Scene 6

Maille felt lonesome and alien – but he was peculiarly familiar with this feeling. Over the years of travelling on assignment in service of the Republic of Santa Lemusa, this feeling of being alien had increasingly become a form of home, like a unique landless nationality – quite as if one felt connected with a place where there was nothing, a reference without an object.

Questiones about his origins, Maille sometimes wished to answer as if it could be a simple matter-of-factly: «From abroad» – quite as if «abroad» was a concrete place, such as a vaguely known star. Sometimes he thought of inventing a land – one that one could be incredibly proud of and never be disappointed in. Santa Lemusa was certainly not the badest spot on earth, but there must surely be better places. Mostly it was the inner-existence, with its rules and automatism, its repetitions and implicitness that demoralised one. Why shouldn't one want to come from a land that is seen only from the outer perspective: from a foreign land without an inland?

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