Song discovers that Rhea, driven by her feminine instincts, has evolved way ahead of him in the post-modern primeval world.
Song trudges down Old Peak Path without his walking pole. He has left it at Rhea’s when leaving in a hurry.
“If I slip and kill myself, it’d be all her fault.” The thought of Rhea bearing the guilt for the rest of her life gives him a tinge of twisted satisfaction. When passing the bend where he dragged and dropped the old man off to nirvana, he wonders what had become of him, and is momentarily tempted to check behind the building. Then he decides against it. Better just let him be.
He has been replaying the fight with Rhea in his head over and over again, discovering more and more regrets. He definitely could have been more patient and sensitive. Perhaps he was a bit petulant and unnecessarily retaliatory? Perhaps he should have simply said less. Why was he so unforgiving, even mean and harsh, to someone he loves so dearly? Was it menopause clashing with andropause? He wonders how many women had mistaken menopause for pregnancy. Not many, he concludes. Most women died before menopause until recent centuries, then they stopped getting pregnant.
Come to think of it, the same folly would have been comical rather than vexing earlier on in their relationship. He would have taken the news with humour instead of exasperation. Is this how love matures?
Rhea maybe being ridiculous but her delusion is excusable, and her reasoning sound. Why couldn’t he just play along, and let her discover the difference between pregnancy and menopause in due course? Why was he so gung-ho about proving her wrong right away? Why couldn’t he shut up and wait? Was he subconsciously threatened by the idea of a baby, even as a remote possibility?
He plods on introspectively.
When he reaches Robinson Road, he continues downhill. He does not feel like going home yet.
__________________
Where did it go wrong?
They were chitchatting after breakfast. Song leafed through the calendar from John, and asked why she suddenly wanted one.
“Because I’m pregnant.” She looked him in the eyes, a big smile on her face.
“Mmm Hmm.” He sensed that it was not just a weird joke, but did not know how to react to it.
“I am.” She repeated, still looking at him with the same exaggerated charm and happy face. “Maybe approaching the end of my first trimester.”
“You sure?” Song sat bolt upright, giving the impression that he was only starting to pay attention. He said the first thing that came to mind. “Have you checked with one of those kits from the pharmacy?”
“Of course, but darling, these things had expired long ago.” She sounded sarcastic. “By the way, I’m a woman. I can tell I’m pregnant without consulting chemical indicators.”
“You sure it’s not menopause?”
“What?” She seemed shocked and offended by his reasonable speculation.
He tried to clarify: “I mean, it could be menopause you know. Don’t they have similar syndromes like, no more periods?”
“Song I don’t believe you.”
A silly argument had started. It deteriorated quickly. The news was more than a surprise to Song; he found it ludicrous, outrageous. His first reaction was that of indignation. Rhea is forty-eight. Even in the bygone fertile world, women rarely became pregnant with their first baby at this age. Furthermore, even if it were true, he told Rhea, why would they want to bring a new life to a dead end? To grow up all by itself? To be the only person on Earth, wandering aimlessly all day engaged in soliloquy?
She turned a furious red, but quickly calmed down to a bit of philosophy. She cautioned against speculating too much about the future. "Doesn’t Ma call us Post-Modern Savages?" she said. "He’s got a point there. We’re now savages. We need to rely on atavistic instincts, not hypothesis and wordy intellectualism. Remember your Homo erectus? They wouldn’t have become Homo sapiens if our primeval ancestors wondered whether it was a good thing to have kids because a million dreadful fates awaited them. Think about it: If they had thought about it, the chance of us large monkeys with stubby toes surviving in the brutal world was pitifully slim so what’s the point.
"But NO!" she almost hollered. "Our ancient ancestors were real men and women. They just went ahead and did it. Their duty was to reproduce, as many as they could, and leave future to the future.
"Who do you think we are?" she stood up and asked like a lawyer in court. "Some kind of god responsible for planning the future of mankind? Had you lived in the tenth century, and been blessed with the knowledge that Song Sung now has, would you have decided not to have kids because mankind might die out a thousand years later? Would you?"
Song said he might have, if he had had that vision.
“Well,” Rhea said, discharging a lungful of exasperation. “Song, humans had known for quite a while that we’d be dried up by the expanding sun one day. So why live today since all lives will be incinerated? Because it’s our instinct to carry on, to keep the species going!
“Fine, for a while there were far too many of us; but we’re now the leftovers of a dying race on its last breath; there’s no time for contemplation. We can’t afford it. Turn on your instincts. Imagine yourself the very first man, serial number 001. You don’t even know you’ll one day grow old into your twenties and die. You have no idea. Just live, a minute at a time, one day at a time, and make babies at every opportunity.”
Maybe she is pregnant, Song thought. How else can she become so impossibly eloquent and aggressive all at once? There’s got to be some hormone with a monstrous molecular structure behind all this.
“Dream! ” Rhea resumed.
“Pardon?” Song was dreaming about hormones, wondering how they might look.
“I said dream,” Rhea repeated, this time softly. “Dreams make us a different animal. Dreams make us special. They are above rationality and irrationality. Dreams allow us to ignore statistics and achieve the unlikely, even the so-thought impossible. Dreams help us to challenge destiny, redefine fate.”
“Wow!” Song smiled slyly, trying to tone down his amazement. “Nightmares are dreams too.”
Rhea paused and looked away.
“Rhea.” Song said to her back. They had dropped the pet names for this present conversation. “But there is something called judgement. Assuming that you are pregnant — Okay, correction, since you are pregnant — we’re going to be parents. As parents, we love our kid, and want it to be happy. But to the best of my judgement, it will have a pretty miserable life. What do you say to that Mum?”
“Were you listening?” retorted Rhea. “In the post-modern world, it’s not felicitous niceties like happiness, job satisfaction, wonderful marriage and a good pension that we care. It’s survival. Survival of self, the species. Nothing else!
“You once said you don’t know what happiness is. How do you plan happiness for your kid if you don’t know what it is huh? You’re still thinking too much, or refusing to switch from thinking to acting. You’re totally out of situation, and out of time for that matter. Come on, come back to here and now. Forget history. Forget future. Quit analysing. Quit weighing one impossible outcome against another. Look at us Song, the way we are — now!”
Rhea then realised she might have sounded too personal and critical. She softened her voice to plea. “Come on Baby, I know what’s happening. I’m not crazy. Trust me. You must. We have a baby coming. Let’s focus on that.”
He was thinking. A technical concern entered his mind. “Okay, if you insist. How are you going to give birth though?”
“How? Like all the women before me.”
Song inexplicably found that answer unreasonable. “What if it’s stuck?” he asked.
“Cut me up if you have to.”
“Alive?”
“If that’s what it’d take.”
Song could not believe his ears. The idea stabbed him like an electric shock. It saddened him for a split of a second, then provoked him with a sense of violence he had never experienced. Blood rushed to his head. “You’re gross.” He sounded ice cold. “And insane.”
She burst into tears, and told him to fuck off.
He turned to leave, forgetting his favourite walking staff.
__________________
Song slouches on John’s favourite bollard at Queen’s Pier, brooding over their argument for the nth time. His anger has ebbed. Remorse has taken over. She was right, whether she is pregnant or not. He does spend too much time thinking and talking inconsequentially rather than acting.
Why wouldn’t he? He has never had to do anything about most things!
His father often told him it’s a tough world, so, be tough son. But in what way? Yes he’s strong; he can run two marathons a day if he has to. But physical strength and stamina turn out to be not nearly as critical as Huan had anticipated. With knowledge and plenty of durable leftovers, food, shelter, clothing are reasonably easy to come by. The wind and rain are no more threatening than before. The animals are just learning to be wild again. In fact, as John once noted, there aren’t even bad guys to worry about anymore. With nothing to gain or lose, villainies have become extinct.
Song’s life has been much easier than his father had imagined. A glutting past had left him with a surplus of nearly everything; and the terminal future isn’t demanding his anxious preparation. Comparing with past generations, he is practically worry free. His duty to himself and others is to live for today. Circumstances had liberated him from birth. He does not even need meditation.
He was often told how wonderfully different and lovable he was for a Generation Z. Nonetheless, he remains somewhat unworldly at the age of forty-two. How can he not be? He has never faced any pressure to grow up; not into a tough caveman, not into an ambitious urban middle-class, or anyone particular. He has never had any real responsibilities. He does not know the burden of mortgage, career, family, children. Up until now, all that has been required of him is to live — eat, drink, bullshit, sleep. Do a bit of chore. Make love if available. Tough life huh? His biggest test supposedly awaits him in the future: To be alone when everyone else has died; if everyone else indeed dies ahead of him. Then he must wait courageously for his turn, and die mankind’s last hero. No one has ever expected more from him. No one has ever expected anything from him.
Except Rhea.
When she moved out of Shek O, she expected to move in with him. His mild panic perplexed them both. When he suggested a separate house in the same neighbourhood to give each other more space, she moved to the Peak instead. She was disappointed, but did not show. “Fine. Good idea. I think I’d pick a house on the Peak instead.” The issue of cohabitation has never been mentioned since.
This morning she did it again, much more shockingly this time, expecting him to become father.
He has been praised and sympathised for the admirable courage to live a life without future. Poor Song. It suddenly dawns on him that living without the burden of history and the stressful expectations of a future is freedom — real freedom. No wonder the world was full of rapturous freaks.
Continuity and expectations cause nothing but headaches. People looked at history, and got aggravated by events that had long become irrelevant. They then wasted today stockpiling for an unknowable future, and waited anxiously for it to materialise.
Song has been free of this fettering cycle since birth, until just now. Rhea’s news of pregnancy, illusive or otherwise, was an affront. For the first time, he was forced to face today and plan for tomorrow. She had forced him to look a different way: Look! then tried to slip a bit into his mouth. It was an assault on the free rein he has always enjoyed.
What about Rhea? She’s a Generation Z too, although at the front end of it, and spoiled by a super-wealthy upbringing.
She’s a woman. That why.
Gender makes a big difference under the circumstances. Basic biology like menstruation keeps women in touch with their raw bloody instincts. Rhea has evolved unaware, way ahead of Song, becoming fitter for survival, for long-term survival of the species — the overwhelming goal of all living things.
With pregnancy — or the illusion of it — her instincts have resurfaced, covering all stains of civilisation. She has completed her transformation. She is a full-fledged post-modern savage now. Her life is no longer distracted by interpretation. No nonsense. For future’s sake, she does not care whether there’s a future or not.
But maybe there is!
Looking back, his own birth was statistically impossible; it happened. His surviving the first year was unlikely; it also happened. Meeting Rhea was a one in a million chance event; and it happened as if by design. According to Ma, the appearance of humanity itself was infinitely unlikely, it happened too didn’t it?
So, what is impossible?
If he quit thinking about it, everything seems possible. What has he got to lose anyway? Maybe they are destined to rekindle the human race, restarting it from scratch? Rhea’s only forty-eight, much younger than many child bearing geriatrics in the Bible.
But . . . Rhea is no mythical figure. She is forth-eight after all, living in a world with neither medical assistance nor guardian angles. What is her chance of surviving a first pregnancy.
What if . . .
He is captivated by the frantic aquatic community around the sunken barge below. Hundreds of fish mill about, searching for food, searching for mate, playing out their role in nature, unthinking. Searching.
That’s it. No more What ifs . . .
All of a sudden, he thinks he heard a baby crying. It rings in his head the same way he used to hear his mother calling him to dinner, years after she had died. Was it a real cry though? He holds his breath to listen. Water splashes against the pier. Could have been a seagull.
Just like fish . . . No more What ifs . . .
Rhea is right. I have not been a good caveman. Not even a bad one. Not even a fish.
His mind drifts to Rhea’s breasts. They do seem fuller recently. Is that because of pregnancy? Or just her getting fat? Or menopause. Who cares! Time will tell. No more what ifs. No more menopause.
In the past couple of hours, since the idea of a baby entered his head, his perception of life has made quantum leaps in all directions. “Wow, powerful stuff.” He takes a deep breath to tests his own strength. He is a new man, with great responsibilities ahead, perhaps. Better be strong. He might be a Father Abraham figure to a congested world two thousand years from now.
He turns towards the Old Peak Path. Many silly questions line up for his attention: Should Rhea move to Robinson Road to stay with me? That should have happened years ago anyway. Yes, with or without a baby. I’ll propose to her.
But Baby Song the Second would grow up all alone . . .
No it won’t. He recalls Rhea’s words when they first met: There’ll be someone else. And they’ll meet, somehow, just like us. What if they finally meet against all odds, and discover each other to be of the same sex? What’s this what if again! In that case, make friends, and keep looking for a mate together.
Perhaps they should move to Kowloon, and be connected to the mainland?
What about a name? “Now this is more than silly,” he mutters with a silly smile. He goes through a few options anyway. Xing can suit a boy or girl in Chinese. It can mean star, or spark. A spark of hope; pilot light for the next civilisation? What about a Finnish name instead. Jari? Satu?
But what if it’s just menopause? That means we’re not going to have a baby after all. He can’t help feeling a bit disappointed. Nah. She’s right. She must know. And no more what ifs, remember?
As he climbs the path, he feels a rejuvenating lightness, and starts to sing his favourite song.
Che bella cosa e' na jurnata 'e sole,
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa
Che bella cosa e' na jurnata 'e sole!
. . .
O sole mio . . .
________________________________________________
Posted 5 November 2011 on Guo Du Blog
END
of Man’s Last Song
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