PENGUIN BOOKS
HECTOR AND THE SEARCH
FOR LOST TIME
François Lelord has had a successful career as a psychiatrist in France, where he was born, and in the United States, where he did his postdoctorate (UCLA). He is the coauthor of a number of bestselling self-help books and has consulted for companies interested in reducing stress for their employees. He was on a trip to Hong Kong, questioning his personal and professional life, when the Hector character popped into his mind, and he wrote Hector and the Search for Happiness, the first novel in the series, not quite knowing what kind of book he was writing. The huge success of Hector, first in France, then in Germany and other countries, led him to spend more time writing and traveling, and at the height of the SARS epidemic he found himself in Vietnam, where he practiced psychiatry for a French NGO whose profits go toward heart surgery for poor Vietnamese children. While in Vietnam he also met his future wife, Phuong; today they live in Thailand.
François Lelord’s series of novels about Hector’s journeys includes Hector and the Search for Happiness and Hector and the Secrets of Love.
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Hector and the Search for Lost Time
A NOVEL
François Lelord
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in France as Le Nouveau Voyage D’hector By Odile Jacob 2006
Published in Great Britain by Gallic Books 2012
Published in Penguin Books 2012
Copyright © Odile Jacob, 2006
English Translation Copyright © Gallic Books, 2012
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-1-101-58741-6
CIP Data Available
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This s a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Hector Isn’t Exactly a Young Psychiatrist anymore
Hector and The Man Who Loved Dogs
Hector and The Little Boy Who Wanted To Speed Up Time
Hector Thinks Things Over
Hector Is Conscientious
Hector and The Man Who Wanted To Turn Back Time
Hector and The Lady Who Wanted To Stay Young
Hector Loves Clara; Clara Loves Hector
Hector Has a Dream
Hector Goes To Talk To Old François
Hector Discovers a Big Secret
Hector and The Old Monk
Hector and Édouard Are Good Friends
Hector and The Little Bubbles
Hector Is Cold
Hector and The Present Which Doesn’t Exist
Hector Learns To Speak Eskimo
Hector Travels In Time
Hector Dreams Up The World
Hector Sings In The Snow
Hector Has a Ticket
Hector and The Presentists
Hector and The Half-Empty Glasses
Hector Understands The Psychiatrists’ Secret
Clara and The Tick-Tock of Time
Hector and The Kingdom of Heaven
Hector Is a Dog Psychiatrist
Hector and Lost Time
Hector Gets Some Perspective
Hector Talks To His Neighbour
Hector and The Song of Time
Hector Makes Some Friends
Hector Is on TV
Hector Sings on Top of The Mountain
Hector and Time Regained
Hector and The Man Who Looked At The Stars
Hector and The Journey Into The Future
Hector and The Lottery Ticket
Hector and Ying Li At The Top of The Mountain
Hector Can’t Dream In Peace
Hector Meets an Important Man
Hector Is Working, Even By The Sea
Hector Goes Back To School
Hector Learns Why We Get Old
Hector Realises That Diet Isn’t Everything In Life
Hector Has a Rest
Hector and The Two Centenarians
Hector and History, Which Keeps Repeating Itself
Hector Is a Good Doctor
Hector Drinks Too Much
Hector and Temptation
Édouard Is a Good Student
Hector and History, Which Keeps Repeating Itself (Part II)
Hector and The Distant Valley
Hector, The Old Monk and Time
Hector and Eternity
Hector Returns
Hector and Clara and . . .
Hector In The Garden
Author’s Acknowledgements
Lelord on Hector
HECTOR ISN’T EXACTLY A YOUNG PSYCHIATRIST ANYMORE
ONCE upon a time, there was a young psychiatrist called Hector.
Actually, Hector wasn’t exactly a young psychiatrist any more. Although he wasn’t an old psychiatrist yet, either. From a distance, you could still have taken him for a young student, but up close you could see that he was already a real doctor with some experience behind him.
Hector had a great gift as a psychiatrist: when people talked to him, he always looked as if he was thinking very hard about what they’d told him. Because of that, people who came to see him liked him a lot; they felt that he was thinking about their particular situation (which was nearly always true) and that h
e was going to help them find a way to get better. At the beginning of his career, he would twirl his moustache when he was thinking things over, but now he didn’t have a moustache; he’d only grown one when he was just starting out in order to look older. These days, since he wasn’t exactly a young psychiatrist any more, there was no point. Time had passed.
But time hadn’t made much difference to the furniture in his office. It was the same as when he’d started out. He had an old sofa his mother had given him when he’d moved in, some nice pictures that he liked and a little statue his friend had brought back from the land of the Eskimos – a bear turning into an eagle, which is quite unusual for a psychiatrist’s office. From time to time, when Hector felt cooped up after spending too much time in his office listening to people, he would look at the bear with huge wings sprouting from its back and dream that he was flying away too. But not for long, because he would quickly begin to feel guilty if he didn’t listen properly to the person sitting in front of him telling him their woes. Because Hector was conscientious.
Most of the time, he saw grown-ups who had decided to come and see a psychiatrist because they were too sad, too worried or just unhappy with their lives. He got them talking, asked them questions and sometimes he also gave them little pills . . . often all three at once, a bit like someone who juggles three balls at the same time. Psychiatry is difficult like that.
But Hector loved his job. First of all because he often felt he was helping people. And secondly because what his patients told him nearly always interested him.
For example, from time to time, he saw a young woman called Sabine who always said things which made him think. When you’re a psychiatrist, it’s funny but you learn an awful lot just by listening to your patients, whereas they assume you already know nearly everything.
The first time Sabine came to see Hector it was because she was getting upset at work. Sabine worked in an office, and her boss wasn’t very nice to her: he often made her cry. Of course, she always cried in private, but, even so, it was terribly hard for her.
Little by little, Hector helped her realise that perhaps she deserved better than a boss who wasn’t very nice, and Sabine built up enough self-confidence to find a new job. And these days she was happier.
Over time, Hector had gradually changed the way he worked. At the beginning, he mainly tried to help people to change their outlook. Now, he still did that, of course, but he also helped people to change their lives, to find a new life that would suit them better. Because, to put it another way, if you’re a cow, you’ll never become a horse, even with a good psychiatrist. It’s better to find a nice meadow where people need milk than to try to gallop round a racecourse. And, above all, it’s best to avoid entering a bullring, because that’s always a disaster.
Sabine would not have been happy being compared to a cow, even though cows are actually kind and gentle animals, Hector had always thought, and very good mothers too. It’s true that she was also very clever, and sometimes this didn’t make her happy, because, as you might already have noticed, sometimes happiness is not knowing everything.
One day, Sabine said to Hector, ‘I think life is just a big con.’
Startled, Hector asked, ‘What do you mean?’ (That was what he always said when he hadn’t been listening properly the first time.)
‘Well, you’re born, and straight away you have to rush about, go to school, and then work, have children, and then your parents die and then before you know it you get old and die too.’
‘This all takes a bit of time, though, doesn’t it?’
Sabine had a nice husband (she’d also had a nice father, which improves the chances of finding a nice husband straightaway) who worked hard in an office too. And two young children, the eldest of whom had started school.
‘I always feel as if I’m up against the clock,’ said Sabine. ‘In the morning, everything needs to be organised, I have to leave in time to take my eldest to school and then dash to the office. I have meetings I have to be on time for, but while I’m in them the rest of my work piles up, and then I have to rush in the evenings too, pick up my child from school, or get home in time for the nanny, and then dinner, and homework . . . Still, I’m lucky – my husband helps me. We hardly have time to speak to each other in the evening: we’re so tired we both just fall asleep.’
Hector knew all this, and perhaps that was partly why he had slowly started to contemplate getting married and having babies.
‘I’d like time to slow down,’ said Sabine. ‘I’d like to have time to enjoy life. I’d like some time for myself, to do whatever I want.’
‘What about holidays?’ asked Hector.
Sabine smiled.
‘You don’t have children, do you, Doctor?’
Hector admitted that he did not, not yet.
‘Actually,’ said Sabine, ‘I think that’s also why I come to see you. This session is the only point in my week when time stops and my time is completely my own.’
Hector understood precisely what Sabine meant. Especially since he, too, over the course of his day, often felt that he was up against the clock, like all his colleagues. When you’re a psychiatrist, you always have to keep an eye on the time, because if you allow your patient to talk to you for too long, the next patient will get impatient and all your appointments will run late that day. (Sometimes, this was very difficult for Hector – for example, when three minutes before the end of a session, just as he’d start to shift in his armchair to signal that time was almost up, the person in front of him would suddenly say, ‘Deep down, Doctor, I don’t think my mother ever loved me,’ and begin to cry.)
Being up against the clock, thought Hector to himself. It was a real problem for so many people, especially for mothers. What could he possibly do to help them?
HECTOR AND THE MAN WHO LOVED DOGS
HECTOR had another patient called Fernand, a man who was not particularly remarkable, except for the fact that he had no friends. And no wife or girlfriend either. Was it because he had a very monotonous voice or because he looked a little like a heron? Hector didn’t know, but he thought it very unfair that Fernand didn’t have any friends, since he was kind and said things that were very interesting (although sometimes slightly odd, it has to be said).
One day, out of the blue, Fernand said to Hector, ‘Anyway, Doctor, at my age, I’ve got no more than two and a half dogs left.’
‘Sorry?’ said Hector.
He remembered that Fernand had a dog (one day, Fernand had brought it with him, a very well-behaved dog that had slept right through their session), but not two, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine what half a dog might be.
‘Well,’ said Fernand, ‘some dogs live for fourteen or fifteen years, don’t they?’
Hector came to understand then that Fernand was measuring the time he had left in the number of dogs he could have over the rest of his life. As a result, Hector set about measuring the life he had left to live in dog lives (that is, which he probably had left, for ye know neither the day nor the hour, as somebody who died quite young once said) and he wasn’t sure if it would be four or five. Of course, he thought to himself, this figure could change if science made incredible advances that would enable people to live longer, but perhaps on the other hand it wouldn’t change, since scientists would no doubt make dogs live longer too, which, you can be sure, no one will ask their opinion about.
Hector spoke to his friends about this method of measuring your life in dogs and they were absolutely horrified.
‘How awful!’
‘Not only that, thinking of your dog dying . . . it’s too sad for words.’
‘Exactly. That’s why I just couldn’t have another, because when our little Darius died it was far too upsetting.’
‘You really do see some complete loonies!’
‘Measuring time in dogs?! And why not in cats or parrots?’
‘And if he had a cow, would he measure it in cows?’
Listening to all his friends talking about Fernand’s idea, it dawned on Hector that what they didn’t like at all was that measuring your life in dogs makes it seem shorter. Two, three, four dogs, even five, doesn’t make it sound as if you’re here for very long!
He understood better why Fernand unnerved people a bit with his way of seeing things. If Fernand had measured his life in canaries or goldfish, would he have had more friends?
In his own lonely and odd little way, Fernand had put his finger on a real problem with time. For that matter, lots of poets had been talking about it for ever, and Sabine had too.
They said . . . the years fly, time is fleeting, and time goes by too quickly.
HECTOR AND THE LITTLE BOY WHO WANTED TO SPEED UP TIME
EVERY so often, children also came to see Hector, and, when they did, of course it was their parents who had decided to send them.
The children who came to see Hector weren’t really ill – it was more that their parents found them difficult to understand, or else they were children who were too sad, too scared or too excitable. One day, he talked to a little boy who, funnily enough, was called Hector, just like him. Little Hector was very bored at school, and time seemed to go by too slowly for him. So he didn’t listen, and he ended up with bad marks.
Big Hector asked Little Hector, ‘Right now, what do you wish for most in the world?’
Little Hector didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘To become a grown-up straight away!’
Hector was surprised. He had expected Little Hector’s answer to be: ‘For my parents to get back together’, or ‘To get better marks at school’, or ‘To go on a school ski trip with my friends’.
So he asked Little Hector why he wanted to become a grown-up straight away.