The factory wasn’t large, by Cuban standards: only a hundred or so workers, enough to roll for one plantation a mile away.

María Isabel had by then breathed so much tobacco dust she developed regular nosebleeds, but the foreman didn’t permit workers to open the window slats more than a sliver-sunlight would dry the cigars. Rollers, allowed as many cigars as they liked, struck matches and took fat puffs with hands tented over flames.

She placed the softened leaf on the layers that preceded it, the long veins in a pile beside. María Isabel ran her tongue along another leaf’s gummy underside, the earthy bitterness as familiar a taste by now as if it were born of her. These men of letters express a warm fondness for workers whose aspirations to such knowledge-science, literature, and moral principle-fuel Cuba’s progress.” “Gentlemen of the workshop,” he said, “we begin today with a letter of great import from the esteemed editors of La Aurora. The lector did the same from his platform over the workers, except in his hands he held not browned leaves but a folded newspaper. At six thirty, when all the cigar rollers sat at their desks before their piles of leaves and the foreman rang the bell, María Isabel bent her head, traced a sign of the cross over her shoulders, and took the first leaf in her hands.