Hector and the Secrets of Love (19 page)

Besides this, he had an intelligent look in his eyes, a wife his own age and another younger than him – his deceased brother’s wife, so Hector had gathered – and a very loud voice when he got annoyed with the young people for doing stupid things. He and the professor seemed very friendly and kept clinking bowls. The professor whispered to Hector that he had given Chief Gnar some of his compound A drugs.

Everyone was sitting on the bamboo floor of a large communal house on stilts, around some earthenware jars people had brought. The women, all wearing embroidered tunics, sat at a slight distance talking amongst themselves, like a big bouquet of flowery fabric. They drank noticeably less than the men and seemed very intrigued by Vayla and Not, who had been given traditional costumes to wear. As evening was setting in, the children were also inside, playing at the far end of the long room.

Gnar had gathered Hector, Jean-Marcel and Professor Cormorant, the honoured guests, around him, and even Miko and Chizourou, who in turn also had to drink fermented rice wine. Outside, you could see the sun setting over the mountains in a symphony of delicate golden tints and hazy blues.

 

 

Miko and Chizourou looked a little uneasy amidst all those men; even so they smiled as they said ‘
Haong-zaotu
’, which for the Gna-Doas meant Happy New Year, let the harvest be plentiful, let the tigers stay away and let there be no war.

Aang-long-arms suddenly stood up and began singing a song, which was received with cries of joy, including from the children.

Professor Cormorant leaned over to Hector. ‘Isn’t life here wonderful?’

‘How do they cope with love?’

‘They have very complex laws. I can’t remember exactly, hang on.’

He leaned over to Chief Gnar and asked him a question. Gnar smiled and gave quite a lengthy reply.

‘That’s right, here everyone calls everyone else brother and sister if they share a maternal ancestor, and as a rule they aren’t allowed to intermarry, unless some of their biological uncles have already married their fathers’ nieces or, at a stretch, their cousins’ mother-in-laws’ children. You see, it’s not simple.’

‘No. They need a good memory.’

‘But, other than that, they can make love with anyone they like, provided they don’t get caught!’

And he burst out laughing.

‘And if they do get caught?’

‘In those cases, the guilty party is forced to borrow money to buy a buffalo, which is sacrificed to prevent the village from being cursed. But the gods will only curse the village if you get caught – that’s what I like about Gna-Doa law!’

‘Do couples stay together?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s their secret?’

‘Unlike other tribes, they no longer have forced marriages, a source of much unhappiness. Here the man makes his request through the chief, who acts as an intermediary with the girl’s family. The family may accept the man’s request or not, but the girl has the right to refuse. And then they have a very interesting custom: between the acceptance of the request and the marriage ceremony, the betrothed couple are allowed to spend a night together, after which the girl may still refuse. The Gna-Doas understand the importance of physical love, especially during the early stages of a relationship . . .’

‘What about later on? How do they make love last?’ This question seemed absolutely crucial to Hector. Almost everyone could fall in love at some point in their lives, but by no means everyone was able to make love last.

Professor Cormorant gestured to the children and young people a small distance away towards the back of the room.

‘Here, they live together all the time, they bring up their children together, everybody does his or her share of the work, couples spend very little time alone, unlike where we come from. They would find the idea of a man and a woman alone in their little apartment every evening completely crazy! Maybe the way to make love last is by not spending too much time alone together.’

‘At the same time, we would find that lack of privacy intolerable,’ said Hector.

‘Because we’ve been brought up like that, each in our own room, but look at them,’ Professor Cormorant said, pointing at the children, who did seem rather happy, it has to be said.

Just then, the young girls they had met on the road stood up and walked over to three boys their own age. One boy was holding a sort of flute and one of the girls a long two-stringed guitar.

The circle widened to give them room.

There was silence as they began to play, the flute’s soft lament seeming to wrap itself around the guitar’s thin notes, while their friends danced gracefully on the spot, smiling and spinning on their tiny feet.

Hector felt very moved at the sight of this calm happiness, which suddenly seemed to him so easy to attain. He and Vayla exchanged glances; she smiled at him, and he said to himself that, with or without chemistry, they loved each other.

The children stopped and everyone cheered. They bowed modestly and did a few more dance steps before rejoining their group.

‘Isn’t it magnificent?’ whispered Professor Cormorant. ‘I know of ethnologists who would give an arm and a leg to see this!’

Hector agreed, but he was beginning to be more interested in Japanese ethnology. As a result of drinking the bowls of fermented rice wine the chief had given them, Miko and Chizourou’s cheeks had turned bright pink, like two little geishas on a spree. To explain what they were doing in Gna-Doa country they had said that the big environmental organisation they worked for had sent them there to check up a bit on the conditions of orang-utans in that region. None of this was entirely convincing as, in that type of organisation, it is seldom the same people taking care of ruined temples and endangered species – but because in Asia you must always be very polite and allow people to save face, Hector, Jean-Marcel and Professor Cormorant pretended to believe them, and Miko and Chizourou pretended to believe they believed them, and they pretended to believe they believed they believed them, and so on, but they still seemed quite uneasy.

Through a haze of alcohol, Hector glimpsed a small purple stone sparkling in Miko’s ear. And suddenly he remembered: it was identical to the one he had seen young Lu wearing in Shanghai. The East certainly is mysterious, he thought, because he was becoming too tired to have any original thoughts, but deep down he had understood, which shows that fermented rice wine didn’t affect his inner mind.

But later, Chief Gnar went away and came back with two bottles that looked as if they came from another era. On the faded labels, the edges of which had been nibbled away by several generations of insects, you could make out a young native woman smiling beneath a cone-shaped hat and, above, the words:
Siam and Tonkin General Distillery Company
.

‘
Choum-choum!
’ said Gnar with a big smile.

‘Ah, this is going to do some damage!’ said Jean-Marcel.

H
ECTOR awoke at dawn. Jean-Marcel’s loud snores reverberated from the other side of the room.

Vayla was still sleeping, on her side, as though she were trying out a different pose for the sculptor who in her dream was immortalising her on a temple wall.

The air was chilly. Hector slid the ladder down, taking care not to make a noise, and descended cautiously because Gna-Doa ladders only have one central pole, and woe betide the clumsy.

He noticed some women already at work in the paddy fields where a few patches of mist lingered, while others sat weaving in the doorways of their house. A few small children were busy gathering up rice husks. The men hadn’t appeared yet. Professor Cormorant had explained that the Gna-Doas only drank alcohol on traditional feast days, but Hector had understood that there were quite a few of these in their calendar.

He walked over to the house where he knew Miko and Chizourou were staying. Their ladder was down, and he climbed up without making a sound. He heard a whispered conversation in Japanese, or thought he did anyway.

Standing next to their big backpacks, the two young Japanese women were clearly preparing to leave. They jumped when they saw Hector, and were even more surprised when he greeted them by the names Lu and Wee. Then they looked at each other. And Hector understood that Chizourou, the one who supposedly spoke no English at the temple, was probably Miko’s boss.

Hector thought he must put them at their ease and he said he would tell them some interesting things provided they explained to him who they really were. And, moreover, as he already had his suspicions, they only stood to gain from this exchange.

He found himself sitting cross-legged like them – which was very uncomfortable for him, but he didn’t want to appear in a position of inferiority – listening to Chizourou, who, it turned out, spoke perfect English. She’d studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She explained that they really did work for a big non-governmental organisation concerned with nature conservation. And this organisation was interested in Professor Cormorant’s research, because his results might help endangered species to breed in captivity, like the pandas at Shanghai Zoo. And, incidentally, that cuddly animal was their organisation’s logo!

Hector said this was all very interesting, but if they were telling him tall stories he could tell them even taller ones. What’s more, he wondered whether the endangered species that most interested Miko and Chizourou wasn’t in fact Japanese babies. And he added that when people didn’t tell him the truth he felt under no obligation to tell them the truth.

There was another little whispered exchange between Miko and Chizourou, and this time Miko admitted that, all right, there was some truth in this story about the Japanese babies. The Japanese population was getting dangerously old and one of the reasons for this was that young women were having fewer and fewer babies, and this was more and more because they were remaining single, she explained.

‘Japanese men too macho,’ said Chizourou, who also spoke a bit of Hector’s language, but not very well. ‘Women modern! Japanese men work too much, go out always with other men, drink saké, karaoke, come home drunk, behave not nice! Japanese women prefer stay single, go on holiday with women friends! Good job, earn money, no need for men!’

And Hector remembered that in his country it was true that most Japanese tourists were in fact young females travelling in pairs, like Miko and Chizourou.

And so the Japanese government was very interested in a drug that would make men and women stay in love with each other, which would produce new generations of Japanese babies brought up in a happy loving environment.

Hector remembered the speech made by Dr Wei, the important Chinese man in Shanghai. Professor Cormorant’s drug, far from being a potion intended for personal happiness, could have important consequences for the fate of a nation, perhaps even for humanity itself.

But Miko interrupted these reflections. Now it was Hector’s turn, what could he tell them?

Hector had begun explaining laboriously in English about oxytocin and dopamine when Vayla’s worried face appeared in the doorway, followed by her graceful body as she reached the top of the ladder and walked over to them with quick, determined steps. Hector drew her to him and she slipped into a sitting position between his legs, leaning back against him as if she were in an armchair.

‘As I was saying,’ Hector resumed.

Miko and Chizourou looked very impressed.

They glanced at one another again and then Chizourou asked whether they might not be able to take one of Professor Cormorant’s drugs, on a trial basis. Hector was about to say they would have to take it with their respective fiancés, but suddenly he realised Miko and Chizourou might not be just fellow workers any more.

There really were a lot of people interested in Professor Cormorant’s research.

J
EAN-MARCEL was lighting a fire outside, watched by a group of Gna-Doa children who followed his every movement with interest.

‘Aren’t they adorable?’ he said to Hector.

And with their bright smiling faces and flower-patterned clothes that were like something out of an oriental fairy tale, the children looked like perfect miracles who should be protected forever from television advertising and factory-made sweets.

‘You seem in a good mood,’ said Hector.

‘Yes, I hooked up the satellite dish and I’ve been able to exchange a few emails with my wife.’

‘And what does she say?’

‘Some rather nice things. She says she’s reinventing herself. Do you understand what that means?’

‘That she’s building herself anew, like building a new house to welcome you home again.’

‘Excellent! I really hope you’re right.’

‘What about your Chinese interpreter?’

‘Well, in the end nothing happened.’

Jean-Marcel explained that he and Madame Li had felt very attracted to one another, and had even confided their feelings over two glasses of iced green tea, but finally they had decided it was wiser not to endanger the relationships they were each trying to patch up.

‘That’s wonderful!’ said Hector.

‘Possibly,’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘But it’s not easy. Though I have the feeling I’ve grown up a bit. It’s the first time in my life I’ve voluntarily turned down a promising and very tempting affair.’

Hector thought this type of self-denial was probably one of the noblest demonstrations of love, even though it usually had to remain a secret. You can’t go home and say: ‘Darling, I nearly had a passionate affair, but I love you so much I stopped myself at the last minute.’ Because, for many people, ideal love would be not being tempted, even for a second, but does that kind of love really exist? In the end, isn’t resisting temptation more meaningful than not being tempted at all?