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 anticipation
--all I wanted was space enough to dump our books in and a bathroom handy for a pair of weary kidneys. I
landed on Apartment Row itself, a street Mandaluyong lined with nothing but apartments, each one planned
with an eye to squeezing out as much as space as possible from lots originally intended for bungalows.
They rose in odd heights--of two, two-and-a-half, three, even four stories (but this one included a
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 greedy 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. He demanded a deposit equal to a month's rent, besides a month's rent in
advance. The 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 received 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, tended to be footloose and fancy-free, but perhaps I would make an effort not to damage his
kitchen shelves?
I forgave him that crack about wives. The man was jobless, you see, with nothing to do except tend his four
apartments which did not belong to him at all but to his father-in-law
The lady of his house was deceptively slight-looking but fierce-mannered, screeching away in a many
decibeled voice. She tended a market stall.
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 clutching a thin night dress about her, her hair in curlers. Mine is a particularly dirty mind
and so I thought that she had probably sneaked out to meet someone, the landlord perhaps-wherever did he
get the guts, I wondered-or the pater familia of the sing-alongs next to us, or the master of the sow and the
bitch. Earlier that evening, the alley had heard some loud arguing going on in C, but the voices had died
away.
It had to do with money.
Utang mo! cried a man bayaran mo! defensive. Then followed Mrs. Y's voice, angry and defensive. 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.
I took a good look at Mr. Y when he passed by the next day. Such an unprepossessing fellow, he stooped,
he wore horn-rimmed glasses, he carried an umbrella to the bus stop rain 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, half-dressed, tracking down some underclothes.
The junkman is there every Wednesday for your empty sauce and beer bottles, your 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, complete 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 voice 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 That 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
encyclopedias). “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 so narrow, the landlord must have had stilts in mind when he built them.
Outside, my wash mysteriously disappeared 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.