Hector and the Secrets of Love. Francois Lelord

was amazing how much the Chinese managed to say in just four characters, and Hector felt she was perhaps a little bit cleverer than him.

      Other people had found love, but worried about it even so.

      ‘We love each other, of course. But is he the right person for me? Marriage isn’t to be taken lightly. When you marry, it’s for life. And, anyway, I want to enjoy my freedom a bit longer … ’

      Hector generally asked these people to tell him about their mothers and fathers and how they got along.

      Other people wondered whether they could ever hope to find love, whether perhaps it wasn’t too good for them.

      ‘I can’t imagine anybody finding me attractive. Deep down, I don’t think I’m a very interesting person. Even you seem bored, Doctor.’

      At this point Hector woke up completely and said, no, not at all, and then kicked himself because the right thing to say would have been: ‘What makes you think that?’

      So a lot of people came to explain to Hector that love or lack of love prevented them from sleeping, thinking, laughing and in some cases even from living. And with this last category Hector had to be very careful, because he knew that love can make people kill themselves, which is a very foolish thing to do, so don’t ever do it and if you have thoughts about doing it go to see someone like Hector immediately, or call a close friend.

      Hector had been in love, and he remembered how much suffering love can cause: days and nights spent thinking about somebody who doesn’t want to see you any more, wondering whether it would be better to write, to call or to remain in silence, unable to sleep unless you drink everything in the mini-bar of the hotel room in the town you’ve come to in order to see her except that she doesn’t want to see you. Now, of course, this type of memory helped him to understand people who found themselves in the same situation. Hector also remembered the nice girls whom he had made suffer because of love and he wasn’t very proud of that. They had loved him and he had only liked them. Sometimes, he’d lived through both roles, victim and executioner, with the same girl, because love is complicated, and, what’s worse, it’s unpredictable.

      This type of suffering was now a thing of the past for Hector. (Or so he thought at the beginning of this story, but just wait and see.) Because he had a good friend, Clara, whom he loved very much and she loved him, and they were even thinking of having a baby together and of getting married. Hector was happy because in the end love affairs are very tiring, so when you find somebody you love and who loves you, you really hope that it will be your last love affair.

      The strange thing is that, at the same time, you wonder if it isn’t a bit sad to think that it will be your last love affair. You see how complicated love is!

       HECTOR LOVES CLARA

      ONE evening Hector arrived home, preoccupied with all the painful stories about love he’d heard during the day: situations in which one person loved more than the other, or both people loved each other but they didn’t get on, or they no longer loved each other but couldn’t love anybody else, and other permutations besides, because whereas happiness in love offers a beautiful, relatively unchanging landscape, unhappiness comes in many and varied forms, as a great Russian author once put it slightly better.

      Clara wasn’t home yet, because she always had meetings that finished late. She worked for a big pharmaceutical company, which produced many best-selling drugs. The big company enjoyed swallowing up smaller companies, and one day it even tried to devour a company larger than itself, but the larger company fought it off.

      Clara’s bosses were pleased with her because she was a very conscientious, hard-working girl, and they often asked her to stand in for them at meetings or sum up long reports for them, which they didn’t have time to read.

      Hector was happy to know that Clara’s bosses had faith in her. On the other hand he didn’t like her coming home so late, often tired, and not always in a very good mood. Because, although her bosses depended on her a lot, they never took her along to the really important meetings with the real big shots; they went to those on their own, and made out that they were the ones who had done all the work or come up with all the good ideas.

      What a surprise, then, when Clara arrived home with a big smile on her face.

      ‘Good day?’ asked Hector, pleased to see Clara looking so happy.

      ‘Oh, not great, too many meetings getting in the way of work. And everybody is in a panic because the patent on our leading drug has expired. So we can kiss our profits goodbye!’

      ‘But you look so happy.’

      ‘I’m happy to see you, my love.’

      And she began to laugh. You see, this was Clara’s way of jesting about love. Luckily, Hector was used to it and he knew that Clara really loved him.

      ‘Well,’ said Clara, ‘it’s true, but I’m also happy because we’ve received an invitation.’

      ‘We?’

      ‘Yes, well, you’re the one invited, but I’m allowed to go with you.’ Clara took a letter out of her briefcase and gave it to Hector. ‘They should really have posted it to you, but they’re aware by now that we know each other.’

      Hector read the letter. It was written by a man who was very high up in Clara’s company, one of the real big shots she didn’t meet very often. He said that he thought very highly of Hector (Hector remembered they’d shaken hands twice at conferences on psychiatry) and was relying on him to take part in a confidential meeting, where people from the company would ask his opinion on a very important matter. He hoped that Hector would agree to go, and repeated how much he appreciated his expertise.

      Together with the letter was another piece of paper showing the place where the meeting would be held: a very pretty hotel made of wood overlooking a magnificent beach with palm trees. The hotel was on a faraway island surrounded by a very blue sea. Hector wondered why they had to take them so far. It was perfectly possible to think at home in an armchair, but he told himself that this was the company’s way of making him feel that he was important to them.

      There was a third piece of paper telling Hector that in addition to the invitation he would of course be paid for giving his opinion. When he saw the amount, he thought he’d misread it and had added on an extra zero, but on rereading it he realised that he hadn’t, that it was right.

      ‘Hasn’t there been some mistake?’ Hector asked Clara.

      ‘No, that’s the correct amount. The others are getting the same – more or less what they asked for.’

      ‘The others?’

      She gave Hector the names of his fellow psychiatrists who had also been invited.

      Hector knew them. There was a very old psychiatrist with a bow tie who, as he grew older, had specialised in rich unhappy people (though he also occasionally saw poor people and didn’t charge them), and a jolly little woman who had specialised in people who had difficulty doing what people in love do, and were willing to pay crazy amounts of money in order to be able to do it.

      ‘Right, well, this will be a mini holiday for us,’ said Hector.

      ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Clara. ‘I’ll be seeing the same old faces I see at every meeting.’

      ‘At least we’ll be going away somewhere together for a change,’ said Hector.

      ‘We went to Italy recently!’

      ‘That was only because you had a conference there afterwards. Your job always determines everything.’

      ‘Would you prefer me to be a good little housewife and stay at home?’

      ‘No, I’d prefer you to stop letting yourself be exploited, and come home at a reasonable time.’

      ‘I