Read Online The Infinite Plan by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online Page A

grocery store of her beard and mustache. In that society where not even men had much hair on their faces, the shopkeeper was the butt of savage jokes until Olga intervened, liberating the lady with a poultice of her own invention, the same she used to cure mange. When at last the bearded woman’s cheeks were exposed to the full light of day, sharp tongues said that at least the beard had made her interesting; without it she was just another woman with a face like a pirate. Rumors spread of how, just as Olga could heal with her salves and ointments, she could do harm with her witchcraft, and she was treated with respect. Judy and Gregory often visited her, and from time to time she showed up for Sunday lunch with the Reeveses, but the visits grew further and further apart and finally were completely suspended. Gradually even her name was no longer mentioned, because to do so filled the air with tension. Judy, distracted by her new life, did not miss her, but Gregory never lost touch.
    Charles Reeves went back to earning a living by painting. Working from a photograph, he could produce a quite faithful image of a man; when it came to the ladies, the representation was enhanced: he erased signs of age, modulated Indian or African features, lightened skin and hair tones, and gowned his subjects with elegance. As soon as he had the strength, he also returned to his preaching and to writing books, which he himself printed. Despite the financial strain of keeping The Infinite Plan afloat, he staggered on tenaciously. His audiences were composed principally of laborers and their families, many of whom barely understood English, but he learned several key words in Spanish, and when his vocabulary failed he turned to the blackboard and sketched his ideas. At first only friends and relatives of the Moraleses attended, more interested in getting a close look at the boa than they were in the philosophical aspects of the lecture, but soon they learned that the Doctor in Divine Sciences was very eloquent and that fast as lightning he could draw wonderful cartoons—Imagine, you have to come see how he does it, quick as a wink, almost without looking!—and soon Morales did not have to exert pressure on anyone in order to fill the hall. When Reeves learned of the precarious conditions in which his neighbors lived, he spent weeks in the library studying the laws, and thus in addition to spiritual aid could offer his listeners counsel on how to navigate the unknown seas of the system. Through him, immigrants learned that even though they were illegal aliens they had certain civil rights: they could go to the hospital, bury their dead in the county cemetery—although they preferred to take them back to their home village—and claim countless other privileges they had previously been ignorant of. In that barrio, The Infinite Plan had to compete with the pageantry of the Catholic ceremony, the drums and tambourines of the Salvation Army, the novel polygamy of the Mormons, and the rites of seven Protestant churches, including the Baptists, who submersed their fully clothed converts in the river, the Adventists, who served lemon pie on Sundays, and the Pentecostals, who went about with hands uplifted in order to receive the Holy Spirit. Since Charles Reeves’s course accommodated all doctrines and it was not necessary for followers to renounce their own religion, Padre Larraguibel of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes and the pastors of the other affiliations could not object—although for once they were in accord, and each from his own pulpit accused the preacher of being an unprincipled charlatan.
    From their first meeting, when the Reeveses’ truck had disgorged its contents onto the Moraleses’ patio, Gregory and Carmen, the Moraleses’ youngest daughter, had been fast friends. One look was enough to establish the complicity that was to last throughout their lifetimes. The girl was a year younger, but in