- #The laughter of my father by carlos bulosan full
- #The laughter of my father by carlos bulosan windows
He banged down the window and ran through his house, shutting all the windows.įrom that day on, the windows of our neighbour’s 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 is the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. We knew that they were not sick from the lack of nourishment because they were still always frying something delicious to eat. We hung outside their windows and listened to them. At night their coughing sounded like the barking of a herd of seals. Then the children started to cough, one after the other. The rich man started to cough 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 full
Other neighbours who passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in laughter.Īs time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anaemic, while we grew even more robust and full of life. We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious.
Sometimes we wrestled with one another in the house before we went to play. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun and bathed in the 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 out to us. The chickens were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting odour. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbour’s servants roasted three chickens. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood outside the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of bacon or ham. We hung about and took all the wonderful smells of the food into our beings. Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma of the food was wafted down to us form the windows of the big house. His house was so tall that his children could look in the window of our house and watched us played, or slept, or ate, when there was any food in the house to eat. While we boys and girls played and sang in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept the windows closed. We had as a next door neighbor a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house.
Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so several years afterwards we all lived in the town though he preferred living in the country. When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on the island of Luzon. The following entries will observe said format NB: Normally, the text goes first before the analysis, but this is a rare exception.
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