I found a lorry driver who offered to take me to the Valley in return for the brogues I was wearing (which I gladly surrendered — they were a battered old pair from Ducker’s on Turl Street). He did not enquire as to the purpose of my journey nor question the wisdom of it, and for that I was glad. He seemed content to sit in silence with my shoes now adorning his feet. Every so often he would raise one foot onto his seat to admire his trophy. I did not fear for our safety as much as I admired his dexterity. My limbs and joints suddenly felt ridiculously stiff and superfluous; my blood, after a month in the Orient, still felt cold and viscous.
We drove past tranquil villages where sleepy-eyed children with distended stomachs played amongst rainbow-plumed fowl. Their tiny wooden houses looked fragile, perched as they were on delicate stilts. They seemed so vulnerable to the forces of nature, to the sun and rain and the very trees that surrounded them; they were transient, almost nomadic, I thought. In the shade, indolent as Bruegel swineherds, young men watched me with reddened eyes without ever rousing themselves from their tropical languor. I thought, naturally, of Gauguin, and realised how wrong he was in his quiet romanticism. The beauty of these hot lands is not feminine nor lyrical, I thought; it is dusty and muscular.
“How wonderful to live like this,” I said to the driver, hoping to encourage conversation, but he merely looked at me with an uncomprehending expression.
I began to feel the heat and the dust gather on my face, yet I refused to yield to their force. Like my silent companion, I sat staring at the red road before me as if I had travelled it many times before. On either side the jungle seemed ancient and impenetrable. Every so often its murky darkness would suddenly vanish, giving way to a plantation of rubber or oil palm whose trees were arranged like columns in a vast cathedral. I closed my eyes and felt the base of my neck throb with the heat. I knew I was not far from the Valley now.
When I stirred from this gorgeous stupor I found my driver shouting aggressively. Cyclists swarmed around the lorry, impeding our progress and inducing bursts of swearing from my hitherto taciturn companion. The houses looked different here. Rough timber dwellings gave way to larger, sturdier-looking brick-and-mortar buildings. Shops advertised their wares by displaying them prominently in their doorways: sacks of dried fish, peeled open to reveal their contents; large pyramids of rice; strange, dried, mud-coloured leaves; combs of tiny golden bananas. My driver stopped abruptly and, without looking at me, said, “Kampar.” He reached for his shoes and laced them up tightly. He walked down the street with his back held straight, lifting his feet so that his new leather heels clicked loudly against the gravelled road.
I found a guest house at the far end of town. The room was exactly as I imagined it would be, invaded at every moment by the sounds and smells of life around me. The kitchen lay at the other end of the small courtyard, and its aromas seemed to have embedded themselves in the upper-floor rooms. Roasting coffee produced a perfume that was unpleasant but not unbearable; it paled, however, beside the smell of shrimp paste. The cooks pounded the dried shrimp in a mortar and pestle together with an assortment of other noxious ingredients before moulding it into a damp mass and leaving it to ferment in the courtyard right below my room. I arrived to find a huge basin of it sweltering in the late-afternoon heat, filling the air with its fumes. The emaciated man who showed me to my room pointed excitedly at this glorious creation and intimated that it would play a starring role in my dinner that evening.
I bathed — as everyone else did — by dousing myself in spring water from a vast earthenware tub. I scooped the water with a wooden pail and poured it over my head, delighting in the shock of the cold on my travel-weary senses. Afterwards, as the tropical night fell swiftly around me, I moved my bed next to the large windows. I left the shutters open and lay shirtless as I listened to the feasting downstairs. I was not hungry. The heat and the sharp smell of the shrimp paste had drained me of all desire. Nonetheless, curiosity got the better of me and I stood at the top of the darkened stairs and spied on the convivial gathering below. On the table lay a single oval dish bearing a mass of dark green vegetables, which, I presumed, were cooked with the shrimp paste. All eight people hungrily attacked this offering; there was nothing else on the table. I crept back to my room, careful not to make a noise.
