Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  Actually the King ate very little of the lavish food, although he often spent much time urging it on the princess. He was notably temperate in his diet. During the long seclusion in the Buddhist cloister he had acquired habits of abstemiousness which he never abandoned. It was amusing to watch him solemnly eating with gold chopsticks a modest bowl of boiled rice such as might have made a coolie’s meal.

  At these leisurely breakfasts it was his custom to hold Anna in conversation. Sometimes they discussed the news of the day. The issue of the Civil War was still in doubt. Lincoln had announced the emancipation of the slaves. England and Spain had withdrawn from Napoleon’s expedition to Mexico. China was still racked by the long agony of the Taiping Rebellion. A new and interesting figure had emerged there, “Chinese” Gordon, who had assumed command of the Ever-Victorious Army organized a few years earlier by a daring American adventurer, recently dead, Frederick Townsend Ward.

  At other times they discussed some topic of interest out of the King’s studies or reading, or out of Anna’s own studies in Sanskrit. It was at this hour that Anna came to know the King well, to admire and respect his intellectual attainments. She believed him to be the most systematically educated, the most capacious devourer of books and news, of any crowned head of that day, either Oriental or European. But she was often repelled by the extreme skepticism of his mind where people were concerned. He had no faith whatever in the integrity of any human being. He believed that every man strove to encompass his ends by good means or bad. He could not be convinced that anyone acted out of principle.

  On occasion Anna would try to refute his scornful analysis of the actions of a friend, only to discover in mortification that he saw in her magnanimity some seeking for personal advantage. It was simply “to your peculiar interest to say so,” he would say, adding sourly, “Money, money, money! It will buy anything,” as if her friends had bribed her to uphold their cause before the King.

  He passed his mornings in study or correspondence. Anna was usually free to carry on the business of her school during this time, except on mail days, which came at least twice a month. If the King was tired, he took another nap at noon. If not, he continued to study until two o’clock when he put aside his books and letters, and sent a golden candlestick to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

  As Anna had seen on her first visit to the Palace this was the signal that the King had begun to prepare for his public appearance. Immediately all the narrow, crooked streets and lanes which intersected and crossed each other in such bewildering irregularity were thronged with women and children of every age, from the tottering dame of eighty to the two-year-old just beginning to feel the earth under his feet. This motley stream of humanity, some in silks and some in rags, some pale and downcast, some laughing and fresh, moved rapidly and wordlessly toward the audience hall of the women.

  Those of lesser rank knelt on the pavement outside, while all around the hall itself in the alcoves and shadowy recesses formed by the kincob curtains hundreds of the princesses, concubines, and ladies-in-waiting prostrated themselves to await the King’s appearance. In the meantime His Majesty had bathed and anointed his body with the help of his women. Then he descended to the dining salon where he was served the most substantial meal of the day. After he had finished, he entered the audience hall and chatted with his favorites among the wives and children.

  The love of children was his one constant virtue. They appealed to him by their beauty and their trustfulness. They amused him with the bold innocence of their ways. He would take them in his arms and embrace them, making droll faces at the babies. He would ask the older children puzzling questions and laugh at their serious attempts to reply.

  One of the strange contradictions of Siamese character, which never failed to surprise Anna, was that in spite of the King’s presence and the enormous fear the women seemed to feel for him, it took the Amazons to keep discipline. If there was too much giggling and whispering behind a curtain, one of the female police would start up and lay a whip lightly on the shoulders of the more noisy. The whip was administered as often as three times during an audience. And the moment the King retired, the women scattered like a flock of geese, rushing away to their homes as if they had just escaped from an unpleasant duty.

  This curious mixture of subservience and complete lack of discipline also complicated the smooth running of the little English school. Most of the time the children’s manners were perfect, their attention to Anna’s orders admirable. On the other hand, she could never be sure when her control would break suddenly and for no apparent reason, and the royal pupils would throw all regulations to the wind and become unmanageable. One morning she entered the temple to find every child in place. Something distracted her for two or three minutes, and when she returned to start the day’s lessons the children had vanished, for no reason that she could discover. Nor could she reassemble her school until the next day. It was bewildering.

  Almost every afternoon the whole school was disrupted when a company of priests, closely guarded, entered the harem city to purify it with consecrated water. As they passed from one gate to another along the streets sprinkling the water right and left, the children would make a frantic rush to prostrate themselves on the pavement within reach of the cleansing showers. Books, pencils, slates, were strewn in every direction. It was useless to try to reorganize the lesson when the priests had passed, for the children were refractory and inattentive. Anna would sigh and send them home, and they would disappear on the backs of their slaves to prepare for the afternoon audience with their father.

  When the King had dismissed the women and children, he passed to the outside Hall of Audience to consider official matters with the members of his government. Twice a week at sunset he appeared at one of the gates of the Palace to hear the petitions of the people, who could not reach his ear at any other time or place. It was pitiful to see the awe-stricken subjects of the Lord of Life prostrate and abject, often too overwhelmed to submit the precious petitions they had brought.

  At nine he retired to his upper chambers. Immediately there issued from them a series of domestic bulletins, orders regulating life on the Inside, assignments of special tasks to designated officers, names of the women whose presence he desired, and the list of those who were to wait upon him during the night.

  About twelve or one he woke from his first sleep, and devoted several hours to study or letter-writing. If he found a word in his reading that baffled him, he would send a dozen or more slave women for Anna. Usually these words were technical or scientific terms not found in the dictionary, and not in Anna’s head, either. Her inability to define them never failed to infuriate the King. He would look at her indignantly and say, “Why for do you not know? It’s clear that you aren’t scientific!” Then, not having demolished her to his satisfaction even with this the most damning censure he knew, he would search for words to poison the shaft of his disdain. “Well, you’re only a woman after all,” he would add, and being unable to think of anything worse at the moment he would add scornfully, “You can go now.”

  Twice a week at midnight he held a secret council of the San Luang (the Royal Inquisition). Anna never obtained any clear knowledge of the dark and terrifying sittings of this secret inquisition, for she never attended, nor would anyone talk about them with her. Certain things she learned, however, as time passed. The San Luang was silent, insidious, secretive. It was an inquisition, not overt and audacious like that of Rome, but nocturnal, unseen, ubiquitous like that of Spain. It proceeded without witnesses or warning; kidnaping a subject, not arresting him; and then incarcerating, chaining, and torturing him to extort a confession or denunciation.

  The laws of the country were not intolerable, but no one not in the good graces of the San Luang could depend upon them or the regular courts for justice. The San Luang was so feared and dreaded that no man would consent to appear before it even as a witness except for a large reward. The wise citizen was careful to find a protector i
n some formidable friend who was a member. Spies in the employ of the San Luang penetrated every family of wealth and influence. Every citizen suspected and feared his neighbor and his servants always, sometimes even his wife.

  On several occasions when Anna was more than usually annoyed by some act of the King, she gave vent to her feelings in word or look. She soon observed that if this happened in the presence of certain officers and courtiers they rapped in a peculiar and stealthy manner. This tapping, she discovered, was one of the secret signs of those in the employ of the San Luang. The warning signal was addressed to her because they imagined that she was also a member of the Inquisition, so great was her influence with the King considered to be. When this happened it was clear evidence that she had ceased to be merely a pawn on the vast and dimly seen chessboard. She had become a player in the game.

  The work of the school itself was progressing rapidly and this delighted the King. As early as the fall of 1862, after only a few months of instruction, the royal pupils had begun writing little notes in English to their teacher’s daughter, Avis. These were addressed in care of the Misses King, to whose school at Fulham Avis had been sent. Some of them were written on paper embossed with the royal seal, some on lace-bordered sheets like old-fashioned valentines, and some on mere scraps from notebooks. They conveyed little sense but much love, with an occasional Siamese word inserted where English had failed. It seemed infinitely sad to the royal children that Avis should have to be sent so far away from her mother. A few of them brought little gifts such as rings to be forwarded to Avis. The small donors thought that these might help comfort her in her loneliness.

  As the year drew to a close Prince Chulalongkorn continued to be outstanding among the children. He was methodical in his work and very serious. He moved ahead with a steady even progress that was gratifying to his teacher and doubly so to his father. He was more self-disciplined than the rest of the children, and often helped keep his small brothers and sisters under control by example or word.

  Other children to whom Anna was especially attracted were the two little sons of Lady Talap, the exquisite doll-like wife to whom the King had presented her at her first audience; Son Klin’s son, Prince Krita; the oldest daughter of Lady Thiang, Princess Somawadi; and the Princess Chanthara Monthon or the Fa-ying, as the sister of Prince Chulalongkorn was called. She was an exceptionally lovely child, besides being the favorite of the King among all his sixty-odd children. She had soft dark eyes filled with a trustfulness that was very winning. Her skin was a clear and beautiful olive with a delicate flush that heightened its transparency.

  Shortly before her death the late queen consort had entrusted her four children to their royal father with a pitiful tenderness and anxiety. He had been deeply moved by her pleading. As he had loved the mother, so now he loved the children. And among the four of them the Fa-ying was closest to him. She was almost always with him at meals. During state processions about the city by dragon boat or palanquin she sat beside him. In a fumbling sort of way he lavished on her a love intended to take the place of her mother’s. When she was hardly more than a baby he had assigned to her the best of the tutors among the women of the harem. Thus she had started her studies in Siamese and Sanskrit at the age of three. When she came to Anna at seven she was already surprisingly proficient in both.

  The pictures in her English books delighted her. She grew especially fond of the pictures of the Christ Child. Whenever she was tired of study, she would jump up into Anna’s lap and settling down comfortably would demand, “Tell me a story! Tell me all about your beautiful Jesus!”

  And after Anna had told her story the Fa-ying would smile and pat Anna’s cheeks and say, “I, too, little Fa-ying, I love your sacred Jesus very much. Do He love me a little, very little? I no got mother, poor little Fa-ying! Could He love her too?”

  Consciously Anna tried to shape the little princess to a pattern of kindness. She knew that she had in this the encouragement of the old great-aunt, Princess Lamom. If in the years to come the Fa-ying chose to use her enormous power over her father unselfishly, there was much she might be able to do to alleviate the cruelty of the life around her. And like her brother, Prince Chulalongkorn, she had an innate sympathy for those who suffered.

  It seemed to Anna that both of these children were less like their father than their uncle, the Second King. Even as a small boy he had been known for his generous spirit. An elderly priest had told Anna how at twelve the young prince was being carried through the eastern gate of the city on the way to his mother’s lotus gardens when he noticed an old man, half blind, resting by the roadside. He had commanded his bearers to halt, and had alighted from his sedan to speak to the poor creature. Finding him destitute and helpless, a stranger in Bangkok, he had had him seated in his own sedan and carried to the gardens while he himself followed on foot. There he had had the old man bathed and dressed in fresh clothes and fed with a substantial meal. And afterward he had taken his astonished client into his service as a keeper of cattle.

  From stories that Anna heard on every side it appeared that this incident was not unusual. Later in life the prince had continued no less generous and romantic, a sort of Harun-al-Raschid, visiting the poor in disguise, listening to the recital of their sufferings and wrongs, and relieving them where he could. The populace idolized him and would have liked to see him king, a fact which drove a wedge of misunderstanding between the brothers. King Mongkut, whose temperament was essentially cold except when heated by rage, regarded his warm-hearted brother with suspicion and contrived to limit the Second King’s activities until he became in effect a state prisoner.

  It seemed unlikely, however, that the King would feel the same distrust of the warm impulses of his favorite children. They were not even aware of the fact that their father wore armor against the world. In their hands he was completely malleable. What they asked for they received. Anna looked back over the year and felt strongly that it had not been wasted if it had done nothing more than reinforce the natural idealism of Prince Chulalongkorn and the Fa-ying.

  “Will you teach me to draw, Mem cha? I want to make some pretty pictures.” A small bell-like voice interrupted Anna as she worked alone one afternoon while her pupils attended their Sanskrit class. It was the Fa-ying, leaning confident and smiling close to her. “It’s more fun to sit here by you than go to Sanskrit class. My Sanskrit teacher isn’t like my English teacher at all.” The little princess leaned even closer and opened her dark eyes wide as if she were about to share a solemn confidence. “Do you know what she does? She bends my hands back when I make mistakes and it hurts. I don’t like her and I don’t like Sanskrit either.” The engaging prattler twisted her face into a deep frown. Then the frown vanished and she looked up archly into Anna’s face. “But I like my English teacher and I like English. There are so many pretty pictures in my English books. And I want to draw some myself. So will you teach me to draw, Mem cha?”

  The Fa-ying climbed up into Anna’s lap and curled up like a kitten. Anna put down her pen to make room. Although the princess was almost eight, she was no larger than a four-year-old English child. Her flower-like charm was not the result of delicate physical perfection, however, but came more from a sunny spirit, which remained unspoiled even by the attention heaped upon her.

  “I’ll be glad to teach you to draw and paint, if His Majesty doesn’t object,” Anna promised. The Fa-ying slipped her arms around the Englishwoman’s neck and gave her a delighted hug that stirred in Anna a homesickness for Avis.

  “And when you go far away to England, Mem cha, will you take me along with you and Louis on the big, big boat?”

  “Well, that’s a little different,” Anna objected. “I’m afraid His Majesty would never let you go that far away from him, even with me. After all, how could he get along without you?” She smiled down into the soft eyes that watched every expression of her face with quick intelligence.

  “Oh, yes, he’ll let me go!” contradicted the Fa-yi
ng with complete assurance. “He lets me do anything I want to do. I’m the Somdet Chao-fa-ying, you know, and he loves me the best of all. So he’ll surely let me go, if that’s what I want to do.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Anna said, amused by the child’s matter-of-fact assumption of power over her autocratic father. “And I’m also glad that you like English and drawing. Let’s go and ask His Majesty if you may study drawing instead of Sanskrit, shall we?”

  The Fa-ying sprang to the floor and seized Anna’s hand. “Oh, yes, let’s go right now!”

  So they went and laid their request before the King in his upstairs study. His face softened as he looked at the little girl. And he smiled at Anna, gratified by her interest in his favorite child. He made no objection to his daughter’s request, and day after day she came to Anna while her brothers and sisters attended their Sanskrit class. It was a pleasant interlude in the school routine.

  Sometimes the child drew or painted. Sometimes she sat quietly and watched Anna draw. If she grew tired she climbed into Anna’s lap and demanded a Bible story. She had her favorites, which she insisted upon hearing over and over. Anna marveled at the spiritual perception of her alert small mind and at her ability to grasp the meaning of these stories. There was more in her rapt attention than the natural interest of any child in a good story well told. There was a nascent humanitarianism that fed on their inner significance. The other children, even the brightest, were lovable, earth-bound mortals. This child was different. The Welsh in Anna responded to this difference, which was like a spring welling up from some source within the child’s depth of spirit. If the little princess and her brother, given all the latent power that was theirs by birth and position, fulfilled their seeming promise, the Siam of the next generation would be a better place than the Siam of 1863.

  Pleased as the King was with the progress of his children, it never seemed to occur to him that it would have been even more rapid if he had refrained from summoning their teacher from her schoolroom whenever he needed an English letter written. There were other breaks in the regular schedule. The children would be summoned in the middle of a class to attend some ceremony. The frequent royal cremations were especially time-consuming, but the children loved them for the elaborate theatricals and fireworks. The festivals of the Buddhist year also took their toll of school days.