My mind went back to 1917. I thought of the Salient, the bombers, that day with Teague. It was just my luck to fit two European wars into my four decades. How could all this be happening again? And so soon?… Then, Christ! Karl-Heinz! What about Karl-Heinz? Then I felt bitterly sorry for myself, alone in this noisy, noisome border town. What the hell was I doing here? I grew angry. I strode back round to the consulate, but it was shut. I had a vicious argument with an impassive concierge. I left a note urging Lexter to process my application with the greatest speed as I wished to return to Britain at once.
It was a curious day. I drove back to Rincón and packed my suitcases. Then I unpacked them. That evening I went down to the Cervecería Americana. The place was full of glum Germans. As I sat on the terrace and talked with them I suddenly realized that notionally we were enemies. To cope with this absurdity I drank too much tequila añeja and took a hundred-dollar bet with an affable man called Ramón Dusenberry that the U.S.A. would declare war on Germany before the end of November. When I left the cervecería at 2 A.M. it was still loud with the noise of morose disputation.
I confess the events of the next week or so are hard for me to untangle. My journal entries are undated.
Wednesday. To Tijuana. Lexter says he will do everything he can to expedite matters. Back to Rincón. Cervecería at night. F. says Hitler will sue for peace once he has Poland.…
Friday. To Tijuana. Lexter — no news. Cable Father for money. Telephone Lori to pass on message to the Coopers and Monika — no reply from AMPR.…
Tuesday. Herr and Frau K. return L.A.
Saturday. Americana — Dusenberry.
Sunday. Pack up. Settle bill—330 pesos.…
Monday. Cable AMPR for advance on salary. No news, Lexter. Cannot understand delay. Return Rincón. New room. Unpack …
Wednesday. Dusenberry bets me that Russia will ally with Germany against Britain and France — fifty dollars.… [Here there is an unexplained gap of one week.]
Wednesday. Lexter says my request for visa renewal has been turned down.
This was an astonishing blow. I had been in Mexico for getting on for three weeks, and despite the unprecedented delay I had never once suspected that I would not be allowed to return to the United States. Lexter was apologetic but formal. He declined to explain why I had been refused entry. His sympathy for me, his decent pro-European liberal sentiments, disappeared behind apparatchik reserve. As symbol of my plight he naturally became my enemy. Suddenly I found his mop of hair an offensive affectation. Shouldn’t a man of his age, I suggested to him, stop pretending to be a college kid? He called a Marine in to throw me out. I apologized, said I was overwrought; my country was at war; I just wasn’t myself. We sat down again. It must be a simple mistake, he said. He would investigate further. He advised me to do what every frustrated emigrant did: be patient and reapply.
I took his advice. There was one other course of action I could have followed: catch a boat to England from a Mexican port. But I was now running into the other eternal problem — money. Brodie McMaster’s chauvinistic loyalty to a fellow Scot had its limits. He sent me one week’s salary in lieu of notice. I was unemployed. The Coopers wrote and said that without the rent they could only hold my apartment until the end of October. Soon I would be homeless. I left the hotel and moved into a clapboard cottage behind the Vera Cruz. It cost sixteen pesos a day, cheaper than a double room at the Max. After a week there and more fiscal calculations, I transferred to a single room in the main hotel that bore an unfortunate resemblance to my cell at Weilburg, but it cost only eleven pesos a day.
My life took on a strange routine. I ate a modest breakfast at the Vera Cruz—pan dulce and coffee. I wrote letters in the morning. I lunched in a cheap restaurant (surrounded by suspicious monoglot locals — what was this gringo with his old newspaper doing here every day eating refritos eggs and rice with a bottle of Garci-Crespo mineral water?). After lunch I took a long siesta. In the evening I bought a couple of lardy quesadillas—hash and cheese — from a roadside stall on my way down the avenida towards the Americana. There, I tried, and usually succeeded, in getting mildly drunk on white tequila with beer chasers. I became a regular. There were always new émigrés to engage in conversation, but I am afraid people tended to avoid me after a couple of nights’ of my company. I could only talk about one subject and at length — the conspiracy to prevent me from entering the U.S. I had become a bore. Even Monroe Smee (whom the Anti-Nazi League had sent down with some money) stayed only twenty-four hours.
Three times a week, then once a week to economize on gasoline, I drove into Tijuana. I visited the consulate, where I inquired about the progress of my reapplication, and changed the books I was generously allowed to borrow from the small eclectic library they had there. Lexter was a thoughtful decent man, but even he admitted that this delay was more than bureaucratic ineptitude. But he couldn’t clarify matters any further. After that I went to the post office to post letters and collect mail, bought whatever English-language newspaper was available and drove back to Rincón and my drear accommodation at the Vera Cruz.
On Christmas Day 1939 I motored up to Tecate, parked the car in some scrub and walked several miles across the border to Potrero, where sanity returned and I retraced my steps. So many official inquiries had been instigated on my behalf, my particulars had been forwarded to so many government agencies, that I realized I must be the best documented would-be immigrant the U.S.A. had ever seen. I would be lucky to last a week before being deposited back in Tijuana with all hopes gone. And Lexter would never forgive me. He was my only hope. I simply had to be patient.
My begging letters kept me alive, hovering above the poverty line. Lori, the Coopers, Monika, the Hitzigs, the Gasts and the Anti-Nazi League subsidized me in my exile. All my Californian gloss disappeared. I grew thin again, my hair was cut rarely and my clothes were grubby. My friends corresponded regularly, sent me food, newspapers and magazines. Even my father wrote. I had cabled him for fifty pounds. He replied, saying he would see what he could do — then, silence. My letters to Eddie Simmonette were marked “return to sender.” To my eyes it looked suspiciously like Eddie’s handwriting on the envelope, but I couldn’t swear to it.
I felt as if I were in quarantine, a dog suspected of rabies. I was free, but I was not free. Free in Mexico to do what I pleased as long as it was not the one thing I desired — leave. I caught something very nasty from a charming whore in Tijuana that cost me a precious twenty Yankee dollars to have put right. I didn’t visit Lexter for two weeks out of pure shame. Those pale Baptist eyes of his saw everything, I knew.
My diary:
Rincón. February 1, 1940. The fiesta of El Rescate, in honor of our Lord of the Rescue. I lit a candle in the church of Our Lady of Los Dolores. It is all too horribly apt. The battery on my car has gone flat and I can’t afford a new one. Assets: one immobile 1935 Mercury. Two suitcases of worn clothes. One camera. $27.55. The frightening thought strikes me that I could keep going like this indefinitely. Years may pass. Enough money to hang on in Rincón, but not enough to escape. If only Thompson would help. I hate that fat sanctimonious bastard! I think I understand the poverty trap. You have to have a little money, a little self-esteem, a little respect for authority. That way you don’t starve, beg or steal. And that way you never do anything.