Return to Buenos Aires

I had eight wonderful days on Casa Reduncion working in the garden, chanting to the divine mother and Cristo, swimming in the thermal pools, connecting with other cosmic travelers. Then I returned to the city to get my visa to India.

On the way back, I wandered up through Florida, just on the off chance that the street vendors might still be there. They were, or some of them. Selling jewelry, dolls, whatnots, lace knit vests, watches, gems, scarves, anything you might want or need. Or not need, and just happen to buy on an impulse.

My theatrical gem seller was not there, nor the woman I read for before. I noticed two women sitting against buildings with little tables and tarot cards, each with a stool available for customers. Each charged fifty pesos. I went with the second; she also read palms.

About seventy, she had learned palmistry from her Russian grandparents who immigrated to Argentina. She was born here, proudly stating this made her an Argentinean. However, she used an Egyptian deck of cards (which cost thirty pesos more) and a little Buddha along with them.

She called herself “Prof. Camila” on a little flyer which also offered her services to unite couples, return you to your being of love, and to help with your spiritual being, as well as to open doors, read hands, and make predictions with tarot.

She asked me to her house after the reading, and tried to sell me a rock, having given me a little formula with a spell to cast to catch a lover as well.

The drawing she had of a palm that drew me to her table was of a tree of life up the center of a hand. At the top of the tree was a wave of rays that spread out into the mounds under each finger. She explained that from the left to the right, or from the little finger to the thumb, these rays predicted or told the story of one’s past, present, and future.

She told me I had had unhappiness in the past, and someone had just left me, but the portal of happiness was open, and I was about to form a couple in the future (which is why she had given me the stone with the instructions to put in the bottom of a glass of water with honey and perfume, and to repeat the desired partner’s name).

For those of you who have not been following my column, she was correct. My daughter left just under a year ago. I am a displaced housemother/homemaker, an empty nester reconstructing my life after the child has flown the coup leaving me alone.

Actually, the first thing the palm reader had said was I had a long life, and I made her show me where she saw that. Then she showed me the happiness line which was something I did not know — the line verging up from the line drawn down the side of the lunar mount from the base of my palm up to the mount under the little finger.

This line starts about midway between the base where my mind line hits the intuition line and where my mind line crosses over the same intuition line into the mound of Luna, showing I have musical abilities. It crosses the mind line and heads straight up crossing the heart line towards the Saturn mound. She calls this the happiness line.

She reads only the right hand, by the way, and confirmed what I began to find out in my research in February, which was that the preponderance of palmistry here in Buenos Aires — which I had noticed in the South American registry — is not because this was the furthest place gypsies could go when the fled the inquisition, as I had originally imagined, but rather because of the influx of European immigrants who brought their folkways with them.

Indeed, a trip to the Tango National Museum in November had revealed that the highest immigration occurred in the last few decades of the 19th century when there were more newcomers to Argentina than people born here. This was about the time my reader’s grandparents would have immigrated, and about the time my great grandparents also fled Russia, albeit for Ellis Island. I wonder if they too were Jewish and fleeing the czar and pogroms. Too bad I walked away.

I am probably not going to go to her house as she invited me. I am not sure I have enough wits about me yet to wander around this city of fifteen million into strange and unknown neighborhoods alone. She is not on the international palmistry registry; I doubt if she has a webpage. But here is her number, and you can find her on Florida if you come after 5 p.m.: 15-4083-2226; NOGOYA 3508 V. del Parque, COL. 4-47-84-109-14-14. She has been showing up regularly, she says, for 15 years. I did not have time to ask what she did before then. The first number is the phone; what the number after her address on Noyoya is I do not know. You will have to ask a local when you do your research. I am just copying the flyer for you. Have fun and let me know what you find out.