Hector and the Secrets of Love

by Francois Lelord

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘My plane . . .’

  ‘He could at least have let you fly in the company jet,’ said Hector.

  He felt pathetic for having said it – but too late.

  He was torn between the urge to embrace Clara and the thought that you don’t embrace a woman who has cheated on you.

  And so he watched her cross the lobby and go outside, and his heart broke even more.

  Jean-Marcel had seen the whole scene involving Clara, Hector and Vayla, and he slipped quietly out of a side exit, to go round and wait at the front of the hotel. He arrived just as Clara’s taxi was leaving. He knew Vayla wouldn’t come out from behind her armchair until Hector had left for his hotel. Jean-Marcel knew Asian women well. And that was one of his problems, because his wife suspected he knew them a bit too well.

  In the taxi he said to Hector, ‘You know, things aren’t as bad as all that. I’m beginning to think you suffer from a rich man’s worries.’

  ‘Nonsense, she’s in love with another man!’

  ‘Hmm, she comes to Shanghai and cries as soon as she sees you.’

  ‘That means she’s attached to me, not that she still really loves me.’

  ‘So being attached to someone isn’t the same as being in love?’

  Hector explained to Jean-Marcel the two main components of love according to Professor Cormorant. (Hector thought there were others, but as they weren’t clear to him yet he didn’t mention them.) The first component: desire, passion, the urge to make love, indomitable dopamine. The first component could manifest itself from the first encounter (and disappear after the next for that matter). And then the second component, which often took a bit more time to develop, anywhere from a few hours to a few days: attachment, the desire to show affection towards the other, to have him or her near, a very strong but slightly calmer emotion, no doubt similar to the emotion between parents and children, the sweet taste of oxytocin. And one of the biggest problems with love was that these two components were often out of step, in one partner or the other or in both, and that is where Professor Cormorant and his drugs came in. (But he didn’t talk to Jean-Marcel about that. Hector was on a mission, don’t forget.) Explaining all this calmed Hector; it stopped him from thinking about Clara’s tears.

  ‘Well,’ said Jean-Marcel, ‘that’s sort of what’s happened to me and my wife. A lot of attachment, but not much desire. And during my trips, it’s the exact reverse!’

  ‘How is your interpreter, Madame Li?’

  Jean-Marcel looked uncomfortable.‘Never mix business with pleasure,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Once you start saying that it’s because they’re already a bit mixed, isn’t it?’

  Jean-Marcel laughed slightly, and Hector knew he had fallen for his interpreter. When a man finds it difficult to talk about a woman, it is often a sign that he is in love with her. Because men – real men, traditional men, like Jean-Marcel – sense that love can weaken them. But ever since they were little they’ve been told they must always be strong.

  Later, Hector felt sufficiently calm to begin writing, but he only had to say the name ‘Gunther’ from time to time and he would feel angry enough for it to cloud his inspiration.

  HECTOR IS ANGRY

  The Third Component of Heartache

  The third component of heartache is anger. Unlike the second component, where we blame ourselves and all our faults for having driven the loved one away, this time it is the object of our love whom we blame for having behaved shamefully towards us. The person who has jilted us no longer seems to glow with boundless beauty and goodness, but appears on the contrary as a cruel, shallow, ungrateful being, in a word, a bitch, or a complete bastard, whom we would like to see, not as before in order to declare our undying love and our true remorse, but in order to unleash the full force of our wrath.

  The third component manifests itself, then, in the form of painful fits of suppressed rage stirred by memories of all the loved one’s failings, which take place most often in the final weeks before they leave. They break off contact for several days despite promising to stay in touch. With hindsight, there have been several indications that, before leaving us for good, they have been seeing someone else for an unknown period of time, the duration of which we will seek to discover with the doggedness of a palaeontologist attempting to date a dinosaur’s jawbone. Shortly before withdrawing from us, they assure us tenderly that they love us. If they’ve lied to us, it shows how shamefully deceitful they are; if they meant what they had said, then they’re shallow, fickle and irresponsible.

  This resentment can become so intense it bursts out: we begin talking to ourselves, reproaching the loved one as though they were present, imagining them trembling, crying or begging for forgiveness when confronted with our righteous anger. One step further and we start leaving accusatory messages on the loved one’s answering machine and voicemail, or writing them letters venting our anger in words aimed at hurting them in the same way as we have been hurt.

  Hector paused. How could Clara have done this to him? Come to his bed at night and be having an affair with Gunther? He thought of several hurtful things he could have written straight away. But Hector stopped himself from emailing Clara. Hector is a psychiatrist, so perhaps he had learnt a little better than most that writing when you are in an emotional state never works very well. He went back to dealing with the third component.

  These attempts at revenge are ill advised because after the email has been sent or the letter posted, we might suffer another unexpected attack of the second component (guilty brooding over our own past failings), which will be made all the more powerful by the sudden realisation that what we have just done is irreversible and renders impossible the return of the loved one, which, despite all signs to the contrary, is what we are still hoping for.

  The act of writing had soothed Hector. He sensed there were still more components to deal with, but how many?

  Suddenly he thought of old François. He seemed to have thought so much about heartache that Hector’s reflections would surely interest him, and undoubtedly he would have his own ideas on the subject. Hector went on to the internet in order to send him his thoughts on the first three components.

  He was still sitting at his computer when Vayla walked in and came to put her arm around his neck.

  ‘Noblem?’ she asked, ruffling his hair.

  ‘Noblem,’ replied Hector.

  They looked at one another, and suddenly, for no reason, they burst out laughing. For a moment, Hector was surprised: he thought he had seen a tear in Vayla’s eye.

  HECTOR CALMS DOWN

  LATER, they were sailing high up in the sky, but in a plane this time. Vayla complained of not being able to go to sleep on Hector’s shoulder as the seats were too far apart, separated by huge armrests because, as you’ve guessed, Hector had not skimped on the price of the tickets – they were paid for by Gunther.

  Since the armchair folded out into a proper bed, Vayla managed to drop off, settling, as she slept, into the position Hector loved so much. An apsara flies through the air, he thought.

  He realised that Vayla, like most people from her country, had spent her childhood in one room where the whole family lived and where you slept next to each other, never alone. Where he came from, he knew psychiatrists talked a lot about the possible trauma children could suffer if they suddenly discovered their parents making love. But what if they had shared the same room since they were tiny? Were they permanently traumatised? And in that case were billions of the world’s children permanently traumatised? And what if it was the other way round, what if people from countries like Hector’s were traumatised by having been left all alone in a bedroom as babies, when, in the wild, animals of every species stay with their mothers? Of course, because countries like his had invented psychiatry, they were the ones who decided what was normal and what wasn’t.

  A few rows behind them (three to be precise, because in that part of the plane there aren’t
very many seats), he knew Jean-Marcel was talking to Not. Because, guess what, they were going back to Vayla and Not’s country, where the professor was already waiting for them. And why not all travel in the same class: it was so much nicer, especially when you thought of Gunther’s face when he had to explain the cost of the mission to his boss. (Because even Gunther has a boss, or people known as shareholders who can make trouble for him, so don’t imagine the lives of big bosses are all plain sailing, because for a lot of them happiness is a question of comparison — they compare themselves with one another, their incomes, how big their companies are, a bit like little boys who enjoy seeing who can throw a stone the furthest or who has the biggest willy.)

  Hector looked at the professor’s message which Not had brought to him.

  My dear friend,

  We must flee – all has been exposed! I will tell you more in due course, but it appears Dr Wei brought some other associates on board, some new Chinese partners. I don’t like collaborating with people who want to force me down new avenues of research, especially when they flash their gold teeth and watches at me, not to mention their bodyguards who come and flex their muscles in my little laboratory. As for the two youths, Wu and Lee, suddenly I’m not so sure what their game is; I even have my suspicions about their nationality and, I would venture to say, about their gender. No, don’t think I’ve become paranoid . . . I already was, ha ha! In any event, this psychological tendency made me take steps that allowed me to erase the hard drive and deactivate the molecular samples in a jiffy, and, hey presto, Professor Cormorant vanishes into thin air, leaving in his wake only a big mouse orgy and a pair of lovesick ducks. Where have I gone? I shall leave it to the divine Not to inform the sublime Vayla. That’s as safe a means of communication as the most secure networks: two apsaras whispering in each other’s ears; all you need to do is let yourself be guided!

  Best wishes,

  Chester

  P.S. I think Dr Wei’s new partners are persistent (pigheaded) types. Take care nobody follows you.

  These last words had prompted Hector to ask Jean-Marcel to go with them, and it was lucky because, as it happened, Jean-Marcel had to go back to Khmer country on business. (You may be wondering why we don’t just say ‘Cambodia’ at this point. Well, it’s because this is a story and in stories countries don’t have names, unless they are fabulous thousand-year-old empires like China.)

  Hector couldn’t fall asleep because he kept thinking about Clara. He was experiencing the first three components – neediness, guilt and anger – consecutively or simultaneously. He calmed his neediness by looking at Vayla, assuaged his guilt by thinking of Gunther, stifled his anger by remembering Clara and his own past failings, and washed it all down with a few glasses of vintage champagne to take the edge off things. He could feel other components stirring in him, which made him a little uneasy, but at the same time he rejoiced at the prospect of penning a few sublime and probably immortal lines, which lovers would still be reading when all that remained of him was dust.

  GUNTHER LOVES CLARA

  IT was Gunther’s turn to feel needy and angry while he waited for Clara to return. (Didn’t he feel any guilt? you may ask. Well, no, as a matter of fact he didn’t. Gunther felt a sense of duty – towards his close family and friends – he was careful to avoid problems with his shareholders and the taxman, but guilt was not his strong point.)

  What’s more, Gunther was worried Clara might have told Hector about their relationship, and if that were the case, his incentive to find Professor Cormorant was likely to be severely diminished and Gunther’s plans badly upset.

  ‘What on earth is he doing?’ wondered Gunther as he noticed the sudden appearance of large payments on the statements for the credit card they had given Hector, statements allowing them to track his movements, which were cross-checked and confirmed by other sources. The payments upset Gunther, not because of the actual sums of money, which were laughable compared to what he was used to handling, but because they weren’t planned, and Gunther had always felt a strong need to control and to plan. Despite his passing irritation, Gunther never lost sight of the huge profits a drug enabling people to fall in love would generate.

  Besides, constantly focusing on his aims was actually good for Gunther as it helped him not to suffer too much by thinking about Clara. Gunther sadly acknowledged that the one time he was truly in love with a woman, he was being punished for it. Up until then, he had experienced all his affairs and liaisons as a healthy distraction from the unhappiness of his home life. And yet Gunther loved his wife. Professor Cormorant would have said that what he felt was above all an attachment to the mother of his daughter, as well as a certain sense of duty: Gunther came from a traditional family where the men weren’t always faithful but they never left their wives. How awful, some women will say, what a hypocrite, what amazing cowards men are. But if Gunther had left his wife and daughter to go and live with one of his pretty mistresses, would you find that praiseworthy and courageous? You see how complicated love is. Of course, we would prefer Gunther to remain faithful to his wife, but then the story wouldn’t be so interesting anyway and, although big bosses who are completely faithful to their wives do exist, you’d have to look quite hard to find one.

  On Hector’s credit card statement Gunther noticed a very large payment to an Asian airline company renowned for its comfort. Is he travelling with his whole family or what? he thought. What annoyed Gunther even more was that, as part of a cost-control plan, the company executives were supposed to travel business class, not first class, and it was evident Hector was not only travelling first class himself, but was paying for others to travel first class.

  His mobile rang. It was Clara.

  ‘Are you calling from Shanghai?’

  ‘From the airport.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you tell him about us?’

  ‘Is this a cross-examination?’

  Like Hector, Gunther sensed he was taking the wrong approach. It’s a tendency men have, always to ask very precise questions about facts, whereas women feel that truth lies beyond mere facts.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I get very anxious when you’re away from me. I miss you terribly.’

  ‘I miss you, too,’ said Clara.

  They carried on saying affectionate things to each other, and at the same time Gunther could sense Clara was upset; she wasn’t talking to him the way she normally did. She’s told him everything, he thought. She’s told him everything.

  As he was talking to Clara, Gunther looked at his diary, ticking off all the meetings he could cancel so that he could fly to Asia immediately. This was an emergency.

  ‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’

  HECTOR AND THE LITTLE MOUNTAIN FAIRIES

  A MUFFLED sound came from the forest.

  ‘Is that a monkey?’ asked Hector.

  ‘No, it’s a tiger,’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘On the prowl.’

  They decided it was best to go back to the car, a big four-wheel drive they had hired for an exorbitant sum. Vayla and Not had stayed in the back seat; they knew they were in tiger territory because this was their country!

  ‘Your friend the professor doesn’t believe in making things easy, does he?’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘Burying himself in a little village in the mountains. I’m not even sure we’ll be able to do the last few miles in the car.’

  ‘What about the tigers?’ Hector asked.

  ‘Oh, there’ll be fewer at this altitude.’

  Fewer. This reminded Hector of the time he had wanted to go for a swim in a tropical sea. He had asked a friend who lived there whether there were sharks. The friend had replied, ‘Hardly ever.’ Hector had gone for a swim, but it was a very short one.

  Anyway, he had noticed that the ever-practical Jean-Marcel had a gun holster in his luggage, as well as a box containing a satellite phone and receiver, which would enable him to keep up with his business affa
irs and to access the internet. Hector thought he might be able to send a message to Clara when they arrived, although he wondered what he could possibly write to her.

  The road wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t even really a road any more, more of a track, and not even a proper track in places. The forest began to thin out – it wasn’t jungle any more, but more like a forest in Hector’s country, only with trees that were sometimes different.

  In the back, Vayla and Not were speaking in excited voices. This was the first time in their lives they had been sightseeing in their own country and they seemed to be enjoying it enormously.

  ‘You look more relaxed,’ said Jean-Marcel.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Hector, ‘I tell myself some problems have no solution, so what’s the point of even trying to find one?’

  ‘You’re beginning to think like a local. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up staying here.’

  Hector looked at the hills covered with trees, some of the green slopes partially hidden by patches of earlymorning mist. And why not stay here? Set up home in one of the long wooden houses on stilts he had seen from the road, with Vayla.

  But he knew even Vayla wouldn’t have been keen on the idea. Like all women, or nearly all women, she preferred living in a town than in the middle of the countryside.

  ‘My God,’ said Jean-Marcel, ‘we should have been there ages ago by now.’

  They were driving along the side of a huge bare hill – you might even have said a small mountain – and on the other side you could see a forest, but apart from that there was nothing, only a few tiny paddy fields dotted here and there where the land was a little flatter, like ornaments on an already magnificent landscape.