Читать книгу Hector and the Secrets of Love - Francois Lelord - Страница 17

AFTER taking another plane, this time one with propellers that juddered quite a lot, Hector arrived in a small town in the middle of the jungle. The town centre had been built a long time ago by people from his country and it looked just like a sleepy town from his childhood, with its post office and town hall, a canal lined with tall trees, and the Café des Amis. But, of course, the people who lived here were Asians who strolled in a leisurely manner and drank at the Café des Amis and other bars, particularly the men, because in this country, like many others, it was mostly the women who did the work. As soon as you went a little way from the centre, the roads were no longer tarmacked, except in the hotel district where they widened out again and were lined with palm trees. Because in this country they had built a lot of hotels in huge gardens full of marvellous trees. Beautiful hotels made half out of wood with roofs that blended in with the local architecture and balconies on stilts, because they had been built not very long ago, after the period when architects were crazy and planted huge cement blocks all over the world.

The architects who certainly weren’t crazy were the ones who, a few centuries earlier, had conceived the huge stone temples you found in the forests near the town, at around the same time that people in Hector’s country were building cathedrals. There were dozens of temples scattered over several miles and people came from all over the world to see them. It was the architects of those temples, then, who had provided work for their colleagues who had built the hotels centuries later, and who should perhaps have raised another little temple to their predecessors.

The manager of one of the town’s most delightful hotels was quite young and cheerful; he wore a shirt with button-down pockets and looked a bit like Tintin. He clearly remembered the professor who often sent emails from the business centre at his hotel.

‘He left three days ago. He told me he was going to Laos. Why are you looking for him?’

‘He’s a friend of mine,’ said Hector. ‘My other friends and I have been a bit worried about him lately.’

‘Ah,’ said the hotel manager.

He nodded without saying anything and Hector could see that several thoughts were flashing through his mind. Hector understood at once: hotel managers are a bit like psychiatrists: they see and hear many things they mustn’t tell anybody. It’s called professional confidentiality. Hector had always got on well with hotel managers – to start with because he liked hotels and it is always better when you know the manager, but also because, with all their guests and staff, hotel managers end up learning a thing or two about human nature, a bit like psychiatrists, but they’re often cleverer.

Hector knew how to put the hotel manager at his ease (we won’t tell you how because psychiatrists have to keep some things to themselves, a bit like magicians) and the manager began to talk about Professor Cormorant.

‘At first, we found him charming. Also, he picked up a few words in Khmer quite quickly and everybody was impressed. The staff adored him. He always had a kind word for everyone. He visited the temples in the late afternoon when the crowds of tourists have left and the light is at its most beautiful. And he spent a lot of time working in his room. One evening, I invited him to dinner.’

The professor had explained to the hotel manager that he was an expert in butterflies and was in search of a very rare species which all the other experts thought was extinct, but he was convinced a few specimens still survived in the area surrounding one of the temples deep in the jungle.

‘I tried to dissuade him from going there because that temple is in a region that isn’t safe, and there are still a lot of landmines around it.’

What we haven’t told you is that this beautiful country had a terrible history: crazy leaders who had studied abstract reasoning during their time in Hector’s country had decided to come back and purge their country. And, be warned, the moment a great leader mentions the word ‘purge’ you know how it will end – that’s to say very badly. Almost a third of the country’s population was exterminated in the name of Good. Since his arrival, Hector had only met smiling young men and smiling young women, but he had the feeling that these smiles concealed terrible stories of childhoods without parents or with parents who had been forced into becoming executioners or victims or both. And there were a lot of landmines left over from that period, which occasionally exploded underneath fathers tilling their fields or children playing at the side of a road cleared of mines.

‘And he still went to visit the temple?’

‘Well, that’s what he told me, at any rate. The problems started when he got back.’

The hotel manager explained that the professor had begun pestering the masseuses.

‘The masseuses?’

‘Yes, we offer our guests traditional massages. But strictly massages, if you see what I mean, nothing more. If people want something different, there are places for that in town, but we cater to families with children here, and the two things don’t mix. Anyway, he became very persistent with the masseuses and they came and told me. I then had a word with him, which is always a little embarrassing, but clients who come on strong with the staff is one of the situations you have to deal with in a hotel, especially here, you understand.’

Hector had glimpsed some of the young female staff in the lobby, and he understood.

‘And how did he take it?’

‘Very oddly. He laughed, as if I were joking, only I wasn’t joking at all. Anyway, I assumed he’d understood and was laughing to save face, the way people here often do, in fact.’

‘And had he understood?’

‘I don’t think so. The next day, he left. With one of our masseuses.’