Читать книгу Hector and the Secrets of Love - Francois Lelord - Страница 13

HECTOR was embarrassed. He agreed with both François and Ethel. Depending on the day – and who he had listened to during the day – he could have sung an ode to love or, on the contrary, wished someone would hurry up and invent a vaccine against it. But in a meeting it isn’t exactly impressive just to say you agree with what has already been said, because meetings are also occasions for showing off. And so Hector thought for a moment, and began.

‘I think what both my colleagues have said about love is very true. Love is the source of our greatest joys and love is the cause of our deepest misfortunes.’

Hector noticed Clara was watching him, and was surprised to see she looked a little sad. Had François’s song affected her to that extent? He went on.

‘But, listening to my patients, I often say to myself that the main difficulty with love is that it is involuntary. We fall in love or stay in love with people who are unsuitable or who no longer love us and, conversely, we feel no love towards people who would be very suitable. Love is involuntary, that’s the problem. Our personal histories prepare us to be attracted to people who unconsciously evoke emotions from our childhood or adolescence. I love you because unwittingly you provoke the same feelings in me as Mummy or Daddy, or my little brother or sister, or the opposite feelings, for that matter. And then there are the circumstances of our meeting. We all know that people fall in love more easily when they are already troubled by another emotion – surprise, or even fear or compassion’ – an image flashed through his mind of tears streaming from pretty almond-shaped eyes, one evening in a taxi – ‘because we know that any intense emotional state greatly increases the risk of falling in love. And we could also speak of the role music plays in the early stages of love, only I don’t sing nearly as well as François, so I am not likely to move you to tears!’

They all laughed, which was good, because, although it wasn’t obvious on the surface, François’s speech had upset everyone a little.

‘But I can recite a few verses,’ Hector went on. ‘Phaedra is about to marry Theseus; everything is wonderful until her future son-in-law Hippolytus, Theseus’s son, turns up and disaster ensues!

‘I blushed and went pale when first I saw him,

My mind was troubled, my eyes grew dim,

Love-struck I was unable to draw breath,

My body burned, I felt close to death.

‘And, like poor Phaedra, we fall in love not with who we want to fall in love with, but with who moves us, and sometimes it is the last person we should fall in love with. Our involuntary choice is not always the right one, and sometimes it is actually the worst one, hence our suffering. And then, of course, there is the completely different situation of the loving couple where, over the years, the love they once felt for each other fades and they can’t go on. They feel their love dying, but are unable to bring it back to life.’

As he spoke, Hector noticed that Gunther and his colleague were watching him with special interest, which made him shudder, because he thought they looked a bit like cats sizing up a particularly appetising mouse. Suddenly he was certain these two had plans concerning him, and he wondered whether Clara knew.