Scene 11

The Summer Palace is one of the most important excursion-spots of Beijing's citizens, above all for pensioners who go there in hordes to walk along the pond district, to box with shadows or to paint poems with water on the plaster. Despite the many people around, Maille suddenly found himself again on the pleasure-boat all on his own, and being swiftly ferried back by the two men from the so-called South Sea Island over ti the West Dike (Xidi).

Hardly does one do something in this land in the manner one is not accustomed to doing, and one finds oneself suddenly all alone. Unfortunately it is not possible to plan that – one can only accept the unexpected solitude as a gift. A gift that, in the eyes of the local populace, is actually more a curse than a blessing, as Madame Tu had told him, the owner of an Asian shop in the Old Town of Port Louis where Maille shopped for herbs and spices. For the Chinese, the pretty lady had explained, there is only one incontrovertible truth for being all alone in the landscape: the strongest, deepest and most painful lovesickness.

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