“Thank her for me, and invite her to be seated.”
The Khun Ying took a seat upon one of the low sofas, bringing her feet up and behind her. One of her maids crawled to her on elbows and knees with a gold tray on which were several small gold containers. With deliberation she chose a piece of areca nut, a siri leaf, a tiny pinch of tobacco; waxed the inside of her lip carefully, put the lime on the siri leaf, and then the whole into her mouth. It was not until this cud was thoroughly resolved into a single red mass that she spoke again. “Are you comfortable here?” she asked through the duenna.
“Please tell her that I’m quite comfortable and also that I’m grateful to her for these pleasant apartments and the good meals her servants have been bringing me and my son.”
The Khun Ying looked gratified at the praise of her meals. “How many children have you, Mem?” she asked.
“I have two, a girl and a boy. The girl is on her way to England to school.”
The Khun Ying’s expressive face showed sympathy. “Ah, that is hard, that is hard indeed.”
“How many children does the Khun Ying have?” asked Anna in her turn.
“My lord is childless,” she replied.
And the duenna whispered an explanation: “She is my lord’s second wife. He put away his first wife because he believed that her child was not his. And he named the boy, when he was born, ‘It is not so.’ But the good Khun Ying brought this son back and raised him here. She changed his name to ‘My lord endures.’ And now he is an important man and his father’s assistant. But he is my lord’s only son.” She shook her head at this calamity, obviously the result of some terrible sin in a former life.
“Offer her some gift, Mem,” the duenna prompted.
Anna selected from a basket an excellent little pair of scissors of which she was fond. “Will Lady Phan accept this small gift as a token of my appreciation of her generous hospitality?”
Lady Phan was enchanted with the gift, turning it over and over in her palm. One handle was delicately fashioned like a stork.
“Some day soon you must come and see my garden,” she said. “Of flowers I have many, and they take the place of the children I do not have.”
“I have noticed the lovely flowers in vases in every room in the palace.”
The Khun Ying smiled again, pleased. “And tonight we are having theatricals,” she said. “If the Lady Leonowens cares to attend I shall send a slave to fetch her.”
Anna bowed her acceptance, hardly knowing what else to do.
“It will be the Ramayana, the section where Rama comes for Sita.”
“Ah, then I am more than delighted, for I have often seen the Ramayana in India and have grown to understand and admire it.”
And now that her business was over the Khun Ying and her retinue retired to go on with the business of the palace, which kept her occupied from dawn to dark.
It was after eight o’clock and Louis was in bed and asleep with Beebe sitting beside him, when the slaves came to conduct Anna through a series of long corridors to the saloon in which the drama was taking place. The slaves indicated a low bench where she seated herself in a vast room dimly lighted, around the edges of which shadows played. Candelabra on the remote ceiling shed a soft illumination like mist. As her eyes grew accustomed to this half-light, she saw the Kralahome himself, the only man present in a room filled with women.
He sat like an idol of ebony with his feet crossed under him, erect and silent on a bench covered with a Persian carpet. He seemed like a natural king among the dusky forms that surrounded him, semibarbaric but comely. His body was vigorous, the neck short and thick, his nose was large, the nostrils wide, his eyes inquisitive and penetrating. The force of some tremendous intellect reached across to her through the disgust and fear that still hung in her mind from the first terrifying interview on board the Chow Phya, when his indifference to her welfare had so shadowed her arrival.
Apart on a dais lay the Khun Ying Phan, surrounded by waiting maidens. Nor did she turn her head from busily creaming her lips when Anna entered.
From the folds of a great curtain a single flute opened the entertainment with low tender strains. Twelve girls appeared from curtained recesses, bearing gold and silver fans. They seated themselves on the floor before the central group and began fanning the Kralahome and his consort. Another group of girls, graceful and laughing, were seated behind musical instruments of so great a variety as to recall to Anna’s mind the “cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltry, and dulcimer.” They picked up the theme of the flute in a swift ruffle of rhythm and melody.
In the center of the hall the dancers appeared, a long line of girls with skins of olive. There were some twenty, naked to the waist, with golden girdles and transparent draperies, obviously the chorus. Their heads were modestly inclined, their hands humbly folded, and their eyes drooping timidly beneath long lashes. Their only garment was a skirt that floated around their legs in light folds, of some costly material bordered with gold. On the ends of their fingers they wore gold nails six inches long, like the claws of some mythological bird.
Now the dancers responded to a burst of joyous music and formed in two lines. Simultaneously, with flawless precision, they knelt, folded their palms together, and bowed until their foreheads touched the carpet before their lord. He watched them indifferently, no trace of approval or recognition of their graceful gesture upon his face.
When they had retired, still dancing, to the background, the principals of the drama appeared, Rama and his followers in jeweled clothes, the monkey king and his followers in hideous masks. The war began. Anna could not understand the words that were sung, but the story was easy to follow because she was familiar with it. The grace of the actors was exquisite. Each movement of a finger or foot was obviously traditional, conventional, with meaning. For two hours she watched intently until the battle was won and Sita had been recaptured at last.
In the triumphant finale the chorus sprang to their feet and described a succession of rapid and intricate circles, tapping the carpet with their toes in time to the music. The soft rain of light sparkled on their bare breasts, their gold ornaments and the gold of their clothes. Their arms flashed with heavy bracelets of gold. Their dance was a miracle of grace, poetry in motion. Every attitude was an expression of love, the eloquence of passion overcome with its own fervor. On and on, on and on they danced, and the hypnotic mystery of the music kept pace.
The dim lights, the shadows blending with them, the fine harmony of colors, the rhythmic symphony of sound, the fantastic steps of the dance, the overwhelming sentiment—all the poetry and pity of the scene, the formless longing, the undefined sense of wrong, were overpowering.
Half-shocked, half-fascinated, Anna tore her eyes from the dancers to look at the stony figure for which this exotic thing was done. He sat like an idol of ebony, cold and grim, his huge hands resting on his knees in statuesque repose. Whatever the fire raging within him, he was to all appearances as calm as night, affecting contempt for these trifles of humanity offered on his altar. There was about him the look of some sable Moloch in whom the flame burned fiercely, even though no ardor was visible through any crevice in the outward man.
The music swelled into a rapturous crescendo that seemed a prelude to a choral climax. The dancers raised their delicate feet, curved their arms and fingers in seemingly impossible flexures. They were withes of willow swaying before a wind. All the muscles of their bodies were agitated like leaves in a breeze. Their eyes glowed, their lips were parted, as they floated round and round in the slow eddies of the dance.
And there sat the Kralahome, carved of basalt, while the elfin worshipers with flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, tossing arms and panting bosoms, postured their adoration.
Then they were at his feet, blown there by the winds of desire, and so left, like brown leaves of humanity after a storm. Was it all maya—delusion? The utter unreality overcame Anna. She closed her eyes against the sensation of floating
away out of time and space, opened them, closed them again. It was not maya. It was incredible reality.
There they lay, living puppets, their young bodies panting on the floor, not daring to look up into the face of their silent god where scorn and passion contended for place. Then expression died out. He yawned. Automatically he arose, abruptly retired, bored.
The third day in Siam—was it really only the third?—had ended.
8
THE MATTOONS
The weather began to be very hot. No rain had fallen for months and the grass in the gardens was brown. Some of the trees were shedding their leaves. Even at night there was little relief from the suffocating heat. As one stifling day after another dragged itself out Anna waited more and more impatiently for her interview with the King. But no summons came, nor did she get any word that a house had been prepared for her.
She had devised a temporary schedule. In the mornings she taught Louis his lessons. Afternoons they both rested until the worst of the heat was past. Then letters were written. Evenings after dinner Moonshee brought his books and settled down with them at her table. She enjoyed these hours of study, one evening in Persian and the next in Sanskrit. She felt an intense pleasure as nugget after nugget of ancient knowledge was turned up to lie shining in her thoughts.
Every day or so her apartments suffered a tumultuous invasion from her intimate enemies of the harem. They came upon her like a flight of locusts and rarely left without booty in the form of trifles which they had begged or taken. To them this was not thievery. They regarded it as their due. Sometimes they dragged with them the old Malay duenna and then they pelted Anna with a storm of childish questions.
Morning and evening she and Louis strolled in the gardens or along the quay that faced the river. Sometimes Anna called at Khun Ying Phan’s pretty house, in the women’s quarters of the Kralahome’s palace. Here were the same half-tints and subdued lights that gave such an air of graciousness to the saloons of the palace. Here, however, there were neither carpets nor mirrors, nothing indeed of foreign origin. The only articles of furniture were sofa-beds, low marble couches, tables and a few chairs. The forms of these were antique and delicate, like nothing that Anna had seen in any other country. The combined effect was one of delicious coolness, retirement and repose, and this in spite of the hot March sun that shone along the satin floor through silken window nets.
Around this charming home bloomed an equally charming garden. The shrubbery, fountains, nooks, walks, and lawns had been laid out by a consummate artist. There was none of the excessive use of dwarf trees in big Chinese jars that gave to the usual Oriental garden the stiffness of a cemetery. There were instead flowering trees, ferns, shrubs, all harmoniously arranged. A cool and shaded walk ran to an even larger garden, bordered with latticework, and filled with flowering shrubs of extraordinary beauty.
“These are the children of my heart,” said the Khun Ying, as she and Anna walked there. And in a whisper, “For as you know my lord is childless.”
But Khun Ying had little time to spare for visiting. Around the palace and within it more than a thousand of the prince’s retainers lived. There were also several hundred slaves to be directed. This miniature city was the Khun Ying’s responsibility.
As the days passed Anna grew to admire her more and more. She was mild in her manner, but very efficient. The big establishment moved easily with something of the calm which distinguished its mistress. Anna was especially impressed with her unfailing kindness to the younger women of her husband’s harem. She lived among them as happily as if they were her daughters, sharing their confidences, comforting their sorrows, pleading their cause with her lord and theirs. And over the Kralahome himself, unyielding and aloof as he seemed, she yet managed to exercise a cautious but positive influence.
Every day or so Mr. Hunter called to see Anna and to inquire about her health or her needs, and to report the progress of negotiations for her presentation at court. She found him a harried little man, serious when sober, and very volatile when, more often, he was otherwise. Once he brought his wife, a pleasant woman, part Siamese and part Portuguese, with the musical name of Rosa Ribeiro de Alvergarias Noi Hunter. She was interested in Louis and his games, for, as she said, “I have two boys myself. Robert is eleven now, and John is nine.”
“Louis is only six,” Anna said, “and my little daughter Avis is seven. She is on her way to London to enter a school there.”
The shadow of compassion flitted across Mrs. Hunter’s face. “Ah, it is hard, is it not, to be separated from the little ones? Our boys are going, too, but I think I cannot endure to have them away.” And she sighed.
Sometimes it was the interpreter who came from the Kralahome instead of Mr. Hunter. His visits were always unwelcome. The combination of fawning humility and arrogant pride, of which he seemed to be fashioned, never failed to annoy Anna. And try as she would she could not make herself cover up the repugnance which he aroused in her, even though policy dictated the wisdom of making as few enemies as possible in this strange country.
Late one afternoon she had a call from Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Mattoon of the American Presbyterian Mission. Mr. Mattoon had twinkling eyes above a beard. Mrs. Mattoon was very plain with pronounced features and hair drawn back straight under a netted cap. But something about her reached across to the young Englishwoman with comfort.
They were friends at once. Anna could ask them the questions pent up in her. She learned that they had been in Siam for fifteen years except for the time they had spent in the United States on health furloughs. Anna was especially interested in the teaching that Mrs. Mattoon and two other mission women had done in the Palace ten years before.
“We were invited by the King himself to start teaching the women of the Palace—let me see—that must have been the very year that he came to the throne, 1851. You will find as we did, I think, that it is hard to hold their attention for more than a few minutes at a time. You see most of them have never been trained to use their minds at all. But many of them have an inherent nobility of character on which you can build.”
“I think,” Anna said, “that I am to have the teaching of some of the young princes, too.”
“So we have heard, and that is of course your greatest opportunity, for one of them will be king.”
“The women here at the Kralahome’s have filled me with terror of the King himself. They call him the Lord of Life, which is certainly an awesome title for a human being and very suggestive of his power. Is he really as capricious and vengeful as they say?”
Mrs. Mattoon hesitated. “Yes. It wouldn’t be fair to make you think that he’s anything else. But he’s an extremely intelligent man, and he’s done more for Siam than all his predecessors. Those of us who have known him over a period of years admire him very much! You must remember that the King is really absolute only in name. He is very advanced in his ideas, but he must work against intrigue and suspicion on the part of the more reactionary nobles and against the inertia of the mass of the people, who do not want any change. He is the head of what you might call the Young Siam Party. And he has with him his younger brother who is Second King, and the Kralahome, and Prince Wongsa, whom you will meet …”
“I have already met him,” Anna interrupted.
“Oh, have you? Good. Well, and a few others. But the mass of the nobility are afraid of the opening of the country to trade with Europe. And you can understand that, I’m sure. They’re suspicious of the colonial aspirations of both France and England and would have preferred a policy of seclusion. Think of the King like this then—he has one foot in the past, in the middle of ages of feudalism, perhaps we may call them, in which he grew up, and he has one foot in the modern world of civilization and science. He is two people. And it is hard to say on any given occasion which one he is going to be, the Oriental despot, or the learned man of science. First he’s one and then the other. But never underestimate him! He’s a very brilliant man. I’ve known him to be very c
ruel, and again to be very tender-hearted.”
“You see,” explained her husband, “he should’ve come to the throne when his father died in 1824, but his older half-brother was very powerful at the time and really usurped the throne with a vague promise that he would relinquish it to Prince Mongkut when he was of age. But Prince Mongkut saw the handwriting on the wall, not to mention the danger to his life, and left his wife and two small children to enter the priesthood. He had a natural inclination toward learning anyway. He became a scholar of note in Pali and Sanskrit as well as his native language. He rose to be high priest. The priesthood gave him a freedom that he would not have had in palace life. He used to come often to the homes of the missionaries to borrow books and ask questions. He even took up the systematic study of English with one of them, Jesse Caswell, and studied French and Latin with Bishop Pallegoix. He’s a fine mathematician and amateur astronomer, too.”
“He sounds formidable,” Anna laughed.
“He is really,” Mr. Mattoon went on. “For instance, he is the first Siamese to set up a printing press. He did this while he was still in the priesthood. And he ordered for it two fonts of English type, and two of Pali, and one of Siamese. He has even prepared a new character for the Pali, which he calls the Ariyak. The Cambodian character commonly used in Siam requires a thousand matrices, while the King’s new Ariyak requires only forty-one. Yes, he’s an amazing man! He started a reform movement within Buddhism here, too, and reorganized the whole Buddhist church while he was in the priesthood.”
Mrs. Mattoon continued, “And now that he’s King he has his press with him in the Palace. Have you seen any of the products of his press yet?”
“No, I haven’t,” Anna replied.
“Well, he has an amazing use of the English language. Not that he uses it with grammatical accuracy, but he does use it with force, and he never seems to run out of copy. We’ll have to give you some samples when you come to see us.”
Anna and the King of Siam Page 7
