Chapter 7 6

6 The alarm clock woke me up from my sleep. I lowered my head in the dream, only to see that my feet were about to melt away like jelly. I quickly put on a pair of rubber boots, only to find that the tips of my fingers became transparent .I was thinking about going to the mirror to see if there would be a problem with my face when I woke up.I usually don't remember my dreams very much. Ainsley was still asleep, so I cooked the eggs, tomato juice and coffee by myself.Then put on a set of clothing suitable for investigation work, that is, a skirt for work, a long-sleeved shirt on the upper body, and a pair of low-heeled leather shoes on the feet.I think it's better to start early, but it can't be too early, because men always want to sleep for a while when they are resting, and people who go early have not gotten up yet.I took out a map of the downtown area and studied it. I knew there were some areas that would be formally surveyed, so I excluded those areas first.Then I ate some slices of toast, drank a cup of coffee, and thought out some routes I was going to take.

I just need to find seven or eight men (at least to some average) who drink a beer a week, as long as they answer the questions.Because of the length of the weekend, it will be harder than usual to find these people.In my experience, men are generally less cooperative than women when it comes to answering questionnaires of this type.The streets near where I live can't be included because the landlady downstairs is likely to get wind that I'm asking the neighbors how much beer they drink.Besides, I think people in these parts drink whiskey instead of beer, and some widows don't drink at all.Further west are the boarding houses, which should also be ruled out, where I once did a potato chip survey and found the landladies to be very nasty.They probably thought that I was sent by the government, pretending to do research, but actually came to find out whether they had truthfully declared the actual number of tenants in order to increase their tax.I also considered a fraternity house near the university, but this survey was limited to the age of the interviewees, so I had to give it up.

I took the bus to the subway station. After getting off the bus, I recorded the fare on the reimbursement form as "transportation expenses". Then I crossed the road and went downhill to the park opposite the subway station.The park was flat, without trees, and there was a softball field in one corner, but no one was playing.The rest is grass, the grass has turned yellow, and it rustles when stepped on. Today was as windless as yesterday, and it was very sweltering.The sky was cloudless, but it was not clear. The air was very humid and seemed to be filled with invisible water vapor, so that the colors and outlines of distant objects were blurred.

At the end of the park was a raised asphalt path, and I walked up it.It leads to a street full of houses, the houses on both sides of the street are not tall and look a little dilapidated, two-story shoebox-like buildings with wooden frames under the windows and eaves.Some houses had newly painted wooden borders, which only made the weather-beaten plank-clad facades even more dilapidated.Such areas have been going downhill in the past few decades, and only in the past three to five years have they picked up again.Some people moved in from the suburbs, bought these houses and repainted them, painted them an unnatural white, put flagstone walkways, planted evergreens in cement pots, and put antique stagecoach lights.These freshly painted houses look frivolous next to the others, seeming to turn their heads away with an irresponsible ease, avoiding the problems of modernity, ignoring the shabby surroundings and the prim climate pay attention.I decided not to go into these refurbished houses, the people who live in them are not the type of people I'm looking for, they drink martinis.

There is always something formidable about those gates when you know you have to go to a row of houses with closed gates and knock on them.I tidied up my dress, straightened up, and tried to put on an official but kind smile on my face. After practicing for a while, I walked another block before summoning up the courage to start.At the end of the block there was a relatively new-looking apartment house, and I was determined to target it because it wouldn't be too hot inside, and it would be possible to find all kinds of people willing to be interviewed. I rang the bell.A figure glanced at me from behind the translucent white curtains of the street window, and the door opened.The door was opened by a chiseled woman in a printed skirt with a breast pocket, with no make-up on her face, not even lipstick.On my feet were a pair of lace-up black leather shoes with thick heels that reminded me of the word "freak" and of the cheap goods department in the basement of a department store.

"Good morning, I'm from the Seymour Institute," I said with a forced smile. "We're doing a little research. Could you please answer a few questions, sir?" "Are you here for a sales pitch?" she asked, looking at the pencil and form in my hand. "Oh, no! It has nothing to do with sales. Our company does market research, just asks some questions. It helps improve the quality of the product," I added timidly, thinking that this is not the way to go up. "What is it?" she asked, the corners of her mouth tightened in suspicion. "Well, it's actually beer," I said, trying to sound as sweet as possible to make the word sound like honey.

Her face changed, and I thought she was going to refuse me and shut me out.But she hesitated, stepped aside and said, "Come in." The cold tone reminded me of cold cereal. I entered the immaculately tiled doorway, smelled of furniture wax and bleach, and the woman entered an inner door, closing it behind her.There was a murmur, and then the door opened again, and a tall, white-haired man came out frowning, followed by the woman.Despite the heat, the man was wearing a black jacket. "Well, ma'am," he said to me, "I don't mean to blame you, because you can see that you are a good girl, but innocent and ignorant, and are being used for this odious business. But please take these things with you." To your employer, maybe those people's hearts are not ringed to the point of obstinacy. Promoting drinking, encouraging people to get drunk is a sin, a crime against God."

I accepted a few sermons from him, but felt that as an employee of the Seymour Research Institute, I had to say something for the company: "That's right, our company doesn't sell beer." "It makes no difference," he said sternly, "it's all the same thing. 'Anyone who is not on my side, says the Lord, is against me.' Stop the mongers who bring misery and degradation to mankind His tomb has been painted and powdered." He was about to turn around when he suddenly said to me as if he remembered something: "Miss, you can also look at these things. Of course you never let wine stain your lips, but no Who is pure and innocent, infallible in the face of temptation. Maybe the seed of goodness will not fall by the roadside, let alone on the pebble ground."

I said "thank you" in a barely audible voice, and the man grinned from side to side.His wife, who had been watching the little sermon with some satisfaction, stepped forward and opened the door for me. I went out, almost on a reflex, shaking their hands and saying goodbye, like walking out the church gate. This started badly.I walked down to the house, looking at the sermon in my hand.One exhorts people to "Quiet Alcohol," and another has an eloquent title: "Drinking and the Devil."I figured the man must be a clergyman, but certainly not Anglican, not quite like the United Church of Christ, but probably of some unknown denomination.

No one was home next door, and the next door opened was a kid with a chocolate smudge around his mouth, who told me Dad wasn't up yet.As soon as I got to the door below, I knew right away that I had finally found the right place.The door was open, and a man stepped out shortly after I rang the bell. He was of medium build, stocky, almost fat. He opened the grid door and I found him wearing only socks, no shoes, an undershirt and Bermuda shorts.His face was flushed. I explained my purpose and showed him the graph showing the average weekly beer consumption, divided into 11 categories, numbered from 0 to 10.The company designed it this way because some people don't want to use a lot of words to explain how much beer they consume.This person picked category 9, which is the second frame.Almost no one will choose the 10th category, and everyone does not want to be the most drunk.

After completing this procedure, the man said, "Come and sit in the living room for a while. It's so hot, you must be tired from running outside. My wife just went shopping." He added casually . I sat down on an armchair and he turned the TV down.I saw a half-bottle of beer, one of Elk's competitors, on the floor beside his chair.He sat across from me, smiling, wiping his brow with a handkerchief, and answering the first few questions with the air of an expert drawing conclusions about a problem in his line of work.After listening to the phone commercial, he scratched his hairy chest thoughtfully, and then gave him an enthusiastic admiration. Isn't that the kind of response that people in the advertising business dream of?After all this was done, I took his name and address, which is required by company policy to avoid repeated investigations of the same person.Then I stood up and thanked him, but unexpectedly he got up suddenly and approached me with a drunken smile: "Hey, a beautiful chick like you, why are you running around asking men how much they drink?" Beer?" he said, spitting, "You should stay at home and be served by some big man." I slipped two sermons against alcohol into the wet palm he held out to me, turned and fled. Then I surveyed four more people hastily, and didn't encounter any problems.During the survey, I found that the questionnaire needs to add the column "No phone... The survey is over" and the item "Do not listen to the radio", and those who like the joyful atmosphere in the advertisement do not agree with the word "Ding Dong". Agree, think it's too "frivolous", or as someone said, "too low taste".The fifth interviewee was a tall, thin man with a slightly bald head. He was afraid to say anything, and asking him to speak was as difficult as pulling out his teeth with pliers.Every time I asked him a question, his face flushed red, and his Adam's apple went up and down, looking extremely painful.After listening to the ad, he didn't say a word for several minutes. I asked him, "What do you think of this ad? Is it 'like it', or 'okay', or 'not so much'?" It took a lot of effort to squeeze out the word "yes" in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible. I only need to investigate two more people to complete the task, so I decided to skip a few houses and go to the square apartment building.The old method is still used to enter the door, that is, ring all the doorbells at the same time to see who will be fooled and open the door. It was cool in the house, and I went up a short flight of stairs where the carpet was just beginning to thin.I knocked on the first door, and it was number 6, which I thought was a bit strange, because it should be number 1 according to its location. No one answered after knocking on the door, so I knocked harder.After waiting for a while, when I was about to try the next one, the door opened silently.Standing in front of me was a boy, probably about fifteen years old. He rubbed his eyes with one finger, like he just got out of bed.He was shirtless and skinny, with protruding ribs like those scrawny figures in medieval woodcuts.The skin on his chest was almost colorless and not white.And a bit closer to the dark yellow of old sheets.He was barefoot and wearing only khaki shorts. His straight black hair was disheveled and fell over his forehead and covered his eyes, which had a stubborn and sad look, as if on purpose. We looked at each other, he obviously didn't want to talk, and I didn't know what to say.The questionnaires I brought with me suddenly seemed insignificant, and I had a vague feeling that they were getting in the way.Finally, I finally opened my mouth and said, "Hi, is your father at home?" He was still staring at me with no expression on his face. "No, he's dead long ago," he said. "Ah," I stood in front of the door, shaking slightly.The contrast between here and the sweltering weather outside is so great that I feel a little dizzy.Time seems to be converted into slow motion, it seems that there is nothing to say, but I can't leave or walk, he is still standing at the door. After a while (it seemed like hours to me), it dawned on me that maybe he wasn't as young as he looked.There were some dark halos around his eyes, and some thin crow's feet appeared around the corners of his eyes. "Are you really only fifteen years old?" I asked, as if that's what he told me. "I'm twenty-six," he said grimly. I was really taken aback. His words seemed to have triggered a certain accelerator switch hidden in my body. I quickly recited my self-introduction and told him that I came from Seymour Research Institute not to sell goods but to Asking a few simple questions about how much beer is drunk per week on average in order to improve the quality of the product, I wondered as I spoke, that a man like him would not be a teetotaler, but chained in a dungeon and thrown to him by the guards A few crusts of bread and a few glasses of water for a living.Although he looked sad, he seemed very interested, just like some people are interested in dead dogs.So I showed him the card with the average weekly consumption and asked him to choose his level. He looked at it for a minute, turned it over again (no writing on the reverse side), closed his eyes, and said, "Category 6." That's seven to ten beers a week, which is enough for him to fill out the questionnaire, and I told him that. "Come in then," he said.I stepped over the threshold feeling a little uneasy as the wooden door slammed shut behind me. Inside was a square, medium-sized living room with a kitchenette on one side and a hallway leading to the bedroom on the other.There was a small window, and the plastic leaf on the blind was closed, and the room was dark.In the half-light, I can barely see that the walls are white and there are no paintings.On the floor was a fine Persian rug, with swirls and flowers in maroon, green and purple, which I thought was better than the one in our landlady's drawing room, which belonged to her grandfather. .Against one wall is a whole row of bookshelves, the kind people build by themselves with planks and bricks.Other than that, the only furniture in the room were three huge armchairs, stuffed and old, one in red plush and one in old teal Brocade, and one in purple, which has faded to white, and there is a floor lamp next to each sofa.There were scraps of paper strewn all over the floor in the room, notebooks, books, some open with the covers up, some with pencils and slips of paper stuck in the middle for bookmarks. "Do you live alone?" I asked. He was still looking at me sullenly. "It depends on what you mean by 'alone,'" he said slowly. "Oh, I see," I replied politely.I walked into the room, stepping over the things on the floor, trying to keep my spirits up.I walked over to the purple sofa, because that was the only one that was empty, without the mess of papers. "You can't sit on that sofa," he said behind my back, a little unhappy in his voice. "That's Trevor's seat. He doesn't like other people sitting on it." "Oh, so can the red one sit?" "Well, that's Fish's, and he wouldn't mind you sitting on his couch, at least I don't think he would. But it's got his papers on it, and you're going to mess it up." It was a mess. Yeah, I don't see how sitting on it for a while would make it worse, but I didn't make a sound.I wondered if Fish and Trevor were figments of the kid's imagination, and the age he told me might just be lying.In the light of the room, his face looked like that of a ten-year-old boy.He stood by, looking at me solemnly, with his shoulders slumped, his hands folded on his chest, and his elbows held. "So your sofa is the green one?" "That's right," he said, "but I haven't sat on it myself for two weeks, and it's all sorted out." I really wanted to go over and have a look at what he was sorting out, but then I thought about my task. "Then where do you sit?" "Sit on the floor," he said, and would go into the kitchen, or my bedroom, if he could. " "Oh, don't go into the bedroom," I said hastily.I stepped back over the papers and peered into the kitchen in the corner.There was a peculiar smell--there seemed to be garbage bags in every corner of the small kitchen, and the rest of the place was full of large pots and kettles, some clean and some unwashed. "There doesn't seem to be any room left in the kitchen," he said.I bent down and tried to clear the books and papers on the floor to make a space, just like people clear the garbage on the surface of the pond. "You'd better not touch these things," he said. "Some are not mine. You'll mess them up. Let's go to the bedroom. ’ He walked listlessly across the living room into an open door, and I had no choice but to follow. It was a rectangular room with white walls, as dark as the hall, and the shutters were drawn.There was little furniture, just an ironing board with an iron on it, a chess set in one corner with pieces scattered about outside, a typewriter on the floor, and a cardboard box that seemed to be For dirty laundry, he kicked it into the closet when I came in, and then there was a narrow bed.He pulled a gray army blanket over the crumpled sheets, climbed into bed himself, and sat down cross-legged, leaning against the corner of the wall.He turned on the reading lamp above the bed, took out a pack of cigarettes from his back trouser pocket, took out one cigarette and put it back in his trouser pocket. He lit a cigarette and smoked it with his hands folded. He looked like a hungry Bodhisattva burning incense and making offerings to himself. "Let's go," he said. I sat on the edge of the bed (there were no chairs in the room), took out the questionnaire and filled it out.Every time I asked a question, he would throw his head back against the wall and close his eyes before answering.After this, he opened his eyes and looked at me for the next question, but you could hardly tell he was looking at you. When asked about the phone ad, he went to the phone in the kitchen to dial the number, and I think he was there for a long time, then went out to see what was going on, and he put the phone on tight Close to the ear, the mouth parted, almost in a smile. "You're really only supposed to listen to it once," I tell him, a little irritated. He reluctantly put down the receiver. "Can I listen to it a few more times after you're gone?" he asked, with the timidly flattering tone of a child trying to get an extra biscuit. "Okay," I said, "but don't call next week, okay?" I didn't want him to hold up the line and interfere with the investigation. We went back to his bedroom and sat down as usual. "I'm going to repeat that ad to you line by line, and tell me what comes to mind for each line," I said.This is the free-association part of the questionnaire, which is used to test the immediate responses certain key words elicit in people's minds. "First of all, the phrase 'truly manly', what comes to your mind?" He threw his head back and closed his eyes again. "Sweaty," he thought, "espadrilles, basement locker room, and elastics." The interviewer was supposed to record the answers verbatim, so I did.I thought why not shove this survey into the official survey file, and have some colleague who ticked the answers with a pen - perhaps Mrs. Wimmer, or Mrs. Gentridge - think otherwise. So tedious, so same.She would read it aloud to others, and they would say that the answer was so amazing that it was enough to talk about it three or four times over coffee. "How about 'take a sip of a refreshing drink'?" "Can't think of anything. Wait a minute. It's a bird, white, falling straight down from a high place. In winter, it was shot in the heart by a bullet, and its feathers fluttered around. . . . It's like the kind of word games the therapists give you," he said, opening his eyes. "I've always liked that kind of game. It's better than the ones with pictures." I said, "I think they're the same thing. How about 'tastes healthy and satisfying'?" He thought about it for a few minutes. "That's heartburning," he said. "Nah, no, that's not the right way to say it." His brow furrowed. "I remembered, it was a story about cannibalism." For the first time, he looked a little depressed. "I know this format, there is one in (The Decameron), and two or three of Grimm's fairy tales. It's about a husband who kills his wife's lover, or the lover kills the husband, digs out the heart and stews it or makes it into a pie and serves it on a silver platter and the other eats it go down.But that doesn't have much to do with health, does it?Shakespeare," his voice became less agitated, "Shakespeare wrote something like that. There is such a scene in Titus Andronicus, but whether it was by Shakespeare is debated, or . . . " "Thank you," I hurriedly recorded.By this time I had come to the conclusion that this man was suffering from some type of obsessive-compulsive neurosis, and I had better keep calm and not show fear.I'm actually not scared by the example - he doesn't seem like the violent type - but these questions definitely make him nervous.He may be on the verge of some kind of danger mentally, and a word or two is likely to throw him out of control.This type of person is what I imagine, remembering Ainsley telling me of cases where a little thing like a poor word might irritate them. "And what about the line 'Ding Dong, make your head flutter and get drunk'?" He thought about it for a long time. "It doesn't make any sense to me," he said, "it doesn't make sense at all. The first two words remind me of a man with a glass head that's jingled with a stick, like a glass bowl. But The word drunk doesn't mean anything," he said sullenly, "and I don't think it's going to do you much good." "Well said," I said, wondering what would happen if IBM's computers were to handle this. "And one last, the phrase 'flavor of the wild'." "Oh," he said, beginning to warm up, "that's a simple line, and immediately I thought of a color movie about a dog and a horse. 'Flavour of the Wild' is obviously a dog, a wolf and a dog." The husky crossbreed that saved the life of its owner three times, once from fire, once from water, and once from bad guys, is now probably white hunters, not Indians, and finally Shot dead with a .22 by a vicious hunter, owner weeps and buries it, presumably in the snow. Panoramic shot of forest and lake. Sunset. Fade out." "Fine," I said, jotting these things down quickly.For a while, I only heard the rustling of pencils on the paper, and neither of us spoke. "Oh, one more annoying thing I have to ask is to ask you to rate whether these five sentences apply to beer as 'very good', or 'fair', or simply 'terrible' ?” "I can't say that," he said, completely lost interest. "I never drink that stuff, I only drink whiskey. None of these words fit whiskey." I was very surprised, so I said to him: "But you just chose the sixth category on the card, which means drinking seven to ten bottles of beer a week." "You asked me to choose a number," he said unhurriedly, Fei is my lucky number.I even asked them to change the number on the door. You see, it should be number 1 here.Besides, I was bored and was looking for someone to talk to. " "That means my interview with you doesn't count at all," I said with a straight face, forgetting for a moment that it was actually just a prediction. "Hey, don't you like it?" He said with a half-smile. "You're fully aware that the rest of the papers you've got are boring. You have to admit I did make you happy today." An unknown fire suddenly rose from my chest.I always thought that he was mentally ill, and I was full of sympathy for him, but I didn't expect that he was pretending to lie to me.I could show my displeasure by standing up immediately and walking away, or simply admitting that he had a point.I frowned at him, and while I was considering which method to take, at this moment, there was a sound of opening the door, and someone was talking at the same time. He leaned forward and listened nervously: then leaned back against the wall again. "It's just Fish and Trevor, who live with me," he said, "Two other nasty people. Trevor is the most annoying, he sees me without a shirt, and he's in the house again What a fuss must have been for a pretty girl." There was the sound of brown paper bags of groceries in the kitchen, and a deep voice said, "My God, it's fucking hot outside." "I think I should go," I said.If the other two are like this one, I don't think I can handle it.I put away the answer sheet and just stood up when the voice sounded again. "Hey, Duncan, would you like a beer?" At the same moment, a shaggy bearded head poked through the doorway. I was stunned. "So you still drink beer?" "Yes, it is. I'm sorry, but I just wanted you to talk to me a little longer. The rest of that stuff is pretty boring, and I've already told you what I'm going to say anyway. Fish," he said to the beard, " It's a blonde." I forced a smile.Actually my hair is not blonde. On top of that head appeared another head, that person was fair-skinned, light-haired, and slightly bald.The eyes are blue and the nose is straight.His jaw dropped when he saw me. I have to go now. "Thank you," I said to the person on the bed, in a cold but polite voice, "thank you for your great support." As I headed for the door, he actually had a smile on his face, and the two hurriedly backed away to make way, only to hear the man on the bed yell, "Hey, why do you do such a bad job?" I thought it was only fat, sloppy-dressed housewives who would do such a thing." "Oh," I replied, trying to be as respectable as possible, and not wanting to explain to him my actual role in the company -- well, I'm much higher than that, "one's got to eat, and besides, getting a What good job can you get with a bachelor's degree?" After walking out of the gate, I looked at the answer sheet.Under the strong sunlight, my notes of his questions were barely legible, save for a gray blob on the paper.