My father was a friend of the owners of the Kalamba estate. He was intimate, too, with the manager in charge of the plantation. Frequently, important visitors came to the plantation house. Then the manager asked my father for whatever he needed. He very often asked for a turkey, and my father gladly gave it to him. The poultry yard at our house was always full of turkeys because my father was a fancier of these fowls.

Rizal at 30

Doctor Blumentritt considered this the best likeness among all the portraits of Rizal

But one season there came some epidemic and almost all the turkeys died. Only a few pairs, which were being kept for breeding, were left. Just at this time the manager one day sent for the customary turkey. Naturally my father had to tell the messenger that he had no turkeys to spare, because the greater part of them had died. This reply made the manager furiously angry. He wound up his abuse by saying, “You will pay for this in the end!” A few days later my father received a note from the manager, saying that he was going to raise the rent on the land which my father occupied. He said the rent would be one-third more than father was then paying.

The reason for this decision was clear. It was because my father had refused to give the manager the turkey. The proof of this was that no other tenant received any such notice.

Father paid this increase on the day set, without a single word of protest, being among the first to pay. But after a few months, there came another note. In it the manager gave notice that the rent would be doubled. This, he said, was because my father was growing rich from the rented land where he had installed machinery for making sugar.

My father could not pay this price. Then he was summoned to appear in court; and finally the alcalde ordered him to leave the land. So he lost his houses and machinery, all because of a turkey.