Remembering Crystal’s glowing face now, as he gulped down his coffee, Dilman supposed that she was right. The returning of the nation’s banner to its normal position meant that the thirty-day period of national mourning had ended. On this day, four weeks and two days since he had taken office, the beginning of his second month as President, his fellow countrymen would do an about-face. They would cease looking backward. They would look ahead again, and find him before their eyes. They would begin looking at him, at him and no one else. Not that they hadn’t already done so, he thought wryly.
A vicious editorial, in one of Zeke Miller’s more Southern newspapers, came to mind: “Citizens, keep your Old Glories at half-mast for the rest of Dilman’s term, not in mourning for T. C., but in mourning for the death of our dignity and stature as a nation.” But now Crystal had told him, in effect, that Miller’s advice had not been followed, that this day the flag once more celebrated at full-mast a living President.
Yes, he thought, today it’s official. They would all be looking at him, and he did not like it. He was not ready for their total scrutiny and judgment.
He drank his coffee in haste, knowing that today would be another busy and trying day, even more trying than the ones that had preceded it. When the telephone at his elbow rang genteelly, as befitted its station in the gracious damask room, and then musically rang again, Dilman was not surprised. Lately Edna Foster had been starting off his mornings with these calls from her office because there were more and more messages awaiting his reluctant arrival, acting like so many powerful magnets trying to draw him into a day that he shrank from attending.
With a sigh he gave the saucer back its cup, and answered the telephone before it could begin its third summons.
The caller was Edna Foster.
After assuring her that she had not disturbed him, not at all, that he was dressed and fed and almost prepared to come downstairs, he listened for the inevitable.
“There are several messages, Mr. President-”
“Yes, Miss Foster.”
“Grover Illingsworth called in a terrible panic-I mean for him.”
Dilman enjoyed good humor for the first time this morning. Visualizing Illingsworth in a panic was as difficult as picturing a waxen Prince Albert in Madame Tussaud’s trying to slap a fly off his nose. Ever since Kwame Amboko, the President of Baraza, had arrived two days ago, the tanned, tall patrician Chief of Protocol had been a dominant part of Dilman’s life. Everything about Illingsworth was formidable-he was Back Bay Boston, his English so precise as to sound faintly foreign, his chalk-striped gray suits as impressive as a military uniform, his knowledge of Burke’s Peerage and Almanach de Gotha as thorough as his fluency in French, German, Italian, Spanish was expert-yet he did not make Dilman cower. And this instant, Dilman realized why: because, as Chief of Protocol, Illingsworth regarded all heads of state as equals without regard to their race, religion, or background. When you rode in jet planes or jeeps or on horseback with leaders of millions of people in Ireland, in Spain, in Nigeria, in Iran, in India, in Japan, you charted men by their position in life and not by their color. To Illingsworth, Dilman was one more head of state, like so many black or yellow ones he had known and dealt with, and he was easy and casual with Dilman, and Dilman felt relaxed and natural with him. But this man phoning in a panic? Had Miss Foster taken leave of her senses?
“What is he upset about?” Dilman asked. “Is anything really wrong?”
“Tonight’s State Dinner you are giving for President Amboko. Mr. Illingsworth knows the menu is set, but he just found out Amboko is a vegetarian!”
Dilman laughed. “Is that all? Well, you have the housekeeper prepare a special meal for Amboko. What does a vegetarian eat besides grass?”
“I already asked Mr. Illingsworth. He said he hadn’t had a chance to inquire, but he supposed that a vegetarian could eat anything that, in its original state, would not have bitten back. Anyway, he’s very anxious about this State Dinner, since it’s your first, and Baraza is such a hot spot, and-”
“Miss Foster, you call Illingsworth right back, and have him get in touch with Amboko’s aide-de-camp at the Barazan Embassy, and have him find out exactly what our guest will or won’t eat. Then have him pass it on to Miss Watson, and she’ll take care of Mrs. Crail and the chef. Put in a call for Illingsworth at the New State Department Building right now-I’ll hold-”
Waiting, Dilman tried to review the two meetings that he had already held with Kwame Amboko. In some childlike way, he had expected that the meetings would be informal, lively, easier than those with his own Cabinet members, because both he and Amboko were black, and that would be enough to bind them in quick understanding and agreement. It had astonished him how wrong he had been.
He had found Amboko a young man, no more than thirty-five, a scholarly and withdrawn young man with woolly black hair, suspicious eyes behind rimless glasses, and a flat nose that seemed to cover his countenance from cheek to cheek. His puncture of a mouth was ringed by flabby lips that revealed a quarter of an inch space between his upper center teeth. While Amboko’s accent was Harvard, and he possessed many agreeable memories of his time in the United States, and had tried to model his newly independent democracy along the lines laid out by the United States Constitution, he had appeared unconvinced that the United States was an entirely trustworthy mentor and friend.
Dilman could see that Kwame Amboko was not impressed by a fellow colored man’s ascension to the Presidency in a mammoth white nation where colored men were a minority. Amboko seemed to be suggesting, without saying so outright, that Dilman was merely a front for an undependable white cabal. The African had implied that Dilman was a puppet repeating white men’s words, and therefore could bring no more understanding to the problems of an all-black nation than could his white masters.
Dilman had been able to discover only one common bond between President Amboko and himself. He and his visitor appeared to be equally sensitive to disregard and disrespect from whites. But even this one bond, which might have drawn them closer, was slack, because their sensitivities were activated by different hurts. Whereas Dilman was sensitive to slights reflecting on his human and democratic rights as a man, Amboko was sensitive about the weakness of his small country and the threats of foreign domination. To Dilman, President Amboko was like a longtime prisoner, paroled at last, uncertain that his freedom is real, constantly glancing over his shoulder at the gray walls that had incarcerated him to make sure that someone more powerful than he is not reaching out to pull him back inside. When Dilman had mentioned this to Sue and Nat Abrahams two nights before, Nat had said, “Yes, I think all newly independent nations are at once paranoid and egocentric-they think everyone is against them, and they have no interest in anyone but themselves. Not so long ago the United States suffered those same adolescent growing pangs.”
Dilman’s policy talks with Amboko had been inconclusive. Dilman had been frank about the necessity for a compromise. He would sign America into the African Unity Pact, which the Senate had ratified, he would guarantee continued economic assistance to help industrialize Baraza, if Amboko would be less repressive toward native Communists and the Soviet Union. Dilman felt that this was the least Amboko could do, in order to help the United States pacify Russia.
Doggedly President Amboko had resisted this compromise. True, the Barazan Communist Party was small. True, there was no evidence of subversive activity by the Soviet Embassy in Baraza. True, there was no conclusive evidence that young Barazan natives on cultural exchanges to Moscow were being indoctrinated with Marxist ideas. Yet, despite this, President Amboko felt that his country, in this transitional period, was a fertile field for the rise of Communism. Because Amboko had abolished rule by chieftains, broken up the ancient social structure (which had scattered warring tribes over the grasslands of the plains and through the dense forests of the mountain ranges), supplanted it with not yet effective elected inter-village councils, there was discontent. Furthermore, the per capita income in Baraza was still only sixty dollars a year, and industrialization had hardly begun. The impoverished and unemployed might easily be turned against democracy.