A Shade of Difference (49 page)

“Why are you so hot to get involved in this thing, Senator?” LeGage inquired quizzically. “I don’t remember you being such a big wheeler and dealer on the race issue up to now.”

“It’s in the times,” Fred said quickly. “It’s in the times. Nobody can escape it, if he wants to be a good servant to the country and help the cause of true liberalism. Why, God damn, we’ll take the ball away from Knox and that old fuddy-duddy in the White House so fast they won’t know what hit them!”

“We will?” LeGage said with a dryness that escaped the junior Senator from Wyoming. “I see.”

“Remember what I said now, boy! We’re all counting on you. I’ll see you later, now, understand?”

“I understand,” LeGage said, as Fred jumped up restlessly and moved off with a final wave.

“Good!” he said in farewell. “I knew we could count on you.”

That LeGage, he told himself as he left the Lounge through the strolling delegates with his restless, questing air of always looking for some personal certainty and security he would never find, was a good boy. Personally he, Fred, could take them or leave them alone, preferably the latter, but in a fight like this you needed all the help you could get. LeGage was a damned good boy, for a nigger. LeGage, he told himself, could be quite an asset. Yes, indeedy, quite an asset.

As for the chairman of DEFY, it was with a sick distaste and anger that he watched the Senator depart. Except for Felix, it seemed to him, he got the same treatment from all the whites, and most annoying of all was this arrogant no-good who did so much fancy spouting about being a liberal. Him and his damned labels, LeGage thought bitterly. Of all the phonies! He could feel Fred’s personal distaste for him oozing through every phony word, and he returned it a hundredfold for Fred and all his phony friends. “Been patronized enough for one day,” he muttered with a fearful scowl that seriously alarmed a lady member of the British delegation, sitting nearby. “Just been patronized enough for one day.”

Thus he was in a more than receptive mood when the Ambassador of Panama approached a few minutes later with the news of Cullee’s resolution and the fruitless talk with Hal Fry. For a short time he was taken aback and abashed by Cullee’s action—although it gave him a moment of savage pleasure when he thought of Fred Van Ackerman’s boasted plans and how dismayed he would be when he found Cullee had beaten him to this phase of them—but the more he turned over in his mind what Cullee had done, the more he became convinced that it was just what Seab Cooley said: a put-up job for Orrin Knox. “Never thought I’d agree with that old man,” he remarked with an unamused laugh; but his bitter suspicions and jealousies persuaded him. And the angrier he grew, with a deep, emotional, personal anger that was just something between Cullee and him that nobody else could understand, at this betrayal by his ex-roommate and this attempt to take the spotlight away from him in the eyes of the whites and his own people.

There came a point when he jumped up, startling Felix with his abruptness.

“See you later,” he said. “I’ve got things to do.”

Felix gave him a quick smile.

“I hope so. Then you’ll—”

“I’ll see you later,” LeGage repeated impatiently.

“Good,” Felix said with satisfaction.

But the chairman of DEFY did not hear him as he hurried out with his loping, pantherlike gait. His mind was filled now with just one thought, bitter and shrouded in an agonized unhappiness, and it was driving him on in a way he could not have imagined until it happened. He knew there was just one thing to do now, and he was on his way to do it.

The Ambassador of Panama remained seated in the Lounge for a few minutes, nodding politely to other delegates as they passed, pretending to read
La Prensa,
reviewing the morning, appraising events. He was under no illusions about the potency of Cullee Hamilton’s resolution in this present context. It would, if successful, be a serious and probably fatal blow to his own amendment here, for the United States then would be able to argue that it was making more than ample apologies to Terry and also moving in good faith to set its own house in order. But the “if successful” was a powerful qualification that encouraged optimism. He had had occasion many times in Washington to observe the ponderous grindings of the Congressional machine, and he was not worried that it could produce action on the Hamilton resolution overnight. Certainly it could not do so by Thursday, when the General Assembly would resume debate on his amendment here.

He was forced to admit, however, that the development did make his own task more difficult. A gesture had been made, now, and much propaganda could be manufactured from it, even if it died in committee in the House and never came to the floor at all. He also suspected that Seab Cooley was correct, and that this was, among other things, a shrewd move by Orrin Knox to bring Cullee into his political camp and thereby weaken Ted Jason in California and at least partially negate his appeal to the Negro vote. Thank God, he told himself with a grim satisfaction, that certain powerful newspapers were so down on Orrin. That would take care of
that,
he hoped, imagining the knowing editorials, the harsh cartoons, the savage imputations of motive and character that would now be unleashed upon the Secretary.

And thank God, too, that he had been given the inspiration to find the lever that would finally tip the wavering LeGage in the direction he wanted him to go.

“I do think it is a real pity,” he had said thoughtfully, “when you two are such deep friends, to discover that he would introduce his resolution for Orrin Knox, when he wouldn’t do it for you.” A startled and embittered expression had leaped into LeGage’s eyes as this thought took hold, and in an instant’s time he had reached his decision, jumped up, and hurried away, bound upon the errand Felix had been trying for twenty-four hours to persuade him to undertake.

As for his own over-all problem here, he did not think the Hamilton resolution made his chances so very much worse. It wouldn’t be as easy as it had started out to be, but he could manage. Oh, yes, he thought with a calm confidence as he rose and prepared to meet the Soviet Ambassador for lunch and convey the invitation he had been asked to convey, Felix Labaiya-Sofra could manage. And would.

“It isn’t as though we don’t want you to succeed in whatever it is you want to do, old chap,” Lord Maudulayne remarked as he stared about the Delegates’ Dining Room with a speculative expression, “but of course you understand that it does pose a delicate problem for us.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to do anything really forceful and affirmative,” Hal Fry said with some sarcasm, for by now he was feeling much himself again; the mysterious pain was almost gone, only a very faint echo still twinging his arms and shoulders. “That wouldn’t be in character, would it? Isn’t the British policy Ruminate and Retreat? I thought that was it.”

Raoul Barre chuckled.

“You are beginning to sound like Orrin, who doesn’t sound like Orrin any more. It is like old times.”

“And also somewhat unjustified, I think,” Claude Maudulayne said mildly. “We have problems in the Commonwealth that make a cautious policy advisable. We do what we can.”

“The handicap hasn’t disturbed you on Gorotoland’s independence,” Hal remarked. “You’re standing firm on that, Commonwealth or no.”

“We have given our word,” the British Ambassador said in a tone that canceled argument. “That is a different matter.”

“But chivvying the United States is fair fun for all, is that it?”

“You forget,” Raoul said with an ironic blandness, “that the Commonwealth is now black. So, of course, is the French community. A majority of both are of a color different from our own; there is, as our friend K.K. is fond of pointing out, a shade of difference in what we are now and what we used to be. It makes it less easy to move, here in this assemblage of organized argumentation.”

“You French don’t think much of it,” Senator Fry said. “Why do you let yourself be swayed by it in this instance?”

‘It is not the United Nations which sways us,” the French Ambassador said with a shrug. “It is the community. But since the community is within the United Nations, we must of necessity give thought to what the community desires in the United Nations. And so with the Commonwealth. If you will forgive me for stating it with a harsh candor, what they both desire at the moment is the scalp of the United States. Unfortunately by a curious combination of mischance and miscalculation, compounded by the astute Terry and others, you have given them the opportunity to attempt it. It is most regrettable but, I am afraid, unavoidable.”

“However, of course,” Lord Maudulayne said thoughtfully, “we want to do all we can to work out a reasonable accommodation of views on this difficult issue. It is not as though we really wanted to leave you in the lurch, old boy. That would hardly be fair. Nor would it be consistent with what Her Majesty’s Government believe to be the best long-range interests of the Commonwealth, the United Nations, or the world.”

“Thanks so much,” Hal Fry said. “How do you propose to go about it, by doing nothing?”

“We are not ‘doing nothing,’” the British Ambassador said. “Both of us have had numerous conversations in the past forty-eight hours, as I assume you have, too.”

“Don’t add up to much, do they?” Hal Fry said. “Not much ground for accommodation, is there? At least I can’t find any discernible pattern, except dislike for us and a great evasiveness every time I try to pin somebody down on how his delegation is going to vote.”

“It is not clear yet at all,” Raoul Barre said. “All is mysterious and hazy and full of hints. Dark faces materialize out of dark clouds, murmur dark words and depart, leaving us in darkness. I would not say at this moment that the outcome is certain either way. Therefore, I think you should make every attempt to appear with Tashikov this afternoon when he addresses the Afro-Asian group. I think it might prove very profitable for your cause, at this particular stage of events.”

“I didn’t know they were meeting or that he was going to appear,” Hal said blankly. “They’ve kept it very quiet from the U.S. delegation, I’ll say that for them.”

“I suspect your Mr. Shelby has known right along, but his position is, shall we say, somewhat equivocal at best at this moment. However, it is the fact. At 3 p.m., in Conference Room 4, I believe. I think you should be there.”

“That’s obvious, if you can tell me how to go about it. I doubt if I could barge in uninvited.” Possibly because he was suddenly very concerned with this new development, or so he told himself, he began to feel a slight pain, somewhere in his body, gently ominous and insistent, making his heart contract with apprehension; but there was no time to give in to it now, even if it became ten times worse. He hurried on, hoping that if he ignored it, it would go away. “Perhaps you can arrange an invitation for me through the community or the Commonwealth. Maybe if Cameroun or Sierra Leone, or somebody relatively responsible, could ask me—” But he was aware of a silent but definite hesitation on the part of his two old friends of the diplomatic corps.

“Well, you see,” Lord Maudulayne said carefully, “if it were something that was to happen tomorrow, possibly, or next week, it would be possible perhaps to arrange something without any undue show of haste. But, as it is, only two hours away—well, I think that would seem too definitely like rushing it, would it not?”

“We mustn’t rush anything,” Hal Fry said with an annoyance beginning to be increased by the fact that ignoring his devil wasn’t working; the pain was now rising steadily, insistently, with a terrible softness like some fearful flood up through his body. “That’s for sure. That wouldn’t look right, now, would it?”

“Really, old chap,” the British Ambassador said, “I don’t think it would. I think your best gambit now is to be dignified and not beg too much, you know. I think if they get the idea you are running around frantically seeking their favors, the reaction will be contempt.”

“Is it ever anything else?” Senator Fry asked. “I have yet to see it, if it is.”

“I still think it would be best to wait for an invitation, rather than ask,” Claude Maudulayne said. “If it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, well—”

“We cannot afford to wait,” Hal Fry said in the same tone, prompted by anger and pain combined. “My country is under direct attack. We must act in any way we can to defend ourselves here. I’d like to be calm and stately and British and pretend the foxes eating at our vitals aren’t really there, but I’m afraid the world doesn’t allow of it any more.” He paused and stared for a long moment, through vision now beginning ever so slightly but surely to blur, at the crowded dining room, the avid and interested faces of the nations, more than a few casting covert but attentive glances toward their table as they talked. “Very well. I shall simply appear, if that is the only thing possible.”

“Suppose they just ignore you and let you sit there?” Raoul Barre asked softly. “Such cruelty is not unknown to them, you know. In fact, they delight in it when the victim is a white man. Alas, our ancestors sowed a fearful harvest for us to reap; but I do not think we should volunteer to speed the gleaning any more rapidly than we have to. No,” he said with a sudden decisiveness. “Such an event would be just one more humiliation for your country. You do not want to run the chance of it. I would suggest you talk to the Secretary-General. In the meantime, I shall talk to Cameroun and Senegal. One way or the other, perhaps something may be arranged by three o’clock.”

“I should of course expect to do what I could, too,” Claude Maudulayne said, somewhat stiffly. “I just felt that it should not be too precipitous and undignified. All of these elements must be kept firmly in mind in dealing with them. There is a matter of face, and it is not to be ignored if one would succeed in attaining one’s objectives.”

“All right, Claude,” Hal said, more calmly, for the pain, in what he was already beginning to recognize as its own capricious pattern, was suddenly lessening, though the blurring of vision remained about the same. “I know you mean to be helpful, insofar as your own interests permit.” He sighed and shook his head with a tired little smile. “I’m sorry I sounded so impatient. Got too much on my mind right now, I guess … Are we through?”

“Yes,” Raoul Barre said. “Where will you be in the next two hours?”

“You can reach me through the delegation,” he said, the blurring too beginning to disappear. “I’ll be checking in with them from time to time.” At the elevator he turned to Lord Maudulayne with some of his usual humor. “Ask London whether they’ll swap us a No vote on Gorotoland for a No vote on the amendment, Claude. Maybe we can work out a deal.”

“If the world were only that simple nowadays,” the British Ambassador remarked.

“I’m told it used to be,” Senator Fry said.

“Never again,” said Raoul Barre.