Читать книгу Hector Finds Time - Francois Lelord - Страница 17

THE next day, in his office, Hector picked up his newspaper to read in peace, because one of his patients had cancelled their session. (When you’re a psychiatrist and one of your patients cancels a session, it’s a bit like when you’re at school and one of your teachers is ill: you get a free period.)

Suddenly, he jumped. What was that picture he’d just seen on the front page of the newspaper? The old monk laughing with his orange robe over his shoulder! Hector was very happy: if there was a story about the old monk on the front page with a photo of him laughing, then he must still be alive! Then he read the story.

The old monk had disappeared, and everyone was arguing.

People from different countries all over the world were accusing China of having made him disappear, because the old monk had already had problems in the past with the people who ruled China. He didn’t think like them. As a result, he’d spent quite a long time in rather cold prisons in order to learn how to think in the right way, which is to say, in exactly the same way as the people who ruled China at that time. But, since he hadn’t succeeded (he hadn’t tried very hard), they’d kept him locked up for many years. But all that was a long time ago and, anyway, China had changed since then, and the important people in China these days said that if the old monk had disappeared they had nothing to do with it. The other countries said that it was China’s fault, and perhaps they had everything to do with it! This had started a big row between all the countries in the world: important people said unkind things to each other in big meetings with microphones, and it was quite funny to look at the picture of the old monk laughing as if he’d just played a great trick on everyone. Of course, straight away, Hector thought of only one thing: finding the old monk. First of all, because he was worried. He wanted to know what had happened to him … perhaps the old monk needed some help. And then, because Hector thought that the old monk, with all his wisdom and experience, would be bound to have something very important to tell him about the passage of time. So he sent a message over the internet to one of his friends who also knew the old monk: Édouard.