And what about him? Did he love Vayla or was he just attracted by her beauty and the sexual harmony they enjoyed? This was a question all beautiful women could ask themselves: did men love them for who they were, or for their attractiveness, for the erotic stimulation they produced, and also for the prestige men gained from showing them off, impressing the crowd with a beautiful trophy wife? The same question also applied, to a lesser extent, to rich women and handsome men.
Hector wrote in his notebook:
Seedling no. 19: Could love be a combination of self-interest and emotions?
Again, it was complicated, because there was material self-interest, which was generally considered very different from love, but also emotional self-interest, which was generally considered the same as love. A woman could fall in love with a man who had more money, not for the money in itself, but because she felt protected and reassured, and that feeling of security was what made her love thrive. And her love might endure even if the man lost all his money – or not, and that would be the real test. She might also fall for a man who was successful in his field not because she particularly liked successful men but because of the energy and determination that had allowed him to attain his position.
We fall in love with someone who is beautiful because beauty creates desire and at the same time it gives us a feeling of peace and contentment, which is part of the sentiment we describe as love. ‘Beauty is a promise of happiness,’ a great writer from Hector’s country had once said, a man who himself was not very handsome and rather unhappy in love.
But of course the ideal would be to love somebody in spite of their imperfections and faults, whatever happens. You should be able to perceive the beauty of the loved one in all its splendour, even if everyone else is blind to it. He had to write that down:
Seedling no. 20: Love means still seeing the other’s beauty when nobody else does any more.
Hector began to sing:
‘Pushed aside by younger, stronger arms than mine, Will you love me still when part of me has died . . .’
‘A charming song,’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘Only it’s the kind of question it’s best not to ask yourself.’
‘I was just wondering about the difference between love and self-interest. What do you think?’
‘Well, my friend, twenty years in Asia has given me plenty of time for reflection. I’ve seen it all, believe me, and here, of course, a white man is nearly always rich by comparison. And there are a lot of young people in these countries, and therefore a lot of young women, and it makes some men lose the plot.’
‘So what?’
‘So I’ve seen it all – for instance the romantic types, who married bar hostesses; you know, the saviour complex: “She’s too good for that; she’s different from the others.” Everyone was afraid for those men, and they were right to be – mostly the men got taken to the cleaners, and occasionally even thrown out of the country when the sisters had connections. But in some cases, even when the men became penniless and old, the girls stayed with them, caring for them and supporting them, sometimes until their dying day. Out of love or duty? I don’t know. But in any case there was some bond that wasn’t self-interest. And then there were a few happy couples in the bunch, excellent wives and mothers, who, frankly, to begin with, you would never have believed had it in them. The fact is, in poor countries, completely normal girls find themselves making a living from their physical attributes, and often it’s to feed their little brothers and sisters who are still living in the countryside. And, you know, I’ve seen some of the messiest situations involving wives from the most sophisticated families.’
‘So it’s hard to differentiate between love and self-interest.’
‘When everything’s going well, it’s very hard to tell; the real test is when things go wrong, like in your song. You know what they say during the marriage ceremony, what they used to say anyway: “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health . . .”’
Jean-Marcel sometimes seemed a bit rough and ready, but you could see he had the ability to think about things, especially when he was feeling a bit down.
Hector wrote in his notebook:
Seedling no. 21: Love proves itself when put to the test.
Suddenly he noticed Vayla entering the lobby. The moment she saw Hector her face lit up.
Hector had time to write:
Seedling no. 22: Love is, smiling the moment you see one another.
HECTOR’S LIFE IS COMPLICATED
AFTER a shower and a change of clothes, Clara felt as good as new as she made her way to the lobby of the Peace Hotel. It looked like the inside of a castle with its bare stone walls, stained-glass windows and oldfashioned furniture, except that it was invaded by a steady flow of businessmen and tourists from all over the world, including Chinese tourists, because China is as big as several countries put together.
All of a sudden she felt discouraged. What had she come to Shanghai for? To see Hector of course, but what for?
To tell him that she didn’t love him any more? She knew that wasn’t entirely true, otherwise she wouldn’t be there. To tell him she still loved him? But in that case how could she explain her affair with Gunther? And, anyway, she loved Gunther, she knew that, with a love that was more passionate and more overwhelming, different from the more serene but perhaps deeper love she felt for Hector. She ordered some mineral water, thinking to herself that, in an ideal world, she would have liked to pursue her love for Gunther while knowing that Hector was still bound to her. That means I’m no better than a man who wants to have a mistress and keep his wife. She also realised that it had been the sight of the pretty Asian girl that had sparked off her fear of losing Hector forever, which she wasn’t exactly proud of.
Still, she might as well be clear in her mind about it. She called Hector.
It was a bad moment because Hector had gone back up to the hotel room with Vayla and, surprise surprise, Vayla had given him a note from Professor Cormorant.
‘Not,’ explained Vayla, and Hector understood that two young Khmer women let loose in a foreign city can always find each other when necessary.
Dear friend,
Let us once more stray from the common pathways of the internet, spied upon by petty souls, and communicate via winged messengers like those that served the gods. And, by the way, do they not resemble goddesses, our two lovely apsaras? Come this instant and meet me at my laboratory, where you will witness science in the making. Leave the charming Vayla behind to do some shopping on your expense account – because, believe me, knowing what you know, they won’t dare refuse you anything – and go to the corner of Fuxing Dong Lu and Wan Bang Zhong Lu. Pretend to be interested in the paintings – a fine collection of Chinese modern art, by the way – go into the gallery, ask where the toilets are and, once you reach the end of the corridor, hurry through the second door on the right. One last but important detail: make sure you open the door at exactly 12.45. If it doesn’t open, come back and follow the same procedure exactly one hour later.
In anticipation of our summit meeting, which I am already looking forward to,
Yours,
Chester the Brilliant
Just then, Hector’s phone rang, and it was Clara.
‘Well, I’m here. Where are you?’
‘Er . . .’
‘Are you at your hotel?’
‘Yes, but I’m about to go out.’
‘Do you want to meet somewhere else?’
Hector looked at his watch. It was 12.18; if he met Clara now, he would be unable to keep to Professor Cormorant’s schedule.
He explained to Clara that he had to leave his hotel right away for an important meeting.
‘Who with? Cormorant?’
‘No, no.’
‘With that girl.’
‘No . . .’
‘Listen, call me as soon as you’re done.’
‘I will.’
As he rang off, he saw Vayla’s pretty brow
knitted in a frown: she had understood that Hector had been speaking to a woman who was causing him problems.
‘Sabay!’ he said, but he could see this didn’t calm her.
She shot him a reproachful look.
‘Noblem!’ he added, kissing her, because this was another one of the few expressions he shared with Vayla: it was how she had understood and remembered ‘no problem’. This time, she smiled and Hector left with a light heart, more or less.
HECTOR GOES FOR A DRIVE
THE gallery was in a big street lined with beautiful old brick buildings, which looked like the ones you find in New York. This wasn’t surprising, seeing as they dated from the same time and could well have been designed by the same architects who were in fashion back then.
Hector found the painter’s work very interesting: a lot of the canvases showed young Chinese women against a background of factories, ploughed fields or construction sites, a bit like propaganda posters, but you could see the artist’s intention was to make fun of propaganda, because the young girls didn’t really look as if they were thinking about building the future of socialism. If anything, they looked bored, or as if they’d rather be having fun or texting their boyfriends on their mobiles.
The young Chinese woman who ran the gallery – one of the artist’s models? — gave him a charming greeting and Hector was sorry to disappoint her since he wasn’t going to buy anything, not this time anyway. He walked towards the toilets, checking his watch: it was 12.44. He paused in front of the second door on the right and opened it.
He found himself in a small side street behind the building and was nearly run over by a big black car with tinted windows, which pulled up right in front of him.
‘Come on, get in!’ said Professor Cormorant.
Hector found himself sitting beside the professor as the car sped off, chauffeured by a woman who, to Hector’s surprise, was wearing the uniform of the Chinese army.
‘Allow me to present Captain Lin Zaou, from the People’s Liberation Army. She’s a very good driver and, even better, she’s the reason we’re never stopped by the police.’
The chauffeur turned round for a moment to greet him, and Hector saw a very stern-faced Chinese woman in an army cap and a collar studded with gold stars.
Professor Cormorant had apparently made a lot of connections in Shanghai. The Chinese have a word for it: guanxi, and without guanxi you won’t get far in China.
‘What’s good,’ said Professor Cormorant, ‘is to see that people with ideals are interested in my research.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To my new laboratory!’
The car drove up an access ramp and they found themselves on a flyover. They sailed past a lot of very tall skyscrapers, so many that Hector couldn’t see the ones he had noticed when he arrived and used to get his bearings. Back in his own country, Hector lived in a big city, but now he realised it wasn’t that big after all.
‘Professor Cormorant, before we do anything else, I need the antidote. I don’t want to be tied to Vayla forever.’
‘But why not, young man?’
‘Because . . .’
It was difficult to explain. First of all because Hector was still in love with Clara, and he didn’t think either Clara or Vayla would want to share him. (Mind you, this solution might have suited Hector quite well, because with men it’s often like that; they don’t necessarily like cut-anddried solutions in love; they want to be nice to everyone, but there’s always one woman who wants them only to be nice to her and not to others.) But also the idea that his and Vayla’s love was the result of a drug bothered him: Hector felt that it was an infringement of their liberty, and possibly of their human dignity, although that was very difficult to explain to Professor Cormorant, who seemed so pleased with his experiments.
‘Don’t worry, you will get it,’ said Professor Cormorant, ‘but I still think it will make you unhappy, or rather that you will be throwing away an opportunity to be immensely happy.’
Hector decided not to press the point – all he wanted was the professor’s word that there was an antidote. He decided to ask him about love, as he knew the professor liked talking about that.
‘The other day I wrote: Could love be a combination of self-interest and emotions? I asked myself whether self-interest doesn’t lead to emotion – a woman wants a man’s status because it offers her security, but ends up falling head over heels in love with him – and, equally, whether our emotions don’t serve our self-interest – a man feels he is in love with a pretty woman, but deep down having that pretty face near him will help confirm his social status in the eyes of the world.’
‘Excellent!’ roared Professor Cormorant. ‘But you have only spoken about one component of love. Two at the most. And you are speaking of attraction rather than love.’
Hector was pleased: in only a few words Professor Cormorant had given him a foretaste of everything interesting he had to say about love. But, just then, the Chinese chauffeur in the army cap informed them in English that they were being followed.
They saw a big German car behind them, or rather behind the car that was behind them, because the driver must be clever, but not as clever as Captain Lin Zaou of the People’s Liberation Army.
‘For God’s sake!’ said Professor Cormorant. ‘You were followed!’
‘Or perhaps you were,’ said Hector.
‘Impossible!’
They might have gone on arguing about it, but their car swerved abruptly towards an exit, so fast it felt like it was falling, and for the next five minutes all Hector and Professor Cormorant could do was hold on to the door handles, amid a screeching of tyres. Then the car slowed down.
‘We’ve lost them,’ said the captain.
Hector and Professor Cormorant sat up straight.
They were now driving along a narrow street lined with plane trees and cottages – you’d have thought you were in Hector’s country, which was understandable, because a long time ago that part of town had belonged to his country. The car drove through a gateway and parked in a courtyard with two plane trees and what must once have been stables running along one side. At the foot of one of the trees, Hector noticed a shrine with fruit and sticks of incense placed in front of a statue of Buddha. A pair of French windows opened and Not appeared, smiling, followed by two young, effeminate Chinese men.
‘My assistants,’ exclaimed Professor Cormorant.
The two young Chinese men greeted Hector. One of them had very untidy hair that stood up on end as though he had just got out of bed, except that it was done on purpose, and the other was wearing purple glasses and an earring.
‘Nice to meet you. Professor Cormorant very good,’ they said to Hector in English.
‘Never mind the compliments,’ said Chester, ‘let’s take you straight to the lab,’ and Hector knew he wasn’t going to be bored.
CLARA MEETS VAYLA
ANOTHER person who wasn’t bored was Clara, who had gone directly to Hector’s hotel. She was perfectly aware of its name, since Gunther had given it to her.
Clara was in the lobby, which looked like an Indian palace, with lots of comfortable settees, which were so pretty that the thought occurred to Clara that one of them would look good in Hector’s consulting room, before she realised how inappropriate that thought was. She decided to sit on one of these splendid couches while she waited for Hector to come back.
Of course, this was what Clara told herself, that she had come here to wait for Hector, but it would have been much easier to ring him and arrange a meeting. In fact, Clara had only one thought in her head: to catch sight of the pretty Asian girl she had seen at Hector’s side.
She began to watch people coming and going, and what with the businessmen and -women assembled at one of the lobby bars before going off to a meeting, the tourist couples arriving exhausted from their morning excursions and the hotel staff dressed in their white, faintly Indian-looking uniforms, it made for quite a crowd, and sudde
nly, coming out of the arcade of boutiques, she saw the charming young Asian girl. Clara had to admit it: she really was lovely.
Vayla was carrying rather a lot of bags with the names of the various boutiques on them, and Clara felt a little pang as she wondered whether all this expenditure was a gift from Hector or whether it was being paid for by the company, in which case Gunther, in a sort of poetic justice, was footing the bill for Hector’s new lover’s purchases.
Vayla felt a bit tired after all that shopping, and so she sat down with a graceful little movement in one of the armchairs in the lobby, a few yards away from Clara, who was still watching her.
Clara looked for any defects, but because she was essentially honest, she recognised that there weren’t many to find.
A waiter approached Vayla with a menu and asked her what she would like. She looked embarrassed. The waiter spoke in English then Chinese then English again, but Vayla still had the embarrassed look of someone who is afraid of making a blunder. Finally, she asked for an orange juice in the voice of someone who has learnt the words off by heart. The waiter went away and Clara began to fret.
The girl didn’t speak English, and as it was unlikely she spoke Hector’s language, and he didn’t know any Asian languages, this provided an insight into their relationship which worried Clara. She tried to say to herself: So that explains it, she’s just a bed friend; his lordship is enjoying himself with a woman who isn’t capable of answering back. At the same time, she knew Hector and realised it couldn’t be true; it wasn’t his style to make love several times without becoming involved. He must be attached to this girl in a way that wasn’t just physical. Perhaps he wanted to help her, to protect her, to take her away from the place where he had found her? Clara realised it was this thought that caused her the most pain. Hector having a passionate liaison with a pretty local girl wasn’t exactly pleasant, but the idea that he could be attached to her for other reasons, and above all because he wanted to take care of her, was absolutely unbearable.
Hector and the Secrets of Love Page 11
