Hector and the Secrets of Love

by Francois Lelord

  And, indeed, when you looked at Ethel, who was no longer exactly young but who had such a youthful air, you said to yourself that love certainly seemed to agree with her.

  Gunther appeared delighted. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘what a joyous description of love you have given us, dear Ethel. And how joyful love is, to be sure! Speaking of which, if you’ll allow me . . .’

  Gunther rose to his full height and began singing in a fine bass voice.

  ‘L is for the way you look at me

  O is for the only one I see

  V is very, very extraordinary

  E is even more than anyone that you adore . . .

  Love is all that I can give to you

  Love is more than just a game for two . . .’

  All the women round the table suddenly seemed mesmerised by Gunther’s (very good) rendition of Nat King Cole. He had even acquired the self-assurance, easy smile and smouldering gaze of a real crooner, and Hector felt a pang of jealousy. He glanced at Clara but, amazingly, she seemed indifferent to Gunther’s performance; in fact she looked a little annoyed, which made Hector love her all the more.

  When he had finished, everybody applauded, even Hector, who regretted his pang of jealousy and who, with Clara’s career in mind, didn’t want to give a bad impression.

  ‘Thank you, my friends,’ said Gunther. ‘I’m sorry, I still don’t know any love poems in French, but next time you can depend on me! And now you, dear Dr Hector, what do you think about love?’

  HECTOR TALKS ABOUT LOVE

  HECTOR was embarrassed. He agreed with both François and Ethel. Depending on the day – and who he had listened to during the day – he could have sung an ode to love or, on the contrary, wished someone would hurry up and invent a vaccine against it. But in a meeting it isn’t exactly impressive just to say you agree with what has already been said, because meetings are also occasions for showing off. And so Hector thought for a moment, and began.

  ‘I think what both my colleagues have said about love is very true. Love is the source of our greatest joys and love is the cause of our deepest misfortunes.’

  Hector noticed Clara was watching him, and was surprised to see she looked a little sad. Had François’s song affected her to that extent? He went on.

  ‘But, listening to my patients, I often say to myself that the main difficulty with love is that it is involuntary. We fall in love or stay in love with people who are unsuitable or who no longer love us and, conversely, we feel no love towards people who would be very suitable. Love is involuntary, that’s the problem. Our personal histories prepare us to be attracted to people who unconsciously evoke emotions from our childhood or adolescence. I love you because unwittingly you provoke the same feelings in me as Mummy or Daddy, or my little brother or sister, or the opposite feelings, for that matter. And then there are the circumstances of our meeting. We all know that people fall in love more easily when they are already troubled by another emotion – surprise, or even fear or compassion’ – an image flashed through his mind of tears streaming from pretty almond-shaped eyes, one evening in a taxi – ‘because we know that any intense emotional state greatly increases the risk of falling in love. And we could also speak of the role music plays in the early stages of love, only I don’t sing nearly as well as François, so I am not likely to move you to tears!’

  They all laughed, which was good, because, although it wasn’t obvious on the surface, François’s speech had upset everyone a little.

  ‘But I can recite a few verses,’ Hector went on. ‘Phaedra is about to marry Theseus; everything is wonderful until her future son-in-law Hippolytus, Theseus’s son, turns up and disaster ensues!

  ‘I blushed and went pale when first I saw him,

  My mind was troubled, my eyes grew dim,

  Love-struck I was unable to draw breath,

  My body burned, I felt close to death.

  ‘And, like poor Phaedra, we fall in love not with who we want to fall in love with, but with who moves us, and sometimes it is the last person we should fall in love with. Our involuntary choice is not always the right one, and sometimes it is actually the worst one, hence our suffering. And then, of course, there is the completely different situation of the loving couple where, over the years, the love they once felt for each other fades and they can’t go on. They feel their love dying, but are unable to bring it back to life.’

  As he spoke, Hector noticed that Gunther and his colleague were watching him with special interest, which made him shudder, because he thought they looked a bit like cats sizing up a particularly appetising mouse. Suddenly he was certain these two had plans concerning him, and he wondered whether Clara knew.

  HECTOR IS WORRIED

  JUST after lunch, Hector and Clara went for a walk on the beach under the still cloudy sky.

  ‘You looked sad just now,’ said Hector.

  ‘No, I wasn’t sad,’ said Clara. ‘Or maybe I was, seeing your elderly colleague. I found what he said moving.’

  ‘Yes, so did I.’

  They had come to a small family of crabs. The struggle continued: fighting, mounting each other, fighting.

  ‘We should show him these crabs. That would confirm his opinion: love, what misery!’

  ‘Let’s keep going,’ Clara said, with a shudder.

  They walked for a while in silence. Hector was worried; he sensed Clara wasn’t her usual self.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, of course!’

  Hector realised this wasn’t the time to interrogate Clara, but he tried asking a different question.

  ‘I had the feeling Gunther and Marie-Claire were looking at me in a funny way. As if they had something planned for me.’

  Clara stopped and stared at him. She looked angry. ‘And you think I wouldn’t tell you if I knew?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you what I felt.’

  Clara pulled herself together. She thought it over then let out a sigh. ‘It’s possible. I was wondering the same thing.’

  ‘Anyway, if I’m right, we’ll soon find out. I’ll try to be a credit to you.’

  Clara smiled, but Hector thought he glimpsed traces of the sadness she had displayed earlier.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Oh, look, a weird crab.’

  It was true: one crab was bigger than the others and was moving very slowly, pausing from time to time, as though observing the others scuffling around him. But he didn’t try to fight, or mount any females. It looked as if he were watching, and then he moved off again with his slow, rather sad gait.

  ‘It’s your old colleague,’ said Clara.

  They both laughed because it was true, the old crab did look like François. Hector thought that life with Clara was wonderful for many reasons and one of them was because he and Clara laughed at the same things.

  As a result, they began looking for Ethel among the other crabs, and they found her: a lively little female who kept scuttling from one crab to another.

  Then Hector noticed a formidable-looking male with two huge pincers that the other crabs didn’t even attempt to attack when he mounted a female.

  ‘That’s Gunther,’ said Hector.

  Clara smiled, but she still looked sad, Hector was sure of it. Suddenly he wondered whether he, too, wasn’t about to become very unhappy because of love.

  HECTOR ACCEPTS A MISSION

  AT the end of dinner, Gunther put down his cigar and leaned over to Hector. ‘I’d like to have a quiet word with you,’ he said.

  ‘Whenever you like,’ said Hector.

  ‘We’ll wait until the others have gone,’ said Gunther.

  Everyone seemed quite cheerful at dinner; they had the healthy glow of people who have been swimming in the sea and begun to get a tan, and even old François seemed very jaunty. He was chatting to a young employee of the company and making her laugh. Clara had begun a long discussion with Ethel, and Hector overheard the word ‘mul
ti-orgasmic’, which Ethel seemed to repeat often.

  And then everyone stood up and people began making their way back to their bungalows. Hector gave Clara a little wave, and she left, too. As he watched her walk through the door and glance back at him, Hector had another awful feeling, but he quickly told himself he was imagining things – he knew that Clara loved him.

  The three of them, Hector, Gunther and Marie-Claire, sat facing one another in big armchairs made of tropical wood in the lounge area in Gunther’s suite. Gunther relit his cigar and the tall maître d’hôtel came in with the drinks they had ordered: cognac for Gunther and Marie-Claire, and coconut milk with a straw for Hector, who had never liked drinking after dinner. The tall maître d’hôtel left the bottle of cognac next to Gunther.

  It was dark outside, and you could hear the sound of the waves, and Hector thought about the crabs that were perhaps still making love under the moonlight.

  A large file lay on the low table, and Hector was surprised to read on the cover the name of somebody he knew; it was the eminent professor of Happiness Studies he had met in the country of More, or, for people who are fond of geography, America. The eminent professor was a small, skinny man with a big nose and a big tuft of white hair, who spoke very quickly and who thought even more quickly. He was carrying out a lot of complicated research to try to discover whether happiness was largely a question of character (you are happy because you have a talent for happiness) or a question of circumstances (you are happy if you have things in your life that make you happy). The eminent professor’s name was Cormorant, which was quite amusing because with his big nose and his tuft of white hair he looked a bit like the bird of the same name.

  Hector liked him a lot and they often exchanged emails. Professor Cormorant told Hector things about happiness which gave him ideas about how to treat his unhappy patients. He and the professor very rarely met and there was a big age difference between them, but they had struck up a long-distance friendship.

  ‘You know him,’ said Gunther, taking a photo of Professor Cormorant from the file.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘A brilliant mind.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘An outstanding researcher.’

  ‘Without a doubt.’

  Gunther took a puff of his cigar, as though to calm himself. Hector had the impression he was angry.

  ‘He’s working for us,’ said Marie-Claire.

  ‘On happiness?’

  ‘No, on love.’

  Marie-Claire explained that the big pharmaceutical company had funded some new research into love, and as Professor Cormorant was already a world expert in the study of emotions it had been easy for him to switch from happiness to love because both are combinations of complex emotions. Hector was very interested. The professor had never mentioned this new research to him.

  ‘There was a confidentiality clause,’ Marie-Claire explained, ‘for him and his team of researchers. They were working in collaboration with our researchers.’

  Hector looked out of the corner of his eye at Gunther, who was still puffing on his cigar as though to calm himself.

  ‘Were you developing a new drug?’

  ‘Do you remember what you were saying this morning? We don’t choose who we fall in love with? We fall out of love with a person we’d like to go on loving? We’re trying to find a solution to that problem.’

  Hector was stunned. ‘A drug for falling in love with whoever we want to? Or for staying in love when we want to?’

  Marie-Claire didn’t answer and looked at Gunther as though asking his permission to say more.

  Gunther sighed.

  ‘You’ve got it in one,’ he said.

  Hector began to think about all the effects a drug like that might have on people’s lives. What if you gave it to someone without them knowing?

  ‘We’re in deep shit because of him,’ said Gunther suddenly.

  It was surprising to hear Gunther swear. This time Hector was sure Gunther was very angry with Professor Cormorant.

  Gunther took a swig of cognac then gestured to Marie-Claire to carry on explaining the situation.

  ‘Our research teams had developed three drugs that acted in three different ways. It was Professor Cormorant’s job to study their effects on the love impulses of healthy volunteers. What we didn’t know was that, aided by a chemist from his university, he had secretly modified the molecules of the drugs we had provided him with, which meant the psychological results he obtained related to those modified products, not to our original drugs.’

  Hector said to himself he had always suspected the professor was a bit mad – now he knew for sure.

  ‘And what were the results?’

  ‘They were promising,’ said Marie-Claire.

  Hector sensed she wouldn’t give any more away.

  ‘We’re in deep shit because of him,’ Gunther repeated.

  You could tell from his voice the cognac had begun to take effect.

  Marie-Claire explained that one day the professor had wiped all the most recent results off the computers’ hard disks and had disappeared with all the samples of the modified molecules.

  ‘And the chemist?’

  Again Marie-Claire looked at Gunther, who nodded.

  ‘The chemist went mad.’

  ‘Mad?’

  ‘We think he tried to test one of the new drugs on himself. He’s completely incoherent. He’s been . . . committed.’

  ‘That arsehole,’ said Gunther, starting on his third cognac.

  Marie-Claire went on to explain that this research into love had cost hundreds of millions of dollars and that they had been about to get some results when the professor had disappeared. Other rival companies were working on the same thing; it was like a multimillion-dollar race.

  There was a silence. Seeing Gunther and Marie-Claire looking at him, a question occurred to Hector, the answer to which he was sure he already knew. He asked it just the same.

  ‘And why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘So you can find him,’ said Gunther. ‘We need to find Professor Cormorant.’

  HECTOR TAKES TO THE AIR

  Who are you to think you can tame love? Under the guise of relieving suffering you want to impose servitude. The control of feelings, that’s your aim. Well, Professor Cormorant isn’t going to help you. Professor Cormorant has a very different vision of the future that you cannot begin to imagine. All you can think about is stuffing people full of your little pills. Professor Cormorant pities you because he is a good man.

  Professor Cormorant really had changed; he referred to himself in the third person in almost all the emails he had sent Gunther and Marie-Claire. An unexpected side effect of the new drugs he had taken with him perhaps?

  Hector folded the letter and looked at the air hostess, who was bringing some champagne. This made him happy because he already knew the effect champagne had. In addition, the air hostess was wearing pretty oriental clothes, a dress with a slit up one side over silk trousers. And, you’ve guessed right, she was Asian, because Hector was on his way to a country very near China where they had most recently traced Professor Cormorant. Since that country had been occupied a long time ago by Hector’s country, he was hoping to find a lot of people there who spoke his language, because Hector was not very good at languages, and Asian languages aren’t the easiest ones to speak, let alone write.

  But the air hostess only spoke English. She asked Hector if he was visiting her country as a tourist or on business and Hector said ‘tourist’, and wondered how the young woman would have responded if he had told her he was going in search of a mad professor.

  Talking a little to the air hostess and drinking champagne did Hector good; it stopped him from thinking about Clara.

  Before leaving on this mission, he and Clara had had a long talk. Or rather he had started off asking Clara a lot of questions to find out why she often looked sad. At first she had said no, it was nothing, she wasn’t sad, Hector w
as imagining things, and then she had finally told him she still loved him, but she wondered whether she was really in love with him. Hector hadn’t taken it too badly, because when you are a psychiatrist you are used to remaining calm while you listen to what people say, and people say very strange things sometimes, but even so, there on the plane he needed to drink champagne and talk to the air hostess in order to repress the urge to pick up the telephone fitted to his seat and call Clara at half-hourly intervals. Especially because he knew it wouldn’t have done much good and he would quickly have run up a phone bill that would have shocked even Gunther.

  Love is universal — saying this might make us wonder whether we have made any progress at all, but of course we have, because it allows us to jettison all those silly cultural prejudices, hey presto. Regardless of race, culture or the regime imposed on us, love sets us all aquiver. Just take a look at all the world’s love poems throughout the ages and I guarantee you will find in them universal themes: the sorrow of being parted from the loved one, the joy of seeing him or her again, odes to his or her beauty and the promise of ecstasy it brings, the desire to see him or her triumph or escape from danger. Do it and you will see I am right and that will shut you up, you dimwits.

  Before writing this message, it would seem Professor Cormorant had taken another type of pill. Hector had quivered slightly when he read the sorrow of being parted from the loved one, but he managed to focus again in order to read all the professor’s most recent emails since he had gone missing. There were about fifty of them and Hector thought that by examining them he might discover what was going on in the professor’s mind, understand what he wanted, and eventually find him.