Hector and the Search for Happiness (6 page)

And Édouard gave Hector a funny look and said, ‘You poor thing!’

Hector got a little annoyed. Édouard shouldn’t take him for a fool. He knew perfectly well what Ying Li did for a living! Édouard said that he didn’t take Hector for a fool, but he could see that Hector had fallen in love, which was worse than being a fool. He was worried about Hector.

Hector felt reassured, because he realised that Édouard was still a good friend. But he told him that he was mistaken of course; Hector wasn’t in love with Ying Li, he simply wanted to see her again. He asked Édouard if he’d ever had a Chinese girlfriend. Édouard said no, not really, but Hector could see that he wasn’t quite telling the truth (don’t forget that Hector’s a psychiatrist). And so Hector said nothing and went ‘mmmhmm’ and hoped that Édouard would say more.

But Édouard clearly didn’t feel like telling the story of ‘not really’. Finally, he said with a sigh, ‘The problem over here is that you don’t know whether they love you for yourself or for your passport.’

And after a moment he added, ‘I’m old enough to ask myself that question, but not so old that I don’t care what the answer is.’

And from the way he said it, Hector understood that Édouard had fallen in love and that it can’t have ended very happily.

And now Hector was sitting alone at his table in the little Italian restaurant waiting for Ying Li!

When he’d telephoned her she’d sounded a bit surprised, but had immediately accepted his invitation. (It was Édouard who had recommended the restaurant to Hector.)

Now, he was waiting, she was late and he wondered whether she would come. In the meantime he’d ordered a bottle of wine, and he told himself that if he had to wait for her much longer he was going to drink the whole bottle and end up like Édouard.

And then Hector saw Ying Li enter the restaurant, her hair slightly wet from the rain and still so terribly beautiful, and he stood up, knocking over his chair.

The waiters behind the counter practically fell over each other rushing to take Ying Li’s coat.

Finally Ying Li sat down opposite Hector and they started talking. But Ying Li was different from the first evening; she seemed almost shy, as though she dared not look at Hector, or was afraid of saying something foolish.

And so Hector began making conversation; he told her a bit about his life, and described the city where he worked. And Ying Li mostly listened, and even told him that she liked his city because it was where they made the things she liked. Indeed, Hector could see that her watch, her belt and her bag were made in his country, although Ying Li had bought them in her city. Hector told himself that this, too, was globalisation. And then he remembered how Ying Li made the money to buy all those very expensive items, and he wondered whether globalisation was such a good thing.

Later, Ying Li dared to say a bit more, though it was clearly difficult for her because there was a subject they both wanted to avoid — her work. And so she spoke about her family.

Her father had taught Chinese history (and being Chinese you can imagine how well he knew his subject). But the people who ruled China when Ying Li was a child had decided that teachers like him were useless, undesirable even, and so he and his family had been sent to the remotest part of China. And there everybody worked in the fields and nobody was allowed to read books except for the one written by the man who ruled China at the time. And that meant Ying Li’s sisters never went to school, because the children of undesirable people weren’t allowed to study; they had to learn about life from working in the fields. Being younger, Ying Li was later able to catch up a little at school, but then her father had died (he’d never got used to working in the fields and it had worn him out), and she’d been unable to continue her studies.

That was why her sisters, who had never been to school, could only get jobs in Charles’s factories. And that was when Ying Li stopped talking, because she realised that now she was going to talk about herself, about why she wasn’t a worker like them, and that was rather a delicate subject.

H
ECTOR was once again on a plane, and he felt sad. Through the window he could see the sea, so far below that it seemed as if the plane wasn’t moving at all.

He had taken out his notebook, but he couldn’t think of anything to write.

Sitting next to him was a mother holding her baby — no, it couldn’t have been her baby because it had fair hair and blue eyes, like a doll (Hector couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl and what’s more he didn’t really care), and the lady looked like the Asian women he’d seen sitting on their oilcloths. But even though she wasn’t the baby’s mother, she looked after it very well; she rocked it and spoke to it, and she seemed very fond of it.

Hector was sad because he had the feeling of leaving a place he loved — a city he hadn’t even known a week before.

And Édouard had also seemed sad accompanying him to the airport. Clearly he’d thoroughly enjoyed Hector’s visit. Édouard had plenty of friends in that city to go out for a drink with, as well as pretty Chinese girls who whispered in his ear, but perhaps not many real friends like Hector.

 

 

Of course, he was thinking about Ying Li.

In the restaurant, she’d finished telling him about her family and he’d finished telling her about his city, and there’d been a brief silence.

And then Ying Li had said, ‘You’re kind.’

Hector had been surprised, because he knew that he was fairly kind, but he wondered what Ying Li meant by it. Then she had added, lowering her eyes, ‘I’m not used to it.’

And Hector had felt another pang.

They got up from the table and the waiters jostled one another to help Ying Li on with her coat.

They found themselves outside in the tiny cobbled street.

Hector, of course, very much wanted to take Ying Li back to his hotel, but he felt awkward because that was exactly what the men she worked with did. He sensed that Ying Li also felt awkward, even though she wanted to stay with him.

And so they entered a bar at random, and it was most bizarre in there; there weren’t many people, only some Chinese men who all seemed to know each other and were taking turns to get up on a stage and sing songs in Chinese, probably famous songs. Hector even recognised a Charles Trenet tune, but not the words. And the Chinese men were laughing and buying rounds of drinks. They seemed just like the people in Hector’s country, and he remembered what Charles had said on the plane: the Chinese aren’t really any different from us.

It even made Ying Li laugh, and Hector was glad to see her so cheerful. And when Ying Li laughed he could see how young she was, despite all the expensive things she was wearing that evening.

But it probably wasn’t a good idea to have gone into that bar because, as Hector and Ying Li were leaving, a big car pulled up beside them.

And the tall Chinese man from the other night, the one with the earpiece, stepped out, and in the back Hector could see a not very young Chinese lady looking angrily at Ying Li. The tall Chinese man didn’t even look at Hector, he spoke to Ying Li, and she answered him nervously. Hector couldn’t understand what they were saying because they were speaking Chinese, but he could see that the Chinese man was questioning Ying Li in an unfriendly voice, and that she was flustered. And so Hector put on the foolish air of a satisfied client who understands nothing, and asked the Chinese man in English, ‘Should I pay you?’

The tall Chinese man was a little taken aback but he calmed down. He even smiled at Ying Li, although it wasn’t a pleasant smile. He told Hector that there was no need, that he could just pay Ying Li. And he climbed back into his big car and put his foot flat on the accelerator and sped off. But Hector didn’t see that, because Ying Li was already crying in his arms.

Afterwards, it was easier to take her back to the hotel in a taxi, because a man consoling a woman who was crying didn’t have much to do with Ying Li’s work, it had more to do with Hector’s.

And then in the room, Ying Li stopped crying and they lay on the bed in the dark, although the room was lit up faintly by the city lights outside, and Ying Li remained motionless in Hector’s arms.

He was prepared to lie next to her all night if necessary, but Ying Li soon showed him that she wanted to do what people in love do.

It was different from the first night, it was less joyful, but far more intense.

The next morning when Hector woke up, Ying Li had gone without leaving a note or anything. Hector had wanted to give her money, because he was thinking about the Chinese man, but he realised that Ying Li must have preferred to arrange things herself.

Hector wanted to talk to Édouard immediately, and they met at the café at the bottom of the tower, and because it was Monday it was full of people. Édouard listened to Hector, very seriously, the way Hector listened to people when they told him their story. And then he said, ‘They won’t take it out on her, she’s too valuable. And anyway, I know the Chinese man. I’ll sort it all out. But as far as you two are concerned I don’t think it would be a very good idea for you to see each other again.’

Hector had thought the same, but it’s one thing thinking something and another thing knowing it, and Édouard said, ‘You poor thing . . .’

 

 

And now, on the plane, Hector couldn’t think of anything to write in his notebook.

The baby had been looking at him for a while, and stretching its arms out towards him. This made the nanny laugh — because of course you’ve guessed that she was the nanny — and the baby as well.

So Hector smiled at them and felt a little less sad.

Suddenly, a tall blonde lady came up and stood in the aisle near them. Hector understood that this was the mother, who was no doubt travelling with her husband in business class.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked the nanny.

And then she left again. And the baby’s face crumpled and it began screaming.

Hector took his notebook and wrote down:

H
ECTOR was on yet another plane, but this one was rather different from all the others.

(Between this plane and the one before there’d been another, and then another, but these weren’t mentioned because, besides thinking about Ying Li and Clara, nothing much had happened to Hector.)

Firstly, this plane was full of African men and women. Hector was practically the only white person on the plane. Many of the men and women were smartly dressed, almost as if they came from another era, like Hector’s grandparents in the country, when they went to Mass. The women had on long flowery dresses and the men rather baggy suits. Another thing that reminded him of the country was their huge shopping bags, and some even had live chickens and ducks in cages! These animals were quite noisy, but that was just as well because they drowned out the noise of the plane, which also dated from another era. Hector remembered the patients who came to see him because they were afraid of flying, and he told himself that after this flight he’d understand them a lot better. On the other hand, if the plane was old, it was because it had never crashed, which was somewhat reassuring.

Sitting next to him was an African lady with her baby. This time it wasn’t a nanny, but the baby’s real mother. She rocked her child as she read. The baby looked at Hector, who was looking at the lady’s book. Lady isn’t really the right word because she was quite young, about Hector’s age. And you’ll never guess: the book she was reading was a book on psychiatry! The lady was a psychiatrist!

They both found it funny to be sitting next to a colleague, and the lady, whose name was Marie-Louise, explained that she was going back to her country on holiday, because in fact she worked in the country they had just taken off from, where there are more psychiatrists than anywhere else in the world. Hector felt nervous about asking her why she hadn’t stayed in her own country (a little like when he asked Charles why he hadn’t built his factories in his own country, if you remember), but the lady was quick to explain why.

‘I want my children to live a normal life.’

She had two older children who had stayed at home, and Hector asked her what she called a normal life. (Even psychiatrists can ask each other questions.)

Marie-Louise replied, ‘I want them to be able to go to school without needing a driver and a bodyguard, for example.’

Hector agreed that indeed that wasn’t a normal life, even though, when he was a child, he would have been very proud to go to school with a driver and a bodyguard, but mothers don’t think like that, of course.

And then the plane began to tilt to one side and make a noise like the dive-bombers in documentaries about the war, and everybody went quiet, except for the chickens and ducks, which made more noise than ever.