“Mama, that man scares me,” Judy whispered.
“Why, daughter?”
“Because he’s as black as my shoe.”
“He isn’t the first black man you’ve seen, Judy. You already know there are people of many colors, and that’s the way it should be. We whites are in the minority.”
“I see more white people than black ones, Mama.”
“This is only one corner of the world, Judy. In Africa there are more blacks than whites. In China people have yellow skin. If we lived farther south, across the border, we would be exotic creatures; people would stop in the street and stare at your white skin.”
“Just the same, he scares me.”
“Skin doesn’t matter. Look into his eyes. He seems to be a good man.”
“He has eyes just like Oliver’s,” Greg noted with a yawn.
Toward the end of the Second World War, life was hard. Men were still leaving for the front with a certain adventurous enthusiasm, but the patriotic propaganda had not made solitude any more bearable for the women; for them, Europe was a distant nightmare. They were tired of rationing, of keeping the house in good repair, and of bringing up the children by themselves. The widespread poverty of the preceding decade was not to be seen, but neither was there prosperity, and farmers were still roaming the highways in search of good land—white trash, as they were called to differentiate them from others who were as poor as they were but even lower on the social scale: blacks, Indians, and Mexican braceros. Although the Reeveses’ only earthly possessions were the truck and its contents, they were better off than many; they seemed more refined, less desperate; their hands were free of calluses, and their skin, although tanned by life in the outdoors, was not, like the farm laborers’, as tough as a boot sole. When they crossed a state line, the police, experienced in distinguishing subtle levels of poverty, treated them respectfully; they detected no trace of humility in these travelers. They did not force them to unload their truck or open their bundles, as they did farmers run off their land by dust storms, droughts, or the machinery of progress, nor did they insult them, looking for a pretext to use force, as they did with Latinos, blacks, and the few Indians who had survived massacres and alcohol; they merely asked questions about where they were headed. Charles Reeves, a man with the face of an ascetic, burning eyes, and an imposing presence, would reply that he was an artist and was taking his paintings to be sold in some nearby city. He did not mention his less tangible merchandise, in order not to create confusion or find himself forced to provide long explanations. Charles Reeves had been born in Australia and had shipped half around the world in boats captained by smugglers and drug dealers. One night he had disembarked in San Francisco. This is as far as I go, he had decided, but his wanderlust would not allow him to stay long in one spot, and as soon as he had exhausted the city’s surprises he began his peregrinations through the rest of the country. His own father, a horse thief who had been shipped to a penal colony in Sydney, had passed on to his son his passion for that animal and for open spaces: the outdoors is in my blood, he had always said. Enamored of the wide-open country and of the heroic legend of the winning of the West, Reeves painted its vast panoramas, its Indians and cowboys. With his small trade in paintings and Olga’s fortune-telling, the family scratched out a living.
Charles Reeves, Doctor in Divine Sciences, as he always introduced himself, had discovered the meaning of life during a mystic revelation. He would tell how he had found himself alone in the desert, like Jesus of Nazareth, when a Master materialized in the form of a snake and bit him on the ankle—look, here’s the scar. For two days he lay in agony, and just when he felt the icy clutch of death rising from his belly toward his heart, his intellect had abruptly expanded: before his feverish eyes appeared the perfect map of the universe, with all its laws and secrets. When he awakened, there was no trace of the venom, and his mind had entered a superior plane from which he never intended to descend. During that radiant delirium, the Master had commanded him to divulge the Unique Truth of The Infinite Plan, and he had done so with discipline and dedication, despite, as he never failed to inform his listeners, the grave impediments that mission entailed. Reeves had repeated the story so many times that in the end he believed it and had completely forgotten that the scar had been acquired in a bicycle accident. His sermons and books brought in very little money, barely enough to pay for renting the meeting sites and for publishing his works in inexpensive pocket-size editions. He did not taint his spiritual labors with gross schemes for financial gain, as was the case with many of the charlatans traveling around the nation in those days, terrorizing people with the threat of God’s wrath in order to swindle them out of their pitiful savings. Nor did he resort to the offensive practice of whipping his audience into a frenzy of hysteria and then exhorting the foaming-mouthed participants rolling on the ground to cast out the Evil One—primarily because he denied the existence of Satan and was repelled by such performances. He charged a dollar to come in to hear his sermons and another two to leave: Nora and Olga stood guard at the door with a pile of his books, and no one dared pass by without purchasing a copy. Three dollars was not an outrageous sum, considering the benefits his listeners received; they went home comforted by the certainty that their misfortunes were part of a divine plan, just as their souls were particles of universal energy; they were not abandoned, nor was the cosmos a black space in which chaos prevailed: there was a Great Unifying Spirit that gave meaning to life. To prepare his sermons, Reeves used any source of information at hand: his experience and his unfailing intuition, things his wife had read, and gems from his own perusal of the Bible and the Reader’s Digest.
During the Great Depression, Reeves earned a living by painting murals in post offices; in that way he had come to know almost the entire country, from the humid, sweltering lands where echoes of weeping slaves still reverberated to icy mountains and tall forests. But he always returned to the West. He had promised his wife that their pilgrimage would end in San Francisco, where one luminous summer day in a hypothetical future they would unload the truck for the last time and settle down forever. Even after the jobs painting post office murals had dried up, he still occasionally painted a commercial sign for a store or an allegorical canvas for a parish church. At those times the travelers would stay in one place for a while and the children would have the opportunity to make friends. They would brag and boast to their playmates, spinning a web of such yarns and fibs that they themselves would tremble at the terrifying visions: bears and coyotes that attacked by night, Indians that chased them to rip off their scalps, and outlaws their father fought off with his shotgun. Scenes flowed from Charles Reeves’s brushes with astounding facility, from curvaceous blondes holding a bottle of beer to an awesome Moses clutching the Tablets of the Law. Such major commissions, however, came infrequently; it was more usual to sell only the smaller canvases Olga helped him paint. Reeves’s own choice was to reproduce the nature he found so enthralling: red cathedrals of living stone, sere desert flats, and abrupt shorelines, but no one bought what they could see with their own eyes, things that reminded them of the harshness of their fate; why hang on the wall the very thing they could see out their window? So from a National Geographic clients would select the landscape closest to their fantasies, or the picture whose colors went with the worn furniture in their living room. Another four dollars bought them an Indian or a cowboy, and the result might be a war-bonneted redskin on the icy peaks of Tibet or a pair of cowboys in ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots shooting it out on the pearly sands of a Polynesian beach. Olga could quickly copy the landscape from the magazine, then, in only a few minutes, Reeves would draw the human figures from memory and the clients would pay their bill and leave, carrying a canvas whose paint was still wet.
Gregory Reeves would have sworn that Olga had been with them always. Much later he would ask what her role in the family had been, but no one could answer, because by that time his father was dead and she was a
forbidden subject. Nora and Olga had met on a boatload of refugees from Odessa crossing the Atlantic to North America. They had lost touch with each other for many years but were reunited by chance after Nora was married and Olga’s career as a midwife, healer, and fortune-teller was well established. When the two of them were together they always spoke in Russian. They were totally different, one as introverted and shy as the other was exuberant. Nora, long-boned and deliberate of gesture, had a face like a cat and combed her long, colorless hair back in a bun; she never used makeup or wore jewelry, but always looked freshly groomed. On dusty travels where water for bathing was scarce and it was impossible to iron a dress, she was somehow able to keep herself as neat and tidy as the starched white cloth on her table. Her natural reserve increased with the years; little by little she became detached from the earth and ascended to a dimension no one could reach. Olga, several years younger, was a short, sturdy brunette with full bust and hips, a narrow waist, and short but shapely legs. A wild head of henna-dyed hair, in shades of vermilion, fell over her shoulders like an outlandish wig. She was draped in so many strands of beads that she might have been an idol loaded down with baubles, a look that lent authority when it came time to tell fortunes; the crystal ball and the tarot cards budded like natural extensions of her beringed fingers. She hadn’t a trace of intellectual curiosity; she read nothing but the crime reports in the sensationalist press and an occasional romantic novel. She had never cultivated her gift of clairvoyance through any systemized course of study, because she believed it was a visceral talent. You either have it or you don’t, she always said, it’s no use to try to acquire it from books. She knew nothing about magic, astrology, cabala, or other facets of her calling. She barely knew the names of the signs of the zodiac, but when the moment came to peer into her crystal-gazer’s ball or lay out her marked cards, a prediction was always forthcoming. Hers was not an occult science but an art of fantasy composed principally of intuition and shrewdness. She was genuinely convinced of her supernatural powers; she would have bet her life in defense of one of her predictions, and if they sometimes failed she always had a reasonable explanation on the tip of her tongue—usually that what she had said had been misinterpreted. She charged a dollar to divine the sex of a child in its mother’s womb. She would lay the woman on the floor with her head pointing north, place a coin on her navel, and dangle a lead weight tied to a length of fishing line above her belly. If the improvised pendulum swung clockwise the child would be a boy; if the reverse, it was a girl. The same system could be applied to cows and pregnant mares by swinging the weight above the animal’s hindquarters. She gave her verdict, wrote it on a piece of paper, and kept it as irrefutable proof. Once, they returned to a hamlet they had visited several months before and a woman accompanied by an ill-tempered parade of curious onlookers came out to demand her dollar back.
“You told me I was going to have a boy, and look what I got! Another girl! I have three already!”
“That can’t be. Are you sure I predicted a boy?”
“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I know what you told me? That’s what I paid you for.”
“You must have misunderstood me,” Olga replied, unfazed.
She climbed onto the truck, rummaged through her trunk, and produced a slip of paper she showed to everyone present; a single word was written there: girl. An admiring sigh swept through the crowd, including the mother, who scratched her head with perplexity. Olga did not have to return the dollar but in fact reinforced her reputation as a prophetess. There were not enough hours in what was left of the afternoon and part of the night for her to attend to the line of clients waiting to have their fortunes told. Among the amulets and potions she offered, the most requested was her “magnetized water,” a miraculous liquid bottled in crude green-glass vials. She always explained that it was ordinary, everyday water but that it had curative powers because of being infused with psychic fluids. She carried out her bottling operation on nights of the full moon, when, as Judy and Gregory had witnessed, she merely filled the containers, sealed them with a cork, and pasted on labels—but she guaranteed that in the process the water was charged with positive force, and that must have been the case, because her products sold like hotcakes and the users never complained of the results. According to how the water was used, it provided various benefits: drinking it cleansed the kidneys, rubbing it on relieved the pain of arthritis, and massaging it into the scalp improved mental concentration—but it had no effect on affairs of the heart, including jealousy, adultery, and involuntary spinsterhood. On this point the healer was very clear, and she advised every purchaser of that fact. She was as scrupulous about her nostrums as she was in charging for them. She maintained that there is no such thing as a good remedy that is free; she never charged, nonetheless, for assisting at a birth. She enjoyed bringing babies into the world: nothing could compare to the moment when the infant’s head emerged from between its mother’s bloodied legs. She offered her services as midwife on isolated farms and in the poor areas of small towns, especially Negro neighborhoods where the idea of having a baby in a hospital was still a novelty. While she waited beside the mother-to-be, she hemmed diapers and knit booties for the baby; it was only on those infrequent occasions that her boldly painted sorceress’s face grew soft. The tone of her voice changed as she lent support to her patient during the most difficult hours and as she sang the first cradle song heard by the babe she had helped into the world. After a few days, when mother and child were well acquainted, she would rejoin the Reeveses, who were camped nearby. As she said goodbye, she wrote the child’s name in a notebook; it was a long list, but she called them all her godchildren. Births bring good luck, was her brusque explanation for not charging for her services. She was like a sister to Nora and like a grumbling aunt to Judy and Gregory, whom she thought of as her niece and nephew. Charles Reeves she treated like a colleague, with a mixture of petulance and good humor; they never touched, they seemed scarcely to exchange glances, but they acted in tandem not only in the work of the paintings but in everything they did together. It was they who handled the family’s money and resources, they who consulted maps and decided which roads to take; together they went out hunting, disappearing for hours in the deep woods. They respected each other and laughed at the same things. Olga was independent, adventurous, and as resolute as the preacher; she was forged from the same steel. For that very reason she was not impressed by either the man’s charisma or his artistic talent. It was only Charles Reeves’s masculine vigor—which later would also characterize his son, Gregory—that on occasion could subdue her.
Nora, Charles Reeves’s wife, was a being destined to silence. Her parents, Russian Jews, gave her the best education they could afford. She graduated with a teaching certificate, and although she left the profession when she married, she kept up-to-date by studying history, geography, and mathematics in order to teach her children, because the bohemian life they led made it impossible to send them to school. During their travels she read magazines and esoteric books, with no presumption of analyzing what she had read, content to pass on the information to the Doctor in Divine Sciences for his use. She hadn’t the least doubt that her husband was gifted with psychic powers that enabled him to see beyond the veil and discover truth where others saw only shadows. They had met when they were no longer young, and their relationship had always been characterized by a certain decorum and maturity. Nora was not suited for the practicalities of life; her mind floated in otherworldly dreams, more preoccupied with the potential of the spirit than with everyday vicissitudes. She loved music, and the most splendid moments of her uneventful existence had been the few operas she had attended as a girl. She treasured every detail of those spectacles; she could close her eyes and hear the brilliant voices, suffer the tragic passions of the performers, and luxuriate in the color and richness of the sets and costumes. She read the librettos, imagining every scene as part of her own life; the first stories her children hea
rd were of the star-crossed loves and inevitable deaths of the world of opera. She took refuge in this extravagant, romantic atmosphere when she felt weighed down by the vulgarity of real life. For his part, Charles Reeves was a man who had sailed the seven seas, earning a livelihood as a jack-of-all-trades. He had in his seabag more adventures than he could ever tell; he had left behind him a trail of broken love affairs and a few offspring he never heard of again. When Nora had first seen him haranguing a crowd of amazed churchgoers, she was immediately infatuated. She had become resigned to her spinster’s fate, like many women of her generation whom chance had not gifted with a sweetheart and who lacked the courage to go out and look for one. Having been suddenly, and tardily, smitten, however, gave her the courage to overcome her natural shyness. The preacher had rented a hall near the school where Nora taught and was distributing handbills announcing his lecture when Nora caught her first glimpse of him. She was impressed by his noble face and determined air and out of curiosity went to hear him, expecting to find a charlatan like so many that passed through, leaving no trace of their passing but a few faded posters peeling from the walls; she was, however, in for a surprise. Standing before his audience, aided by an orange suspended from the ceiling, Reeves explained man’s place in the universe according to The Infinite Plan. He did not threaten punishment or promise eternal salvation; he limited himself to practical solutions for bettering one’s life, for soothing anguish, and for saving the resources of the planet. All creatures can and must live in harmony, he argued, and to prove it he opened the lid of the boa’s box and let it coil around his body like a fireman’s hose, to the amazement of his listeners, who had never seen a snake so long or so fat. That night Charles Reeves put into words the confused feelings Nora had not known how to express. She had discovered the teachings of Baha Ullah and had adopted the Bahai religion. Those Eastern concepts of loving tolerance, of the unity of mankind, of the search for truth and the rejection of prejudice, had clashed with her rigid Jewish background and the provincialism of her milieu, but listening to Reeves made everything seem simple; now, knowing that this man had the answers and could serve as her guide, she had no need to worry about such fundamental contradictions. Dazzled by the eloquence of the delivery, she overlooked the vagueness of the content. She was so moved that she found the courage to go up to him at a moment when he was alone, with the intention of asking whether he was familiar with the Bahai faith and, in the case that he was not, meaning to offer him the works of Shogi Effendi. The Doctor in Divine Sciences was aware that some of his sermons excited certain women, and never hesitated to seize the advantage of such bonanzas; the schoolteacher, however, attracted him in a different way. There was something pure about her, a transparent quality—true rectitude, not just innocence, a luminosity as cold and uncontaminated as ice. He not only wished to take her in his arms—his first impulse on seeing her strange triangular face and freckled skin—he also longed to penetrate the crystalline surface of this stranger and light the banked fires of her spirit. He proposed that she join him in his travels, and she immediately accepted, with the sensation of having been taken by the hand once and for all time. At that moment, as she envisioned the possibility of surrendering her soul to him, the process of disengagement that would mark her destiny was begun. She left without a single goodbye, with a pouch of books as her only baggage. Months later, when she discovered she was pregnant, they were married. If it was true that a raging fire burned beneath her phlegmatic appearance, only her husband knew. Gregory himself spent his life captivated by the same curiosity that had attracted Charles Reeves in that rented hall in a godforsaken town in the Midwest; a thousand times he attempted to breach the walls that isolated his mother and reach her inner feelings, but as he had never succeeded, he decided that she had none, that she was hollow and incapable of truly loving anyone; at most, she manifested an undefined sympathy toward humanity in general.