At first Baby Kochamma tried to seduce Father Mulligan with weekly exhibitions of staged charity. Every Thursday morning, just when Father Mulligan was due to arrive, Baby Kochamma forcebathed a poor village child at the well with hard red soap that hurt its protruding ribs.

“Morning, Father!” Baby Kochamma would call out when she saw him, with a smile on her lips that completely belied the viselike grip that she had on the thin child’s soapslippery arm.

`Morning to you, Baby!” Father Mulligan would say, stopping and folding his umbrella.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you, Father,” Baby Kochamma would say. “In First Corinthians, chapter ten, verse twenty-three, it says `All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient,’ Father, how can all things be lawful unto Him? I mean I can understand if some things are lawful unto Him, but-”

Father Mulligan was more than merely flattered by the emotion he aroused in the attractive young girl who stood before him with a trembling, kissable mouth and blazing, coal-black eyes. For he was young too, and perhaps not wholly unaware that the solemn explanations with which he dispelled her bogus biblical doubts were completely at odds with the thrilling promise he held out in his effulgent emerald eyes.

Every Thursday, undaunted by the merciless midday sun, they would stand there by the well. The young girl and the intrepid Jesuit, both quaking with unchristian passion. Using the Bible as a ruse to be with each other.

Invariably, in the middle of their conversation, the unfortunate soapy child that was being force-bathed would manage to slip away, and Father Mulligan would snap back to his senses and say, `Oops! We’d better catch him before a cold does.”