A Shade of Difference (52 page)

He was aware that Tashikov’s hand had come down again, and even as he saw the quick, commanding movement with which it descended, some instinct some sixth or eighth or tenth sense, told him through his terrible discomfort what was going to happen, so that his own voice rose even as other voices began to rise in wild banshee shoutings from the public galleries—“to take the action proposed by Ambassador Labaiya!”

“To hell with the United States!” a voice bellowed from the galleries. “Murderers! Damned bigots! Racial assassins!” screamed another. A surging, shouting mob began to pour down the aisle toward the floor as the delegates turned and watched. But there was about their watching the impassive aspect of those who had known all along what to expect, and as he remained at his seat while the UN guards fought with halfhearted energy to hold the well-organized mob, Senator Fry understood, with a sick sadness compounded by the raging fires of his sick body, why he had been invited at the last moment to address the Afro-Asian conference.

For almost twenty minutes—long enough so that all the television cameras and still photographers and news reporters and radio commentators could snap their pictures and make their breathless broadcasts and secure their eager interviews—the mob continued to shout its obscenities and scream its insults from the galleries. It was clear enough at once that despite its initial surge toward the floor, this had not been its purpose. The purpose was headlines, and swiftly and efficiently they were achieved.

There was time, as the riot went on, to distinguish certain participants, some of them very famous and widely known in both the white and colored worlds: the chairman of DEFY, shouting obscenities crazily with the rest; the pretty little wife of the Congressman from California, screaming like a fishwife in the intervals between her posings for the cameras and her hasty interviews with the lady correspondents covering the UN; the famous male calypso singer, hating the white man but loving his money, whose Cadillac was waiting for him outside; the famous female blues singer, sick to death inside her sharp-featured little head with all her twisted hatreds of her native land; and even, quite out of place, looking incongruous but screaming and shouting with the rest, a few strange and wild-eyed whites carrying COMFORT banners, a few unwashed unfortunates up from the Village, and even a few of the more far-out and fantastic denizens of the literary, theatrical, academic, and journalistic worlds. All in all, Hal Fry thought with a tired disbelief when the shouting finally died and the mob was cleared out, it was one of the most conglomerate collections of human trash ever assembled in one place for one purpose. And the purpose, obviously, had been fully achieved.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, when the delegate of Mali had secured order at last and the other delegates were once more waiting attentively, many with little ironic smiles and knowing looks at one another, “I think the United States has nothing more to say on this matter at this time. You have seen the nature of the opposition. We would prefer to think it does not represent the spirit and judgment of your distinguished conference.”

And feeling dizzy and weak, his condition certainly not improved by the tensions of the scene, he sat down.

“The distinguished delegate of the Soviet Union,” the chairman said calmly.

“Mr. Chairman,” Vasily Tashikov said smoothly, “the distinguished delegate of the United States said you have seen the nature of the opposition. I say you have seen the nature of the emotions aroused by the inexcusable racial policies of his government. Nothing I could add would make the point any stronger, gentlemen. The amendment of the distinguished Ambassador of Panama never seemed more worthy than it does at this moment after this brave, noble protest by freedom-loving elements in the United States, provoked by the racial policies of their own government. Mr. Chairman, I shall save further comments for the debate that resumes in the General Assembly on Thursday.”

“Is there further discussion?” the chairman asked politely, and Hal Fry in his mind said savagely, of course not, you’ve all of you achieved what you came here today to achieve. “Then,” said the chairman blandly, “this conference is adjourned subject to call of the Chair.”

Around the world there sped the word of a new United States humiliation, and on radio and television and in the newspapers the sensation was great and the commentaries profound. Men of goodwill were sickened and disheartened; men of ill will gloated and told one another happily that their cause had been advanced. The dilemma of the beleaguered Republic was flung once again in the world’s face, tossed in it, pushed in it, rubbed in it, so that by nightfall the psychological climate in which America must perforce operate in meeting the challenge of the Labaiya amendment had deteriorated to a new low.

Only one decisive act emerged from it all out of Washington as the night came on: a statement from the White House press office.

“The President,” it said, “is pleased to announce the appointment of the Honorable Cullee Hamilton, Congressman from California, to the seat on the United States delegation held until 4 p.m. today by Mr. LeGage Shelby.

“Mr. Shelby’s resignation from the delegation was requested, and received, by the President.”

4

And now LeGage was off on collision course, and so was his own wife, and it was a cold day for a wounded heart as the Congressman from California dressed slowly in his empty bedroom and prepared to depart for the Hill and the first day of action on his resolution of apology and recompense to Terrible Terry and his own people in the United States. Understandably, he had slept very little, watching with a sad fascination until late into the night the televised recapitulations of the riot at the UN, the supplemental riots in twenty obedient capitals around the world, the interviews with Sue-Dan and the chairman of DEFY as they were encouraged to denounce their countrymen and mouth a sullen insolence toward their government. Both spoke with a self-conscious, exaggeratedly hostile air, as though they were afraid someone might talk them out of it if they stopped to listen, and he got the curious impression from both that they were really talking to him and to no one else.

Well: if so, they could talk a long day in hell, he thought bitterly as he descended the stairs to greet Maudie and eat his lonely breakfast. And so could all the other black bigots in the world, including the one who had called him shortly after midnight and breathed heavily into his ear for several moments before saying in a stagily ominous voice, “The Prophet is watching you.” He had told the voice immediately and with great explicitness what it could do to the Prophet; it had appeared taken aback by the harsh anger of his tone, and hung up. But he expected there would be more of the same, both anonymous and in the open, and he told himself grimly that he was prepared for it. He was sick and saddened by what might well prove to be the permanent loss of his wife and his friend, but he wasn’t so sick and saddened that he couldn’t fight back. It hadn’t really hit him quite as hard, in fact, as he had thought it might in his advance imaginings.

You picked the wrong man if you think you can scare Cullee, he told whoever-he-might-be with a silent wrath. Old Cullee doesn’t scare.

Nor, he thought with an equal grimness, does old Cullee fall for all these oily questions from the press in the middle of the night, either. They had all called him, AP, UPI, the
Washington
Post,
the
New York
Post,
the
New York
Times,
the
New York
Herald Tribune,
the
Chicago
Tribune, Ebony, Jet,
the
Afro-American,
the
Pittsburgh
Courier,
the
Defender,
the Atlanta
Daily World,
and the rest. Had he known Sue-Dan was planning to do what she did? No comment. Oh, then he didn’t know, was that it? No comment. Oh, then he did know? Well, if he didn’t know, did he approve? No comment. Oh, then he didn’t approve? Was he going to see her when he was in New York? What about his resolution now? What did he think of LeGage’s actions? Hadn’t he been under pressure to participate himself? Why hadn’t he participated himself? Oh, no comment?

That, they implied, sounded damned fishy to them, and, they indicated strongly, they were going to use his silence as the basis for all kinds of speculation, since he was going to be so damned stubborn about it. One or two from his own race even told him what they thought of him, before they hung up. He was, he gathered, an Uncle Tom, a white man’s nigger, a stooge, a patsy, a traitor to his people. It was a pleasant burden to carry with him into a bed whose emptiness complicated his unhappiness further by arousing a fiercely anguished desire that no one was there to satisfy.

But it would take more than that to break old Cullee, he repeated to himself as he entered the dining room. By God, it would.

“My sakes,” Maudie said tartly, “here come Storm Cloud No. 1. Stop fighting the whole world and sit down and eat your breakfast. Won’t do you any good to hate on thin air. Need something more than that to back it up.”

“I don’t hate anybody, Maudie,” he said, observing the banner headlines in the
Washington Post
, the glaring front-page picture of Sue-Dan and LeGage struggling with a couple of UN guards, the terse little box insert informing the capital that “Rep. Cullee Hamilton, the man who wasn’t there at yesterday’s UN riot, refused comment at his Washington home tonight on developments involving his wife, Sue-Dan, and LeGage Shelby, the man he has succeeded on the United States UN delegation.” The day’s editorial cartoon showed a gallant group of giant glamorized blacks, stately, statuesque, overwhelmingly noble and righteous, rising accusingly out of an enormous gallery to look down upon a tiny Uncle Sam staring up in startled disarray.

“Nobody here but us Americans,” the caption said.

“You know, Maudie,” he said as he bit into his toast with a savage emphasis, “white folks baffle me sometimes.”

“Baffle me, too, but I stopped trying to guess ’em fifty years ago. Won’t do you no good, believe me. Don’t think they know what they doin’ themselves, half the time. Best not to trust ’em, either, you got any such ideas.”

“What ideas?”

“You and that Orrin Knox and the President I heard about it.”

“Maudie,” he said mockingly, “you’ve been peeking. Wasn’t anybody supposed to know about that.”

“Whole wide world knows. They say you stoogin’ for Orrin Knox.”

“So they say,” he agreed with an airiness he did not entirely feel. She sniffed.

“Needn’t get smart about it. Gettin’ smart cost you a wife. Not that she’s worth keepin’, seems to me.”

“I don’t care what it seems to you,” he said sharply. “You keep your opinions of my wife to yourself, hear? Also your opinions about my being smart. I’m not being smart. I’m doing what I think I have to do for the United States of America, that’s all.”

“What the United States of America do for you?” she demanded. He snorted.

“Got me in Congress making enough money to support one loudmouthed old woman who isn’t worth what I pay her. That’s what.”

“Hmph,” she said, trying to sound angry but ending up in spite of herself in a chuckle that gurgled into a laugh. “Guess that ain’t much. Bet my grandpappy do better than that as a slave.”

“Okay,” he said, for the first time since yesterday afternoon feeling amused and a little relaxed, “you just think about this as Cullee’s Castle, fine old plantation down in Georgia, and see how you make out. Don’t bother me about food money, that’s all. Just raise your own ’taters and corn down there in the pasture and don’t bother me, that’s all I ask of you, Maudie.”

“Feed you on fatback and hominy,” she said. “Be lucky you get that. What you going to do now about all this?”

“All what?”

“Her and him. Orrin Knox and them. All this stuff you tearing yourself to pieces about. All this mess you mixed up in.”

“Why, I don’t know,” he said, finishing his coffee and getting ready to depart. “I expect I’ll just play it by ear and see how it goes, Maudie. I’ve got me a resolution that’s going to take some doing to get through the Congress. I expect that’ll keep me busy for a day or two, wouldn’t you say?”

“Going up to New York with all them high-flyin’ Africans, too? Understand you’re a mighty important man now, up there at the UN, well as here in Congress. How you going to ride all your horses at once, you ever think of that?”

“I’ve thought of it. I’ll tell you in a couple of weeks.”

“Be down in the pasture with my corn and ’taters when you want me. Also be here when you come home. That’s important too, I think, have somebody here when you come home.”

“It is,” he said gratefully. “Guess I won’t sell old Maudie, after all. She’s too good a slave to sell.”

“Get on, now,” she said, shooing him out the door. “You goin’ smilin’; now you come back smilin’, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll try.”

But he was not at all sure that he could; nor did he anticipate that the day’s events would put him in a much better mood, even though he knew that much of a decisive nature would probably occur on his resolution before he again parked his car at the house off Sixteenth Street.

“But, my dear boy,” the querulous, familiar old voice said swiftly over the telephone, “I don’t really think we can afford to go along with this pretense by Orrin that he doesn’t have a political interest in this. It’s so blatant, my dear boy. So fearfully blatant. I think no true liberal can afford to ignore his obvious motivation, even if it is tending toward a constructive result.”

The executive director of the
Washington
Post
sighed a heavy sigh that was promptly taken up at the other end of the line.

“Now what’s the matter?” Justice Davis asked sharply. “Have I offended you in some way? You must tell me if I have. I’m only trying to be helpful, you know. I’m only trying to assist the liberal cause.”

“Yes, Mr. Justice,” the executive director of the
Post
said patiently. “I’m sure we all appreciate your efforts and welcome your support.”