A Shade of Difference

by Allen Drury

  “But—” Orrin began, then stopped. “Okay. Have Lafe call me tonight if there’s anything I ought to know. If you need me up there, I’ll try to make it, but I’d prefer not to because of this visit from the President of Brazil. We’ve all got a lot to talk about down here. Don’t hesitate to call if you want me, though.”

  “Right. We’ll try not to bother you.”

  “Bother me all you like. It’s what I’m here for. And, Hal—for God’s sake, take care of yourself, will you?”

  “I will. Good-by, Orrin, and thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  After the conversation ended there was a silence in the room for several minutes, broken finally by the Senator from West Virginia.

  “Thank you, too. It was most kind.”

  “No more than I’d expect from you in a similar situation,” Lafe said. He frowned. “Actually, things don’t look quite as good as we’d like, over there.”

  “Oh?” Senator Fry asked in some alarm. “How so?”

  “Well, Terry and Felix seemed very cheerful this morning, in the Lounge. And I had a strange little talk with the S.-G. Beware a wild majority, he said. What would you suppose that means?”

  Hal Fry’s eyes widened.

  “You don’t suppose they’d try—”

  “If they thought they could get away with it, they’d try anything.”

  “I’m coming back down with you right now,” Hal said abruptly, reaching for the bell cord by his bed and ringing it vigorously for the nurse. “Get my clothes out of the closet there, will you?”

  “Now, wait a minute—” Lafe began, but his colleague brushed aside his protest impatiently.

  “Come on, come on! We’ve got work to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lafe said with a smile. “So we have.”

  “Mr. Stanley of New Zealand, please,” the young lady at the telephone desk said sternly into the microphone. “Madame Vinagradof of Romania, please call the Delegates’ Lounge … Mr. Haiutara of Japan, please …”

  Seated already at one of the telephones along the wall of the Lounge, exchanging pleasantries with the Foreign Secretary in London, the British Ambassador wondered with some impatience who wanted him now via this cow-voiced female whose voice mooed so commandingly over the hubbub of the crowded Lounge. Whoever it was, he or she would have to wait a bit, for the voice from London was gradually abandoning pleasantries and getting down to the business in hand, namely how things were shaping up for the vote tomorrow on the Labaiya Amendment and, more importantly for Britain, on the basic resolution to demand immediate independence for Gorotoland.

  As precisely as he could, Lord Maudulayne told him, though he considered it a damned difficult spot from which to telephone. Most delegates tried to confine their calls from the Lounge to relatively innocuous matters, since you never knew who might be tapping the wire or listening in at the main switchboard. Probably no one was, but it was something of an article of faith that somebody might be. Therefore calls like this were customarily made from one’s own headquarters in Manhattan. However, the Foreign Secretary had tracked him down here and so, to his best knowledge, he was giving him the information he sought.

  Not that his best knowledge was very good, Claude Maudulayne was forced to admit, at least to himself, because he, like Felix Labaiya, found the world a haze of dusky incertitudes at the moment. The two-thirds requirement for the resolution might just—just—save passage of the demand for Gorotoland’s independence. As far as the Americans were concerned, he thought they were safe; or were they? He had the intimation, from his many conversations today with the Commonwealth and others of something moving under the surface of the waters, of vague, slippery, not-clear possibilities, and half-formed, half-hinted, half-organized projects.

  “I don’t like the feel of it,” he said absently. “Something’s in the wind.”

  “Eh?” said London blankly, and he realized that he had not been paying the slightest attention to his superior as the latter worried along.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. “I didn’t mean for us; our situation is relatively clear. I meant for the Americans.”

  “Are they going to take a pasting?” the Foreign Secretary asked with a suddenly much more cheerful interest that broke through his general gloom about Gorotoland.

  “I don’t know,” Lord Maudulayne said thoughtfully. “On the surface it appears impossible, and yet—”

  “Congress’ action has been very well received here. I thought possibly it might have been there.”

  “Yes and no. There’s a very peculiar mood here, right now.”

  “Isn’t there always? I thought it was chronic.”

  “There are moments when it is more chronic than others,” Lord Maudulayne said. “Are we prepared to rescue the M’Bulu when the sky falls in upon him?”

  “I suppose,” the Foreign Secretary said wearily. “I suppose. Although of course that, too, will cause a great uproar there. How does he seem this morning?”

  “Disturbed and wary, but he tells me he’s going to stay until the debate ends. He seems confident of the outcome. Both outcomes.”

  “Isn’t it nice that we’re here to depend upon?” the Foreign Secretary said. “How do you tolerate him?”

  “Oh, in his own strange way,” Lord Maudulayne said, “he’s a rather likable fellow. There’s a curious innocence about it all, you know. I think fundamentally it’s a complete lack of any moral sense whatsoever—like a giant child running about the world in pretty clothes tossing hand grenades into other people’s open parlor windows.”

  “One hundred and thirty-seventh in direct descent,” the Foreign Secretary said dryly. “That’s more than you and I can say. And of course he isn’t the only child that’s loose in the world these days.”

  “How true.”

  “Well: I shall not keep you further. I think it would be well if we refrained from the Kashmir debate this afternoon. It would only inflame matters tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

  “My feeling exactly. I shall keep you advised.”

  “Good man.”

  “I see the two Senators coming in the Lounge, so—if you will forgive me—”

  “Carry on.”

  “Right-ho.”

  There passed through Lord Maudulayne’s mind as he watched the slow progression of the two Americans along the Lounge, nodding here, smiling there, being intercepted by many outstretched hands and effusive greetings, the thought that the Senator from West Virginia, despite the rumors about his health, looked determined and relatively rested, while the junior Senator from Iowa appeared tired and strained and without some of his usual comfortable amicability. The British Ambassador was also rather amused by the hearty welcome they were receiving; it had its little ironies. The thought was put into words a second later as his colleague from France came to his side from the other end of the Lounge, carrying a cup of coffee.

  “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 c
ontempt. 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—?