“I am as American as April in Arizona. The flora, the fauna, the air of the western states, are my links with Asiatic and Arctic Russia.”

Port-au-Prince has become an amputated town, throbbing in upon itself. Grief muffles the rhythms of this Caribbean port city—tourists gone, trade vanished, a crazed dictator pressing the Haitian millions into misery. Still, amid desolation and dismay, the smell of ripe mangoes is good, sun and salt are good, the sway of Creole girls a? they go about their day is a happy reminder of time that was and time still to come—why not?