A Shade of Difference (50 page)

If he held himself very carefully and walked very quietly, he assured himself as he entered the elevator that would take him to the thirty-eighth floor, everything would be all right and he would continue to feel steadily better. And of course at once, suddenly, powerfully, the pain was back in his body. He gave an audible gasp and leaned back against the wall of the car. The sweet-faced Italian girl at the controls turned at once with an expression of concern.

“You are not well, Senator?” she asked in a softly worried voice. He attempted a smile, which came out crazily, he knew; but by a great effort of will, he made his voice sound reasonably calm.

“I—don’t quite know. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

“Shall I take you back down to the doctor?” He shook his head.

“No. I have an appointment with the Secretary-General and—don’t—want—to—miss—it.”

“But if you are sick—” she protested. Again he shook his head.

“It will pass,” he said between clenched teeth, the old pat line coming wildly into his head as he fought, with eyes blurring and the terrible sick dizziness surging through his head in waves, to remain standing:
Even this shall pass away.
But would it? Dear God, would it?

“Well,” she said doubtfully, slowing the car while she thought what to do. He managed to gesture with one hand.

“Please—keep—on—up. Really, I’ll be—all right.”

“Is it heart? My father—”

“I don’t know,” he said, and as abruptly as they had come the terrible cramping pains through his stomach and chest began to recede a little. “I don’t think so.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face in an automatic gesture, though he knew there was no sweat upon it for all his intense inward struggle. “I don’t know,” he said more strongly, “but I don’t really believe so. If it were heart, and I felt that badly,” he added with an attempt at a smile that went pretty well, because he was already beginning to feel in control of himself again, “I’d be dead by now, I’m sure of that. It just—comes and goes.”

“Well,” she said with a brisk decision, “we won’t pick anybody else up.” She smiled as they shot by waiting lights. “They won’t like it, but we will take you straight to the S.-G.”

“Thank you,” he said, as the blurring, reddish in tinge and fuzzy around the edges, began to clear up a little while the car leaped upward. “UN Express.”

“That’s us,” she agreed with a smile, still worried but relaxing a little as he seemed to be feeling better. The waves of dizziness, too, were becoming less; he might now be able to walk down the corridor to the S.-G.’s office without falling down. But it was with a very cautious feeling of holding himself tightly together, or putting one foot very carefully after the other, or not moving too suddenly or changing direction too fast, of balancing with great care this delicate bowl of jelly that seemed to be moving around the top of his head, that he gave her a shaky farewell smile and stepped out.

“I’ll be all right. Don’t worry. I’m feeling much better already.”

“I hope so, Senator. Please don’t take chances. We must all keep ourselves in good health here at the UN, for the world’s sake, must we not?”

“If I can be as good a delegate as you are an elevator operator,” he said, “the world needn’t worry, I guess.”

He was rewarded by a blush of pleasure and a sweet, though still concerned, smile as the door closed. Whoo-ee, he whispered to himself, do I feel like the devil.

But he was considerably better than he had been five minutes ago, he knew that, as he gave his name to the guard at the reception desk and was shown down the long corridor to the chaste office with its beautiful view off over Brooklyn. The principal thing that bothered him now, of course, that had bothered him ever since this morning and would continue to bother him until he licked it or it licked him, was that he was now more vividly aware than ever that at any moment, at any time of day or night, under any conditions, without rhyme or reason or provocation deliberate or inadvertent, he might find himself without warning in the grip of his private demon.

Again, apparently, none of this showed on the surface, for the Secretary-General rose to greet him with no indication that he was conscious that all was not well with his visitor. He gestured gracefully to a chair and then returned to his own behind the desk with an air of grave politeness and, the American thought, a touch of genuine weariness. That his impression was not false the S.-G. made clear after a moment during which he leaned his chin on the tips of his long narrow fingers and stared thoughtfully out at the lazily drifting autumn day.

“So it is not going well for the United States,” he said finally, with what seemed a trace of sadness, “and now you are here to ask me for help.” He sighed. “I wish it were possible for me to help you, but it is not.”

“Well,” Hal Fry said, wishing he were in better shape to combat this unexpected attack, for such in its indirect fashion he thought it might be, “I am sorry you feel that way, Mr. Secretary-General. I had hoped you wouldn’t foreclose us altogether from your good offices. Especially since the request I have is a rather minor one, all things considered.”

The Secretary-General smiled, rather wanly, Hal thought.

“Is there such a thing as a minor request these days at the United Nations? Is not everything expected and required to revolve around the central power struggle in the world? I sometimes find that a competing request for paper clips can be turned into a major battleground between East and West. What, then, is ‘minor’?”

“Very well,” Hal said, wishing that the reeling room would settle down, the vise, still pressing gently against his back, be relaxed even further, but knowing he must go forward henceforth regardless of how he might feel inside his besieged body, “perhaps it is not so minor. The Afro-Asian group is meeting at 3 p.m. They have invited the Soviet Ambassador to address them. I want them to invite me also. Arrange it for me, will you, please?”

The S.-G. looked at him for a moment from dark, impassive eyes with an expression of knowledge that seemed to invite some further comment; but the Senator decided he had best make none until he got an answer. It did not surprise him when it came.

“I am afraid that you enter there upon an area where I am even more completely foreclosed from assisting you.”

“You knew, though, of course, about the invitation to Tashikov.” The Secretary-General gave the smallest of confirmatory nods. “And it was impossible for you, even, then, to suggest to whoever told you, ‘Perhaps it would be reasonable also to invite the head of the American delegation’?”

“Tashikov told me,” the S.-G. said, “and it was not possible to make such a suggestion to him.” He looked far away across Brooklyn and spoke in the same weary, almost wistful tone. “Even if it had come from one of the delegations concerned, I should not have been able to make such a suggestion. You underestimate how deeply emotions are stirred on this issue.”

“Your own, too, I take it,” Senator Fry said sharply, feeling physically crippled and psychologically on the defensive, a combination that gave him little room for grace. The S.-G.’s gaze swung slowly back to his and held it for a moment before he gave a slow, unhappy shrug.

“I can go far in denying Africa in the pursuit of my duties, and then I can go no farther. After all, Senator—” he paused and spread his hands wide before him on the desk, staring down at them with an expression in which pride and sorrow were inextricably mixed, “your answer is in my skin … Is that not true?”

Hal Fry nodded, feeling suddenly burdened with the sorrows of the world, resting so heavily upon the backs of poor mankind that it often seemed they could never be removed, making of his own physical worries, at least for the moment, something small and insignificant.

“That is true. I suppose that when all is said and done you have no choice, really.”

“There are areas in which men do not have choices,” the Secretary-General said softly, “though sometimes they can go quite far beyond those areas by pretending to themselves that they do. But there always comes the ultimate moment when the truth catches up. It has with me, on this. Certainly I do not wish to hurt the United States, indeed, without her where would the United Nations be, where would any small state be; but neither can I help her too openly.” He sighed again. “No one could, white or black, in the present situation. The colored races of the world are so aroused that any attempt at intervention, even the most reasonable and sensible, would only antagonize them still further. I repeat, you do not realize how explosive the tensions are on this issue here in this house.”

“Oh, yes, I realize,” Senator Fry said unhappily. “The signs are clear enough. But the United States cannot afford to let itself be frozen out of the discussion of it, either. It is a matter of necessity that we talk to our opponents. It is a matter of simple fairness.”

“Many of them do not equate the United States with fairness on the issue of race,” the S.-G. said softly. “Why should they be fair to the United States?”

To this the acting chief of the American delegation had, for the moment, no answer; here too was the blank wall of disbelief that would admit of no qualification, the rigid refusal to acknowledge any moderating facts that would upset a pattern of thinking too comfortably direct and simple to permit of the difficulties of reasoned argument. But he made one last attempt.

“Mr. Secretary-General, do you really believe that the United States is doing nothing to better its racial conditions? Do you really, honestly, on the basis of your own intelligence and observation, think we have made no gains worthy of respect and consideration? I cannot believe you are so blind or so willfully intolerant.”

The S.-G. did not look at him, nor did he answer. He only spread his hands wide again upon his desk and stared down at them with the same expression of sorrow and pride, possessed of an unchallengeable sad dignity of its own.

“All right,” Hal Fry said, standing up. “I won’t take any more of your time. The least we have a right to expect is that you will not intervene against us. We shall expect you to be neutral, and we shall hold you to account if you are not.”

The Secretary-General looked up with a sadly ironic little smile.

“As I told the Secretary of State the other evening, neutrality is all I am permitted. I am a man with many masters, and none will allow me to move an inch beyond my golden cage.”

“If that is all you can do, then God help the United Nations.”

“I wonder if He will,” the S.-G. said with the same combination of sadness and irony. “Yes, Senator, I sometimes wonder if He will.”

On which cheerful note, Hal Fry told himself as he descended to the Delegates’ Lounge in a different elevator so that he would not have to pretend to his little Italian friend that the pain, now steadily getting worse, was getting better, he had been wise to terminate a conversation that had obviously reached its end. Though it had not been confirmed in so many words, he did have the feeling that he had secured the S.-G.’s neutrality, and that was worth a great deal, for his active intervention could be very effective and damaging in the present situation. But he had certainly not secured his active help, and that could be almost as effective and damaging.

It was therefore with some relief that he heard his name called as he entered the Lounge and, turning, saw approaching one of the smooth and supercilious young men of the Ghanaian delegation.

“Senator,” he said without preamble, “I have been authorized to tell you that the Afro-Asian bloc is meeting at 3 p.m. in Conference Room 4, and if you would wish to address us at that time, we should be pleased. We have extended the same invitation to the Soviet Ambassador.”

“Oh,” Hal said, with a smile that he hoped did not look too relieved, “did Lord Maudulayne talk to you?”

“I believe the invitation was suggested by Ambassador Labaiya,” the Ghanaian said, and now it was Hal’s task to refrain from looking too surprised.

“That was kind of him,” he said gravely. “And kind of you all. I shall be there.”

“That will be delightful,” the Ghanaian said in a tone that edged insolence but just managed to stop this side of it. “We shall be expecting you.”

And that, Senator Fry told himself, was a puzzler. What was Felix doing, being nice to him? He decided that he must be on guard—always on guard, ever on guard. Could suspicion and mistrust ever stop, in this antiseptic temple to man’s undying hope and unchanging nature? Maybe, but he did not expect to live to see the day.

Or live at all, he told himself with a wryly-desperate humor, as the terrible dizziness began to come back again in waves through his head. It was about two-thirty and he had just enough time to see the doctor. He found a phone, requested and received an immediate appointment, and took the elevator back up to the Medical Service on the fifth floor.

“Tour 27,” Miss Burma (East) said into the microphone at the guides’ desk in the Main Concourse on the ground floor. “All persons holding tickets marked 27, will you go to the glass doors, please …” She cupped a hand over the mouthpiece and added to Miss Viet Nam (South), “Will they never stop coming, these idiots, these schoolgirls and schoolboys, these goggle-eyed tourists?”

Overhearing this explosion, prompted by the steady stream of visitors that had been flowing past the desk ever since 9 a.m., Miss Malaya (North) and Miss Thailand (West) moved in closer with ironic and understanding smiles.

“But they are so innocent,” Miss Malaya (North) said with a knowing little laugh. “They
believe
in it.”

“I am glad someone does,” said Miss Thailand (West). “I don’t know whether
they
do,” she added, with an upward gesture in the general direction of the General Assembly Hall.

“How could anyone not believe in it?” inquired Miss Viet Nam (South) blandly, “when all of us here have seen such remarkable proofs of it? It has saved half of my country—and half of your country—and half of your country—and half of
your
country—and who knows where all this half-ing will end? No one can say it has not accomplished much, this half-ing!”