A Shade of Difference (105 page)

“France voted with us, too,” Lord Maudulayne said in a surprised voice. “Apparently my fears were groundless.”

“But wait a minute—” Lafe said in a suddenly worried voice, and they fell abruptly silent as once more there came a call of “Mr. President!” from the floor.

“The distinguished delegate of Bolivia,” the President said into the tensely rustling hush.

“Bolivia also abstained,” her delegate said laconically. “Bolivia also wishes to vote. Bolivia votes
Si!”

“I knew it,” Lafe said, pounding a fist into a palm. “I
knew
it. Here comes Venezuela. I must say for Felix—”

“He planned it well,” Lord Maudulayne said glumly.

“Venezuela, too, abstained,” her delegate said into a chained excitement almost more than the delegates could bear. “Venezuela, too, will vote.
Sí!”

And in the midst of the thundering noise that ensued he walked quickly back to his seat as the President pounded for order. When he had it, he spoke into the quivering silence.

“The vote on the resolution now stands at 76 Yes, 38 No, 2 abstention, remainder absent, and the resolution for the immediate independence of Gorotoland is approved by this Assembly … This plenary session of the General Assembly on The Problem of Gorotoland is now concluded,” he said, his words almost lost in the rush of excited sound as delegates and galleries rose and began milling about in excited groups. “The plenary session of the Assembly on the second resolution of the distinguished delegate of Panama on The Matter of the United States, will convene at 3 p.m. on Mond—”

“Mr. President!” Hal Fry and Vasily Tashikov shouted together. The President recognized Hal.

“Mr. President,” he called as the Assembly, now in almost complete informality as its members, moving toward the exits, turned back for a moment of attention to hear him, “there is no point in delaying this. The United States suggests that the next plenary convene at 3 p.m. today, instead of Monday.”

“The next plenary session,” the President said as Vasily Tashikov nodded his head in satisfied agreement, “will convene at 3 p.m. today.”

There was a scattering of applause as the gavel fell. The Problem of Gorotoland was settled. Ahead still lay The Matter of the United States.

Across the big concave bowl, now draining rapidly of its colorful, cantankerous occupants, the giant figure standing with the Indian delegation and the small, neat figure in the Panamanian delegation caught each other’s eyes and bowed. Felix Labaiya’s smile, as always, was slight and self-contained, the smile of a man who had planned well, expected to do well, and done well. The M’Bulu’s happy grin was broad and carefree, that of a prizefighter who had finally bested his opponent. As if to strengthen the comparison, he raised his hands above his head and clasped them together in the traditional victory gesture. There was a sound of laughter and friendly applause from all around, and in the glow of it he told himself that the gods were still with Terence Ajkaje, just as always. He had the vote he had fought so hard to get, and while he had thought earlier that it might be his death warrant, now that the triumph was actually his he did not really think so—he could not really think so, so happy and supremely confident did he feel. He would stay one more day, now, to help Felix as Felix had helped him, and then he would fly home and, with the kind assistance of the British, put things to rights in Molobangwe. There, he now felt sure, triumph awaited him, after so great a triumph here in this world assemblage that once and for all had recognized the 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele for the great one he was in the councils of mankind.

Seeing his happy aspect, and grasping intuitively something of the emotion that must be behind it, the Ambassador of Panama felt triumph too, though the last thing he would ever have done was to have shown it by so revealing a gesture as that of Terrible Terry. Outward displays were not Felix’s way; nor did he have time for them. His major task still remained, though it now appeared much simpler in the wake of the Assembly’s support for his parliamentary maneuvers and the size of the favorable vote on Gorotoland.

He looked with a glance that was half calculating, half pitying, toward the American delegation, where Senator Fry, gray-faced and tired, was moving slowly out with Senator Smith. We shall meet this afternoon, Felix Labaiya promised them. We shall meet this afternoon and see who wins the final toss.

Lafe waved to him and automatically he waved back. But there was no cordiality on either side, only the cold, carefully appraising look of opponents who know a battle to the death still lies before them.

After they had crossed First Avenue in the mixture of sleet, snow, and freezing rain that now had the city under siege, the two Americans went briefly up to Hal’s office in U.S. headquarters before catching a cab, Lafe to go to the Waldorf for much-needed sleep, Hal to return to Harkness for another treatment and sleep until time to come back for the next plenary. In the office they put through a call, as directed, to the White House and the Knox home in Spring Valley. Once again a conference call was set up and their two superiors, sleepy but increasingly awake as they talked along, analyzed with them the import of the day’s events.

“Is Cullee there?” the President asked, and Hal said yes, he was, but had preferred, and they had agreed, to defer his appearance until debate actually came on Felix’s new resolution.

“I think it’s as well we didn’t have him with us today,” Lafe said. “He’s still feeling pretty rocky and of course looks like the very devil—”

“Which is all right,” Orrin said from the Spring Valley house.

“It doesn’t harm us,” Hal agreed. “He’ll feel better tomorrow, and be more impressive then. I think it’s well for them to see how he looks; they’re always saying nobody in America cares about the racial problem. Somebody cared, right enough.”

“Which has made Cullee care, too, in a way he didn’t imagine he could before, I think,” Orrin said.

“How ironic it is,” the President said, “that in the affairs of the world these days, nations must stage-manage their effects as carefully as though they were on Broadway. Terry with his splattered robes, Cullee with his beaten body—” He made a sad sound, of tiredness and disgust. “What an age.”

“Yet it must be done,” the Secretary of State said. “That is how many of the nations reach their decisions nowadays, on the basis of emotions stirred up by things like that.”

“I know,” the President said. “It does not always give me great faith in the future of the globe. Good night, all. I think we know where we stand for this afternoon. Thank you for everything, and best of luck in the debate.”

“What will we do if—” Hal Fry began, and left the question hanging.

“We will do whatever the situation requires,” the President said. “When it requires it. Sleep well.”

The farewells said, the call ended, hats and coats on, lights turned off in the office, the two Senators stood for a moment looking across at the Secretariat, surging upward into the night, its many brightly lighted windows, where charwomen worked as the hour reached 2 a.m., obscured and shrouded by the weather. The building seemed almost to drift against the night, without anchor or reference point for the eye to tie it to, all else blocked out by the scudding storm. Out of the north door of the Main Concourse they could see a few last stragglers hurrying home across the lighted esplanade. In front of the Delegates’ Entrance, directly below, two tiny figures were methodically hauling down the sopping flags.

“It’s curious,” Lafe said. “So much happens there during the daytime, but somehow I always think of it as being at night. It always seems to be a night place—for night people
—”

“—doing night things to the world. I wonder if it will ever fulfill what mankind hoped for it when it first began.”

“Who knows?” Lafe asked soberly. “Who knows? … But, here!” He clapped his colleague on the back. “You’re desperately tired and it’s past 2 a.m. Let me run you up to the hospital.”

“I’ll drop you and go on alone. I can make it all right.”

“Can you?” Lafe said, studying him closely. Hal smiled.

“Whatever the situation requires,” he quoted the President. “When it requires it. Come on.”

Downstairs, while they waited for a cab to come along the now quite deserted avenue in the hostile storm, their eyes were inevitably drawn once more to the great building rising into the mists above them.

A night place—for night people—doing night things.

And the hope?

It was still there somewhere.

It had to be.

There Wasn’t Anything Else.

4

Looking down once again upon the crowded and colorful scene as he once more patiently awaited the arrival of the President of the Assembly, the Secretary-General could see that of all those who would contest the issue, the acting chief delegate of the United States appeared to be the most eager to commence. Certainly he was the first of the major participants to appear in the chamber, arriving with one of his delegation secretaries at 2:45 p.m., well in advance of the time the plenary would actually begin.

He looked, the S.-G. thought somewhat tense and under pressure, but that was understandable. Apparently his medical examination, despite the rumors running through the corridors, had given him a clean bill of health, for here he was again today, evidently in good shape and ready for battle. It was true that there was a certain luminous grayness about his face, but then, the S.-G. thought with a shiver, who wouldn’t be gray in the kind of weather that howled upon Manhattan outside? That is, he corrected himself with a small inward amusement anyone who could
turn
gray would be gray. Those who were black could only look pinched and shrink with the rest in the storm that had lasted all night and was only now easing, after piling the streets with heavy snow. It seemed to him that he could feel the cold right here in the chamber, overheated as it was, so foreign was this type of weather to that he was native to in West Africa.

Along with that, it seemed to him, there was another coldness in the room, the coldness of men contending in bitterness and determination for different and conflicting ends and ambitions. He had spent much time in the white man’s world, but gods and ghosts still walked his mind at times, and this was one. There were presences here today, moving among the living and influencing their actions; presences going back to the earliest colonialism and the first slave-trading days in Africa—not only white presences that had profited, but black presences that had profited, as well.

The burden of all the world lay heavy upon this issue. What the Indian Ambassador had lately taken to referring to, with a pixyish relish, as the “shade of difference” united many in guilt even as it divided them in purpose.

What could he do about it, where could he logically and with honor participate in the struggle imposed by history upon mankind? Perhaps, old man, he told himself bleakly, there is no place for you. Perhaps you will fail here, as in all the rest.

For his part, as he stood at the head of the aisle leading down to the section marked for the United States delegation, managing to smile and shake hands with other delegates as they arrived, Senator Fry, too, was feeling the winds of the years and the certainty of a harsh contention. As much as could be expected, he was ready for it, after a long sleep under sedation that had lasted until almost noon. But he wondered if any of them, really, whatever their condition, was ready for it, and whether this might not be one of those occasions when men attempted to deal with forces of history so great that they could not, in reality, be controlled or managed—when the only feasible human purpose must be to channel them as much as possible into ways that would not damage too much the structure of a reasonably sane society.

Whether some of his fellow delegates realized this he did not know as he stood there watching them form into little groups, chat for a moment, break up, form other groups, move restlessly here and there among the aisles, waving and greeting one another as the chamber filled. There were many purposes here, within the shadow of the resolution of the Panamanian Ambassador on The Matter of the United States; and he was well aware that a majority of them were hostile to his country and that it was questionable if his country could defeat them.

In the delegation and among its friends, he thought things were as favorable as possible under the circumstances. Certain strategies had been worked out, certain plans made, for the debate. With equal attention to detail, he knew, plans and strategies had been organized by the other side. The votes that had permitted Felix to bring the issue here in this form, and the vote with which Gorotoland’s independence had been approved, might on the face of them be taken to predict a simple and inevitable defeat for the United States on the companion issue. Yet it was not that simple or inevitable, as many hints and indications coming into the delegation during the morning had made clear.

Again, as in the first debate when Terry had made his dramatic appeal after the episode in Charleston, there appeared to be two conflicting impulses: one to rush forward in a storm of emotion and condemn the United States, the other to recognize the United States’ many contributions to the UN and draw back before condemnation went too far. What he would do in the event the first impulse prevailed, he did not know. He had no instructions other than the President’s cryptic “what the situation requires, when it requires it,” and so he was in no position to use the possibility of future action as a weapon in debate. He did not know what the possibility was.

Neither was there any further means of diplomacy or pressure open to the delegation. Everything had been exhausted by now. The type of horse-trading with funds and promises and warnings that all the nations resorted to on major issues had run its course. Nothing was left but persuasion and argument in open debate; and there, basically, all that remained was emotion, since reason and logic had automatically been forced to a secondary place by the impassioned prejudices and preconceptions that surrounded this highly emotional matter.