Steven waves his hand dismissively. “A private fart, none of this posturing, an honest fart which he might expel, say, after a long day of arresting protestors and oppressing Chechens.” “My instinct says he would fart with all the Slavic bombast of a Mussorgsky composition, moving his upper body with the passion of a conductor while his legs remained rigid and ramrod straight. ”Steven fingerpistols at me and nods. “That was my first thought, also, but here, consider this.” He reaches into his satchel and produces a crumpled newspaper, flicking through it to find a colour photo of Vladimir Putin staring down the camera. “Observe the narrow, calculating eyes, the thin lips set in a grim line. This is a man with KGB training. Every orifice is a closed border. Gas either escapes from him with a pitched whine, like the release of air from an untied balloon with the end pinched, or with the mechanical efficiency of a venting steam engine, with accompanying whistle.” Steven buys more beer for the road and insists on paying for the meal, though I have brought fresh American dollars and travellers cheques. As we approach the car, Heng hurriedly stubs out a cigarette and throws down a hand of cards, collecting a pile of brightly coloured, stained paper money from the ground where a gang of motodops gamble on a reed mat. “Back home now, Mr Steven?” “Home, Mr Heng.” The city unspools around me as the car glides on through the clogged streets. We pass a statue of a revolver with the barrel tied in a knot and travel over a bridge. Beneath us, Toul Sap or the Mekong river carries its own rushing parades of catfish, flatfish and darting shrimp. Beyond the bridge, Phnom Penh drops away like a lost grip. Long grass fields and the occasional lonely apartment building, a karaoke beer garden looking desolate in the sunlight and a temple behind high white walls are the last modern buildings. Heavy trees and wooden stilt houses, more thatched rooves and bunches of coconuts, prawn crackers and stacked slabs of soda cooking in the shade stud the roadside, dirt tracks cut into the red earth lead away into flat rice fields peopled with children, men with scarves around their waists and contemplative bison. Steven is dozing in the front seat and I stare out of the window. The forest is shocking in its brightness. The colours hotter, more vivid than anything I am used to. Seeing all of this from a cool, air conditioned car, this chaos of heat and speeding traffic and barely contained flora is surreal, like watching a documentary rather than participating with the world. Cars and scooters honk their horns, not as a sign of displeasure, rather as a constant courtesy to other drivers on the lawless National Highway 6. Heng never once glances in his rear view mirror. Beside us, a rusted minivan packed with people like a box of dominos nearly tumbles over the verge in its haste to overtake, barrelling down the road in a roaring blur. Heng curses and swerves to the right,
narrowly avoiding a collision with a truck heading the other way. I grip the leather seat so tightly it creaks, toes digging into the inner soles of my boots as every part of me tenses. Horns erupt in chorus all around me and the bus is gone, the road resumes its customary rhythm. While the disembodied voice of a stewardess took pains to inform passengers of the dire consequences of drug offenses while in the Kingdom of Cambodia, that same strict rule of law has no place on the roads where anything goes. Right and lefthand drivers share the same roads, the cars imported from wherever is cheap at the time. People travel long distances on small scooters, trucks are piled precariously high, their heavy loads lashed in place with chains and rubber straps. Pickups and minibuses are packed full of people to be ferried from the city to the provinces and back again, like blood to be oxygenated by the heart. The traffic slows and snarls, the breathless pace grinding to a funeral crawl. Heng slows with them, craning his head to see. The minibus has gone off the road, collided with a thick palm tree and come off worse. The driver has been ejected from the front, windscreen shattered and the rough bark of the tree has torn chunks of him which glisten like market meat in the sun. The bus has crumpled like an accordion, some arms wave weakly out of windows but there is a great deal of blood and stillness from what is now a rusted coffin. Other travellers have leapt from bikes and cars to help and Heng drives on. Steven rouses from his doze, looks over the wreck and turns back to me. “Welcome to Cambodia,” he says.
Being creative