by Allen Drury
For a touch-and-go minute there was a busily waiting silence.
“Very well, then. On this vote the total is 59 Yes, 61 No, 2, abstentions, others absent, and the resolution is defeated.”
“Thank you, Raoul Barre,” Lafe said in the delegation, knowing very well what Raoul knew—that another vote might very well go against the United States, and that he had in effect smooth-talked the Assembly into letting him prevent it. “God knows why, Raoul Barre, but thank you.”
“If there is no further business—” the President began, but once again someone cried “Mr. President!” and in a tired voice he said, “The distinguished delegate of Portugal.”
Immediately tension returned. A wave of boos greeted the slight, mustachioed figure of the Portuguese delegate as he mounted the rostrum. He spat, rather than spoke, into the microphone.
“So now we see, Mr. President, the fine results of trying to appease those in this body who are unappeasable! Now we see that the United States, like everyone who tries to bow to pressures no self-respecting nation should bow to, reaps, like everyone, the same reward.
“Now we see, in this vote which came so close to majority condemnation of the United States that in the eyes of the world it is condemnation and cannot be explained away as anything else, how pointless it is to try to make friends in this body by crawling to those who are too ignorant and too hostile to be anything but enemies.
“Now we see,” he said, his voice rising against the surge of boos that began to rise against him, “what this United Nations is worth. How empty are its pretenses, Mr. President, how shabby its performances! How futile it is to abandon honor and integrity in the hopes of being rewarded by its members! How pointless to run like a scared mouse before this cat which wants nothing but to gobble you up!
“This is what you get, I will say to my friends of the United States. This is what you receive when you try to appease certain nations here. This is what you receive when you abandon principle and try to make humble bargains against your old friends and your own best interests.
“What has it profited you, to treat as you have my country, and Belgium, and South Africa, and others? You tried to please your new-found friends, but you have found they are not friends, even so.
“May you learn from this what the United Nations really is, before it is too late for you!”
And, to the applause of some few delegations but the hisses of many more, he left the rostrum, a fierce scorn upon his face, and returned to his seat, looking neither to right nor to left along the jeering aisle.
“Now,” Hal Fry said, struggling slowly to rise, “I must. Get the President’s attention for me.”
“But, Hal, damn it—” Lafe protested.
“Get it, I said!”
“Mr. President!” Cullee shouted, jumping to his feet. “Mr. President!”
“The distinguished delegate of the United States,” the President said uncertainly. “Which delegate is it who wishes—?”
“Senator Fry,” Cullee said.
Abruptly the hall quieted once again to a close and watching attention as slowly down the aisle, walking with a carefulness that betrayed his weariness and pain in every movement, came the senior Senator from West Virginia. But he did not falter, and when he turned to face them at the lectern his head came up with an earnest and commanding air that stirred and gripped them all.
Of the many things going through his mind, he knew in general which he would select to say; the many things going through his body he was aware of as a sort of great, dark wall of pain hanging between him and a world that, though it now seemed far away, must yet be spoken to. He did not know at that moment, so agonizing was the pain that had defied the sedatives, whether he could even utter words aloud.
Yet he felt he must, and he thought that if he could keep off the dizziness a little bit he could manage. If he held himself very tightly with the aid of the lectern, if he made no sudden gestures to induce further dizziness and nausea, if he kept his mind and attention firmly on the words that it seemed to him must now be said, then he might make it.
He took a deep and trembling breath and began to speak, slowly and carefully, but without pause or other outward sign of the terrible storm within.
“Mr. President, the United States could not leave alone upon this record, as the final words to be said about the United Nations in this debate, the comments just made by the distinguished delegate of Portugal.
“The United States can realize what prompts this bitterness. Just as it can realize, I hope, the bitterness on the other side that has filled much of this debate and resulted in a vote which is, as the delegate of Portugal truly says, for all practical purposes a condemnation of my country.
“Yet, Mr. President: That debate is over, now. That decision has been rendered. Those hostile words and feelings, the United States now hopes, can be put aside and left to history. It is now a question of where we go from here.
“Mr. President,” he said, and a note of deeper urgency came into his voice, “I would like to tell you something that I would not tell you if I did not think it would help you to listen more seriously to what I have to say.”
He paused, and in the press gallery and everywhere through the Hall, men leaned forward with a rapt and completely absorbed attention.
“A few minutes ago, as you saw, I was overcome by what the President kindly referred to as a temporary fainting spell. I wish”—and he smiled faintly with a wistful ruefulness that almost killed his two colleagues, who had followed him down and were now sitting nearby with the delegation of Tanganyika in the front row of seats—“that the President had been right. I wish it had been temporary.”
He paused again for a moment and then, after some obvious inner struggle, managed to keep his voice steady and went on.
“The word ‘temporary’ no longer belongs to me. Everything I now face is permanent.
“My visit to the hospital, of which many of you have heard, was not encouraging. The disease I have is leukemia.” There was a sudden great intake of breath all around the chamber, but he still managed a slight, wry smile. “No votes can be changed on that.”
“Oh, God, I wish he didn’t have to,” Lafe whispered with an agonized expression to Cullee on the floor.
“So, my friends, I have no more axes to grind in this world. Everything is—over—for me. And therefore, perhaps, you will believe me when I say that I am truly concerned about the lack of tolerance and mutual understanding and, if you will forgive the word—because, for me, at least, it no longer has any embarrassment—love, for one another, that seems to be characteristic of our associations here.
“I would like to think, Mr. President,” he said, and it seemed to them as they examined him more closely that there was now a certain luminous quality about his skin, a first outward intimation of his ravaging disease, “that the time has come for an end to hate in the world. I would like to think that we have reached a point in human history where we might all realize that hate is no longer effective, that hate, indeed, is fatal.
“Mr. President, I suppose that in a sense I have been guilty of it, for I have had deep suspicions of the Soviet Union. It has seemed to me that hate has been more of a conscious and consistent policy there than it has in any other nation or area. Yet perhaps it is time to put aside that part of the record, too, and appeal to all of us, without regard to nationhood or political policy but simply as human beings to deal with one another kindly and charitably in all things.
“Mr. President”—and there was no doubt that he had them completely now, so silent and attentive was the whole of his colorful audience—“what is the situation of the world at this moment? We all know what it is.
“Armies stand poised. Nuclear arsenals are full to overflowing. Rockets rest at the ready on launching pads around the earth. The arms race mounts and mounts and no one yet has managed to cancel out the logic of history which has always said, before, that arms races have but one ending.
“Oh, Mr. President!” he cried, and his anguish both mental and physical lent his words a vivid power. “How does mankind stand, in this awful hour? Where does it find, in all its pomp and pride and power, the answer to its own fateful divisions? Where on this globe, where in this universe, is there any help for us? Who will come to our aid, who have failed so badly in our trusteeship of the bounteous and lovely earth? Who will save us, if we do not save ourselves?
“I say to you, my friends, no one will. No one will. We are wedded to one another, it may be to our death, it may be to our living. We cannot escape one another, however hard we try. Though we fly to the moon and far beyond, we shall take with us what is in our hearts, and if it be not pure, we shall slaughter one another where’er we meet, as surely on some outward star as here on earth.
“This is the human condition—that we cannot flee from one another. For good, for ill, we await ourselves behind every door, down every street, at the end of every passageway. We try to remain apart: we fail. We try to hide: we are exposed. Behind every issue here, behind the myriad quarrels that make up the angry world, we await, always and forever, our own discovery. And nothing makes us better than we are.
“Mr. President,” he said, and his voice, beginning to fill with a dragging tiredness, came up in one last powerful surge of effort. “I beg of you, here in this body of which men have hoped so much and for which they have already done so much, let us love one another!
“Let us love one another!
“It is all we have left.”
With an infinite weary dignity he bowed to the President and the Assembly and came slowly down the steps, no applause, no stirring, no sound breaking the stillness, to his waiting colleagues.
“Well,” he whispered with a wistful little smile as they took his arms to brace him on his now quite unsteady walk up the aisle, “at least this time I didn’t fall down.”
“No,” Lafe said in a choked voice. “You didn’t fall down.”
“If there is no further business to come before the Assembly,” the President said “this plenary session is now adjourned.”
***
Five: A Shade of Difference
1
But, of course, so reluctant are men to seek the love that binds them, in contrast to the eager diligence with which they pursue the hate that divides, that by next morning the effect of the speech of the senior United States delegate to the United Nations had been pretty well dissipated around the world.
There were still many millions of ordinary folk in many places over the earth who were profoundly moved and touched and would not soon forget his gray, strained face and desperately earnest words, and who thought that possibly, in the seats of power and communication, so urgent an appeal might perhaps have some moderating effect. But they were only the ordinary folk. In far too many seats of power and communication it was tacitly understood at once that nothing like that could be allowed to interfere with the course of events.
As the speaker had truly implied, love was an embarrassing concept, too simple and too direct and too naked and too desperate for those who produced the clever editorials, the smooth radio-television commentaries, the bland, self-serving statements of the leaders of men. Suavely, with respect for Senator Fry’s brave effort but with a gentle irony concerning the impossibility of what he proposed, the disturbing subject was put back in its proper place and allowed to do no harm to the plans of the mighty as they whipped on the hurtling juggernaut of the hapless Twentieth Century.
Nor, in fact, was it only the mighty who so reacted; for even among the ordinary folk the human suspicions, the human envies, the human fears and worries and mistrusts came back almost at once after the initial emotion of the speech had died away.
“It’s all very well to tell us to love them,” people said, from Shanghai to Seattle, from Tierra del Fuego to Hudson’s Bay, in Zanzibar and Yap, in Moscow and Washington, in London and Paris and New Delhi and Athens and all the points between. “The real problem is to get them to love us.”
And so, as always when some human voice gives expression to the deepest yearnings of the human heart, mankind paused for a brief, shivering moment to weep hastily for its own fate and then plunged hurriedly back into the blind pursuit of it.
It was generally agreed that Senator Fry’s speech was very noble, and it was apparent already that it would be widely quoted and requoted in many places for as many years as the world had yet to run—but it was seen that it was, after all, only a speech.
Humanity had more pressing things to attend to. And so, as always, few dared to love. And the globe spun on.
In the two days following, while the Secretary-General saw to the final arrangements for the annual United Nations Reception and Ball, and while the nations studied the new posture of world affairs in the wake of the Assembly’s almost-condemnation of the United States, the various participants in the visit of the M’Bulu and all its ramifications assessed their positions as the episode passed into history.
For Terrible Terry himself, towering at Idlewild in his gorgeous robes before the B.O.A.C. plane that would carry him home, smiling and waving triumphantly to the reporters and cameramen who had gathered to see him off, it seemed that history had given him half the garland while still retaining its grip upon the remainder. He did not show it to those who saw and photographed his cheerful face, nor did he acknowledge it in the happy and confident words in which he permitted himself to be quoted, but it was in a strange mixture of moods that he was leaving the United States.
He did not know, at this moment, what he would find in Gorotoland, or how, or whether, he would survive it. He was not physically afraid, for he had a fierce courage that convinced him that he would win out, whatever the obstacles; but along with it, unfortunately for his complete peace of mind, went an intelligence sophisticated enough to know that sometimes courage was not enough. He might not win out, when all was said and done. That would depend on many factors—his people, his cousin, the Communists, the British, his mother, himself. In these complicated days a chieftain needed more than paint, dried bones, a shield, a spear, and the conviction of his people that he was invincible. Invincibility required many things, nowadays: the gods that watched over him would have to be not only well disposed but well equipped. He waved and chatted, but there gnawed at his heart many doubts and misgivings now that he actually faced his return. It did not help him any to see approaching four familiar figures from Washington, or to be told, as they greeted him with a slightly ironic cordiality at planeside, that he would have two of them for company at least as far as London.
“But how delightful!” he exclaimed, as the watching reporters hovered close around. “How delightful, Senator Munson; how delightful, Mrs. Munson! And you, Mr. Secretary? Could we not persuade you and Mrs. Knox to travel with us, too, to brighten up the journey?”
“I’m afraid not, Terry,” Orrin Knox said. “We just came up to have dinner with these two and see them off. Then I think we’ll stay in town tomorrow and attend the UN Ball tomorrow night. Sorry you couldn’t be there.”
“Oh, you know how it is,” Terry said. “Affairs call one home. There is always something.”
“Yes, I know,” the Secretary agreed, a trifle dryly. “Well, perhaps next year. After all, you’ll be a member then.”
“Yes,” the M’Bulu agreed, and for a moment nothing but the most complete satisfaction showed in his face and filled his heart. “Yes. So I will.”
“Are you going straight on from London?” Dolly Munson asked. “We’ll be at the Dorchester, and perhaps if you’d like to have dinner—?”
“Can’t wait to get back, eh?” the Majority Leader couldn’t resist asking, and the listening reporters crowded closer for the M’Bulu’s answer.
“You know how it is,” he said cheerfully. “Affairs of state, affairs of state!”
“They are time-consuming, aren’t they?” Beth Knox agreed gently, in a tone that caused Terry to give her a sudden sharp glance. But he covered it with a laugh.
“You and your husband should know, Mrs. Knox. Indeed you should.”
“Well, have a good trip,” the Secretary said, as the jets began to whistle and the stewardess appeared and looked down upon them questioningly from above. “Robert,” he said, shaking hands, “rest well. You deserve it. Dolly, my dear, take care of him.” He leaned down. “A kiss to travel on.”
“Yes,” she said, returning it. “You be careful, too. Beth”—they kissed and looked at one another soberly for a second—“you take care of this one, too.”
“I will,” Beth said. “Do have a wonderful time, both … And you, Your Highness,” she said as the Munsons went up the steps and disappeared inside. “A safe journey home.”
“And safety when you get there,” Orrin Knox said quietly as the reporters retired and the cameramen drew back for a last shot of them shaking hands.
“Thank you,” Terry said, suddenly sober. “It is kind of you to wish me that after—after—” He stopped.
“We are a strange people,” the Secretary said. “Don’t try to understand us. Travel well.”
“I shall,” the M’Bulu said. “And now,” he added with a sudden change of mood and a wink to them both, “I must pose once more for my public.” And, ascending to the door of the plane, he turned and did so, laughing in the glare of the flashbulbs and the night lights of the great airport, roaring with activity all around, while from a window nearby the Munsons waved down to the Knoxes and the Knoxes waved back.