Hector and the Secrets of Love Read online

  Here life goes on as before. Where are you?

  Write back soon.

  Lots of love.

  Apparently, Clara had a problem with abandonment, too.

  Hector was thinking this while looking at a very beautiful, remarkably pale Chinese woman calmly impaling herself on the enormous veined member of a fat Chinaman with a slightly distant look on his face. Actually it was a statue, because they were in a museum, the museum of love to be precise, where thousands of works on the subject had been amassed, further proof that people who have sex on the brain are nothing new.

  Faced with the vastness of Shanghai, Hector had decided to start by visiting this museum, telling himself that the professor might also have come here and left him a clue.

  They went from room to room, Vayla’s arm gently entwined in his, discovering paintings or statues entitled The Butterfly in Search of Nectar or Break Open the Rock so the Spring May Burst Forth or The Restless Bird Discovers the Way through the Forest, because Chinese civilisation is a great civilisation that sees poetry in everything. Hector remembered that a great Chinese leader had even launched a massive campaign known as the Hundred Flowers Movement when it would have been more accurate to call it the Slaughter Anyone Who Stands Out Movement.

  He was unable to share these thoughts with Vayla, just as she was unable to understand any of the captions in Chinese and English, but the meaning of the works was fairly explicit, so much so that Hector wondered whether Vayla might not get ideas about the normal size of a, well, of what artists there called ‘the jade beam’.

  Vayla had laughed with her hand over her mouth when she saw the first pieces, and had then examined the following ones with interest, but gradually it became obvious she was getting bored, and was covering her mouth now in order to yawn. Hector remembered this was a slight difference between men and women. Men were always a little aroused by the image of people making love, as he was at that moment in fact, whereas in general it wasn’t enough to put women in the mood – with a few exceptions, but we won’t be giving out any phone numbers.

  They came to some showcases containing various artefacts carved from ivory. At first glance you might have thought they were pieces of jewellery, but they weren’t; they were accessories and implements designed to console women in the absence of men or to provide men with the extra means to satisfy their women, which proved that even the ancient Chinese had definite feminist sensibilities. Vayla stood transfixed in front of these objects then turned to Hector, cupping her hands behind her ears and moving her head from side to side in imitation of an elephant. She had understood what the objects were carved out of because there were still quite a few elephants in her country, and sometimes even on the roads, instead of a row of heavy trucks, you had to overtake a row of elephants, which is less dangerous because a good elephant never pulls out unexpectedly.

  Around them, other visitors chuckled as they viewed the works, and this made Hector wonder: why did the same act, which caused so many to despair because they couldn’t do it with the person they wanted to, or as many times as they wanted to, make more or less everyone laugh? Everyone who passed through the museum, including Chinese, Europeans, Americans and others of uncertain origin, laughed or giggled a little when they discovered The Hungry Horse Gallops towards its Manger or The Weary Dragons Repose in Mid-combat.

  Probably, thought Hector, because love is a private emotion. But when you see other people in a frenzy over love, becoming as oblivious to reason as animals or little children, it makes you laugh. Just like it does when you see animals or little children who don’t know how to hide their desires under a façade of good manners. Good manners are after all meant to serve as a façade, and love and good manners don’t always go together, if you follow.

  Hector stood staring at a painting entitled The Longnecked Cormorant Shoots out a Jet of Foam, and in this case we don’t need to do a drawing for you.

  The strange thing about this minuscule painting was that it didn’t appear to be in the same style as the others, even though the frame looked older, if anything. To Vayla’s astonishment, Hector turned the painting over and found a label with a number printed on it in very fine handwriting – 316 715 9243 – followed by the same ideograms he had read behind Vayla’s ear.

  Professor Cormorant seemed to be having a lot of fun.

  HECTOR AND VAYLA VISIT THE ZOO

  WHEN Hector and Vayla arrived at Shanghai Zoo (the meeting place suggested by Professor Cormorant, whom Hector had called at the number on the back of the painting), they found trucks and several local television channels and quite a big crowd there, and in China when you say quite a big crowd, that can mean a very big crowd.

  They went to see what was happening. Various television crews were filming a couple of pandas.

  The two pandas sat tenderly embracing one another in the middle of a little island built especially for them, and from time to time they looked at the crowd staring back at them and at the cameras filming, but they didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned and carried on gently licking each other’s muzzles.

  It was very cute, but Hector couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Still, Vayla seemed delighted, and she sighed sweetly as she watched the pandas, probably secreting oxytocin without knowing it.

  Finally, Hector found two young Chinese students who spoke English. They explained that the zookeepers had been trying for months to get the two pandas to mate. But Hi, the male panda, seemed totally uninterested in Ha, the female panda. And when she tried to attract the male’s attention, he had kicked her away, so that the zookeepers had begun to wonder whether Hi wasn’t a bit . . . you know what. And then two days ago Hi had suddenly become very amorous, and not only had he been intimate with Ha several times, but he kept cuddling her, when as a rule panda love was a very brief affair, after which those concerned went back to doing their own thing. And so these events were very important for the panda world, and for China, whose mascot is the panda, and even the great leaders were going to give speeches about Hi and Ha, because their new-found love was considered a good omen for the country and proof that the policies they were implementing were the right ones. And then the two students started sniggering – you could tell they were the arrogant type, probably a couple of spoilt only children.

  ‘So, my friend, what do you make of it?’

  Hector turned round; it was Professor Cormorant, of course, looking very well and accompanied by a young woman who looked like Vayla and also wore clothes from the hotel boutique. Vayla and Not gave shrieks of joy and embraced one another, after which they began a conversation punctuated with furtive giggles, while Professor Cormorant and Hector had a serious conversation. Hector noticed that the professor was leaning on a walking stick, which surprised him because he didn’t recall him having a limp.

  ‘You don’t mean to tell me the pandas . . . ’ said Hector.

  ‘Of course!’ said the professor. ‘The same ones we took, except I modified the dose for the male.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘The difficulty was making sure they took it at roughly the same time. It had to land directly under their noses, and I found the way to do it,’ said the professor, waving his stick and winking at Hector.

  Hector understood that Professor Cormorant’s bamboo cane was a blowpipe.

  ‘And you? How is everything going with the sweet Vayla?’

  Hector explained that, as the professor might imagine, everything was going very well, but even so he wanted to take the antidote.

  The professor appeared surprised, but just then the two of them found themselves in front of a television camera, a microphone under their noses.

  ‘We’re from CNN,’ said a young, determined-looking Asian woman. ‘Would you like to say a few words about what is going on here?’

  Hector saw Professor Cormorant freeze, ready to flee, then his cheeks flushed with pleasure and he declared, ‘What we see here is proof that love is universal! Even amo
ng pandas! Because what is love if not a combination of affection and sexual instinct?’

  At that moment, a murmur rose from the crowd because Hi was being intimate with Ha again, and she let him have his way, glancing at him sweetly over her shoulder.

  Professor Cormorant was ecstatic. ‘Look how happy they are, far more so than mere mating animals! They have discovered both desire and affection.’

  ‘How interesting. And who might you be?’

  ‘My name is Chester G. Cormorant, Ph.D., and this is my great friend Dr Hector – he’s a psychiatrist. We both specialise in love.’

  The young Asian woman seemed about to go into raptures – she had been looking for two English-speaking onlookers in a crowd of Chinese people, and who should she stumble upon but two experts!

  ‘But is there some explanation as to why this is happening to these two pandas now?’ she asked.

  Just then, Vayla and Not came over, intrigued by the presence of the camera. They stood on either side of Hector and the professor, beaming into the lens.

  ‘Do you know them?’ asked the journalist.

  ‘They are our research assistants,’ said Professor Cormorant.

  ‘From Benteasaryaramay University,’ Hector added.

  Professor Cormorant embarked on a lengthy explanation: the ingredients necessary for love were present in the brains of all mammals, a bit like musical instruments kept in a cupboard; all they needed was a conductor to make them work together.

  The journalist seemed very interested, like most girls when you spoke to them about love, thought Hector.

  Suddenly, he caught sight of Jean-Marcel on the other side of the crowd of Chinese people. He seemed to be looking for someone. Hector turned to Professor Cormorant to tell him but he and Not had vanished.

  ‘A last word to sum up?’ said the journalist.

  ‘Sabay!’ exclaimed Vayla.

  Hector understood; it meant ‘All is well’ in Khmer. But Hector was becoming less and less sure about that.

  HECTOR ISN’T THERE

  THE report about Hi and Ha was shown on television channels all over the world – well, the part where they kissed each other’s muzzles, not where Hi got behind Ha, because the strange thing about news programmes is that they can show you people being shot or hacked to pieces, but not two pandas making love. A few seconds of Professor Cormorant’s impassioned declaration followed the panda images, and his words about love and musical instruments were repeated and translated into a lot of different languages, while next to him you could see Hector nodding in agreement, and the fresh, smiling faces of Vayla and Not.

  Clara was watching CNN, as she often did to keep up her English, when she stumbled on the coverage. The first thing she noticed was how happy Hector looked. And then she thought she saw that Vayla, standing right next to him, had put her arm around his back.

  Clara felt as if a jolt of electricity had passed through her body.

  ‘What a jerk!’ said Gunther.

  Gunther was sitting next to her on the sofa because, there we are, sadly enough, Clara and Gunther were having an affair, and now you understand why Clara felt so sad back on the island.

  You might have a low opinion of Clara – a girl sleeping with her boss in order to get promoted. Only that wasn’t true at all. Clara already had a very successful career before she fell in love with Gunther so she didn’t need to do that. Well, all right, you’ll say, but she still fell for the alpha male – how typical. Wrong again. Clara had never been impressed by Gunther’s role as the big boss, and anyway, if you think about it, Clara fell in love with Hector first, and psychiatrists are hardly ever big bosses; on the contrary, psychiatry is a profession where you don’t have to obey or give orders, which was one of the things Hector liked about it, as a matter of fact.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Gunther, ‘he was there and they missed him by a few seconds. What’s wrong? Are you crying?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Clara, quickly getting up.

  Clara went off to the bathroom and Gunther was upset. Because Gunther was very much in love with Clara, he wanted to start a new life with her, and, once again, he realised he still had a long way to go. He had vaguely hoped that sending Hector off on the trail of Professor Cormorant would help bring him and Clara closer, but he only had to see Clara’s reaction to Hector in the company of that pretty Asian woman to realise it was not going to be easy.

  In the bathroom, Clara dried her eyes and called herself a bloody fool. After all, she was the one being unfaithful to Hector – she had almost told him the truth on the island, and then she had lost her nerve – so why did she feel so bad seeing him with another woman? And given that she hadn’t told him the truth because she didn’t want to make him unhappy, why should she find it so unbearable to see him looking happy now?

  Did this mean she still loved Hector? Or was it simply jealousy? Was jealousy a demonstration of love? Or was it that seeing those images had suddenly made her realise she was in danger of losing Hector forever? She’d known that when she started having an affair with Gunther, but, as previously mentioned, there’s a big difference between knowing and feeling, and feeling is what counts most.

  She had a terrible urge to speak to Hector, there and then. There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Clara? I’ve made a cocktail for you.’

  The big oaf, thought Clara, and at the same time she told herself she was being unfair, because she knew Gunther was crazy about her. She hadn’t realised it right away, but now she was sure of it: he was completely bowled over by her. And suddenly she felt less in love with him. Oh dear, love can be so complicated, can’t it!

  HECTOR MEETS UP WITH A GOOD FRIEND

  ‘THIS city is a bit crazy,’ said Jean-Marcel.

  He was having lunch with Hector and Vayla at the top of a tower shaped like a rocket in a revolving restaurant that turned very slowly so you could see the whole view several times over during lunch; it felt like being up in a plane or a balloon. The city stretched into the distance and everywhere skyscrapers were springing up like giant trees, and below them the river carried barges loaded with building materials, as the Chinese were putting up more and more buildings while having fewer and fewer children.

  Vayla had never left her small town where the tallest building was the post office that had been built a long time ago by Hector’s countrymen, and she seemed fascinated by this new city that Jean-Marcel thought was a bit crazy.

  Hector was very pleased to meet up with Jean-Marcel again. Following their trip to the unsafe region and the temple recently cleared of mines, they had become real friends.

  ‘What brings you to Shanghai?’ asked Hector.

  ‘Business, as always,’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘With all these towers they’re building, they need signalling equipment and lots of other stuff to improve mobile telephone communication, and my company is the supplier.’

  ‘How lucky that we bumped into each other like that,’ said Hector.

  ‘Oh, this morning the whole town was talking about those pandas – it was on all the Chinese channels – and as I had no meetings I thought I’d go and take a look. Oh man! She’s got our order completely wrong!’

  Hector and Jean-Marcel had asked for two beers and the waitress had brought two large tankards. Vayla frowned; she didn’t like Hector drinking too much, he’d noticed, and he told himself this was a further sign of love. Vayla didn’t drink alcohol because after only half a glass of wine her cheeks turned bright pink and she practically fell asleep on the spot. Hector remembered it had something to do with an enzyme deficiency common in Asian people. As a result, alcohol had a strong effect on them, but this didn’t worry some of them, like the Japanese people behind them who were bravely defying their enzyme deficiency by downing tankards of beer as if it were going out of fashion.

  Hector was still worrying. He hadn’t been able to take the antidote yet, assuming there even was one, and he sensed that the longer he and Vayla left it, the less
effect the antidote would have, because all these happy moments spent together would inevitably leave an indelible mark. Just then, Vayla smiled at him, and once again he felt waves of happiness flow through him.

  ‘Your friend is very lovely,’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘Does she speak any English?’

  ‘Not a word,’ said Hector.

  ‘And you speak no Khmer?’

  ‘None at all.’

  This reply left Jean-Marcel looking thoughtful because you can see what a relationship between a man and a woman who can’t say three words to each other immediately makes you think of, and it has to be said you wouldn’t be far wrong.

  ‘And how are things between you and your wife?’ asked Hector.

  ‘Oh, not so good.’

  Jean-Marcel explained they had been speaking on the phone. His wife blamed him for neglecting her over the past few years, for having been too engrossed in his job, and now it was over: she didn’t love him any more. Later, she had rung Jean-Marcel back to see how he was; she was worried about how he was spending his evenings, whether he was going out with friends or staying at his hotel on his own.

  ‘And how do you feel?’ asked Hector.

  ‘Terrible. When she says she doesn’t love me any more, I feel abandoned, in a panic, and I want to see her right away. Then I feel angry with myself for neglecting her. I can’t stop thinking about it. I tell myself that I’ve been a bit of a bastard. And then . . .’

  ‘And then you feel angry with her because, after all, you’ve been a good husband to her, a good father to your children, and she’s leaving you.’

  Jean-Marcel looked surprised.

  ‘Exactly! In fact, the other evening, I’d had too much to drink and I phoned her to tell her what a bitch she was, total madness. I felt pathetic, but obviously she realised I was in a bad way and I don’t think she was too cross with me. And then at other times . . .’