By E. Graydon Carter

"I play tennis, but I don't win tournaments, so I didn't know what to do with it," said Pianist Andre-Michel Schub, 28, hoisting his silver trophy high over his head Bjorn Borg-style after winning the sixth Van Cliburn International Quadrennial Piano Competition.

His performances during the two-week contest in Fort Worth were strictly center court. Impressed by his emotionally spare, but powerful and nearly flawless technique, the eleven-member international jury gave the Paris-born, Brooklyn-raised musician the nod over 38 other entrants. A victory on the high Cs is nothing new to Schub--in 1974 he won the Naumburg competition and three years later the Avery Fisher Prize--but the Van Cliburn win carries a $ 12,000 cash award, a recording contract and two years of solo and concerto appearances.

Says the pianist of his now full performance schedule: "My page is black."

Yikes! Is CBS Chairman William S. Paley, 79, one of the

more accomplished corporate executioners of modern times, learning yet another technique for beheading underlings? Nope. The veteran shoman-warrior, who has disposed of two CBS presidents in the past five years, was just cutting up with Actor Toshiro Mifune (Tom! Tom! Tom!), 61, during a recent visit to Japan. On location in Kyoto with the cast of The Equals, a CBS movie due out next year, Paley cast an experienced samureye on the set before joining Mifune in light swordplay. Affecting a traditional shogun stance, the CBS chairman cried: "Critics beware!"

"I am devoting more time to the birdbrains in my comic strip Shoe. I would like to devote less time to the birdbrains on the national and international stages." So said Jeff MacNelly, 33, last week as he announced that he was giving up regular political cartooning. From his editorial-page perch at the Richmond (Va.) News Leader, MacNelly had drawn and quartered Washington wildlife through eleven years and four Administrations. His winsome wit and goofily graceful draftsmanship had won him two Pulitzer prizes and syndication in 450 newspapers. But it seemed that the wag had tailed the dogged daily routine too long. Says he: "I would like to work end to end on something." Though he plans to spend more time on Shoe and the featherbrained journalists who work for the Treetops Tattler Tribune, MacNelly is hardly going out on a limb: started less than four years ago, the strip is already syndicated in 650 newspapers.

With Rome's ocher-tinted buildings fairly glowing in the late-afternoon sun, Pope John Paul II, 61, made his way gingerly down the steps of Gemelli Hospital, almost three weeks to the hour after being felled by a terrorist's bullets. He appeared gaunt and a trifle pale, but the sparkle was back in his eye.

Smiling as he walked toward his black, open-top limousine, the Pontiff stopped for an instant when greeted by a young girl bearing a welcome-back bouquet. Due for a second operation by month's end, the Pontiff was nevertheless in high spirits. "You think you can now boast that you made me a new person," he reportedly told his doctors, "but I'm the same rascal I have always been." --By E. Graydon Carter

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