A Paris Affair Read Online Free PDF

There is no such thing as a faithful husband.
    Guy

 
    T HE A NSWERING M ACHINE
    Unable to suppress love,
    the Church wanted at least to disinfect it,
    so it created marriage.
    —C HARLES B AUDELAIRE (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 S é bastien. ‘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,” S é bastien 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, S é bastien, 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 S é bastien, 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 S é bastien. “If you pick up the phone as the answering machine starts working, because you’ve forgotten to switch it off, it