Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [19]
“You selling anything?” she asked, glancing at my papers and pencil.
“Oh, no! We have nothing to do with selling. We’re a market research company, we merely ask questions. It helps improve the products,” I added lamely. I didn’t think I was going to find what I was looking for.
“What’s it about?” she asked, the corners of her mouth tightening with suspicion.
“Well, actually it’s about beer,” I said in a tinsel-bright voice, trying to make the word sound as skim-milk-like as possible.
Her face changed expression. She was going to refuse, I thought. But she hesitated, then stepped aside and said in a voice that reminded me of cold oatmeal porridge, “Come in.”
I stood in the spotless tiled hallway, inhaling the smell of furniture polish and bleach, while she disappeared through a door farther on, closing it behind her. There was a murmured conversation; then the door opened again and a tall man with grey hair and a severe frown came through it, followed by the woman. The man wore a black coat even though the day was so warm.
“Now young lady,” he said to me, “I’m not going to chastise you personally because I can see you are a nice girl and only the innocent means to this abominable end. But you will be so kind as to give these tracts to your employers. Who can tell but that their hearts may yet be softened? The propagation of drink and of drunkenness to excess is an iniquity, a sin against the Lord.”
I took the pamphlets he handed me, but felt enough loyalty to Seymour Surveys to say, “Our company doesn’t have anything to do with selling the beer, you know.”
“It is the same thing,” he said sternly, “it is all the same thing, ‘Those who are not with me are against me, saith the Lord.’ Do not try to whiten the sepulchres of those traffickers in human misery and degradation.” He was about to turn away, but said to me as an afterthought, “You might read those yourself, young lady. Of course you never pollute your lips with alcohol, but no soul is utterly pure and proof against temptation. Perhaps the seed will not fall by the wayside, nor yet on stony ground.”
I said a faint “Thank you,” and the man extended the edges of his mouth in a smile. His wife, who had been watching the small sermon with frugal satisfaction, stepped forward and opened the door for me, and I went out, resisting the reflex urge to shake both of them by the hand as though I was coming out of church.
It was a bad beginning. I looked at the tracts as I walked to the next house. “TEMPERANCE,” commanded one. The other was titled, more stirringly, “DRINK AND THE DEVIL.” He must be a minister, I thought, though certainly not Anglican, and probably not even United. One of those obscure sects.
No one was at home in the next house, and at the one after that the door was opened by a chocolate-smeared urchin who informed me that her daddy was still in bed. At the next one though I soon knew that I had come at last to a good place for head-hunting. The main door was standing open, and the man I could see coming towards me several moments after I had rung was of medium height but very thickly built, almost fat. When he opened the screen door I could see that he had only his socks on his feet, no shoes; he was wearing an undershirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts. His face was brick-red.
I explained my errand and showed him the card with the average-beer-consumption-per-week scale on it. Each average is numbered, and the scale runs from 0 to 10. The company does it that way because some men are shy about naming their consumption in so many words. This man picked No. 9, the second from the top. Hardly anybody chooses No. 10: everyone likes to think there’s a chance that somebody else drinks more than he does.
When we had got that far the man said, “Come on into the living room and sit down. You must be tired walking around in all that heat. My wife’s just gone to do the shopping,” he added irrelevantly.
I