11

Maritha and Mariko, wife and husband, were well known in Santalu-cia because they were always in each other’s company, going to market and shops or attending wakes, funerals, and weddings. If one or the other was spotted alone, people knew—and they were hardly ever proven wrong—that the other one was not far away.

Their cat, black except for a white patch on its forehead, sometimes followed them, and when once it came to church children adapted a familiar song:

Maritha and Mariko were faithful members of the All Saints. They dusted pews and windows and arranged flowers. When the cathedral started a program of feeding the homeless and sheltering them in the basement on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, Maritha and Mariko volunteered to minister to the needy wayfarers. They even fed doves and other birds nesting on the roof of the cathedral.

Maritha and Mariko were as twins. Many were the times when one would complete a sentence begun by the other. They were in their sixties, their bodies had held remarkably well, and their children, now young men and women, were secure in their different jobs. All in all, Maritha and Mariko were without a blemish, and they seemed a model for a wholesome marriage and family life.

That may explain why the entire church community was so shocked when one Sunday, not many months after the event involving the Ruler and the broken glass at All Saints, Maritha and Mariko stood before the congregation and confessed that they were tormented by an irresistible lust for other people’s flesh. In keeping with how they always did things, they told their story as if reading from the same book.

“Even walking in the streets is becoming a torture,” Mariko said.

“There is not a single night we have not prayed that this burden be lifted, but our prayers have not yet been answered,” added Maritha.

“Our own bodies no longer call out to each other, but other people’s make ours burn with desire.”

“As if Satan is beckoning us to leave the path of righteousness to break some of the Ten Commandments …”

“… which say,” they intoned together as in a chorus, “Thou shall not commit adultery and Thou shall not lust after another person’s property. “

“So far, the lust has remained in our eyes only” Maritha explained.

“But even that is a sin,” Mariko hastened to add, as if to quell any doubts the audience might harbor about how seriously he and Maritha took these temptations.

The congregation prayed that the couple be made strong and the Satan of Lust be crushed. After the service was over, Bishop Tireless Kanogori, a fellow brother in Christ, had a heart-to-heart talk with them and told them to remain steadfast, that they should remember that when Christ was once alone in the wilderness, hungry, thirsty, tired, Satan chose that very moment to tempt him for forty days and nights, and Jesus wrestled with numerous desires but remained steadfast in his courage and righteousness and in the end defeated Satan; and it was this great struggle with the Temptor that prepared Christ to assume his role as the redeemer of all the sinful. Consider, then, he went on, how lucky you are that you are not alone with Satan for forty nights and days in a wilderness full of howling winds and wild animals, that you are still there for each other in your own home in Santalucia, and we are all around you, shouting at the Temp-tor: Shame on you, Satan! And the trio broke into a hymn:

But even then Satan would not leave them alone, and every Sunday Maritha and Mariko would tell scarier and scarier stories of how Satan had dogged their paths for seven nights and days in different guises, and wily as ever, trying to stoke their lust for other people’s flesh. The only place where they felt safe from him was within the cathedral. Elsewhere, especially when one or the other was asleep, at home, or walking the streets alone, Satan was back. Theirs was now a war on a grand scale; testifying about his tactics was their one way of fighting back so that if Satan struck a pound’s worth they would hit back with their two cents’ worth. It was because they feared most the possibility of Satan catching one of them alone in a dark alley that they were now inseparable. Their saga was very moving, and every Sunday more and more people would congregate at the All Saints to listen to the latest episode in the daily battles between Maritha and Mariko and Satan.

The cathedral became a popular spot packed every Sunday with people eager for titillating details about the couple’s lust and engagement with Satan. There was not even standing room left inside, and many would simply gather outside the doors and windows the better to catch glimpses of the heroic couple as they told their story.

It was bound to happen that this story would reach the desks of news editors, and one newspaper, the Daily Gossip, increased sales severalfold when it started carrying versions of Maritha and Mariko’s serial confessions; and the war against Satan became the subject of talk at crossroads, marketplaces, shopping centers, and bars. Whenever and wherever young men and women met, they would say half in jest: Oh, my dear, you have afflicted me with a severe case of Maritha and Mariko, or I feel a Mariko and a Maritha for you—what do you say to that r

To the dwellers of Eldares, particularly those living in Santalucia, the story of Maritha and Mariko and their epic battle against the Satan of Lust became bigger than even the arrival of the Global Bank mission to study the feasibility of funding the proposed Marching to Heaven. The story of an ordinary man and woman standing up to the mighty Satan gripped their imagination, curious as they were as to how it would all end.