Hector and the Secrets of Love by Francois Lelord

goes on as before. Where are you?
    Write back soon.
     
    Lots of love.
    Apparently, Clara had a problem with abandonment, too.
    Hector was thinking this while looking at a very beautiful, remarkably pale Chinese woman calmly impaling herself on the enormous veined member of a fat Chinaman with a slightly distant look on his face. Actually it was a statue, because they were in a museum, the museum of love to be precise, where thousands of works on the subject had been amassed, further proof that people who have sex on the brain are nothing new.
    Faced with the vastness of Shanghai, Hector had decided to start by visiting this museum, telling himself that the professor might also have come here and left him a clue.
    They went from room to room, Vayla’s arm gently entwined in his, discovering paintings or statues entitled The Butterfly in Search of Nectar or Break Open the Rock so the Spring May Burst Forth or The Restless Bird Discovers the Way through the Forest , because Chinese civilisation is a great civilisation that sees poetry in everything. Hector remembered that a great Chinese leader had even launched a massive campaign known as the Hundred Flowers Movement when it would have been more accurate to call it the Slaughter Anyone Who Stands Out Movement.
    He was unable to share these thoughts with Vayla, just as she was unable to understand any of the captions in Chinese and English, but the meaning of the works was fairly explicit, so much so that Hector wondered whether Vayla might not get ideas about the normal size of a, well, of what artists there called ‘the jade beam’.
    Vayla had laughed with her hand over her mouth when she saw the first pieces, and had then examined the following ones with interest, but gradually it became obvious she was getting bored, and was covering her mouth now in order to yawn. Hector remembered this was a slight difference between men and women. Men were always a little aroused by the image of people making love, as he was at that moment in fact, whereas in general it wasn’t enough to put women in the mood – with a few exceptions, but we won’t be giving out any phone numbers.
    They came to some showcases containing various artefacts carved from ivory. At first glance you might have thought they were pieces of jewellery, but they weren’t; they were accessories and implements designed to console women in the absence of men or to provide men with the extra means to satisfy their women, which proved that even the ancient Chinese had definite feminist sensibilities. Vayla stood transfixed in front of these objects then turned to Hector, cupping her hands behind her ears and moving her head from side to side in imitation of an elephant. She had understood what the objects were carved out of because there were still quite a few elephants in her country, and sometimes even on the roads, instead of a row of heavy trucks, you had to overtake a row of elephants, which is less dangerous because a good elephant never pulls out unexpectedly.
    Around them, other visitors chuckled as they viewed the works, and this made Hector wonder: why did the same act, which caused so many to despair because they couldn’t do it with the person they wanted to, or as many times as they wanted to, make more or less everyone laugh? Everyone who passed through the museum, including Chinese, Europeans, Americans and others of uncertain origin, laughed or giggled a little when they discovered The Hungry Horse Gallops towards its Manger or The Weary Dragons Repose in Mid-combat.
    Probably, thought Hector, because love is a private emotion. But when you see other people in a frenzy over love, becoming as oblivious to reason as animals or little children, it makes you laugh. Just like it does when you see animals or little children who don’t know how to hide their desires under a façade of good manners. Good manners are after all meant to serve as a façade, and love and good manners don’t always go