Scene 11

When one sleeps until late in the afternoon, one's body feels like an incredibly compact piece of tart when one wakes up and one's lips feel sticky with a strange sort of slime – as though one had slept through the night with an éclair in one's mouth.

In his dreams, Maille had traversed once more through the Daein Bazaar with all its bizarre sea creatures – and bought some Ginseng cubes. Then he had needed to cook for a huge number of people, who were seated in the sun at a long table in a harvested cornfield. The guests had impatiently rocked back and forth on their stools, but the little gas-stove at his command had not been powerful enough for him to bring the pilao in the dish to a boil. The rice grains in the lukewarm water proceeded, to his chagrin, to become one big sticky lump. Mercier had stepped into the kitchen that had been installed in a tent on the field and begun to scold Maille. He had wanted to defend himself, to explain, but ended up just bowing – quite evidently Korean Confucianism had begun to leave its first traces in him. He did not feel pleased at all. (Dance of the worms with some Schubert)

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