Free The Infinite Plan by Isabel Allende

vestments.
    â€œLook here, son, you need to learn to defend yourself. God helps those who help themselves, as the old saying goes.”
    That very day, the priest, who in his youth had been a belligerent peasant boy, shut himself in the courtyard of the sacristy with Gregory and began teaching him to box—without regard for the Marquis of Queensberry. The first lesson consisted of three inviolable principles: the only thing that matters is to win; the one who strikes first strikes twice; and go straight for the balls, son, and may God forgive us. In any case, Gregory decided that the house of God was less secure than the firm bosom of Inmaculada Morales; his confidence in his fists grew in direct proportion to his flagging faith in divine intervention. From then on, if he was in trouble he ran to his friends’ home, leapt over the patio wall, and ran into the kitchen, where he waited for Judy to come to his rescue. He was safe with his sister because she was the prettiest girl in the school; all the boys were in love with her, and none would have been so stupid as to do anything to Gregory in her presence. Carmen and Juan José Morales tried to serve as liaison between their new friend and the rest of their schoolmates, but they did not always succeed; it was not only Gregory’s coloring that made him stand out: he was also proud, stubborn, and crafty. His head was filled with stories of Indians, wild animals, characters in operas, theories of souls in floating oranges, Logi, and Master Functionaries, none of which either the Padre or his teachers wanted to learn more about. In addition, he lost his head at the least provocation and lashed out with eyes closed and fists flailing; he fought blindly, and he almost always lost: he was the whipping boy for the entire school. Everyone laughed at him and at his dog—a mongrel with short legs and an ugly head—and even at how his mother looked: she wore old-fashioned dresses and was always handing out brochures on the Bahai religion or The Infinite Plan. They saved their greatest scorn for his sentimentality. All the other boys had absorbed the macho teachings of their world: men should be merciless, brave, dominant, loners, fast with a weapon, and superior to women in every sense. The two basic rules, learned by boys in the cradle, were never to trust anyone and never to cry—whatever the reason. Gregory, however, would listen to the teacher telling how seals in Canada were clubbed by fur hunters, or to the Padre recounting the woes of lepers in Calcutta, and with tears in his eyes determine to go north immediately to defend the baby seals or to the Far East to be a missionary. On the other hand, they could beat him silly and he would never shed a tear; his pride was so fierce they could have skinned him alive before he would ask for mercy. That was the only reason the other boys did not consider him a hopeless pansy. Despite everything, he was a happy young boy, with an infallible memory for jokes and the ability to coax music from any instrument—the favorite of the girls at recess time.
    In exchange for the boxing lessons, the Padre required Gregory to assist him at Sunday masses. When Gregory told that to the Moraleses, he suffered a barrage of jokes from Juan José and his brothers—until Inmaculada intervened and said that because they were making fun, Juan José must serve as altar boy himself, and be proud of the honor, praise our blessed Lord. The two friends spent grudging hours in the church, swinging incense, tinkling the altar bells, and reciting parts of the Latin mass under the attentive eye of the priest, who even in his most intense moments watched them with his famed third eye—the one people said he had in the back of his head to see his parishioners’ sins. The priest liked it that one of his assistants was dark-haired and the other blond; he thought such racial integration must please the Creator. Before mass the