And yet, in Hector’s country more and more people were turning to the old monk’s religion (which wasn’t really a religion but it’s a bit difficult to explain that here). They thought it would make them happier.
The old monk said that was true, but often people from countries like Hector’s didn’t really understand his religion, which they adapted to suit themselves — rather like the Chinese restaurants in Hector’s city which didn’t serve real Chinese food. But the old monk felt that, although in some ways it was a pity, it didn’t really matter because it could still help people to be less worried and kinder to others. On the other hand, he wondered why people from Hector’s country were so interested in his religion when they had many old and perfectly good religions of their own. Perhaps they’d have been better off taking more of an interest in them; they’d have had a better chance of understanding them properly.
Hector said that it was very complicated, that perhaps people preferred the old monk’s religion because there were no bad memories attached to it and therefore it offered hope: people believed that his religion was the one that would really work.
In any event, it seemed to work for the old monk, because Hector had never seen such a contented person who laughed so much, but not in a mocking way. And yet he was very old, and his life couldn’t always have been much fun.
Hector remembered that there had been a time when the people who ruled the largest part of China had decided that monks were not useful people, and then some terrible things had happened, things too terrible even to mention. And the old monk came from that part of China, and must have experienced all that, and yet it didn’t seem to have stopped him from being happy.
Hector would have very much liked the old monk to reveal the secret of his happiness.
The old monk looked at him, laughing, and said, ‘Your journey is a very good idea. When you’ve reached the end of it, come back and see me.’
HECTOR MAKES A DISCOVERY
THAT evening, Hector went to wait for Édouard at his office before going out to dinner. It was Sunday, but Édouard was at the office because he had to finish a piece of work for the following day. He was going to show a very important man how to carry out a merger, and he wanted to do this ahead of another Édouard from another bank who wanted to show the same very important man how to do the same thing. And this very important man in turn wanted to carry out the merger ahead of another very important man who wanted to do the same thing. Hector had understood that in business everything was always a bit of a race whereas in psychiatry it wasn’t really like that, you just had to be careful not to let your patients talk too much, otherwise you’d be late for the next ones, and they wouldn’t like it.
Hector searched for Édouard’s building among the huge modern towers stretching all the way down to the sea. There wasn’t a beach, only quaysides where huge ships were moored, or building sites where new towers were going up.
The cars drove underneath, which was convenient as Hector was able to walk between the tall towers without any risk of being run over. He arrived at Édouard’s very beautiful, shiny tower. It looked like a giant razor blade. As he was a little early, he decided to have another coffee, and he was lucky because there was another big modern glass-walled café.
This time the waitresses weren’t very pretty, and Hector was relieved because too much beauty can be exhausting. Indeed, Hector considered being so sensitive to female beauty something of a handicap. And although he knew he wasn’t the only one who suffered from it, he hoped that one day he’d get over it. But, as you can see, he hadn’t got off to a very good start.
He rang Édouard, who seemed pleased to hear from him, but he hadn’t finished working yet. He told Hector to continue waiting for him in the café and he’d meet him there.
Hector began sipping his large coffee and watching the entrance to the tower.
And he saw something he’d seen several times before when he came to this neighbourhood: a group of Chinese women had spread an oilcloth out on the ground and were sitting on it in a circle, like schoolchildren having a picnic. On closer inspection, Hector noticed that they weren’t exactly like Chinese women; they were in general slightly shorter, and quite slender and dark-skinned. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, continually chatting and laughing. He’d seen several groups like that when he came to this neighbourhood, with their oilcloths spread out beside the entrance to the towers, under the footbridges or anywhere that gave shelter from the rain, but always outside the buildings.
Hector wondered whether they got together like that in order to practise some new religion. He would have liked to know what it was, perhaps the same one the old monk practised, because, like him, they laughed a lot.
While he was looking out for Édouard, he studied the people coming out of the tower. They were mostly Chinese, but dressed like Édouard at the weekend, in smart polo shirts and deck shoes, and Hector could tell simply from the way they walked that they’d been to the same schools as Édouard, the ones where you learn how to become rich. (Don’t forget that Hector is a psychiatrist; he only has to look at people to know where they went to school and whether their grandfather collected butterflies.) There were also westerners like Édouard, and Hector tried to guess where they came from just from the way they looked. No doubt he got it wrong a few times, but since he couldn’t check he didn’t know, and it amused him, and from time to time he laughed to himself.
Édouard’s colleagues didn’t look amused at all as they left the towers, they looked tired, and some of them were staring at the ground as if weighed down by worries. When a group of them emerged, talking amongst themselves, they looked very serious and sometimes it seemed as if they were cross with one another. Some looked so preoccupied, so caught up in their own thoughts that Hector almost felt like going up and prescribing pills for them. This café would have been a perfect place to establish himself as a psychiatrist if he had been planning to stay longer.
Finally, he saw Édouard, and he felt glad, because it’s always more heartening to see a friend in a foreign country than simply to come across him at home, even if you are slightly annoyed with him. Édouard looked very pleased to see Hector, and he immediately ordered a beer to celebrate.
Hector told Édouard that he looked a lot more cheerful than all his colleagues whom he’d seen coming out of the tower.
Édouard explained that this was because he was pleased to see Hector, and that Hector should see his face some evenings . . .
‘You’d put me straight into hospital!’ he said. And he started laughing.
And then he explained that for the past few weeks the markets hadn’t been very good and this was why his colleagues weren’t very happy.
‘So they might lose all their money?’ Hector asked.
‘No, but they might only get a small bonus, or lose their jobs if the bank downsizes. But at this level you can always find work. You just have to be prepared to go where the jobs are.’
Hector understood that where the jobs were meant other cities with towers that looked like giant razor blades and hotels like those used for conferences.
He asked Édouard who the groups of women were that he’d seen everywhere sitting on their oilcloths. Édouard explained that they were cleaners, and that they all came from the same country, a group of small, very poor islands quite a long way from China. They worked in this city (and other cities in the world) so that they could send money to their families, who’d stayed behind.
‘But why do they gather here on those oilcloths?’ asked Hector.
‘Because they’ve nowhere else to go,’ replied Édouard. ‘Today is Sunday, their day off, so they can’t stay at work and they don’t have enough money to sit in cafés, so they meet here and sit on the ground.’
Édouard also explained that as their country was made up of many small islands, women from particular islands or villages often sat together, and it was almost as if all their oilcloths formed a map of their impoverished ar
chipelago in the midst of these very wealthy towers.
Hector watched the women who had nowhere else to go and who were laughing, he watched Édouard’s colleagues coming out of the tower looking very serious and he told himself that the world was a very wonderful or a very terrible place — it was difficult to say which.
When they left the café, Hector wanted to go over and speak to these women, because he felt that it was very important for his investigation. He walked towards a group of them, and as they saw him approach they all stopped talking and smiling. It occurred to Hector that they might think he was going to ask them to move along. But people usually quickly sensed that Hector meant well, and when they heard him speak in English they began laughing again. He told them that he’d been watching them for a while and that they seemed very happy. He wanted to know why.
They looked at one another, chuckling, and then one of them said, ‘Because it’s our day off!’
And another added, ‘Because we’re with our friends.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ the others said, ‘it’s because we’re with our friends.’ And even with their families, because some of them were cousins.
Hector asked them what their religion was, and it turned out that it was the same as Hector’s! This dated back to the time, long ago, when people of Hector’s religion had occupied their islands, because at that time they tended to think that everything belonged to them.
But they didn’t seem to hold it against Hector because they all said goodbye to him smiling and waving.
HECTOR ISN’T IN LOVE
Lesson no. 1: Making comparisons can spoil your happiness.
Lesson no. 2: Happiness often comes when least expected.
Lesson no. 3: Many people see happiness only in their future.
Lesson no. 4: Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.
Lesson no. 5: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.
Lesson no. 6: Happiness is a long walk in beautiful, unfamiliar mountains.
HECTOR reread what he’d written in his notebook. Some of it was interesting, he felt, but even so he wasn’t very satisfied. It didn’t resemble a proper theory of happiness. (A theory is a story that grown-ups tell each other to explain how things work. People believe it is true until somebody comes up with another theory that explains things better.) In fact, this had given him an idea: at the end of his trip, he would show his list to a famous professor of Happiness Studies.
He had a friend who lived in the country where there are more psychiatrists than anywhere else in the world, and she knew a professor like that.
Hector was in an Italian restaurant with checked tablecloths and candles on the tables, whose owners, a husband and wife, looked like real Italians. (Actually they’d told Hector that they were Chilean, because even when he was at a restaurant, Hector’s apparent interest in people meant that those who came to take his order would first tell him their life story when sometimes all Hector wanted was to order.) It was in the part of the city that was on a hill, where there were still cobbled streets and old houses, and he felt happy to be there.
You must be wondering where Édouard was, but it’ll soon become clear.
Hector remembered his visit to the old monk. He wrote:Lesson no. 7: It’s a mistake to think that happiness is the goal.
He wasn’t sure whether he’d really understood this lesson, but he thought it was very interesting, and he told himself that at the end of his journey he would go back and see the old monk.
He remembered the women laughing on their oilcloths.
Lesson no. 8: Happiness is being with the people you love.
When he wrote this, his heart started to beat a little faster.
Hector began doodling again.
Because, of course, as you’ve guessed, Hector was waiting for Ying Li.
When he’d explained to Édouard that he wanted to see Ying Li again, Édouard told him it wouldn’t be possible because on Sundays the place full of pretty Chinese girls where they’d met her was closed. But Hector said he didn’t want to see Ying Li while she was working. He wanted to invite her to dinner, and since she’d left him her telephone number that was exactly what he was going to do.
And Édouard gave Hector a funny look and said, ‘You poor thing!’
Hector got a little annoyed. Édouard shouldn’t take him for a fool. He knew perfectly well what Ying Li did for a living! Édouard said that he didn’t take Hector for a fool, but he could see that Hector had fallen in love, which was worse than being a fool. He was worried about Hector.
Hector felt reassured, because he realised that Édouard was still a good friend. But he told him that he was mistaken of course; Hector wasn’t in love with Ying Li, he simply wanted to see her again. He asked Édouard if he’d ever had a Chinese girlfriend. Édouard said no, not really, but Hector could see that he wasn’t quite telling the truth (don’t forget that Hector’s a psychiatrist). And so Hector said nothing and went ‘mmmhmm’ and hoped that Édouard would say more.
But Édouard clearly didn’t feel like telling the story of ‘not really’. Finally, he said with a sigh, ‘The problem over here is that you don’t know whether they love you for yourself or for your passport.’
And after a moment he added, ‘I’m old enough to ask myself that question, but not so old that I don’t care what the answer is.’
And from the way he said it, Hector understood that Édouard had fallen in love and that it can’t have ended very happily.
And now Hector was sitting alone at his table in the little Italian restaurant waiting for Ying Li!
When he’d telephoned her she’d sounded a bit surprised, but had immediately accepted his invitation. (It was Édouard who had recommended the restaurant to Hector.)
Now, he was waiting, she was late and he wondered whether she would come. In the meantime he’d ordered a bottle of wine, and he told himself that if he had to wait for her much longer he was going to drink the whole bottle and end up like Édouard.
And then Hector saw Ying Li enter the restaurant, her hair slightly wet from the rain and still so terribly beautiful, and he stood up, knocking over his chair.
The waiters behind the counter practically fell over each other rushing to take Ying Li’s coat.
Finally Ying Li sat down opposite Hector and they started talking. But Ying Li was different from the first evening; she seemed almost shy, as though she dared not look at Hector, or was afraid of saying something foolish.
And so Hector began making conversation; he told her a bit about his life, and described the city where he worked. And Ying Li mostly listened, and even told him that she liked his city because it was where they made the things she liked. Indeed, Hector could see that her watch, her belt and her bag were made in his country, although Ying Li had bought them in her city. Hector told himself that this, too, was globalisation. And then he remembered how Ying Li made the money to buy all those very expensive items, and he wondered whether globalisation was such a good thing.
Later, Ying Li dared to say a bit more, though it was clearly difficult for her because there was a subject they both wanted to avoid — her work. And so she spoke about her family.
Her father had taught Chinese history (and being Chinese you can imagine how well he knew his subject). But the people who ruled China when Ying Li was a child had decided that teachers like him were useless, undesirable even, and so he and his family had been sent to the remotest part of China. And there everybody worked in the fields and nobody was allowed to read books except for the one written by the man who ruled China at the time. And that meant Ying Li’s sisters never went to school, because the children of undesirable people weren’t allowed to study; they had to learn about life from working in the fields. Being younger, Ying Li was later able to catch up a little at school, but then her father had died (he’d never got used to working in the fields and it had worn him out), and she’d been unable to continue her studies.
That was why her sisters, who had never been to school, could only get jobs in Charles’s factories. And that was when Ying Li stopped talking, because she realised that now she was going to talk about herself, about why she wasn’t a worker like them, and that was rather a delicate subject.
HECTOR FEELS SAD
HECTOR was once again on a plane, and he felt sad. Through the window he could see the sea, so far below that it seemed as if the plane wasn’t moving at all.
He had taken out his notebook, but he couldn’t think of anything to write.
Sitting next to him was a mother holding her baby — no, it couldn’t have been her baby because it had fair hair and blue eyes, like a doll (Hector couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl and what’s more he didn’t really care), and the lady looked like the Asian women he’d seen sitting on their oilcloths. But even though she wasn’t the baby’s mother, she looked after it very well; she rocked it and spoke to it, and she seemed very fond of it.
Hector was sad because he had the feeling of leaving a place he loved — a city he hadn’t even known a week before.
And Édouard had also seemed sad accompanying him to the airport. Clearly he’d thoroughly enjoyed Hector’s visit. Édouard had plenty of friends in that city to go out for a drink with, as well as pretty Chinese girls who whispered in his ear, but perhaps not many real friends like Hector.
Of course, he was thinking about Ying Li.
In the restaurant, she’d finished telling him about her family and he’d finished telling her about his city, and there’d been a brief silence.
And then Ying Li had said, ‘You’re kind.’
Hector and the Search for Happiness Page 4