"At Paso Rojo" is a short story by Paul Bowles, written in 1947 and first published in the September 1948 issue of Mademoiselle magazine.
[1] The story is set in Costa Rica at a fictional cattle ranch, Paso Rojo, closely resembling one that Bowles had visited in Guanacaste Province.
Two well-to-do and unmarried sisters, Lucha and Chalia, visit their younger brother Don Frederico, a prosperous rancher, in the countryside shortly after their mother's funeral.
Don Frederico has embraced his role as benevolent patriarch of Pasa Rojo [Translation], and developed a genuine appreciation for the character of the peasants who live and work on his estate.
That evening, emboldened by the older woman's attempted seduction, Roberto disrobes and bathes in the creek within sight of Chalia's bedroom window.
Chalis secretly revels in the success of her scheme, in particular the disillusionment that her brother has suffered concerning his idealized view of the peasants.
Literary critic Allen Hibbard compares the story favorably to "Marie Concepcion" by Katherine Ann Porter.
But where the ordinary writer would leave it at that, Bowles goes deeper into the human case and, paradoxically, he achieves his greatest effect when he concentrates entirely on surfaces.
Although he seldom describes a human face, he examines landscapes with the precision of a geologist…He records weather with all the solemnity of a meteorologist.