_Suppose a salesman knocked at your door and said: "I'm selling
happiness--any kind your heart desires. Every shape, size or
description--and the price is right." Would you know instantly the
thing you wanted above all else? Maybe you'd better think it over in
advance. The salesman might turn up any day._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic January 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: He was a mood-merchant, a happiness-huckster, peddling
dreams from door to door.]
Mary-Jean closed the cover of the current _Woman's Home Journal_ with a
little sigh and walked into the kitchen to put a light under the stew
she was cooking for supper. One thing about Tom, she thought--Tom was
her husband--there was no problem with leftovers because Tom liked stew.
But there ought to be a law, Mary-Jean thought, against such magazines
as _Woman's Home Journal_. She sighed again, remembering the many
stories she had read to pass the afternoon hours, as if, despite the
careful pattern and routine of the household chores, killing time was
still the most important function of the housewife.
There ought to be a law, all right. The heroine in the first story
Mary-Jean had read went off to Caracas, Venezuela, in search of
petroleum with her husband. The heroine of the second story was an Army
nurse stationed in divided, exotic, intrigue-filled Berlin. The heroine
of the third, Mary-Jean thought dreamily, had spent a memorable summer
with the son of a fabulously wealthy Oriental potentate in Shalimar,
Kashmir.
Mary-Jean went upstairs to take her daily shower, still thinking of
Shalimar, Kashmir. The Vale of a Thousand Delights, it was called. Do I
have one? thought Mary-Jean. Just one genuine delight like the girls in
those stories? Oh, there's Tom: Tom's good natured, but an accountant.
An accountant. She shuddered slightly as she got ready for her shower.
And Tommy, Jr., aged seven. But Tommy, Jr., showed every sign of being
a normal, everyday boy who would grow up into a normal, workaday man
like his father.
* * * * *
Sighing again, Mary-Jean stripped before her mirror for the daily
scrutiny preparatory to showering. I'm only twenty-eight, she thought.
No sags in the wrong places. No excess fat and no gawky bones sticking
out, either. But let's face it, Mary-Jean, you're no raving beauty.
You're just a normal, plain, supposedly well-adjusted housewife who--
Who has been waiting every minute of every day of her life, Mary-Jean
thought with unexpected bitterness, for something thrilling to happen
to her. Only, it never did. There was the dulling, oddly frightening
hand of routine, and nothing else. No Vale of a Thousand Delights,
Mary-Jean thought, and laughed at her own unexpected, childish
pipe-dreams.
She had already stepped into the glass-enclosed shower stall when the
door chimes rang pleasantly through the house. Momentarily she debated
answering or pretending she wasn't home. But even a door-to-door
vacuum cleaner salesman would break the routine with his chatter, she
decided, and slipped into a dressing gown on her way downstairs.
Tom, who had a do-it-yourself workshop in the basement, had installed
an ingenious one-way looking slot in the front door sidelight, and
Mary-Jean used this now to see who her visitor was. She frowned, almost
regretting her impulse to answer the door.
A little old man stood outside, holding an enormous suitcase. He was
obviously a peddler. He was a rotund little man with a cheerful-enough
face, red-cheeked, eyes sparkling and an incongruous little rosebud
pout of a mouth under a long--make that, Mary-Jean observed, an
incredibly long nose. He wore nondescript clothing--except for the hat.
The hat was one of those sporty Tyrolean things which went so well with
the tweeds and the college set. Yet oddly, the natty headpiece did not
seem out of place on the rotund little man's head.
Suddenly the little old man did a curious thing. He smiled at
Mary-Jean. Smiled at her through the one-way glass. It could not be,
she told herself, a coincidence. He was smiling right at her, smiling
eye-to-eye, as it were, although he could not possibly see through the
one-way glass. He removed the Tyrolean hat from a round bald dome of a
head and executed a little bow. Mary-Jean fought down a crazy impulse
to curtsey and instead opened the door with a quick, almost an angry
motion. Her heart was pounding.
"You called, madam?" the little old man demanded in a chirp of a voice.
Chirp was the only word Mary-Jean could think of. The little old man
sounded just like a bird.
"Called?" Mary-Jean said in some confusion as the rotund peddler
brought his enormous suitcase into the living room and unsnapped it on
the sofa before Mary-Jean could stop him. There was an iron-clad, if
unwritten rule, in Mary-Jean's household: nothing unclean ever visited
that sofa. And the little peddler's bag looked as if it had spent time
in every sooty waiting room from here to--Shalimar, Kashmir.
"Not five minutes ago, you called," the peddler chirped. "Here I am.
Now then, what will it be?" As he spoke, the peddler had arranged the
enormous suitcase, now open, like a showcase. For some reason she could
not fathom, Mary-Jean felt an unexpected thrill of fear clutch icily
at her spine.
"You can show me whatever it is you're selling," Mary-Jean heard
herself saying. "But please let's get one thing straight. I didn't
call. I didn't send for you. You must be a cold-canvasser. Aren't you?"
* * * * *
The peddler rubbed plump hands together, shaking his head. "We
Happiness Salesmen never canvass without being called."
"Hap-happiness salesmen?"
"I--" here the peddler returned the Tyrolean hat rakishly to his bald
head--"am a Happiness Salesman."
"But what--exactly what--do you sell? Can I see?" Mary-Jean asked,
edging toward the enormous suitcase.
"Specifically?" chirped the peddler.
"I--I can't seem to see anything in your bag. That's strange."
It certainly was strange, Mary-Jean thought. The suitcase was crowded
with various items, she could sense that. Yet try as she might to see
them, an eerie kind of haze seemed to be hanging over the suitcase. She
could see nothing through it. Absolutely nothing.
"Naturally," said the peddler. "But to answer your question. I sell
people."
"No. I don't want to know whom you sell. I want to know _what_ you sell
to them."
"I told you, madam. I made it quite clear. I sell people."
"People?"
"People."
"Really, if this is some kind of an elaborate sales pitch--"
"May I ask you a question, madam?"
* * * * *
Almost, Mary-Jean was disappointed. It was coming now. After the snappy
beginning to hook her interest, the sales routine was sinking into its
familiar pattern. Are you satisfied with your present vacuum cleaner,
madam? Did you know that I am the new Fill-strip Brushman in your
community? Have you ever thought of owning your own encyclopedia, for
when the children grow up? I have here in this suitcase, madam....
Mary-Jean nodded.
"When you were thinking, some ten minutes ago," said the little old
man, "that it would be so nice if something unexpected, something
thrilling, came into your life--did you have anything specific in mind?"
Mary-Jean's eyes widened and she felt the same icy fear race up
her spine. How had the peddler known that? A shrewd guess because
Mary-Jean looked like the typical late-twenties housewife who would be
thinking such thoughts almost constantly? Or--something else, something
Mary-Jean couldn't possibly explain. Instead of answering, she stood
there open-mouthed as the peddler went on:
"Usually, it isn't anything specific. Usually, it's vague and general.
Although--" here he smiled, revealing yellowed, wide-spaced teeth
which made it look as if the healthy pink old-man's skin had been
superimposed on a rotting skull--"although sometimes the specific
nature of the daydream would startle you. When they're specific,
though, they're atypical. I have had specific requests--granted, of
course, for that is my function--for some mighty peculiar items. Are
you interested? Come, come, are you interested?"
"In any peculiar--peculiar items, you mean?"
"Naturally."
"I'm interested in what's in your suitcase."
The peddler stood aside after making a flourish with his plump hands.
Haze hung over the enormous suitcase like dense smoke.
"But I can't see anything," Mary-Jean protested as her curiosity got
the better of her fright.
"Naturally you can't. Until you make your selection. You want something
unusual, something unexpected to happen. You want to be lifted out of
your humdrum life and given adventure, romance, a fling at the exotic
and the improbable, an--"
"These are the things you sell?" Mary-Jean asked in disbelief.
"To women. Only to women such as yourself."
It was still a sales pitch, Mary-Jean told herself. An elaborate one,
to be sure, but presently the peddler would come down to earth with
the offer of some specific product, perhaps a beauty cream or perfume.
Still, she had to admit that the strange haze over the open suitcase
certainly was effective.
"What do you charge for selling--for selling a fling at the exotic, as
you say?"
The peddler laughed. It was a birdlike sound, a chirping, twittering
laugh. "Oh, no, my dear," he said, rocking with his laughter, "you
don't understand. You've already paid."
"I already paid?"
"All your life, for every day of your life, you have paid. Every day
you accepted the mundane and the humdrum, you have paid. You have paid
a thousand times over."
"You mean I get this--this whatever it is you're selling--free of
charge?"
"Very well. Call it that if you want. But shall we get down to
business? I sell happiness. I sell happiness in the form of personal
adornment."
* * * * *
Here it comes, Mary-Jean told herself. Personal adornment. Cosmetics?
Jewelry? The pitch was coming down to earth.
"Personal adornments," the peddler went on, "to change your life, to
remove it from the sphere of the humdrum, to--"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, come to the point," Mary-Jean snapped
irritably. She did not want to admit that she was disappointed because
the peddler seemed to be coming out of the clouds of her pipe-dreams
and down to earth.
"Personal adornments," the peddler went on, unconcerned, "which each
and every still-young housewife, every victim of the mundane and
prosaic, craves. For example, if I were to ask you what personal
adornment, either general or specific, you craved the most, what would
be your answer?"
Mary-Jean perked up. There still was no beauty cream or hand-balm or
one ounce of imported Parisian perfume. And there was, she had to
admit, an intriguing question. Ordinarily, she found herself thinking,
a girl would need days and days to decide on an answer to a question
like that. But this wasn't ordinarily. This question had come on the
heels of Mary-Jean's monthly reading of _Woman's Home Journal_. And
what, Mary-Jean thought, did the young woman who had gone to Caracas,
Venezuela, and the one who had been an Army nurse in divided Berlin,
and the one who had spent a summer with the potentate's son in
Shalimar, Kashmir--what did they all have in common? What was it they
had which Mary-Jean so craved?
They attracted.
* * * * *
Attracted, she thought. And she did not merely mean attracted men,
although that was part of it. To be sure, she told herself dreamily,
all but forgetting the little peddler for the moment, sex-appeal was a
part of it, perhaps a considerable part. But it was by no means all.
For Mary-Jean did not want to attract men for their sake alone. She
was happily, if mundanely, married. Universal sex-appeal was, thus,
an adjunct to what she wanted, but not the sum-total of it. Mary-Jean
wanted to attract, all right. She wanted to attract like the Caracas
girl or the Army nurse or the Shalimar girl, the girl of the Vale of a
Thousand Delights.