Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  A covered passage led from the harem to the palace of the King. At the end where the precincts sacred to royalty began was a bas-relief representing the head of an enormous sphinx, with a sword thrust through its mouth, and this inscription: “Better that a sword be thrust through thy mouth than that thou utter a word against him who ruleth on high.” Anna thought when she saw it or the countless women who had paused there for the first time to read the grisly words. And though the day was warm she shivered a little.

  In the southern part of the city, the most populous and least desirable area, were the markets, the workshops of the women carpenters and smiths, and the quarters of the slaves. These plied their many trades for the benefit of their mistresses, even going outside the Palace on occasion to peddle their wares. It was whispered that more than one princess in financial difficulties, perhaps from too much gambling, had made cakes from recipes known only to palace women and sent her slaves outside to sell them. In this section the streets were narrow and dirty, the tenements crowded.

  No man was ever permitted to enter the harem city, except the King and the priests who came under guard for religious functions. The slave women were allowed to go out to visit their husbands for a certain number of months every year—as well as on business for their mistresses—but the mistresses themselves rarely if at all until they had attained a small degree of freedom through age and position. King Mongkut, more liberal than his predecessors, sometimes allowed his consorts and ladies-in-waiting to go out for such an important occasion as the cremation of one of their parents. But the privilege had to be sought in writing and was not always granted. Even when granted it cost prohibitively in bribes and tips to the Amazons of the guard. So for most of the harem the city was the world—a world of women, nine thousand of them within the confines of its high walls.

  The women of the harem seemed an indistinguishable mass of human beings to Anna, but as time went on the mass broke down into individuals, many of whom she regarded as friends. She first became acquainted with the mothers of her pupils. Their position as Chao Chom Manda, Mothers of Royal Children, set them apart. Of the nine thousand women only about thirty were so honored. Most of these were the daughters of noblemen and had been offered for the royal service by their families, who chose the prettiest daughter or niece for this important position. Some had lived in the Palace since childhood as maids-in-waiting to one or another of the princesses. Each princess had her own establishment, large or small, with many such little maids, and each must make out of her narrow sphere whatever life she was to have.

  Some did exquisite embroidery work, and taught their maids-in-waiting to do likewise. Some made wax and paper flowers for cremations and for temple decorations. Others were skilled in weaving fragile chandeliers, lambrequins, table covers, and even curtains in lacy patterns of rose petals, jasmine, and other natural flowers, threaded and netted in beautiful designs for important festivals. Some read novels, poetry, and plays and taught their small maids to read also. And some spent countless hours in gambling.

  The little maids did light tasks for their mistresses in return for their education in the refinements of palace life. Since there were no schools for girls, it was only girls so trained who had any opportunity for education. All the palace arts were highly prized. They were the mark of the cultivated woman. It was considered an honor for a family to have a daughter in the Palace in this or any other capacity. For, if she caught the eye of the King, or the king-to-be, advancement, wealth, position, and power were in sight for her family.

  The royal consorts as well as the princesses had the daughters of relatives and friends entrusted to them. They, too, had their own establishments, and possessed slaves few or many according to their means. The allowances made to them by the King were hardly adequate for the simplest living, but many of them were independently wealthy.

  Some of the consorts and most of the princesses were very haughty and insistent upon every ounce of respect and honor to which their positions entitled them. Many, however, were gracious and charming. One of these who became Anna’s fast friend was Lady Thiang, mother of her pupil Princess Somawadi. Lady Thiang was the most important of the royal wives. She was a woman of about thirty, fair almost to whiteness, with jet black hair and eyes. She was clever and kind, although as compared to some of the more intellectual women of the harem not highly educated.

  But she was the mother of more of His Majesty’s children than any other woman, even though she had never been his favorite at any time. She had borne four daughters and three sons to the King, and her maternity had brought her pre-eminence. Now that both queens were dead she had become head wife, not by edict, but by common consent and by the veneration in which she was held. She had another distinction. Of all the women in the Palace she alone, according to Anna’s observation, really loved the King as man and husband. She contrived to be always in his favor, serving him with an innate gentleness and understanding that endeared her to him.

  He in turn had recognized her complete trustworthiness by raising her to the position of superintendent of the royal cuisine. This was an extremely lucrative position, which carried with it many perquisites, among them two houses. One was her home where her children were born and brought up, a quaint stately edifice with stuccoed fronts in the most fashionable part of the inner city in the midst of a pleasant garden. The other adjoined the royal kitchens, and there she spent the greater part of each day, selecting and sometimes preparing costly dainties for the royal table.

  Her natural friendliness had made her generally loved, and her immense wealth and influence seemed only to have broadened her sympathies. She was always ready to help the other women of the harem, whatever their shortcomings or whatever means she was obliged to use to render them service.

  She reconciled her little plots, intrigues, and deceptions by saying: “Surely it is better for HIM not to know everything. HE knows too much already with HIS Siamese and English and Pali and Sanskrit. I wonder HE can ever get to sleep at all with so many different tongues in HIS head.”

  Another woman who interested Anna, although she never succeeded in getting to know her, was the beautiful Princess Tongoo Soopia. She was a Malay, the sister of the Sultan Mahmud, ex-Rajah of Pahang. The King had fallen fiercely in love with her on her presentation at his court and had procured her for his harem against her will as a hostage for the good faith of her brother. She was a Mohammedan, however, and she maintained toward the Buddhist King a deportment of tranquil indifference. The King soon tired of her coldness and dismissed her to a wretched life of neglect within the Palace walls, but this, too, she bore with seeming indifference. Anna used to talk to her in Malay when they chanced to meet in one of the avenues of the Inside, but the acquaintance was confined to mere civilities.

  Of the executive staff, which was very large and included four hundred Amazons, twelve judges, stewards, undertakers, and many other officers, none was so interesting to Anna as the chief of the judges of the women’s court. Like most of the executive officers, she was not and never had been a royal consort. Her title was Khun Thao Ap, and she was an unusually tall and commanding woman for a Siamese. She was stout also, and very dark, with soft eyes in a heavy face. Her only real beauty was the graceful form of her hands and arms. Her native aloofness prevented intimacy, but she and Anna soon became friends. Both she and Lady Thiang were much interested in Avis and each sent her silk for a dress on her birthday that first October that Anna was in Siam. Khun Thao Ap accompanied her gift with a little note telling Avis that she was studying English with Avis’ mother.

  She was a religious and scrupulously just woman with a serious bearing. Everything she said or did was studied, not from the desire to create an effect, but from discretion. A certain air of preoccupation was natural to her. She had secured her high office by dint of attention and penetration, and she kept it by virtue of her supreme but unassuming fitness for the position. She knew everything that took place in the harem, and concealed i
t all within her breast. Her complete integrity and her reputation for silence brought her the confidences of the women. The hideous symbolical sphinx with the sword through its mouth had no secrets from her.

  In spite of her enormous power her way of life was simple and even austere. She lived alone in a small house at the end of one of the main streets where she was easily accessible. She was served by four faithful slaves, who constituted her entire establishment. The rest she had freed.

  But none of these women interested Anna as much as Lady Son Klin, Hidden Perfume. It did not take her long to devise a means of seeing the frightened, quiet, passionately eager student. One afternoon Anna went quickly up to the woman before she could run away and asked her if she would not like to come for an hour or two after school for English lessons, since she had gone past the place where Boy could help her. A smile lighted her face and made her lovely for a moment.

  “You will teach me?” she asked in unbelieving wonder. “But, lady, I’m not worthy that you should waste your valuable time on me.”

  “That isn’t for you to decide,” Anna replied firmly. “I’ll be the judge of that when I see what you can do.”

  Lady Son Klin gave a cry of utter rapture, then dropped swiftly to the floor and embraced Anna’s feet.

  She was a diligent scholar and came day after day and month after month with a perseverance that none of the other women had. Her expression was troubled and old. She had long been out of favor. Without hope from the King, she had surrendered herself wholly to fondness for her son, Prince Krita Phinihan, who was nine, only a year younger than Prince Chulalongkorn. The King was an affectionate father to those of his children whose mothers had pleased him, but he could not forgive any child a mother who had not. So Prince Krita, although he was the second living son of the King, had the same diffident air of being unwanted as his mother. For the shadows of the harem fell even across the hearts of children.

  Lady Son Klin was cautious about accepting the friendship that Anna proffered with equal caution. Gradually, however, their daily lessons and talks became her happiest moments. They gave her entrance into a new world from which no catastrophe could bar her. Her clear dark eyes began to grow calmer as time passed. She rarely talked about herself or her troubles, but Anna succeeded in learning a little. She was a Mon, or Peguan, and of royal descent. Her great-grandfather had been brought to Siam as a hostage, and had been placed in charge of the Mon corps of the army by the first Chakri king, who had found him trustworthy.

  By the custom of the time there was no army of Siamese except irregular levies raised during war. The only permanent forces were recruited from captives and their descendants, who were required to give four months of military service a year. The Mon corps under Son Klin’s great-grandfather and his sons and grandsons had been, during most of a century, responsible for the protection of the river approach to Bangkok. Her father was Governor of Paklat, one of the river towns. The family had grown rich through the years and Son Klin’s father had presented Prince Krita with a palace at his birth. It was on the river bank and the little prince would occupy it when he was too old to live any longer in the harem. Many other relatives were in government service, but they also were out of favor with the King, who was strongly prejudiced against both the Mon and the Annamese.

  As the acquaintance ripened Lady Son Klin invited Anna to visit her. After that, the lessons were sometimes in her small and unpretentious home. Her reticence did not melt, however, until one day when Anna chanced to call on the Siamese Sabbath. As a slave led her to a little room that they had dignified with the name of “the study,” she saw her friend kneeling in prayer in an adjoining room. On the altar before which Lady Son Klin had prostrated herself was a gilt image of the Buddha, while on either side hung pictures of the King and her son.

  The room was covered with gay hand-painted wallpaper in the Burmese style. On it were huge trees, some standing, and others uprooted and carried away by the flood of a mighty river. Here and there they drifted along lifeless, or were covered with flowers. The sun shone through a window on the dark, upturned brow of Hidden Perfume. Her eyes were closed and there was a mysterious joy in her plain face that transfigured it completely. She seemed to be holding direct communion with the Infinite Spirit, oblivious of all else. Anna stepped quietly into the study and waited until the devotions were finished.

  In a short time Lady Son Klin’s clear voice called Anna to join her in the sanctuary. Anna sat down on the floor beside her before the altar. “Did you see my wallpaper?” she asked.

  “I noticed it as I came in,” Anna said. “It’s a very gay one for your little oratory, isn’t it?”

  “I see you don’t understand the meaning of it,” Son Klin said, and proceeded to explain the allegory, partly in Siamese and partly in broken English: “That big green tree there,” she said, pointing to it, “is like unto me when I was young and ignorant, rejoicing in earthly distinctions and affections. Then you see I am brought as a gift to the King, and only think how very grand I am and how rich I shall become. And there you see that I am drooping and my leaves are all withering and beginning to fall. Here I am shattered and uprooted by a sense of sorrow and humiliation. And there I am drifting along an impetuous river to destruction, but by and by a little flower stops my downward course. See how pretty it is! That little flower is my child. He springs out of the very waters that threatened my ending. And now he grows into a garden of flowers all over the trunk of the tree, to hide away from me that which would make me sad and sorrowful again. And now I am always glad. Do you see?”

  The two women sat quietly for many minutes. Each had known deep sorrow. One’s loss had been by death, the other’s by humiliation and degradation. In a sense they were both widows, and they both had sons who were all the world to them. A deep bond of sympathy was forged between them in that hour that was to last as long as life.

  After a little Anna stirred, shifting her legs, which were becoming stiff. Then she asked curiously and a little hesitantly, “Son Klin, you were praying to that idol?”

  Lady Hidden Perfume did not reply at once. At length she laid her hand gently on Anna’s arm and said: “Shall I say of you, dear friend, that you worship the image which you have of your God in your mind and not your God? Even so say not of me that I worship the golden image that you see, but the Great One who sent me my teacher, the enlightened Buddha, to be the guide of my life.”

  16

  MOONSHEE DIGS FOR TREASURE

  The pleasant work of making home more homelike had been accomplished. Anna was able to return the various dinner invitations that had come to her. Her social contacts were limited, of course, by the fact that the foreign community of Bangkok was small. The British Consulate had become the hub of Bangkok life not only for the British but for other foreigners. On several occasions during her first year Sir Robert Schomburgk had been host to “a series of public meetings of a social and improving character, superintended by the ladies of Bangkok.” Sir Robert had even obliged on one such occasion with a long and very dull essay on a trip he had made to Chiengmai. His heavy German accent clung still to his speech though he had been many years in British service. He was Prussian born, a protégé of Prince Albert. His soirees were not brilliant but they were pleasant, as were the dinners he gave on the Queen’s birthday. It was natural that during his consulship his own stilted tastes should have set the tone of Bangkok’s social life.

  Anna did not mind, however. Sir Robert was a scholar of note, and her own tastes were scholarly also. She liked him better than some of the gayer of her compatriots who grumbled about him. Then, too, she had made friends among the American missionaries, and attended church in their chapel frequently. From them she learned much of the progress of the Civil War, in which she was such a passionate partisan. She was especially fond of the Stephen Mattoons.

  At home even the work of cleaning up the yard, which had appeared utterly hopeless, was proceeding with astonishing speed. Moonshee
, who had at first shirked the task as below his dignity, was now busy every day with spade and rake. As Anna saw him delving among the stone slabs, examining the rubble with care, she wondered if he had become animated with a sudden access of antiquarian enthusiasm. He offered no explanation, but dug away with his spade hour after hour, excavating bricks, stones, tiles, and carvings. Anna was at a complete loss to account for this new quirk in his behavior, so contrary to his usual dilettante approach to physical effort.

  She had told him to clear the surface of the yard, but she had certainly never ordered him to dig out the rubble embedded in the earth, as he was doing. Still, it was a harmless pursuit, and one that Boy enjoyed also. He was interested in the snails and grubs and bits of broken figures that came up from Moonshee’s diggings. Sometimes he brought an unusually interesting bit of carving for his mother to see and she put it on a shelf that gradually filled with such pieces.

  One evening as she sat musing on the piazza with a book open on her lap she heard Boy’s clear voice ringing out in peals of laughter from the spot where the excavating was being carried on. She laid her book aside and went to see for herself what the two had found. On the edge of a deep hole, in a corner of the compound, sat Moonshee, an effigy of doleful disappointment, and beside him stood Bessy, wagging her tail, and Boy clapping his hands and laughing. The old child had taken the young one into his confidence and together they had dug a hole in search of buried treasure! At the bottom of their digging they had found what looked like a rusty purse. His hands shaking with excitement Moonshee had reached for it with the spade. And after several empty hauls, he had fished it up. A toad! A huge unsightly yellow toad!