Phuket, November 23, 2018
A red scooter buzzes at nightfall, heads up toward the northwest of the island, through the plots scorned by the developers, there where a few rai1 of old forest subsist, cleared at the edges to make way for villages and fruit trees. The sepia moon is full and glows strangely. We cross a plantation of rubber trees: they have been wounded, from the cuts oozes the latex that drains into cups of wood, corrupts the air with its rancid whiffs. The scooter’s tires remember the trees, but they don’t scream, don’t weep, don’t melt. They stay hard under the moon. In the distance flashes of heat lightning flare like magnesium, trace the slender trees and the grey boughs.
There are only the two of us on the road, the two of us on the scooter with the trees that bleed. So, when we glimpse a headlight in the forest, the imagination runs the fields: junkies? murderers? a deal? a plot? We make out two men, a scooter on its stand, engine running. Two farmers no doubt, come to tend their plantation. I slow down. My eyes search the night like dogs, but the passenger shouts:
– Pay! Pay! Glua! Glua!
Go! Go! I’m scared! I’m scared!
Full throttle we vanish into the curves, steered by the lightning that points north.
We leave the secret plantations. We come out onto a noisy highway, a daylight of headlights and hurried cars. We hug the far left of the roadway, guard ourselves against the torment of the machines. We climb up to the plateau of the airport. Money Exchange, Car Rental, Pharmacy, Domestic Terminal. And the mute concrete of the parking garage; and the hundred identical minibuses parked aslant, shuttling to the resorts.
We’re not leaving – it’s only a shortcut. The way elbows and runs along the runways under a fence of sheet metal topped with barbed wire. In the sky polluted with photons, a big luminous fly swoops down on us. It deploys its landing gear. Have its black wheels drunk the blood of the trees?