They heard Jean-Marcel and Miko’s footsteps fade into the distance and then there was silence. Chizourou didn’t speak any English and Hector spoke no Japanese, and so they just exchanged occasional little smiles to show they appreciated each other’s company. Beneath the little white hat, Chizourou’s face had an unassuming, innocent beauty suggesting a pleasant nature, and Hector hoped her fiancé would have time to come to his senses, realise his mistake and go back to Chizourou before she in turn stopped loving him. He wondered what Chizourou thought about him, and also whether it was obvious he had taken a shine to her.
Just then, Chizourou puckered her lips and went ‘Ooooooh’ quite loudly, which made Hector jump. She pointed to a crack in the stone above the early psychoanalysis session. You could see a little piece of bamboo, like the tip of a cane, sticking out. Chizourou had only seen it thanks to a ray of sunlight which suddenly made it stand out against the stone.
Hector wasn’t very good at climbing, but scrambling up the sculpted walls wasn’t very difficult. He grasped the little piece of bamboo and went back to Chizourou.
She went ‘Ooooooh’ again when she saw Hector pull a roll of paper out of the bamboo. Hector immediately recognised Professor Cormorant’s handwriting.
Dear friend,
This note is a gamble, but then so is conducting a scientific experiment. I knew they would send you in search of me, and that you would learn of my visit to the temple. So I counted on your curiosity to lead you to this sculpture, and if you are reading this note then I was right. I received your message, but you are touchingly naïve if you believe you are the only one who knows that email address. They know everything there is to know about you, and probably a bit more besides.
I am on the brink of making several important discoveries, along with my charming assistant, whom you already know about, and those rotten bastards want to come and spoil everything. To keep them at bay, I must completely cover my tracks, which means severing all communication with you, but I may suddenly need an intermediary like you. Keep sending me emails, but remember I am not the only one reading them, which could be an advantage. In the meantime,
Make haste, my beloved!
And be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.
Kind regards,
Professor Cormorant
HECTOR TAKES RISKS
H
ECTOR had scarcely finished reading Professor Cormorant’s note under Chizourou’s inquisitive gaze when they heard Miko’s terrified screams coming from outside.
They dashed out of the little courtyard and came to the edge of a grassy path overgrown by trees, which must have been an old moat. There they saw Miko, crying and screaming at the same time, and looking frightened.
Crouched at her feet, Jean-Marcel appeared to be cautiously digging up the soil with his hands.
‘Stay where you are,’ he shouted to Hector. ‘Tell Miko to come over to you.’
Chizourou and Miko had begun talking very fast in Japanese, and this time it was Chizourou who seemed to be comforting Miko.
Hector insisted Miko come over to them but she appeared terror-struck, unable to move. She had seen that Jean-Marcel was dealing with a landmine and she could no longer trust the ground around her.
Eventually, Hector, trying to walk in Miko and Jean-Marcel’s footsteps, went over and brought Miko back to Chizourou, whom he had left standing with her feet firmly planted in a big stone doorway.
‘That’s better,’ said Jean-Marcel. ‘I don’t like being watched while I work.’
Eventually he stood up, holding a small greenish plastic saucer in his hand.
‘You can always spot them if you look closely, especially after rain, which brings them up to the surface. But it’s very difficult at night.’
Hector wondered when Jean-Marcel would have had the opportunity of walking over a minefield at night – he must have led a very interesting life. But Jean-Marcel continued explaining.
‘We’re safe now,’ he said. ‘It takes about thirty kilos of pressure to make this n asty little thing blow up.’
He began unscrewing a sort of stopper on top of the mine and pulled out a little tube and some other small objects and tossed them as far as he could into the forest, and he placed the defused mine on a rock where everyone could see it.
‘That’ll show them they might need to be a bit more thorough about clearing mines.’
He walked back towards them looking rather pleased with himself. Hector remembered that one of the secrets of happiness was feeling you are doing something useful, and there was no doubt Jean-Marcel had just done something useful.
Chizourou still had her arms round Miko, comforting her, and they were quite touching, the little Japanese girls, as Jean-Marcel called them.
Finally, they decided it was time to go back to their car; the business with the mine had put a bit of a dampener on their excursion.
Under the tree, their driver had fallen asleep behind the wheel with all the doors open because it was very hot.
The young Japanese girls went ‘Ooooooh’ again. Miko explained they had also hired a car with a driver, but he wasn’t there any more – he must have left without them.
‘I don’t like the look of this,’ said Jean-Marcel.
‘Neither do I,’ said Hector.
Having avoided the mines, they were now possibly going to be exposed to the other danger in that beautiful region: bad people. The crazy leaders who had nearly destroyed that country were no longer in power, but some of their troops had taken refuge in the forest where they still lived, growing rich from trafficking various things: drugs that were grown nearby, precious stones that almost flowed out of the earth, or young girls whom they treated as merchandise. From time to time, they kidnapped people passing through and demanded ransom money, and sometimes they killed them, although that didn’t happen very often as the new army in their country came down hard on them, which was bad for business. So the risk of death was very slight (as slight as stumbling on a mine in a temple cleared of mines). But Miko and Chizourou’s driver had left without them and this sudden flight might mean he knew something, unlike Hector and Jean-Marcel’s driver who woke up laughing because, as Jean-Marcel said, he was an idiot.
HECTOR IS THOUGHTFUL
I
N the car, just to occupy his mind, Hector began to think about love again. He was in the back with Miko and Chizourou, while Jean-Marcel sat next to the driver and watched the road very attentively.
Hector was thinking about his feelings towards the air hostess who had brought him champagne, and also about the fact that Jean-Marcel couldn’t manage to be a saint when he was travelling in that region. It was nothing to be proud of, but it was still part of love – feeling desire for someone you scarcely know and don’t necessarily want to get to know, except to do what people do when they are in love, although love didn’t come into it in this case.
The countryside was as beautiful on the way back as it had been on the way there, but the thought that the region was unsafe made everything appear threatening. Even the cows seemed to be watching them slyly as they went past.
Sexual desire was clearly part of love, but it wasn’t everything. What were the sure signs that you loved someone?
Jean-Marcel took a small pair of binoculars out of his bag.
Hector thought about Clara. He missed her. That was love, missing the other person when they were far away. But Hector also remembered that when he was a child and his parents left him at summer camp he missed them a lot to begin with. (He felt better after a couple of days because he made friends.) So missing people was also an element in non-sexual love.
The car braked sharply, interrupting his thoughts – a cow had just crossed the road without looking, and Jean-Marcel shouted a stream of abuse at it, which luckily neither Miko nor Chizourou could understand.
Sometimes, you could also miss someone you loved almost exclusively sexually. Hector remembered having both male and female patients who would say things like: ‘We have nothing to say to one another of any interest, but as soon as we’re in bed . . .’
It was a bit like a drug you’d like to stop taking, but which you can’t live without and it creates a real need.
He opened his little notebook and wrote:
Seedling no. 8: Sexual desire is essential to love.
He knew there were also couples who loved each other deeply and who hardly ever made love, even though it wasn’t at all fashionable to say so nowadays. He added:
but not always.
Seedling no. 9: Needing the other is a sign of love.
Just then, he saw Jean-Marcel speaking into his portable phone, which looked bigger than an ordinary mobile, then he quickly put it back in his bag. Hector had time to glimpse a black metallic object in the bag as he did so.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.
‘There’s no signal here,’ said Jean-Marcel.
And yet Hector had the impression Jean-Marcel had said a few words into the phone.
A few seconds later, he saw a helicopter fly overhead before disappearing.
He remembered the hotel offered it as a way of visiting the temple, but friends had always told him there were countries where you should never go in a helicopter, and this was one of them.
He thought again of Clara and the jokes they had made about the crabs on the beach back on the island. At that moment, neither of them had felt desire, nor had they been missing each other because they were together. And yet it had been an intensely happy moment and they had laughed at the same things. How could you describe that kind of love?
Miko asked him what he was writing in his notebook, and Hector explained he was writing down some thoughts about love. Miko explained this to Chizourou and they both looked intrigued. Hector had noticed that girls everywhere liked to talk about love, whereas boys didn’t always. Hector asked her what the clearest sign of being in love was in Japan.
Chizourou and Miko talked for a moment and then said that the clearest sign of love is when you miss the other person and think about him or her all the time.
Yet another argument against silly cultural prejudices, Professor Cormorant would have said.
HECTOR SUFFERS
Dear Hector,
It makes me sad after our last conversation to think of you alone and so far away. I’m really sorry, I should have waited until you got back to talk about us, but you kept questioning me, and I ended up telling you everything that was bothering me. And now you’ve gone, I’m wondering whether it was a good thing to have told you I was no longer sure about my feelings towards you. I do still love you, otherwise I wouldn’t be missing you now, but, at the same time, and I’m sorry if this hurts, I have the feeling we can’t be a couple any more. I see you as part of my family, but not as my future husband or the father of my children. And yet the thought of never seeing you again is incredibly painful, and part of me wants to hold on to you – as a friend, some would say, but that word is inadequate; I feel closer to you than I do to anyone else in the whole world, and that’s without even mentioning all your amazing qualities.
You’ll think I’m blowing hot and cold, that I don’t know what I want, and no doubt there’s some truth in that. We’ve known each other for a long time and we’ve already had our ups and downs. There was a time when I wanted us to get married, but I remember you being the one who wasn’t very keen on starting a family. By saying this to you I feel you will fret and blame yourself for having let the moment pass. Don’t torture yourself – that’s life – we don’t choose our feelings and we can’t blame ourselves or others for them.
You are still the most important person in my life, even though I can’t see us being together any more. It’s dreadful – each time I say this I feel as if I am punishing you, and yet we’ve always been honest with one another.
Take care, keep safe, and tell yourself that whatever happens you are still my Hector.
Love and kisses.
Hector finished his vodka amaretto and waited for the pretty waitress in the sarong to bring him the next one. It was growing dark beside the pool and he wondered how he was going to fill his time while avoiding thinking about Clara. He was trying to do exactly that when he recognised a few melancholy notes in the background music coming from the bar; it was a song he had listened to with Clara, and which just then he was terrified of hearing:
I no longer love you, my darling, I no longer love you till the end of time.
I no longer love you, my darling, I no longer love you till the end of time.
And those sweet strains began to break Hector’s heart.
Just then, Jean-Marcel turned up, not looking very happy either. He sat down without paying any attention to the song and explained that he had just spoken to his wife on the phone.
‘Do you think two people who have loved each other can stop loving each other?’ he asked Hector.
Hector said he feared it was possible, yes. And he thought about Professor Cormorant’s drugs. Was there one that allowed people to go on loving each other for as long as they wanted?
‘I have a feeling it’s over between me and my wife,’ said Jean-Marcel, ‘and yet we used to be so happy together.’
They ordered a bottle of white wine because cocktails are a bit sickly after a while.
Jean-Marcel and Hector began comparing notes on women, which is always a good way for men to become friends quickly.
‘They never know what they want.’
‘And they’re never happy.’
‘As soon as we’re nice to them, they make us pay.’