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. To her it was: 'How can I serve you? In the meantime will you honor my poor house by accepting a glass of wine? Or a cup of coffee?'
Barefooted and in a garish dress, Margrethe was a lady - I was riffraff. Don't ask me why this was so; it just was. The effect was most marked with men. But it worked with women, too. Try to rationalize it and you find yourself using words like 'royal', 'noble', 'gentry', and 'to the manner born' - all involving concepts anathema to the American democratic ideal. Whether this proves something about Margrethe or something about the democratic ideal I will leave as an exercise for the student.
Don Ambrosio was a pompous zero but nevertheless he was a relief because he spoke American - real American, not English; he had been born in Brownsville, Texas. I feel certain that the backs of his parents were wet. He had parlayed a talent for politics among his fellow Chicanos into a cushy sinecure, telling gringo travelers in the land of Montezuma why they could not have what they desperately needed.
Which he eventually told us.
I let Margrethe do most of the talking because she was obviously so much more successful at it than I was. She called us 'Mr and Mrs Graham' - we had agreed on that name during the walk here. When we were rescued, she had used 'Grahain Hergensheimer' and had explained to me later that this let me choose: I could select 'Hergensheimer' simply by asserting that the listener's memory had had a minor bobble; the name had been offered as 'Hergensheimer Graham
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