The next morning on her way to school she took the street on which Son Klin lived. Again she saw Krita sitting in the window, in the same attitude, his eyes bent anxiously in the same direction. Anna had the startled thought that he must have been sitting there all night. “Is your mother home yet, dear?” Anna asked.
The child answered without looking down, “No, Mem, she hasn’t come yet.” This was really very alarming!
As Anna entered the porch of the temple the favorite, Lady Talap, was waiting there for her. She seized Anna’s hand and pulled her aside, saying, “Mem cha, Son Klin is in trouble.”
“What’s happened?” Anna asked. “Do you know?”
Lady Talap drew Anna closer and whispered in her ear, “She’s in prison!” Then looking around to be sure that none of the old duennas who acted as spies was near, she went on quickly, “She isn’t prudent, you know—not like you and me.” In her tone were commiseration, fear, and self-righteousness.
“What did she do?”
“Ssh! Don’t ask! I dare not tell you!”
“Can I see her myself?”
“Yes, if you bribe the jailers. Give them one tical each. They will demand two. And go quickly—right now!” She almost shoved Anna through the door.
In the pavilion which was the private chapel of the ladies of the harem as well as the school, priests had already begun to read prayers and recite homilies from the sacred book of Buddha called Sasana Thai, the Religion of the Free. The ladies of the harem had gathered and were sitting on their velvet cushions with their hands folded, a vase of flowers and a pair of fragrant candles in front of each.
Anna tiptoed out of the temple hurriedly. At the door lounged the Amazons and the two eunuchs with swords and clubs who escorted the priests in and out of the Palace and watched them during the services. A young mother with a sleeping baby was sitting nearby. Some slave girls were engrossed in a game of saba, a kind of marbles that they played with their knees as well as their fingers. Anna met two princesses, almost grown, in the arms of their slaves.
She quickened her pace. At the door of the prison a group of slaves idled. It was guarded by two Amazons who seemed to be deep in conversation with them. They grew silent as Anna approached. Were they talking about Son Klin? Anna caught no names. It was more difficult than Lady Talap had led her to believe to get in. She was not admitted until she paid two ticals to each guard. Inside the door a third Amazon, who also had to be bribed, led her through a long corridor. Off this were secret apartments in which prisoners condemned to death by the Supreme Court or the supreme will of the King spent their last days.
Anna breathed deeply as they passed without pausing. The prison was an irregular, rambling building encircling two enclosures which opened from the corridor, and which stood one behind the other. Here the prisoners were allowed to walk at stated times. The hall that served as court formed one complete side of the enclosures. Three vaulted banks of cells occupied the other sides. A woman confined in one of these peeped out at Anna from behind a screen, but it was not Lady Son Klin. These cells were used for the reception of women convicted of petty crimes, such as gambling, stealing, or immodest language. Lady Son Klin was in none of them.
The Amazon stopped and pulled up a trapdoor that led to one of the dungeons. Anna was horrified! Of what crime had her friend been convicted to be incarcerated here? She descended a flight of broken stone steps. They were so slippery that she could scarcely keep her feet, and so dark that she had to grope her way. She reached out to steady herself against the wall, but it was slimy under her hand. She heard the slithering sound of a lizard or snake and recoiled with loathing. No floor received her feet when she reached the bottom. A few planks, loosely laid, were soft as the mud they were meant to cover. The ooze from the nearby river had rotted them through and through.
The cell was lighted by one small window, so heavily grated on the outer side that it barred all ingress of air. It was laced with cobwebs. Only a glimmer of light came through. Overhead, the roof was black with filth and mold. The walls were rough stone covered with moss, fungi, and reptiles. As Anna’s eyes gradually adjusted themselves to the darkness she saw that rude designs had been scrawled on them. Whoever had painted them—perhaps some half-mad prisoner—had exhausted a nightmare fancy on hideous personifications of Hunger, Terror, Old Age, Despair, Disease, and Death, tormented by furies and avengers, with hair of snakes and whips of scorpions.
A pair of wooden trestles on the far side of the cell supported some rough boards that formed a makeshift bedstead. Over it was spread a mat. The Lady Son Klin lay still as death on this crude bed. Her feet were covered with a silk mantle, and her head was supported by a pillow of glazed leather. Her face was turned toward the clammy wall and she did not try to see who had come so stumblingly down the stairs. At her head a little higher than the pillow were a vase of flowers, half faded, a pair of candles burning in gold candlesticks, and a small image of the Buddha.
She had brought her god with her. “Well,” Anna thought with a shudder, “she needs him!”
Anna moved cautiously across the mud of the floor, trying to keep her footing on the rotten planks, and stood beside the motionless figured She was so shocked that when she tried to speak her voice was scarcely audible. “Son Klin …”
The woman turned with difficulty. A slight sound of clanking explained the covering on her feet. She was chained to the trestle. Sitting up, she made room for Anna beside her. No tears were in her eyes. Only the habitual melancholy of her face was deepened. Anna thought savagely that before her was the perfect work of cruelty and injustice upon meekness and patience. It was utterly impossible to believe that the gentle woman on the bed could have committed a crime worthy of such mistreatment.
Son Klin was evidently astonished to see Anna. She reached out to touch her friend, doubting her own eyes. When she saw that Anna was indeed flesh and blood she folded her hands in the attitude of supplication and bent her head forward upon them. “Mem, Mem,” she moaned. “Help me. Mem, help your poor pupil!”
Anna took the Mon woman’s hands in her own and said, “I’ll try, Son Klin. I’ll surely try. But you must tell me why you’re here. What has happened?”
When Son Klin spoke it was without expression, as if agony had bled her of all feeling. “You are aware, Mem, that we are allowed to petition His Majesty through our children.” Anna nodded. She did know this. She had seen her little pupils, groomed and shining in their best clothes, carrying on golden salvers some request or other on behalf of their mothers’ families.
“My family wished me to petition the King for my oldest brother. They hoped that His Majesty would grant the appointment held by my late uncle to him, not knowing that His Majesty had already chosen another noble for the post. Nor did I know it, Mem.” She passed one hand over her eyes as if to banish something she seemed to see, and continued tonelessly:
“Yesterday morning I dressed Krita in his best and sent him in to the King at breakfast with the petition. The child was afraid to go, for as you know we are not in favor, but when I explained to him the reason he was willing. I waited for him at home. But when he came home he was in tears. After the King had read the petition he had flown into a rage and dashed it back into the face of my trembling little boy kneeling there before him. He accused me of plotting to undermine his power, saying that he knew me to be a Mon rebel at heart. He screamed that I hated him and all his dynasty because my ancestors were Peguans and the natural enemies of the Siamese. And the more he talked the angrier he became. So he sent one of the judges for me to summon me to trial for rebellion. I went at once leaving Krita at home, but before I could reach the Palace another judge met us with His Majesty’s order to chain and imprison me without trial, since His Majesty had decided that my guilt was proved. After they had chained me here and gone away, a third judge came with an order to flog me until I confessed my treacherous plot, and the names of my accomplices.”
“Son Klin! No! They di
dn’t flog you, did they? Oh, my dear!”
The woman smiled wanly at the pain in Anna’s voice. “They did, yes, for indeed they must, but without energy, so that it hurt little, for they knew that I was innocent.”
“And what did you confess?”
“That I am His Majesty’s meanest slave and ready to give my life for his pleasure.”
“And then what?”
“Then His Majesty roared that I was to be beaten on the mouth with a slipper for lying!”
“No!” Anna exclaimed. “No!” For a Siamese this was the supreme insult, since the head was too sacred even to touch while the feet and what went on the feet too low to be mentioned in polite society.
Son Klin sat with her head hanging, no spirit left in her. “I am degraded forever,” she said.
There was little that Anna could do. She comforted Lady Son Klin as best she could, told her that she had seen Prince Krita and that he was at home with the slaves, and was surely being taken care of, and promised that she would lay the matter before the Kralahome that very evening.
The Kralahome received her privately, but when she had explained the purpose of her visit he rebuked her sharply. “It is not your place, Mem, to interfere between His Majesty and His Majesty’s wives!”
“She is my pupil,” Anna replied stubbornly. “And besides, I have not interfered. I have only come to you privately for justice. No one knows of this outside of the Palace as yet, but if you will not help her, I shall carry the news to her family at once.” The premier looked at Anna sharply, for he knew as well as she that Son Klin’s family, though they were out of favor, were a large and powerful clan and would find some means of repaying the insults that had been heaped upon her. And it was an open secret that the French were on the lookout for disaffected officials who might serve their imperialistic plans. The premier stirred uneasily and asked, “Of what exactly is she accused?”
“Of seeking an appointment for her brother that had already been granted to someone else. His Majesty accuses her of plotting with her family to rebel against him. This is obviously ridiculous since they did not even know that the appointment had been made, nor did she when she sent Prince Krita to the King with the petition. And to punish one woman for what is permitted and encouraged in another is gross injustice. It can’t enhance His Majesty’s reputation with his foreign friends.”
The Kralahome listened gravely, frowning a little at the implied threat in her last sentence. Then he sent for his secretary, and having satisfied himself that the appointment had not been published, he promised that he would explain the matter to the King at the evening audience.
“I shall tell His Majesty that there has been a delay in making known to the court the royal pleasure in this matter,” he said. But he spoke with indifference, as if the treatment of Son Klin were after all of no consequence.
Anna felt chilled by his failure to respond as she had thought he would with some sign of indignation. She was more anxious than ever when she remembered the weary eyes of the boy watching for his mother’s return. None of the slaves had dared to tell him the truth. What after all had she to expect from the premier’s apathetic promise, if indeed he bothered to keep it?
There was nothing more that she could do. She went home lonely and sad. She had counted on the premier more than she had realized, for she had come slowly to believe that there was good moral fiber in him. He was cold, shrewd, ruthless, but she had thought just; never quixotic and unreliable, or swayed by prejudice and favor as was the King. The King’s brutality and the premier’s callousness weighed down upon her like a load of stones. It seemed to her as she listlessly ate a little dinner that with leaders like these the Siamese could never achieve a society where justice and mercy were a reality. She wondered again, as she did each time she grew discouraged, why she had come where her sensibilities were continually bruised by that lack of concern for human values which underlay all the evils she saw round her—injustice, favoritism, slavery, and concubinage. The King regarded his women as nothing more than stalled animals kept by his bounty for his pleasure, to be destroyed at his whim. The idea filled her with loathing and with a sense of the hopelessness of the task she had set herself. But she would not give up her determination to help Son Klin. If she was not free when next Anna entered the Palace her family at least could be informed.
Monday morning Anna approached the temple school with bated breath, hardly daring to hope, but unable to repress the swift beating of her heart. Several of the women, who had evidently been waiting for her, rushed forward with the good news. Son Klin was home with her child.
Anna decided that this was one morning when she would omit the religious service, whatever it did to school attendance, and hurried off to see her friend.
As she came down the street Son Klin rushed out to meet her and embraced her ardently. “Mem, Mem! I’m free, see! I am free! All due to your gracious goodness and kindness and to your merciful intercession on my behalf.” She glorified Anna with grateful epithets from the extravagant vocabulary of her people until Anna stemmed her in embarrassment.
It seemed that the very night that Anna had called on the Kralahome he had gone to the Grand Palace and explained to the King, without appearing to be aware of the concubine’s punishment, that there had been a delay in publishing the last list of appointments, but that it would be taken care of at once.
Anna felt a swift glow of gratitude for the premier. He had been more troubled than he had let her see at the mistake Son Klin had made.
“So then what?”
“So then on Sunday morning the Amazons came with the news that the King had ordered my release. And so here I am!”
Gravely she drew from her finger a treasured ring set with an emerald. Taking Anna’s hand in hers she slipped the ring on one of the fingers saying, “By this you will remember the thankful friend whom you have freed.”
On the following day she sent Anna a small purse of gold thread netted, in which were a few Siamese coins. This was the sort of gift which royalty was accustomed to bestow. And in the purse with the coins was a scrap of paper inscribed with cabalistic characters, an infallible charm against poverty and distress.
19
THE KING’S BREAKFAST
By the time Anna’s first year in Siam was drawing to a close the dim life of the Palace had come into focus. The framework, at least, was now clear. What had seemed in the beginning a chaos of color had assumed meaning. Objects and then groups fell into their proper relation.
The world within the Palace walls was a universe with a single sun and many moons. The King was the disk of light around which everything revolved. What he did day by day determined what the women of the harem did. Even the English school had to be adjusted to the orbit of the King’s life. He rose at five. So, therefore, did most of the members of his household. After a scanty meal served by the women who had been in attendance through the night, he descended to the courtyard and took his place on a strip of matting, laid from one gate of the Inside through all the avenues to another. His children were seated on his right in the order of their rank, then the princesses, his concubines, his maids of honor, and their slaves. Before each person was placed a large silver tray containing offerings of boiled rice, fruit, cakes, and siri leaf, which some of the women had arisen hours earlier to prepare. There were occasionally cigars also.
A little after five the gate called the “Gate of Merit” was thrown open and a hundred and ninety-nine priests entered, escorted on the right and left by eunuchs armed with swords and clubs. As the priests came toward the royal family they chanted, “Take thy meat, but think it dust! Eat but to live, and but to know thyself, and what thou art below! And say unto thy heart, ‘It is the earth I eat, that to the earth I may new life impart.’”
The chief priest led the procession. He advanced with downcast eyes and presented his bowl, which was slung from his neck by a cord and had been hidden under the yellow folds of his robe until that moment. If
anyone before whom a bowl was placed was not ready, no priest stopped. All continued to advance slowly, taking what was offered without thanks or even a look of acknowledgment until the end of the long row had been reached. Then the procession retired, chanting as before, at the gate called the “Gate of Earth.”
After this the King withdrew to his private temple, which was dedicated to the memory of his mother. This was a unique building decorated with beautiful frescoes representing the numerous metempsychoses of Buddha, which had been painted by Japanese artists imported for the purpose. The King ascended alone the steps to the altar and rang the bell that announced the hour of devotions. He lighted consecrated tapers and offered the white roses and lotus that he had brought. Then he spent an hour in prayer and meditation.
This service over, he retired for a nap, attended by a fresh detail of ladies-in-waiting. Those who had been on duty through the night were dismissed, not to be recalled for two weeks or a month unless as a mark of special favor. Most of them, however, waited on him voluntarily every day.
When he woke his breakfast was served with intricate formality. After he had inspected the gifts on the pavement before the palace he entered an antechamber of the women’s audience hall where a large number of the harem ladies waited. He seated himself at a long table, frequently with the little Princess Chanthara Monthon on his lap. Twelve women knelt nearby before great silver trays filled with twelve varieties of food—soups, meats, game, poultry, fish, vegetables, cakes, jellies, preserves, sauces, fruits, and teas. Each tray in its order was passed by three ladies to the head wife, Lady Thiang, who removed the silver cover, and at least seemed to taste the contents of the dish. Then advancing on her knees she set the dishes one by one on the table before the King.
Anna and the King of Siam Page 19
