A Shade of Difference (48 page)

“My in-laws,” the Panamanian Ambassador said with equal sharpness, “are neither here nor there. They understand my position.”

“Do they?” he said, still able almost by instinct that could function without him to use the weapon he knew would trouble Felix most. “Better check with the Governor. I’m not so sure.”

“He hasn’t said anything,” Felix said quickly.

“I haven’t seen the wire-service clips this morning,” Hal Fry said with a fair show of indifference, and the pain receded sufficiently so that he could come back to the everyday world long enough to feel a slight satisfaction that the opening had developed so naturally. He pressed the buzzer on his desk with a show of vigor. “My secretary will bring them in, and we’ll see.”

‘There will be nothing there,” Felix said firmly.

The pain was back, but through it he forced himself to give the answer he knew had to be made.

“There will be nothing there about the United States retreating, either,” he said as they waited for the girl. “So there we are. Having a good time in America, Terry?”

“Senator,” the M’Bulu said genially, “now you are trying to divert us. It will not work. The situation here in the United Nations has reached a point where diversions and evasions and side issues no longer hold the attention of the world. We are approaching a showdown, Senator. What will you do?”

“That is the question,” Krishna Khaleel agreed. “What will you do?”

“Why do anything,” he asked with a fair show of calmness, though someone was now working on the small of his back with a pair of forceps, “except continue to do what we are doing, which is to persuade the General Assembly of the validity of our position? There’s only one way to decide it now, isn’t there, and that’s to have a vote and see who wins. Unless, of course, you intend to withdraw your amendment, Felix. That might speed things along considerably.”

The Panamanian Ambassador looked at him with a strange expression, as though he considered him to be verging on insanity.

“I shall never withdraw it,” he said coldly. Hal Fry shrugged, though the motion seemed to cost him a new set of pains searing up through his shoulders.
Is there no end to it?
his mind demanded; and for the time being, at least, his body answered, No.

“Therefore we must meet it as best we can, in the only way open to us,” he said carefully. “You aren’t afraid of losing the vote, are you, Felix? Perhaps that’s what behind this little visitation.”

“I think we are losing sight of our purpose in coming here,” the M’Bulu said with a graceful laugh. “We have let the conversation carry us afield. We are really here in the best interests of the United States, Senator. We think there is a commendable way out for you.”

Now it was back in his eyes again, a blurring haze that suddenly turned reddish; this upset him more than anything yet, for it harked back to his recent troubles of the weekend. But again he forced himself to remain still and outwardly calm.

“It would not be so difficult, Hal,” the Indian Ambassador said earnestly. “It would, indeed, make all your friends and supporters around the world regard you with genuine pride and affection. It would be a simple exercise of restraint and dignity, Hal, of understanding what the tides of history are in this world of ours. It is not so much to ask of a truly great power.”

“And what would that be,” he asked, as the red light began to fade a little. “Join in supporting the amendment? Surely,” he said with an enforced levity that cost him greatly, “you can think of something more original than that, K.K.!”

“Nothing would be more becoming to a power of the stature the United States considers herself to have,” the Panamanian Ambassador said with a smooth insolence that Hal Fry was too sick to counter. “Why should you object?”

“It would be such a simple solution,” Terrible Terry said encouragingly. “Then we could all forget this unhappy wrangle and turn together toward new eras of peace and understanding!”

“I’m glad the world seems that simple to you,” Senator Fry said, the pain swiftly receding all over his body for no reason he could see or understand. “And what would we get out of such an action?”

“Honor,” said Felix Labaiya.

“Integrity,” said Krishna Khaleel.

“The applause of the whole wide world, Senator, I can assure you of that; the applause of the whole wide world!” said the M’Bulu.

“Otherwise,” Felix said soberly, “we must continue to line up the votes that can only result in a most humiliating condemnation of the United States in the eyes of the whole world. Surely you do not want that for your country.”

“It would be terrible for you, Hal,” K.K. assured him. “You cannot imagine the endless repercussions that a defeat on such an issue would have for you throughout the world.”

“Oh, yes,” Hal Fry said grimly, for both subject matter and pain were again conspiring, the pain once more racking his body with a savage capriciousness, now here, now there, now everywhere, “we can imagine. That is why we intend that it will not happen.”

“Then you must do as we ask,” the M’Bulu said happily. “There is no other solution.”

“We shall see,” Hal Fry said, wondering furiously through his fluctuating agony where his secretary was with the long yellow clips of copy paper from the two wire-service tickers in the outer office. He reached over and pushed the buzzer again with a hurried, impatient air, and this time the girl did hurry in with the streamers in her hands.

“Excuse me,” he said, beginning with a great effort at casualness to riffle through them for the item he hoped desperately was there—for now, in his own physical pain and their organized onslaught against his country, it suddenly seemed fearfully important that it be there. “I want to find Ted Jason’s statement in here for you, Felix.”

“There is no statement,” the Panamanian Ambassador said with an uneasy anger. “He would have talked to me first.”

“Possibly,” Hal Fry said calmly, “or possibly not. Let me see: ‘Governor Edward Jason of California said today—’ But, no, that isn’t it; he’s making some statement on Mexican wetbacks.” In an instant the pain was gone entirely, and in his relief he resorted again to irony. “But don’t give up, Felix. There are three more sheets.” Now where in the hell is it, he asked himself with a growing impatience, diverted momentarily from the inexplicable things occurring in his body. Orrin had called him an hour ago; surely the plan had gone well. “Why, here it is,” he said in a relieved tone of voice.

“Ted’s statement?” the Panamanian Ambassador asked, and for once he did not seem to be quite the cool and collected customer he liked to have the world think he was.

“Why, no,” Hal said with satisfaction; “Cullee Hamilton’s resolution.”

“What’s old Cullee done?” the M’Bulu asked with the beginning of a smile, which indicated that he would not be surprised to find the Congressman attempting to checkmate him.

Hal Fry started to read it aloud, but suddenly his private pack of devils was back again, exercising their marksmanship against his chest and lower body, sending the horrible waves of dizziness through his head, blurring his sight again, closing off his esophagus.

“Why don’t you read it aloud, K.K.?” he managed to suggest before the kaleidoscopic sensations became too severe for him to talk. “It may change things somewhat.”

“Well,” the Indian Ambassador said nervously in his precise, clipped English; “well, let me see …

“‘Representative Cullee Hamilton, California’s Negro Congressman, today introduced a joint Congressional resolution expressing the official apologies of the United States Government to the M’Bulu of Mbuele for the “danger and personal humiliation” he suffered while escorting a colored child to school last week in Charleston, S.C.

“‘The resolution authorizes a grant of $10,000,000 to the African prince to use as he sees fit for the “advancement and improvement” of the people of his native Gorotoland, and it also promises him the use of United States technical advisers in furthering any project he may wish to undertake along those lines.

“‘The resolution also declares it to be the sense of the Congress that the United States should “move with increased rapidity to improve the conditions of its Negro population at all levels.” It pledges the “full co-operation” of Congress in achieving this aim.

“‘There were immediate indications that the resolution may have tough sledding in both houses of Congress. Experienced observers felt that its greatest difficulty will come in the Senate.

“‘There, the resolution was attacked soon after its introduction by Senator Seabright B. Cooley of South Carolina, who charged that it was a “put-up job.”

“‘Rep. Hamilton, the Senator said, was “acting as water boy for the political ambitions of Orrin Knox” (Secretary of State Orrin Knox) in introducing the resolution.’”

Well, that figures, Hal Fry thought through his pain as the Indian Ambassador finished reading and a little silence fell. Finally Krishna Khaleel shrugged elaborately.

“Well, what does it mean, eh? Just words. Just a resolution in the Congress. It does not affect us here, Hal. Surely you do not think it affects us here.”

“Felix knows,” Hal Fry said with a casual air that cost him much, for the agonizing sensations again were everywhere throughout his body. “Don’t you, Felix?”

“I know it means a very difficult project for the Congress,” the Panamanian Ambassador said tersely.

“You know it means the turning point here,” Hal Fry said.

“If it goes through there.”

“It will.”

“We shall see,” said Felix Labaiya.

“Well!” the M’Bulu exclaimed with a cheerful laugh, rising to his full height and draping his robes carefully about him as he prepared to leave. “So old Cullee fooled us all. What do you know.”

After they had gone, after he had made farewells which seemed and sounded to him terribly shaky but which they in their annoyance and frustration apparently did not notice as such, the Senator from West Virginia sat for what must have been many minutes at his desk as the waves of pain came and went, came and went. Gradually they began to subside, and presently the time arrived when he was able to conclude instinctively that the terrible storm, which had swept through his body was beginning to die away.

My God, my God, he repeated to himself in a sick and frightened bafflement,
what is it?
And later, with a grim determination,
whatever it is, I’ve got to keep going; I’ve simply got to.
And finally, almost too much to bear now, prompted by the thought of a handsome boy sitting in the sun far up the Hudson, the agonized cry:
If you could only be here to help me, Jimmy. If we could only help each other.

But they could not; and after a few more minutes, during which his vision gradually returned to normal and the dizziness slowly subsided so that he could stand up without fear of falling, he rose shakily, squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and prepared to go across the street to the UN.

Perhaps forcing himself to conduct his normal business would provide surcease; perhaps there would come the blessed calming of customary things. But he knew as he stepped out of U.S. delegation headquarters and started, feeling steadily better now, across First Avenue to the Secretariat Building, that things were not the same.

Perhaps, he recognized with a terrifying honesty, they could never be the same again. In the space of half an hour fear had come to live with him, and he did not know, now, when, if ever, it might depart.

“Señor Varilla of Ecuador, please,” the young lady at the telephone desk said with a bored intonation. “Mr. Takasura of Japan … Mr. Ben Said of Morocco, please …”

“So you see, boy,” Fred Van Ackerman concluded expansively, “that’s the way it shapes up. All of us want to get together and put over the real liberal viewpoint, and you’re just the man to do it. DEFY’s got to front this thing; it’s the only move that makes sense. The Jasons are interested, COMFORT will come in on it, and I suspect the
New York
Post
and the
Washington
Post
and all that crowd will give us all the support they can, and that’s plenty. But it’s up to you to start it moving, right?”

“I don’t know,” LeGage said slowly. “I just don’t know. I’m not so sure I want to run with that bunch on this.”

“Why not?” the Senator from Wyoming demanded sharply. “Aren’t we good enough for you? Why, see here, boy, that’s the best support you could possibly ask for. It’ll give us a chance to show up Knox and some of these other phonies who seem to think they can grab the liberal cause for their own political advantage. Nothing like the genuine article, now, is there?”

“I wouldn’t know,” LeGage said with a trace of sullenness. “Folks I represent aren’t quite so concerned about labels as you seem to be. They’re more concerned with results.”

“Results!” Fred Van Ackerman said. “Results! God damn, ’Gage boy, you just stick with me and you’ll see results!”

“Yes, I know,” LeGage said like a flash. “You got resulted right into a censure motion, seems like I recall.”

“Bastards!” Fred Van Ackerman said with a brooding emphasis. “I’ll get them yet, see if I don’t. That’s why it makes so much sense for us to get together, boy. You people and I, we both want revenge. We’ve both had a dirty deal.”

LeGage was silent for a moment at the colossal arrogance of this, but spoke finally in a soft voice.

“Oh? You think it’s equal?”

“You’re damned right I do,” Senator Van Ackerman said. “Look now,” he said with a sudden urgency, gripping LeGage’s arm again, though the chairman of DEFY tried, too late, to move it out of reach, “how about it, now, boy? Just give the word and we’ll start getting things organized any way you say. Under your orders, if you like, too, okay?”

“I want to think about it. I don’t want to be rushed.”

“Let me call you at 2 p.m.,” Fred said. “If you want to call me earlier, I’ll be at the St. Regis, or you can leave word at the delegation.” An expression of spiteful satisfaction came into his eyes. “Most of ’em hate my guts, but I’m still United States Senator and they have to deal with me whether they like it or not.”