintings to tell 

their tale . That rarely flagging level of quality is crucial , because the last

 opportunity to survey de Kooning 's work a 1983 retrospective at New York 's Wh

itney Museum of American Art could be described most charitably as erratic in th

e loans that were secured . With few notable exceptions , topped by the missing 

`` Pink Angels '' from circa 1945 , all the pivotal paintings are in Washington 

. As a result , it 's easy to follow the internal trajectory of de Kooning 's ar

t . The most important insight de Kooning took from Cubism was his sensual artic

ulation of the surface of a painting as a bodily metaphor . The Cubist structure

 on which the great , rambunctious `` Woman '' paintings rely is harnessed by de