Hector and the Secrets of Love (17 page)

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.

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.

L
ATER, 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.

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.

I
T 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.’

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 affairs 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.

Jean-Marcel turned round to show Not and Vayla the map and ask them where they were, but judging from the panic on their faces, it was obvious they didn’t know how to read a map, and in this they were no different from Clara, thought Hector. Still, Jean-Marcel could understand a bit of Khmer.

‘Not and Vayla say the problem with these villages is they sometimes move around.’

‘Why?’

‘These people practise slash-and-burn farming. So some years they have to move to a different area. Otherwise their paddy fields become barren. Or it brings bad luck and they have to please the gods. Or the tigers — ’

‘But if there are paddy fields, the villages can’t be far away.’

Jean-Marcel shrugged as if to say, you never know here, and it was sort of true, because they didn’t even know what country they were in. This area was on the border between three different countries which had once been colonised by Hector’s country, and when his fellow countrymen had left (with a bit of persuasion, it has to be said), they took with them the layouts showing the exact position of the frontiers in the mountains, and as there weren’t any real landmarks — no high peaks or wide rivers, just a few villages that moved around – the three countries weren’t too sure where their borders were, and for that matter they didn’t try too hard to find out.