"How would you like to spend the weekend in the country?" asked Ilsa. "Sylvia and Tom are going up to the summer house, and we're invited to go along."
Sylvia was Ilsa's best friend and Tom was her fiancee. The summer house belonged to Tom's family. It was located right in the traditional heartland of Calandria---the idyllic ancestral rain forest. It was a part of the country that I hadn't seen yet but very much wanted to.
I don't know why, but I've always felt a bit intimidated by Sylvia. Perhaps it's because she is so strikingly beautiful, with shoulder-length black hair and such a piercing intensity. Perhaps it's because she is so direct in her manner. She often cuts through the standard courtesies with her own kind of shorthand, assuming congeniality without always working hard to maintain it. I always had a hard time knowing where things stood between the two of us. But Ilsa loved her like a sister, and so that is how I'd come to think of her, as an exotic and somewhat eccentric member of the family whom I could abide, and even appreciate, without always having to understand.
"It sounds like fun," I replied. "Let's go, do you want to?"
We all rode up together on the Friday morning train. I'd heard about the large swaths of untouched rain forest, but I had no idea how extensive and green they seem when you chug through them for mile after mile. We passed only a few clearings and villages, and finally got off at Tom's station. We were able to take a jitney to within about half a mile of the summer house, and we had to walk the rest of the way.
The summer house consisted of a roofed kitchen and sitting room with electricity and running water, two semi-detached, thatched bedrooms, and a large, partially covered veranda that looked down the steep hillside toward the river below. It sat in a small clearing surrounded on all sides by the forest. Fuchsia and hibiscus grew in abundance. The furnishings were rustic, but comfortable.
After Tom opened up the house, our first chore was to sweep the veranda and tidy up the clearing. Then Tom and I collected some firewood while Sylvia and Ilsa organized the kitchen and set out lunch. Tom had a few things to attend to in the village that afternoon. We could go along if we wanted. There was also a nice waterfall within hiking distance. I wanted to see the waterfall; Ilsa preferred just to stay at the summer house and relax. We finally decided that Sylvia and I would visit the waterfall, and then later the three of us would join Tom in the village for supper.
After lunch, Tom changed into the local costume of shorts and sandals, gave Sylvia a quick kiss, and headed off. Most people wore shorts or a skirt in town, Sylvia told us, although both men and women usually went bare chested. But out here in the forest the sartorial rules were less rigid. A lot of people still went about as their ancestors had done, without any clothes at all. There was really no need for them. The insects were not harmful and the temperature was almost always comfortable. If it did rain from time to time, you were better off without clothes anyway.
Ilsa took off her top, and Sylvia took off her top and her bottom. She had long legs and neatly trimmed pubic hair. Her breasts were not as large as Ilsa's, but large enough to droop under their own weight like two ripe gourds. Her areolas were almost as large as the circle of your thumb and finger, and her nipples rose in their centers so gently that they were barely noticeable.
I had seen Sylvia naked before at Ilsa's. Calandrians are not self conscious about being naked in front of others, and they are used to having others be naked in front of them. But I was only a neophyte in both of these skills, and my nonchalance was usually more affected than natural. I knew I shouldn't stare, but I found it hard not to peek. When one is conversing with the friend of a friend, who is breathtakingly gorgeous and absolutely nude, where does one direct one's eyes? With Sylvia I had always been so afraid of committing a faux pas that I bent over backwards to appear disinterested and proper, with the result that I was often curt and standoffish.
But now the two of us were heading up the trail together wearing nothing but sandals. The way back up to the road was narrow, so I led. Then we walked along the road for a while side by side. Even though we didn't meet another soul, the road felt public and exposed. At least when one is walking it's not too hard to figure out what to do with one's eyes. We didn't say much except to remark every now and then on a particularly majestic tree or a flower that might have gone unnoticed. When I would turn to look at her on those occasions, her nudity registered pleasantly, but only in my peripheral vision.
When the trail split off from the road again, she went first and I followed. This meant that I had her beautiful backside constantly in my view. But there is something different about the backside of a woman when she is tromping through the forest than when she is reaching to take down a bowl in someone's apartment. Perhaps it's the constant flexing of the haunches, the sure acceptance of weight on the forward foot, the unselfconscious swing of the arms. She seemed more and more like a creature of the forest. She was beautiful, but it was the beauty of proportion in motion, the beauty of the doe, the springbok. Her coloration---her tan pelt and black mane---stood out strikingly against the green background.
She raised her forearm for me to stop. There was a small rodent just off the path with a bright yellow pod in his two front paws. We stood and watched him nibble.
The trail headed constantly upward, crossing and re-crossing a rocky stream. We passed through a thicket of bamboo whose stalks were as big around as your wrist. It was so dense that at twenty paces apart we could only see each other in glimpses. The stalks were bare of leaves until high in the air, and the ground was completely matted with their pale debris, so that the whole world seemed to have turned into a jumbled black and white geometrical pattern.
Finally we reached a steep cliff face, about a hundred feet tall. It was covered with vegetation, like a garden wall, except for one vertical slash of bare rock where water cascaded down from above. The flow was somewhere between a trickle and a torrent and it spread out as it fell into a diffuse shower of individual drops.
"Do you see the little cave about two thirds of the way up?" asked Sylvia, pointing. "We can climb up to it."
The path went right up the garden wall just to the left of the rocky slash. It was steep and required careful foot placement, but not unmanageable. I wasn't used to climbing in the nude. We reached a ledge that extended across the rock, behind the waterfall. Up above we could see the water rushing over the edge out into the pure air. We were about sixty feet above the pool. Below us the forest fell away toward the road, and then more gently toward the river, rising again on the other side toward the distant hills.
"The cave is right along the ledge," said Sylvia. "You go first. Be careful."
I had to step closely around her, and I couldn't do it without holding her shoulder and brushing against her thigh. It was, I realized, probably the first time, except for kisses on the cheeks, that we had ever touched each other.
The ledge was wide enough for one person, but the drop was sheer, so I went sideways, keeping both hands on the cliff wall. The cave was really not much more than a niche, directly behind the waterfall. I saw that Sylvia had started along the ledge as well. There wasn't much room for the two of us.
