A Shade of Difference (20 page)

“Possibly not, Hal. But it matters now. Most assuredly.”

And so, because of this damnable twentieth-century habit of inflaming everything out of all proportion, it did. The Senator from West Virginia was very conscious of the two of them talking behind him as he put on his coat and hat and walked along the great empty lobby toward the Public Entrance. This was typical of his days since becoming acting head of the delegation: a series of little talks and arguments, an endless attempt to do justice to the United States position and still be fair to others, the grinding burden of truth denied and falsehood enthroned that weighted down the UN. There were moments when this left him deeply depressed. If men knew the truth and yet persisted in denying it with a straight face, how were the nations ever to arrive at a stable world?

And yet one had to keep trying. The favorite cliché here in Turtle Bay was to say quickly, “Why, of course the UN will continue. It’s got to. There isn’t anything else.” Along with the cliché went the most candid cataloguing of all the handicaps that made its success most problematical. Oh, yes, they would say cheerfully, this is wrong and that is wrong, and this won’t work and that won’t work, the Russians hate the Americans and the Americans distrust the Russians, and the Jews won’t accept
that
and you know very well the Arabs won’t accept
that,
and the Africans are angry about
that
and the Asians about
that
and the Latin Americans think so-and-so and the Europeans think thus-and-such, and you know nothing can possibly be achieved
there
and nothing can be done
there—
but, It’s Got To. There Isn’t Anything Else.

He sighed, feeling suddenly extraordinarily tired and sapped of energy with an abruptness that startled him for a moment; perhaps he hadn’t rested long enough, though at Orrin’s insistence he had gone back to delegation headquarters and slept for half an hour or so. It was true that in the last couple of weeks something had seemed to be a little wrong with his health: nothing he could quite put his finger on, a fleeting moment of complete tiredness, such as he was experiencing now, gone almost as soon as it came; the little odd reddish flickering of vision, a sudden flash of white, that he had noticed a couple of times in the past few days; an odd little rash on one arm. Maybe he was working too hard, but if so he wasn’t about to admit it to anyone yet. The General Assembly was really just getting under way, and there was a great deal to be done to serve the American cause: his country, to use another cliché which was also valid, needed him. He had never shirked a public duty yet, and now in mid-fifties he wasn’t about to shirk this one, if he could get by with a little more rest and care for the abrupt, puzzling, but really quite slight deterioration in his physical condition. And besides, he told himself wryly, he was one of the cliché-repeaters, too. He too had acquired a deep devotion to the strange, troubled, gloomy-hopeful organization. Like everyone else, he too believed that. It’s Got To. There Isn’t Anything Else.

In the open space before the bronze doors given by Canada, he paused for a moment to glance at the incongruous but somehow fitting trio that guarded the gates: to his far right, off near the wall, the statue of naked Zeus, gift of Greece, with his old man’s head and his young man’s body with its half-erection; the model of the first Sputnik hanging insolently above the entryway; and high on the left the two-hundred-pound, gold-plated pendulum of the Netherlands on its seventy-five-foot stainless-steel wire, swinging slowly and inexorably back and forth as it crossed a metal ring below, endlessly demonstrating the rotation of the earth.

Zeus and Sputnik and the sure, impersonal turning of the globe: a fitting galaxy of Fates to preside over mankind’s latest joint endeavor.

“It is a privilege to live this day and tomorrow,” Queen Juliana had said in donating the pendulum; the words were inscribed on the steel pillar supporting the ring. Everyone who labored in the organization could certainly agree with that, Hal Fry reflected. Today and tomorrow—and stop there. Take them as they came—and stop there. No one cared, or dared, to look beyond.

He sighed as he emerged onto the plaza and the cool nip of the autumn night air hit him in the face. He must hurry over to the delegation and tell Orrin to get busy on the task of rolling out a substitute red carpet for an angry and vindictive M’Bulu who had no intention of being mollified by anything less than abject amends on the part of the United States. There had not been much attempt to conceal the injured spitefulness beneath the spurious outward amicability. He walked toward the roar of First Avenue and the glittering mass of Manhattan, hoping that the Secretary of State would already be at work doing those things that would have to be done to appease an injured ego, which, unappeased, could cause much damage.

And so, of course, Orrin was, being at that moment on the phone to Senator Munson in Washington, getting the Majority Leader’s acquiescence to a temporary delay in Senate adjournment and securing from him Dolly’s aid in giving a small private dinner party that might, hopefully, give the M’Bulu’s hurt feelings the comforting they wanted in Washington.

8

There appeared shortly thereafter on the little screen the visage, alert and intelligently terrierlike, of one of the nation’s top commentators. Smoothly and ably, as he did every night at this time except Saturdays and Sundays, he proceeded to put the whole thing in perspective for his faithful audience:

“It is already apparent tonight that the President of the United States has pulled something of an international boo-boo in his cavalier treatment of the young African leader known by the unusual title of the M’Bulu of Mbuele. Terence Wolowo Ajkaje, hereditary crown prince of British-held Gorotoland, perhaps expected a little too much when he confidently predicted here at the United Nations earlier today that he would receive the red-carpet welcome usually reserved for heads of states and major royalty in Washington. But he perhaps had the right to expect at least a modest version of it, and even this much the President seems determined to deny him. The President, in fact, has left the capital for a five-day fishing trip on the eve of the M’Bulu’s visit. Behind him he has left a United Nations abuzz with what many delegates, particularly those from Africa and Asia, seem determined to regard as a deliberate insult to the whole African continent.

“The rights and wrongs of this dispute are already buried beneath automatic layers of prejudice, East and West, that make it virtually impossible to get at the basic justice of it. Let it suffice to say that what the United Nations sees most clearly is that a symbol of emergent Africa, a Western-educated leader who might be expected to bring his people into the democratic camp, has been publicly, and it would seem deliberately, snubbed by the President of the West’s greatest democracy. This cannot help but have serious consequences here in several areas not directly connected with the immediate event.

“There is, for instance, the resolution introduced by the Ambassador of Panama, Felix Labaiya-Sofra, which would bring strong United Nations recommendation that independence be granted to Gorotoland immediately instead of at the end of the one-year period now promised by Britain. Señor Labaiya and the M’Bulu won the first stage of that battle in the United Nations First, or Political, Committee this afternoon by a vote of 51 to 23. Now the argument moves to the Assembly. The United States voted with Britain in First Committee today, but there were strong indications that this unity of Western viewpoint may not hold in the Assembly. The Soviet Union, of course, voted for the Panamanian resolution and thereby again gave dramatic proof to the African-Asian states that she favors their cause and desires a speedy and complete break with all vestiges of the colonial past. If the United States should vote against Britain in later stages of the debate on Ambassador Labaiya’s resolution, it would indicate that this country, too, has decided to step up its attempts to compete more directly in the sweepstakes for Africa’s friendship.

“Against this background, the President’s snub to the M’Bulu seems doubly puzzling to observers here at the United Nations. For those observers interested in domestic politics, there is an added factor that intrigues them. One thing the M’Bulu will definitely do is attend a private luncheon in his honor to be held tomorrow in Charleston, South Carolina, under the auspices of the Jason Foundation. The Jason Foundation, of course, is one of the family foundations of Edward Jason, Governor of California, who may well seek the Presidential nomination of the President’s party next year if the President follows through on his announced intention not to seek re-election. And another director of the Foundation, of course, is the Governor’s sister Patsy, who is the wife of Ambassador Labaiya, author of the Gorotoland resolution. Thus are domestic and international politics dramatically linked in this argument at the United Nations, to which the President has now, by his snub to one of the most intelligent, most worthwhile, and most hopeful young figures out of Africa, added the fuel of personal controversy.”

And now, Patsy Labaiya told herself with a pleased anticipation as she snapped off a further comment on Japan’s latest atomic tests, I shall see if I can’t add a little more to that personal controversy. The phone rang twice at a handsome home just off Sixteenth Street near the Woodner and a soft and slightly sulky voice answered, “This is the Hamilton’s’ residence.”

“Is this Sue-Dan—Mrs. Hamilton?” Patsy asked, adding hurriedly, “This is Patsy Labaiya, Sue-Dan. I believe we met at the Pakistan Embassy last month, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did,” the voice said, somewhat less sulky and more cordial. “How are you, Mrs. Labaiya?”

“Patsy. Why, I’m fine, thank you, just fine. And how are you and the Congressman these days?”

“Oh, we’re fine, too.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t ma’am me,” Patsy said in an annoyed tone. “I hate that. Particularly from someone in your—your position.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sue-Dan evenly. There was a silence and then, impersonally, “How is everything with you and the Ambassador?”

“Oh, we’re fine, too, thank you,” Patsy said, beginning to feel a little on edge about this and rather sorry she had called in the first place. After all, she didn’t have to take this kind of insolence. Jasons usually didn’t. But she filled her voice with a cordiality that fooled her listener not at all and pursued her objective.

“I was wondering, Sue-Dan, if you could help me persuade that distinguished husband of yours—distinguished
and
handsome, I might say—”

“Lots of ladies seem to think so,” Sue-Dan observed politely. Patsy flushed and, in spite of her best intentions, found it impossible not to retaliate.

“I’m sure you’re pleased,” she said smoothly. “Well, as I was saying, I wonder if you could help me persuade him that he really should come down to Charleston tomorrow and be one of our head-table guests at the luncheon in honor of Terence Ajkaje—you know, from Gorotoland. The M’Bulu of Mbuele.”

“I know Terry.”

“Oh? Then why don’t you come, too? I think it would be very nice to have you there with him.”

“I usually leave most of that official business to Cullee. Anyway, I doubt if he would like me to come along to see Terry. He doesn’t approve of Terry.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Patsy said, and she genuinely was, for it complicated several plans. “I hope, though, that this wouldn’t prevent him from doing honor to a fellow—er—a fellow—”

“Nigger?” Sue-Dan said blandly, and was pleased to hear a gasp at the other end. “I really wouldn’t know. I expect Cullee just doesn’t like him.”

“But, surely,” Patsy said, trying not to sound flustered, “in his capacity as a distinguished visitor to this country—”

“I wouldn’t know about that, really. Cullee doesn’t pay much attention to frills when he likes somebody or doesn’t. And I do know he doesn’t think too much of Terry. So I couldn’t say.”

“Well, will you tell him I called?”

“Oh, sure, I’ll tell him.”

“Will you tell him what I wanted, and that I may call again later, when he’s home? I suppose you do expect him home from the Hill soon?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’ll be here, and I’ll tell him.”

“And look, Sue-Dan,” Patsy said rather desperately, “why don’t you and I have lunch together some day soon? I feel I should know you better. I think we would have a lot to talk about.”

“Where?”

“Why—er—why, I don’t know. How about the City Tavern?”

“Would they take me?”

“I should think they would if I said so.”

“Mmm-hmm. Well, no, thank you, ma’am. Unless you’d like to join me at something like some Hot Shoppe somewhere.”

Damn her, anyway, Patsy thought furiously; she knows perfectly well we’ve got to have Cullee’s support in California.

“Look, Sue-Dan,” she said pleasantly, “I don’t really think either one of us is going to gain anything by playing games with the other, now, are we? It’s important to me to know you better. It is not entirely unimportant, I might point out, for you and your husband to know me better, considering his plans and my brother’s plans for next year. I would like to take you to lunch. Next Tuesday. At twelve-thirty. I shall pick you up at your house. All right?”

“Why, yes,” Sue-Dan said agreeably. “I expect that would be all right.”

“Thank you, Sue-Dan.”

“Thank you … Patsy.”

And, with a wicked little laugh that came clearly over the wire, she hung up. Patsy turned away in genuine irritation. They were all alike, all alike. She told herself sternly, however, that she must get over that thought and calm herself down to call Cullee back later, because Cullee wasn’t one of those who was “all alike.” Cullee was quality and a very important man to the Jason family. But she pitied him his wife. How on earth did he stand it?

In this thought, she would have been interested to know, she was not alone; for now as he ran hastily through the accumulation of letters to be signed that his secretary had put before him, affixing his flowing signature carefully to each, the young Congressman from California was unhappily thinking much the same thing. His mind, temporarily diverted from the subject by his visit to the Senate and his uncomfortable chat with Ray Smith, had returned to it again as soon as he started back down the long corridor to the House.

Nothing he had found in that chamber had done much to divert him again. The House, operating as usual under the five-minute rule, was hearing a long parade of short speeches on a bill to tighten minor provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. The bill was not going to pass—everybody knew it—and so both proponents and opponents were just going through the motions while they waited for the customarily laggard Senate to wind up its business so that both houses could adjourn for the year and go home. Cullee dutifully presented his five minutes of opposition and then for a while sat toward the back of the room; the House at work on a dull bill, he had found, was the best place in the world in which to concentrate free from distraction. Late in the afternoon the Speaker came by, took the seat beside him, and chatted for a few minutes about life in general and next year in particular.

“You going to run against Ray Smith?” he asked, and Cullee, who felt obligated in many ways to the powerful old man who had befriended him and encouraged his career from the first, answered with complete honesty, “I don’t know at the moment, Mr. Speaker, but I’m leaning.”

“Toward or away from?” the Speaker asked, and Cullee smiled.

“Depends on which wind happens to be blowing. Mostly toward, I guess.”

“You’ve got powerful support in ‘the other body,’” the Speaker said, using the term with which House members are accustomed to refer formally to the Senate. “Bet you’d be surprised to know who it is.”

“Victor Ennis?” Cullee asked, thinking possibly California’s senior Senator had abandoned his increasingly uneasy neutrality to take the plunge, but prepared to be surprised if it were for him.

“Guess again,” the Speaker said with a chuckle. “No, sir, you’ve got powerful support from the South, my boy. A certain very distinguished southern Senator.”

The memory of his polite exchange of nods with the President Pro Tempore of the Senate flashed across Cullee’s mind. He began to laugh.

“Don’t tell me Seab Cooley—” he said, and the Speaker chuckled again.

“Yes, sir, you should have heard him. They tell me he had poor old Ray Smith backed right against the wall and admitting in public that you were fully equipped to be United States Senator. Practically had him urging the people of California to vote for you, way I heard tell.”

“That I should like to have heard. Poor Ray! He does have his troubles, and I guess I’m no help to them.”

“Why should you be?” the Speaker asked in some surprise. “This isn’t any charity ward. It’s politics.”

“I know, but—” the Congressman began. The Speaker stopped him with a fatherly squeeze of his knee.

“You run. You owe it to the country and to California. Don’t like to get maudlin about these things, but you also owe it to your people. Think it over,” he admonished as he rose to go back to the Chair for the vote on the Taft-Hartley amendments. “Think it over, hear?”

And while the few remaining five-minute speeches were delivered, and then through the lopsided roll call, Cullee found that he was thinking it over, for this was a diversion important enough to take him away from the thought of Sue-Dan—though, of course, it inevitably led back to her, for she was gaining support all the time, and he was losing, in their running argument about what he should do. About all he needed now was for LeGage to call and put the pressure on him, and he would really be in a mood to blow up and tell them all to go to hell. He was not at all amused ten minutes later when this turned out to be mental telepathy and a page boy came up to tell him he was wanted on the phone in the cloakroom. “A Mr. Shelby,” the boy said, and was quite startled by the Congressman’s expression and the tone in which he said, “Oh, for—all
right,
I’ll take it!”

“Cullee, boy!” ’Gage’s voice came cheerily over the line in one of the private booths. “How’s the great statesman in our next-to-most-deliberative body?”

“I’m fine,” Cullee said, without giving much. “How’s our greatest civil rightser?”

“Always busy,” LeGage said, not so cheerily. “Think you’ve got ’em stopped coming in the doors and they come in the windows. Looks now as though something’s going to pop in South Carolina.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Justice Tommy Davis has just handed down an order upholding our appeal in the Charleston case. They’re ordered to integrate immediately.”

“Well, you’ll be down there tomorrow,” Cullee said in a mocking tone. “You can wrap all that up in no time.”

“I don’t know about that,” LeGage said thoughtfully. “DEFY’ll have some pickets out, but South Carolina’s a tough one. They’re really mean down there.”

“Check with Seab Cooley. He’s a friend of mine.”

“What?”

“Sorry. Confidential Congress business. Look, ’Gage. I’ve got to get back to the floor in a minute. We’ve got an important vote coming up—”

“Oh, damn it, you always use that ‘got to get back to the floor’ routine on me. Why don’t you ever be nice to me, Cullee? I’m a friend of yours.”

“Yes, boy, I know. We slept together all through college. In the same room, that is.”

“Well, damn it, you always hold me off, when we know each other a lot better than anybody else knows us. We need each other, Cullee. We’re both fighting for the same thing.”

“Different ways.”

“All right, Mr. High and Mighty. So you’re a Congressman and I’m head of DEFY. Who’s bigger?”

“Want to test it out against me in California next year? Maybe you can lick me.”

“Oh, damn it, I
don’t want
to lick you. I want you where you are, doing the job you’re doing. Or even a better one.”

“Sure. Now
you
tell me to run for the Senate. That’ll really kill it.”

“Cullee,” LeGage said patiently, and the Congressman could tell he was close to that point of emotionally frayed nerves to which he could so easily drive him, “please lay off me? I didn’t call to get in a fight. I called because Felix Labaiya asked me to. He thinks you ought to be down there in Charleston tomorrow at that luncheon for Terry.”

“You agree with him?”

“I suppose I’d better say no, so you’ll do it.”

“Well, I don’t care whether you do or not, really. But I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“Because I just don’t like to be patronized by the Jasons, for one thing. Ted just sees one thing when he looks at me, and you too, and that’s the Colored Vote. Furthermore, Terry doesn’t mean any good for this country, and I don’t want to be part of whatever he may have in mind, even if you do. Also, I’ve seen him on his home grounds and he isn’t much. Why, hell! All this white sentimentalizing over that little two-bit belly bumper from the bush. He isn’t worth
that.”

“He isn’t little,” LeGage objected mildly. “He’s six-foot-seven.”

“I’m talking about inside, not outside,” the Congressman snapped. “Why, hell! I’ll bet he’s all over television right this minute. Yes, Your Highness. No, Your Highness. Tell us poor ignorant white folks about all you noble black fighters for freedom in Africa, Your Highness. Crap all over the United States, Your Highness. We love it, Your Highness. It’s how we prove we’re a great-enlightened nation, Your Highness. Acchhkk. They make me sick!”

“What’s the matter, boy?” LeGage asked with a sarcasm he knew would infuriate but could never resist when Cullee got in this mood. “He try to run off with your wife?”

“And leave my wife out of it,” the Congressman said ominously. “Good-by.”

“Cullee.
Please, Cullee, don’t hang up ye—oh,
God
damn it.”

And that’s the way it always was with ’Gage, Cullee thought bitterly as he went back into the chamber; why in the hell doesn’t he leave me alone? They had been on each other’s nerves from the day they met, they had never stopped being on each other’s nerves one minute since, and they would always have this tension between them if they lived to be a hundred. “I think you and I are too much alike,” he had told his clever, driving roommate after one of the earliest of their many furious arguments in the room at Howard; “maybe I’d best move out.” But ’Gage, instantly contrite, had begged him not to—“We’ve got to stick together, boy. Who else is there for us to talk to?”—and some combination of like, dislike, affection, annoyance, love, hate, whatever, had kept them together, bickering through their school years and bickering still. It was true that they did know each other better than anyone else did, and that included ’Gage’s placidly limited wife and the hellcat he himself happened to have drawn in the Lord’s sardonic lottery. When things got unhappiest for him, he could always think—and it was genuinely comforting, he would admit— Well, I’ll bet ’Gage knows how I feel; and he was sure ’Gage did, and that ’Gage often thought the same about him, although they rarely came even as close to touching on it as ’Gage had done just now. It was a curious and apparently unbreakable relationship, whose possible implications they had finally faced one time in senior year in a completely candid discussion that certainly didn’t change matters any. “Well, it’s obvious neither of us is a woman,” Cullee had said, “but I guess we can’t live with each other or without each other.” “You make me awful mad sometimes,” ’Gage had agreed, “but I expect if I was ever really—
really—
in trouble, I’d come to you.” “Me, too,” Cullee said, and they had shaken hands very solemnly, at twenty-one. Then divergent paths to the same objectives had brought increasing criticism, increasing nagging, growing uneasiness and sharpness between them, inflamed and embittered the tensions of their youth, made their friendship ever harder to live with, or without. Damn it all, why did he have to be such an annoying bastard?

On the House floor he found only a handful of members remaining for the final speeches of the day, the “special orders” without time limitation after regular House business is done, in which those who desire can present their arguments about this, their exhortations about that, rarely listened to by their colleagues but, once in the Record, available to be sent out under frank to presumably interested constituents. He left the floor; dropped by the Speaker’s office for fifteen minutes of what that gentleman referred to as “the usual libation,” a little late-afternoon ceremony that he reserved for the more powerful chairmen and his special favorites among the younger members; and then went on to his own office in the Old House Office Building, cleaned up the mail, and dismissed his staff. He called home to say he was coming; got the maid, Maudie, who informed him when he asked for Sue-Dan that “she’s resting and can’t be disturbed”; and closed the huge mahogany door to his office with a crash so vigorous that a policeman at the guard desk far down the corridor looked up startled from his copy of the
Evening Star.
He waved, the cop waved back, and then he took the elevator to the basement, got his Lincoln Continental out of the garage, and drove off through the heavy traffic of homebound Washington, negotiating automatically and hardly conscious of the crush of cars around him all the way through town and up Sixteenth Street.

Arrived home, he went on into the house, again punctuating his mood with the door from the carport. The sound brought Maudie immediately to the living room. She was a woman of sixty who reminded him a good deal of his mother, and she always treated him as though she were.

“A mighty big noise from a big man,” she said, pausing to plump the pillows on the sofa. “Suppose the world’s ending, maybe, or something?”

“It may be,” he said darkly. “Could just be, old Maudie.”

“Not likely tonight,” she said. “Not likely tonight. Let me take that hat and coat and get you a drink.”

“Thanks,” he said, tossing the garments to her. “The usual.”

“Martinis made by the devil,” she observed disapprovingly, “but if you want one, I expect I have to make it.”

“Expect so, Maudie,” he said, more cheerfully, “seeing as how you’re a devil.”

“You get along, now. Don’t see you growing any angel wings, Mr. Congressman.” Her voice underwent the subtle change it always did when she referred to the lady of the house. “Shall I mix one for
her,
too?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. Is she up? Ask her.”

“Oh, she’s not up,” Maudie said. “You wouldn’t think she’d be up and waiting for her husband after his day at the office, would you? That not the girl
you
married.”

“Okay, if you know so much about it, old woman, maybe she just likes to wait for me in bed. How about that?”