"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff . . ."
The rich, resonating, calming baritone of the La Lectura began to weave Ernest Hemingway's
The Old Man and the Sea
for us for perhaps the hundredth time, as we Torcedores settled once more into the rhythm of preparing our bunches of tobacco leaves perfectly for the press. We could not have done our demanding work without La Lectura, the reader who sat on the dais on the cigar factory floor, reading to us, first from the daily press and then from classical works—and sometimes, to our great privilege, reciting poetry to us in perfect rhythm to the set movements of our leaf bundling.
In this way he was not only transporting us from the onerous work of bunching the leaves of a perfect Vegas Robaina cigar in the demanding style of the Entubado, rolling each of five varieties of tobacco leaves separately and covering them with the binder Capote leaf before sending the bunch to the press, but also in transporting us beyond the drabness of the factory.
Day in and day out, we gathered in the dusty outskirts of Minas de Matahambre in Cuba's Vuelta Abajo region, famous for its premium cigars, at this dimly lit, factory—more a cavernous open-ended shed than a building—to repeat again and again, the perfect bunching of cigars that each would sell on the European market for more than one of us made in two week's time.
La Lectura was salvation for us—and more for me than any of the other workers here. Only he, Estaban, and I were of Spanish stock. All of the other workers here, peasants all, were Mulattos or Mestizos. I had worked among them for nearly two years in almost complete isolation, and not only because of our different statuses. I chose to live not in the village but in a small, crude shack at the seaside, more than an hour's walk from the factory. Isolation was my protection; I had my secret to bear. I lived in fear that the others would find me out and I'd lose even this existence and have to retreat even farther into the island's interior.
I rested for a moment from the work of the Torcedore, the cigar roller, to gaze at Estaban, La Lectura, the glorious alien presence in this room, delivering culture and transport from this world of care in his rich baritone voice.
Estaban paused in his reading, seemingly sensing someone was watching him. I lowered my face, not wanting him to know it was me. But I slanted my gaze and saw Estaban's eyes stop and link with those of Teotilo, the dark-skinned Mulatto, small and somewhat effeminate of stature and slow of wit runner, who took our bunched tobacco packets from our rolling tables to the cigar presses. Teotilo was barely as old as I was, but he had been working here for ten years or more, since he had been a boy of no more than nine or ten. He was a good-looking young man of pleasant humor, despite the drabness of his never-varied, subsistence life. But, like any of us who could not escape this life, his prime would be over before he reached twenty-five and then, overnight, he would become an old man. In his case, as small-boned and thin and slow-witted as he was, I could not see him living into his thirties. But, then, maybe being a little dense helped him endure this monotony.
He had stopped in the rhythm of his running from factory tables to press and was looking at Estaban in total awe and admiration. Estaban was from Havana, another world altogether from Minas de Matahambre, a paradise, albeit thin veneered, of culture and sophistication and beauty to country peasants who had never been outside their isolated provinces in the remote peninsulas of Cuba. And Estaban was a handsome, well-built man of pure, patrician Spanish stock. This was in addition to being educated and refined and to having that rich baritone voice that had brought him to the highly honored position of La Lectura for one of the best of Cuban cigar brands, the Vegas Robaina, in the heart of the island's tobacco region.
I saw the grin spread across Teotilo's face as he realized that La Lectura had singled him out for attention and a smile. The women rollers near me, Estelle, Maela, and Yelina, all as smitten as Teotilo with the handsome, mysterious, velvet-voiced La Lectura, sighed at the realization that Estaban's smile was not for them and returned to their leaf bunching.
Teotilo seemed almost to melt on the spot in the sunshine of Estaban's smile, and I almost melted with him. I was so, so lonely among these Mulatto and Mestizo peasants, and so, so bored with the monotonous repetition of the leaf bundling. If it wasn't for Estaban—a Spanish city-formed soul like me—and his rich baritone reading connecting us with and transporting me to the outside world, I could not endure this existence for much longer. I would have given anything if that smile had been for me. But I could not even think of it; it brought me too close to the raw edge of my secret, what had banished me here in the first place.
"Ssst. You are lagging behind, Ramon," hissed Ernesto, the shift foreman, one of those barely thirty-year-old countrymen who had already collapsed in on himself in ugliness and ill health, one foot in the grave, the other foot on this factory floor until the day he no longer could stand.
"Take care of that one," Ernesto continued in a hoarse whisper, nodding his head toward the dais. "He does not belong here and may not be here for long, not if the rumors of what sent him out of Havana are true. Best leave him to the half-wit, if the rumors are true."
And then, leaving me to ponder that and to reach for a leaf of the first variety of tobacco to be rolled and bunched into a perfect Vegas Robaina cigar, Ernesto took two steps along the edge of the factory table and cuffed the runner, Teotilo, roughly on the back of head.
"The presses are waiting, dim-wit," he hissed. "Stop gawking and pick up the rhythm."
With that, La Lectura broke his glance at Teotilo, lifted the book in his hand, and began reading in that rich baritone of his, rhythmically, providing the beat for the preordained, precise, movement-efficient steps of the leaf bunching process.
". . . and he had gone eight-four days now without taking a fish."
