So we walked to the north, across the rifts and wide savannahs, to a rise where stunted casuarinas grew out of fissures in rocks split by lightning. Where, it was said, a sacred river once ran uphill, carrying golden leaves of a perfect tree in a holy place that sounded suspiciously like Paradise, an unparalleled eminence assigned to Mesopotamia (and what would now be Iraq) by Johann Durchfall, the early Moravian explorer and missionary. In a biblical controversy written months before he died, Durchfall propounded the notion; it was no more than that because he offered no physical evidence to support the hypothesis, and his logic was fuzzier than his theology.

I digress; to get back to Val and me—our hill—Val’s and mine—had a crest as might be expected, and along its slope was an aggregation of caves, in any of which we could have woven a secret life. One of them had a mouth that was no more than a slit in its rocky face, and this was our retreat, a refuge from Grady’s impositions, a cozy nest we had surfaced with a couple of rat-skin rugs after her rescue. Bubbling up from a rock-ribbed pond was the most delicious water I’d ever tasted.

We went there often, but on this day it was occupied. The Reverend Dewey Lipgloss, in the hallowed tradition of his calling, reclined in the missionary position and was being bounced all over our rat skins by a fat native girl. It was an egregiously private moment, and politely we turned away. But Lipgloss, entwined as he was, called after us.

“Be finished in a jiff,” he gasped. “Then it’s all yours.” And he turned back to the business at hand.

I wanted to get out of there, but Val whispered, no, it would be discourteous, he was being friendly, he might think we were critical. So we settled down on the far side of the hill in a little bower shaded by flames of bougainvillea and tufted with springy bracken. Good as his word, Lipgloss and his partner soon appeared. Upright they made a peach of a pair. He was half her size, a scrawny little man with shoulders the breadth of her thighs and arms scarcely thicker than her fingers.

“We have spent the night in vigil,” he said in a booming liturgical voice that seemed to echo in his beard. The beard tilted upward; he might have been smiling behind it, up at the fat girl. “A night of devotion,” he boomed. “I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you. Shall we take a meet? Tomorrow? My digs?”

“Well…”

“Splendid. See you then.” And he loped off down the slope with the girl.