Certainty

By Richard Oh

There were few things in life he knew with any certainty, except when he was in the woods, among the plants.

Whether he was trying to identify the variegated Musaceae genus, the tropical banana genus that has more than 230 species, or when he was studying the oldest palm in the world, the more than a hundred million-year-old Nypa Palm, he knew with certainty that with a little help from his Asian Edition of Oxford Tropical Plants he could name each and every one of them.

There was a sense of both discovery and joy when he chanced upon an unfamiliar species and was able, after considerable pains researching it, finally to find its proper name. The Latin terms that rolled out of his tongue, Corypha umbraculifera, for the Talipot Palm, the tallest of all palms or Borassus flabellifer, the Lontar Palm, whose leaves had been used for writing since 450 A.D., somehow reaffirmed the seriousness of his pursuit. He felt that by finding a name to the hitherto nameless species he brought a new life into being. He could not imagine anything more worthwhile or more rewarding than being able to do this. But with each new species he named he found hundreds and thousands of new species waiting for him to discover. The prospect turned him giddy with excitement.

His wife had grown weary trying to figure out this new bent in her husband's nature. He had never shown any inclination for anything botanical since she knew him in his youth. He would not have any patience for such a "bland" hobby. A hobby, she recalled him once say, should involve plenty of sweat and pain: that was why for years he was a rock climber until he broke his hip and had to quit for good and picked up white-water rafting.

Now as she watched him bending over a plant, one hand leafing through the well-thumbed pages of the guide, she had no idea whether she should pity him his new but pathetic passion or start getting worried about this rather prolonged erratic behavior.

It was no picnic sitting on a heap of wild growth in some god- forsaken highland, waiting for her husband to finish his day. She could think of so many things she could do on a beautiful Saturday like this. She could spend a day in the city's spa, totally spoiling herself. Freshen up the sagging tired body. This thought then led to another thought. Look at him so self-centered in his pursuit.

Maybe he had lost interest in her. Why else would a man with such vigor and health spend so much time talking to plants? They should be making love in this wide-open field. Instead she found herself sitting there with pollens swirling around her, clogging up her nasal system.

She tried to finish a chapter of the new romance paperback she had picked up from a supermarket on her way up there. But she found that her attention span was short and her eyes began to wander. Maybe physically he had lost interest in her. The thought gained more currency as she speculated that he had not touched her for quite some time.

She shifted her gaze and watched him move through the copse toward what appeared to be, she could only guess, Acacia leucophloea. That could not be, her thought persisted. His shoulders might be slightly stooped and he was not as sinewy as he was ten years ago but his gait betrayed no sign of age. He carried himself with the haughty vigor of a man in his prime.

She remembered how envious all her friends were when she first introduced him to them. They could not get over the fact that he chose her. He was the most eligible man in college. He was the captain of the university basketball team. He could have the pick of any girl but he picked her, the bespectacled and unassuming girl.

Initially she had her doubts but when she saw how steady and consistent he was she began to trust him.

A milkweed butterfly wafted by and hovered over the Rhododendrons bush. She stopped and watched the black-white- yellow spotted wings flutter in the still cool air. She held her breath and kept completely still. What a lovely thing. Was it nature's quirk of creation or was it nature's perfection, she wondered.

Her good sense told her that it must be the latter. Because if one accepted that there was a divine high being, then no creations should be considered a quirk of nature. All creatures, big or small, must be perfect. But the rebellious part in her asserted itself and shouted that it was not true, not true. Life is imperfection. Humans are full of flaws. History is chockfull of examples of the weird, the deranged and the ruthless: the Michael Jacksons, the Charles Mansons and the Pol Pots.

From behind the bushes another milkweed butterfly emerged and glissaded across the plants, slowly catching up with the other one that was now nestling into a sunflower, suckling nectar. How long have they stayed together? They seemed so attached to one another. Then a thought occurred to her. Could fidelity be a quirk of nature? She spent the whole afternoon turning the thought over and over in her mind. Later when they drove back to the city the thought continued to haunt her.

She spent days in the isolation of the backyard, thinking. She must have let herself drown in this quandary for weeks before she decided she had had enough of the torture. She had lost ten kilos and a permanent question mark was beginning to form on her forehead.

"I've done some thinking," she announced over dinner one evening.

"Yes, you seem to have been in a brooding mood lately," he said and gazed across the table at her with genuine concern.

"I've been thinking that maybe we haven't done much to amuse ourselves."

"What do you have in mind?" he said.

"Oh, I don't know," she said and made a flourish with the ladle in her hand. "Let's do something irresponsible for once."

All the while as she was talking she kept herself preoccupied by spooning out the curry into her bowl.

"You mean like doing something crazy?"

She detected the shrill incredulity in his voice, a tremor of emotion that she had never seen him display for a long time.

"Do something exciting."

"Like what?'

"Anything."

"Anything?"

"Yes, anything you wish."

Her heart beat wildly.

"I have no idea at all," he said.

She stole a glance across the table. He looked dumbfounded and was not sure which way the conversation was heading.

For a moment his words hung in the silence like echoes bouncing in a hermetically sealed room. They stared at the steaming pot of curry.

She calmed the rioting beat in her heart and worked up her nerves to say, "May I make a suggestion?"

"Yes, yes," he said, quite grateful for the offer.

"I suggest that you get a call girl," she said and chided herself immediately for sounding a tad too cheerful.

He was stunned. His eyes popped and he sat as if her words had impaled him against the rattan chair.

She averted his eyes and kept her head stooped over her bowl and waited.

"What are you saying?" he asked, looking squarely at her.

"You heard me."

"A call girl, whatever for?"

"Well..." she paused, trying hard to find the right words, and then said briskly, "... for whatever men do with call girls."

"You must be out of your mind."

"I'm perfectly sane. Trust me on this. I have given this a lot of thinking. You should take this as a gift for being such a decent man over the years."

"I don't deserve this ... this humiliation, you know."

"What do you mean? This is a well-intentioned gesture. My way of showing how appreciative I am for all the years you've been faithful to me."

"You can't be serious. Are you putting me to the test after all these years?" he asked, his voice rising with indignation.

"I'm not. Truly. I just feel that after almost thirty years of being so faithful you are entitled to a little bit of fun."

"And just who the f--k do you think you are? You can't just do whatever you want with our marriage."

"I'm your partner, your shackles, the restraint to your conscience and freedom. I'm the one person that keeps you from doing whatever you want to do in the name of love."

"You're out of your mind. This is so very unlike you. Who's giving you this quaint idea, Mariam, is it?"

"Please don't implicate anyone in this. Besides Mariam is incapable of this, believe me."

"You have no right screwing up our marriage with your little whim. I won't let you do that."

"Don't be a prude now. Given the opportunity, other men would be prancing with joy."

"Look at you. You're taking great pleasure out of this, aren't you?"

"I'm not. I'm trying to allow you to have some fun. What's wrong with that?"

"Everything is wrong. I've never heard of any wife giving her husband such a break. This is insane."

"OK then, if you disagree with this idea, may I make another suggestion?"

He held back for a moment, as if mulling over the possibility of rejecting her request. Then begrudgingly he said, "It'd better be good."

She blinked hard, the reflex that she had whenever she grew unnerved. For a moment she considered calling it all off, but at the last minute she pushed through with it and blurted, "Since you disagree with the idea of getting a call girl, I'd like to suggest that we get a gigolo."

He pounded his fist on the table.

"That's it. You've really gone too far."

"Listen to me please before you lash out in this manner."

He slouched back, his face withdrawing from the cone of table light into the shroud of shadow.

"I'm listening," he said.

"I've lived without a single suspicious thought in my mind about your fidelity. It has been a way of life for me all these years. When you came home late I never thought of anything else other than that you had been busy. It had never crossed my mind whether you could have done something improper or any such speculations. As far as I am concerned, you're the most decent and faithful man I've known ..."

"Then why do I deserve this superfluous sentiment?" he said, his voice hoarse with conflicting emotions.

"But you see the thought of how certain I am about your faithfulness just drives me mad. Since I could not prove to the nearest degree of the truth, and for goodness sake I do not cherish one day having to prove it any other way, I should as soon let you become the imperfect person that assumingly you're not so that I won't be bothered by this ever again."

"What?"

"You heard every word I said."

"Let me try to get this straight. You're saying you want to be not so certain because you think that I've been so faithful to you for so long that it makes you want to be so certain that now you want to be uncertain so that you won't need to be so certain ever again."

"Precisely."

"You're nuts if you think I'm going to buy into this crazy plan."

"It's not a plan. It's an idea, a good idea. This should be good for us."

"Everything about us is good. And thanks to you now it's getting completely whacked."

"It's too neat. It worries me when things are so perfect."

"What's wrong with being perfect?"

"It's all wrong. It's not natural. Look around you, there's nothing perfect about life. Anything so perfect is bound to fall apart sooner or later."

"We are well beyond old age. We are nearing senility. There must be a limit of how much craziness we are still capable of."

"Exactly my point. I hate to discover in our old age that all along you have been unfaithful to me and that I have been living a life of illusion until now. This way, I'll live with the surety that I'll never break my heart in these remaining fragile years. I don't suppose I can sustain such a crushing blow now.

"I'd rather live with the certainty that you are imperfect just like any of the 60 or 70 percent of the men in the world. I'll feel so much better having this knowledge with me. It's like a warranty of peace in my old age."

"I'm not going to let you make me do this."

"Suit yourself."

She rose from her seat and made to move toward the door. Hastily he got up and rushed to block her. They stood facing each other in the hallway, he with his shirt end out of his pants, looking distraught and she, feisty and throbbing with determination, eying him defiantly.

"So what's it going to be?" she asked.

"OK, I'll do it," he said limply.

Although she would like to believe that she had prepared herself well for all consequences but when he relented she felt nauseated. She had to collect herself before muttering, "Let's go."

"Go where?"

"Go find a girl."