“They have the insurrection in Cuba to deal with.”
“An insurrection fueled by yanqui gold.”
“Nonetheless—”
“They have abandoned us. They have hooked a monster this time, have roused the interest of these overgrown Americans, and have decided to cut bait rather than endure the fight.”
“But we will fight,” they all add. “If only for our sense of honor. If only to stand as men, under our flag and God’s eyes, till the very end.”
And then, enraptured with their own tragic Iberian nobility, intoxicated with sentiment for their beloved archipelago, their Pearl of the Orient, each Spaniard will turn to lay a hand on Diosdado’s shoulder and speak as if to a brother.
“Y tu, amigo—what will you do?”
They do not mean what will Diosdado Concepción do, or Idelfonso Ledesma, the name on the newest cédula the Committee has given him. They worry, they obsess, about what the Filipino people will do.
“So many of our prominent figures,” Diosdado reassures them whenever asked, “have sworn to stand with our mother Spain against these invaders. Look at those already leading volunteer battalions — Pio del Pilar, Buencamino in Pampanga, Paterno, Ricarte, Licerio Gerónimo, the Trias brothers—”
Diosdado has spoken to almost all those that Alejandrino, too well-known by the Spaniards to operate secretly, has not been able to reach. Hurrying about the provinces in his flimsy disguise, General Aguinaldo’s faceless envoy to those he hopes will follow him in a revived insurgency. They are all, perhaps with the exception of Ricarte, practical men, and have deduced that the safest position in the coming upheaval is at the head of a large body of armed men, preferably from one’s home province.
“But will they stand to the end?”
And because he is an imposter, with a radically different notion of what that end should be, Diosdado can look the Spaniards in the eye and say, honestly, “I hope so. With all my heart.”
He raises his binoculars as the American ships form a line, one behind the other, speeding past the Malecón now, the shore batteries silent. The lead vessel is within two hundred yards when the Spaniards begin to fire. One by one the American ships turn hard right and run parallel to the Spanish line, rapid-fire cannons delivering a continuous broadside, balls of smoke and then the booming report over the water. The Regina Cristina and the Don Juan de Austria charge forward and immediately begin to come apart. They are old, badly fitted, wooden-hulled relics facing gray-painted fortresses of steel. It is target practice. The Mindanao is on fire off Las Piñas beach, the Castilla is sinking, only its chimney stack still above water, and the Regina Cristina explodes with a concussion that jolts the solemn watchers all along the sea wall.
The clerk has the side of his hand in his mouth, biting down on it. There are men in the water now, some of them on fire, swimming away from the wrecks or rowing lifeboats, desperate to be out of killing range. The American ships each take a second, then a third and a fourth turn, as evenly spaced as a line of mechanical ducks at a shooting gallery, only they are the sportsmen and the thrashing Spanish marineros the prey.
Most of the Filipino leaders were evasive, or at the best noncommittal, when he spoke to them, noses to the wind.
“Give Miyong my regards,” said Buencamino, who fought for the Span-iards in the ’96 uprising. “Tell him I will do what is best for our people.”
Any of them watching this carnage will have chosen sides by now.
Diosdado has planned for this day, he and his fellow universitarios have longed for it, but at this moment, with the mighty Spanish Navy revealed as a floating scandal, his heart is with the men struggling to keep their heads above the waves. Morning sun flashes off the steel hull of the last American warship in the procession as it turns, then the rolling smoke and the roar of cannons and one of the long lifeboats is blasted into flying splinters, the rowing men simply gone, gone from the world. Somebody beside him is sobbing.
READER
Quiroga sits on his platform, surveying the bowed heads below. They never look up, not even if he pauses for a very long time, not even at the most emotional moments, as when poor little Nell died in Mr. Dickens’s wonderful tale — only a wagging of the bowed heads, maybe a cry of “Ay, Dios!” from one of the women at the back benches, stripping the fibers from the leaves, and the one instance where Fermín Pacheco was so upset that it seemed one of the Musketeers had been killed he slammed his fist down and ruined a Corona. No matter what Quiroga reads or how powerfully he presents it, the work, the chopping and pressing, the rolling and wrapping, the tap-tapping of wooden boxes being assembled, continues unabated, the fingers keep on moving.
“ MUCH CONJECTURE IN LIBERATORS’ CAMP,” he reads in the tone he reserves for newspaper headlines and chapter headings. La Verdad and most of the other Ybor City papers invariably refer to the American force as “los liberadores” unless they choose to use the more fraternal “nuestros hermanos de la Causa.” Don Vicente allows him to read the Cuban papers if he sticks to the reporting, the editorials invariably too inflammatory and likely to injure the sensibilities of the Spaniards at the fábrica, who are, after all, his key employees.
“General Shafter Cites Progress in Organization.”
Still declamatory, but at reduced volume. Quiroga prides himself on delivering the sensation of reading, even for those few illiterates in the factory, prides himself on finding an equivalent for the effects of font and justification. He has a vocal technique to match everything in the arsenal of author and printer.
The fingers keep moving.
“United States Major General William R. Shafter, in an interview granted today from his headquarters at the Tampa Bay Hotel, displayed a cautious but optimistic viewpoint when asked about the readiness of his force for the impending confrontation on Cuban soil. ‘The logistics of transport and supply for an army that has not been employed on foreign shores in one hundred years are daunting,’ he stated. ‘But I am confident we shall overcome them in time to engage the enemy to our best advantage.’ When pressed to verify that Havana will be the primary focus of the assault, he reiterated that all sensible military options remain open. Major General Shafter reassured this newspaper that contacts with Cuban patriots already in arms on the island are being maintained, and that these groups are considered an invaluable part of the liberation process.”
Though the author of the article, a Cuban zealot of his acquaintance named Flores, employs a very high and impassioned style, Quiroga tries to deliver the story in the matter-of-fact tone befitting a news dispatch. He is paid by the workers themselves like any other lector, but he understands he is here at the sufferance of Don Vicente.
Quiroga notes that Señor Aragon is not at his bench. It has been entrusted to him, Quiroga, to “keep an eye” on Aragon, a Spaniard of openly Royalist sympathies. But Aragon is a crafter of perfectos, an artisan paid by the bundle and not by the hour and thus able to stroll out onto La Séptima whenever he wishes. When a special order was presented to the wonderful writer, humorist, and cigar aficionado Mr. Samuel Clemens, it was Aragon who was honored to fashion the puros. Any man who makes nearly three cents per cigar is an aristocrat among workers.