- THE LAUGHTER OF MY FATHER BY CARLOS BULOSAN PDF FULL
- THE LAUGHTER OF MY FATHER BY CARLOS BULOSAN PDF WINDOWS
The spectators covered their mouths with their hands, they were soamazed to see the children so thin and pale. Then he said, I would liketo see the children of complaint, Judge.
THE LAUGHTER OF MY FATHER BY CARLOS BULOSAN PDF WINDOWS
Do you or you do notagree that you have been stealing the spirit of the complaints wealth and food?ĭo you or do you not agree that while the complaints servants cooked and fried fat legs oflamb or young chicken breast you and your family hung outside his windows and inhaled theheavenly spirit of the food?ĭo you or do you not agree that while the complaint and his children grew sickly andtubercular you and your family became strong of limb and fair in complexion?įather got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. The rich mans lawyer jumped up and pointed his finger at Father. We stood in a hurry and then sat down again.Īfter the courtroom preliminaries, the judge looked at the Father. The judge entered the room andsat on a high chair. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. He had grown old and feeble his face was scarred with deep lines. We children sat on a long bench by the wall.Father kept jumping up from his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though we were defendinghimself before an imaginary jury.
Father sat on a chair in the center ofthe courtroom. When the day came for us to appear in court, father brushed his old Army uniform and borrowed apair of shoes from one of my brothers. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the spirit ofhis wealth and food. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk and askedhim what it was about. One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. We could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight thewindows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into ourhouse. He banged down the window and ran through his house, shuttingall the windows.įrom that day on, the windows of our neighbors house were always closed. He looked at my sisters,who had grown fat in laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like the molave, which isthe sturdiest tree in the Philippines. One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. We knew that theywere not sick from the lack of nourishment because they were still always frying something delicious toeat. Wehung outside their windows and listened to them. At night their coughing sounded like the barking of a herd of seals. Then the children startedto cough, one after the other.
The rich man started tocough at night then he coughed day and night. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad.
THE LAUGHTER OF MY FATHER BY CARLOS BULOSAN PDF FULL
Other neighbors who passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us inlaughter.Īs time went on, the rich mans children became thin and anemic, while we grew even more robustand full of life. We were always in the best of spirits and our laughterwas contagious. Sometimes we wrestled withone another in the house before we went to play. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun and bathed inthe cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea. He looked at us one by one,as though he were condemning us. Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted outto us. Thechickens were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchantingodor. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbours servants roasted three chickens. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stoodoutside the windows of the rich mans house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of baconor ham. We hung about and took all thewonderful smells of the food into our beings. Now, this rich mans servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma of thefood was wafted down to us form the windows of the big house. His house was so tall that his children could look in thewindow of our house and watched us played, or slept, or ate, when there was any food in thehouse to eat. While we boys and girls played and sang in the sun, his children stayedinside and kept the windows closed. We had as a next door neighbour a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldomcame out of the house. Fathers farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippinefloods, so several years afterwards we all lived in the town though he preferred living in thecountry. When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on theisland of Luzon.
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