A Shade of Difference (45 page)

“Of course I don’t,” Orrin Knox said firmly. “And whoever thinks you are doesn’t know you, of that I am sure.”

“Maybe they don’t,” the Congressman said slowly. “Maybe that’s the trouble. Maybe
she
doesn’t. That’s probably it.” He stopped and seemed lost in thought for several moments. The Secretary didn’t dare break in, didn’t in fact, dare to even move a little in his chair, though one leg was pinching painfully upon the other and he would have loved to uncross them. He remained very still and presently Cullee spoke again.

“You see, my wife and my friend—LeGage—they both think I’m a coward and a traitor to my people and—and everything else, I guess. They don’t think I’m much good. They think I should have gone to that school with Terry, and they think I ought to be up there fussing around at the UN, and if they knew I’d ever called you about Felix’s plans, they’d—they’d really hate me, I guess.”

“They’ll never know from me. You can trust me on that.”

“Can I trust you?” the Congressman asked, again in a tortured whisper. “You’re white.” He looked startled and dismayed by his own statement. “I don’t mean that,” he said sadly. “I really don’t mean that. But that’s what it’s like on the—the other side. I like to think I’m an American, and I’m proud of it, too; but millions of Americans feel like that about—us, you know. They don’t trust us, just because we’re black … Only now,” he said with a scarifying bitterness, “I’ve got myself in a place where it isn’t only white people who don’t trust me. Black people don’t either.”

“Oh, now,” Orrin Knox said lamely, feeling more inadequate than he ever had in his life about anything, so deep was the unhappiness before him and so impossible was it, he recognized honestly, for a white man to really alleviate it, “that isn’t true. It just isn’t true. I won’t let you torture yourself like this, Cullee. You aren’t being fair to yourself at all.”

“LeGage tells me I’m riding both races. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should cut over and be one way or the other. But how can I, and be honest?
How can I?
I can’t hate the way so many of them—listen to me,” he said with anguish; “‘them’—and it’s my own people I’m talking about—the way so many of
us
can. I guess hate was left out of me. I guess that makes me really unfit for the world we live in. You’ve got to hate nowadays, or you aren’t anything. I guess that’s it.”

“Don’t,” the Secretary said, with a pain of his own. “Please don’t. I grant you we are trapped in a terrible time, Cullee, but we’re all trapped; you’re not the only one. And we can’t afford to let it get us down—we simply cannot—or we really will be lost, and the world will be lost too, to those who wish to murder it. You and I have got to fight that Cullee. So help me, will you? I can’t carry it alone.”

At this appeal, in which Orrin had been unprepared for, and startled by, his own intensity, the Congressman seemed to relax a little. But it was several moments before he spoke, and the bitterness was still in his voice when he did.

“I’d like to, but they’d just say I was trying to get white votes for Senator, if I did.”

“All right,” Orrin Knox said, for now the way out of this emotional dead end suddenly came clear; “and do you know what they’re going to say about me? That I’m just trying to get black votes for President, aren’t they? So what do we do about it you and I, sit around crying because they call us names and don’t understand us, or go ahead and do what we know is right? You tell me. We start equal with our own people, Cullee, so you tell me what you’d like us to do. I’ll follow your advice, and that’s a promise.”

Again he did not dare move as their eyes held for a moment that lengthened until a stillness sang in the room. The Congressman spoke at last in a low voice.

“What do you want
me
to do?”

“Good,” Orrin said with a great relief, aware that he had been given a trust that imposed upon him an obligation forever, but unafraid to accept it because he knew he would not betray it. “What I have in mind is this. See if you agree; and if you have suggestions, tell me. Okay?”

For the first time Cullee Hamilton looked at ease and untroubled.

“Okay,” he said with the start of a genuine smile. “We’ll show ’em.”

“We will that,” said Orrin Knox.

So the day looked much brighter to the Congressman from California as he got his car from the reserved parking lot of the State Department and drove toward the Hill. He would call the office of the Legislative Counsel for help on drafting the resolution when he reached his office, but first he would call home and tell Sue-Dan what had been decided, and that would be all right. True, it was the same thing essentially that she had wanted him to do, and it might be a little hard to explain why he had refused her and agreed with Orrin Knox, but, then, why did she need to know about Orrin Knox at all? Why couldn’t he just tell her he had agreed with her after thinking it over, and everything would be all right? In fact, that was what Orrin himself had suggested.

It was with a rising excitement that he checked in at the House floor and then went direct to the cloakroom to make the call. Maudie answered, and the day began to die.

“Is she there?” he asked quickly. There was a strange little silence at the other end, and panic gripped his heart “Is she there, Maudie?”

“Not here,” Maudie said mournfully. “Not here, really, this time.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded harshly.

“She just not here, I’m telling you. She and that LeGage took off together directly you left.”

“But I want to tell her something,” he said stupidly, as though the logic of his call would bring her back.

“She said to tell you they see you at the UN, if you want to come. She said she expect you know where New York is and how to find it, if you care to get there. She said she doubts you will, but, anyway, you know.”

“Was that all?” he asked, feeling sick.

“That’s all. You coming home for dinner?”

“I don’t know.”

“Got to eat. Can’t beat trouble on an empty stomach. Anyway, maybe you’ll get her back.”

“Oh, sure,” he said dully. “Maybe.”

“I’ll have it ready. You come home, hear?”

“Okay,” he said automatically. “I’ll come home.”

He went through the rest of the afternoon like a robot, but he kept his promise to Orrin Knox. He called the Legislative Counsel and told them what he wanted on the resolution, and he called the Speaker and told him what he wanted to do about introducing it. Now it seemed even more important than before that he keep faith with the white man who trusted him. He was too shaken emotionally to be exactly sure why, but he knew it was.

3

His host on the early-morning television show had been suitably complimentary to Panama, suitably apologetic for the United States, suitably anxious to take upon his own country all the blame for whatever unpleasant consequences might have arisen from the visit of the M’Bulu. Now Felix was on his way back across the maze of midmorning Manhattan to the East River, congratulating himself that with the eager encouragement of his interviewer he had been permitted to state his case in the friendliest possible atmosphere to many millions of those whose nation he was doing his best to defeat. It had been an enjoyable and constructive session, and he was grateful that he had been given the opportunity.

Furthermore, he had been able to do it without telling any lies. His claims of growing support throughout the UN for his anti-American amendment were entirely true. His talk yesterday to the African bloc had gone exceedingly well—the delegates had been only too eager to hear his carefully worded statement and had furnished with their own excited shouts and loud endorsements the added degree of criticism and condemnation of the United States that he had been too circumspect and careful to enunciate himself.

From then on, the day had proceeded with great success.

By the end of it, in fact, he had also talked to some twenty delegations outside the African bloc and had received from fourteen of them, including India, assurances of firm and active support. Krishna Khaleel, for whom the Ambassador of Panama did not have much respect but who nevertheless was an excellent troublemaker in his own fluttering, circuitous way, had taken off like a rocket amid fervent and exclamatory expressions of approval for what Felix was attempting to do. Felix had glimpsed him from time to time throughout the day, hustling about the Delegates’ Lounge, pacing importantly up and down the corridors buttonholing delegates and correspondents, spreading the word and flexing India’s not inconsiderable muscles with the neutral states.

At one point Felix had watched Senator Fry attempt to delay this vigorous progress long enough for a talk, but he had noted with an amused gratification that K.K. would have none of it. Instead he had gone hurrying away leaving the chief United States delegate with an expression of frank annoyance on his face. Hal Fry did not yet look really worried about the situation, Felix saw, but he made him a silent promise that he soon would be. By day’s end, when they exchanged polite and wary inconsequentials at a New Zealand delegation cocktail party held in the Delegates’ Dining Room, it was obvious that he was.

“Have you got all the votes in the Fifth Ward lined up?” Hal had inquired with an offhand humor, and Felix had smiled with a genuine amusement.

“Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth. I think we will win in a walk.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Hal Fry said. “Nobody is going to win this one in a walk. We’ll make you run for it.”

“As you like,” Felix Labaiya had said calmly. “I’m in training.”

He had expected some humorously sharp rejoinder, but the Senator had seemed momentarily dismayed and distracted by something, and a puzzled, almost pained expression had briefly shadowed his eyes. One of the numerous little princes from Thailand had come up at that moment and drawn the Panamanian Ambassador away before the American could collect his thoughts and respond.

They were worried, he told himself fiercely as the cab swung off Forty-second into First and cruised swiftly up to the Delegates’ Entrance. Oh, yes, they were worried, for all that their official attitude was a sort of annoyed impatience with all these bothersome little states. Their flag still flew proudly with the rest in the half-circle before the Secretariat, but the wind had died down and it did not snap so briskly as it had yesterday. He realized with a tiny smile at his own fancies that this was a childish symbolism, but in a fight like this even the slightest of omens was worth reliance for the encouragement it could give. He made up his mind that before the day was over they would have still further cause to be concerned.

In pursuit of this, he put in a call to U.S. delegation headquarters as soon as he reached the Lounge. The chairman of DEFY was in and at his desk.

“Why don’t you come over for coffee in ten minutes?” Felix asked, and LeGage agreed at once.

“I want to talk to you anyway,” he said in a significant tone, and the Panamanian Ambassador suggested, “Then perhaps the Lounge is too public—”

“Oh, no,” LeGage said with a sudden violence Felix could not quite interpret, “I don’t care if they see me. I just don’t care!”

“Very well,” Felix said impassively. “I shall expect you.”

And what did that mean? he wondered, as he studied the day’s
Journal of United Nations Proceedings
with its listing of all committee meetings, its items on the agenda, its announcement of today’s plenary session on the latest fighting in unhappy Kenya. Patsy had told him rather vaguely that she had seen Sue-Dan, though she didn’t say much about their conversation; there was the old friendship between LeGage and Sue-Dan’s husband. Could LeGage, Sue-Dan, and Cullee be cooking up something? What was going on, he asked himself dryly, in the darker reaches of the North American continent? Anyway, it could only help to advance his plans, whatever it was. If it didn’t fit into them immediately, he was confident he could talk LeGage around until it did.

There came into his mind with a sudden uneasiness, as he nodded to a sheik from Saudi Arabia and one of his fellow Latins from Guatemala, the thought of his brother-in-law. He still had heard nothing from Ted, nor, apparently, had Patsy. He could always tell when she had, even if she did not tell him directly. No such overtones had been in her voice when she called last night. Apparently Ted was not worried yet about the course he was pursuing, and so Patsy wasn’t either. She would have TOLD him if she were. There was no doubt of that.

Still, he had to confess that he did feel a certain puzzlement at the Governor’s aloofness, for there was no doubt that he himself was on risky ground, pushing close to the limits of what Ted could afford to be associated with and still run for President. At any moment the backlash might begin, there might be some reaction, in the Congress or elsewhere, that would prove embarrassing; and then he would receive the phone call he had half expected ever since he introduced his amendment on Monday. What choice he would make then between the alternative courses of action that would be clearly presented, he did not, at this moment, know with any certainty; except that he knew he would have to make one, and, whatever it might be, it would not be easy. La Suerte sprang suddenly to his mind, the long view down the valley from the terrace, Chiriqui high and challenging behind. Be careful, Yanqui, he said in his mind to the one Yanqui he was afraid of; don’t push the grandson of Don Jorge too far.

But, he told himself with an instantly following impatience, Ted was a practical man. What Felix was doing could be justified on grounds of Panamanian internal politics; Ted could understand that. Felix was being circumspect in his language, leaving real anti-American bitterness to others. He told himself he was worrying too soon and worrying too much. His self-confidence, shaken only by one man and by him never for long, surged back as he glanced up and saw the lithe figure of the chairman of DEFY enter the Lounge and look about for him with a questioning air that quickly gave way to a secret and intimate smile as Felix waved from his vantage place in the corner by the magazine racks.

“You know,” Lafe Smith said, casually shifting his position at a coffee table far down the room near the window so that he could watch this meeting between the Panamanian Ambassador and the American delegation’s most unknown quantity, “I really think you have one of the most fascinating jobs in this whole organization. Don’t you think so?”