Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  As often as Anna was to sit in the porches of these temples while the chanted prayers of the worshipers re-echoed through the aisles, she was to be filled with a sense of deepest awe. The character of the buildings was nothing short of sublime. The architect had wrought “in a sad sincerity” and the stone had grown to beauty. Anna was to know every inch of the temples in the years she was to teach there, and yet she was never able to penetrate their meaning and power. Whenever she passed along the dim and silent corridors, and came unexpectedly in front of one of the great golden images amid the gloom of the never-ending twilight—the head and shoulders illuminated by a halo from the unseen source above—she was impelled to stop. The Buddha, motionless with folded arms and drooping eyelids, looking down upon her in monitory sadness, had the wisdom of ages stamped upon his brow. Each time this happened Anna felt again a strange mystical sense of the solemn and profound thought of the unknown builder.

  Among her pupils none attracted Anna so much as Prince Chulalongkorn and his pretty little sister Princess Chanthara Monthon, whom everyone called “Fa-ying,” or Celestial Princess. They were both exceptionally bright children. Prince Chulalongkorn, the Fa-ying, and their two younger brothers lived with an old great-aunt in the Tamnak Tuk, one of the most imposing of the palaces on the Inside. Their pretty young mother, the Queen, had died the year before and Princess Lamom had undertaken their care. She had raised their mother, too, since the Princess Ramphoei had also been orphaned in childhood.

  The old princess was a tranquil woman, attracted by everything that was bright and pretty. She was always busy with her flowers, or some poetry, or her niece’s children. The little Fa-ying was her favorite, and after the princess the young crown prince. Her establishment was a very large one, full of the daughters of her brothers, her nieces and nephews and friends; for not only was she a very great lady indeed, into whose home it was an honor to have a daughter received, but she was also famous for her goodness and kindness.

  Anna and she had many earnest conversations about the education of Prince Chulalongkorn. The old princess astonished Anna from the first by imploring her to instill into the mind of the young prince the tenets of the Christian faith, its principles and precepts. She drew no distinction between her own religion and Anna’s, desiring only that her young charge be fortified with all available goodness against what she knew lay in wait for a king. She was most scrupulous in her devotions, with a freshness of religious zeal like that of a young girl. And, although her nature was happy, she loved too well and too wisely not to have been apprehensive all her life, first for the mother, then for the children.

  The children themselves were no problem. They were intelligent and charming, and the little Fa-ying was a fairy child. She was not only her great-aunt’s favorite, but also her father’s. From infancy the King had liked to have her near him. He held her on his lap at meals and took her with him on tours as far away as Ayuthia.

  Prince Chulalongkorn, too, was exceptionally attractive, neither tall nor short, but handsome. He was attentive to his studies, and serene and gentle as well-bred Siamese boys were expected to be. He was invariably affectionate to his old aunt and his younger sisters and brothers. He had a warm heart that was aroused to sympathy by the mere sight of poverty or pain. And he studied hard, seeming to overcome obstacles with a resolution that gained strength as his mind gained ideas. Each new idea was an inspiring discovery to him of his actual poverty of knowledge, and the possibilities of intellectual opulence. The shadow of the throne was already upon him. It had deprived him of any childish love of play. Life for him would be full of heavy responsibilities. As Anna watched his swift young mind hurrying along from day to day, she remembered her dreams and doubled her efforts to help him in his eager search for knowledge. He was only a ten-year-old child now, but who could say when vast and limitless power over the lives of millions would be his?

  The studies that took the most absolute possession of the fervid Eastern imaginations of all the royal pupils were geography and astronomy. Each of them had his own ideas about the form of the earth, and it needed much patient repetition to convince them that it was neither flat nor square.

  The only map they had ever seen was an old one that had been made twenty-five years or so before at the request of the late king, the Usurper, his present Majesty’s older half-brother. It had been drawn by the prime minister of that time, who was a better politician than cartographer. It was five feet long and three wide. In the center was a ground of red, twenty by twelve inches. A human figure as long as the red patch was cut out of silver paper and pasted on it. This was the King of Siam. On his head had been placed an enormous crown with many points, indicative of his vast possessions. In one hand he held a breadfruit, symbol of plenty, and in the other what looked like a pitchfork, with which he consigned to destruction all who opposed him. His legs were miserably thin and met sympathetically at the knees.

  On three sides and a part of the fourth was a broad margin of blue representing the ocean. Over it miniature ships, boats, and junks sailed in every direction to and from the land, showing the great amount of Siam’s mercantile trade. Just above the patch of red was a smaller one of green, twelve by four inches, intended to represent Burma. In the center of this was drawn in India ink a rude figure without clothes or crown, the King of Burma. His lack of equipment showed the poverty of his domain. Around him sported rude figures of demons and hobgoblins, showing the disorder and misrule supposed to prevail in his little realm. On the north side of the green patch was painted a large Englishman, wearing a cocked hat with red feathers, and clasping in his arms what was meant for an immense tract of land. This was British Burma, and the Englishman holding on to it was Lord Clive.

  But however inadequate the children’s knowledge of terrestrial geography, their knowledge of celestial geography was amazing. They loved to tell Anna about it with a wealth of picturesque detail concerning the mountains and seas and countries of this far land; the turtle on whose back it all rested; and the fish that had churned the ocean when the world was forming. Whenever a difference of opinion arose among them as to the height of some of the mountains or the breadth of one of the oceans in the celestial world, they would at once refer to a Siamese book called Trai Phum Lok Winichai, a book, they explained, which settled all questions about the three realms of the angels, the demons, and the gods.

  Anna did not dispute with them. Indeed, she listened to them with interest. But at the same time she sent a request to the King for maps and globes. His Majesty responded promptly with a large English map and globes of the celestial and terrestrial spheres. These created an enormous sensation when they arrived one morning in the Temple of the Mothers of the Free. The King had caused the map to be mounted in a heavy gold frame, and commanded that it be placed with the globes on ponderous gilt supporters in the middle of the temple. For nine days crowds of women came to be instructed in geography and astronomy. It was hard for them to see Siam reduced to a mere speck on the great globe. The only thing that comforted them was that England, their teacher’s country, was smaller yet.

  After the first excitement had worn off and the women had left the schoolroom to the children again, the royal pupils began to enjoy their lessons with the map and globes. They would cluster around the latter, delighted with the novel idea of a world revolving in space. Some of them became as keen as any Arctic explorer for the discovery of the North Pole. They seemed to think that if it could only be discovered they could sit astride it with perfect ease and satisfy their doubts about the form and revolutions of the earth.

  One day, as they were busily tracing the River Nile, an event took place which profoundly changed Anna’s status in the harem. She was telling the children about her own long-ago trip through Egypt when there suddenly fell from the vaulted roof above their heads onto the very center of the chart, which she had stretched on the table, a coil of something that looked at first like a thick silk cord neatly rolled up.

  In ano
ther instant the coil unrolled itself and began to move slowly away. Anna screamed, and forgetting her dignity fled to the far end of the temple expecting the children to follow her. When she turned she was amazed to see all her royal pupils sitting quietly in their seats with hands folded before their faces in the attitude of veneration. Not a child had moved or made a sound. The temple was profoundly still. All the children’s eyes were fixed on the serpent as it moved in lazy tortuous curves along the entire table. With a feeling of shame Anna returned to her seat to watch the beautiful creature. She even managed to share a little of the children’s fascination as she looked into the clear eyes of the snake. She had never seen one like it. The upper part of it was a fine violet color. The sides were covered with scales of crimson edged with black. Beneath, it was a pale rose, and the tail ended in tints of bluish ash of a singular delicacy and beauty.

  The snake moved on its slow way down the table. To Anna each second seemed an hour. She held her breath in terror as it dropped from the table to the arm of the chair of Prince Chulalongkorn. What if the child moved and the snake struck? She had no doubt that her own life would be forfeit in a moment were the young crown prince to die thus under her care. She wanted to call out to him to hold perfectly still, but no sound came. She need not have worried, however, for he sat as motionless as the Buddha gleaming in the twilight behind him. Anna could not swallow or breathe until she saw the serpent glide from the chair and trail itself through the corridor and down the steps, and finally out of sight under the stone basement. Then she almost fainted from relief.

  Not a child had stirred, and not a hand had been lowered from the position of salaam. But on the moment of the snake’s disappearance the royal children jumped from their seats and clustered around her in what she saw was the wildest joy. They fell at her feet. They salaamed her and caressed her, and chattered at her so fast that she could not grasp a word. As the news spread the women of the harem came hurrying in to greet her affectionately and to salaam her as they had never done before. It was with the greatest difficulty that she finally learned what it was all about. They were trying to tell her that the gods evidently loved her, else they would not have sent such an auspicious token in favor of her teaching. They assured her that the gliding of the snake all over the table was full of happy omens, and that its dropping onto the arm of the Prince’s chair was an unmistakable sign that he would one day become famous in wisdom and knowledge.

  Nor was it an ordinary snake. This was the Sanskrit Sarpa Rakta, the red snake which brings secret messages from the gods. The Siamese called it the Ngu Thong Daeng, the crimson-bellied snake, which confers on the beholder all that is good and great.

  Anna hardly knew whether to be amused or annoyed or pleased. Even the King, when he heard of the behavior of the visitor, was impressed. He caused the event to be made known to the wise men of the court. They all united in pronouncing it a wonderful and inspiring recognition of favor from on high. Anna herself felt not a little uncomfortable for days after the sudden appearance of the snake, and secretly hoped that she might never again be so signally favored of the gods. But she did not mention her thoughts to the women of the harem. For they, both young and old, continued to come and congratulate her during the week that followed, grasping her hands between theirs and raising them to their foreheads in veneration.

  Whatever prejudice they had had against the innovation of an English school in the Royal Palace—and it must have been strong and deeply rooted, for they were inherently conservative and suspicious of change—was gone overnight. From that time on Anna was treated with great consideration and respect. And she was grateful. Another of the intangible barriers against which she worked was down.

  15

  THE PALACE CITY

  The palace itself, which at first had seemed too complex to be understood, gradually assumed proportion and form for Anna. It was in reality a walled and fortified city, rectangular in shape, covering more than a square mile. Parallel walls running east and west divided it into three sections.

  The northern section comprised the seat of government. In it were the armory, the barracks of the palace guard, the government offices, the exchange, and the supreme courts of justice. Here, too, were the buildings of the Chapel Royal in the midst of which stood the gorgeous temple of the Emerald Buddha. Men came and went freely on official business in this northern enclosure.

  The middle enclosure was almost as large. It was approached through two sets of double gates in the wall that separated it from the first section. It was semi-private. Men were admitted only for certain work and certain occasions. In it were the mint, the King’s private press, and a number of pavilions, theaters, and aviaries, richly gilded and ornamented. It was dominated by two buildings, one of which was the Amarind Winichai Palace, or “Audience Hall of Indra,” near the eastern end, where Anna had first gone with Captain Bush. Close to it stood the largest of the aviaries, so large that trees had been planted in it on a miniature mountain. Around this on all sides were ornate pavilions in Chinese style where the court and the nobility sat to watch processions such as those connected with royal tonsure.

  At the west end toward the river rose the second important building. This was the majestic cruciform temple of the Dusit Maha Prasat, where kings had been crowned and where their remains had lain in state in golden urns on the high golden altar. The roof was of glazed tile, each of the four wings being covered with a five-tiered roof. Where the roofs met rose a tapering gold spire supported by four enormous Garuda birds. The terraces were studded with sculptures and large incense vases of bronze, the dark color and graceful forms of which stood out in beautiful relief against the shining white of the building.

  But both the first and second enclosures were for Anna mere preludes to the wall that separated them from the third, the city of the Nang Ham, where her work was. Not only was this area guarded on its northern side by the wide double belt of the two enclosures; it was protected on the east, west, and south by an inner wall running parallel to the outer wall of the Palace. The ponderous double gates of the latter were guarded by men; the hardly less ponderous gates of the former by Amazons.

  The heart of the entire royal city was the palace within a palace, where the King lived. It was on the east of the harem behind its own walls. It was so placed that it could be approached from the outside through heavily guarded gates, and from the second enclosure. The most imposing building within was a large audience hall where diplomats were received. Near this was a state banquet hall and a museum, in which the gifts to the King from the heads of foreign states were housed. There were also private dining salons, an audience hall for the women of the Palace, and several residences with sleeping apartments, a chapel, an armory, and a building for the secretariat. Between this elaborate concourse of buildings and the Chapel Royal at the northeast corner of the walled city stood the old palace of the King’s father, almost unused now, but preserved by the King for religious purposes as a memorial to his royal sire.

  The windows of the King’s palace opened on terraced gardens. These were formal, with orange and pomegranate trees growing in costly Chinese pots. The leaves of ilex and oleander cast pointed shadows on the marble pavements. Porcelain jars were planted with water lilies in every form and color, purple and gold, and pale pink, and white. There was the perpetual splashing of fountains. Stone basins caught the overflow and in the basins gold and silver fish glittered like gems.

  Anna had found to her delight a description of the inner city in a book by the venerable Bishop Pallegoix, who had died shortly after she arrived:

  In the third enclosure is a remarkable garden, and containing in miniature a representation of the world as they imagine it to be—woods, mountains, cultivated fields; a sea with islands, vessels of war and merchantmen of every nation; a city, a village, a bazaar, a market; all quadrupeds and birds; and all the rare trees and plants they can produce. They call it the “Garden of Delights,” or “Terrestrial Paradise.” It
is on the model of that at Peking.

  As there are persons enclosed here who have never seen the world, and who will never see it, they have thus an imperfect notion of what it contains. It is illuminated at night by lamps. The ladies of the harem retire to the garden and amuse themselves there, if they please, till morning.

  This had been written in 1828. Anna could find no trace of the “manikins representing all the different nations of the earth.” But there was a beautiful garden, close to the King’s palace and within the harem, which seemed to fit the description otherwise. In the center of it was a small artificial lake. Morning and evening the great ladies and princesses came there to bathe. They spent many hours splashing about and picking the water lilies.

  Not far from the garden were the barracks of the Amazons and the pillared hall where, as in the days of old, female magistrates daily administered justice to the inhabitants of the city of women. Near the court set in a grove was the Temple of the Mothers of the Free where Anna taught, and next to it the theater and gymnasium where the more important women assembled every afternoon to gossip, play games, and watch the dancing girls.

  It did not take Anna long to discover that here, as in any other city in the world, there were good residential areas and poor. Immediately south of the wall which divided the inner city from the center enclosures were some of the finest residences. Here were the palaces of the princesses, daughters of the late king, who were never allowed to marry unless the present king desired them, since there was no one else high enough in rank and a foreign alliance was unthinkable. Here also lived the more favored of the royal consorts with their numerous slaves and personal attendants. In this part of the city there were clean regular streets and small parks, groups of fine trees scattered over miniature lawns, and beautiful flower gardens.