Hector and the Secrets of Love (25 page)

‘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, when 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 of his colleagues. When you are a psychiatrist, you always have to pay attention to the time, because if you allow your patient to talk to you for too long, the next patient will become impatient in the waiting room. Then 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 began to shift in his armchair to signal that time was almost up, the patient with him would suddenly say, ‘Deep down, Doctor, I think my mother never loved me,’ and start to cry.)

Being up against the clock was a real problem for so many people, especially for mums, thought Hector. What could he possibly do to help them?

H
ECTOR had another patient, a man called Fernand, who was not particularly remarkable, except for the fact that he had no friends. And he didn’t have a 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 nice and said things that were very interesting (although slightly odd, it has to be admitted).

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 one with him, a very well-behaved dog that had slept throughout their session), but not two, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine what half a dog might be.

‘Well,’ said Fernand, ‘a dog lives for fourteen or fifteen years, doesn’t it?’

Hector then realised that Fernand was measuring the time he had left in the number of dogs he would have over the rest of his life. As a result, Hector set about measuring the rest of his life 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 three or four. Of course, he thought to himself, this number could change if science made incredible advances to make you live longer, but perhaps on the other hand it wouldn’t, since scientists would no doubt make dogs live longer too, which, you can be sure, no one would 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 did not like about it at all was this: 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 forever, and Sabine had too.

They said . . . the years fly by, time is fleeting, and time goes by too quickly.

E
VERY 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 fearful or too worked-up. 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.

Grown-up 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.

‘To decide things!’ said Little Hector.

If he became a grown-up straight away, explained Little Hector, he could decide for himself what time to go to bed, when to wake up, and where he could spend his holidays. He could see the friends he wanted, have fun doing what he wanted, and not see grown-ups he didn’t want to see (like his dad’s new girlfriend). He would also have a real job, because going to school wasn’t a real job. Besides, you don’t choose to go to school, and then you spend hours, days, years watching time going by slowly and getting bored.

Hector thought that Little Hector had let his imagination run away with him about life as a grown-up: after all, grown-ups still had to do things they didn’t like doing, and see people they didn’t like seeing. But he didn’t tell Little Hector that, because he thought that, for the moment, it was a good thing that Little Hector was dreaming of a happy future, since his present was decidedly less so.

So he asked Little Hector, ‘But if you became a grown-up straight away, it would mean that you would already have lived for a good few years, and then you’d have fewer left to live. Wouldn’t that bother you?’

Little Hector thought it over. ‘Okay, it’s a bit like a video game when you lose an extra life. It’s annoying, but it doesn’t stop you having fun!’

Then he looked at Hector. ‘What about you? Would it bother you to have already lost one or two lives?’

Grown-up Hector thought that Little Hector might become a psychiatrist himself one day.

A
T the end of each day, Hector thought about all the people he’d listened to who were worried about time.

He thought about Sabine, who wanted to slow time down.

He thought about Fernand, who measured his life in dogs.

He thought about Little Hector, who wanted to speed time up.

And many others . . .

Hector spent more and more time thinking about time.