by Allen Drury
“I appreciate your courtesy,” the Secretary said. His voice became wry. “I can’t say my views have changed much since the last time you disapproved of them, but it may be helpful for you to get a refresher.”
“The decisions to be made are important,” Walter repeated without humor, “and I feel I must weigh everything very carefully if I am to do the job the country expects of me.”
“So must we all,” Orrin agreed, trying not to sound ironic. “Until tomorrow, then, and Thursday.”
“I shall be looking forward to it,” Walter Dobius said, thinking as the Secretary hung up. Little do you know how much I will be looking forward to it.
“There’s a puzzler,” Orrin said as he returned to the living room and started to poke up the fire. “He wants us to come to lunch on Thursday.”
“Alone?” Beth inquired. He paused, the poker dangling from his hand, and gave her a surprised and thoughtful stare.
“He didn’t say. I assumed so, but—he didn’t say. Anyway, it’s what you and Harley have both told me to do today—go talk to Walter. So I am going to go and talk to Walter. Coming?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said with a smile. “Somebody has to keep you from chopping his head off in the first five minutes.”
“I’m afraid I already have,” he confessed with a rueful little chuckle, “He began giving me this Noble Young Leader routine on Obifumatta Ajkaje, and I’m afraid I got a little short with him. That’s one of the things I can’t stand about Walter and his crowd, their damned hypocrisy. They can moon all over a bright young good-for-nothing like Terry as long as he’s doing what they want him to—namely, kicking the United States in the teeth—and then the minute he stops that, they drop him and find somebody else to give the big buildup to. They tell the public such damned lies about these people. That’s what I can’t stand.”
“Well,” Beth said firmly, “I’d suggest you keep things like that to yourself, Mr. Secretary. You aren’t going to change them, and pointing out their hypocrisy is the surest way to make them hate you forever. And that we don’t want when you’re on the verge of running for President again. Right?”
“I suppose so,” he agreed with a grin, “but I must confess I like to twist Walter’s tail once in a while. Somebody ought to, or he’ll get even more insufferable than he is already.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure that Walter isn’t about to twist your tail,” she remarked thoughtfully. “In which case, lunch on Thursday should be great fun.”
“Well,” he said, “Thursday will have to be Thursday’s problem. Right now I’ve got to call Cullee and Lafe, who no doubt are having great fun themselves at Selena Jason Castleberry’s party for Free Gorotoland. They’re having fun, and Selena’s having fun, and Prince Obi’s having fun, and all of Obi’s friends and admirers in New York are having fun. What more felicity do you want in the world?”
She chuckled.
“The felicity of a cautious tongue, if you must know,”
He tossed her a cheerful grin as he started out of the room to make his call to New York.
“It wouldn’t be me. And think how dull that would be!”
“How will we ever know?” she called after. “It’s never going to be tried,”
But he didn’t answer, and after a moment she returned with a quizzical expression to her book, though not before deciding to put in a call a little later to someone who might know Walter’s plans, or at least would know enough of how his mind worked to come up with an educated guess about them.
“Darling,” cried the gaunt, diamond-drenched woman with the hacked-off gray hair and the gasping eyes—Mrs. Jason Castleberry that was, Mrs. Roger Castleberry that had been, Selena Jason that was, had been, and always would be—“I do want you to come over here and meet Prince Obifumatta Ajkaje. He’s a mad, mad character and so utterly delightful in his understanding of this whole mad situation in Africa.” She glanced quickly around the hectic, shouting, bulging living room of her modest little twenty-room hideaway on Sutton Place and lowered her voice to a hurried whisper. “Not at all like our Negroes, you know. In spite of the great danger he’s in personally because of this wonderful enterprise he’s leading, bringing freedom to his poor downtrodden people in Gorotoland, he has a sense of humor about it all, you know. It makes him so much easier to talk to. Now, then,” she cried triumphantly as she shoved forward her companion, the earnest little man from the Nation, “here he is! His Royal Highness Prince Obi—Prince Obifumatta, that is. Darling, where ever did you get such a delightful name?”
The tall young Negro who loomed above her in his gorgeous red and green robes smiled down with a beneficent gaze reminiscent of his cousin, Prince Terry, except that underlying Prince Obi’s smile there was, at present, a terrible tension that grinned like the smile of death through his outward cordiality. Neither his hostess nor her guests, most of them filled to slopover with liquor, love, and liberalism, seemed to notice this, though it did not escape the two Americans, one white and one black, who stood together at the side of the rocking room. Cullee Hamilton, Representative in Congress from the State of California, and Lafe Smith, junior Senator from the State of Iowa, members of the U.S. delegation to the UN, were under no more delusions about Prince Obi than they had been six months ago about his cousin. Only the emphasis had changed, as though a kaleidoscope had been given half a turn and everything had come up at right angles to where it used to be. It still meant trouble for them and their country.
“My name?” Prince Obifumatta repeated in the clipped, guttural Afro-British accent of his education and upbringing. “I made it up. I knew that someday I would be a famous man and I wanted a name that people could neither pronounce nor forget. So I chose Obifumatta.
“Actually,” he said, giving again the nervous thrust of his savage smile, “it’s been in my family for seven hundred years, give or take a few.”
“That’s what I mean, darling,” Selena Castleberry said, giving the arm of the Nation’s earnest little man an excited squeeze. “Such a sense of humor. Such a doll.”
“What is your reaction to this American attempt to suppress your battle to bring freedom and democracy to Gorotoland, Your Highness?” the Nation’s little man inquired earnestly. Prince Obifumatta thumped him so fiercely on the back that he staggered.
“Call me Obi!” he directed. “Everybody does. I really have no comment at all, you know I am happy with everyone. I am not annoyed with anyone. Life is wonderful, do you not agree?”
“I do,” the Nation’s little man assured him hastily, “but I was just wondering if you cared to express a comment—”
“Now, express a comment. Obi, dear,” Selena admonished him with a shriek of laughter. “That’s exactly why I’m giving this Aid-to-the-People’s-Republic-of-Free Gorotoland party you know, so that all these darling people of the press, television, and radio, all these molders of American opinion, can see you and find out what you think.” She gave a coy hoot. “It might make headlines, you know! It just might, now!”
“Headlines are nothing to me,” Prince Obifumatta said with a sober air. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Oh, doll!” Selena cried. “Isn’t he just a doll, now?” she demanded of the horned-rimmed glasses, the ivory cigarette-holders, the portentous martini glass, and the thoughtful, important pipes that swam before her in the dancing room. “He is a doll, a doll, a doll! And of course,” she added with an abrupt transition to complete solemnity, “one of the Truly Great Men Of Our Time.”
“We think so,” said the man from the New Yorker, somewhere behind her.
“We think so,” said the man from the Reporter, somewhere behind him.
“We think so,” said the man from the New Republic, somewhere behind him.
“We think so,” said the man from the In-Group Quarterly, trying to see around them.
“We think so,” said Newsweek, right out front and smiling up at Prince Obi with a fearfully concentrated gaze, horribly nearsighted b
ut damn it, darling, I hate contact lenses and I will not wear glasses to a party.
“I’m damned if I think so,” Senator Smith murmured to his companion. Congressman Hamilton returned a grim little smile and nodded.
“Tell us what you think of the President’s defense of Standard Oil’s exploitation of your country,” the New Yorker demanded with a nervous little giggle, coming closer.
“Tell us what you think of this attempt by Washington to launch a new colonialism in Africa,” the Reporter suggested, lighting his pipe,
“Tell us what respect you think the United States can possibly hope to retain when it takes so backward and vicious an attitude toward its own great Negro people,” the New Republic proposed, elbowing one of their representatives absently aside as he grabbed another martini from a passing tray.
“Tell us anything,” breathed Newsweek, stabbing Prince Obi unexpectedly in the region of the belly-button with an eight-inch ivory cigarette holder picked up on a twenty-four-hour survey of Southeast Asia’s trouble spots last spring.
“Yes,” shrieked their hostess, “do tell us, doll!”
“It would hardly behoove me, as a visitor to your great country, to say anything critical about it at such a pleasant social occasion—” Prince Obifumatta began slowly.
“Yes, yes!” said the New Yorker eagerly.
“Yes, yes!” said the New Republic.
“Yes, yes!” said the Reporter and the man from the In-Group Quarterly.
“God, don’t keep us in suspense!” cried Newsweek. “Out with it. Obi, out with it!”
“But,” said Obifumatta, “it does seem to me that in these times of great challenge—”
“In which the United States is playing, at best, a shabby and equivocal part,” the New Yorker offered quickly.
“—when the eyes of the world are upon this country—”
“Whose people and leaders seem absolutely stupefied by their own lack of intelligence and imagination,” contributed the Reporter.
“—and when both abroad and at home her attitude toward the colored races of this earth is under such heavy fire—”
“Which of course is God damned well deserved!” cried the New Republic, gulping his martini with a feverish concentration.
“—then it does seem to me—”
“Oh, tell us!” cried the In-Group Quarterly.
“—that there is reasonable ground for criticism in recent events.”
“How well you put it!” exclaimed Newsweek, extricating the cigarette-holder from Prince Obi’s midriff and swinging it about into the eye of the earnest little man from the Nation. “Doesn’t he put it well, everybody? Doesn’t he?”
“He’s a doll!” Selena Castleberry assured them, her hacked-off hair a-frizzle, her staring eyes wide with excitement. “I told you all he was a doll. Now you know!”
“We’ve just signed him to do his autobiography for us,” murmured the vice president of The Most Right-Thinking Book Publishers, Inc. “We’re going to call it New Star Over Africa: My Struggle for Justice, by Prince Obi.”
(“Well make a bid of five hundred thousand dollars plus 30 percent of the gross,” offered the representative of The Most Daring Young Right-Thinking Hollywood Producer. “We’ll budget it for thirty million, shoot it in Spain, and hire the entire nation of Dahomey to be extras. It’ll be the greatest!”)
“Oh, God!” Selena cried with a sudden yelp of pleased surprise. “There come Poopy Rhinefetter and the Princess Saboko! Now the party’s complete. Poopy! Poopy, darling! Do bring your lovely bride and come meet the greatest leader of Africa. This man,” she explained to Prince Obifumatta in a confidential voice that carried clearly over the clutter, the clamor, the raucous, smoke-laden roar of the aching, shaking, quaking room, “is almost as famous as you are, darling. He’s worth absolutely untold millions and he’s always to be found supporting the most liberal causes, and just three weeks ago he married that lovely girl, there. The Princess Saboko—your fellow royalty, doll. It was all so romantic. He found her last month, singing native songs at some place down in the Village, and before you could say clip-my-coupons he had eloped with her to Connecticut. The family’s absolutely furious. Their picture was all set to be on the cover of Life this week until you came along, you naughty boy, and they decided to run yours instead. Poopy and the Princess! Poopy and the Princess! Come over here this minute, you delicious dolls, and meet this wonderful man!”
“Where did you say the Princess was from?” Obifumatta inquired.
“Some place in Ghana, I believe,” Selena Castleberry said. “Or is it Mali? Or maybe Nigeria? Oh, darling, who cares? She’s a princess, she’s lovely, and she’s Mrs. Poopy Rhinefetter. That’s all anybody needs to know. Poopy, this is His Royal Highness Prince Obifumatta, from Gorotoland. Your Royal Highness, this is Poopy Rhinefetter and Mrs. Poopy Rhinefetter, Her Royal Highness. From Ghana. I think. Those marks on her forehead are the marks of her royal birth, aren’t they, Saboko, darling?”
“Place dere bime roahll fadder,” the Princess Saboko said carefully, while her adoring husband swung at anchor off her left elbow.
“I am honored,” Prince Obi said gravely, sounding his most British. “Those are noteworthy marks, indeed. Are you from Ghana?”
“Dat my place,” said the Princess, and Poopy, apparently relaxed from some previous engagement, echoed happily, “Dat her place, everybody. Yassuh, boss, dat her place.”
“I see,” Obifumatta said in the same polite tone. “Whore of the earth,” he added pleasantly in Twe, “you are doing well in the white man’s world.”
“Anus of the universe,” the Princess responded cordially in the same language, “swallow your own excrement.”
“They like each other!” Selena cried ecstatically to the billowing room. “They speak the same language! These two great leaders of Africa are here with us. Oh, God, to think we are making such progress in world relations, right here in my humble flat! Oh, it’s wonderful!”
“It’s the greatest thrill of my life,” the New Yorker said soberly.
“The moment is really historic,” said the Reporter, relighting his pipe.
“I’m going to recommend a very strong editorial next week,” the New Republic announced.
“We shall run one next month,” sniffed the In-Group Quarterly.
“This sort of thing makes up for everything,” Newsweek said fervently. “Really for everything!”
“And now,” Prince Obifumatta said gracefully, “I really must be buzzing off. Tomorrow is a fateful day for Free Gorotoland in the Security Council, you know, and I must rest and prepare.” He enfolded his hostess’ hands in his enormous paws. “It has been delightful, dear lady. I commend to you the Princess Saboko, who will tell you much of our difficult life in Africa now that she is Mrs. Poopy Rhinefetter. My thanks and blessings to you all.”
He waved to the turbulent throng, bowed low, and departed on a burst of approving shouts and applause.
“He’s a dreamboat,” murmured the New Yorker fervently.
“One of the authentic greats of our time,” agreed the Reporter, sucking deep upon his pipe.
“How wonderful the spirit of unity that binds the great black continent together,” the New Republic said gravely.
“With people like that in the world,” asked the In-Group Quarterly, “how can humanity lose?”
“They are both so real,” agreed the Nation. “What an experience!” “And the wonderful thing about it, darling,” murmured Newsweek, “is that these people aren’t dull. They aren’t ordinary Negroes, like ours.”
“Is this actually fresh air we’re breathing out here?” the junior Senator from Iowa asked the Congressman from California as they stood on the stoop in Sutton Place half an hour later waiting for an official U.S. delegation car to work its way through the crush in the narrow street and take them back to the Waldorf-Astoria.
“I’ve about forgotten,” Cullee Hamilton said. He sniffed. “Guess it is
—or about as close as New York gets when it isn’t breathing the kind they were breathing in there. What a crew!”
“Marvelously enlightened,” Lafe Smith agreed, nodding to the Ambassador of Chad and his ample lady, who had emerged beside them into the snowy night. “Prodigiously progressive. Lavishly liberal. A three-thousand-dollar party for a ten-cent cause. Now they can all go home feeling so much better. It’s comforting.”
“What phonies there are in this city,” Cullee said in a curious tone that combined wonder, irritation, and a sort of despairing hopelessness at the prospect of ever breaking through to reality in such an atmosphere. “Six months ago they were giving poor old Terry the buildup and now he’s out in the snow on his ass. Not that I mind,” he added with a grim little smile, “what they do to poor old Terry. But it’s the principle of the thing.”
“The principle is consistent enough,” Lafe said thoughtfully as their car arrived and they got in. “Tear down your own country and its aims, ideals, and purposes as often and loudly as you can. Support any international brigand who attacks it and attempts to defeat it in world affairs. Tell yourself you do these things out of an enlightened liberalism and a genuine patriotism. Have another drink, and congratulate yourselves on your contribution to the forward progress of humanity. Be gay. Be happy. Be smug. Be secure. In your heart you know you’re right! Have another drink.”
“You sound bitter,” Congressman Hamilton said with a chuckle, giving him a friendly slap on the knee as they settled back and the car began its slow crawl through the swirling whiteness that still held the city. The storm that had already died in Washington would linger a while in New York before it moved on out to dissipate somewhere over the lost and lonely reaches of the black Atlantic.
“I am bitter,” Senator Smith said. “All that fuss we went through six months ago over Terry, and now we have to go through all this with his cousin. I must confess the UN gives me a terrible sense of being caught forever in a revolving door.”
