The elite here and at the Sanchez and Haya fábrica down the street are Spaniards. Cubans, thus far, are only the masters of a few storefront operations, full of moody Sicilians churning out inexpensive cheroots for those who can tolerate them.
“ LOCAL MERCHANTS OFFENDED, ” Quiroga announces, switching to the other front-page story. “ Colored Troops Behind Disruptions.”
Aragon has never so much as acknowledged his existence, even when he is reading from the more exhortatory of the Cuban papers. In fact, the only Spaniard he can be sure is listening is wizened old Infante, the blade-sharpener, who puts something especially dull and noisy on his wheel if the writer’s opinions upset him.
“Several Tampa merchants have complained of distasteful and sometimes violent incidents involving bands of negro soldiers set loose on the city streets each night. They complain that military officials have not considered the effect on local sensibilities of encamping such troops in the area without adequate supervision. ‘We are left at the mercy of these insolent brutes,’ a prominent merchant accuses, ‘and ask at least that the authorities disarm them before allowing them to leave their bivouacs.’ The murder of a white man by members of the colored 10th Cavalry, prompted by his refusal to serve them in his establishment, has terrorized the inland community of Lakeland recently, and residents there warn of impending retribution. ‘We have plenty of white boys down here ready to fight, and more coming from our Western states,’ continued the downtown merchant. ‘The colored should either be sent home or immediately dispatched to Cuba, where their loss on the battlefield will be no great misfortune.’ ” Quiroga folds the newspaper carefully. “Reprinted from the Tampa Post and Defender.”
A few of the negros americanos stand in the rear talking softly to each other, the ones who tend the wagons and carry crates to and fro. He wonders if they have any Spanish. Most of the Cuban rollers know only a scant handful of English words, and with the Sicilians it is impossible to tell. English is not necessary here in Ybor City.
His facility with the two tongues, his lector’s erudition, has led the Junta to employ Quiroga as an interpreter for their overtures to the American command. But the latest meetings on the vast porch of the Tampa Bay have been polite in protocol alone, the Junta being told in no uncertain terms to tend to their flag-waving and leave military intrigue to the professionals. Undaunted, they have convinced themselves of dire Spanish plots to reveal details of local troop maneuvers, when in fact the schedule of Don Vicente’s trolley service into Tampa City is harder to divine than the open and predictable drilling of Shafter’s regiments. No doubt the Crown has spies in Tampa, feverishly translating the reports of the flock of war correspondents that hovers about the palatial hotel waiting for something, anything, to happen, but Aragon the puro artist is not likely to be one of them.
It shamed him, the American officers smug in their rocking chairs, cocktails in hand. Arturo Quiroga knows when he is being condescended to. He wanted to tell the yanquis to keep their ten thousand men and send instead fifty thousand rifles with twenty rounds of ammunition each, to tell them that with these Cuban patriots would control the country in a week. It made him wish he was a true orator, not just a medium, a channel for other men’s words. Martí—he met the man at the Pedrosos’ boarding house just after the Spanish tried to poison him — Martí should have been on the porch of the Tampa Bay Hotel. “The belly of the Beast” Martí called America in his speech at the Liceo, the speech praised or blamed for starting the Ten Years’ War, “he vivido en la barriga del Monstruo del norte,” and offered no apologies when the quote was picked up by the yanqui papers. He was a little man, slight of build and stature, but the voice, the eyes — he spoke and every Cuban in Ybor became a believer. Quiroga was there listening on the stage with his own brother, Pablito, not much more than a boy, who was moved to buy a pistol and join Martí’s fated expedition of ’95, and gunned down in Dos Ríos at the side of the Apostle.
He is no orator though, Quiroga, only a channel for other men’s words, other men’s ideas. The torneadores have their favorites, books they love to hear again and again, Mr. Dickens and Monsieur Dumas fils prominent among these, but occasionally he is able to widen their scope, to introduce them to authors and ideas of his own choosing. It is a tiny act of persuasion, an act not of revolt but of subversion. “Each serves as he may,” said Martí, standing not an arm’s length away from him in the boarding-house parlor, “and ideas may triumph while weapons fail.” Are they listening, these bowed heads, stacking, pressing, rolling, binding, cutting, fingers ever moving, these human machines spread at the benches below his platform? And if listening, do they intuit a connection, decipher a metaphor, find instruction or reassurance in the lives of those fictive characters? Or is it all just a story, buzzing over their heads?
Quiroga is beginning a novel today, and has some question as to how its content will be received. Don Vicente Martínez-Ybor, though a Spaniard by birth, is said to be sympathetic to La Causa, allowing on the premises the collection of monies to arm and organize the revolt, Quiroga faithfully tithing his ten percent like most of the others. But Don Vicente’s opinions on organized labor are less tolerant, the move from Key West blatantly an anti-unionist stratagem, and though the old man rarely enters the factory these days, his ears, as they say, are long. Freedom, true freedom, is not only a matter of what flag flies above your head. After the star and the triangle are raised over Havana, the struggle will truly begin—
The fingers keep moving.
Quiroga opens the new volume gently, attempting not to crack the spine.
“Germinal,” he announces. “Escrito por Don Émilio Zola. Capítulo Uno.”
A GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT
The White Admiral sits in a wicker chair in his quarters on the flagship of the victorious Fleet. He is dressed in white, with a white head of hair and a thick white moustache, resplendent against the stateroom’s dark, polished wood. This could be a room in a grand hotel, the Olympia so huge that they are barely rocked by the waters of the Bay. The White Admiral crosses his hands and rests them against his middle, while the smaller brown men sit facing him with their hats in their laps, afternoon rays slanting into their eyes from the skylight above. One of them, the exiled General, ventures to speak in careful Spanish.
He congratulates the White Admiral on his great naval victory.
The White Admiral smiles and nods when this is translated for him.
“We have come,” the Admiral says in English, looking the exiled General directly in the eye, “to lift the yoke of Spanish rule from the backs of the Philippine people.”
Diosdado sits behind and to the side of the White Admiral, hired by the Americans to help if the exiled General cannot say what he wishes in Spanish and needs to revert to Tagalog. But Aguinaldo’s Spanish is adequate if not elegant, and Diosdado only listens.
The exiled General expresses his admiration for the grandeur and beneficence of the American nation. It is a courtly dance, between partners who have been only recently introduced.