Earl Fumer wrote to me all fall and winter from the north. He told me how new and rough the towns were – the roads recently cut, lumber stacked along roadsides, the smell of salt and boatloads of fish on the coast, of s***h piles and smoke in the interior. He drew arrows to the smudges of sap that marked the paper and asked me if I would holiday with him in Jasper, in the northern Rocky Mountains. Instead, I left with the family – by train to Los Angeles, then by ship to Havana. We were there two weeks, during which Ofelia’s health improved enough that she could sit poolside, shaded, and instruct Sveva on how to swim. Afternoons, the duke would take Sveva on tours of the city – art galleries, a sugar factory – and I stayed behind as Ofelia rested. More of Earl Fumer’s letters were waiting
