Nora grew accustomed to depending on her husband, more and more becoming a passive creature who fulfilled her duties by reflex as her soul escaped worldly concerns. So strong was Reeves’s personality that to make space for him, she herself gradually faded from the world, turning into a shadow. She participated in the routines of their communal life, but she brought little to the energy of the small group; her only contributions were the children’s studies and matters of hygiene and good health. She had come to the United States with a boatload of immigrants, and during her first years in the country—until her family had worked their way out of adversity—she was minimally and poorly nourished. That period of poverty had burned the pangs of hunger into her memory for all time; she had a mania for nutritious food and vitamin pills. She communicated some aspects of Bahaism to her children in the same tone she used for teaching them to read or to name the stars, without the least spirit of conviction. Only when she spoke of music did she grow passionate; those were the only times her voice was vibrant and color lighted her cheeks. Later she would agree to raise her children in the Catholic Church, which was the standard in the Hispanic barrio where they were to live. She understood the need for Judy and Gregory to blend into their surroundings; they had enough to bear with differences of race and custom without being further mortified by unknown beliefs like her Bahai faith. Besides, to Nora all religions were basically the same. She was concerned only with morality, and anyway, God was beyond human comprehension. It was enough to know that heaven and hell are symbols of the soul’s relation to God: proximity to the Creator leads to good and to gentle pleasures, while distance produces evil and suffering. In contrast to her religious tolerance, she would yield not an inch in principles of decency and courtesy; she washed out her children’s mouths with soap if they used profanity, and she curtailed their food if they did not hold their fork properly. All other punishments were the father’s responsibility; she merely identified the offense. One day she caught Gregory stealing a pencil from a store and informed her husband, who made the boy return it with apologies and then, before Nora’s impassive gaze, burned the palm of his hand over a blazing match. For a week Gregory had an open sore. He soon forgot the reason for the lesson and the person who had inflicted it; all that stayed in his mind was his rage against his mother. Many decades later, when he was at peace with his memory of her, he could be quietly grateful to her for the three major gifts she had given him: love for music, tolerance, and a sense of honor.
The heat is unrelenting, the ground is parched; it has not rained since the beginning of time, and the world seems to be covered with a fine reddish powder. A harsh light distorts the outlines of things; the horizon is lost in a haze of dust. It is one of those nameless towns like so many others: one long street, a café, a solitary filling station, a jail, the same wretched shops and wood houses, and a schoolhouse with a sun-faded flag drooping overhead. Dust and more dust. My parents have gone to the general store to buy the week’s supplies; Olga has been left to look after Judy and me. No one is in the street; the shutters are closed: people are waiting for it to cool down before they return to life. My sister and Olga are drowsing on a bench on the porch of the store, dazed by the heat; they have given up brushing away the annoying flies and are letting them crawl over their faces. The unexpected smell of burnt sugar floats on the air. Large blue-and-green lizards lie motionless in the sun, but when I try to catch them they dart away and hide beneath the houses. I am barefoot, and the earth is hot on the soles of my feet. I am playing with Oliver; I throw him a worn rag ball, he fetches it, I throw it again, and in this game I wander away from the store. I turn a corner and find myself in a narrow alley, partly shaded by the unpainted eaves of the houses. I see two men. One is heavyset, with bright pink skin; the other has yellow hair. They are wearing work overalls; they are sweating, their shirts and hair are soaking wet. The fat one has cornered a young black girl; she must be no more than ten or twelve. He is holding her off the ground in the crook of one arm, and he has clamped his free hand over her mouth. She kicks once or twice and then falls limp; her eyes are red from her effort to breathe through the hand that is suffocating her. The second man has his back to me and is struggling with his overalls. Both are very serious, focused, tense, panting. Silence. I hear the men’s puffing and the beating of my own heart. Oliver has disappeared, along with the houses; there is nothing but the threesome suspended in the dust, moving in slow motion, and me, paralyzed in my tracks. The man with the yellow hair spits twice in his hand, moves closer to the girl, and parts her legs, two dark toothpicks, dangling limply. Now I can’t see the girl; she is crushed between the heavy bodies of the rapists. I want to run; I am terrified, but I also want to watch. I know that something fundamental and forbidden is happening, I am a participant in a violent secret. I can’t breathe, I try to call my father, I open my mouth but nothing comes out; I swallow fire, a scream fills me inside, I am choking. I must do something, it is in my hands, the right action will save us both, the black girl and me; I am dying but I can’t think of anything to do, I can’t move a muscle, I have turned to stone. At that instant I hear my name in the distance—Greg, Greg!—and Olga appears at the mouth of the alley. There is a long pause, an eternal minute in which nothing at all happens; all is still. Then the air is vibrating with a long scream, Olga’s hoarse and terrible cry, followed by Oliver’s barking and the voice of my sister, like the shrill of a rat, and finally I am able to draw a breath and I begin to scream too, desperately. Surprised, the men drop the girl, who as her feet touch the ground darts away like a frightened rabbit. We stare at one another; the man with the yellow hair is holding something purple in his hand, something that seems detached from his body, something he is trying to force inside his overalls. Finally they turn and walk away. They are not perturbed; they laugh and make obscene gestures. How would you like a little yourself, you dumb bitch? they yell to Olga. Come here and we’ll give you a sample. The girl’s underpants are lying in the street. Olga grabs Judy and me by the hand, calls the dog, and we hurry, no, we run, toward the truck. The town is waking up, and people are looking at us.
The Doctor in Divine Sciences was resigned to disclosing his ideas to uncouth farmers and poor laborers, who were not always capable of following the thread of his complicated lecture; he did not, nonetheless, lack for followers. Very few attended his sermons for reasons of faith. Most came out of simple curiosity; there were few diversions in those parts, and the arrival of The Infinite Plan did not pass unnoticed. After setting up camp, Reeves would go out to look for a place to speak. It was free only if he knew someone; if not, he had to rent a hall or clean out a place in a tavern or barn. As he had no money, he used Nora’s pearl necklace with the diamond clasp, her only legacy from her mother, as security, with a promise to pay at the end of each meeting. In the meanwhile, his wife would starch her husband’s shirtfront and collar, press out his black suit—shiny from wear—polish his shoes, brush his top hat, and set out the books, while Olga and the children went from house to house distributing handbills inviting everyone to “The Course That Will Change Your Life: Charles Reeves, Doctor in Divine Sciences, Will Help You Find Happiness and Win Prosperity.”
Olga would bathe the children and dress them in their Sunday best, while Nora dressed in her blue dress with the lace collar, severe and out of style, but still decent. War had changed how women dressed; now they wore tight knee-length skirts, jackets with shoulder pads, platform shoes, elaborate pompadours, and hats trimmed with feathers and veils. In her nunnish dress, Nora looked as prim as someone’s grandmother from the first years of the century. Olga, for her part, was not one to follow fashion, but prim is not a word anyone would ever use in regard to her clothes: she was flamboyant as a parrot. In any case, people in those small towns knew nothing about the niceties of fashion; they worked from sunup to sunset, drew pleasure from a drink or two of whiskey—still prohibited in some states—a rodeo, the movies, a dance from time to time, and listen
ing to war reports and baseball games over the radio; it was easy to see why they were attracted by a novelty. Charles Reeves had to compete with revivalists preaching the new awakening of Christianity, a return to the fundamental principles of the twelve apostles and a literal reading of the Bible, evangelists who crisscrossed the country with their tents, bands, fireworks, gigantic illuminated crosses, choirs of brothers and sisters decked out like angels, and loudspeakers that bruited to the four winds the name of the Nazarene, exhorting sinners to repent because Jesus was coming whip in hand to drive the Pharisees from the temple, and calling upon them to combat satanic doctrines such as the theory of evolution, the evil invention of a heretic named Darwin. Sacrilege! Man is made in the image and likeness of God, not monkeys! Buy a bond for Jesus! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! blared the loudspeakers. Churchgoers flocked to the tents, looking for redemption and entertainment, all of them singing, many dancing, and from time to time someone writhing and gasping in ecstasy, while the collection trays filled to overflowing with the gifts of those hoping to buy a ticket to heaven. Charles Reeves offered nothing so grand, but his charisma, the strength of his conviction, and the fire of his discourse were persuasive. It was impossible to ignore him. Occasionally someone would walk forward to the platform, begging to be freed from pain or unbearable remorse; then Reeves, without the least trace of hypocrisy, simply, but with great authority, would lay his hands on the head of the penitent and concentrate on easing his suffering. Many thought they saw sparks shooting from his palms, and those who had benefited from his treatment swore they had been shaken by an electric shock to the brain. For most in the audience, it was enough to hear him once to want to sign up for his classes, to buy his books, and become a follower.
“Creation is governed according to the rules of The Infinite Plan. Nothing happens by chance. We human beings are a fundamental part of that plan because we are located on the scale of evolution between the Masters and the rest of the creatures; we are intermediaries. We must know our place in the cosmos.” So Charles Reeves would begin, galvanizing his audience with his deep voice, standing solemnly beneath the orange strung from the ceiling, garbed from head to toe in black and with the boa curled around his feet like a thick coil of ship’s rope. The creature was totally apathetic and unless directly provoked never moved. “Listen closely, so you can understand the principles of the The Infinite Plan. Even if you don’t understand, it won’t matter; all you have to do is follow my commandments. The entire universe belongs to a Supreme Intelligence; that Intelligence created it and is so immense and perfect that no human being can ever comprehend it. Beneath the Supreme Intelligence are the Logi, representatives of the light who are charged with carrying particles of the Supreme Intelligence to all the galaxies. The Logi communicate with the Master Functionaries, through whom they send the messages and rules of The Infinite Plan to man. The human being is composed of the Physical Body, the Mental Body, and the Soul. Most important is the Soul, which is not present in the earthly atmosphere but operates at some distance from it; it is not within us, but it dominates our lives.”
At this point, when his listeners, somewhat bewildered by his rhetoric, began to exchange glances of fear or mockery, Reeves would electrify his audience anew by pointing to the orange to explain the nature of the Soul floating in the ether like a cloudy ectoplasm that could be seen only by those expert in the occult. To prove it, he would invite several persons from the crowd to study the orange and describe its appearance. Invariably, they would describe a yellow sphere, that is, a common orange, whereas Reeves saw the Soul. Then he would introduce the Logi, which were in the hall in a gaseous state and therefore invisible, and explain that it was they who kept the precise machinery of the universe in working order. In every age and every region the Logi elected Master Functionaries to communicate with man and divulge the plans of the Supreme Intelligence. He, Charles Reeves, Doctor in Divine Sciences, was one of those men. His mission consisted of teaching the guidelines to mere mortals; once he had completed that stage, he would pass on to become part of the privileged contingent of the Logi. He stated that every human act and thought is important because it has weight in the perfect balance of the universe and that therefore each person is responsible for fulfilling the commandments of The Infinite Plan to the letter. He then enumerated the rules of minimal wisdom, through which the monstrous errors capable of derailing the project of the Supreme Intelligence could be avoided. Those who did not capture all this in a single conference could take the course of six sessions, in which they would learn the rules of a good life, including diet, physical and mental exercises, controlled dreams, and several systems for charging the batteries of the Physical Body and the Mental Body, thus assuring themselves of a dignified life and peace of Soul after death.
Charles Reeves was a man ahead of his time. Twenty years later several of his ideas would be predicated by various spiritualists up and down California, the last frontier, the goal of adventurers, desperadoes, nonconformists, fugitives from justice, undiscovered geniuses, impenitent sinners, and hopeless lunatics, a place where even today every possible formula for avoiding the anguish of living proliferates. It is not Charles Reeves, however, who must bear the blame for having initiated bizarre movements. There is something in the air of the place that agitates the spirit. Or maybe those who came to populate the region were in such a hurry to find their fortune—or easy oblivion—that their soul lagged behind, and they are still looking for it. Uncounted charlatans have profited from this phenomenon, offering magic formulas to fill the painful void left by the absent spirit. At the time Reeves was preaching, many in that land had already found a way to get rich by selling intangible benefits for the health of the body and solace of the soul, but he was not among them; he honored austerity and decorum, and thereby earned the respect of his followers. It was Olga who had glimpsed the possibilities for turning the Logi and the Master Functionaries to more commercial ends, perhaps by acquiring a site and starting their own church, but neither Charles nor Nora ever evinced any enthusiasm for that covetous idea; for them, divulging their truth was quite simply a heavy and inescapable moral burden, and never an excuse to peddle cheap merchandise.
Nora Reeves could point to the exact day she lost faith in human goodness, the day her unspoken doubts about the meaning of life had begun. She was one of those people who are able to remember meaningless dates, so with even more reason the event of dropping two cataclysmic bombs, signaling an end to the war with Japan, was burned into her brain. In years to come she dressed in mourning for that anniversary, just when the rest of the country was throwing itself into celebrations. She lost interest even in those closest to her; it is true that maternal affection had never been one of her principal characteristics, but from that moment on she seemed to divorce herself entirely from her two children. She also withdrew from her husband, but so discreetly that he found nothing to reproach her for. She isolated herself in a secret cloister, where she remained untouched by reality until the end of her days; forty-some years later, without ever having participated in life, she died convinced that she was a princess of the Urals. On that fateful day, people celebrated the final defeat of the enemy with slant eyes and yellow skin, as months earlier they had rejoiced at the defeat of the Germans. It was the end of a long combat; the Japanese had been vanquished by the most powerful weapon in history, one that in only a few minutes killed one hundred thirty thousand human beings and condemned that many more to a drawn-out agony. The news of what had happened produced a horrified silence through the world, but the victors blocked out visions of charred bodies and pulverized cities in a tumult of flags, parades, and marching bands, anticipating the return of their fighting men.