Hector and the Search for Lost Time

by Francois Lelord

  Hector remembered his name too: Nietzsche.

  HECTOR IS A GOOD DOCTOR

  THE next day, before he left, Hector went to see Paul. They both had coffee looking at the sea, which was a very pale blue, exactly the same colour as the sky at the North Pole when the sun was about to come up, thought Hector. Or the colour of Éléonore’s eyes, but he quickly put that thought out of his mind.

  ‘Your pills have calmed me down,’ said Paul. ‘But I’m still asking myself the same questions.’

  ‘About how full your life is?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been thinking that it’s fuller than I thought, but there are still quite a few things missing. And there’s a hole at the bottom of the bottle!’

  All the same, Paul was managing to laugh at himself a little, so he was a bit better.

  ‘Instead of a bottle,’ said Hector, ‘try comparing your life to music.’

  And he told Paul what the centenarians had revealed to him in his dream (without saying it was a dream, of course, because Hector was supposed to be a modern psychiatrist, not a shaman, or, in any case, that’s not how Paul saw him).

  ‘Time is like music?’ asked Paul, with a look of amazement.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hector. ‘Each note only means some-thing because of the note before and the note after. A note is like the present, which never stops becoming the past. And yet music exists!’

  Later, as he walked away, he heard Paul starting to whistle.

  Quite out of tune as it happens but, wouldn’t you know, this music was also composed by the great musician with twenty children and a very full life

  HECTOR DRINKS TOO MUCH

  ÉLÉONORE opened the little notebook and began to read.

  Time Exercise No. 1: Measure your life in dogs.

  Time Exercise No. 2: Make a list of what you wanted to do when you were little and dreaming of being grown up.

  Time Exercise No. 3: Over the course of one day, count how much time you have for yourself. Sleeping doesn’t count (unless it’s at the office).

  Time Exercise No. 4: Think of all the people and things you are not paying enough attention to now, because one day they will be gone and then it will be too late.

  Time Exercise No. 5: Imagine your life as a big roll of fabric, from which you have made all the clothes you have worn since you were little. Imagine the set of clothes you could make with the rest of the roll.

  Time Exercise No. 6: Write down everything that makes you feel younger. Then write down everything that makes you feel older.

  Time Exercise No. 7: If you don’t believe in the good Lord, imagine you do. If you do believe in Him, imagine you no longer believe. Note how this affects your view of time going by.

  Time Exercise No. 8: Play a game with some friends. Try to find a definition of time. First prize: a watch.

  Time Exercise No. 9: Take some time to think about things. The past has gone, so it doesn’t exist. The future hasn’t happened yet, so it doesn’t exist. The present doesn’t exist, because, as soon as you talk about it, it’s already in the past. So, what does exist?

  Time Exercise No. 10: What if your life was just someone else’s dream? In that case, where are they sleeping?

  Time Exercise No. 11: Hide your watch. From time to time, make a note of what time you think it is. Then compare it with the time on your watch.

  Time Exercise No. 12: Thinking about your past, try to predict your future (at least, your most probable future).

  Time Exercise No. 13: Whenever you meet an elderly person, always imagine what they were like when they were young.

  Time Exercise No. 14: Imagine that growing old will bring you closer to the Kingdom of Heaven (or the place in your religion).

  Time Exercise No. 15: Imagine you are a cow. You don’t remember that you were little. You don’t know that you’re going to die. Would you be happy? If you could choose, would you rather be a cow? Or maybe another animal? Which kind?

  Time Exercise No. 16: Concentrate and be aware that there’s no time without movement, and no movement without time. Time is a measure of movement.

  Time Exercise No. 17: Put together a collection of beautiful poems about time going by. Learn them by heart and recite them to friends who are older and younger than you.

  Time Exercise No. 18: Do you spend time trying to change the things that can be changed? Do you try to accept the things that can’t? Do you know the difference between them? Make sure you can answer ‘yes’ to these three questions.

  Time Exercise No. 19: Meet the children of the women you love loved when you were younger.

  Time Exercise No. 20: Read a good science book about time and the theory of relativity. Spend a bit of time understanding why if we can’t go faster than the speed of light then we can’t go back in time.

  Time Exercise No. 21: If you want to look young, always stay in the shade (or in candlelight).

  Time Exercise No. 22: In your opinion, what is a very full life?

  Time Exercise No. 23: Draw up a nice table with four boxes: Urgent-Important, Urgent-Not important, Not Urgent-Important, Not urgent-Not important. Put everything you have to do into these boxes. Are you any further forward?

  Time Exercise No. 24: Sort out everything you have to do into ‘important for doing your job well’, ‘important for your boss’ and ‘important for your career’. How much time do you spend on each of the three?

  Time Exercise No. 24(B): Work out how much time you spend doing important things for your children, for your partner and for yourself. Show the rest of your family the results.

  Time Exercise No. 25: Listen to some music and tell yourself that it’s the same thing as time. Compare it with your life.

  Éléonore read on a bit, then she shut the little notebook and said, ‘I wouldn’t want to seem like I’m criticising, but your take on philosophy is a little sketchy!’

  ‘It’s a summary. And, besides it’s not finished.’

  ‘So,’ said Édouard, ‘what’s next – Pinot or Cabernet?’

  ‘I’ll let you choose,’ said Hector.

  And Édouard called the Chinese wine waiter over again.

  The three of them were having dinner in a beautiful restaurant with windows on all sides at the top of a hotel. You could see the Chinese city glittering in the night, and even a little beacon at the top of the mountain so that planes wouldn’t bump into it.

  When he’d set off for China again, Hector had called Édouard. He thought that two heads would be better than one in the search for the old monk. And, also, he didn’t want to be all by himself again in the Chinese city. Otherwise, he might have called Ying Li a second time.

  ‘You two don’t half knock it back!’ said Éléonore.

  The problem was that Éléonore had come along with Édouard, at first just because she’d flown him quite far south in her little plane, then because she’d said that she needed a holiday and so why not come along with Édouard? Édouard had said why not indeed?

  ‘You know that alcohol makes you age?’ said Éléonore.

  Hector and Édouard looked at each other.

  ‘Maybe we’re not afraid of time passing,’ said Hector.

  ‘It’s more that you’re men and you know that you’ll always find a woman who’ll love your wrinkles, or at least pretend not to see them!’

  ‘Maybe drinking makes us forget about time going by,’ said Édouard.

  Around them, at other tables, there were quite a few very well-dressed Chinese men and women who were busy forgetting about time going by. Édouard had explained to Hector that it was China and Japan that had saved cognac, and, there, you could see that they were still going strong.

  They had all arrived in China very late in the evening, too late to go and see who was handing out the tickets for the little train.
Until the next morning, they didn’t have much to do, other than have interesting conversations.

  Éléonore had started to read the list of time exercises that Hector had written in his little notebook.

  ‘You’ve reinvented or remembered, maybe’ (Hector wasn’t sure which it was either!) ‘Aristotle and St Augustine: “There’s a past present, a future present and a present present.”’

  Hector was impressed. Éléonore explained that apart from learning how to fly a plane she had also studied philosophy.

  ‘I wanted to understand what the point of living was,’ said Éléonore.

  Once again, Hector thought that Éléonore must have had a few problems with her mother or father, or both.

  ‘What St Augustine realised,’ Éléonore continued, her eyes shining with excitement, ‘is that everything only exists in the present. The past and the future only exist when they’re in the present. Some people say that the present doesn’t exist, but you could say the opposite . . . nothing exists outside the present! You can only live in the present; there’s no getting away from the present. Whatever you think, whatever you do, it’s always today!’

  Straight off, Édouard began to sing in rather a nice voice:

  ‘Today is my moment and right now is my story, while I laugh and I cry and I sing . . .

  Today, while all the blossoms still cling to the vine . . .’

  And he raised his glass so that Hector would fill it up again.

  ‘You have a really good voice,’ said Éléonore with amazement.

  ‘ . . . I’ll taste your strawberries and I’ll drink your sweet wine, and a million tomorrows shall all pass away ere I forget all the joy that is mine toooo-daaaay . . .’

  Once again, Hector thought to himself that poets were better at getting people to feel things than philosophers were.

  ‘So you could say that the present lasts for ever?’ said Édouard after emptying his glass.

  ‘Exactly. That’s why you could say that the present is the reflection of eternity in time!’

  Hector remembered: that was the last thing Roger had said on the snowmobile!

  ‘It was a Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard, who said that,’ said Éléonore. ‘He was the first of the existentialists. He thought you had to live life with passion. For him, living was choosing to ride a wild stallion rather than choosing to fall asleep in a hay wagon. I just love him.’ Éléonore spoke breathlessly, like a young girl talking about a rock star.

  Hector thought that, in fact, Éléonore, with her little plane, lived her life like the rider on a wild stallion. What’s more, she’d perhaps considered Hector to be a new stallion, which was flattering in a way.

  ‘He also said that believing in God or getting married must be passionate or personal choices, because there’s no rational argument for doing it or not doing it, but that you have to choose, fully committing yourself.’

  Hector resolved to read Kierkegaard, because in these two areas, he still hadn’t chosen to choose.

  Suddenly he also remembered what Noumen had replied to Roger.

  ‘And what was God doing before the world was created?’ he asked. ‘Was there time then?’

  ‘For St Augustine, no. God created time and space as properties of the universe. For Kant, God gave us time as a way to make sense of the world, in what he called an a priori form of intuition, so time is only a reality within our soul. For Leibniz, time isn’t within our soul, it’s a physical reality outside us, where events follow one another in time, but this reality is created, of course, by God. For these people, before creation there was no time. God was, or rather is, in eternity, which is outside time.’

  ‘And what do physicists say about it? The Big Bang and all that,’ asked Édouard.

  ‘Physicists tell us that time doesn’t go by everywhere at the same speed,’ said Hector, thinking back to his conversation with Hubert about travelling into the future.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Édouard, ‘at least physicists can do experiments to verify their theories and know whether they’re right or wrong. But with philosophy, you can say anything and everything!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Éléonore, ‘but philosophy teaches you how to think. And then, in the end, you can choose your own little personal philosophy.’

  ‘For example?’ asked Hector.

  Éléonore looked at him, and Hector wondered if he’d been right to ask the question.

  ‘For example, personally, I’ve chosen to live only in the present. I certainly never think about the past and I avoid thinking about the future . . . or I just think about the immediate future.’

  Éléonore’s very blue eyes looked deep into his.

  ‘And how’s Hilton these days?’ asked Hector.

  Éléonore began to laugh.

  ‘Is this another shrink trick? Oh, Hilton’s fine, but he’s the opposite of me: he lives in the past with his little bubbles, and in the future he wants to start a family.’

  Hector thought that Éléonore should have liked Hilton, because he also made passionate and non-rational choices in his life, like drilling holes in the ice in minus fifty degrees, or, tougher still, wanting to start a family with a girl like Éléonore . . . But there you have it: love is often unfair, and Éléonore preferred Hector, who was hardly the king of passionate choices himself.

  ‘How about some champagne to finish?’ asked Édouard, because the phrase ‘little bubbles’ had sparked some memories, which once again just goes to show that the past only exists in the present, and can very quickly go back to being the immediate future, that’s to say the future present, if you’ve been following so far.

  HECTOR AND TEMPTATION

  After dinner, everyone was quite tired, especially Édouard and Hector. They all decided to go back to their hotel. It was the same hotel that Hector had stayed in the very first time he’d come to this city, when he’d met Ying Li and the old monk. But he’d drunk enough champagne to feel quite merry, and coming back with Édouard and Éléonore saved him from thinking about the past.

  They said good night to each other as they got out of the lift, then went back to their rooms, and Hector managed to avoid meeting Éléonore’s final gaze in his direction.

  When he got into his very comfortable room with its bed that was big enough for at least two people, Hector felt very tired, and he thought to himself that he would have a rest for five minutes before he brushed his teeth, and he lay down fully dressed on the bed.

  The conference was still going on, in the same big amphitheatre, but it was very cold and, instead of the lovely navy-blue cushions, everyone was sitting on animal furs.

  Above all, Hector noticed everyone had grown awfully old, with bald heads or grey hair, and there were lots of rather cloudy eyes looking at him. He noticed a little old lady who still had a nice smile. It was Marie-Agnès. As for Paul, he looked so old, still and quiet that you almost wondered if he was already dead, but he opened one eye and gave Hector a little nod. Olivier the biologist had grown awfully old too, and yet you could see he was sucking a pickled herring.

  Hector counted himself very lucky, first of all because he had on a beautiful Arctic fox fur outfit which was keeping him lovely and warm, and then because even though he had also grown old – he could tell from his wrinkly old hands – he felt fit as a fiddle.

  ‘So, I’m going to talk to you about something that a lot of psychiatrists are interested in and which puts a lot of work their way: the midlife crisis. But I know it’s a little late for you.’

  There was a murmur from the audience.

  ‘No, it’s not too late for us!’ shouted Marie-Agnès.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Olivier, ‘we’re slap bang in the middle of it!’

  And Hector felt a little foolish: he had forgotten that, thanks to medical advances, all these very old p
eople had in fact just reached middle age.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the midlife crisis is precisely the point when we begin to think about the time we have left, because before, when we’re younger, we think about it less, since we live more in the immediate future, and we don’t think too much about the limits of our life, even though we know it’ll end one day.’

  ‘Does it mean that you’re having a midlife crisis when you start measuring your life in dogs?’

  Hector recognised Fernand standing in the back row. He had also grown old, but in an even thinner and more upright kind of way. He was holding a big dog on a lead, and Hector recognised Noumen, who hadn’t changed one little bit, and was looking at him with his pale and intelligent eyes.

  ‘Yes, measuring your life in dogs,’ said Hector, ‘that can be a sign. But it’s not the only one. A midlife crisis is when you really start to take stock of your life and, above all, when you compare what you expected out of life when you were younger with how it’s turned out. Sometimes, things work out well and you end up saying to yourself that you’ve got what you’d hoped for, or even better.’

  ‘That’s what I say to myself, even if it’s not easy every day,’ said a woman, and Hector recognised Sabine, his patient who thought that life might be a big con. Hector was surprised: Sabine didn’t look that much older. She was sitting between her two children, a girl and a boy, who must have been in their twenties and who both looked a little taller than she was.