Hector and the Secrets of Love (13 page)

The answers to these questions were all more or less the same. Clara knew Hector inside out, his good sides and his not so good sides, so it was true he no longer really held any mystery for her.

If this was true, it was very unfair, she thought, but who said love was fair? Hector’s profession often made him very tired, and when he got home he was unable to speak for an hour at least, even when they were both invited out to dinner in town. Some evenings Hector would drink too many aperitifs in order to put himself in the mood and sometimes he would say silly things that irritated Clara. On holiday or at weekends, Clara liked to be active, to do sports, but Hector said he was too tired for that and he spent his time snoozing, relaxing or sleeping, and also making love, but mostly he spent his weekends lying on his back, and this also irritated Clara.

Clara chewed her pen. This was a difficult thing to admit. What if it were the main reason? She loved Hector but Gunther had come along, and she had been attracted to the man, his energy, his intellect (which, let’s be clear, was simply different from that of Hector, who wasn’t stupid either), his swift decision making (very different from Hector in this regard, admittedly), his ability to switch very quickly from crude anger to polite composure (Hector never lost his temper) and his gift for seeing the bigger picture from a strategic point of view whilst being able to pay great attention to detail (Hector wouldn’t have made a bad strategist, but detail bored him).

What really upset Clara was that this affair was a cliché: the girl who falls for her boss, like the student falling for her teacher, and Clara couldn’t stand the idea of being a cliché. For her it was demeaning.

She preferred to tell herself she had fallen in love with Gunther because she had been moved when he began confiding in her about the hellishness of his home life with his wife and daughter.

And it was true. The intimacy that had grown up between them as a result of these confidences had blossomed into love. (Hector had in fact already explained this to her: intimacy can lead to a woman loving a man she is not even initially attracted to, and psychiatrists have to be careful about this type of love in female patients with whom they develop a close relationship.) But let’s imagine it was her colleague Lemercier from research and development, who liked hiking in the Vesoul region, around his parents’ pretty converted farmhouse; yes, what if it was that nice boy who had begun telling her about some similar family problems, would she have been as moved?

This was the sort of question Clara didn’t really like to dwell on, all the more so because in her youth she had been a left-wing activist, and so the idea of falling in love with a man known as Gunther the Downsizer upset her three times as much.

The plane arrived over Shanghai during the day, and the city was a forest of skyscrapers rising from the earth in the misty daylight. An enchanted concrete forest, thought Clara, who had a way with words.

This was just as well because now she had to come up with some damn good ones to inform Hector that she no longer loved him and that she was having an affair with a man she did love, Gunther, her boss. On second thoughts, perhaps she shouldn’t tell him the last part, because it might make Hector less inclined to find Professor Cormorant, and at least that mission kept his mind off things.

Why then had Gunther allowed her to go to Shanghai in order to tell Hector their relationship was over? Because he trusts me, she thought. Which proves that when a thought reassures you it can prevent you from thinking any further.

And what if Hector had fallen deeply in love with that young Asian girl she had glimpsed on television? What a cliché! Clara thought again with a shudder. The Western man, no longer exactly young, falls into the arms of a sweet young Asian girl who smiles at him all the time. Very nice, really, well done, Dr Hector!

She recalled an expression her parents often used when her two equally insufferable little brothers came telling tales: ‘The pot calling the kettle black’. The same could be said of her and Hector in this situation, she thought to herself, and of men and women in general when it came to love.

A long way below her, Hector and Vayla were engaged in doing just that – making love, that is. They hadn’t had time to see themselves on television. But Vayla had watched enough to be able to sing later in Hector’s ear: ‘“I just can’t get you out of my head . . .”’

This message made Hector feel deeply uneasy. Professor Cormorant was carrying on with his experiments. And yet he remembered that his first chemist had been committed after trying out one of his new drugs. What he said about Vayla also alarmed him: he knew Professor Cormorant was an expert in deciphering people’s facial expressions and emotions and that his studies had allowed him to identify the type of smile which could predict whether a person was predisposed towards happiness. But this would make it even harder for him to leave Vayla, assuming he was able to at all. And, in addition, the professor had said nothing more about an antidote.

He watched Vayla sleeping peacefully, oblivious to his crises of conscience, her graceful profile silhouetted against the pillow. All at once she must have felt him looking at her, because she opened her eyes and gave him a big smile. Hector was filled with tenderness towards her. His brain was secreting oxytocin, Professor Cormorant would have said.

But why leave Vayla? you may ask. If Hector and Vayla were happy together, why not get married? Yes, you’ve guessed, it was because Hector was still in love with Clara. And, as a matter of fact, when he looked at the computer again, he noticed a new email in his inbox. Vayla had got up and was sitting in front of the television.

Hector became intensely agitated. He replied:

No. He pressed delete.

No. He pressed delete.

He had bought a Chinese pre-pay mobile so he could communicate more secretly with Professor Cormorant, although the professor had explained to him that Gunther’s company had enough money and contacts to employ a few people from the Chinese secret services who would be only too happy to do some overtime in order to have some jam on their bread, or in this case, some lacquer on their duck. And Hector’s new number would be discovered and tapped within twenty-four hours. But that didn’t matter, because Gunther must have known Clara was coming to Shanghai.

Vayla cried out in front of the television. Hector looked at the screen.

You could see Professor Cormorant giving his impassioned speech about love next to the panda enclosure, Hector standing beside him and Vayla’s smile lighting up the whole screen. Hector’s face began to flush; now he knew why Clara was coming to Shanghai!

Vayla threw her arms round his neck and covered him with kisses. He realised that, for her, seeing them together on television was like a blessing, an amazing miracle that had happened to her, a poor waitress. It was just like one of the fairy tales from her country, where the benevolence of the gods suddenly shines down on a simple peasant walking barefoot beside a paddy field.

H
ECTOR woke up. Vayla was sleeping soundly next to him rolled up in the bedspread with only her pretty nose poking out, because, for her, air conditioning was like winter in the mountains.

Hector began thinking about Clara again.

She was about to arrive in Shanghai, so what was he to do?

Introduce her to Vayla and ask them to be friends? No, psychiatrists are said to be a bit mad sometimes but not to that extent. Hector told himself that, in an ideal world, he would have liked to pursue his love for Vayla without losing Clara. Even Professor Cormorant’s drug hadn’t destroyed the bond between them, which he could still feel was very strong.

So why had she begun not to love him any more?

Hector started thinking.

He kept remembering all the times he hadn’t been very nice to Clara, and when he had made her cry, at the beginning of their relationship, when he had calmly explained to her that he wasn’t sure he wanted to commit to their relationship, or when he had been in a bad mood and snapped at her. All those occasions when Clara had been in tears, or had looked sad after suffering rejection, indifference or criticism from him, all those occasions came back to him. He felt like shouting at himself, although he wouldn’t have gone so far as to call himself a bit of a bastard like Jean-Marcel.

Clara had not replied to his first desperate emails. And yet here she was on her way to Shanghai in person.

Vayla opened one eye and began smiling as soon as she saw him, then suddenly gave him a concerned, questioning look. She had sensed Hector was worried. Hector returned her smile and wrote:

H
ECTOR had fallen asleep. And when he woke up Vayla had gone. This made him uneasy. How would she manage all alone in this city where the names of the streets were in Chinese, and where the taxi drivers never understood the way you pronounced an address? As a result, they often took you to the wrong place altogether! That meant that unless you kept the business card of your hotel with you, you were liable to find yourself eating reheated noodles under a flyover several days later.

In the hotel lobby, Hector found Jean-Marcel sitting near the bar, not looking very happy.

‘Are you all right?’ Hector asked.

‘Oh, the same old story. I keep blaming myself for things. No doubt you’ve heard it all before.’

‘That’s for sure! You haven’t seen Vayla, have you?’

‘Yes, I just saw her walk past. In fact, she looked like she was in a hurry.’

‘I wonder where she went. What if she gets lost?’

‘Oh, don’t worry, you can’t get lost here – someone will always find you. And, anyway, I don’t see a girl like her letting go of a guy like you.’