The Infinite Plan (4 page)

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 listening 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.

“Do you remember that black soldier we picked up on the road? Do you suppose he's still alive? Will he be coming home too?” Gregory asked his mother before they left to watch the fireworks display.

Nora did not answer. They were in a city like many other cities, and while her family danced in the crowd, Nora sat alone in the cab of the truck. In recent months the news from Europe had strained her nerves, and the devastation of the atom bomb had been the last straw, plunging her into doubt. There was nothing else on the radio, and the newspapers and movies featured Dantesque images of concentration camps. Step by step, she followed every detail of the atrocities and accumulated suffering, obsessed by trains in Europe that made no stops but carried their cargo straight to the ovens, and by the hundreds of thousands cremated in Japan in the name of a different ideology. I should never have brought children into this world, she murmured in her horror. When a euphoric Charles Reeves brought home the news of the bomb, she had thought it obscene to rejoice over a massacre of such dimensions; her husband seemed to have lost his sanity along with everyone else.

“Nothing will ever be the same again, Charles. Humanity has committed something worse than original sin. This is the end of the world,” she lamented, terribly distraught but maintaining the facade of her customary good manners.

“Don't be silly. We should applaud the progress of science. It's a good thing the bomb is in our hands, not the enemy's. No one can stand up to us now.”

“They will use them again and wipe out life on this earth!”

“The war is over, and we've been spared even worse. Many more would have died if we hadn't dropped the bombs.”

“But, Charles, hundreds of thousands did die.”

“They don't count; they were all Japs.” He laughed.

For the first time, Nora had doubts about the quality of her husband's soul and asked herself whether he was a true Master, as he claimed. It was late at night when her family returned. Gregory was asleep in his father's arms, and Judy held a balloon painted with stars and stripes.

“The war is over at last. Now we'll have butter and meat and gasoline,” Olga announced, radiant, waving a tattered paper flag.

Although nearly a year passed between the time of his mother's depression over the inhumanity of war and his father's death, Gregory remembered the events as one; in his memory, they would forever be related: it was the beginning of the end of the happy days of his childhood. A short time later, when Nora seemed to have recovered and was no longer talking about concentration camps and bombs, Charles Reeves fell ill. From the very first, his symptoms were alarming, but he was proud of his strength and refused to believe that his body could betray him. He felt young; he could still change a truck tire in a couple of minutes or spend hours on a ladder painting a mural without getting a cramp in his shoulder. When his mouth filled with blood he attributed it to a fishbone stuck in his throat; the second time it happened he said nothing to anyone but bought a bottle of Milk of Magnesia and took a spoonful whenever he felt his stomach in flames. Soon he lost his appetite and survived on milk toast, broths, and baby food. He lost weight, and his eyes clouded over; he could not see the road clearly, and Olga had to take over the wheel. She realized when he was too tired to travel any farther, and stopped so they could set up camp. As the hours dragged by, the children entertained themselves running around the campsite, because their mother had packed away their books and was not giving them lessons. Nora had not accepted the fact that Charles Reeves might be mortal; she could not understand why his strength was flagging—his energy was hers as well. For years her husband had controlled every aspect of her life and that of her children; the detailed rules of
The Infinite Plan,
which he administered as he pleased, left no room for doubts. With him she had no freedom, but neither was she besieged by uneasiness or apprehension. There was no reason to be alarmed, she told herself; after all, Charles has never had much hair, and those deep wrinkles aren't new, they were carved by the sun long ago; he's thinner, that's true, but he'll snap back in a few days, just as soon as he begins to eat like he used to; this is nothing but indigestion. “Don't you think he's much better today?” she would say to no one in particular. Olga watched without comment. She did not attempt to treat Reeves with her potions and poultices but limited her care to holding wet cloths to his forehead to lower the fever. As the invalid declined, fear inexorably infected the rest of the family; for the first time they felt they were drifting and realized the extent of their poverty and vulnerability. Nora retreated like a whipped dog, unable to put her mind to finding solutions; she sought consolation in her Bahai faith and left all problems to Olga—including her husband's care. She could not bring herself to touch that sick old man; he was a stranger: how could she possibly recognize him as the man who had charmed her with his vitality? Her admiration and reliance, the bases for her love, disintegrated, and as she did not know how to construct new ones, respect turned to repugnance. As soon as she found a good excuse, she moved into the children's tent, and Olga went to sleep with Charles Reeves—to nurse him through the night, she said. Gregory and Judy became accustomed to seeing her half naked in their father's bed; Nora ignored the situation, preferring to pretend that nothing had changed.