What He's Poised to Do

TOMAS TINTA WAS BORN IN THE CITY OF CAMAGÜEY IN CUBA on the ninth day of April in the year 1923. He was the son of a hardworking Spaniard named Antonio Tinta, who was the proprietor of a shoe store in Camagüey. Tomas’s mother, Camilla Garcia, also hailed from Spain, where she had been considered a great beauty. Comfort and love filled the Tintas’ Camagüey home, which was completed by the addition of a baby girl named Sofia in 1926; the Tintas basked in the glow of their mutual love for their children and their success as entrepreneurs, which led them to open three more shoe stores. But then, in 1935, suddenly and without warning, Antonio Tinta was called back to eternity, and all at once things changed. The money that Antonio had earned from his first stores had, the family discovered, gone into opening the later stores, and Camilla, try as she might, could not make sense of the business. Two years after Antonio went into the ground, his beloved wife followed. Sofia went to stay with a cousin in Havana, an elderly devout who believed she could raise girls up into proper women. She did not have the same confidence when it came to boys, and so Tomas was placed in the care of a friend of the family, a country doctor named Ferrer. Dr. Ferrer was of high standing but not of high character. He beat Tomas when he did not listen to him or when he looked at him. Tomas endured a life of great privation and violence. Five years after coming to Dr. Ferrer, Tomas was finally able to rejoice when the doctor followed his dear parents down into the hereafter.

By this time Tomas was old enough to enter a trade school, and so he did. He began training to become a typesetter. As luck would have it, a distant cousin of his mother was a head operator at a company in Havana. The city was a tonic. Work kept his mind sharp, and he was reunited with his sister, Sofia, which brought him much joy. Pleased with his apprenticeship at the printing company, Tomas set his sights on becoming a full type operator, and as the law required an age of sixteen, he falsified documents to that effect. He was a printer, after all. He was awarded his certification.

In the early part of 1940, an event occurred that changed Tomas Tinta’s life forever. It took place on the last day of March, when Tomas, in search of work in Havana’s type shops, met a woman named Yamila Rodriguez. Tomas had a coffee in his hand and spilled it when he saw her. “My hand went limp with fear and hope,” he wrote to her in a letter that was composed on the first day of April. “The apparition had jet-black hair and a ripe little plum of a smile. I could not tell whether she was smiling at me or past me, and then I came to realize that they were one and the same, because I had been expanded by that smile.” This is the first known letter written by Tomas Tinta; it is also the first of more than two thousand letters he wrote to Yamila Rodriguez. In the second letter, written the very next day, Tomas confessed his unconditional love for her. “A man who has discovered love in his heart can pretend to wait before making his declaration,” he wrote. “But that would be like visiting a museum, standing before a masterpiece, and reserving judgment. What would be the point, apart from stubbornness and pride?” According to a letter of April 19, Tomas had revealed his new love for Rodriguez to his sister, who took the news with cautious enthusiasm. “She told me that she had always felt that my heart was a fragile vessel, and as such it should not be filled too quickly for fear of shattering it. I assured her that my feelings have quite the opposite effect, and that they are giving me a strength I could not have imagined. She then asked if she could meet you, and I told her that if she has met me, she has met you, so tightly woven together are our souls. This answer did not satisfy her. Perhaps you can come for dinner one day soon.”

It is not known whether Rodriguez ate dinner with Tomas and Sofia. What is known is that, in early May, she disappeared from Havana entirely. Tomas continued to write letters regularly, and these letters remained passionate and poignant. They were not, of course, mailed, as he did not know her whereabouts. On the first of July, Tomas boarded the ship Leandro and sailed for Miami, Florida. “I do believe I know where you are, my Yamila,” he wrote in a letter during the voyage, “or rather, I believe I know where you are in addition to being in my heart. It is said that a man cannot spend his entire life in pursuit of one goal, particularly if that goal is merely a woman. Merely a woman? This strikes me as a terrific affront. Better to say ‘merely a cathedral’ or ‘merely a gold mine.’”