Hector and the Search for Lost Time

by Francois Lelord

  ‘To decide things!’ said Little Hector.

  If he became a grown-up straight away, explained Little Hector, he could decide for himself what time to go to bed, when to wake up and where he could spend his holidays. He could see the friends he wanted, have fun doing what he wanted and not see grown-ups he didn’t want to see (like his father’s new girlfriend). He would also have a real job, because going to school wasn’t a real job. Besides, you didn’t choose to go to school and then you spent hours, days, years watching time passing slowly and getting bored.

  Hector thought that Little Hector had let his imagination run away with him about life as a grown-up: after all, grown-ups still had to do things they didn’t like doing, and see people they didn’t like seeing. But he didn’t tell Little Hector that, because he thought that, for the moment, it was a good thing that Little Hector was dreaming of a happy future, since his present was not that happy.

  So he asked Little Hector, ‘But if you became a grown-up straight away, it would mean that you’d already lived for a good few years, so you’d have fewer left to live. Wouldn’t that bother you?’

  Little Hector thought it over. ‘Okay, it’s a bit like a video game when you lose an extra life. It’s annoying, but it doesn’t stop you having fun.’ Then he looked at Hector.

  ‘What about you? Would it bother you to have already lost one or two lives?’

  Big Hector thought that Little Hector might become a psychiatrist himself one day.

  HECTOR THINKS THINGS OVER

  AT the end of each day, Hector thought about all the people he’d listened to who were worried about time.

  He thought about Sabine, who wanted to slow time down.

  He thought about Fernand, who measured his life in dogs.

  He thought about Little Hector, who wanted to speed time up.

  And many others . . .

  Hector spent more and more time thinking about time.

  HECTOR IS CONSCIENTIOUS

  HECTOR noticed that, if he asked them, almost all the people he saw had two kinds of worries.

  Sometimes, it was the fear that time was passing too quickly, which is quite a distressing fear to have because you can’t do much about the speed of time. It’s like being on a horse that gallops on without heeding you, which had actually happened to Hector once, and it had given him a real fright.

  At other times, it was the feeling that time was passing too slowly, and that . . . well, that’s like sitting on a donkey that doesn’t want to budge. Of course, it was mostly youngsters who told Hector that, or else very unhappy people who were waiting for things to get better and for whom every day seemed to last for weeks.

  Hector thought that in order to help people who were worried about time he could suggest some little exercises to make them think. Because, when you’re a psychiatrist, you can obviously just tell people what they need to do to get better, but the chances are they won’t listen properly. It’s better to help them discover by themselves what would be good for them. Suggesting little exercises to make people think was a method favoured by Hector and quite a few of his colleagues.

  Hector took out his notebook and got ready to make some notes. First, he thought of Fernand and wrote:

  Time Exercise No. 1: Measure your life in dogs.

  This exercise might help people to realise that it was better not to wait too long to do the things you really wanted to do. On the other hand, it could make you even more worried about time passing, and especially about how much of it you had left. Was it such a good exercise then, after all? Hector remembered having learnt at school that some philosophers thought a good life was one which involved thinking every day that one day it would all end. There was even a philosopher who had music played for him every evening at bedtime. Singers would gather at the foot of his bed and sing, ‘He lived!’, as if it was his funeral. But, as Hector knew, some people are a bit crazy, even some philosophers (and don’t tell anyone this, but even some psychiatrists too).

  Hector thought of Little Hector.

  Time Exercise No. 2: Make a list of what you wanted to do when you were little and dreaming of being grown up.

  Again, this could help spur you on to do the things you really wanted to do. But it could just as easily discourage you by making you think it was too late. Hector would have liked to find an exercise which worked for everyone.

  Hector thought of Sabine and wrote:

  Time Exercise No. 3: Over the course of one day, count how much time you have for yourself. Sleeping doesn’t count (unless it’s at the office).

  It was still very hard to tell what the results of this exercise would be. Some people would realise that they didn’t have a moment to themselves and that all their time was spent on other people – he was thinking of Sabine – and others would realise that they had nothing else to do but enjoy themselves or think about themselves. But Hector had already noticed that this didn’t always make those people happy. In fact some of them even wanted to kill themselves!

  With his three exercises, Hector was well aware that his list was a bit on the short side. Perhaps, if he kept listening to the people who came to see him, it would give him other ideas.

  And if that wasn’t enough? Well, there would always be time to think about that later.

  HECTOR AND THE MAN WHO WANTED TO TURN BACK TIME

  AHA, thought Hector, I feel a new idea coming on. He was listening to Hubert, who was an astronomer. He observed and listened to the stars with such expensive equipment that it took several different countries to pay for it all. Then Hubert and his colleagues did some very complicated calculations to work out how the world had begun a very long time ago. They even wondered what things were like before the world began, and even whether time existed back then.

  Hubert had had a complete breakdown the day he realised that, as a result of spending all his time thinking about the stars, he hadn’t been paying enough attention to his wife, and she had left him for a man who did nothing much in life, but who was apparently quite funny. Hector was helping Hubert to understand that you shouldn’t dwell too much on the past. (It was a bit like the business with the beginning of the world: Hubert was spending all his time trying to understand how this business between his wife and this man had started.) Hector explained to Hubert that knowing whose fault it was wasn’t all that important. It would be better for Hubert to look to the future and try to take better care of the next nice woman he met, even if that meant that the next big theory of the beginning of the world was a little delayed.

  But Hubert couldn’t let it go. ‘I wish I could go back in time, back to the time when she still loved me.’

  When Hubert said ‘to the time when she still loved me’, he couldn’t stop tears welling up in his eyes. It was terribly sad.

  ‘Now, I’d know how to love her; I’d pay attention; I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. If only I could go back . . .’

  And yet, with his very complicated research on stars, Hubert of all people should have known that you can’t turn back time – or else it would completely change our understanding of the world and how it works. But, despite this, he didn’t stop thinking about it.

  ‘Anyway, Doctor, at our age, you really have to take stock of your life.’

  Hector was startled – he thought he was a lot younger than Hubert. He didn’t say anything, but afterwards he checked Hubert’s date of birth. Sure enough, Hector was younger, but, as it turned out, not by that much.

  Hector was a bit disappointed. The only idea Hubert had given him was that he wasn’t exactly a young psychiatrist any more, and he already knew that anyway. The only difference was that now he actually felt it, and, as psychiatrists well know, when it comes to knowing and feeling, it’s feeling that’s important.

  In the end, Hubert did give Hector another idea.

  Time
Exercise No. 4: Think of all the people and things you are not paying enough attention to now, because one day they will be gone and then it will be too late.

  HECTOR AND THE LADY WHO WANTED TO STAY YOUNG

  THE patient just after Hubert was Marie-Agnès, a rather charming young woman who had a tendency to change boyfriends as soon as they fell in love with her. As a result, Hector had been her psychiatrist longer than she’d been with any of her boyfriends. When you’re a psychiatrist, you mustn’t fall in love with your patients, even when they are your type. Marie-Agnès had begun to realise that all her friends were married, and that most of the men she was interested in were married too.

  ‘When I think of all the perfectly good men I broke up with when I was younger . . .’

  ‘Perhaps they weren’t right for you,’ said Hector.

  ‘Oh, but they were. Besides, when I see how they’ve turned out, I think to myself that I was an absolute idiot not to hold on to them.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘No, no! Just one.’

  ‘Do you think this might be a useful lesson for the future?’

  ‘The future? But, at my age, I’ve got much less choice. I think my future will always be worse than my past.’

  ‘If you want to live the same way in the future as you did in the past, maybe,’ said Hector.

  ‘Do you mean that at thirty-nine you can’t keep living like you did at twenty?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Ah, but still . . . twenty is the most wonderful time of your life.’

  Hector thought that this wasn’t true for everyone, but it clearly was for Marie-Agnès.

  ‘Not having a care in the world, being free and able to choose any guy you want, not thinking about the passage of time, feeling that your life is never going to end . . . How I wish I could go back!’

  ‘You were saying a moment ago that you would take the opportunity to choose a good husband quickly,’ said Hector.

  ‘Well, there, I’m contradicting myself. Maybe I’d do the same thing all over again.’

  ‘Then why have any regrets?’ asked Hector.

  ‘I just miss that feeling that my life will never end . . . because I don’t have that feeling any more,’ said Marie-Agnès.

  Hector had read studies on this. There’s a moment when your life seems to stretch out before you like an endless roll of fabric, from which you’ll be able to make all sorts of outfits. And then comes the moment when you realise that the roll does have an end, and that you’ll have to do some careful calculations if you’re going to manage to get even one more set of clothes out of it. (Don’t forget, you’ve known from the beginning that the roll has an end, but, once again, when it comes to knowing and feeling, it’s feeling that counts.) Depending on the person, this feeling that the roll has an end hits them somewhere between two and a half dogs and three. Psychiatrists call this a midlife crisis and it puts a lot of work their way.

  ‘By the way, Doctor, could you write me a prescription for my vitamins?’

  Hector remembered that, even though Marie-Agnès couldn’t slow time down, she tried to slow down its effects on her at least. There were so many things she could try: there were vitamin supplements and supplements of other supplements of every colour imaginable, which she bought on the internet, and workouts three times a week with lots of aerobics. And it’s true that, as Hector sometimes noticed, she had a really stunning figure. Then, of course, there were fruit and vegetables at least four times a day (this made Marie-Agnès’s mother happy, since she could never get Marie-Agnès to eat her vegetables when she was little), no cigarettes at all any more, not much wine and only good fats (that’s to say, none which come from cows or pigs, another reason for not eating those good animals).

  Above all, Marie-Agnès avoided sunbathing, because she knew it ages the skin, and she used at least three different sorts of face cream, depending on whether it was morning, night or during the day, and her night cream was called ‘anti-ageing’.

  Hector thought all this was very good for her health, and would make Marie-Agnès look younger for longer, but it didn’t stop time passing.

  As it was, Marie-Agnès must have thought the same thing sometimes, because one day she said to Hector, ‘When I see myself bouncing up and down in the mirror at the gym or I’m standing in front of all my beauty creams, sometimes I ask myself, what’s the point? Why not just finally let go . . . stop caring about all that. Basically, it’s a kind of slavery.’

  A slave to wanting to stay young. Hector thought that was a very good way of putting it, but he knew that Marie-Agnès would carry on being a slave for quite some time, because the way men looked at her was still very important to her.

  When Marie-Agnès had left, Hector looked at himself in the mirror above the mantelpiece just as she had . . . and he noticed, no two ways about it, that for the first time in his life he had a few grey hairs, which you couldn’t miss, just above his ears.

  So he wasn’t exactly a young psychiatrist any more.

  In the end, just like all the other times when he had something important on his mind, Hector wanted to talk to his girlfriend Clara about it.

  But he took the time to write:

  Time Exercise No. 5: Imagine your life as a big roll of fabric, from which you have made all the clothes you have worn since you were little. Imagine the set of clothes you could make with the rest of the roll.

  HECTOR LOVES CLARA; CLARA LOVES HECTOR

  HECTOR and Clara . . . well, it was a long story, even though they were both still quite young. We’ll try to explain it to you, but, as with all love affairs, it’s not always easy to understand, even for those involved.

  Clara and Hector first met at a big conference for psychiatrists organised by a big company which made medicines and which Clara worked too hard for. Hector had gone up to ask Clara some serious questions about the medicines. Clara had answered him seriously. Then, just after that, Hector had made her laugh; then after that he’d phoned her; then some time after that they’d realised that they were both in love.

  And now Clara and Hector were living together.

  Clara and Hector sometimes thought about getting married and having a baby, but they hardly ever thought about it at the same time. Sometimes, Hector went off travelling, and when he’d been away, it must be confessed, he’d got up to mischief. And for a while he hadn’t really been too sure what he wanted. For her part, Clara had wondered if Hector and she would ever get married. And at times she hadn’t really been too sure any more what she wanted either.

  But, at this point in their story, Clara and Hector were living together and were starting (once again) to think about getting married and having a baby.

  Will they get there eventually? You’ll have to keep reading to the end of this book to find out!

  One day, Hector talked to Clara about what he’d noticed: that almost nobody was happy with time. And he also told her about this feeling he had, from some of the comments his patients had made, that he wasn’t exactly a young psychiatrist any more.

  So Clara said to him, ‘Oh, you men! You’re always a bit slow!’

  And she explained to Hector that, for women, the feeling of not exactly being young any more came much earlier than for men.

  ‘How do women notice?’ asked Hector.

  ‘The competition appears,’ said Clara.

  At first, Hector didn’t understand what Clara meant, which just goes to show that psychiatrists aren’t always that clever after all.

  Clara went on: ‘And we women are much more aware of the years going by. For a long time, when you’re young, you think your life will really get going a bit later, and then one day you realise that this “later” has already been and gone. Usually, this is the point when you begin to see little wrinkles appearing on your face that other p
eople don’t notice. Sometimes, I tell myself that if I keep thinking “later”, one day I’ll realise it’s “too late”. To have a baby, for example.’

  And Clara looked at Hector, and Hector looked at Clara.

  All of this showed that, even though Clara seemed to be quite an optimistic girl, there were still times when she thought quite deeply about things. Of course, Hector already knew that, and it was one of the reasons he loved Clara.

  Once again, Hector told himself that, even if no one talks about the passage of time, everyone thinks about it.

  Apart from babies, perhaps. But, then again, who knows?

  HECTOR HAS A DREAM

  THE following night, Hector had a dream.

  He was in a compartment of a train, just like the ones he remembered from his childhood, with a big corridor and windows you could open with a handle. He himself was a grown-up like the Hector we know now. He was alone and felt a little uneasy. Outside, the countryside rolled by, bathed in late-afternoon sunshine, but it was strange because the countryside was like it used to be when he was a child. You could still see cornflowers and poppies in the fields, big hedges with blackberries and raspberries where birds and rabbits hid, ponds where children fished on their way home from school, their bicycles lying in the grass, and, along country paths, cows and sheep being brought in for the night. Even the sky looked different – it was a softer blue, and the clouds were a purer shade of white. Hector was touched by this sight, and he wanted to share it with someone – perhaps one of his friends was sitting on the train. He went out into the corridor, but there was no one there, and all the other compartments in the carriage were empty.

  Feeling a little uneasy, he went through to the next carriage, but there was no one there either. He continued walking up the train, thinking to himself all the while that there had to be someone on it.