A Shade of Difference (71 page)

‘It is. Meanwhile, I’m sure the whole country must be wondering a little, as Beth says, about why your brother hasn’t made some comment. I think perhaps it would be well for him to do so.”

“Is that an ORDER, Mr. President?” Patsy asked. He smiled and shrugged.

“Who am I to give orders to the Governor of California? It’s just a thought I have. Bill, is that resolution really going through the House tomorrow?”

The Speaker nodded.

“Orrin and I have it pretty well in hand,” he said with the comfortable assurance that always distinguished his approach to legislative crises. “May be a few of ’em jump the traces, but mostly it’s pretty well in hand.”

“If you will forgive me,” Raoul Barre said, “I still think your problem is young Mr. Hamilton. He did not have a happy time of it Friday at the United Nations. He is also under fearful pressures from his own people. You may be preparing a battle whose hero will run away before the first shot is fired.”

“Somebody else will introduce the resolution if he backs out,” Orrin said. “We aren’t without replacements, on this team.”

“It won’t be the same,” the French Ambassador said. “You need his name and color if you are going to impress our somewhat erratic colleagues in Turtle Bay. That is obvious, certainly.”

“Yes,” the Secretary admitted somewhat glumly, “that is obvious, true enough. I wish I knew where he was, right now. I’d talk to him.”

“I doubt if that would be wise,” Lord Maudulayne said. “It is my impression he’s been talked to, and at, enough. He has to work it out in his own way, it would seem to me. Not, of course, that it is any of my government’s business, except that we would like to see that aspect of The Problem of Gorotoland solved as equably as possible for all concerned.”

“You can’t defeat Felix’s basic resolution on immediate independence, can you?” Orrin asked, and the British Ambassador gave him a look of amused surprise.

“My dear fellow, not if you vote against us, no. And that, I take it, is what you intend to do.”

“Whatever we intend to do,” the President interjected with a pleasant smile, “it will not be announced at a brunch at Dolly’s, no matter how charming and delightful a hostess she is.”

“You’re too kind, Mr. President,” Dolly said. “I thought all kinds of historic things would happen here this morning. That’s why I invited you all. Please go right ahead.”

“I think we really must go right ahead and get back to the White House,” Lucille Hudson said. “We have that reception at five for the President of Brazil, you know. We shall see you all there, of course. I do think, dear—”

“Yes, of course,” the President said, quite as though he hadn’t given her the signal. “I’m sorry to have held you all here as long as this, but it’s such a beautiful day, and the company is so enjoyable, and one doesn’t find these islands of peace as often as one would like, in these days.” He rose and took Dolly’s hand in his. “Good-by to you all, and we shall see you at the house later. Dolly and Robert, many thanks.”

“It is always an honor,” Dolly said. “Lucille, dear—”

“Our pleasure, Mr. President,” the Majority Leader said. “I’ll see you out.”

There was a general stir, a getting-up and moving-about in the wake of their departure, and in it Beth could be heard saying clearly to Patsy, “We do hope there will be some news from Ted, Patsy, dear. And that it will be
good
news.”

But Patsy’s reply, if any, was lost in the general murmur of farewells and departing conversation, and it was only as they stood on the steps of “Vagaries” waiting for their car that the Secretary of State was able to remark to Beth with a chuckle, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you know, needling poor Patsy like that. How would you feel, trapped between husband and brother with the whole world watching?”

“I am mean, aren’t I? But I expect Patsy will survive. She’s never been
very
trapped between husband and brother. That marriage was always a convenience to both of them, I suspect, and now that Ted’s ambitions are being threatened, I don’t expect it to last much longer.”

“Felix is playing a strange game, I must say,” the Secretary said as the car arrived and they got in and swung down the curving drive to Albemarle Street. He frowned. “And I still wish I knew where Cullee was.”

High in his apartment overlooking Manhattan, on the thirty-eighth floor of the Secretariat Building, the man who did know awaited his visitor with a curious mixture of anticipation, unease, and regret. The Secretary-General had been awakened at ten by the Congressman’s muffled and unclear call, but out of it he had received the plain impression that he was somehow supposed to help remove a confusion that was obviously great. He was not sure that he could. In fact, he was almost certain he could not, and he wished now with a bleak unhappiness that Cullee Hamilton had decided to go elsewhere with his problem that perhaps had no real solution.

And still, of course, it was part of the S.-G.’s job to play host to such matters, to indulge in such conversations, to participate in the endless web of talk that was the United Nations, to help disturbed and passionate and impatient people thrash over and over and over the complexities of situations that never seemed to get either better or worse but stayed always at the same level of racking, pointless, immobile arguments that baffled and paralyzed the world. The only comfort, and it sometimes seemed small and cold, was the glib phrase so beloved of the Americans: “Well, as long as we’re talking, we’re not shooting.” They weren’t shooting, the S.-G. reflected, but while all of them talked, some of them also went right along with their imperialistic conquests.

At any rate, now he was faced with an issue that concerned not only his position but his race, and he told himself with the half-guilty feeling of relief that had become endemic in his months in office, that fortunately he had no authority whatever to offer anything but advice. There were occasions when he sharply regretted that his title carried with it no more real power than it did, but there were others when he was thankful that it was basically symbolic and he need not assume too many responsibilities for the unending ills of mankind. The Soviet-imposed impotence of the Secretary-Generalship sometimes proved to be, though a hindrance and a fretting for a strong man, a welcome, if possibly cowardly, relief for a weak one.

Which of the two he was, he had never faced up to squarely in all his life, he thought now, remembering the relatively easy course of events by which he had risen under the British to a place of top leadership in colonial Nigeria, risen even higher in free Nigeria, and then been chosen to break an East-West deadlock in the United Nations. He had been noticeably bright as a child, and something of the same favoring tutelage as that given Terence Ajkaje far away across the black continent had been given him in his time by their mutual masters. He too had gone to England, and spent his years at Oxford; he too had been trained to succeed eventually to independent power; and more smoothly and more surely than Gorotoland, Nigeria had achieved it, and he and colleagues similarly trained had been ready. In his land, too, there had been the jealousies and suspicions of tribe against tribe, the fierce clash of individual will and ambition; yet somehow the transition had been safely made and he himself had emerged on the world scene as a leading and responsible statesman of Africa. For a time he had helped Nigeria withstand both the temptations of a renascent tribalism from within and the incessant nagging ambitions of Ghana from without. Then the United Nations had threatened to founder on the selection of a new Secretary-General and his life had moved to a pinnacle he had never thought to occupy.

In all of it, he could see now, he had never really had a major testing that could tell him whether he was truly a strong man or one who might be not so strong. In the tribal testing of his youth, his entry into manhood, his exploits in hunting and warfare, he had been adjudged the bravest of the brave; but those were not always the terms in which the white man’s world measured bravery. There were other, more subtle things that his education and experience in that world had only partially prepared him for. The concept of character, the belief that a man could be brave inside his heart and mind without outward physical proof of it, that in endurance and courage and the stubborn adherence to principle there was a profound and worthy strength, had taken him a long while to realize. It could not be seen, and in his civilization that which could not be seen could not be understood: it could only be feared. For a long time that had been his reaction to the white man’s type of bravery, which could be so strong on occasion and yet be surrounded with agonies of thought and self-doubt that puzzled, when they did not greatly amuse, his kind.

But the more he had seen the white world, the more he had come to understand it, and to wonder if he could muster from within himself such reserves of character should the need arise. He had received news of his selection to be Secretary-General with utter astonishment when the word had reached him in Lagos, and he had come to New York afire with the idealism of this new position with all its potential to do good for all peoples, everywhere. His work on the delegation during two tours of duty prior to his selection had left him reasonably knowledgeable yet still with an abiding idealism concerning the organization. Disillusionment had come within a week after he moved to the thirty-eighth floor. The Soviet Ambassador had explained with brutal directness exactly how little the S.-G. was empowered, and expected, to do. His first reaction had been one of crushed protest, of retreat, of injured dignity and disapproving silence. Then he had wondered if that was the proper way to meet it. Possibly he should take a leaf from the British, and from others he had known over the years, and stubbornly and insistently assert his own position and the moral influence that went with it. Yet that would require a major effort of will and an unhesitating ability to challenge every Soviet deceit, defy every Soviet threat. That in turn required a courage and determination that might have been given to some of his predecessors, but had not been given to him.

There had come over him gradually a wistful acceptance of his attenuated and emasculated position. He had tried, he often told himself defensively. He had gone through the motions and made the necessary protests, and even, on one occasion or another, taken the lectern in the Assembly to make short and pointed statements in his own defense. But somehow his heart had not really been in it, he had been too uncertain of his position in the world, it had been too easy for the Communist bloc to undermine his morale and weaken his intention by their public attacks, their unremitting private pressure, their studious distillation of verbal poison through the corridors and committee rooms of the UN. They had perceived at once that he was uncertain, had congratulated themselves that they had made the right decision when they yielded to the British suggestion that he be chosen to break the deadlock, and had acted to make the most of it ever since. They had been determined to throw him off balance from the outset, they had succeeded, and they had never permitted him to recover. He was, if truth were known, a very sad man; sad as a public figure, and sad inside.

And now the Congressman from California wanted him to give fatherly advice and furnish a strength he knew he could not provide. Too many people looked to him for this kind of strength, too many ascended to the thirty-eighth floor hoping for comfort, reassurance, and leadership. Because he had a noble head and carried himself well and looked, in his black dignity, like the perfect image of the elder statesman, many went away convinced that in his vague comments and tentative suggestions they had found a genuine strength to help them. Orrin Knox had apparently felt so, but Orrin Knox, characteristically, had not really been looking for advice; he had known all along what he intended to do and had only been clearing it with headquarters. The S.-G. had been resentful of his own inability to offer more, yet glad he could do that much for the volatile Secretary of State. Cullee Hamilton was something else again. Cullee was one of his own, and he might well be searching for real comfort and real strength. It was with an inward sigh and an outward aspect of impassive graciousness that he rose as the Congressman was shown in and went forward to shake hands with a grave, dignified air.

“I’m sorry to bother you again,” Cullee began awkwardly, “but I thought perhaps—well, I thought maybe you could help me see more clearly what I ought to do.”

“Sit down,” the Secretary-General said kindly, thinking that perhaps if his guest were harried enough he would not realize how inadequate was the comfort he would receive. The Congressman took a chair facing the great window and stared out across Manhattan with an unhappy expression.

“Now,” the S.-G. suggested with a calm certainty in his voice, “tell me.”

“Well, basically, I guess, I—I just want to know whether you think I am doing the right thing. In my resolution, and all. I guess it’s as simple as that.”

“Do
you
feel you are, my son?” the S.-G. inquired with a paternalism that startled the Congressman a little; but his expression instantly changed from skepticism to gratitude at the kindness in his host’s voice.

“I think so,” he said humbly, “but a lot of my own people—
our
own people,” he said with a beseeching smile that made the Secretary-General feel even more hopeless, so futile yet so automatic was this assumption by many American Negroes that Africa was somehow superior in knowledge and perception to their own more advanced society—
“our
own people don’t seem to think so. A lot of them seem to really hate me for it.” He frowned unhappily and suddenly blurted in angry protest, “But what else can I do? Why can’t they understand that? What else can I do, unless I want to stop trying to be fair altogether and join the whole pack of them in trying to tear down everything? What good does that do? Do they
know?
”

“They don’t know,” the Secretary-General said with an unhappiness of his own. “They don’t have any standards by which they
can
know. It is that which makes it all so difficult.”