so they strip off their clothes and walk into the water as the grimy supplicants of a desecrated earth-the man 's body pale and thick , almost hairless , sitting like a sunken stone in the shallows , motionless as the water finds its course around the simple obstruction , and she , like a tiny despoiled innocent washing away the marks of her ruin , dunking her head under the water as if there she would find the baptismal kingdom of heaven , and rising up again with the pink of her flesh beginning to show through the mask of putrefaction .