Read Online Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord - Free Book Online Page B

having a home and a garden of your own.
    He thought about everything he’d seen and heard since his arrival and wrote:
    Lesson no. 12: It’s harder to be happy in a country run by bad people.
    And this reminded him of the old Chinese monk’s life and the story of Ying Li’s family. And a little of Ying Li, too, of course.

HECTOR LEARNS ANOTHER LESSON
    D USK was falling and they were on their way back to the city, because Jean-Michel said that it was better not to drive at night in this country,
    You may have been wondering why Marcel was sitting in the car with a pump-action shotgun on his knees acting as a bodyguard. Why would anyone want to harm Jean-Michel who went all over the place trying to cure babies?
    Here’s why. In this country a car was a highly prized object and it’s difficult to start modern cars without the ignition key. So here, criminals waited at places where you had to stop (not at traffic lights, as there was only one, but where a boulder was blocking the road for example), and then they came with their revolvers and made you get out of the car and they drove off with the car and the keys. The problem was that before stealing the car they would often kill the people inside because they didn’t want to be reported or simply because they were nervous, had drunk too much rum or beer or had taken harmful drugs.
    ‘It’s happening more and more,’ said Jean-Michel. ‘Every day criminals arrive from elsewhere because the police are less efficient here than in their own countries, and it’s easier not to get caught.’
    ‘It’s globalisation,’ said Marcel, laughing.
    Police inefficiency was also the reason why people like Eduardo came here to do business, and, what’s more, it was often the police they came to do business with; it was more practical that way.
     
     
    At the hotel bar, there were still some uniformed men in shorts, but not Eduardo, which was just as well because Hector sensed that Jean-Michel and Eduardo weren’t made to get on together.
    Isidore, the barman who had a second job, looked pleased to see Hector again. He immediately served them a beer, which Hector thought was excellent, because in this country where nothing worked properly they still produced excellent beer.
    Hector asked Jean-Michel if he was happy. This made Jean-Michel laugh. (Hector reflected later that this question tended to make men laugh but sometimes made women cry.)
    ‘I never ask myself that question, but I think I am. I do a job that I love, and that I know I do well, and, on top of that, I feel really useful over here. And as you’ve seen, I get on with the people here. We’re a real team.’
    Jean-Michel drank some beer and then said, ‘Every day here has meaning.’
    Hector found this very interesting because he also had a useful profession in his country, though sometimes, when all he saw were people who were unhappy for no apparent reason with no real disorders and whom he found it difficult to help, he wondered whether his life had any meaning, and that didn’t make him very happy.
    ‘Also,’ Jean-Michel said, ‘I feel loved for who I am.’
    And perhaps by now you’ve realised that Jean-Michel and Marcel were more than just friends, or more than just a doctor and his bodyguard, and you’ve also understood why Jean-Michel was never very interested in girls. But he’d never talked to Hector about this before, and he didn’t really talk about it now, since there’s no need to explain everything to a friend who’s a psychiatrist (or to a friend who isn’t a psychiatrist for that matter).
    Hector noticed that Jean-Michel glanced at him to see how he’d taken it, and that he was looking a little nervous. And so Hector said, ‘It’s true. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy.’
    And then Jean-Michel smiled, and ordered two more beers, and they didn’t mention it again, because that’s the way men are.
     
     
    Jean-Michel left and Hector went to his room to lie down for a