A Shade of Difference (30 page)

“Sit down for a moment, Your Highness,” he said, doing the same in a deep leather armchair that he drew up facing the M’Bulu, while Orrin perched on a corner of the Presidential desk. “I won’t keep you for a minute, but I wanted to know if you were satisfied with the evening here.”

The M’Bulu smiled and spread his palms with his charming shrug.

“I cannot complain of a single thing. The company was magnificent, the food was superb, the hospitality was all that one associates with America.” He could not resist a little laugh that somehow sounded more spiteful than amused. “Some parts of America, that is.”

“Yes,” the President said. “Well. We hope that unhappy memory will soon be banished from your mind.”

“The kindness shown me in Washington will surely do much to achieve that objective,” Terry agreed.

“I want you to know also,” the President said, so easily and matter-of-factly that it hardly appeared he was apologizing at all, “that I am sorry they misinterpreted me at my press conference. I probably should have made a formal apology at once, but you know how it is. One assumes certain obviously understandable errors can be forgiven by men of reasonable goodwill.”

“Yes,” Terry said politely, his amicable expression changing a little. A silence fell, during which the Secretary was on the point of shooting out an explosive, “Well?” But he restrained himself, and after a moment the President resumed.

“We can assume, then,” he said gently, “that you don’t hold a grudge against the United States?”

The M’Bulu gave his merriest laugh.

“Oh, heavens! Mr. President, I could not be happier!”

“And this is the end of it, as far as you’re concerned?” Orrin asked. Again there was the rollicking amusement.

“Mr. Secretary, this is the end! … Of course,” he added, more soberly, “I do think that—well, there are some things in your country that are not perfect. I could wish they were better.”

“Yes,” the President said gravely. “You have helped to emphasize them to the whole world, possibly at real risk to your own life, and you have a right to criticize us for them. But we work at it, my impatient young friend. We work at it all the time, and it gets better all the time.”

“Not very fast,” Terry remarked.

“About as fast as a democratic society can move.”

“Then perhaps a democratic society is not the answer to the world’s problems,” the M’Bulu said quickly.

The President nodded.

“Yes, that’s the obvious comment. So narrow it overlooks a great many things having to do with the freedom and dignity of the individual—but obvious.”

“Are rotten eggs and tomatoes part of freedom and dignity?” Terrible Terry inquired, and now he was not smiling at all. “Is trying to win a great victory over little children part of freedom and dignity?”

“Not dignity, no,” the President said. “Surely not. But freedom, yes. Now,” he went on, as the M’Bulu made as if to interrupt, “I may condemn certain practices in your country—we, for instance, abolished slavery here well over a hundred years ago, and it has been a great many years, and then only under the greatest of desperation, that one of us ate another—but that does not stop the United States from supporting independence for Gorotoland, as we expect to do this coming week at the United Nations. We believe you can correct these evils, which some might say were signs of a barbarous and savage and unworthy country, if you are given sufficient tolerance and help and the freedom to solve your problems within their own context. Would you say that was a tolerant, fair-minded attitude, or would you not?”

For a long moment they stared at one another, until the M’Bulu’s eyes finally dropped and he shrugged.

“I would say it is typical of the United States.”

“Is it fair?” the President persisted. His guest gave a sudden laugh and, as always when pressed, an evasive answer.

“Fair, fair! Freedom! Dignity! Such words! All I know is that I have had a delightful evening with charming hosts, and now I must go back to the Hamiltons and get my rest before returning to New York tomorrow.”

“And there are no shenanigans planned for the UN?” Orrin Knox inquired. Again the M’Bulu gave a laugh, startled this time.

“She-nan-i-gans?” he repeated carefully, sounding not at all like a former graduate student at Harvard. “A wonderful word, whose meaning I can guess. No, Mr. Secretary,” he said with a flourish, “I do not think any she-nan-i-gans.”

“Is that a promise?” Orrin asked, and Terrible Terry looked at him with a playful blankness.

“I have nothing in mind but to go back to New York, make my speech to the Assembly, and hope for the best when the vote is taken.”

For a long moment in his turn, the Secretary stared at him, and this time with a bland innocence he stared back and his eyes did not drop.

“Good,” the President said comfortably. “Then we part friends. Let me see you down. Staying with the Hamiltons, you said?” For a second his eyes met Orrin’s and looked away again, but not before the Secretary had responded with the slightest of nods. “Cullee’s a fine Congressman, a fine American. Orrin, wait just a minute and I’ll be right back. I want to talk to you about an invitation I got from Peru today to visit down there.”

But when he had seen his guest safely off in a White House limousine and returned to the comfortable study, minus his predecessor’s coin collection but otherwise the same masculine leather-filled room it had been as long as he could remember it, the Secretary had nothing to report on Cullee.

“He won’t tell me anything. His wife didn’t even want to tell him I was calling, and then he was very guarded, possibly because she was there. Something’s going on.”

“You mean you didn’t believe our distinguished visitor?” the President asked dryly.

The Secretary snorted. “Not a word. No more did you.”

“That’s right,” the President said thoughtfully. “Not a one.”

But that was not the way they heard it at the other end of Sixteenth Street. “Oh, you should have seen them, the two stupid fools,” said Terrible Terry, sprawled in the Hamiltons’ biggest armchair. “They believed it all. No shenanigans at the UN, said the great Orrin Knox, that fool! You don’t hold a grudge against the United States, said the great President. How much of an idiot can a man be! I fooled them! I
fooled
them!”

“Did you?” Cullee said. “I’m sure you should be very proud of that.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?” Sue-Dan demanded in a tone so sharp that Maudie, bringing in coffee on a tray, stopped short and gave her an exaggerated stare. “And stop staring at me, old woman! Bring that coffee in here, and get out!”

“You’ve no call to speak to Maudie like that,” the Congressman said with an angry sharpness of his own.

“I’ll speak to Maudie any way I—” she began, but he interrupted.

“You’ll speak to Maudie like a lady. She
is
a lady, even if you’re not. A fine Senator’s wife you’ll be!”

“Senator’s wife!” she said scornfully, as Maudie set down the tray, gave her an insolent look, and flounced out. “
That’s
a chicken that’ll be a long time coming out of the egg. Go on, Terry; I want to hear about it even if this brave boy doesn’t. His friend Mr. Knox has already been on the phone trying to spy on you.”

“Oh?” said the M’Bulu, all trace of amicability suddenly gone from his face, a dangerous quietness replacing it. “How was that?”

“He called from the White House,” the Congressman said with a patient calm he did not feel, “to tell me you were on your way, that’s all.”

“That’s what
he
says,” Sue-Dan observed with a sardonic little smile. “That’s what you say, Cullee.”

“All
right,
suppose he did want to know what was being planned. And suppose I told him. What could you do about it, big boy? Or you either, little gal?”

“Did you tell him—” Terry began, leaning forward tensely in his chair, but Cullee held up a hand.

“Oh, no,” he said in a tone of tired disgust. “I didn’t tell any of your precious secrets. I don’t think it’ll matter much to us, anyway.”

“Who’s us, Cullee?” his wife asked softly. “Who’s ‘us’?”

“‘Us’ is the United States. That’s the country I belong to. Who do you belong to, Sue-Dan?”

“I belong to you, Cullee,” she said sarcastically. Then her tone hardened. “I also belong to the colored race. Terry and me, we belong to the colored race. We wouldn’t expect you to understand that, Cullee.”

“Are ’Gage’s boys and girls still outside?” he asked, ignoring her thrust, though a deep rage at its unfairness welled in his heart; and, going to the window, he drew the draperies and looked out.

The street was quiet at last; the group of DEFY picketers that had been in front of the house all day with big banners proclaiming “TERRY THE COLORED HERO” and “AFRICA WILL FREE AMERICA” was gone. He let the draperies fall back.

“I guess he’s called them off.”

“They’ll be back,” she said with satisfaction. “They’ll be back everywhere they’re needed, until the job is done.”

“I don’t think Cullee cares about the job,” Terry said tauntingly. “He just cares about standing in well with the white man. He doesn’t want to get involved in anything messy.”

“When are you going back to your own country?” the Congressman asked levelly. His guest laughed.

“Are you tired of me already, old Cullee? Well, I guess
they
are, too. When I get my vote, I’ll go. You can tell your friend the Secretary, if he’s interested.”

‘Tell him yourself. You fool him so well.”

“Well,” the M’Bulu said, “let me put it to you this way: Who do they think they are? All they’ve done to the colored people all these years, and then they think if they issue a pretty invitation and put on a pretty party and the President pats you on the head and says, My boy, be nice, you’ll be nice. Why, hell and damnation!” he exclaimed with his guttural British precision. “Who do they think they are? Who do they think
we
are?”

“Go to bed, Terry,” Sue-Dan said, finishing her coffee, getting up, and starting for the stairs. “He doesn’t care. You’re talking to a stone wall when you talk to Cullee.”

“Stone walls get broken down,” the M’Bulu observed harshly. His host with a great effort controlled his impulse to shout back in anger.

“Yes, Terry,” he said softly. “Go on to bed. You’re tired and you tire me. We’ll have breakfast at eight and I’ll take you to the plane.”

“Don’t bother,” the M’Bulu said with a grin. “I’ll whistle to Claude Maudulayne and he’ll send an Embassy car ’round.”

“Good night, then,” the Congressman said quietly, and after a moment’s hesitation his guest arose, picked up his robes from the sofa where he had flung them when he got in from the White House, and started slowly after Sue-Dan.

“You coming, Cullee?” she asked from the top of the stairs.

“Why?”

She laughed.

“Suit yourself. Good night, Terry. Be sure you stay in your own bed.”

The M’Bulu threw back his head with a shout of amusement.

“I would love not to, but I am afraid old Cullee would not permit it.”

“You’re right,” the Congressman said with a last halfhearted attempt to be more amiable. “Hospitality doesn’t extend to offering wives in this country. It’s against the rules. Not that Sue-Dan,” he added under his breath with a twist of agony in his heart, “wouldn’t enjoy it.”

He picked up a magazine and dropped aimlessly into the armchair, one leg over its arm, as Maudie came back in to get the coffee tray.

“Don’t like him,” she said grumpily, lowering her voice just enough so that it was inaudible beyond the living room. “Don’t like her. Think I’d best go—”

“Oh, Maudie,” he said in genuine alarm, “don’t do that. I have to have somebody around here I can talk to.”

“Who he think
he
is, coming to this country and messing things up?” she demanded indignantly. “We gettin’ along down that road without ’no-’count African trash showin’ us what to do. We don’t need African trash.”

“You go to bed, too, Maudie,” he said. “Maybe we’ll all feel better in the morning.”

“He’s trouble,” she said as she started for the kitchen. “He’s Mr. T. for Trouble. T for Terry and Terry for Trouble.” She repeated it like a litany as she went out and left him alone in the softly lighted, luxurious room. “T for Terry and Terry for Trouble. Yes,
sir.
”

And so at last, he thought, as he looked about the empty room of this house, which used to hold such happiness for him and recently was holding so little, he was alone to think about things for the first time in three days. He had been presented quite an issue by this dashing visitor; this hero of the front pages, the airwaves, and the television cameras; this bright, self-appointed symbol of the colored man’s hopes and the UN’s problems. T for Terry and Terry for Trouble: it was certainly true enough for him.

And doubly so, of course, because, in a sense that he had been vividly aware of ever since he won election to the House, he was indeed trapped between the two races. His every instinct as a Negro had cried out to accept Terry’s taunting challenge to go with him to Henry Middleton School; after the limousine had driven away from “Harmony,” he had stood in the bedroom with hands clenched and said to himself over and over in an agonized whisper, “I should be there. I should be there.” Yet at the same time he had known with an equally agonized certainty that he could not be.

There was herein a conflict so fundamental and yet so subtle that he knew very well that it could never be understood by the great majority of his people. It was a conflict on the practical political level, and, since he was a decent and steady man who felt a great responsibility to his country and a great concern for her welfare, it was on yet another, much higher, much more racking level. The practical aspects of it were easy enough to grasp; Sue-Dan, much as she wanted to be a Senator’s wife, was still capable of accusing him of being afraid to participate so dramatically in the desegregation struggle because it might antagonize his white electorate in California. And this was true. He didn’t like to admit it to himself, but he had to: it was true. He was to some degree bound by the knowledge that even in California he could arouse antagonisms that would be fatal to his public career if he went ahead as fast and as blatantly in that area as LeGage, for instance, was always wanting him to do.