Hector and the Search for Happiness. Francois Lelord

factories. When they were still at the bar and Ying Li was telling Hector about herself (of course now he realised that she hadn’t told him everything), she’d told him how much her sisters earned in a month: he’d worked out that it was half the price of the bottle of white wine Édouard had ordered, sparkling next to them in its ice bucket.

      Hector wasn’t sad because he’d discovered how Ying Li earned her living (in fact it did make him a little sad), but because the evening before he’d understood nothing. Or rather, he was sad because that morning he’d understood that he’d understood nothing, because while he still understood nothing he wasn’t sad at all, but now that he’d understood that he’d understood nothing he felt sad, if you follow. Realising that one has understood nothing is never pleasant, but for a psychiatrist it’s even worse.

      The pretty Chinese waitress came back and asked if he wanted more coffee, and when she saw what he was doodling in his notebook she laughed. Hector looked: without knowing it he’d been drawing lots of little hearts.

      The waitress went away again and he saw her talking about him to the other waitresses, and they all seemed very amused.

      Hector still wasn’t in a very good mood, so he paid and left the café.

      Outside, he nearly got run over trying to cross the road because he’d forgotten that cars drove on the left in this city. There’s no point in looking before crossing the road if you don’t look in the right direction.

      He wondered what to do with himself. He couldn’t see Édouard because he wasn’t on holiday; he was working all day at his office. They’d arranged to have dinner again that evening, but Hector wasn’t sure he really felt like it any more.

      Basically Hector was a little annoyed with Édouard. He knew that Édouard had only wanted to make him happy, but the fact was that this morning Hector was unhappy. Édouard liked drinking a lot, and so Hector had drunk a lot, too. Édouard liked meeting Chinese women whose job it was to make men like him happy, and so Hector had met Ying Li.

      Hector told himself that really Édouard was a bit like those friends who are excellent skiers. One day they take you to the top of a very steep ski slope and tell you you’ll have great fun if you just follow them. In fact they’ve only taken you up there because they are excellent skiers and love skiing down very steep slopes. And you don’t enjoy yourself at all trying to keep up with them, you’re scared, you fall over and you wish it would end, but you have to get down the slope anyway and you have a miserable time while those morons, your friends, fly over the moguls shrieking with joy.

      While he was walking, Hector came upon a tiny station with a single track. It wasn’t for the usual kind of train but for one of those trains you find in the mountains, because, if you remember, this city was built at the foot of a mountain. And the little train went all the way up to the top of the mountain.

      Hector thought that it would do him good to get up into the mountains and so he bought a ticket from an old Chinese man wearing a cap, and he sat down in a tiny wooden carriage.

      While he was waiting for the train to move, he began thinking, and he thought about Ying Li again. He could still see her when she’d walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, looking happy; and when she’d stopped smiling because she’d understood that Hector had understood. Afterwards, she’d looked sad and they hadn’t known what to say to one another.

      The little train moved off and began to climb past the buildings and very soon it reached the trees and then the clouds, because the weather wasn’t good at all, but then the sky turned blue and Hector could see magnificent green mountains all around and, down below, the sea dotted with boats.

      It was very beautiful but Hector was still unhappy.

       HECTOR COMES CLOSE TO WISDOM

      THE station at the top of the mountain was much bigger than the one at the bottom. It was a large concrete cube. Inside were restaurants, souvenir shops and even a wax museum with figures of Tony Blair and Sylvester Stallone. All this was even less like The Blue Lotus and this irritated Hector, who was already in quite a bad mood. He left the station and began walking along a road that took him further up the mountain.

      The higher he climbed the fewer people he saw. Finally, he was all alone on the road. The surrounding mountains were very beautiful, all green and with quite high peaks. They looked very Chinese. Hector was out of breath, but he felt a lot better.

      He stopped to write in his notebook:

       Lesson no. 6: Happiness is a long walk in the mountains.

      He thought about it then crossed out ‘in the mountains’ and replaced it with ‘in beautiful, unfamiliar mountains’.

      At the side of the road he saw a sign in Chinese characters, but fortunately underneath it said in English: ‘Tsu Lin Monastery’. Hector was very happy. In monasteries, there are always monks, and maybe in this one he’d find an old monk who would be like Chang’s father and who would have interesting things to say about happiness.

      The path to the monastery grew steeper and steeper, but Hector didn’t feel tired any more because he was eager to arrive. From time to time, at a bend in the road, he would catch a glimpse of the monastery, and it was wonderful, just like in The Blue Lotus – the monastery looked really Chinese with its pretty curled rooftop and tiny square windows.

      He pulled on a rope and heard a bell ring and a monk came to open the door for him. He was young and looked more like Chang than Chang’s father, but his head was shaved and he wore a long orange robe. He spoke very good English and explained to Hector that the monastery was only open to visitors one day a week and that today it was closed. Hector was very disappointed: just when he was beginning to feel better there was some bad news.

      And so he persisted; he explained that he’d come a very long way, that he was a psychiatrist and was trying to discover what made people happy or unhappy and he couldn’t wait until next week for the monastery to open. The young monk looked uncomfortable, he asked Hector to wait, and left him standing in the little doorway.

      There were things for sale which the monks had made, statuettes, pretty saucers, and Hector told himself that he would buy one as a present for Clara.

      The young monk came back and Hector was very happy because he’d brought with him an old monk who must have been as old as Chang’s father! As soon as he saw Hector, the old monk began laughing, and said: ‘Hello. You’ve come from afar, so I hear.’ He said it just like that, no translation was necessary, he spoke Hector’s language as well as Hector!

      He took Hector into his office, where Hector expected he’d have to kneel on little mats because there’d be no chairs. But it wasn’t like that at all. The monk’s office looked similar to Hector’s, with a proper desk, chairs, a lot of books, a computer, two telephones, statuettes – but Chinese ones – and a splendid view of the mountains.

      The old monk explained that in his youth, long before Hector was born, he had spent a few years in Hector’s country. He’d been a student, and had earned money washing dishes at a big restaurant where Hector would sometimes have lunch. He asked Hector a lot of questions in order to find out how much things had changed in his country these days, and he seemed very pleased with everything Hector told him.

      Hector explained the reason for his trip. More and more of his patients were unhappy without any apparent reason, and he wanted to find out why.

      The old monk listened very attentively to Hector, and Hector told himself that he, too, was genuinely interested in people.

      Hector asked him whether he had anything interesting to say about happiness.

      The old monk said, ‘The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!’ And he began to laugh.

      Hector would have liked him to explain this a bit better, but the old monk liked to say things