Hector and the Search for Lost Time

by Francois Lelord

  ‘Well done,’ said Hector. ‘But sometimes things don’t work out so well, because you don’t have what you’d hoped for. Or you do have it, and you’re very disappointed. So you tell us that what you hoped for out of life when you were young was the wrong path to take, and you were swayed by your parents and your teachers. And now you want to get off this path! But, of course, it’s a little late . . .’

  ‘I also say that to myself from time to time!’ said Sabine.

  ‘Ah, that just goes to show that having children doesn’t solve everything!’ cried Marie-Agnès.

  ‘Nobody said it did,’ answered Sabine, sounding a little annoyed.

  Suddenly, Hector felt anxious, because he couldn’t for the life of him remember if he’d had children with Clara. He began racking his brains to try to remember. And in the meantime he didn’t say anything.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Doctor, keep going!’ said Marie-Agnès.

  ‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘we’re wasting time here!’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ said Olivier, ‘our telomeres are getting older.’

  But Hector’s mind was a complete blank. Had he had children with Clara or not?

  Paul began rapping on a pile of programmes resting on his lap, as if to wake Hector up, and it went ‘bang, bang, bang’ louder and louder.

  Somebody was knocking at his bedroom door and Hector went to open it. He already knew who was knocking and he thought to himself that perhaps it would be better not to open it, but he was still half asleep and, by the time he thought that, his body had already opened the door.

  ‘I rang several times,’ said Éléonore, ‘but since nothing happened I began to get worried, thinking that you’d had a funny turn or something.’

  She sat down gracefully in one of the armchairs in the room and lit a cigarette.

  ‘You know tobacco makes you age?’

  ‘Oh, you! Of course I know that, but I only have one every now and again . . . or when I’m not quite sure what to say.’

  And, again, Hector felt Éléonore’s blue eyes lock onto his. Hector felt that his own body, the same one that had opened the door, was beginning to get restless, because he’d sensed Éléonore’s body very close to his, a little like two animals that sense each other’s presence in the dark.

  He thought to himself that it was very difficult to resist temptation when it was put right in front of you. The prayer he used to have to say when he was little was really rather good, since it went: ‘Lead us not into temptation’. Perhaps he hadn’t said it enough since then!

  He tried to think very hard about Clara, but that didn’t work all that well because the presence of Éléonore, who was so close and looking at him, was just too much.

  Then Hector finally woke up properly; the effects of the champagne had worn off, and suddenly he saw every last detail of the room, which brought back so many memories – even the frosted-glass door of the bathroom, behind which he’d heard a certain someone singing to herself one morning.

  And so it was that Hector didn’t get up to mischief and he stayed faithful to Clara.

  ÉDOUARD IS A GOOD STUDENT

  The next day, Hector woke up very early and wasn’t in a good mood at all. As he brushed his teeth, he thought that perhaps this was how you knew a good deed was truly good: you didn’t necessarily feel better afterwards. He consoled himself with the thought that if he’d given in to temptation he might have been feeling even worse now.

  He could have called Clara, but in the end he decided it was better not to, because he was a little annoyed with her. He was a little annoyed with her for not having come with him: with her there, he wouldn’t have been led into temptation in the first place. And when temptation came his way, like last night, he had to struggle quite hard to resist it. He knew it wasn’t fair to be annoyed with Clara, but he thought it was better to call her later.

  As a result of all this, Hector didn’t really want to see Éléonore that morning, or Édouard, who had brought her along with him, and he decided that he’d go to the little train station straight away to ask about the old monk. But before that he’d better call Trevor and Katharine.

  Because you’ve realised, of course, that the old Chinese man who was handing out tickets was the old monk. But Hector hadn’t recognised him the first time round, because when you’re expecting to see someone who always wears an orange robe over one shoulder you don’t realise it’s them when you see them dressed as a station master. Hector was sure the old monk had recognised him, though, so why hadn’t he said anything?

  He phoned Trevor and Katharine. Had they heard from the old monk?

  ‘Ah,’ said Trevor, ‘yes. But we should meet in person to talk about it.’

  And he gave Hector their address on the island, a house on one of the slopes of the mountain. They were expecting Hector for breakfast.

  As he was leaving the hotel, who do you think Hector bumped into? Édouard!

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he explained. ‘So I went out again.’

  Hector preferred not to ask him where he’d been.

  So they decided to go and visit Trevor and Katharine together.

  And who did Hector and Édouard run into as they waited for their taxi? Éléonore, who was coming back from a little early-morning walk, which had given her rosy cheeks, because in the morning Éléonore’s walks were more like runs.

  The night before, since Hector didn’t want to become another empty glass thrown in Éléonore’s face, he’d very gently explained to her why it was better for both of them to go back to their own beds, even if in a parallel world, or indeed a past or future life, things could have turned out differently.

  That morning, Éléonore gave Hector a little smile, as if to say that she didn’t really have any hard feelings.

  And so all three of them decided to go and see Trevor and Katharine together.

  Trevor and Katharine were waiting for them in the middle of their garden, which looked a little like a garden from their country, with lots of flowers, and especially some magnificent hydrangeas. In any case, they were the only flowers Hector knew by name.

  They went to have breakfast on the veranda, which overlooked the city and the sea in the distance with some islands or patches of distant coastline, and some mountains or clouds – it was hard to tell.

  Katharine and Trevor explained that, before, this used to be their home when they lived in the city. Now some friends lived there and lent it to them when they went on holiday.

  ‘Coming back out onto this veranda is like going back in time,’ said Katharine.

  In fact, thought Hector, if time is a measure of movement, by moving back, you might think you were turning back time, but that wasn’t exactly true, since things had kept moving elsewhere, like in your telomeres, for example.

  Actually, the tea, the blue and white porcelain, the perfectly done toast and lots of kinds of jam ending in ‘berry’ all reminded Hector of when he was a little boy and used to go and stay with a family a little like Trevor and Katharine’s during the holidays to learn English.

  ‘A view like that . . . it makes me want to go flying,’ said Éléonore, looking at the city and the sea in the distance and all the little islands.

  ‘Oh, flying a plane! That’s always been a dream of mine,’ said Katharine.

  Éléonore and Katharine carried on talking. They seemed to get on very well, and it occurred to Hector that when she was young Katharine must have looked a lot like Éléonore. And if that meant that Éléonore would look like Katharine when she was old, she was lucky. Of course, she’d have to find her Trevor between now and then.

  What with drinking so much tea, Hector had to go to the toilet. While he was in the house looking for the bathroom, he came across an old black and white photo of Trevor and Katharine, framed and hanging on the wall. Th
ey both looked very young and were wearing shorts. Around them was a group of little children who looked so poor that some were almost naked, and they were all staring at the camera with amazement. Behind them was part of a hut which must have been the classroom, and behind that the jungle.

  He remembered what Trevor had said about coping with time going by: spend your time changing the things that can be changed.

  When he came back, Hector started talking to Trevor about the old monk.

  ‘Hmm, now things get a little tricky,’ said Trevor.

  And he went off to look for something.

  Édouard had fallen asleep in his armchair, but everyone was pretending not to notice.

  Trevor came back with a big map and opened it out on the table.

  Hector only saw mountains at first, then lakes, and in one corner of the map a border with China.

  ‘It’s an old map,’ said Trevor, ‘because, these days, all this is China too.’

  The peaks of the mountains had very beautiful names, like Shishapangma, Gurla Mandhata and Karakal.

  Trevor pointed to a valley between three mountains, where there was no city or village name, and nothing was marked on the map. It was right on the border with the country which had become China.

  ‘He was born there,’ said Trevor. ‘So he wanted to go back there to die.’

  Hector had sensed it for a while now, but it came as a bit of a shock to him to realise that the old monk was going to die.

  ‘But how do you get there?’

  ‘By plane,’ said Éléonore.

  And Hector saw that she’d been looking at the map from the start, and had begun to do some calculations in her head, because even though Éléonore looked at horoscopes she still believed that part of her future present was determined by what she did in the present present.

  Just then, Édouard woke up with a start.

  ‘Sorry!’ he said, blushing, and seeing everyone looking at him.

  Then he turned to Hector.

  ‘I dreamt,’ he said, ‘. . . a distant . . . valley.’

  Hector thought that, assuming the Inuit shaman had now come round up there in the camp, he must have been very happy. Unlike a lot of the teachers Hector had given little pills to, the shaman could tell himself that he had at least two good students.

  HECTOR AND HISTORY, WHICH KEEPS REPEATING ITSELF (PART II)

  It looked as though a bear was flying the plane, but it was just Éléonore with a big fur hood. It was history repeating itself, Hector thought.

  Hector had got to thinking this because he was also drinking some very good champagne from a bottle Édouard had brought – and this time, in a real glass, which showed that things sometimes got better when history repeated itself, contrary to what the philosopher with the enormous moustache liked to think.

  What wasn’t quite so good, on the other hand, was that instead of flying through the Arctic night (which wasn’t that scary, since you couldn’t see anything at all outside), this time they were surrounded on all sides by big frightening mountains. Hector and Édouard kept thinking the plane was going to crash into the mountains, taking them with it. But Éléonore always found a way through two big snowy rock faces, because, before they left, she’d studied the map carefully and calculated everything in her head. And she had probably read her horoscope too. Hector remembered that the philosopher with the enormous moustache called this way of living your life ‘the Great Style’. And Éléonore had style, no doubt about that.

  ‘The only problem,’ she’d said, ‘is that I’m not too sure where to land.’

  The big problem when you’re flying a plane, Éléonore had explained, is that you always have to land eventually. Éléonore always thought of a plane journey in terms of the landing, just as the philosopher with the little moustache thought that our Being-in-the-world was only really worthwhile if we kept thinking that one day it was going to end in death, so our Being-in-the-world was a Being-towards-death, if you follow. But maybe this idea had come to the philosopher when he was just the right age for a midlife crisis. Hector said to himself that he’d check, providing Éléonore managed to land the plane.

  Just then, Éléonore looked as if she wanted to fly over a big mountain that was coming towards them, although the big mountain looked too high to fly over. She must have been unable to find a way through, and the plane began to climb with a straining noise that wasn’t very reassuring. Édouard quickly poured a last glass of champagne for Hector, and they clinked glasses with their fingers crossed. Suddenly, the plane went into the clouds and they couldn’t see anything at all any more and were a lot less scared, but still a little scared. They knew the mountain was very close, but they couldn’t feel it any more.

  Éléonore had pushed back her hood, and Hector could see that she didn’t look very relaxed either.

  Then the cloud seemed to blow away, the plane levelled out again, and, a long way ahead of them, between the clouds, they saw a valley bathed in sunshine.

  ‘There it is!’ said Éléonore.

  Hector looked at the valley coming towards them, a blanket of soft green in the middle of these vast mountains. He understood why, when you’d known this place once, you might want to come back here to die.

  They were getting closer. Hector could see a village and, a little higher up in the foothills of the mountain, a monastery. Then he saw some people watching the plane, a little boy leading a herd of very hairy buffaloes, monks in orange robes coming down from the monastery on a little path, and women in tunics of every colour washing rugs in the river.

  Éléonore made a turn, and Hector and Édouard admired the monastery’s exquisite architecture, the beauty of the rugs drying in the sun, and the people’s kindness as they welcomed them with a big wave. Hector remembered that buffaloes from these parts were called yaks.

  Everything was wonderful, but they thought it a little less so when it dawned on them that if Éléonore was going round in circles it wasn’t so they could admire the scenery, but because she couldn’t see a good spot to land her little plane. Yet it had been fitted both with runners like skis for the snow and little wheels inside which could be lowered.

  At the end of the valley, they spotted a lake.

  ‘Damn!’ said Éléonore. ‘We’d have been better off with a seaplane.’

  Well, Hector pointed out, Éléonore really should have thought things through a bit more before they left, and brought a seaplane! But she explained that the lake hadn’t been on the map.

  ‘We could try and land on it,’ she said. ‘It cuts down the risk of a crash landing. But we won’t be able to get back . . .’

  Hector imagined himself going all the way back on foot surrounded by gigantic mountains. Of course, it was impossible.

  So he said to himself, that one way or another, they were all going to end their journey in this valley.

  He thought about Clara very hard.

  HECTOR AND THE DISTANT VALLEY

  ÉLÉONORE spotted a meadow which was more or less flat, right by the lake, and they landed quite smoothly, but it gave the yaks rather a fright and sent them running in every direction.

  A little procession came to meet them – people from the village, monks, children, and even one or two rather curious yaks that had retraced their steps and were quite trusting, because, here, people never killed animals.

  A young monk spoke English. He explained that this was only the second time in their lives that the people and the yaks had seen an aeroplane. The first time had been the aeroplane which had brought the old monk a week earlier.

  ‘And how did it take off again?’ asked Éléonore.

  The young monk pointed to the lake, and Hector understood that the plane would never take off ever again. But they’d had time to get the old monk out of it.

  They started walk
ing towards the village. The little children kept zigzagging back and forth in front of them, running and laughing as they looked at them, because, while it was the second aeroplane they’d seen, these were the first ever white people. They couldn’t get enough of Éléonore’s blue eyes. Hector noticed that the children, like their parents, were dressed in all kinds of different tunics made of wool, most probably from yaks. The women were just as lovely as the Inuit, but taller. They had pinker cheeks and lighter-coloured eyes, and they wore pretty necklaces covered in little precious stones. Everyone had wonderful smiles, and yet no one had ever seen a dentist. And there were lots of children, because women were allowed to have as many as they liked, unlike the part of the mountains which had become China.

  Hector thought that everyone was always talking about the Mediterranean diet, but that it would probably be a good idea to study the diet here, especially since by the time he reached the village, he felt very tired from the little walk. But the children, who must have run twice that distance as they zigzagged back and forth in front of them, didn’t seem tired at all, unlike Édouard, who wanted to sit down right away and if possible have a drink. The young monk said they could have something to drink at the monastery, but that they’d better hurry if they wanted to see the old monk. No time to go sightseeing in the village with its stone-tiled houses or have a conversation with these charming people. They had to climb a steep little path covered with stones which led up to the monastery. Hector and Édouard were out of breath, but Éléonore wasn’t at all.

  ‘It’s the altitude,’ she said. ‘You’re not used to it.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Édouard, because admitting that he wasn’t as strong as a girl always annoyed him.