Life in an Apartment

Patricia S. Torres

In one of those impulsive decisions that people often make when (1) they don’t get
enough sleep, (2) they don’t have enough money, and (3) they don’t get the right
advice, we rented out our house last year and scanned the classified ads for an apt for
two ideal loc nr chr mkt sch & trans.
I was not the bride of twenty years ago, opening doors and peering up stairways in a
dither of antici
bathroom handy for in Mandaluyong lined with squeezing out as much
not the bride of twenty years ago, opening doors and peering up stairways in a
anticipation--all I wanted was space enough to dump our books in and a
handy for a pair of weary kidneys. I landed on Apartment Row itself, a street
oluyong lined with nothing but apartments, each one planned with an eye to ind
out as much space as possible from lots originally intended for bungalows.
noč in odd heights--of two, two-and-a-half, three, even four stories (but this one
deda penthouse), and the number of doors to an apartment indicated the size of
a landlord's avarice.
Going by this, therefore, mine was not an unusually greedy landlord, but he was
eady enough: four doors, each renting at P140 (I paid an extra P10 for a tiny
carport), packed into a lot the size of a longish swimming pool.
I had forgotten how it was to rent. It was not a simple matter of handing
over the first month's payment and receiving a key to the front door. First,
my landlord interviewed my husband and me in a common alley (a
distinguishing feature of all apartment houses, I was later to find out),
quizzing us closely on such sundries as jobs, income, number of children,
pets, voting preferences and so on; if we gambled and/or drank, went to
nightclubs and kept rowdy friends; if we were, in short, the kind of citizens
who would help him pay off his SSS amortization. He seemed satisfied with
our answers and I expected him to draw a sword and knight us then and
there, but all he did was tell us what he was like.
He didn't like big dogs; he didn't like noisy children (but we were expected to take a
kindly view of his own children's barbaric ways); and he didn't like delayed rentals. He
said nothing about loud fights, and I would find out later why.
We hadn't unloaded our furniture from the van when his wife walked in and, between
wiping the sweat off our faces and trying to make out what she wanted, we signed a
contract that bound us to a three-month stay in the cubicle. We were not to keep
inflammables-a paragraph in fine print gave him the right to knock at our door any time
he pleased to check our store of lighter fluid. We were, at all times, to keep the
apartment in the condition we had found it (we found it rat-and roach-infested), and if
ejected for any reason, we were to surrender the keys without any trouble. A verbal
notice of ejection meant that in fifteen minutes he would have a For Rent sign outside
the sale and would bring in prospective tenants whenever they came, whether 3 P.M. or
3
A.M.
That wasn't all.
The

bowls cracking, faucet

tena

e demanded a deposit equal to a month's rent, besides a month's rent in advance.

ne first, he explained, was to cover such contretemps as bathroom tiles chipping,
toilet
cracking, faucet screws unscrewing and glass windows breaking. The previous It
of our apartment, a rather lively grass widow who had stepped out too often and
ed more male callers than the landlord approved of, had burned a kitchen shelf to a
crisp. He hoped I would be different. Wives these days, he philosophized on the side,
d to be footloose and fancy-free, but perhaps I would make an effort not to
damage
rec

his kitchen shelves?

do except teng
law. The lady of n
orgave him that crack about wives. The man was jobless, you see, with nothing to kcept
tend his four apartments which did not belong to him at all but to his father-in
The lady of his house was deceptively slight-looking but fierce-mannered, cching away in
a many decibeled voice. She tended a market stall.
Screechi

376
Nothing in the contract protected me against the apartment and its sounds. The paper-
thin walls reverberated to the rasp of TV sets all day long, a steady drone of Bentot,
Sylvia, Cachupoy, Uncle Bob, Dancetime, Pilita, Carmen, Tia Dely, and Bat Masterson. If
these had been all, I might have stood it, but the more intimate sounds of the body
processes echoed like gunshots in a canyon.
The nights seemed particularly made for such betrayals. When someone dropped his false teeth
in a cleansing solution, you could hear the telltale click of his dentures as he swished them
around in a glass. A man breaking wind in Apartment C would cause the baby in A to scream as
if stabbed; the chamberpot in D sounded like the roar of waterfalls; and the old woman's moan
in B was like a death rattle.
In another apartment house close by, one family liked to demonstrate its togetherness
with loud and jolly sing-alongs, mostly Ilocano songs and some early Perry Como. The
dog howled, the cat yowled, a pet bird chirped an entire chorus all by itself, Grandfather
kept time with his cane, and the demijohn of basi rolled back and forth across the floor.
On occasions like this, someone who's taking up voice culture is sure to be around.
There's nothing different about our opera hopeful—she likes to measure the distance of
her uvula to the Met with long and anguished trills that set your bile ducts pumping.

This was across the fence, to the right.

Now, across the fence, to the left, were an old sow and her litter; augmented, before my
three months were up, by an old bitch and her litter. For the sow, the maids in the
household rose at 4 A.M. and began chopping banana stalk, standard pig fare, stirring
this into a cauldron full of yesterday's table scraps. It made for a strong odor at 4 A.M.
For the bitch, which yelped and scratched in the night, the mistress roused herself long
enough to yell something ear-splitting at the animal.
One wall away lived a young bride and her groom. Both had a habit of dropping
their shoes heavily on the floor at 5 in the morning. It's just possible they slept
with their shoes on—I don't know-but my husband, who likes to recall the
memories of a durable and happy marriage, often said that not all the couple's
noises were made by their shoes. When the newlyweds moved in with their
belongings, each chair and cushion, so heartachingly new, their wedding gifts still
wrapped in gay paper bright like their hopes, the entire alley sighed collectively.
She was pretty and sweet-he was tall and dashing. Probably we looked at them through
our own private memories gilded with nostalgia, but when they had trouble fitting their
large bed into the small bedroom upstairs, the male population in all four apartments
consulted seriously with one another one noon in the alley. Someone suggested a pulley,
hitching up the double mattress and swinging it through an open second floor window.
Another said, had they considered removing the banister of the staircase? My husband
said, why not exchange it for two singles, at which the bride looked wide-eyed, hurt, and
smitten, as if someone had suggested divorce so early. 1 think they finally got it up, and
in, because we began to hear those shoes thumping on the floor at 5A.M., but by then I
did not think the bride so sweet and pretty. She had a voice that was flat and wet and
common, especially when she complained about the way the toilet flushed, and he was
slightly bowledgged and a mite too meek: in two weeks he was cooking breakfast and
putting out the garbage while she lingered in bed, doing her toenails.
One night, past twelve, down in the tiny living room, I was finishing a book when I heard
a timid rap on my door. Apartments are so built that you can't tell if the knock is on your
door or the next one's. I opened our door and found no one, but at C, pretty
Mrs. Y stood clul particularly dirty m someone, the landi. familia of the sing-alo evening the alley
had away.
Meny a thin night dress about her, her hair in curlers. Mine is a dirty mind and so I thought that
she had probably sneaked out to meet
landlord perhaps-wherever did he get the guts, I wondered-or the pater he sing-alongs next to
us, or the master of the sow and the bitch. Earlier that alley had heard some loud arguing going
on in C, but the voices had died
It had to do with money.
Utang mo! cried a man defensive. A door slamy here was Mrs. Y sh she said. I asked if
I cried a man, bayaran mo! Then followed Mrs. Y's voice, angry and
A door slammed, the building shook to its rafters, and afterward a sob. Now *Mrs. Y
shivering in the cold air. I asked if she had forgotten her key. No, no,
I asked if she wanted me to pound on the wall. No, no, she said. When we he
said, the darkness helping her embarrassment along, he locks me out.
a good look at Mr. Y when he passed by the next day. Such an unprepossesing
che stooped, he wore horn-rimmed glasses, he carried an umbrella to the bus
orain or shine, and when he paid for anything, a paper or a shoe shine, he pulled
out change purse and counted his money out fussily, rather like my old
unmarried aunt.
When it was my landlord's turn to be locked out, I felt like cheering, shooting off
rockets, or getting drunk. He was a genuine peeve, coming around every so
often to count the number of nails I had driven into his walls and making sure I
used the proper detergent for his tiles. His own turn came after a protracted
quarrel with his wife that lasted for several hours about an overdrawn bank
account. Since she was employed and he wasn't, she banked and he withdrew. It
seemed he had drawn more than she allowed and she accused him now of
throwing money around that he didn't help to earn. He said he helped to earn it
too; why, he kept her content-in the night, in the dialect, in the state he was in,
the statement took on several shades of vulgarity. The furniture crashed, the
children wept, the servants rushed-pale-faced—into the alley. Everyone
pretended nothing much was happening, but my gnomish landlord was putting up
a bitter fight to recoup lost dignity, for how now would he look before his tenants
when he sallied forth to count the bathroom tiles and measure the scratches on
the floors if his wife bested him? The resistance proved to be more real than
token. .
"I'll hit you!” he said, and did. We heard the thump of a body against a wall. "I'll
kill you!” he said, and very nearly did, for clear above the treetops and the TV
antennae rose the full-bodied scream of his wife. It was obvious he didn't give a
hoot about being stricken off a joint bank account. Then he marched off, with my
bloodied and bruised landlady vowing vengeance.
She did it with a set of keys.
She locked the main gate and the side gate. She locked the front door. She locked the windows.
I suppose he could have swung himself, Tarzan-fashion, up the porch and tried the French
windows there but she had locked those too. Then she must have distributed two dozen
sleeping pills to the entire household, for when he came and banged away, no one woke up.
When I stepped out for bread the following morning, I found him squeezed between the garbage
and the gate, sleeping fitfully. Apartments also attract vendors, salesmen and oddballs.
The woman who brings a basket of wilted vegetables and sick-looking meat cuts,
to save the Missus a trip to market, is actually a blessing, if only she'd learn to
knock at the night time. She comes, however, just when you're ready to take a
bath or you're upstairs. all-dressed, tracking down some underclothes. The
junkman is there every Wednesday for your empty sauce and beer bottles, your
reos, TV sets, ng from dapper
dashers, complete
378 old newspapers, magazines and paper bags. Salesmen plague you with stereos, TV
refrigerators, stoves, air conditioners, floor polishers, their manner ranging from da to desperate,
their clothes from casual to shabby.
The dapper ones, who are difficult to get rid of, dress like haberdashers, como with tie
pin, cuff links, frat pin, even a cummerbund (which is also, if you look in sometimes
called a cholera belt). They mesmerize you with their sensual voic dismissing the down
payment and the monthly installments of whatever you've made the mistake of seeming
to be interested in, as some trifle. What Is Important Is Th They've Met You, at last! after
miles and miles of apartment alleys. They convey this with tender smiles, loving looks
and delicate gestures. The real pros dilate their nostrils and roll their eyes, breathing
passionately and-once when I began to wonder how any woman could squeeze in
amour between a pile of dirty clothes and a stew, what with the added risk of a husband
storming in promptly at noon and demanding a brisk alcohol rub, the sheik across any
coffee table leaned forward intimately and said I reminded him (heavy pause) of a
woman in his past. Oh? I said archly. My mother, he said, with a catch in his throat. I
asked, as sweetly as I could manage, And what did you sell her?
These survey houses should get around to studying the relation between
increased appliance sales in a given neighborhood and the number of agreeable
seductions.
Those who look like college students are, indeed, college students. They're red-eyed,
pale and shaky, and touchingly eager to make a sale. They'll offer to do anything, even
wash your floor, if you'd only look at their can openers and their plastic basins. Once let
them tell you the story of their lives and you'll find yourself with more can openers than
you've got cans for.
If it isn't appliances or can openers, it's insurance they sell, books, subscriptions,
and-believe it or not-salvation. Heaven's peddlers, however, are, in looks, as far
removed from angels as possible. They surface when there's a fiesta anywhere
within a radius of 50 miles. They belong to the same guild that solicits
contributions for an anonymous deceased to be mourned at a wake for the
umpteenth time. They also service policemen too shy to do their own tong
collection.
One afternoon one of them came to the door and rapped smartly, and when I
looked out from a second floor window all I could see was a leather jacket and
something difficult to make out which was big, heavy and wrapped in a
newspaper, cradled in the crook of his elbow. I wondered if my landlord had
finally strangled his wife, and there downstairs perhaps was a police officer, with
warrant, and a pair of handcuffs (in fashionable, silver finish), carrying a piece of
torso it was to be my painful duty to identify
Our exchange went thus:
“Katoliko ka ba?” (It did not endear me to him that he had to push his head back
and look up to talk to me.)
Bakit?” "Tinatanong ko lang kung Katoliko ka,” he pressed belligerently. (I had
just washed my hair and the dripping strands hung right over him.) “O ano? Kung
Katoliko ka, bumaba ka!" "Bakit nga?”
"Aba, anak ng pu.., wala ka bang relihiyon? O tingnan mo, binabara mo na
pati ang Diyos.”
When I had sufficiently recovered from his natural but abrupt charm, I found out
he had God in his arms, more accurately a lesser deity, some saint whose gentle
intercession would protect me from warts, cancer, and the diminution of sexual
energy, if I came
down, kissed its foot and gave him some money.
I waved him away. “Hindi ka ba natatakot maimpiyerno?" "Bahala na kung
mabarbecue!"
Stratagems they didn't lack. One foot through the door, they said: "I'm thinking of
your children's future, Madam” (educational insurance). Or ‘Missis, why don't you
take good care of your eyes?" (color film for the TV set). “Twenty centavos a day,
per child, the price of a coke" (Harvard Classics or one of the encyclopaedias).
“Surprise your husband tonight!" (hair spray, ten months' supply). "Something for
your old age?" (jewelry, on installment).
Besides putting up with persistent salesmen and other people's marital troubles I contended
with impractical closets that were so high and só narrow, the landlord must have had stilts in
mind when he built them. Outside, my wash mysteriously disappeard off a common line. I lost
count of how many handkerchiefs, undershirts, slips and towels I missed in three months. It did
not make me feel any better to know that some of my underwear belonged to Mrs. Y who must
have been, in an unwitting lend-lease arrangement, wearing some of my own.
Apartments invariably mold a kind of person quite hard of hearing and more than a trifle
uncaring of the rights of others. His dwelling forces him to be that way. Stifling, airless,
shockingly public, the architecture of the popular three-by-six apartment, although
stylized with the latest in doorknobs and light switches--my landlord's apartment had a
chandelier-is still oppressive to all that is human in one. The soul must have room to
move in, where it is quiet and dark and private, where neighbors don't intrude with their
sneezes and their grunts, where walls protect and not reveal. It isn't a stray theory that
children who grow up in apartments must suffer some twisting, eventually acquiring
much of their elders' malicious curiosity. Thrown too closely together, separated only by
a thin plaster of cement, apartment dwellers pry, listen, peep, keep track of, speculate,
with more than subliminal interest.
I suppose with a sturdy wall between us, a breadth of yard and some trees, the quirks of Mr. Y
wouldn't have been too horrible nor my landlord seem too much of a runt. The bride's overdone
languor next door would not annoy me and her way with shoes at dawn would have been
charming. When I finally moved out, it was like the day we moved in-a line of slack-jawed
houseboys and maids (and unwashed babies) watching intently while the men trooped by with
our belongings.
My landlord nervously counted the keys. For the last time and asked repeatedly if I had settled
my light and water bills. Yes, yes, I said, I was leaving nothing behind except the roaches that
belonged to him.
Questions:
1. What were the author's reasons for moving into an apartment? 2. List the various sounds heard
in an apartment. 3. How did the alley react to the newly married couple? 4. Discuss the most
humorous scene in the selection. 5. What is the main intention of the author? 6. List any details
which you think should have been added to this selection 7. Evaluate the entire selection.