A Shade of Difference (99 page)

“One would think,” said Raoul Barre, “that such a triumphal progress could only indicate a triumph. Would one not?”

“One would,” Lord Maudulayne agreed. “Shall we get a table and talk to them about it?”

“It might be well,” the French Ambassador said. He gestured with his cup toward the window. “I shall find a place for us, if you will—”

“Back directly,” the British Ambassador said, starting off toward the Americans just as two Malinese, an Egyptian, and the Indian Ambassador stepped forward to offer their cordial greetings. Out of this jolly grouping he rescued Hal, Lafe, and K.K. and led them through the gossiping delegates, who opened a path for them rather like the waves parting for Moses and his friends, Lord Maudulayne thought. Lafe volunteered to get coffee for the four who did not have it, and in a few moments they were all comfortably seated, sipping thoughtfully and waiting for one another to make the first move. Finally Krishna Khaleel did so with a rather nervous little chuckle.

“Well, my dear Hal, we are so pleased to see you back and looking so well, in view of all the—er—unpleasant—rumors going about, you know.”

“Oh, I expect I’ll be around for a while,” Senator Fry said calmly, though inside his head the dizziness had begun again and was stealthily growing. “I expect I’ll be around, much as I imagine you’d all like to have me elsewhere in the next couple of days.”

“Oh, now!” the Indian Ambassador said in a shocked voice. “How can you say such a thing!”

“Indeed, Hal, how can you?” the French Ambassador inquired. “And what makes you think that K.K. and his colleagues don’t want you here? Are you implying that they would wish you elsewhere when the Assembly votes on the proposition they favor so highly? How can you!”

‘It is not that at all,” K.K. said stiffly. “His presence is always welcome. In any event, I do not think the presence or absence of individual men will affect the course of history in the United Nations.”

“I say, how ego-destroying!” Lord Maudulayne exclaimed. “You mean we might as well all go home?”

“Now, as usual, you are joshing me,” the Indian Ambassador said sadly. “However”—he brightened—“I do not think joshing will be so fitting tomorrow, perhaps!”

“Looks good to you, does it, K.K.?” Lafe inquired. “Got us on the run, have you?”

“It is not a matter of ‘having you on the run’” the Indian Ambassador said somewhat testily. “You seem to impute a degree of hostility toward your country which does not exist here. It is all quite impersonal, believe me. Certain things are inevitable, that is all. It is purely in the spirit of history that your friends are acting here. We feel nothing but the most friendly things for you. I assure you of it.”

“Mr. Tuatutu of Western Samoa, please call the Delegates’ Lounge,” said the young lady over the loudspeaker. “Mr. Hartley-Smith of Jamaica, please … Miss Mary-Alice Czinzki of the United States, please …”

“The executioner was friendly,” Senator Fry remarked. “That’s good to know.”

“Assuming you get ‘executed,’ to use your distasteful term,” Krishna Khaleel said. “Really, Hal, it is all done in the utmost spirit of helpfulness.”

“Well,” Lafe said comfortably, “I expect it’s all academic anyway, because it does take two-thirds, and I don’t think Felix has it.” His tone remained comfortable, but his attention concentrated on the Indian Ambassador. “Does he, K.K.?”

“You know,” K.K. said with an airy shrug, “I really am as puzzled about that as you are. One hears so many things, here in the Lounge and around the corridors, does one not? Two-thirds—four-fifths—three-fourths—six-tenths—seven-eighths—” He laughed merrily. “Who knows? We shall just have to wait and see. And now,” he said, putting down his cup and rising briskly, “I must be off. I have an important speech to deliver on Kashmir, you know. It is important that we make our position clear.”

“It is indeed,” Hal Fry assured him. “We shall all listen with interest to your exposition of history’s imperatives.”

“They control us all, do they not?” the Indian Ambassador asked cordially. “It is so foolish to oppose them …”

“That was enlightening,” Lafe remarked as their friend hurried away. “I still feel things are under way that we don’t know about. What do you two hear?”

“I get the distinct impression that something is, yes,” Lord Maudulayne said. “But it’s devilish difficult to pin it down.”

“There are certain things that could happen,” Raoul Barre observed. “Not if the Assembly abides by its own rules, of course, but, then—” He shrugged. “When did that consideration ever stop it?”

“How strange it is,” Hal Fry said, and for the moment the strangeness of it did indeed blot out the dizziness and the pains, “that at this moment the United States, having voluntarily passed a resolution meeting all the objections of the Assembly, having done exactly what a majority of its members seemed to want, should not know what the Assembly is going to do tomorrow. We have acted in complete good faith, we have every right to be completely confident of a friendly and favorable vote—and yet we aren’t. What a commentary!”

“And not on us,” Lafe remarked.

“Nor, of course,” the British Ambassador observed with a certain wryness, “is that all. We, too, have acted in good faith on Gorotoland; and we, too, face the possible interference of the Assembly. Assisted in this instance, I might point out, by the likely support of our good friends in the United States.”

“So where does it all end,” Raoul Barre asked, “this attempt to satisfy what K.K. refers to as the spirit of history, as it is claimed to exist in this peculiar era? And can it
be
satisfied, by any of us who attempt to adhere to traditional principles of fair dealing and civilized behavior? I think that this, perhaps, is one of the fundamental questions we must ask ourselves … I think that we must do much conferring, between now and tomorrow. The spirit of history may not have a place for us,” he added with a dry little twinkle, “but I am not prepared to admit it, just yet. I think diligent effort can still persuade the Assembly to honor its own rules. What happens under them, of course, is a matter for each of us to decide.”

“Yes,” the British Ambassador said with a smile. “Shall we go to the Assembly Hall? It must be time for K.K. to begin his statement on Kashmir.”

“I think we’ll stay behind and map strategy for a minute or two,” Senator Fry said. “We’ll see you there shortly.”

After they had left, he and Lafe remained staring out upon the cold gray water as the Lounge gradually emptied and grew quiet around them. In the Assembly Hall the Ambassador of India would be starting upon his explanation of how the spirit of history warranted affirmative nonaggression against Kashmir, the Ambassador of Pakistan would be replying bitterly, the Ambassador of Panama would be engaging in still more of the endless conversations with other delegates in which they themselves must soon engage, the Soviet Ambassador and many another Ambassador would be busily preparing the morrow for the Americans; but for the moment they were silent, as if gathering themselves together, enjoying a brief respite before the strenuous hours and days to come.

“How do you feel?” Lafe asked quietly. “Going to make it?”

“Oh, sure. I feel quite dizzy, I have cramps in my chest and stomach and somebody is working on the small of my back with a pickax, but otherwise I’m fine.” He managed a smile. “I’m all right, really. Don’t worry. We haven’t got time to worry. There’s too much to do.”

“I’ll try not to, but I’m only human.”

“I haven’t got time to be,” Hal said; and then with a bleak irony repeated, “I literally
haven’t
got time to be. Let’s go along to the Hall. Just being there will be helpful, right now … Speaking of being here, have you heard anything from Cullee?”

“No. I guess the poor guy’s so badly banged up that he may still be in the hospital, for all I know.”

“He ought to be here, if he possibly can. Can you call him pretty soon? The radio said he was in Bethesda Naval Hospital this morning, but he may be home by now.”

“I’ll call as soon as the morning session ends. He may not want to, but—”

“He has no choice,” Hal Fry said harshly. “Any more than I have.”

But as he lay half dozing, half-thinking on the bed where he had engaged in so many triumphant encounters with his wife, the Congressman from California was far, at that moment, from agreeing. His right eye was closed, he could barely see out of his left, his face was painfully swollen, a patch of court plaster masked a gash across his forehead, a sling supported his sprained left wrist and elbow, and over all his body it seemed to him that wherever anything touched him new agonies developed, whenever he moved new searing pains made themselves known. He was a messed-up sad sack for sure, he told himself with a hopeless little sigh as he lay there, a messed-up good-for-nothing wreck who had found a bitter harvest down his long, dark street.

For the one who had brought it to him, his mind was too tired at the moment to feel anything but a weary contempt. He had passed beyond anguish and anger with LeGage, had arrived finally at an emotional disengagement that now permitted him only a tired pity for the one who, in his judgment, was gone hopelessly far down his own dark road, and with no profitable or sensible end to it, either.

“All this was between you and me,” he whispered through lips so swollen they could hardly form the words. “Just you and me, ’Gage. And you couldn’t even do it yourself. You had to hire somebody. Poor ’Gage. Poor little old ’Gage.”

There drifted across his infinitely weary, unhappy mind vague wonderings about other people: Sue-Dan was probably laughing about it right now, Orrin Knox was probably—what was he doing? Feeling sad or worried? Or was he amused, too, thinking how cleverly he had persuaded little Cullee Hamilton from Lena, S.C., to do his work for him? Or maybe not. Maybe he was after ’Gage. Maybe he was sad and sick about it, too; maybe he and the government and the nice old President were trying to find Cullee’s beaters. Yes, he thought, maybe that might be more like Orrin; but of course he didn’t know … He didn’t know much, really, except that he ached and pained and hurt all over.

Now as he lay there, where they had brought him half an hour ago by ambulance from Bethesda, he wanted nothing so much as to be allowed to sleep and forget it all. Maudie had fluttered around, clucking and exclaiming and giving him little sympathetic squeezes on the arm that only shot further agonies through his body, though he didn’t have the heart to tell her, and right now she was downstairs fixing him some soup, though he had told her as best he could that he didn’t want anything to eat right yet. Any minute now she’d be back, bustling and fussing and mothering him, trying to make him eat when all he wanted to do was rest for a while, just rest …

Idly his mind wandered in and out through recent days, his triumph in the House, the filibuster last night before he had started on his fateful journey home, his talks with Orrin and LeGage, his bitter arguments with Sue-Dan, his triumphant appearance at the United Nations— The UN. His mind tried to concentrate on it for a moment, paused, and tried to concentrate on it again. Was there something he was supposed to be doing about the UN? Wasn’t there something—?

“Oh, yes,” he whispered aloud again, forcing the words out between puffed lips. “Supposed to be debate.” But today? Tomorrow? When? His exhausted mind did not know.

Nor, right then, did his exhausted mind care. Dimly he felt that he wanted to have no part of the UN ever again, didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to hear of it, didn’t want to be part of any of its crazy schemes. It was too much for him—everything was too much for him. He had done his best to be a decent citizen, and they had all ganged up on him, Sue-Dan and LeGage and Orrin and the President and the UN and everybody.

“Guess I better just hide my head in a hole and keep quiet, now,” he whispered. “Guess I better just not climb out of that hole ever again.”

“Well, you alive, anyway,” Maudie said, coming into the room with a tray. “I didn’t know, a while back. What you mumbling about over there? What’s that about a hole?”

“I want to sleep, Maudie. Please go away.”

“You want to sleep,” she said firmly, “but they told me to keep you awake and give you some soup; that’s best for you. Didn’t need to tell me, I knew that already, but they told me anyway, so now it’s official. Anyway, you’re not crawling into any hole. Not while I’m around.”

“Wasn’t talking to you,” he whispered wearily. “None of your business.”

“Got nobody else to be my business,” she said tartly. “You it. So get your mouth ready; I’m going to give you this soup.”

“Not too hot,” he protested, almost whimpering at the thought. “Please, not too hot.”

“It’s medium,” she said, drawing up a chair beside the bed and taking a careful spoonful. “Open … Swallow it!” she demanded sharply. “Don’t dribble it like a little baby. Swallow it, I said!”

“I’m swallowing,” he whispered, with the first stirrings of annoyance. “Get it in right, maybe I can swallow it right.”

“I’ll get it in right. You just concentrate.”

“Concentrate yourself—” he began, but a spoonful of soup stopped him and he half choked, half gagged on it. But it went down.

“That’s better,” she said, readying another. “Now what’s this about a hole? What kind of talk is that?”

“Guess I’ll crawl into a hole and not get out. Don’t guess I have any business trying to do anything else.”

“More soup,” she said firmly, giving him another spoonful. “What do you mean? Don’t understand you, must say. You mean just because of a little old beating, you going to run away? Is that Cullee Hamilton talking?”

“You didn’t get the beating,” he whispered, his annoyance growing at her busy intervention; and, with the annoyance, of course, he was already beginning to feel a little better.

“I got good and scared,” she said. “Guess I lost a few years’ growth out of it, even if I didn’t have a hand laid on me. I know you got hurt,” she said, more gently. “I feel it for you. But it’s no way to talk, crawling into holes. You got more to do in this world than that.”

“Everything’s gone wrong,” he said, despair returning. “Tried to do what’s right, and everything’s gone wrong.”