Free Hector and the Secrets of Love by Francois Lelord

like Snowy when he has to choose between carrying a vital message in his mouth or dropping it in order to seize the delicious bone he has just dug up, and his conscience struggles with a miniature Snowy-devil on one side and a miniature Snowy-angel on the other, each doing their best to win him over. In Hector’s case, the message he had to hold on to was his love for Clara, and the wonderfully tempting bone was Vayla, willing to give herself up to him and to the raptures her friend had described.
    But suddenly the letter he was holding reminded him of the one Clara had written to him.
    I have the feeling we can’t be a couple any more.
    He took the twin phials from Vayla’s hand. She smiled at him and hugged him tenderly round the legs.

HECTOR MAKES LOVE
    L ATER, when he was almost asleep, Hector was thinking that Professor Cormorant had made a fitting choice in quoting verses from the Song of Songs in his messages. That poem expressed so perfectly what he felt with Vayla and what the professor must have experienced with his new friend.
    In the course of a few hours, Hector had experienced with Vayla a range of emotions he hadn’t often felt for the same person: intense sexual excitement, it has to be said, accompanied by a rush of tenderness and affection towards her. And when she wanted him to be more forceful than gentle or at other moments more gentle than forceful, Hector sensed it, all the while feeling this surge of tenderness towards her that was as powerful as his desire. When Vayla stared deep into his eyes, he saw she was experiencing the same intense emotions. As they soared together, borne aloft by the mounting current of their love, Hector could not help asking himself questions. What would it be like when they came down? (Don’t forget that Hector is a psychiatrist, and he has a tendency to analyse his and other people’s feelings, even in the thick of things.)
    What memories, what emotional impressions would he and Vayla have of these moments?
    Luckily, the professor had come up with an antidote that would allow them to dissolve the bond that now bound them together, like melting a chain link that has been forged in a furnace.
    Hector looked at Vayla, lying naked, her eyes closed, a smile on her gently pouting lips. With her arms half raised either side of her head, her legs turned outward and resting flat on the bed, she was like a living replica of one of the stone dancers – apsara , as he had been told they were called – decorating the temple walls. No doubt one of her ancestors had posed as a model and, since in that country nobody travelled much, that harmony had been passed on through the generations only to end up next to him on that bed. Psychiatry is interesting, but travelling isn’t bad either, thought Hector.
    Vayla opened her eyes, smiled and stretched her arms out towards him. Hector knew immediately what he had to do, but he would probably have known that even without the professor’s drug.
    Later, dawn came. The jungle around the hotel was alive with the squawks of countless birds, and even the odd plaintive ou-ou-ou which seemed to suggest the presence of monkeys.
    Hector and Vayla had a few more spells of waking and sleeping, and soon it was midday, the sun was high in the sky and the jungle had gone quiet.
    The phone rang. It was Jean-Marcel.
    ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked.
    Hector looked at Vayla’s profile as she slept.
    ‘Couldn’t be better,’ he said.
    Even so, he was afraid; he felt a deep desire to protect Vayla for the rest of her life, to be near her always, to make love to her until his dying breath. He felt swept away by a flood he was powerless to resist.
    ‘Shall we have lunch?’ Jean-Marcel said.
    ‘Sure.’
    He must wake up completely and take the antidote quickly and make Vayla take it with him. He felt her arms on his shoulders.
    He turned round and immersed himself in her eyes and her smile, at once delighted and terrified by the emotion he felt,