Hector and the Search for Happiness (3 page)

H
ECTOR decided to go to China. He’d never been there before, and it seemed to him like a good place to think about happiness. He remembered the adventures of Tintin in
The Blue Lotus
, and Tintin’s friend Chang’s adoptive father, Mr Wang. The wise old Chinaman with his long white beard looked as if he might have a few interesting things to say about happiness, and there had to be people like him still in China today. Also, in
The Blue Lotus
this distinguished gentleman’s son goes crazy and makes his parents very unhappy. When they cry Tintin tries to comfort them, but he doesn’t really succeed. Fortunately, later on he manages to free from the clutches of villains a famous Chinese professor, who manages to cure Mr Wang’s son. In the end everybody is happy, and perhaps it was reading this moving adventure as a boy that first gave Hector the idea of becoming a psychiatrist (even though he’d never heard of the word then). Hector had also seen quite a few Chinese films at the cinema with Clara, and he’d noticed that Chinese women were very pretty, even though there weren’t that many in
The Blue Lotus
.

When he boarded the aeroplane, the air hostess gave him some good news: the airline had overbooked the part of the plane where Hector was supposed to be sitting, and she was giving him a seat in the part where you normally had to pay a lot more. That part of the plane is called business class, just to make it seem as if the people sitting there are travelling on business and not for the pleasure of having a nice comfortable seat, champagne and their own private TV screen.

Hector felt very happy to be there. His seat really was very comfortable, the air hostesses had brought him champagne, and he also felt they were smiling at him a lot - much more than when he travelled the normal way — but that might have been the effect of the champagne.

As the plane climbed higher and higher in the sky, he began thinking about happiness. Why did he feel so happy to be there?

Of course, he was able to stretch out comfortably, drink champagne and relax. But he could do the same thing at home in his favourite armchair, and although it was enjoyable it didn’t make him as happy as here on this aeroplane.

He looked around. Two or three other people were smiling and looking around, and he thought that like him they must have had a nice surprise. He turned to the man next to him. He was reading a newspaper in English containing rows of numbers, with a serious expression on his face. He hadn’t taken the champagne that the air hostess had offered him. He was a bit older than Hector, a bit fatter, too, and he wore a tie with little pictures of kangaroos on it, and so Hector thought that he wasn’t going on holiday, but was travelling on business.

Later on, they started talking. The man’s name was Charles, and he asked Hector if this was his first trip to China. Hector said it was. Charles told him that he knew China a little because he owned factories there, where Chinese people worked for less money than in the country Hector and Charles came from. ‘For less money but just as hard!’ he added.

In these factories, they made all sorts of things for children: furniture, toys and electronic games. Charles was married and had three children; they always had plenty of toys because their father owned factories that made them!

Hector had never really understood much about economics, but he asked Charles whether it wasn’t inconvenient to have all those things made by the Chinese and whether it might not take jobs away from the people in Hector and Charles’s country.

A few, perhaps, Charles explained, but if he employed workers in his country, his toys would be so much more expensive than those made in other countries that nobody would buy them anyway, so it would be pointless even to try. ‘That’s globalisation for you,’ Charles concluded. Hector reflected that this was the first time during his journey that he’d heard the word globalisation, but it would surely not be the last. Charles added that one good thing was that the Chinese were becoming less poor and soon they would be able to afford toys for their own children.

Hector told himself that he’d done well to choose psychiatry, since people weren’t about to go off to China to discuss their problems with Chinese psychiatrists, even though they were no doubt excellent.

He asked Charles about China, in particular whether the Chinese were very different from them. Charles thought about it, and said that essentially they weren’t in fact. The greatest differences were between people in the big cities and those in the countryside, but that was true in all countries. However, he did tell Hector that he was unlikely to find anybody like Chang’s father there, because China had changed a lot since the days of
The Blue Lotus.

From the very beginning of their conversation, Hector had wanted to ask Charles if he was happy, but he remembered Clara’s reaction and this time he wanted to be careful. Eventually he said: ‘These seats are so comfortable!’ hoping that Charles might say how glad he was to be flying business class, and then they could go on to talk about happiness.

But Charles grumbled, ‘Hmm, they don’t extend nearly as much as the ones in first class.’ And Hector understood that Charles usually flew business class, but that one day he’d been upgraded to first class (an even more expensive part of the plane) and that he’d never forgotten it.

This made Hector think. Charles and he were sitting in identical seats, and had been offered the same champagne, but Hector was much happier because he wasn’t used to it. There was another difference: Charles had been expecting to fly business class, whereas for Hector it had been a pleasant surprise.

It was the first small pleasure of his trip so far, but looking at Charles, Hector began worrying. What if the next time he flew economy class he regretted not being in business class, like Charles now regretted not being in first class?

Hector told himself that he’d just learnt his first lesson. He took out the little notebook he’d bought especially and wrote:

He thought that this wasn’t a very positive first lesson, so he tried to find another. He drank some more champagne and wrote:

H
ECTOR was very surprised when he arrived in China. Of course he hadn’t expected it to look exactly like in
The Blue Lotus
(Hector is intelligent; don’t forget he’s a psychiatrist), but even so.

He found himself in a city full of huge modern glass towers, like the ones containing offices that had been built around his city; only this Chinese city was at the foot of a small mountain by the sea. The houses and streets were exactly the same as in Hector’s country. The only difference was that instead of the people he was used to seeing, there were lots of Chinese men in grey suits walking very quickly and speaking rather loudly into their mobile phones. He saw quite a few Chinese women, too, including some very pretty ones, though not as many as in the films. They all seemed to be in a hurry, were dressed a bit like Clara, and gave the impression that when they were at the office they also had lots of meetings.

In the taxi on his way to the hotel, Hector saw only one house that looked like a proper Chinese house, with a funny-shaped roof: it was an antiques shop wedged between two huge buildings. His hotel was a glass tower that looked exactly the same as the hotels he stayed in when he was invited to conferences organised by pharmaceutical companies. He told himself that this was beginning not to feel like a holiday any more.

Fortunately, Hector had a friend called Édouard who lived in the city. They had been at secondary school together, but afterwards, instead of studying psychiatry, Édouard had become a banker, and now he had lots of silk ties with pictures of little animals on them, played golf and every day read newspapers in English full of rows of numbers, rather like Charles, except that Édouard had never been inside a factory.

Hector and Édouard met for dinner at a very fine restaurant at the top of a tower. It was wonderful; they could see the city lights and the boats on the water. But Édouard didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the view — he was more interested in the wine list.

‘French, Italian or Californian?’ he asked Hector straight away.

Hector replied, ‘What do you prefer?’ Because, as previously mentioned, he knew how to answer a question with another question, and as a result Édouard knew exactly which wine to order without his help.

Édouard seemed to have aged quite a lot since Hector had last seen him. He had bags under his eyes, and jowls, and he looked very tired indeed. He explained to Hector that he worked eighty hours a week. Hector figured out that this was nearly twice the hours he worked, and he felt really sorry for Édouard: it was terrible to work so much. But when Édouard told him how much he earned, Hector figured out that it was seven times what he earned, and he didn’t feel so sorry for him any more. And when he saw how much the wine Édouard had ordered cost, he told himself that it was just as well Édouard earned so much money, because otherwise how would he have been able to pay for it?

Seeing as Édouard was an old friend, Hector felt at ease about asking him if he was happy. Édouard laughed, but not the way people laugh when they’re really amused. He explained to Hector that when you worked as hard as he did, you didn’t even have time to ask yourself that question. And that was exactly why he was going to resign.

‘Right now?’ Hector asked. He was taken aback and wondered whether Édouard had decided this suddenly after seeing how much less tired he looked than Édouard.

‘No. I’ll stop when I’ve earned six million dollars.’

Édouard explained that it was common in his job. People worked very hard and then when they’d earned enough money they resigned and did something else or did nothing at all.

‘And then they’re happy?’ asked Hector.

Édouard thought very hard and said that the problem was that having worked that way for so many years a lot of people weren’t in a very good state when they stopped: they had health problems and some of them had got into the habit of taking harmful pills in order to be able to work longer hours, and they found it difficult to do without them. Many had got divorced because of all the meetings that prevented them from seeing their wives. They worried about money (because even when you’ve earned a lot of money you can still lose it, especially if you order wines like Édouard every day) and often they didn’t really know what to do with themselves because they’d never done anything else except work.

‘But some people cope very well,’ Édouard said.

‘Which ones?’ Hector asked.

‘The ones who continue,’ Édouard replied.

And he stopped talking in order to study the label on the bottle of wine the Chinese wine waiter (just like a wine waiter in Hector’s country except that he was Chinese) was showing him.

Hector asked Édouard to explain what he did in his job, which was ‘mergers and acquisitions’. Hector knew a little about it because two pharmaceutical companies, both producing pills prescribed by psychiatrists, had merged. They’d become one big pharmaceutical company with a new name that had no meaning. The funny thing was that, afterwards, the bigger company had done less well than the two smaller companies. Hector had learnt that quite a few people (the ones who read newspapers containing rows of numbers) had lost a lot of money and weren’t very happy. At the same time, some of the people who had worked in the two old companies, whom Hector knew because they’d invited him to conferences, had been to see him at his practice. They were very scared or they were very unhappy because, even though the new company now had one name, everyone knew who was from which company and the two groups didn’t get on very well, and many of them were afraid of losing their jobs.

Édouard said that this didn’t surprise him because mergers often didn’t work out very well, the rich people lost money and the not so rich people lost their jobs.

‘Why do people keep doing them, then?’ asked Hector.

‘To keep us in work!’ Édouard joked.

He was very pleased to see Hector, and he looked much more cheerful than at the beginning of the meal.

Édouard also explained that mergers were a bit like his six million dollars: the people who decide them think that they’ll be happier afterwards, because they’ll be richer or more powerful.

Hector told himself that this dinner was very interesting, that he’d have lots of things to write about happiness, but he was sorry he’d drunk so much wine because his head was going a bit fuzzy.

B
Y the end of the meal, Édouard looked very cheerful indeed, but apparently this wasn’t enough for him because he insisted on taking Hector to another place.

‘You must get to know China!’ he said, although Hector wondered whether the type of places Édouard liked going to, like that restaurant, were the real China. He would have preferred to go back to the hotel and write down what he had learnt about happiness, but since Édouard was his friend he agreed to go where he proposed.

At the entrance was a very tall, very smartly dressed Chinese man wearing an earpiece. When he saw Édouard, he winked at him.

Inside was like a very big bar with soothing music and very soft lighting, and quite a few men like Hector and Édouard — that’s to say not only Chinese men. Hector immediately noticed that there were some Chinese women as pretty as the ones in the films, and some of them were so pretty that it almost hurt to look at them. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. They were talking to the men like Hector and Édouard, who also seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Édouard ordered a bottle of white wine, which was placed in an ice bucket on the bar next to them. Almost immediately, a pretty Chinese lady came up to speak to Édouard. They must have known each other quite well because she laughed at all Édouard’s jokes and from time to time she whispered things in his ear which made him laugh, too.