A Shade of Difference (68 page)

And somehow, he must still find, if he could in the night city whose life rushed by him on all sides, the Congressman from California, whom none of them had seen since early afternoon, and let him know he still had friends. Orrin thought this might be necessary in the wake of the bitternesses aroused by the day’s debate, and he thought so too, particularly after Felix’s final, equivocal warning. If, that is, the Lord permitted him to stay on his feet. He was not at all sure that He would, as he stood there hesitating.

“Botten-booden-dooden-daddy,” the enormous Negro on the drums said into the microphone at his elbow with a bored and drooling emphasis. “Botten-booden-dooden-daddy-doo.”

And botten-booden to you too, you silly bastard, Cullee Hamilton thought wearily through the haze that filled the little room off 138th Street and Lexington. Just botten-booden-dooden right up your—

“Now, honey,” the girl at his elbow told him with her silly laugh, “you stop that old thinking, now. You just stop. All you done ever since we met is just think and think and think and
think.
What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“I like to think,” he said. “Did you ever try it?”

“Honey, you shouldn’t ought to talk to me like that,” his companion said in an aggrieved tone. “Of course I think. Now and then, when I’m not”— she gave a shriek of laughter that passed unnoticed in the general gabble and babble of drunken voices all around—“well,
you
know.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “When you’re not what?”

“Botten-booten-dooden-daddy—
oh,”
the drummer remarked mournfully. “Ba-dooten-bodden-dooten-do!”

“When I’m not making love to
you!”
she cried with a happy laugh.

“Why, you sweet thing,” he said. “I didn’t realize you had that in mind
at
all.”

“Oh,
you!”
she screamed. “I bet you’re just terrific.”

“I manage,” he said. “How about another drink?”

“I shouldn’t,” she said. “I just shouldn’t, now. I won’t be good for
anything.
Just not
anything.”

“I will,” he said. “It makes me better. Hey, waiter! Two more here!”

“I hear you,” the waiter said sullenly. “Who you think you are, King Kong?”

“Just get it,” he said indifferently. “Get it for a lost man on a dark, dark night.”

“Honey,” his companion said, “you’re a mystery to me, just a plain mystery. What is it—your wife cheating on you?”

“She may be, for all I know,” he said, staring about the hectic little room with its hectic black faces crowded into every square inch, black bodies elbowing one another at tiny tables or standing crowded together along the walls. “Why should we worry about that?”

“We shouldn’t,” she cried. “We shouldn’t! Let her go, Big Joe, let her go. Like the song says.”

“That’s right,” he said. “There’s a song for everything and everything for a song.”

“Gimme that glass,” she said, reaching for it and letting her arm trail across his chest. “You could give me the creeps, honey, if I let you. But I won’t. We’re going to be happy and forget all about everything.”

“I’m sure,” he said. “I’m sure of that. We’ll creep right into bed and be happy. But don’t forget H. J. Res. 23.”

“What’s that?” she asked. “Some new kind of medicine for the itch?”

“My itch,” he said. “House Joint Resolution 23. But don’t worry about it.”

“Who are you, anyway, honey?” she said. “You great, big, handsome, mixed-up man?”

“Ba-botten-botten-dooden-do-doot,” the drummer said with a significant emphasis. “Do-doot-botten.”

“I’m Mr. A. Nonymous,” he said. “Representative A. Nonymous. I’m the Prophet Cullee, going to lead you out of bondage. Don’t you want to be led?”

“Honey,” she said, “I just live around the comer. Why don’t you forget all that and come along home with me?”

“Oh, I intend to,” he said. “Just let me finish this drink and then we’ll go and I’ll forget all about it. I tried to find them, anyway, and I couldn’t. Her folks claimed they didn’t know where she was. I don’t believe them, but the hell with them, anyway. All I want is you.”

“Good,” she said in a relieved tone. “You just come along now, and we won’t think about
anything.”

“Ba-dooten,” the drummer said as they went out. “Ba-dooten-dooten-dooten-
dooo.”

“I have an hour,” he said five minutes later, just around the corner, “and then I have to go and be with a lot of very important people.
Very—important—people.”

“An hour’s enough.”

“That’s it,” he said a little later. “That’s it, sister, that’s
it
.”

“That’s
it
,”
said the junior Senator from Iowa gently. “That’s
it,
thank you, thank you, thank you.” He left his body where it was, propped his head up on his left hand, and looked down at her face close to his with his engaging boyish smile. “I am impressed with the advantages of Indonesian culture.”

“You talk so much,” she said, accepting a light for her cigarette. “Why do you always talk so much?”

“I am a man of worldly affairs, with many important things on my mind. It makes me garrulous. I’m sorry if it bothers you.”

“Oh, no. It is just part of you, I suppose. As long as you are not nervous.”

“Do I act nervous?” he asked in some surprise. “I was not aware of it.”

“You act very—practiced. Perhaps nervous is not the word.”

“I should hope not.”

“Unhappy,” she said, and his right hand, traveling slowly over her body, stopped abruptly.

“Oh. Are you a psychiatrist, too?”

“I am sorry.”

“No, seriously. You have a point, possibly. If you think so, pursue it.”

“It would only make you more unhappy.”

“If there’s anything I abominate,” he said, with a grin between amusement and genuine annoyance, “it’s these damned half-finished conversations with people I’m in bed with. It’s no time to be cryptic, but sooner or later everybody tries to be. It’s most annoying, really.”

“I am very wrong,” she said gravely. “You are very happy. Not even in Indonesia, land of happy people, is there anyone so happy.”

He laughed and his right hand began again its slow, insistent traveling, up and down, and over and around, and back and forth, and up and down.

‘You win,” he said. “I lose … Is this all right?”

“Very nice,” she said, pressing closer into the curve of his chest and arm. “Your friend the Senator Fry was in again today.”

“Oh? He didn’t tell me he was going to the doctor, although I urged him to. He was feeling very badly during the plenary session.”

“He looked strained. I do not think he finds the doctor very satisfactory.”

“Perhaps he should see someone else.”

“I think so. That doctor is—” She gave the tiniest of chuckles, deep in her throat. “He is nervous, too, I think.”

“Good God,” he said with a humorous sound of protest. “Don’t tell me you’re going to compare us. I haven’t seen him, but I can imagine: horn-rimmed glasses, big intense eyes, hairy arms, a squat body, a smug expression, a degree from Columbia or N.Y.U., and a sex life as messed up as Gaius Caligula’s. Absolutely sure, of course, that he knows what’s wrong with everybody else. I don’t think that’s what Hal needs right now.”

“Nor I. I was talking to my husband about him this afternoon—”

“Ah, yes, your husband. The hope of Indonesian medicine in another couple of years.”

“I think so,” she said gravely. “He has an idea.”

“Sometimes ideas from intelligent young men are helpful,” he said with equal dignity. “And what,” he said in a lighter tone, moving his hand a little faster, a little more delicately, not so roughly, frolicking it over her body as though it had a life of its own, “does Indonesia’s white hope think it is?”

His hand stopped as abruptly as though paralyzed when she told him. He took in his breath in a sharp gasp and goose-pimples broke out on his body. She kissed him gently on the nipple.

“I know,” she said softly. “It is terrifying and tragic, if true.”

“But—” he said stupidly.

“My husband is quite positive, though of course, as in most medicine, it is simply a guess. But the idea came to him last week, I believe at once when I first mentioned the Senator to him. Since then he has been reading and investigating. I told you he is taking his internship at Harkness Pavilion. There are several cases there and he has been talking to their doctors. It mimics many things, of course, but certain basic details seem to fit.”

“But wouldn’t any doctor—” he began, and she shook her head against his arm.

“It mimics many things,” she repeated, and smiled a little. “Even a hairy graduate of NYU could be fooled.”

“Especially if he were already convinced it was something else and too arrogant to admit the possibility it might be what it is,” he said bitterly.

“My husband is not arrogant,” she said. “He thinks that may be what it is.”

“I think I shall like your husband, when we meet. And apparently we soon will. My God,” he added abruptly in a stricken tone. “Poor Hal. Poor Hal, poor Hal!”

“Of course we are not yet sure. Perhaps tests will show differently. There is one that is infallible. My husband thinks he should have it.”

“But how can we get him to take it? He refuses to admit he’s sick enough to go into the hospital for a full examination.”

“You are his friend,” she said simply. “Tell him to.”

“He won’t listen to me—” She put a finger on his lips.

“If you tell him as though you really mean it, he will listen. He is very fond of you, you know. He will listen.”

“Yes. He must. My God, what a thing.”

“Do not think of it now,” she said gently. “It will be too much to bear, for a little while. Think of other things, and later you can be ready to think of it again.” She turned toward him and took his hand in hers. “Do this,” she said. “And this—and I will do this—”

“Yes,” he said in a grateful whisper. “Yes. That’s it. That’s
it.
”

“That’s
it,”
Terrible Terry said to the admiring ring of multicolored faces that surrounded him. “That’s exactly why it’s so impossible for the United States to stand in the path of history saying No. No one can say No to history. History says Yes.”

“History says Yes,” agreed the righteous young man from Kenya, with a portentous and self-conscious air. “We are history’s Yes-sayers.”

In the Delegates’ Dining Room, chairs and tables removed, ceiling and pillars draped and decorated, lights aglow and floor thronged for the dance given by the delegation of Nigeria, there seemed to be at the moment more talking than dancing. Many little groups like the M’Bulu’s stood about engaged in earnest conversation, broken by occasional outbursts of laughter at some particularly devastating sally at the expense of the Western powers. Here and there a few dancing couples, clad in the colorful robes of their native tribes, moved gracefully to the strains of the orchestra playing at one end of the room. The windows were thrown open onto the great concrete esplanade overlooking the East River, and across the dark hurrying water the lights of Brooklyn cast their gleaming patterns in the crisp yet gentle night. It was in one of the open apertures that the heir to Gorotoland stood now, holding court for a dozen faces ranging in color from blackest black to tannest tan. Upon them all at this particular moment there was an expression of reverent agreement.

“After all,” Terry said, “it is not as though an ambitious American politician can speak for the colored races of the world. Some of your delegations today seemed to vote in the belief that his empty gesture is sufficient to salve the stern consciences of our peoples as they look upon this hypocritical democracy and say to it, in the thunderclap of the ages, ‘Set your own house in order!’ My friends, do not be persuaded down that garden path.”

“Hear, hear!” said the righteous young man from Kenya. “I say, hear, hear!”

“So do I,” said a young lady from Pakistan. “I, too, say, ‘Hear, hear!’”

“Then,” the M’Bulu said with a confiding air and a sweeping gesture around the room, “go forth and talk to our brethren. Tell them the fight has just begun. Tell them we need votes for a week from today. Tell them the downtrodden of the earth look to them to do the noble thing … Excuse me,” he said abruptly. “I see some people I must talk to. Uhuru!”

“Yes, uhuru,” said the young lady from Pakistan. “Indeed, uhuru.”

As quickly as Terrible Terry had the Ambassador of Panama observed the chairman of DEFY and the wife of the Congressman from California enter and stand uncertainly near the door, and as quickly did he disengage himself from two members of the Canadian delegation and bear down upon them. Starting from somewhat nearer, he arrived a second sooner and was already bending low to kiss Sue-Dan’s hand as the stately figure of the M’Bulu approached, bringing with him the eyes of the room as surely as though he were carrying a banner. A little buzz of talk immediately sprang up, and there was a general drawing-away around them. It was thus, separate and apart and standing much as they had been earlier in the day in the Delegates’ Lounge, that Cullee Hamilton saw them as he entered the room a second later and looked about for familiar faces. Those that immediately blotted out the rest of the room were all too familiar and for several seconds looked at one another with strange, tense expressions that were not lost upon the rapidly growing gathering.

“Well!” said the M’Bulu finally with a merry laugh that rang clearly through the room, “here comes the hero of the hour! Cullee, dear friend, do come and join us here in this delightful concourse of the nations!”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” the Congressman said, coming close but so filled with conflicting feelings that he was not conscious of how he got there. “I want to talk to these two people.”

“Oh, let him talk,” Sue-Dan said with a laugh that was pitched a little too high and sounded a little too strained. “He never hurt anybody just talking. Did you, Cullee?”

“What kind of a person are you?” the Congressman asked bitterly. “I told you not to come to New York. Where have you been?”

“None of your business.”

“I really don’t see that it is, either,” Felix said in a tone of calculated indifference. “Surely when someone wants to come to New York—” But he was stopped by the Congressman’s hand, enormous and painfully tight, upon his arm.