Well, perhaps we were. After a day of picking through the ruins and two days crowded in with other unwashed in a railroad car that was not too clean when we boarded it, could I honestly assert that I was completely free of vermin?
Delousing wasn't too bad. It was mostly a supervised shower bath with exhortations in Spanish to scrub the hairy places throughly with a medicated 9oft soap. In the meantime my clothes went through some sort of sterilization or fumigation -autoclave, I think - then I had to wait, bare naked, for twenty minutes to reclaim them, while I grew more and more angry with each passing minute.
But once I was dressed again, I got over my anger, realizing that no one was intentionally pushing me around; it was simply that any improvised procedure for handling crowds of people in an emergency is almost certain to be destructive of human dignity. (The Mexican refugees seemed to find it offensive; I heard mutterings.)
Then again I had to wait, for Margrethe.
She came out the exit door from the distaff side, caught my eye, and smiled, and suddenly everything was all right. How could she come out of a delousing chamber-and look as if she had just stepped out of a bandbox?
She came up to me and said, 'Did I keep you waiting, dear? I'm sorry. There was an ironing board in there and I seized the chance to touch up my dress. It looked a sorry sight when it came out of the washer.'
'I didn't mind waiting,' I fibbed. 'You're beautiful.' (No fib!) 'Shall we go to dinner? Soup kitchen dinner, I'm afraid.'
'Isn't there some paper work we have to go through?'
'Oh. I think we can hit the soup kitchen first. We don't want green cards; they are for Mexican nationals. Instead I must explain about our lost passports.' I had worked this* out in my head and had explained it to Margrethe on the train. This is what I would say had happened to us: We were tourists, staying in Hotel de las, Olas Altas on the beach. When the earthquake hit, we were on the beach. So we lost our clothes, our money, our passports, everything, as our hotel had been destroyed. We were lucky to be alive, and the clothes we were wearing. had been given to us by Mexican Red Cross.
This story had two advantages: Hotel de las Olas Altas had indeed been destroyed, and the rest of the story had no easy way to be checked.
I found that we had to go through the green-card queue in order to reach the soup kitchen. Eventually we got as far as the table. A man there shoved a file card in front of me, saying in Spanish: 'Print your name, last name first. List your address. If -it was destroyed in the quake, say so, and give some other address - cous * in, father, priest, somebody whose home was not destroyed.'
I started my spiel. The functionary looked up and said, 'Amigo, you're holding up the line.'
'But,' I said, 'I don't need a green card. I don't want a green card. I'm an American citizen returning from abroad and I'm trying to explain why I don't have my passport. And the same for my wife,'
He drummed on the table. 'Look,' he said, 'your accent says that you're native American. But I can't do anything about your lost passport and I've got three hundred and fifty refugees still to process, and another trainload just pulling in. I won't get to bed before two. Why don't you do us both a favor and accept a green card? It won't poison you and it'll get you in. Tomorrow you can fight with the State Department about your passport - but not with me. Okay?'
I'm stupid but not stubborn. 'Okay.' For my Mexican accommodation address I listed Don Jaime; I figured he owed me that much. His address had the advantage of being in another universe.
The soup kitchen was what you would expect from a charity operation. But it was gringo cooking, the first I had had in months - and we were hungry. The Stark's Delicious apple I had for dessert was indeed delicious. It was still short of sundown when _we were out on the streets of Nogales - free, bathed, fed, and inside the United States legally or almost. We were at least a thousand percent better off than those two naked survivors who had been picked up out of the ocean seventeen weeks ago.
But we were still orphans of fate, no money at all, no place to rest, no clothes but those we were wearing, and my three-day beard and the shape my clothes were in after going through an autoclave or whatever made me look like a skid row derelict.
The no-money situation was particularly annoying because we did have money, Margrethe's hoarded tips. But the paper money said 'Reino' where it should have read 'Republica' and the coins did not have the right faces. Some of the coins may have contained enough silver to have some minor intrinsic value. But, if so, there was no easy way to cash it in at once. And any attempt to spend any of this money would simply get us into major trouble.
How much had we lost? There are no interuniversal exchange rates. One might make a guess in terms of equivalent purchasing power - so many dozens of eggs, or so many kilos of sugar. But why bother? Whatever it was, we had lost lit.
This paralleled a futility I had run into in Mazatlán. I had attempted, while lord of the scullery, to write to a) Alexander Hergensheimer's boss, the Reverend Dr Dandy Danny Dover, DD, director of Churches United for Decency, and b) Alec Graham's lawyers in Dallas.
Neither letter was answered; neither came back. Which was what I had expected, as neither Alec nor Alexander came from a world having flying machines, aeroplanos.
I would try both again - but with small hope; I already knew that this world would feel strange both to Graham and to Hergensheimer. How? Nothing that I had noticed until we reached Nogales. But here, in that detention hall, was (hold tight to your chair) television. A handsome big box with a window in one side, and in that window living pictures of people... and sounds coming out of it of those selfsame people talking.
Either you have this invention and are used to it and take it for granted, or you live in. a world that does not have it - and you don't believe me. Learn from me, as I have been forced to believe unbelievable things. There is such an invention; there is a world where it is as common as bicycles, and its name is television - or sometimes tee-vee or telly or video or even 'idiot box' - and if you were to hear some of the purposes for which this great wonder is used, you would understand the last tag.
If you ever find yourself flat broke in a strange city and no one to turn to and you do not want to turn yourself in at a police station and don't want to be mugged, there is just one best answer for emergency help. You will usually find it in the city's tenderloin, near skid row:
The Salvation Army.
Once I laid hands on a telephone book it took me no time at all to get the address of the Salvation Army mission (although it did take me a bit of time to recognize a telephone when I saw one - warning to interworld travelers: Minor changes can be even more confusing than major changes).
Twenty minutes and one wrong turn later Margrethe and I were at the mission. Outside on the sidewalk four of them - French horn, big drum, two tambourines - were gathering a crowd. They were working on 'Rock of Ages' and doing well, but they needed a baritone and I was tempted to join them.
But a couple of store fronts before we reached the mission Margrethe stopped and plucked at my sleeve. 'Alec... must we do this?'
'Eh? What's the trouble, dear? I thought we had agreed.'
'No, sir. You simply told me.'
'Mmm - Perhaps I did. You don't want to go to the Salvation Army?'
She took a deep breath and sighed it out. 'Alec... I have not been inside a church since - since I left the Lutheran Church. To go to one now - I think it would be sinful.'