Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,45

transmitted by mosquitoes,” Emiliano informed her. “Finley gave Reed a batch of mosquito eggs so he could grow them to adulthood and test out his theory. Volunteers were paid to see if they contracted the disease when they were bitten by the grown mosquitoes. Some of the men were drawn from the U.S. Army’s own ranks. Others were new immigrants from Spain. My father was one of the five Cuban volunteers on the first team. He knew there was every chance that he could contract the disease and die. But he wanted to help the doctor find a cure for this terrible scourge, and he said that if he couldn’t have my mother, life would not be worth living anyhow.” Emiliano’s eyes glowed with a look of filial affection and pride. “Obviously, my father survived, but you can imagine how desperate and deeply in love he was to take such a courageous step.”

“I can,” Jackie said softly as she felt a sudden wave of tenderness for Emiliano. She reached out and touched his cheek, wanting him to know how much she appreciated the poignancy of his father’s courage.

Emiliano blushed, but a smile played around his lips, and Jackie knew that her gesture was not lost on him. “Now, do you want to tell me how you could afford to go to law school?” she asked.

“I worked my way through as a cigar reader.”

A cigar reader? Was that like reading tea leaves? Emilio didn’t seem like the fortune-teller type. Jackie looked blank.

“I should have said a cigar-factory reader,” Emiliano corrected himself. “We have a long-standing tradition in Cuba of hiring people we call torcedores, or lectors, as you would say, to help our cigar-factory workers pass the time by reading to them while they roll the tobacco leaves into cigars. The lectors sit in the front of the factory room and read aloud all day long. They start out with the newspaper in the morning, and after that, it could be anything the workers might like—self-help books, magazines, modern novels, or classics.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, but doesn’t that distract them?”

“No, actually, it improves their concentration by keeping them from getting bored, and they’re not allowed to look at the reader or talk to their workmates because quotas have to be met. So instead of distracting the workers, the reading helps them keep on rolling cigars at top speed while it entertains and informs them.”

“Whoever thought of that was brilliant.”

“Ironically, the idea was originally developed for prisons. Nicolás Azcárate—he was an activist and intellectual back in the 1860s—proposed reading to people locked up in jail as part of their rehabilitation. And the link to the cigar industry came about since many prisoners rolled cigars to earn wages.”

“I can see the parallel,” Jackie said, nodding. “In a way, the tobacco workers are like prisoners too, only they’re locked up all day in cigar factories instead of jails.”

“Exactly,” Emiliano said, beaming at Jackie like a schoolteacher who has just gotten the right answer from a student called on in class.

I wish he would smile more, Jackie thought. He’s so gorgeous when he does.

But Emiliano quickly returned to his pedantic mode. “Most cigar workers have never read a book in their lives,” he said. “Many of them can’t even write their own names. The reading gives them their only access to literature and useful information about the outside world.” He smiled again, crookedly this time. “What the factory owners didn’t count on is that reading increases efficiency, but it also encourages revolutionary ideas. The cigar workers are probably the best-informed sector in the labor force right now, and we think they’ll be vital in the fight for independence.”

Jackie tried to imagine what she would read to the cigar workers if she were a lector. “There are so many books to choose from, I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she pondered.

“The workers have their favorites,” Emiliano said. “Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo has been popular for a long time. In fact, the book was read to them so often that they named the Montecristo cigar after it.”

“I was wondering where the cigar got that name,” Jackie said. “My stepfather smokes that brand.”

“Another favorite classic of the workers is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. That’s where the name of the Romeo y Julieta cigar comes from.”

“Who knew cigars had such a rich cultural history?” Jackie said, laughing.

Emiliano’s eyes snapped as if a sudden idea had come to him. “Would you like to see the cigar factory where