Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  She ordered Mentu to take his book and go on with his lessons. Instantly he stopped pulling her hair and jumped to the table. He seated himself demurely as at first on her left shoulder, and pretended to study, peering at the other pupils over his book. As he did this he rolled his eyes with the oddest human expression as if to say, “Teacher’s an old crosspatch, isn’t she?” It was too much for the children. They let out an uproarious shout of delight. They hopped up and down in their seats laughing and pointing.

  Anna was sorry that Prang had forced the issue which she herself had carefully avoided, but since the girl’s challenge was now in the open it was impossible to evade it any longer. For if Anna ignored it, that subtle revolt every teacher fears would spread through the school with Prang its focal center. Some perversity in the girl had resisted Anna’s kindness and had galloped headlong to this crisis. It was hard to imagine why it should give Prang satisfaction, but quite obviously it did. “Prang,” Anna called peremptorily above the noise, “take Mentu out at once!”

  Instantly the children were quiet. The girl stood up in her place, eyes blazing with anger. One by one she took her books and threw them to the floor, then her pencil, her notebook, and finally her slate, which shattered in an explosion of sound. Only after the last of the objects connected with her school work lay at her feet did she take the monkey in her arms and stalk out.

  Day after day and week after week passed and she did not come back. Anna went to see her and to remonstrate with her, but it was useless. She even took Prang little presents, but the girl sulked and refused to return. So in the end Anna dismissed Prang from her mind and began to look around for someone else who could be trained to help her.

  The matter would have rested there—much as Anna hated to admit defeat where a human problem as interesting as Prang was concerned—if it had not been for the disappearance of the King’s spectacles. He had several pairs, but one pair in particular that he liked. He had taken them off and left them in the study while he went upstairs for a nap. When he came down they were gone. He flew into a rage that lasted not for hours but for days. Everyone around him suffered. Nothing anyone did was right. Dozens of women were thrown into prison. Many more were whipped for the slightest offense or for none at all. The food set before him was not fit to eat.

  The women whose duty it was to wait upon the King searched every nook and crevice of the various residences in which the King lived, but without success. The Amazons started methodically through the houses of the women, and when they, too, failed to find the spectacles a kind of helpless panic descended on the harem. Life on the Inside was reduced to a frantic effort on the part of everyone to escape from the King’s vindictiveness.

  Then it occurred to him to offer a reward. This produced results. An old woman returned the spectacles to the King within twenty-four hours, saying that they had been brought to her secretly the night before by one of his maids-in-waiting. A little pressure extracted the name from her. And when Anna entered the Palace next morning, the first thing she saw was fifteen of the younger ladies-in-waiting being publicly whipped by Amazons for having participated in a conspiracy to steal the King’s spectacles. After the scourging they were carried off to prison weeping loudly to serve a term of several weeks. Prang was among them.

  As soon as school was over Anna went to the prison, which was becoming a familiar place to her, and discovered from the Amazon guards that, as she had more than half surmised, Prang had been the leader in the reckless escapade. Was the girl mad? She would lose her head before she was twenty! She could torment her English teacher with impunity, but not the King! Anna sympathized with her Siamese friends who believed that phi, mysterious devils or spirits, often took possession of otherwise normal human beings and made them do all sorts of unaccountable things. There were phi pluai who would not tolerate the wearing of clothes; phi pop who were sent by sorcerers to devour the livers of their enemies; phi pakkalong who could locate stolen property, and many other kinds of phi. Since Anna was asking herself, “What gets into the girl to make her do these insane things?” she could not feel superior about the simple and not illogical explanation that satisfied the women of the harem. It was hard to understand the willfulness of Prang, although it was easy to see the highly dangerous direction that it was taking.

  When Anna entered the court of the prison the girls had dried their tears and were playing saba on the pavement. Mentu was seated on a bench nearby, cracking peanuts and stuffing himself in a sly and furtive manner. Anna called Prang to her, and the girl came smiling as openly as if she had not just been caught and punished. “What made you steal the King’s spectacles?” Anna asked her reproachfully.

  “What made me?” the girl repeated airily with a toss of her head. “Why, nothing made me. I did it because I wanted to, for the fun of it, for a change, because it was something new. We were all bored with the stupidity of our lives here and we were looking around for something interesting to do. So I suggested that we ought to get together and do something really desperate this time, just to see if we couldn’t stir up a little excitement in this dull old place. We talked over everything that we could think of, and we agreed that it would be fun to hide the King’s favorite spectacles and see what would happen.

  “Well, then we made our plans. And when it was my turn to wait upon His Majesty, I slipped them off the table and hid them in my vest while he was upstairs taking a nap. After a little while he came downstairs and missed them and began to rave, and of course we were all enchanted. It was much better than we had expected. We could hardly keep our faces straight. You should have seen him! He roared and danced around like a puppet, and stamped his feet up and down, and thundered like a wild beast.”

  She threw back her head and laughed heartily. “I thought I was going to burst out laughing right there. As soon as we were off duty we ran to my room and shrieked with laughter because our trick had turned out even better than we had hoped. And it was funny to see the King so upset day after day over a trifle. He kept shouting that he couldn’t study nights until his spectacles were found.

  “But after a while we began to be afraid because the King didn’t forget about the spectacles and didn’t stop being angry. We weren’t sure what we ought to do next. We had planned to return the spectacles so that it would look as if the King had misplaced them himself and then forgotten where he had put them. That would have made it seem as if he had made all the fuss about nothing. But no one dared to try it, after all. We were afraid we’d be caught. The Amazons were looking everywhere for the spectacles and searching the houses, too. None of the other girls would keep them in their rooms, so I had to take them myself, and I knew that when the Amazons got to me they’d find them in my box of clothes. Then when the King offered a reward I began to be afraid that one of the girls would tell on me and claim the money. So I went and sold them to an old woman who lives around the corner from me, and I made her promise that she would say that she had found them lying on the ground and didn’t know where they came from. But the wicked old thing took them back to the King and got the reward, and then she told on me and so here we all are in prison. But I’ll tell you one thing, when we get out of here we’ll lead her such a life that she’ll think all the devils in hell have descended on her for breaking her promise. Believe me, she’ll be sorry!”

  “You’re the one who ought to be sorry, Prang,” Anna said. “Your prank wouldn’t have been funny if you were six, and at sixteen it is inexcusable. Look at the number of women who had to suffer from the King’s anger because of your stupid joke. Nothing is funny that causes other people pain.” Then her voice softened. Of course this girl found the walls of the harem unendurable. Ennui drove some of the women to the illicit excitement of gambling. It drove this girl to practical jokes. Anna wished fiercely as she had so many times before that she had the power to throw open the gates and let such fettered creatures as this go free. But all she could hope to do was to help a few of them find escape into a new
world of ideas and mental activity. “I suppose it is dull, Prang,” she said, “but if you came to school every day, you’d have something to think about and you wouldn’t get bored. So when you’re released I want you to come back to school and really study. That will be your way of telling me you’re sorry for throwing your books on the floor the way you did, and for playing a childish trick on the King.”

  The girl looked up at Anna impishly. “But I’m not sorry,” she objected. “I’m not sorry even a little bit. It was fun. I never enjoyed anything more in my life. If you could have seen the King bouncing around like a shuttlecock with his face all purple, and shrieking like a parrot …” She went off into gales of laughter. “And even being whipped is a sort of a change in this tiresome old place,” she concluded defiantly.

  Anna left her. The girl was surely like a colt. “All right,” Anna thought, “I’ll be persistent and I’ll be kind, but I won’t give up until I break her to the saddle.” The analogy did not satisfy her. “What I mean,” she reflected on the way home in her boat, “is that I must help her get the saddle on herself before she destroys herself. As she is now, she’s a menace to her own future.”

  Anna remembered herself at sixteen and realized how horrible Prang’s narrow existence would have seemed to her then. This beautiful, slender, high-spirited girl should never have been forced into so plodding a life. Anna felt a warm impulse of sympathy for Prang’s futile explosions of rebellion. Nevertheless the harem life was now the only one that Prang would ever have. School and books would make it less monotonous.

  When Prang was free again, Anna waited to see if she would reappear at the school. Several days passed and she did not come. Anna called on her. Again and again she went to Prang’s house, pitting her will against the girl’s. She talked no more about school. She didn’t cajole, she didn’t upbraid. She listened to Prang’s stories of life as a lady-in-waiting. She talked about Avis in England, or about India, or Singapore, or England. At first she felt that Prang was braced against her. Even when the girl’s antagonism melted Anna said nothing about school. But she kept visiting the girl’s house, week by week, always pleasant, always interested. Then suddenly one day Prang burst into tears and threw her arms around Anna’s neck, pouring out a torrent of words—her unhappiness and boredom in the Palace; a flood of accusations against herself for her ingratitude to Anna, the only person who cared about her, incoherent promises.

  The saddle was on. From that day forward as long as Anna stayed in Siam, Prang was her loyal assistant in the school.

  24

  THE KING’S BIRTHDAY

  It was a rainy afternoon in the middle of October. School was in full swing when a small page came to the Temple of the Mothers of the Free for Anna. “His Majesty orders the Mem to come at once to the Audience Hall. Something has happened.”

  Anna was annoyed at having to drop her school books in the middle of a lesson, but there was no choice. She snatched her umbrella and hurried off through the storm. When she reached the Audience Hall she was half drenched. The King seemed to be abnormally excited and incoherent. He was marching up and down with rapid angry steps, shrieking in a shrill and exasperated voice, “Eighteenth of October, eighteen hundred and sixty-three! Eighteen hundred and sixty-three!”

  When he reached the far end of the hall he would about-face in a sudden bound and come leaping toward Anna with the same cry. She stood bewildered. Had he taken leave of his senses at last as she had feared that he some day must from the excess of rage that shook him so frequently? He paid no attention to her entry, but continued his curious march for almost half an hour, leaping and bounding up and down the hall, and shrieking again and again, “Eighteenth of October, eighteen hundred and sixty-three! Eighteenth of October, eighteen hundred and sixty-three!” She was perplexed and half afraid of the seeming lunatic before her, uncertain whether to run or to wait his pleasure. To her further confusion he then sprang close to her and screamed, “Mem, do you understand the meaning of the word ‘agility’?”

  She replied coolly, “Your Majesty has been giving me a very practical illustration of the word.”

  “Aye, aye!” laughed the King. “It is true, very true. You understand the English word ‘agility.’” Then with a return to his previous mood of wrath, “On the eighteenth of October, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, I shall be fifty-nine years old. And you can see that I am as young and as strong as ever!” He waved a newspaper clipping under her astonished nose. “But certain American missionaries have published a statement about me in an English newspaper, and have said that I am a ‘spare man.’ How can I be a spare man? A King cannot be a spare man. How can I be spared from my kingdom? Who can fill my place? I ask you that? Who can fill my place?” And he resumed his infuriated march.

  Anna shook with silent laughter. “But, Your Majesty,” she protested to his retreating back, “the word ‘spare’ has two meanings. One of them is ‘extra,’ but the other one is ‘thin.’ All the missionaries meant to say was that you are a thin man, and not that you are superannuated and unnecessary, as you have interpreted it.” Anger had stopped his ears to reason, and no matter how much she tried to explain he refused to be cajoled into listening.

  “I will prove it I am not a spare man,” he shouted, drowning out her explanations. “I’ll show them I’m as young as ever.”

  Then he ordered her to sit down at once and write invitations to a birthday dinner to be given on the eighteenth, only three days off. Every European and American in Bangkok was to be included. Furthermore, she was to set the table herself in the Audience Hall so that everything would be done in the best European style and according to European etiquette. Everything must be perfect to the last detail! His slaves would cook the dinner and serve it and provide her with all she needed. But she must supervise them and be responsible for all arrangements.

  “But, Your Majesty,” she protested, “your birthday comes on Sunday this year. The missionaries will surely decline.”

  “Very well, make it on Monday then. They shall come. They shall see I’m not a spare man!”

  Anna sighed at this new stretching of her duties. It was useless to remind the King that her little school was in session. There was nothing that she could do but dismiss it and begin on the invitations. She went home through the rain and got out her copy of Dr. Bradley’s Bangkok Calendar. Turning to the list of foreign residents she began to write. Since there were more than fifty invitations to be issued, it was a tedious business. English, French, American, Spanish, German, and Portuguese residents of the city were all asked.

  When the task was finished and the invitations delivered to the King’s chief messenger, she began to inquire about table arrangements. She would place the British Consul, Sir Robert Schomburgk, who was the King’s own age and the senior member of the small diplomatic corps, at the head of the table, and would herself take the foot.

  Eighty-two were expected and on the morning of the nineteenth the tables were arranged and handsome carved chairs brought. Women appeared with a length of perfect heavy white silk, richly brocaded, that went from head to foot of the board and was to serve as a table cloth. But there were no table napkins. While Anna hurried some of the women off to look for napkins, others arrived with a magnificent dinner service of pure gold in an antique pattern. She had never seen anything so superb even in a museum. There were plates, dishes, goblets, vases, stands, candelabra and ornaments of every form, shape, and size, all most exquisitely worked and inlaid with precious stones.

  Anna enjoyed setting the table with the beautiful service. It was worthy of a king when she had finished. But as yet there were no knives and forks or other silver. When she demanded these, the woman brought her instead a basket of chopsticks, also of gold. “No, no!” she said. “These will never do. You must find me some knives and forks and spoons. We Europeans couldn’t eat soup or anything else with chopsticks.”

  The women shook their heads in amazement and started off dubiously. A lon
g search failed to reveal any knives, forks, and spoons worthy of the table. All they could find was a box of old ones of the commonest kind, rusty from long disuse, and these had to suffice, for there seemed to be no others. When Anna left in the late afternoon to dress for dinner the napkins had not yet arrived, but everything else was ready. The hall was brilliantly decorated with flags and burnished armor, garlands of flowers, and innumerable gold and silver lamps. The dinner table which reached from end to end of the great room was resplendent, seeming actually to bend under the weight of gold and silver on it. Incense and perfume filled the chamber. There was nothing further Anna could do except urge the importance of napkins upon the sluggish servants, who seemed unable to comprehend her concern.

  When the guests began to arrive the King himself received the men in one of the drawing rooms. Everyone exclaimed over the flowers arranged with the unrivaled skill of the ladies of the Inside. There was a roll of pleasant conversation. While Anna led the women to a room prepared for them, the King entertained the men by firing with his own hands a twenty-one-gun salute in honor of his birthday.

  Among the guests, most of whom knew each other from long acquaintance, were two strangers—Sir Richard McCausland, Recorder of Singapore, and his sister. They were traveling through Siam and Burma, and had arrived in Bangkok opportunely on the sixteenth of October by the Chow Phya. Sir Richard was a long-time correspondent of the King. He was, moreover, in especial favor with His Majesty as a result of his opposition to the extreme policies of Colonel Orfeur Cavenagh, Governor of Singapore, Malacca, and Penang. Sir Richard had often given the King sound and cautious advice on affairs of state, which His Majesty interpreted as the intervention of a friend designed to checkmate somewhat the rapacious Cavenagh. The King was delighted, therefore, that Sir Richard and his sister could be present at the banquet.