Free Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood Page A

pattern of dropping in for a few beers either before seeing her or, if it was still early enough, after leaving. He hasn’t yet chosen a new bar.
    He’ll have to soon: the Selby, which when he started to drink there was full of anonymous faces, is beginning to clog with people he knows. They aren’t friends exactly and he knows them only because they all drink here. Still, he’s become a regular, and many of the old regulars are gone. Workers from Cabbagetown, frayed, silent for the most part, mutterers of dependably gloomy rote phrases. Now the place is being taken over by the same people who are taking over the mews flats and back alleys of Cabbagetown. Photographers, men who say they’re writing a book. They talk too much, are too cheerful, invite him to sit at their tables when hedoesn’t want to. He has some standing among them, a woodcarver, worker with his hands, artisan, the man with the knife. He prefers bars where he’s the first of his kind.
    The bar he’ll look for will be sober, quiet, devoid of pinball machines and jukeboxes and pimply eighteen-year-olds who drink too much and throw up in the can. He wants a bar half full of men in zip-front jackets and open-necked shirts with the T-shirt collar showing, slow and steady drinkers; serious television-watchers like himself. He likes to tune in on the national news and then get the sports scores.
    He can hardly do this in his own house, as Elizabeth has long since exiled his ancient portable black and white set from the living room, where she said it was out of place, then from the kitchen. She said she couldn’t stand to have it blaring while she cooked and he could decide whether he wanted to watch television or eat, because if it was television she would go out for dinner and let him fend for himself. That was in the olden days, before Nate of necessity began to cook. He tried sneaking the set into the bedroom – he had visions of lying in bed watching the late movie, a Scotch and water in one hand, Elizabeth curled cosily beside him – but that didn’t last a night.
    The set ended up in Janet’s room, where the children watch Saturday morning cartoons on it. When he moved into his own room he didn’t have the heart to take it away from them again. Sometimes he watches it with them or sits in their room by himself during afternoon football games. But they’re always asleep by the time the eleven o’clock news comes on. He could always watch it at his mother’s, she never misses a night, but it’s too far to go and she doesn’t keep beer in the house. She wouldn’t be too excited about this kind of thing anyway. Earthquakes, famines, that’s different. Every time there’s a famine on the news, Nate can predict his mother will be on the phone the next day, trying to bully himinto adopting an orphan or selling Pieces for Peace to his toy retailers. Bits of colored wool made into gnomes, folded paper birds. “Christmas tree decorations aren’t going to save the world,” he tells her. Then she says she hopes the children are taking their cod liver oil pills every morning. She suspects Elizabeth of vitamin deficiencies.
    Elizabeth, on the other hand, has no interest in watching any sort of news whatsoever. She hardly even reads the papers. Nate has never known anyone with as little interest in the news as Elizabeth.
    Tonight, for instance, she went to bed at seven; she didn’t even bother to stay up for the election results. Nate, watching everything fall apart up there on the screen, can’t understand her indifference. This is an event of national and perhaps even international importance, and she’s sleeping through it! The special crew of commentators can hardly contain themselves, one way or another. The Quebeckers on the panel are trying hard to keep from grinning; they’re supposed to be objective, but their faces twitch every time the computer flashes a new victory for the Parti Québécois. The English on the other hand are about to