Palace Council Read Online Free PDF Page A

technological century.
    But Belt was uncooperative. He refused Eddie’s entreaties. He would not meet. Eddie was the sort of man who took rejection as a challenge. From Wesley Senior, past master of politics as well as preaching, he had learned that connections existed to be used, that people of power enjoyed doing favors to place you in their debt. So he approached Langston Hughes, who was owed by everyone. Hughes came through, persuading Doctor Belt to meet Eddie for a drink at the Savoy. The physicist refused to talk about his work, and told Eddie that, had he known this was the subject, he would never have accepted the invitation. Eddie said, no, no, he just wanted to hear what it was like to be a Negro scientist. Belt eyed him disdainfully from behind thick glasses. Science was science, he said, missing the point. There was not Negro science and white science, there was good science and bad science. Belt signaled the waiter for another Scotch. He was a distant, paunchy man, soft and dark like a chocolate Santa. Belt drank heavily but not sloppily. He drank the way men drink to forget their burdens, not to unload them. He was in town to visit friends, he said. He had missed Phil’s funeral. He would pay his respects to the widow before she returned to South Carolina. Eddie kept trying to ask about science. Belt ignored him. He spent a lot of time looking at the door, as if expecting a friend, or perhaps an enemy. The Savoy was one of the most famous music halls in New York. There were as many white guests as black. A couple of movie stars had a table near the band. Smoke hung heavily in the air. The waiters did you a favor by fetching your order. Belt said people were nicer back home, but never said where home was. Somebody dropped a tray of dishes and Belt was on his feet, shaking. He looked around, embarrassed, and headed for the door.
    â€œWhat are you afraid of?” Eddie asked in the lobby, where Belt was buying cigarettes at the stand. The scientist said nothing. Eddie tried again. “Does it have to do with what happened to Philmont Castle?”
    Belt focused on him at last, the eyes moist and rejecting behind the thick glasses. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he said, then glanced over his shoulder.
    Eddie tried again. “Does it have something to do with the cross?” He tried to remember his father’s letter. “The Cross of Saint Peter?”
    A flicker in the dark, constrained face. Nothing more. But the physicist definitely reacted. Then he snickered, and the disdain was back. “What is this, some kind of test? The devils are really scraping the bottom of the barrel if they had to send somebody like you.”
    â€œWhich devils are these?”
    Doctor Belt said nothing. He turned contemptuously away, then swung, briefly, back. “Tell them to stay away from me,” he said, and left.
    (II)
    T HE SECOND of the three events that set Edward Wesley Junior upon his path occurred in July of that same year, 1955—in the larger history, a few days after Disneyland opened its doors for the first time out in California; and, in Eddie’s personal history, on the day of Aurelia’s fabulous wedding to Kevin Garland. Eddie at first planned not to attend, but his younger sister, Junie, persuaded him. Junie was a law student at Harvard, the only woman of the darker nation in her class. From the time they were small, Junie had been her big brother’s frequent muse.
    â€œWhat are you trying to say by staying away?” she demanded, when he called her long-distance on a neighbor’s phone. “That you love Aurelia? Everybody in Harlem knows you love Aurelia. So all you’re really saying is you’re too much of a cad to wish her well.”
    Eddie, feeling trapped, took refuge in silly humor. “What if I lose control and punch Kevin?”
    â€œDon’t even joke about that.” He could feel his sister’s shudder over the