Hector and the Search for Lost Time

by Francois Lelord

In the monastery, they went through several rooms whose walls were covered with very old paintings on wood which depicted devils with huge fangs fighting with very beautiful gods wearing earrings, and also normal people, and sometimes monkeys. It was a lot more complicated than it sounds, but, as the old monk was waiting, they didn’t have time to look, and we don’t have time to explain it to you either.

  They also went past some squatting monks who were chanting, but they didn’t look at all surprised to see Hector, Édouard and Éléonore.

  Then the young monk stopped in front of a very old carved wooden door, and on it there was a crowned figure balancing on one foot inside a big circle, as if it was playing with a hoop.

  The young monk knocked, and another fatter, not so young monk answered the door.

  Édouard and Éléonore motioned to Hector that they’d rather let him go in by himself.

  Hector went through.

  In a very bare little room, lying on his side with his head resting on a pillow, the old monk was looking at him, smiling.

  HECTOR, THE OLD MONK AND TIME

  ‘YOU see,’ said the old monk, ‘when people started talking about how old I was, I thought I’d better make myself scarce.’

  Hector didn’t say anything, because he wanted to let the old monk do all the talking, since it seemed to Hector that he didn’t have much time left, not in this world anyway.

  ‘All these people . . .’ said the old monk. ‘All these poor people who are scared of dying. I’m a sort of symbol, you see. So I said to myself that when they found out how old I was lots of people were going to flock to my religion, as if that would bring them longevity.’

  Hector thought then of all the people in his country who desperately wanted to add years to their lives and have their midlife crisis as late as possible. Some already practised little bits of the monk’s religion, for the same reason as they’d gone on the Mediterranean diet: to get old less quickly.

  ‘Wanting to stay young or live for a long time would be the worst reason to join us,’ said the old monk.

  He reminded Hector that attachment to earthly life was a very big obstacle in both his religion and Hector’s, and in almost all other religions too.

  Hector didn’t say anything to that either, because he wasn’t a great believer himself and didn’t practise his religion. Even in front of a monk from another religion, he would have felt a little embarrassed saying so. (Some people will tell you that the old monk’s religion is not a religion, and we could discuss it till the cows come home, but defining things doesn’t get you very far, as Pascal, the philosopher Hector liked, once said.)

  Even so, in the end, Hector asked the old monk if this business about his age was true.

  ‘Oh,’ said the old monk, ‘what does it matter in the end? How do you like the tea? Here, they add butter and barley.’

  But the old monk could tell that Hector, even though he didn’t dare ask the question, would have really liked to know.

  ‘Well, as I’ve always looked young for my age, it was quite easy to arrange – the story of a father who disappears and a long-lost son who comes back – at a time when there weren’t a lot of photos and no TV yet, and when I had to travel around quite a lot. It gave me some freedom for a few years . . . I had time to arrange quite a lot of things.’

  The old monk coughed, and it took him a while to catch his breath. Hector wished he could have done something, but he knew there wasn’t much he could do. The old monk wouldn’t have wanted machines blinking away all around him.

  ‘Anyway, all that was necessary,’ said the old monk.

  Hector found it interesting to see that the old monk had also been a man of action, like Trevor and the Roman general. Unlike those people who believed it was good to ‘let go’, leave everything behind and spend lots of time in search of inner peace without ever getting out of their chairs again. Even compassion for your enemies, yet another teaching you also found in Hector’s religion, shouldn’t stop you from trying to stand in the way of what your enemies were doing, and even putting quite a lot of effort into it. But Hector could see all too well that the time for action was over for the old monk.

  ‘And being a station master . . . did you like it?’ asked Hector, just so he’d feel less sad.

  ‘Oh, yes! For a start, it’s the best way to hide, you know, being in plain sight. Even you didn’t recognise me! Or Trevor and Katharine either, my dear friends! But I didn’t say anything when I saw you, because the place was being watched very closely, and I was sure that we’d see each other again . . .’

  Hector offered the old monk a little tea, and he took a mouthful.

  ‘And I’d spent so many years cut off from the world, in this monastery, and before, of course . . .’

  Hector remembered that, before, the old monk had spent many years in various places where they’d wanted to force him to think the right way. To do that, they’d locked him up for a very long time by himself, all alone. But the old monk wasn’t thinking about all those years spent facing a wall any more; he was smiling as he told Hector his memories of being a station master.

  ‘How the world has changed! Especially the women from your part of the world! Everyone travels a lot more than before. At the same time, I felt that most people don’t know what they’re looking for. I realised that, for many people in the world, life had become a lot more entertaining than before, and they could arrange their lives as a continuous upsurge of novelty, as one of your philosophers said. All these trips, changing jobs several times in their life, and new loves too. I understand that people have become slaves to this desire for continuous renewal and improvement. But growing old, leaving this life and this world full of promise, then becomes more difficult to accept than if you live in the countryside in a very harsh environment that hardly changes over the course of your lifetime. But now . . . You’re going to have a lot of work!’ said the old monk, with the little laugh Hector was so fond of.

  A little later on, Édouard and Éléonore came in, and the old monk told Éléonore that she looked very like Katharine when she was her age.

  Éléonore blushed, and then afterwards she asked the old monk if he thought the present and eternity were the same. And the old monk said, of course, the present was also eternity and, at the same time, it was nothingness, since it dissolved at the same time as it existed.

  ‘The present is eternity, nothingness and at the same time everything that exists,’ said the old monk, ‘because nothing exists outside the present. And, of course, this everything is really the Whole of everything, so it’s also you and me, and even the clouds and the yaks and the mountains outside . . .’ He closed his eyes, as he was very tired.

  Hector, Édouard and Éléonore exchanged glances to let each other know it was time to go.

  But the old monk opened his eyes and looked at Édouard.

  ‘Dear Édouard,’ he said. ‘The Kablunak-who-counts-fast! Would you like to know exactly how old I am?’

  Édouard said that he’d rather not know exactly, but that he’d really like to know how the old monk had stayed young for so long.

  ‘Good genes,’ said the old monk, smiling.

  Then he closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

  HECTOR AND ETERNITY

  Hector went back to see the old monk once more during the day. And once the following morning. The third time, the young monk told him there was no point any more.

  Of course, there was going to be a ceremony with all the monks and the people from the village, and even the yaks, who were part of the Great Whole. Hector would really have liked to stay, but Éléonore said that with the clouds she could see coming, if they didn’t leave straight away, she couldn’t say when they’d be able to, perhaps not even until spring.

  Since Hector wanted to avoid spending long weeks having talks with Éléonore about t
ime and eternity surrounded by yaks – because he knew that no matter how hard he tried he wouldn’t have been able to stick to the Right View or the Right Action, and the whole thing would have ended up under a yak-wool blanket – he said okay to leaving straight away.

  He went off to look for Édouard. In fact, Édouard had had time to discover the local drink, a kind of fermented yak’s milk, and he’d made some new friends among the men in the village, who had also learnt to say ‘Jourgoodhel’. The single young women found Édouard very funny, as Hector could clearly see when he arrived at lunchtime.

  Édouard said that he was going to stay in the valley.

  ‘Are you mad?’ said Hector. ‘What about the Inuit?’

  Édouard explained that the Inuit didn’t need him any more. Now, they were able to run their buying and selling operation all by themselves. In any case, he would return on the next plane that came through there and, since Édouard would mark out a proper runway, it wouldn’t land in the lake. But, even so, Hector didn’t understand why Édouard wanted to stay.

  ‘It’s this constant need for novelty,’ said Édouard. ‘But I think that being here may be the way to finally leave that behind.’

  ‘Do you want to become a monk?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ said Édouard. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for it! I just want to change a little. And also, this place,’ – he gestured towards the vast mountains, the monks coming down the steep little path and the yaks roaming peacefully – ‘it helps you to really get in touch with time, eternity and all that.’

  Hector thought that Édouard had given some quite good reasons. He could always come back and get him with Éléonore after winter.

  As he walked to the plane, he took the time to write in his little notebook:

  Time Exercise with no number: Try to experience the present as eternity and feel that it’s everything and nothing at the same time.

  Hector knew this exercise was difficult, but, with a little bit of practice every day, you could get there now and again. That might make people feel more comfortable with time going by. He joined Éléonore, who seemed very happy. She had spotted a little meadow for taking off – actually quite a short incline, Hector noticed, and just past it a ravine which he’d rather not see the bottom of.

  ‘Of course, as we drop, we’ll get our speed up. After that, we should be fine.’

  When the plane began to drop, Hector had to think very hard about the old monk, who said that attachment to earthly life was a very big obstacle, and those seconds seemed to last a very long time. Then Éléonore pulled the plane up and they took to the skies again over the big mountains bathed in golden sunlight.

  And Hector looked at them for a long time, those big mountains.

  By telling himself that they too only existed in the present, for a brief moment Hector experienced eternity.

  HECTOR RETURNS

  WHEN Hector met up with old François again, he asked him what he’d thought of all the philosophers he’d had time to read or reread.

  ‘They make you think,’ said old François.

  Hector remembered that Éléonore had said the same thing.

  ‘François? Are you there?’

  And a lady opened the office door and popped her head round it. From the look of old François, Hector understood what had made him so happy. As, for once, the lady was around the same age as the mothers of the young women François usually fell for, Hector thought that this old-fashioned romance stood a good chance of becoming the future present. Hector wondered whether old François had managed to change the way he loved by reading philosophy – if so, it was worth going back to.

  Hector met up with his patients again, and some were even beginning to get impatient waiting for him to come back. For them, time had gone by very slowly.

  Roger told Hector that he’d seen him on TV.

  ‘I didn’t know you were going to see monks,’ said Roger.

  ‘They’re not quite the same sort of monks as in our religion,’ said Hector.

  ‘Perhaps they are!’ said Roger.

  And he told Hector that in the past some people had thought that the founder of Hector and Roger’s religion and that of the old monk’s were actually the same person who had come to visit this world at two different times and in two different places. Each time, the local people who lived in these two places quite far away from each other had told the story of his time on earth in their own way. They had also mixed it in with their local religions.

  ‘The lessons taught both times were compassion for all beings, even for your enemies, non-attachment to worldly possessions, the idea of an end of time,’ said Roger, obviously very much in his element.

  Hector wasn’t too sure what to make of it, but he promised himself he’d do some proper reading, when he had time.

  After which, Roger told him that he was determined to stop all his medication and Hector had to run late for all his other sessions that day.

  Later on, Hector saw Hubert. Hector saw straight away that he was very happy.

  ‘I was right, Doctor, to keep believing in our love! In fact, she’s like a comet – she left, but she came back!’

  Hector thought to himself that if you took this comet metaphor further, this would mean that Hubert’s wife would leave again one day, but he didn’t say that. He wanted Hubert to enjoy the present and perhaps manage to bring about a better present in the future.

  Fernand hadn’t changed a bit. Only, now, he had two dogs. Hector was a little shaken when he saw that the new dog was the same breed as Noumen. It could almost have been his twin, with the same pale eyes which never left Hector for a second.

  ‘In a way, this means I can double the years I have left in dog lives,’ said Fernand with a funny little cawing sound.

  Hector realised that this was Fernand’s laugh. It was the first time he’d heard it. Perhaps Fernand was going to make some new friends.

  Little Hector said that he was less bored in class.

  ‘Why?’ asked Hector.

  ‘I’ve got a friend,’ said Little Hector. ‘Me and her swap notes in class.’

  Hector could tell that Little Hector was very proud of swapping notes with a little girl his age. And what about school? you say. All right, but to be happy in life, isn’t learning very early on how to talk to girls and understand them at least as important as doing well at school?

  Sabine seemed more relaxed than last time.

  ‘I decided to go part time,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot less pressure and more time for the children. Of course, it’s not great for my career. But my husband says he couldn’t care less.’

  Hector’s wish for Sabine was that her husband would always feel that way, and he thought to himself that truly, in life, it was always the women who took the most risks.

  Hector also thought to himself that all these people were doing better since he’d gone on his trip. So that proved he could do it again. He also saw Marie-Agnès again.

  ‘Actually, after you left, I dumped Paul.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Hector.

  He didn’t understand – Paul and Marie-Agnès seemed to get on so well.

  ‘We were caught up in the same madness,’ said Marie-Agnès. ‘Always more, do you know what I mean?’

  Hector knew very well.

  ‘I don’t want to change,’ said Marie-Agnès. ‘I want to stay young for as long as possible. But I’d like to be with a man who doesn’t care about that at all. An intellectual type excited by his work who couldn’t give two hoots about going grey or getting a pot belly, well, not too much of one, anyway. Or else, a greying cowboy type who thinks about his horses . . .’

  Hector said to himself that he’d see to it that Hubert and Marie-Agnès found themselves waiting together in the waiting room one day, when the co
met had left again.

  HECTOR AND CLARA AND . . .

  THE doctor, who was in fact a friend of Hector’s, told him that the baby-to-be looked in fine fettle. Hector looked at the photo taken inside Clara’s tummy and said to himself that this definitely proved that time wasn’t a human creation, since it would take time for the baby to get bigger and become aware of time going by. And – why not – even take up German and decide to write philosophy books about time.

  ‘It’s incredible – I’d swear the baby looks like you.’

  Hector said excuse him, but he didn’t see why that was incredible.

  ‘No, no,’ said Clara, ‘I meant that the baby looks like you, already!’

  Hector knew that at other times the baby would look more like Clara, then like him again, and then one day this little person would still be young when he and Clara no longer were.

  He also thought to himself that he’d forgotten to write down a very important time exercise.

  Hector took out his little notebook and made a note.

  Clara looked over his shoulder and burst out laughing.

  Eternity, thought Hector, let this moment right here become eternity.

  HECTOR IN THE GARDEN

  HECTOR was walking in a garden. The sky was a deep blue, with little white clouds perfectly lined up all around like on a pretty tapestry.

  He followed a path edged with giant hydrangeas, and other flowers whose names he didn’t know. In the distance, he saw someone walking towards him. It was the old monk.

  The old monk was holding something in his hand, and Hector realised it was his own notebook! Even though he knew that the old monk always had a nice way of putting things, Hector was still a bit worried about hearing what he thought of his little exercises.

  They both started walking together, and Hector was careful not to walk too fast.

  Somehow Hector just knew that the garden had no boundaries. In the distance, he could see people strolling along other paths or resting in the shade.