by Allen Drury
Another day, Hal Fry told himself as he looked across First Avenue at the green-and-white shaft of the Secretariat making its powerful statement against the autumn sun, another dollar. He had been up since six, reading the papers, studying reports, making vote-tallies as earnestly as though he were helping Bob Munson on some major issue in the Senate. It was a frustrating pastime, because every time he thought he had a nation accurately pegged, some other aspect of its self-interest would occur to him and he would have to move it into the doubtful column again. Even the powers that normally sided with the United States were doubtful now, so many were the passions aroused by the Labaiya amendment and so strong the subtle, corroding elements that colored the world’s attitudes toward the great Republic of the West. It was in an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion that the acting head of the American delegation moved forward now, aware that his country was surrounded on all sides by active enemies and shifty friends, aware that the world was in a turmoil from which nothing constructive or lasting ever seemed to emerge, aware that men advanced on the basis of their passions with the mind left far behind, aware that in this present era events such as those which were now developing were quite capable of producing consequences of a gravity and permanent destructiveness far beyond the consequences reasonable men might have the right, in some other, more rational age, to expect. He did not even know, for instance, what would come of the appointment he was about to have, here in his office in U.S. delegation headquarters. His only strength at the moment was that his visitors had come to him, not he to them. For what it was worth, this was some small indication of status, and he decided to make the most of it. But it took some doing to be outwardly cordial and calmly unconcerned as he prepared to greet the Ambassadors of Panama and India and their carefree companion, the dashing young heir to Gorotoland.
Even as he rose to do so, the problem was suddenly and terribly complicated by the strangest combination of physical sensations he had ever known. A sudden feeling of nausea, a terrible dizziness, a feeling as though a vise had clamped upon his chest and stomach, shooting pains down his arms and legs, a sudden strangled feeling in his windpipe, a sudden hazy fog in his eyes—he was so completely taken aback at this fantastic and unexpected onslaught that for a second he was terrified that he might fall forward across his desk with hand outstretched in a greeting never to be completed.
Apparently, however, none of this was visible on the surface at this moment. He was to be struck with the fearful irony of it in succeeding days, that apparently his color remained unchanged, his outward appearance normal, only his eyes, Lafe was to tell him later, showing any indication of strain, and that only to those who looked into them with a real perception.
Now, none of the three faces that he could see in a half-blurred haze showed concern or alarm. Evidently what was to him a major and terrifying experience was not communicated to them in any way. What to him seemed agonized minutes must be only the slightest of seconds as the wave of pain throughout his body seemed to build and then began gradually to recede. It was not like what he had ever heard of a heart attack, though the chest pain immediately suggested that conclusion. It was an utterly irrational and erratic onslaught upon his entire system for which he could not, as a layman, find explanation: except that he knew, suddenly and completely and finally, that he was very seriously ill.
All of this, so deeply shattering, so profoundly unsettling as well as painful, the psychological impact even greater than the torturing physical pain, took seconds. With a great and definite effort of the will, through sheer strength of character, relying on plain and simple guts of which he fortunately had a great many, he continued his greetings as casually as he could, talking through a screen of pain that gradually, but only gradually, eased throughout his body. Some impulse to duty, some feeling that the accustomed forms would pull him through, some basic determination not to fail his task in this crucial moment for his country, gave him the strength he needed. But it was with a tenuous and shaky control at best that he continued the greetings so harshly interrupted.
“Felix,” he said, “K.K., Terry—please sit down. I can’t tell you how honored I am by this distinguished trio. Which am I entertaining,” he added with a desperate attempt to cling to his customary humor, “the Three Graces, the Three Fates, or the Three Blind Mice?”
But this, which they of course could not understand was a genuine necessity for him in his present state, was obviously the wrong thing to say to the two Ambassadors, for Felix gave only his small, tidy, unamused smile, and K.K. looked quite offended. Only the M’Bulu burst into ringing laughter as he deposited his towering form gracefully in a chair. In fact, Hal Fry noted through the screen of pain, he even clapped his hands a couple of times as though he were a delighted child with a new toy. This act of innocence was so stagy that the Senator, even in his agonizing physical discomfort, was at once put even more on guard than he was already.
“Senator,” Terrible Terry declared, “you are always so witty. No matter what happens, we can count on you for laughs. It makes of the UN a happier place than it might otherwise be.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Hal Fry said, as the pressures began to increase again throughout his body. “I try to spread what cheer I can in such troubled times. It seems the least I can do.”
“Some of us,” Krishna Khaleel said in a tone of starchy disapproval, “do not think the world is quite that funny, Hal.”
“You’re certainly doing your best to make it not so,” he snapped, egged on by the rising pain which now was attacking him again in his chest, his stomach, his eyes, down his arms and legs, threatening to choke off his breath, savagely enfolding his body in a silent and terrible embrace. “I suppose you have some reason for it that seems logical to you.”
“The logic is clear enough,” the Indian Ambassador said coldly. “You surely did not think the United States could maintain its racial policies in the face of world disapproval forever.”
“The United States is doing its best to straighten out its racial poli—” he began, but his voice died, with the pain, and even more, at this moment, in the face of the three archly knowing expressions that confronted him. What was the use, he managed to think through the silently frightful struggle going on within him, when the world would not believe? What was the point in honor and good faith and the government trying to better the conditions of its people, when no one gave you credit, or even credence? These minds were closed. The great majority of minds around the world were closed. The United States could talk forever, reasonably and with complete honesty, about what it was doing to improve the status of the Negro, and from around the world it would get back exactly this smug, superior, impenetrable, know-nothing smirk. So why, he wondered painfully, should anyone bother?
“How many votes have you got, Felix?” he asked, feeling dreadfully sick but managing by sheer will power to put a cold forcefulness in his voice. “Apparently we might as well get down to brass tacks. You haven’t got enough yet, have you?”
A sudden extra-agonizing twist of pain shot through his entire body. My God, he thought, what is the matter with me?
“Do you think I should admit it if I did not have the votes?” Felix asked calmly. “Certainly I should not. Prove it, if you think I do not have enough.”
“I can’t prove you haven’t, any more than you can prove you have,” he said with a painful slowness that to them apparently only sounded deliberate. “I just don’t think you do. You don’t think you do, either. So what is the purpose of this call? To try to bluff the United States into something? What do you take us for?”
The pain was gone, abruptly, from his stomach and chest; now an almost unbearable ache was in his arms and legs, and he felt as though he could not draw another breath, although, slowly and carefully, he did.
“Well, Hal,” the Indian Ambassador said with a stuffy annoyance, “I must say you are not making it easy. I must say we did not expect to find such intransigence, Hal, nor
such, one might even say, as it were, hostility.”
“My as it were hostility is in good shape, K.K.,” he said, again with what they apparently took to be a thoughtful slowness, though it was in reality an outward sign of the desperate struggle he seemed to be waging with his own body. “How else am I supposed to react, as though you were offering me rubies and roses? Now,” he said with another effort of will that put a show of challenging vigor in his voice, “I want to know what the purpose of this call is. I have a lot of things to do, including a luncheon date, and I can’t afford to spend all morning with you three, delightful though your company is.”
“Are you feeling all right, Hal?” the Indian Ambassador asked, apparently really looking at him for the first time. He drew himself up in his chair and managed a firm smile.
“I’m feeling fine.” The smile faded, because he could not hold it longer against the devils who were now re-entering his chest, turning their screws upon his stomach, shooting the waves of terrible dizziness into his head; but this his guests evidently did not perceive, and he covered it by a renewed tone of coldness. “I’m just annoyed by this attempt at flimflammery, that’s all.”
“We had not thought to find you in such a mood,” Felix Labaiya said quietly. “We had thought to find you in a mood to listen to reason.”
“In a mood to turn tail and run, is that it?” he managed with a sharpness aggravated by the bewildering sensations running through him. “That is not the American mood, Felix, even though you sometimes find it difficult to understand what that mood is. Perhaps your in-laws aren’t a good example.”
“My in-laws,” the Panamanian Ambassador said with equal sharpness, “are neither here nor there. They understand my position.”
“Do they?” he said, still able almost by instinct that could function without him to use the weapon he knew would trouble Felix most. “Better check with the Governor. I’m not so sure.”
“He hasn’t said anything,” Felix said quickly.
“I haven’t seen the wire-service clips this morning,” Hal Fry said with a fair show of indifference, and the pain receded sufficiently so that he could come back to the everyday world long enough to feel a slight satisfaction that the opening had developed so naturally. He pressed the buzzer on his desk with a show of vigor. “My secretary will bring them in, and we’ll see.”
‘There will be nothing there,” Felix said firmly.
The pain was back, but through it he forced himself to give the answer he knew had to be made.
“There will be nothing there about the United States retreating, either,” he said as they waited for the girl. “So there we are. Having a good time in America, Terry?”
“Senator,” the M’Bulu said genially, “now you are trying to divert us. It will not work. The situation here in the United Nations has reached a point where diversions and evasions and side issues no longer hold the attention of the world. We are approaching a showdown, Senator. What will you do?”
“That is the question,” Krishna Khaleel agreed. “What will you do?”
“Why do anything,” he asked with a fair show of calmness, though someone was now working on the small of his back with a pair of forceps, “except continue to do what we are doing, which is to persuade the General Assembly of the validity of our position? There’s only one way to decide it now, isn’t there, and that’s to have a vote and see who wins. Unless, of course, you intend to withdraw your amendment, Felix. That might speed things along considerably.”
The Panamanian Ambassador looked at him with a strange expression, as though he considered him to be verging on insanity.
“I shall never withdraw it,” he said coldly. Hal Fry shrugged, though the motion seemed to cost him a new set of pains searing up through his shoulders. Is there no end to it? his mind demanded; and for the time being, at least, his body answered, No.
“Therefore we must meet it as best we can, in the only way open to us,” he said carefully. “You aren’t afraid of losing the vote, are you, Felix? Perhaps that’s what behind this little visitation.”
“I think we are losing sight of our purpose in coming here,” the M’Bulu said with a graceful laugh. “We have let the conversation carry us afield. We are really here in the best interests of the United States, Senator. We think there is a commendable way out for you.”
Now it was back in his eyes again, a blurring haze that suddenly turned reddish; this upset him more than anything yet, for it harked back to his recent troubles of the weekend. But again he forced himself to remain still and outwardly calm.
“It would not be so difficult, Hal,” the Indian Ambassador said earnestly. “It would, indeed, make all your friends and supporters around the world regard you with genuine pride and affection. It would be a simple exercise of restraint and dignity, Hal, of understanding what the tides of history are in this world of ours. It is not so much to ask of a truly great power.”
“And what would that be,” he asked, as the red light began to fade a little. “Join in supporting the amendment? Surely,” he said with an enforced levity that cost him greatly, “you can think of something more original than that, K.K.!”
“Nothing would be more becoming to a power of the stature the United States considers herself to have,” the Panamanian Ambassador said with a smooth insolence that Hal Fry was too sick to counter. “Why should you object?”
“It would be such a simple solution,” Terrible Terry said encouragingly. “Then we could all forget this unhappy wrangle and turn together toward new eras of peace and understanding!”
“I’m glad the world seems that simple to you,” Senator Fry said, the pain swiftly receding all over his body for no reason he could see or understand. “And what would we get out of such an action?”
“Honor,” said Felix Labaiya.
“Integrity,” said Krishna Khaleel.
“The applause of the whole wide world, Senator, I can assure you of that; the applause of the whole wide world!” said the M’Bulu.
“Otherwise,” Felix said soberly, “we must continue to line up the votes that can only result in a most humiliating condemnation of the United States in the eyes of the whole world. Surely you do not want that for your country.”
“It would be terrible for you, Hal,” K.K. assured him. “You cannot imagine the endless repercussions that a defeat on such an issue would have for you throughout the world.”
“Oh, yes,” Hal Fry said grimly, for both subject matter and pain were again conspiring, the pain once more racking his body with a savage capriciousness, now here, now there, now everywhere, “we can imagine. That is why we intend that it will not happen.”
“Then you must do as we ask,” the M’Bulu said happily. “There is no other solution.”
“We shall see,” Hal Fry said, wondering furiously through his fluctuating agony where his secretary was with the long yellow clips of copy paper from the two wire-service tickers in the outer office. He reached over and pushed the buzzer again with a hurried, impatient air, and this time the girl did hurry in with the streamers in her hands.
“Excuse me,” he said, beginning with a great effort at casualness to riffle through them for the item he hoped desperately was there—for now, in his own physical pain and their organized onslaught against his country, it suddenly seemed fearfully important that it be there. “I want to find Ted Jason’s statement in here for you, Felix.”
“There is no statement,” the Panamanian Ambassador said with an uneasy anger. “He would have talked to me first.”
“Possibly,” Hal Fry said calmly, “or possibly not. Let me see: ‘Governor Edward Jason of California said today—’ But, no, that isn’t it; he’s making some statement on Mexican wetbacks.” In an instant the pain was gone entirely, and in his relief he resorted again to irony. “But don’t give up, Felix. There are three more sheets.” Now where in the hell is it, he asked himself with a growing impatience, diverted momentarily from the inexplicable things occurr
ing in his body. Orrin had called him an hour ago; surely the plan had gone well. “Why, here it is,” he said in a relieved tone of voice.
“Ted’s statement?” the Panamanian Ambassador asked, and for once he did not seem to be quite the cool and collected customer he liked to have the world think he was.
“Why, no,” Hal said with satisfaction; “Cullee Hamilton’s resolution.”
“What’s old Cullee done?” the M’Bulu asked with the beginning of a smile, which indicated that he would not be surprised to find the Congressman attempting to checkmate him.
Hal Fry started to read it aloud, but suddenly his private pack of devils was back again, exercising their marksmanship against his chest and lower body, sending the horrible waves of dizziness through his head, blurring his sight again, closing off his esophagus.
“Why don’t you read it aloud, K.K.?” he managed to suggest before the kaleidoscopic sensations became too severe for him to talk. “It may change things somewhat.”
“Well,” the Indian Ambassador said nervously in his precise, clipped English; “well, let me see …
“‘Representative Cullee Hamilton, California’s Negro Congressman, today introduced a joint Congressional resolution expressing the official apologies of the United States Government to the M’Bulu of Mbuele for the “danger and personal humiliation” he suffered while escorting a colored child to school last week in Charleston, S.C.
“‘The resolution authorizes a grant of $10,000,000 to the African prince to use as he sees fit for the “advancement and improvement” of the people of his native Gorotoland, and it also promises him the use of United States technical advisers in furthering any project he may wish to undertake along those lines.
“‘The resolution also declares it to be the sense of the Congress that the United States should “move with increased rapidity to improve the conditions of its Negro population at all levels.” It pledges the “full co-operation” of Congress in achieving this aim.