The Quarrel.pptx
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Transcript of The Quarrel.pptx
“Andres Cristobal Cruz”
Andres Cristobal Cruz was born in Dagupan City, Pangasinan. He
holds a degree in Bachelor of Arts major in English at the University of
the Philippines. He joined the staff of Liwayway Publishing after his
graduation. H was chosen one of the ten outstanding young men
(TOYU) for his contribution to Philippine Literature. He received the
Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1964 for his short stories. His
selection “The Quarrel” won first prize in 1952-53, Carlos Palanca
Memorial Awards for Literature.
He portrayed the character of his wife Nina, as a good housewife,
and a fast housekeeper. However, as good as she was, she often got
into conflict with their landlady because of her inhuman attitude toward
the couple.
With half-shut eyes he tried in his mind, to make out other things of
the objects in the still dim room. His shirt, for instance, hanging from a nail
of the post between the bed and small altar of the Sagrada Familia,
appeared, against the unmoving faint light of the oil wick, like a man’s
severed body, armless in the dark, headless against the blackwood, and
like the cellutex curtain drawn to side against the wall seemed cold and
mute, as if driven there by the whole night’s darkness which would soon
leave, allowing light outside to comment, through the blind eyes of their
only window where sashpanes were missing, here and there upon the
narrow room, defining in straight rays the reality of the things he had made
out –– the still golden finger that was the oil lamp-wick which now looked
more like a tiny slit of light, or a small bright leaf of light in the huge wall of
darkness, the incomplete form of a man that was his shirt where it should
not be, had it been noticed by Nina, on the nail –– all of these the outside
light would slowly reintegrate into what they really were.
He heard the first trip dragging itself in the distance, leaving three tortured
shrill whistle blasts and the irregular rumbling of iron-wheels to echo in whose
consciousness lay listening, echo less and less until what had been one
should became only a vague thought, as it was now with him as he turned on
his side, getting under the mosquito net to lie beside Nina, his wife. She had
her back to him; he had shaken her when she shriek in the nightmare, and
since then he had not slept again. He pulled her lovingly by the shoulder, his
hand passing over her breast as she turned, still asleep. Had the child lived,
that was six months, seven? He tried to remember, had it lived, she would be
cradling it now. She moaned, called: Ismael, Nina, he whispered; she yawned
after a while, meeting him under the tightening sheet as they pressed the
coldness. What time is it? He heard her say. It’s very cold, she said
shivering against him. She was awake now; they lay on their backs. Above
them, on the second floor, Mrs. Smith, their landlady was up, her cane, she
had rheumatism, tapping in long intervals. There was the rent to pay.
“I’ll ask her to wait,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “When did she tell
you?”
“Last night,” she said turning once more to him, “she’s very mean, the hag.”
Her small laughter tickled his neck. She had little harmless curse worse,
hag one of them.
“She’s not very old, nor very ugly,” he said, “forty? Forty-five?”
“I wonder if her husband still remember her,” she said in a little sarcastic
voice, “she wants to be Missis Smith’ the wife of an American…”
“Was he a sergeant?” Until now he was not sure.
“A captain, so she told me,” she said, “how she could talk about him! You
know, nothing-better-than-American-way talk,” she said “he’s now a
civilian in business-s what’s that for?” she asked after he had kissed her on
the mouth.
“Good morning,” he said turning on the other side and reaching out a hand
for the radiophone on the head table by the bed. The radio was silent for a
while, then a soft tune came out. Chopin. It was Early Morning Classic
time. It was the kind of music they liked. He turned back to her. She put
her head on his arms and snuggled close…
“I’m asking up Wordsworth today,” he said. The image of the classroom
appeared in his mind, there were the young faces before him.
“Do you still like him?” she asked. “In college she was one of your favorites.”
“I still do,” he said, Wordsworth and the rest, and the new ones.”
“Your class understands?”
“A little, and now and then,” he said. He had been having a hard time with the
class.
“Pure water gone stale. And tasteless, etcetera,” she said in a mock lecturing
voice, “Sir, you have me for an anxious student.” She laughed softly,
teasingly.
He pulled her to him. “We’re still young,” he said. He remembered the scene
in the City Hall. That was after he got the high school job right after
graduation. But she was not able to finish her course. There was a child
she was going to have and her parents, quite well-to-do and proper about
things in the determined ways of the old, had found out too soon. “Are you
sorry, Nina?”
“About what?”.
“Us, the child, your parents,” he said. He had asked the same thing a long
time ago. He felt like he wanted to really be sure, really sure.
“We have nothing to be sorry about,” she said and her lips on his confirmed
deeply for him her words. He embraced her tightly.
“Get up, get up,” she said after a long while, playfully trying to push him off
the bed. “We can’t live on it, alone.” She was in her joking mood, and he
felt glad about it, sometimes he wondered if she had completely
forgotten about the child. She was such a brave little woman…
Sunlight fell slicing through the narrow passages between the houses on the
other side of the estero; it was warm on his face as he stood gurgling
water inside the roofless makeshift bathroom that jutted over the sloping
edge of the estero. Opening his mouth as his head bent the gurgled
water splashed on the thick board flooring, the smell of dead animal rose
from under –– it was bloated pig with a mass of active worms on its pale
yellow and blue belly –– he looked around instinctively for something to
dislodge it out with the post of the bathroom and mossy concrete edge.
There was nothing handy for the purpose. He washed his face, he seldom took
his bath here; seeing the black water moving under him he thought of the
white-tiled bathroom in the school, and the shower, of the swimming pools
and Nina went to Sunday mornings, the beach in the province; Nina and his
mother preparing the picnic food while he and his kid brothers built sand
castles while Judge, his father, stood nearby taking the sea wind… His face
tightened, the dead pig under, worm and smell, assailed his nostrils; not
this, he said to himself, somebody outside the door coughed; Not this! He
flushed the water in the small coffee can he had dipped in gasoline drum
that was half-filled ; the wall, a rusty sheet of corrugated iron dripped with
the wash of water carrying the urine and rust. Another cough outside the
door.
“Will they give up, Maestro?” It was Mang Jose, the old carpenter. He was
standing out on the narrow lot between the back of the small four-door
accesoria and the common bathroom.
“I don’t know,” he said opening the door wider and stepping out. It’s up to the
President, I guess.”
“It’s up to us, Maestro,” Mang Jose said. “What I mean to say is it is really up to us,
isn’t it Maestro?”. In the sunlight, the carpenter’s face appeared older, even pained
where the wrinkles stood out. He always had something to say something: Huks,
politics, the ‘merkanos, the fellowmen soldiers fighting in the far-away island. The
old man was an ispiritista, Rizal, Quezon, Saint Peter, he had talked to them, and
they all wanted peace, so Mang Jose told him. “Peace is what God wants,” the old
man said pulling the door of the bathroom after him, “peace!” He must have seen
the bloated pig. “The devil of a pig!” he heard the old man saying aloud. From the
row of kitchens to each of the ground rooms of the accesoria, smoke floated in
different shapes.
He stood out in the sunlight, wiping his face with a towel, in his mind reciting “The
world is too much”– he wondered if the class understand the poem. But that is
something he must see about it. A part of his job. He could hear the jeeps warming
up on the small street in front of the accesoria. As usual Mrs. Smith was barking
out orders to the men who were to take out her jeeps for the routes, “Sooner or
later,” he recited aloud, “but stopped after we lay waste our powers.” Nina had
appeared by the narrow backdoor, a coconut midrib broom in her hand fighting
the hard earth with a regular swishing noise. Mrs. Smith’s passenger jeeps roared.
“A phantom of delight,” he teased her loudly. She looked up from her sweeping and
made a funny face. He walked up to her and giving her a pat on the cheek
went up to their room asking, “What’s breakfast?” on the way.
“As-you-like-it eggs,” she said to him. He could hear her broom swishing on
the ground towards the backyard. Inside the bedroom claimed from the
kitchen-dining space by the cellutex curtain printed with blue birds in
gay flight he listened to the music, turned the volume knob, and the rich
voice of a tenor poured out louder song. Intermezzo. He took up the
clean shirt lying on the already made-up bed. His shirt on the nail was no
longer there. He smiled. Nina was such a fast housekeeper. She went
about her chores with what he sometimes thought of as her punitive fury
against disorder of any kind. She had never lost her next-to-Godliness
mind she was brought up in. Everywhere in their room the mark of her
hands was in the a chair was set, a pillow cased and smoothed out
invitingly again, his lesson plan notebook and the books neatly placed
on the small study table; she was humming in the kitchen; the shell of
an egg distinctly broke on the edge of a frying pan… and then another. It
was going to be as-you-like-it for them. He looked out of the window. He
caught sight of a hand quickly disappearing on the upper edge of the
bathroom wall of the house on the other side of the estero, there was the splash. On the
scummy water a big ball of newspaper moved slowly, unfolding as it followed on the
tide of procession of bits of driftwood and a mass of house manure from the nearby
stables. A daily occurrence. Now, they seemed used to it. They could even tell, if
they liked, what had been dropped or what had been thrown. He had felt sorry the
first days they started living in this almost a slum place, but then, there was Nina. He
put on his shirt.
“We need a little,” Nina had said, “let us not feel sorry about what we must face.” That
face was also her, aside from the Nina that was his young wife with the large dark
eyes, a dimple-slit on one cheek, long hair, lips that were full of flesh as they were
with the soul of words.
You decided your life, Nina’s mother had said that evening when they found out about
the baby she was going to have, live it then with him…And here ther were in a
rented room she made with her heart and hands: into a room distinct from the
others in the same accesoria, distinct from the just-so-there-are-walls-floor-to-lie-on
others: a radiophono they bought after the child died, the books, the few but good
clothes –– and there was her extracurricular job of teaching the kids in the accesoria,
they came to her for extra lessons (I’m an educational system, she would tell him
when he felt jealous of her attention to the kids), the wives who came now and
then to borrow money and utensils. With the small salary he had, Nina
managed commendably to make ends of their wants and means just
meet. Except for the times, and they were so few and negligible, when
he sent necessary amounts to his kid brothers, or when their friends
didn’t live up to their promise to pay punctually – but they could always
wait and make adjustments. And what a budget commissioner Nina
could be at such times. She would always skimp; or haggle to the
amused despair of the market vendors. Thanks to my charm! She would
say and wink across their small round dining table, or you won’t be
eating that. He tucked his shirt, zippered himself there, hearing Strauss?
It must be Strauss, he guessed, gay, light, nymphy almost. There! He
said looking at himself on the large round mirror of the dresser. From the
kitchen she called.“Coming,” he answered. He set the phono put several records. Breakfast
music. That was what the modern science can do. The birds on the curtain seemed to fly as a straywind flapped across and made little vertical waves. The table was set just for two, the as-you-like-it still smelled with the flavor of her cooking. He instantly felt hungry. Behind him she was patting in a bulge on his shirt. There! She said pushing him towards the chair.
“We thanked thee…” Nina’s voice saying the grace struck him as oddly beautiful each
morning. They made the sign of the cross.
“you had a nightmare,” he said smiling as she poured him coffee in his cup. “Must be
something you ate last night.”
“That’s superstition,” she answered reproaching with a distorted smile. She had
pigtailed her hair and seeing her thus – the coffee was hot – he put down the cup,
looked at her. There was a serves-you-right look in her eyes. She laughed softly.
“Don’t forget to tell Missis Smith about the money,” she said, “it was due
yesterday, you know.” Behind the curtain another record dropped.
“My pretty phantom of delight,” he said. He mashed the egg with the fried rice. The
catsup was taking time to flow, he shook the bottle harder.
The jeeps had gone, and as he ate he could hear the voices of the other tenants.
“Don’t be a bother!” that was Aling Pepang to her youngest child with the neck
goiter and who was wailing. From the bathroom came the pouring of water for the
clothes wash. Nina was half listening to the music while eating. An instant picture
of her appeared in his thought. She was sweating as she worked without any
expression in her face… Until she tapped his plate with a spoon he did not have an
awareness of himself before the table. “What’s wrong?” Nina’s voice sounded
frantic. He
had opened his eyes. “Nothing,” he said. The dimple appeared on her cheek, her
smile seemed to fight what he suddenly thought of. It was foolish thought.
About getting Nina to live with his parents in the province. She would surely say
No again. Mrs. Smith was on the sidewalk outside talking loudly to somebody.
Gossiping, talking of how much she spent for marketing… Her voice came
nearer and nearer in the narrow passage between the ground rooms. Nina
looked at him. She was going to say something when, without knocking, Mrs.
Smith came in by the backdoor, her cane tapping against the polished rungs of
the low stairs.
“Come in,” Nina said, “have breakfast Missis.”
“I came for the rent, it’s due today.” The landlady’s voice was cutting.
“We would like to give it now,” Nina said with a humbly apologizing tone.
“Yes, Missis,” he said, “my friend forgot to pay me yesterday, and I just sent money
to the province.”
“I’ve no business with your friend,” the landlady said putting a fist to her large ugly
hip and keeping her head cocked.
“The school I’m teaching in is private, a small school, it so happened they couldn’t
pay the full salaries,” he said. That was the truth.
“I have only one say, today’s today, I need the money!” the rise of the
landldy’s voice shook him unguardedly, the cane kept tapping the floor
with authority.
Under the table he stepped on Nina’s foot. “But tomorrow or next day I can
give it,” he said trying to suppress an inexplicable mass of sudden
hatred that rose in him, even as his legs shook for a moment beneath
the table; he gripped the spoon and fork until his fists felt about to
bursts, hearing: “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” and other words, words that
smashed the music turning behind the curtain of birds, falling past his
ears, struck obscenely at the plates, the coffee cups, and amidst them
he caught a glimpse of Nina’s face, her mouth open as if she had just
been slapped, her eyes struck wide with a wordless astonishment;
“Tomorrow! He says! Tomorrow!” he heard while he felt in his breast the
tortured beatings of many wings in the hardening air of disgust and hate
that welled and fell with words that were neither his nor Nina’s. “How
long? How long?” his mind cried wanting to laugh and at the same time
shout, just shout: “STOP IT!” he only heard words, he was no longer
listening. Nina was struggling to free her foot. And there was the gasp.
Now he was only aware of holding Nina back, the two of them pushing each
other
away, bodily he tried to get her safely behind the curtain of birds. “Too
much! Too much!” Nina was shouting too: words clashed with words,
there was long ripping sound of something, and he found himself
brushing away something that felt like a net on him or Nina.
“What good people you are! How clean! What saints!” the words came clear
and insulting in his ears.
“You’re envious, you hag! Leech! LEECH!” and there was Nina faying him;
now he was pulling her, now pushing her, the room seemed to be
turning and he saw now and then the faces of anonymous people that
appeared from nowhere, children, women, men, in the light and shadows
of the walls and window then the door, here a sudden piece of nearby
roofs and sky, hearing words, there the sudden fragment of dimming
faces, colorless sky, dark, light, eyes that swept around; himself and
Nina flashing off and on in the round mirror. “Nina! Nina!” He shouted,
shaking her as if in a terrible nightmare, pushing and pulling, holding her
in his frantic arms, noise and music scratched the air, rasped through
him, other hands swiftly appeared and disappeared in the turning room.
“You’re envious, you hag!
Who comes to our kitchen and looks at our food! You give me this! Give me that!
You! You think you’re the richest around! Leech! Let me go! Let me go! Ismael!
Let me!” And when he was pulling Nina back, shouting: “Enough! Enough!” he
saw Mang Jose holding Mrs. Smith back, her black cane cutting the air up and
down as if she were a mad woman conducting noise; “Maestro! Missis! Nina,
child!” His fingers reached wildly behind Nina, he twisted a knob and the music
blared, hearing at the same instant Mrs. Smith’s: “Ha! Yes! Yes! Turn it loud!
Turn it loud! I’ll shout! Shout! Everybody will hear!” Voices screeched and
shrieked with his own. He had half-dragged and pushed Nina down on the bed
when he felt something strike his shoulder with a sharp pain, and the music
stopped dead while something clattered down the floor. “Leech! Leech!” Nina
kept on shouting. Suddenly his palm stung on something soft. “Nina!” and then
he was bursting his lungs. “Get out!” LEECH! GET OUT! Get out! Leech!”
He closed the window and the door, then sat down tired and weak on the edge of
the bed, passing the small open bottle of ammonia spirit over Nina’s quivering
nostrils as her head rolled from side to side; she was sobbing and tears and the
sliver of saliva from her mouth mixed where she rubbed her face with agony on
the pillow. “Nina,” he called, “Nina.”
Shivers crept and passed under her skin as if the closed room chilled him. He looked at the
floor that was scratched and ugly with the pervading presence of crazy and formless
streaks of dust and the dark smudges of feet. Through the spaces of the window light
fell carrying a broad band of thin whirling smoke, a page on the volume of Wordsworth
lying open on the floor stood upright and rigid as if an invisible hand were turning it,
and then a page fell gray and looking blank, on the headtable by the bed the last
record on the phono was broken, a black incomplete disc that carried a fragment of
music, he ranged hid eyes around the room, feeling like a confused survivor of a
nightmare that had racked his body; his eyes fell on the black cane that was leaning
against the table, its shook coiled oddly on the neck of the phono arm, he
disinterestedly gave it a short kick on its lower end and it fell clattering for a moment
down the floor, he smirked bitterly at its rattling sound. Across the floor the curtain lay
like a tent crushed by the stampede of beasts; he saw the birds only as a disordered
mass of dark dots on white, a broken cup shone dully under the table, from its gaping
shattered mouth was a dark pool.
He tightly shut his eyes for a moment, passing a cold palm breaking with sweat heavily
across on his face, shaking vigorously his head because he wanted to uproot the
images that struck out in his mind; but they were there: the torn, shattered, dirtied,
smashed, and cluttered objects that were once whole and neat within their room’s
privacy and order; the cries, the screaming, yelling, shouting, raging words that now
seemed remote and vague under the splashing of water of kids bathing outside
and the loud regular hammering of Mang Jose in the other room across the dim
narrow passage. The floor was cold; he picked up the volume of poetry that he had
thrown in fury blindly at the landlady, closed it between his hands and with it thrust
open the window that almost slapped back on hinges that momentarily screamed
in his hearing, the sudden light outside binding him with its harsh brightness.
It was not the rent to be paid that he could think about. The quarrel and the noise
seemed to be intruding in the room. He remembered Mang Jose pulling away Mrs.
Smith. He saw himself shouting. He had slapped Nina to quiet her, slapped her out
of practical necessity. Had he struck the landlady? Leech, he thought, the dark
whitish scabs on the surface of the ester moved slowly in the shadow of the house
on the other side, then in the bright light, then another shadow blackened them
before his eyes, a dead large trunk was drifting with bits of papers and leaves
clinging on its emerged skeletal twigs. He looked back at Nina lying on the
crumpled bed. He had never thought she could be that violent and strong.
“Maestro,” somebody called behind him. It was Mang Jose washing his hands on
the tap outside the bathroom. The old carpenter was approaching him walking
under the shade of the eaves.
“Maestro, you can understand more, you know more,” the old man said.
He nodded, smiling bitterly to himself, “It’s useless,” he said, “it’s almost
noon, I’m late.”
Mang Jose went into the bathroom. “I’ve taken out the dead pig.” He heard
the old man saying aloud.
“Ismael, Ismael.”
He sat again on the edge of the bed. He patted her cheeks where her tears
had dried. He helped her up off the bed. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded, she swayed a little against him, and after a while she
straightened herself back. She walked away and picked up the curtain,
spreading it as far as her hands could reach to the sides. His feet
touched the black cane. He stooped and picked up the cane; it broke
easily on his knees. “You’ll be late, Ismael,” he heard Nina saying, “I’ll
pick up things.” He threw the broken pieces far out of the window. The
pieces jabbed into the water of the estero. They made up of the surface
and drifted with the ebb. Behind him, he was aware of Nina putting
things in order. It was going to take a long time to clean up things again.
Before they could go out and take a long walk.
He knew that like him she was thinking of a new place. “I’ll help,” he said
touching her hand that held one end of the curtain. He took the other
end and pulled it across the room.
He saw fingering the torn edges of the rip that made an empty between
them. He heard the sharp, clear sounds of many things outside. “We
don’t need it anymore,” he said holding off the limp curtain from him.
She was clearing her nose through the pinch of her fingers.
THE END……
“The Quarrel”
By: Andres Cristobal Cruz
Settings: Accesoria
Characters:
Ismael and Nina (couple) – protagonists
Mrs. Smith (landlady) – antagonist
Mang. Jose- Carpenter
Plot:
Ismael fixing object in their room and in the midnight together with his wife they
talk to each other about Mrs. Smith and some other things. In the morning the
landlady went to the house of the couple to collect their payment for the
rent,when Ismael told Mrs. Smith that the money was borrow by his friend, the
landlady began o shout and Nina also shouting and began to hysterical. When
Mang Jose help the couple to let Mrs. Smith out, Nina fixed all the thing that was
damage
Theme:
Pay Due On Time
Point Of View:
Conflict:
It was in the morning then when Ismael and Nina were having
their breakfast. And Mrs. Smith, without knocking, came in by the
backdoor, to get for the rental payment. The couple apologized for they
have nothing to give, because the money which was supposed to be the
payment was sent to the province.