Hector and the Secrets of Love (23 page)

Gunther looked at him calmly. ‘You can’t steal what’s already yours.’

‘All that negotiating was just a trick . . .’

‘That’s business,’ Gunther said with a shrug.

‘How can you be with such a bastard!’ Hector said to Clara.

‘Leave her out of this!’ said Gunther.

‘I’m not talking to you, you big oaf,’ said Hector.

‘You should reread your contract, you poor fool,’ said Gunther.

‘You see,’ Hector said to Clara, ‘that’s exactly what I mean.’

At this, Gunther began to get angry and he stood up.

G
NAR and Aang finally pulled them apart.

Hector felt the blood trickle from his nose, and at the same time he noticed with glee that a missing tooth would give Gunther’s smile a rather loutish look for the time being. (Though right now he wasn’t smiling at all.)

‘God!’ said Gunther, who had just that moment noticed it himself.

The chief and Aang were still keeping them apart, a look of surprise and vague admiration on their faces. It turned out these strange, reserved white men were capable of exchanging blows like real men.

Vayla had rushed over and was trying to staunch the flow of blood from Hector’s nose with a piece of cloth while giving little sympathetic sighs. But what he saw next caused him far more pain than his possible broken nose: Clara had rushed over to Gunther and was examining his split lip. That says it all, he thought.

‘Thith ithn’t over yet, you bathtard,’ Gunther went on in a furious voice.

‘You bet it isn’t!’ said Hector, straightening up.

This rush of hatred felt so good he wondered why he always tried to encourage his patients to control it. The chief and Aang stood between them again.

But once Hector had sat down and put his head back to stop the bleeding he saw Clara’s face appear next to Vayla’s. The two women exchanged a look of simultaneous incomprehension and knowing – we realise men are crazy – then looked at him, concerned. And for a moment, beneath their gazes, so similar and yet so different, he felt incredibly happy. The memory of a paradise lost, or a sultan’s daydream, he thought.

And then, certain he wasn’t badly hurt, Clara went away. He heard her murmuring words of comfort to Gunther.

Suddenly Hector felt ashamed. Fighting. So, after all, he and Gunther had behaved just like the crabs he had seen fighting on the island. Another consequence of love: it reduced you to the level of your friends the crabs. Of course you might think the reason for the fight was the theft of the briefcase, but he and Gunther knew that wasn’t true.

‘Will somebody tell me what’s going on?’ said Professor Cormorant angrily. ‘Where’s my briefcase?’

Not had taken him over to a corner of the room, afraid the brawling men might fall on her beloved Kormoh.

‘Gunther had Ralph and the other guy and some soldiers steal your briefcase.’

‘Is that true? Is that true?’

‘What did you think?’ said Gunther, running his tongue painfully around the inside of his mouth. ‘That we’d go on working with a maniac like you?’

‘But it’s my research!’ Professor Cormorant cried out, suddenly sitting up straight. His cheeks were pink and he looked wide awake. ‘And anyway you can’t do anything without me!’

Gunther sniggered. ‘The cry of the geniuth . . .’

But one look from Clara and he stopped short.

‘Profethor Cormorant, you’ve done very good work, brilliant work, even . . . But now it’th time to begin working theriously.’

‘Who do you think will agree to work under these conditions if I won’t, for God’s sake?’

Gunther said nothing, as though it posed no problem.

Professor Cormorant was struck by a sudden realisation. ‘Rupert? You’re going to get that bastard Rupert to work on this?’

The professor had leapt to his feet, and Hector thought he was going to hurl himself at Gunther, but the chief and Aang intervened again.

‘No problem,’ the chief said, ‘no problem.’

‘No problem,’ Aang repeated.

‘Yes,’ said Hector, ‘big problem.’

The chief smiled and drew his attention to the scenery outside. Was the chief implying that contemplating nature was the most important thing and that all man’s petty disputes were in vain?

Hector saw a small group of Gna-Doas appear at the edge of the forest. They must be returning from the hunt because they seemed to be carrying heavy trophies tied to long poles resting on their shoulders.

Then he made out Derek, Ralph and the four soldiers, suspended by their hands and feet, like hammocks. And where the helicopter was, there were no pilots in sight, just a group of Gna-Doas guffawing loudly.

‘W
HAT a useless bunch,’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘Another example of bad recruiting! Bringing along conscripts with no fighting experience. They should have got some real soldiers, or other mountain people, but to do that you need contacts!’

Jean-Marcel seemed be enjoying himself analysing the failure of Ralph and Derek’s great operation.

‘. . . those inexperienced rookies, useless without a rule book to follow,’ he said. ‘And they thought they could get away with it in the middle of Gna-Doa territory! Where people have been engaging in guerrilla warfare for generations! Well, it’s lucky we were here, otherwise I reckon those young lads would have ended up on an anthill, and that would have been the last anyone heard of them . . . The Gna-Doas have always had problems with people in authority.’

Hector and Jean-Marcel were drinking tea with Chief Gnar and using the briefcase between them as a table, a real symbol of their victory, a bit like drinking out of their enemies’ skulls, only nicer.

Gunther, Derek, Ralph, the pilots and the soldiers were locked in the pigsty. Hector had thought this a bit harsh, but Jean-Marcel had explained that it really was the minimum penalty for entering Gna-Doa territory armed.

Ralph and Derek’s plan had been doomed to failure the moment some of the village children saw the four soldiers slip out of the helicopter and disappear into the forest. And perhaps the boy or girl who had raised the alarm was at that very moment playing around them, and laughing the way children do, because they were very happy at being allowed to stay around the important grown-ups, so happy they were doing somersaults.

Professor Cormorant appeared next to them, a little unsteady on his feet but sturdy all the same.

‘The problem is,’ he said, ‘I’ll always be afraid they are going to try to steal everything off me again. I shall have to go away again with my sweet Not.’

Not and Vayla were talking, watched by Clara, who had escaped being shut in with the pigs thanks to Hector’s intervention. She was sitting quietly on the floor in the furthest corner of the room. Hector was longing to go and speak to her, but he didn’t want to do it in front of all these people – he would be too afraid they might fall into each other’s arms, and he was thinking of Vayla.

Footsteps vibrated on the ladder outside and Miko and Chizourou appeared, a little embarrassed at first, then increasingly interested in Professor Cormorant’s briefcase. Chief Gnar welcomed them with open arms then pointed to the women’s corner, where Vayla and Not were already sitting, because there really was no reason to get carried away.

‘It’s a pity,’ said Professor Cormorant, ‘I’m sure Pelléas and Mélisande were starting to get used to me.’

‘And how are you planning to leave?’ asked Jean-Marcel.

‘You could drive me to town in your car. From there, I’m sure I’ll find a plane going somewhere. Or even a train – apparently there’s an old colonial railway route that’s very picturesque. I’m sure Not will like that.’

Hector thought Not would almost certainly prefer to go to Shanghai than to some other remote village in the jungle.

‘What about the others?’

‘Oh,’ said Jean-Marcel, ‘they’ll let them go. The chief knows he can’t poach or even ransom big game like Gunther. Isn’t that right, Chief?’

And Chief Gnar began to chuckle, either because he agreed with Jean-Marcel, or because he always felt cheerful after a victory, or for some other reason only he knew about.

‘We could celebrate with something a bit stronger than tea,’ Jean-Marcel suggested, making good old Chief Gnar laugh even louder.

Hector went on pretending to take part in the conversation when in fact all he wanted was to talk to Clara.

L
ATER on, Hector found Clara outside, at the foot of the ladder. She had come back from seeing Gunther, or rather from talking to him through the door of the pig pen guarded by two armed Gna-Doas.

‘Let’s have a talk,’ he said.

It was getting dark and he could sense that, like the Gna-Doa women, Clara didn’t like being outside here at night. They could hear Jean-Marcel and the chief laughing above their heads, and Professor Cormorant, who had discovered the joys of fermented rice wine and possibly
choum-choum
.

‘About what?’ said Clara mournfully.

‘Can you think of anything?’

Clara didn’t reply, but she pressed her forehead against Hector’s shoulder, like a stubborn little bull that knows this is life and there is nothing to do but to face it head on.

‘I think we still love each other,’ said Hector.

‘And we always will,’ said Clara.

There was a silence. Hector waited.

‘But it’s impossible now . . .’

Above them, Hector glimpsed Vayla’s face peering into the darkness and he thought she might see them. He stepped back to move away from Clara.

‘You see . . .’ Clara said.

During the night, Hector couldn’t sleep. He could feel Vayla’s restless breathing close to him. He was thinking about those who say it is impossible to love two people at the same time, who say that that isn’t true love. And yet he had often come across such stories through his patients; and it was not only the case for men, which was nothing new, but also for women, which was less talked about. And now here he was experiencing it himself, like in
Doctor Zhivago
, a film that had left a deep impression on him. You had to choose between your two loves so that you did not destroy them both. He resolved to write down:

But perhaps that was too much like
Love is resisting temptation
. He fell asleep.

He felt Vayla’s face close to his, her breath on his cheek. He wanted to put his arms around her, but he saw she looked worried and wanted him to wake up.

‘
Blem
,’ she whispered, gesturing towards the doorway, which was open to the outside.

Dawn was beginning to colour the sky, but the village was still in darkness. Vayla pointed to the chief’s house where Jean-Marcel and Professor Cormorant had stayed overnight. Hector heard a faint rustling, and, given the turn the evening had taken, it would have been surprising if his friends had woken up this early.

‘
Blem!
’ whispered Vayla, frowning.

Two small figures had begun descending the ladder of the chief’s house. One of them was holding something that shone for a second in the pale dawn light. The professor’s briefcase. Miko and Chizourou were stealing away with his briefcase.

L
ATER, as he was running through the dark forest, he said to himself that Japanese martial arts were truly formidable, but that body weight and long legs were still decisive advantages. His nose had started bleeding again, he wondered whether one of his ribs wasn’t broken and the weight of the briefcase was pulling on his arm, but he felt as if he had wings.

Of course, the noise of him running might alert a tiger, but somehow he couldn’t quite believe it.

He stopped. No sound behind him. He had shaken off the two pretty and formidable young Japanese women. He continued on his way, walking this time and catching his breath.

The trees thinned out around him and suddenly he found himself at the edge of a cliff, overlooking a vast wooded plain stretching as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the ruins of a temple seemed to be waking up with the sun’s first rays.

At his feet, a hundred yards below, a fast mountain stream flowed.

Facing the rising sun, Hector deliberated. The briefcase contained the promise of a solution for all those who suffered as a result of love – spurned love, loving too much, a lack of love, the death of love, as old François had said. But he also remembered Hi and Ha and Dr Wei and Miko and Chizourou, and how afraid he had felt when he thought of the ways in which Gunther or others might use the professor’s research. To create forced enslavement. To compel people to form attachments, even a victim to his executioner.

Love was complicated, love was painful, love was the cause of so much unhappiness.