A Paris Affair

  THE RED NOTEBOOK

  The man who loves normally under the sun

  adores feverishly under the moon.

  —GUY DE MAUPASSANT (1850–1893), On Water

  MAY 2

  Guy is irreproachable. He is deathly dull. The only thing to be done is to cheat on him, a course of action I have been pursuing for quite some time now. I dream of a husband who’s a lady-killer, a heartbreaker, a womanizer, a skirt chaser, a charming Casanova, a beautiful bastard! Alas!

  I share a sterilized bed with a faithful man. I am married to an easygoing family man who takes me gently, paternalistically, whispering words into my ear that are more tender than exciting, kissing me in a way that is more respectful than earthshaking. To reach nirvana, I must sink into some bawdy vision of lust and debauchery, a delicious dream of sinful violence, complex positions, and coarse language.

  MAY 21

  My husband bores me.

  It’s sad but true.

  My children are beautiful, but they have never awoken any maternal instinct. I love them, of course, but it’s the nanny who brings them up. The idea of taking care of baby bottles, diapers, vaccinations, and walks in the park is utterly foreign to me.

  I cheated on him for the first time one month after my wedding, with an ex. I told myself that didn’t count, as it wasn’t new.

  Then I realized it was the only thing that did count.

  I soon had to face facts. Cheating on a husband who suspects nothing is almost as boring as not cheating on him at all.

  JUNE 4

  I have been unfaithful for five years now. Everyone knows, except him. He is ridiculous. If only he would insult me or do the same thing in return!

  If only I could find him in bed with my sister or my best friend or the cleaning lady or even his cousin, his niece, his goddaughter … what joy! What a gloriously ridiculed spouse I would be! What insufferable scenes I would make, followed by thrilling reunions in bed.…

  Alas, the aforementioned conjugal bed has been unrumpled forever! And I am nothing more than a bourgeois wife who is bored with her goody-two-shoes husband, and who—at thirty-two years old—already has one foot in the grave.

  JULY 11

  I choose my lovers with subtlety and skill. They are rarely part of my circle. Besides, all these devoted dads make me want to scream. They are always in a rush, looking at their watches. I prefer young, firm-fleshed bucks who would rather surrender to my experience than try to get on top (in every sense), as their elders do. Why does Guy never suspect anything? I force myself to leave clues, just to pique his curiosity. But when he finds a man’s sock that is not his own at the foot of the bed, he just smiles and puts it aside.

  There is nothing more stupid in this world than a faithful husband.

  And, as a rule, faithful husbands don’t even exist. Guy is a freak of nature. The blood that crawls through his veins must be from some dynasty extinguished by a lack of passion, or impoverished by years of unimaginative inbreeding.

  AUGUST 28

  All the same, he’s not dumb. Poor Guy is simply faithful.

  Ever since we were married, I have been devising Machiavellian stratagems to make him cheat on me at last.

  I have recruited the most beautiful women and gotten them, without any attempt at delicacy, to sprawl naked at his feet.

  In vain. He showed them all his wedding ring as if he were brandishing a crucifix at a bloodthirsty vampire.

  So I have had to resign myself. Guy will never cheat on me. It is just not part of his genetic makeup.

  SEPTEMBER 3

  There is nothing more soporific than a faithful husband, especially when he is yours.

  When he falls asleep in the evening after performing his conjugal duties and murmurs, “Sweet dreams, darling,” the night—still so young!—stretches out flatly in front of me like the Dead Sea, or an arid tundra without any surprises, any protuberances or hidden crevices.

  A husband who never strays is a mediocre husband. What a marriage needs is an unfaithful man to spice it up! A sly, cheating husband exudes sinfulness, oozes lasciviousness, breathes concupiscence. When you lie in bed next to him, you think of the libertine debaucheries of his day, of those other women he has brought to orgasm, and you listen in a blissful state to the convoluted lies he reels off so ingeniously.

  Who could ever be bored with an adulterous husband?

  OCTOBER 10

  Why do I write in this notebook? To palliate my boredom. It never leaves my side. It is secured with a tiny padlock, and I keep the key in a safe hiding place. No one will ever read it. One day, I will burn it.

  NOVEMBER 17

  Guy has asked me to look for a new apartment, as our rental agreement will not be renewed. I have to find a pleasant four-room residence in a quiet area.

  DECEMBER 1

  Moving was exhausting. It took me a long time to work up the courage to unpack those final boxes. They were just piled up in the entrance hall.

  Then, one rainy day when the children were at school and I wasn’t expecting anyone, I finally decided to put them away. Inside I found a bunch of old papers: payment slips, accounts, old photographs, road maps, leaflets—the kind of junk you amass over the years.

  I feel too tired. Or not brave enough. I will finish this entry later.

  DECEMBER 18

  I found a nice café, where I like to come and read newspapers, and write. I must continue my story. It’s raining outside.

  So, those old papers …

  I went through them, tossing anything that seemed useless, putting aside whatever we might still need. It was a notebook—a bit like mine, only red, and larger, and without a padlock. I had never seen it before. I opened it. Inside were women’s names, with dates and places. It was all in Guy’s handwriting. For example, I read:

  Paris, Winter ’98:

  Laure

  Yvette

  the Rondoli sisters

  Étretat, Spring 2000:

  Fifi

  Ludivine

  Harriet

  Fécamp, June 2002:

  Adrienne L.

  Then there were remarks, some with spelling mistakes (that I will not reproduce), such as:

  Côte d’Azur, Summer 2004:

  Hermine (aka The Spitter)

  Rosalie (nice)

  Adélaide (too fat)

  Lise (crap)

  I kept turning the pages, reading the lists of names. I wasn’t mentioned. This annoyed me.

  I’m going to order another coffee.

  DECEMBER 20

  I have to finish this story.

  I have to talk about the other women’s names—those that came after we were married. Their names mean nothing to me. All I know is that he had them in Paris, mostly during my pregnancies, then occasionally after that. For the past year, however, the pages of the red notebook show only mysterious initials without dates, places, or comments.

  It doesn’t bother me to discover he’s had mistresses. On the contrary, it is reassuring.

  What bothers me is thinking that Guy no longer loves me. In fact, I don’t think he ever loved me.

  The mask of the simpleton has slipped. Now I see Guy’s true face. And that face suddenly strikes me as magnificent.

  DECEMBER 24

  Dear Jeanne,

  I imagine you are rather startled to see my handwriting in your private diary.

  So, you’ve found it at last—my red notebook! And I have finally unlocked yours. God knows I left that notebook in plain sight for years. Yet you never noticed it. I wanted to see how far your effrontery and your vanity would take you. You imagined yourself the only one capable of cheating and lying. And you took an exquisite pleasure in it. It was amusing. For five years, I enjoyed playing the gullible husband, the honorable spouse, the cuckold who closes his eyes. But, as I’m sure you realize, my dear Jeanne, that can’t last forever.

  Not once did it enter your head that I, too, might be cheating. Not once did you suspect me. You fou
nd it priceless to make your husband look like an imbecile. Oh, my poor Jeanne. What will become of you now? And your young men? Are you so tempting to them now? On whom will you cheat? To whom will you tell your lies?

  I can imagine you, frozen with shock, as you read these pages, in that café where you’ve spent so much time recently. And the worst thing must be that you are now realizing that you love me. I can see it from here—the light of love finally softening your sharp features, like the sun rising for the first time.

  I am going to leave you now, my dear Jeanne, not only at the foot of this page, but forever—because I have nothing else to say to you.

  You no longer amuse me. Frankly, you bore me. May God bless you this Christmas.

  But look on the bright side—you were right all along! There is no such thing as a faithful husband.

  Guy

  THE ANSWERING MACHINE

  Unable to suppress love,

  the Church wanted at least to disinfect it,

  so it created marriage.

  —CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821–1867), My Heart Laid Bare

  APRIL 1992

  ‘Someone must have been playing with the answering machine again—it’s flashing!’

  “What?”

  “Look, it’s broken. We’ve only had it one day and it’s already broken.”

  “You pressed the wrong button.”

  Charles leaned over the machine.

  “There you go. See? All fixed.”

  Lola shrugged. “I don’t like it—it’s too complicated. I’ll never use it.”

  “Just ask your sons. They’ll explain it to you.”

  She looked at the little brown box.

  “I must be turning into an old fogey. I hate these machines. I don’t like leaving messages on them or listening to the messages other people leave me. I never know which button to press.”

  “This one’s really cool, too,” said ten-year-old Sébastien. ‘There’s a voice that tells you the exact day and time when the message was left, because most people forget to say that, and it doesn’t bother recording if there’s no message!”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lola. “So what does it do if someone hangs up without leaving a message?”

  “Well, it doesn’t record that horrible beeping noise. It doesn’t even show up as a message. If someone hangs up, the machine just ignores it.”

  “And you can check your messages from outside the house, too!” added eleven-year-old Benjamin.

  “Incredible,” Lola said sarcastically.

  “You should learn how to use it,” said Benjamin, “instead of making stupid criticisms.”

  “Answering machines are very practical,” Sébastien declared.

  Just then, the telephone rang and the whole family stood up.

  “Let’s test it. Everyone in position!” Charles ordered, excited as a kid.

  All eyes were on the brown box. At the third ring, Charles’s deep voice boomed across the room: “Hello! You’ve reached forty-eighty-nine-thirty-four-fifty-six. Please leave a message for Lola, Sébastien, Benjamin, or Charles and they’ll call you back. Begin speaking after you hear the beep. Thanks. Talk to you soon.”

  “Your message is too long,” Lola said.

  “Shush! Listen!”

  “Hello, this is Alexandre for Benjamin. He can call me back whenever. Good-bye.”

  A complex mechanical clinking noise followed, and then a strange metallic voice announced: “Saturday, six thirty-three pm.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” said Charles. “Look, darling, I’ll show you how to listen to this message. It’s perfectly simple. Imagine you’ve just come home and you see that the light is flashing. That means there’s a message. To listen to it, you just press here. Try it.”

  She pressed the button, and Alexandre’s message was played again, followed by the metallic voice.

  “Now that you know Alexandre has called, you have two possibilities. You could delete the message, but as it’s for Benjamin, you probably shouldn’t.”

  “You’d better not!” grumbled the eleven-year-old.

  “So you leave it the way it is until Benjamin hears the message and deletes it himself. But let’s pretend this message was from … I don’t know, Sylvie, say, or one of your other friends.…”

  “Fanny!” simpered Benjamin, hand on hip.

  “Caroline!” sang Sébastien, prancing around the room.

  “Stop it, boys! You’re being idiotic.”

  “Anyway,” Charles said, “so let’s say there’s a message for you. You listen to it by pressing this button; then afterward you delete it, like this. May I?” he asked Benjamin, who nodded.

  Charles pressed another button and they heard the shrill sound of the message being rewound.

  “And that’s it. Gone! Easy, isn’t it?”

  “There’s something else you should explain to Mom,” said Sébastien. “If you pick up the phone as the answering machine starts working, because you’ve forgotten to switch it off, it records your conversation. And that uses up the cassette. So you must remember to delete it afterward.”

  “Very good point.” Charles nodded approvingly. “You understand, darling?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ll see—this answering machine is going to change your life!”

  * * *

  Later, Lola said to her husband, “Do you think I’m stupid because I don’t know how to use the answering machine?”

  He looked at her, surprised. “What? Of course not, Lola!”

  “I feel like you think I’m stupid.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I feel old and ugly.”

  “You’re thirty-three!”

  “And you can tell.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re a beautiful woman, and you know it.”

  * * *

  The next day, when she returned home from the grocery store, she noticed that the light on the answering machine was red. She put down her bags and knelt next to the machine. Frowning with concentration, she pressed the button. One message for Benjamin, another for Sébastien. She felt disappointed, but at least she had managed to work the thing properly! While she was unpacking her bags in the kitchen, the telephone rang. Standing on a stool so she could arrange the jars of jam on a shelf, she allowed herself the luxury of letting the machine answer for her.

  It was Charles.

  “Darling, it’s me. I’ll be leaving later for that presentation in Brussels. Don’t wait up for me this evening—I might have to spend the night there. If you need to get ahold of me, Nicole has the phone number. Bye, darling. I love you!”

  Lola sighed as she got down from the stool. Charles was often away from home. At thirty-four he had been given a big promotion in the advertising agency where he worked, and for the last two years he had rarely spent a whole week at home. Lola had done her best to get used to his absences. The boys had their own lives, their friends, school. But it seemed to her that she no longer had anything. The days stretched out emptily before her, flat, smooth, and featureless. She should have gone back to work after Sébastien was born, but she had chosen to stay at home and look after her children. And for eight years, that had been fulfilling.

  The boys were older now, though, and they no longer needed her. She was bored. Most of all, she was afraid of becoming boring. Charles seemed happy with her, but was he really? Maybe she should have that third child—the little girl they had dreamed of. It wasn’t too late.

  Lola nestled on the sofa and lit a cigarette, her eyes dreamy. The phone rang again. She did not move, and the machine picked up.

  “Hey there, sweetie—it’s Fanny. I love your new answering machine! You want to go see a movie this afternoon? Call me. Bye!”

  Lola didn’t feel like calling Fanny, whose enthusiasm for life sometimes irritated her. She knelt next to the answering machine in order to delete the last two messages. The machine obeyed her orders. Charles would be happy! Her face clouded
over. Why did she always think about Charles’s reaction? Why did she always force herself to behave properly for him, like a pupil with a teacher? Irritated, she lit another cigarette and decided to bake an apple pie for the boys. And the day went on, long and colorless, until she was rescued by the arrival of her sons.

  * * *

  Charles was gone most of the week. A few days after his return, Lola received a phone call from her mother, who lived alone in Honfleur. She wanted to see her daughter and her grandsons.

  “Take the boys to Normandy for the weekend,” Charles told Lola. “The fresh air will do them good, and you’ll get some rest.”

  “I’m not tired,” she protested.

  “You are, darling. You have bags under your eyes.”

  She blushed.

  “That’s because you kept me from sleeping most of the night.”

  He embraced her, stroking her rump affectionately.

  “I missed you.…”

  Charles had rarely ever been so attentive. Since he came back from Brussels, they had made love with more ardor than usual.

  “Will you come to Mom’s, too?”

  He knotted his tie. “I don’t think I’ll be able to, honey. I’d like to take advantage of the apartment being empty to get some work done and get my files in order. I’m sure you understand.…”

  “I do, but it’s a shame. The boys see so little of you. And as for Mom—”

  “You’ll be able to explain it to her, darling, I know you will. But I have to go. See you tonight. Don’t expect me for dinner, though.”

  He slipped out. She sighed, then started making the bed, which they had made quite a mess of. If Charles were that loving every time he came back from a trip, life wouldn’t be so bad.

  * * *

  She spent the weekend at her mother’s house, with her boys. On Saturday, about 11:00 P.M., she called Charles. The answering machine picked up. Not knowing what to say, she hung up. So where was he at 11:00 on a Saturday night? Maybe he was working and he’d put the answering machine on in order to not be disturbed? She called him back and left a message that she thought sounded garbled and clumsy. The next day, she tried again about 9:00 am, and then again at noon. Each time, she got the answering machine and the recording of Charles’s cheerful voice. She didn’t leave a message. Around 5:00 pm, as she was about to depart with her children, Charles called.