The King sobered immediately, realizing that the strange half-wild thing could no more comprehend the right and wrong of ordinary human morality than the ape he resembled. Without her asking it, he wrote a royal order setting Nai Lek free.
When Anna presented this to the jailer, the prison doors opened to her. She found Nai Lek lying on the bare floor of his cell, exhausted. The moment he saw Anna he began to whine like a dog. His eyes were rolled up in their sockets, and Anna feared he was actually dying from over-exertion and the want of food and water. But when she told him that the King had given orders that he was to be set free, he sprang to his feet and rushed out of the prison. Anna saw him scamper away toward the house where he lived with an old woman whose duty it was to take care of him.
Ten or twelve days later Anna saw him again, sitting astride a wall, whipping it and making all the motions of being on horseback. As soon as he caught sight of her he jumped down and came running toward her on all fours. He crouched beside her, took her hand in his, smelled it, and said, “Hom, hom!”
The King gave orders that Nai Lek was never again to be molested, so that the dwarf was safe from all but the jeers of passing boys. Anna was his beloved benefactor as long as she remained in Siam. In the fog of his mind that much was clear. Once she made him a blue shirt as a gift, and he was delighted. Every little while he would appear below her window and yell to let her know that he was there. When she and Boy looked out he would perform somersaults and acrobatic stunts for their amusement. Each new set of tumbles he learned he brought to them as a kind of offering, and Louis would laugh and clap with pleasure. Anna was touched by the persistence of Nai Lek’s memory of her small act of kindness, especially since in higher quarters, where she had every right to expect it, she had less appreciation.
By the end of 1864, when Anna had been almost three years in the Palace, she decided to ask the King for the increase in salary which had been promised her when her work grew. There was no doubt that her work had doubled and trebled. She was busy with her school all day and had to translate in the evening until ten o’clock. Even these long hours did not free her from the possibility of being called during the night. Her royal pupils showed progress and the King often expressed his gratification with it. It cost sixty pounds a year to keep Avis in school in England. Living in Bangkok was not cheap. There were servants to pay, food to buy, Louis and herself to clothe. And there were the claims upon her of the distressed who came in an ever-increasing stream.
But when she broached the matter of her salary to the King, confident that he needed only to be reminded, to her astonishment he turned on her angrily. He said that “she had not given satisfaction,” and added that she was “difficult and unmanageable, more careful about what was right and what was wrong than for the obedience and submission. And as to salary,” he continued, “why you should be poor? You come into my presence every day with some petition, some case of hardship or injustice, and you demand, ‘Your Majesty shall kindly investigate, and cause redress to be made’; and I have granted to you because you are important to me for translation, and so forth. And now you declare you must have increase of salary! Must you have everything in this world? Why you do not make them pay you? If I grant you all your petition for the poor, you ought to be rich, or you have no wisdom.”
That ended the argument. The King refused to discuss the matter further. Anna was almost deprived of words, anyway, by the discovery that the King actually thought she would batten off the procession of misery that crawled to her for help. She turned quietly away, feeling as if she had been hit with a bludgeon.
There was little consolation in the thought that her influence had grown to the point where even the women and children of the Inside looked to her for help. Many of them, seeing that she was not afraid to oppose the King, imagined that she had more than human powers. So not only the poor, but the highly placed ladies of the harem came to her secretly with their grievances. Without intent she found herself set up between the oppressor and the oppressed. Day after day she was called upon to resist the cruelty of the judges. In cases of torture, imprisonment, extortion, she tried again and again to excuse herself from interfering, but still the mothers or sisters implored her until she had no choice left but to try to help them. Sometimes she sent Boy to the judges with her “clients,” sometimes she went herself. Boy had become a great favorite with the King. He had written Avis: “I like the King. He gave me some gold leaf for you which I send you with all my love.” Anna had to admit honestly to herself that justice was granted not from a sense of right, but either through fear of her influence with the King or through Boy’s known popularity.
When her Siamese and European acquaintances began to whisper that she was amassing a fortune, it was almost more than she could bear. Yet she was too proud to defend herself. She had not had enough experience to know that this was merely the usual suspicion of the comfortably self-centered for the incomprehensible few who set out to help their fellow-men or to reform ancient and accepted evils. Besides, an honest survey of her own motives had convinced her that perhaps there was some reason for people to think that her rescues were not disinterested. In one sense they were not. She suffered so acutely from the sight of suffering that she was driven to action in pity for herself as much as for the sake of the injured. She was like the unjust magistrate in the Bible, she thought, who avenged the wrongs of the persistent widow “lest by her continual coming she weary me.”
In addition to the outsiders there were always some among her pupils who needed special help. One of these was a little princess as beautiful as the Fa-ying had been. She had not been among the royal children brought to Anna at the beginning of the school, in 1862. She had come a year or more later, accompanied by a slave, and had entered the schoolroom timidly, as if she half expected to be rebuffed. She was a delicately formed little girl of about six when Anna first knew her, with large soft eyes that looked pleadingly from under thick lashes. Her low voice and subdued manner were not natural in a young child. They suggested a premature experience of sorrow or unkindness.
Her name was charming—Wani Ratana Kanya, which meant “Maiden of Jeweled Speech.” She caught Anna’s interest from the first by her shy loveliness and by her patience, and Anna made every effort to win her confidence. Wani smiled wistfully at her teacher, but maintained an air of reserve. She came to school regularly, however. Anna went to more than ordinary pains to encourage her, until one day when Lady Thiang, the head wife, called and took Anna aside in deep concern. She begged Anna to be less demonstrative. “Surely,” she said dramatically, “you wouldn’t bring more trouble on that wounded lamb, would you?”
“But of course not!” Anna exclaimed in alarm. “I only want to help her. She seems so forlorn!”
She tried to find out the reason back of Lady Thiang’s warning. Why should it be dangerous to Wani to have her teacher show an interest in her? But Lady Thiang merely reiterated the warning and would not be drawn out on the subject of Wani’s past, nor would any of the other women with whom Anna was intimate. Here apparently was a child who had fallen under a shadow so black that the whole Inside shunned her. The look on Wani’s face reminded Anna of Lady Son Klin’s expression when she had first known the Mon princess.
After that she was careful to avoid any appearance of favoritism in the classroom. But she would not give up her purpose of encouraging the little princess, and merely transferred her campaign to the little girl’s home. It was a long one-story house with a wide verandah around it. A high wall enclosed the garden, which was planted with rare trees and flowers. On the first afternoon that Anna called there a carpet had been spread under a tamarind tree and Wani was sitting on it poring over her books. Surprised and pleased to see her teacher, she patted the carpet, saying, “Here, teacher, sit close to me!”
Anna stayed an hour and Wani soon lost her shyness and prattled happily like any normal child. She was very fond of animals, she said, and had several cats, some pet rabbi
ts and squirrels. Sparrows had built their nests in the eaves of her house and there were parrots and Java sparrows in the garden trees. They flew in and out of the house as freely as they flew about in the garden because no one ever frightened them. Wani pointed to the nest of a bulbul in the beautiful acacia tree that stood at the center of the garden. The bird came every year to that tree, she said, and was now so tame that it would hop to the threshold and beg for the worms which fell from the mulberry trees. Wani would gather the dead worms, and the bulbul would take them from her hand, fly away with them to the young in the nest, and come back quickly for more.
After that Anna often visited Wani. She hoped to meet the princess’ mother on one of these visits, thinking that she could learn something about the little girl’s history, but she never did. There were always a few slaves about, but no one else, and Wani never mentioned her mother, although Anna knew that Khun Chom Kaeo was still alive. When she questioned the slaves they answered vaguely that the “Chap Chom was away.” Wani apparently had no friends except the animals who were her pets. With them she had a kind of magic and there were always some of them frisking about her. Her nurse had bought her a tame turtle-dove, which perched on her shoulder and took seed from her open palm. Sometimes the bird would put its bill caressingly against Wani’s mouth as if it were comforting the child.
In spite of the gulf that separated Wani from the favored life of the other royal children she was neither thin nor pale, and in her own home she seemed happy. The translucent olive of her cheeks was touched with a rose-petal flush which came and went if anything pleased or excited her. Her mother might be neglecting her, or might be unable to care for her, but she was healthy. This seemed to be the result of the care given her by one of the few slaves she possessed. While most of the royal pupils owned many slaves, Wani had no more than five or six. One of them, Mae Noi, who was about twenty-five years old, seemed as devoted to Wani as if the little girl had been her own. It was comforting to Anna, who was troubled by the extreme isolation of the child, to see the attachment between this slave and the princess. Mae Noi carried Wani in her arms to and from school, fed her, fanned her during naps, bathed and perfumed her every night, and then rocked her to sleep. Wani’s face would kindle at the sound of Mae Noi’s step, her big eyes would shine, and the color would come and go in her cheeks. She would be for that moment as lovely as the petted Fa-ying had ever been.
Mae Noi studied with Wani, sitting at her feet at the schoolroom table. On some days Mae Noi apparently could not come, and then what Wani had learned at school during the day she taught to Mae Noi in the nursery at night. Anna was surprised when she first discovered that the slave kept pace steadily and read and translated as correctly as her mistress.
It was obvious that Mae Noi and Wani’s other slaves went to some pains to keep the little girl out of the King’s way. Apparently she was not in favor with her royal father, although the child herself did not seem to be aware of this and adored him with an unquestioning love. She liked to fold her hands and bow before the chamber where he was sleeping, and she spoke of him as a kind of god. She would say to Anna, “How glad my father will be when I can read English.” One of the other children would giggle and nudge his neighbor as if the idea that anything Wani did might please the King was preposterous. Anna would look at the hopefulness in the princess’ eyes, and marvel at the faith of a child which can be deceived without being discouraged. She could find no words in which to prepare the little girl for disappointment.
Wani’s story, when Anna succeeded in getting it, was simple enough. She was the only daughter of Khun Chom Kaeo, who had once been the King’s favorite. The concubine had fallen into disgrace because of her inveterate gambling. When the King discovered she had squandered the entire patrimony of her daughter, with the exception of half a dozen slaves, he had thrown her into prison. Wani was caught in the net of her mother’s degradation. The King seemed to feel no pity for her, only intense dislike. The offense of the mother had made the child offensive to him.
When at last Wani’s mother was released from prison, her term completed, Anna called one day and met her. She was a sullen unhappy woman with traces of the same beauty that made her daughter so lovely. Wani, in her innocence, appeared at the next afternoon audience with the other children. Perhaps Mae Noi had relaxed her vigilance, perhaps Wani’s mother had permitted it. The minute the King caught sight of the little girl prostrate with the other children he became enraged. He taunted her about the misdemeanors of her mother with a coarseness that was revolting. It would have been cruel enough if she had been responsible for them and the gainer thereby. It was doubly cruel in that she was innocent of them and injured by them. Then he drove the little girl roughly from his presence.
The child was thoughtful and depressed for days. Anna’s heart ached for her, and she felt an almost uncontrollable detestation of the King. His ridiculous prejudice not only wounded its victim, it cheated him of the only little princess among the seventy or more royal children who, both in physical beauty and intellectual brilliance, was like the beloved Fa-ying. Wani’s memory was extraordinary and her progress swift. She had learned to spell, to read and write, and to translate almost intuitively. This was due partly to her mental keenness and partly to the fact that there was the same novelty and inspiration for her in the new world that her English books opened up as there had been for Lady Son Klin. Often on fête days she was Anna’s only pupil, unwilling to miss a single hour of the new life she had found. No doubt Mae Noi had had something to do with this, since it was probable that the slave used the inducement of long hours along with the Mem to dissuade her small charge from appearing where the King might see her. To her teacher she brought gifts out of the riches of her poverty, sometimes fruit, sometimes flowers from her garden. With them she offered a love that warmed the Englishwoman, even as it stirred her pity for this exquisite child, so full of affection and so unloved.
A little incident, curiously pathetic, showed that Wani had felt the snub from her father. Like an oyster she had carefully hidden the alien matter in pearl. In a book they came to a verse from the Bible—“Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” Anna had promised the King not to evangelize the harem, but she did not interpret this to mean that she could not explain verses that occurred in the readers she used, nor tell her pupils stories from the Bible. Once when the King remonstrated with her she asked whether he could teach the Siamese language without mention of Buddhism. When he replied that he could not, she said, “No more can I teach English and omit references to Christianity.”
Wani read the verse thoughtfully. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” When she had translated it she looked up at Anna with a troubled expression. “Does your God do that?” she asked. “Oh, Mem cha, are all the gods angry and cruel? Hasn’t he any pity even for little children who love him?” And then she added with a precocious sadness, “He must be like my father. He loves us, so he has to be rai (cruel) in order to teach us to fear evil and avoid it.” There were tears in her eyes but also complete acceptance.
Then something happened. The change was nebulous at first. The little princess came to school as usual, but a strange woman attended her. Mae Noi no longer appeared. After a few days it was obvious that the child was not well groomed and cared for as she had been. Finally she seemed so listless and thin that Anna was forced to abandon the carefully disinterested attitude she had adopted to protect Wani from the jealousy of the harem. “Where is Mae Noi, Wani?” she asked her. The little girl burst into a storm of tears, but would not answer. When Anna inquired of the strange woman who had brought the child to school, she shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Mai ru.” (I don’t know.) Mystified and troubled Anna gave up the questioning for the time being.
She did not have to wait long for her answer, however. Three weeks after the disappearance of Mae Noi, Anna entered her schoolroom one morning and knew instantly that something unusual was taking place. All the female judges of the Palac
e were present, and a great crowd of mothers and royal children. On the steps innumerable slave women, old and young, crouched and hid their faces. As Anna worked her way toward the schoolroom table, she stopped, holding her breath. There was the King, furiously striding up and down.
But the most conspicuous object was little Wani’s mother, manacled and prostrate on the polished marble pavement. The princess knelt beside her, hands clasped helplessly, eyes tearless and downcast, trembling. Anna was shocked to see how terror and sorrow had transformed the child. As well as Anna could understand from the King’s angry torrent of words as he strode up and down, and from the spectacle itself—for no one dared to explain anything to her—Wani’s mother had been gambling again, and had staked and lost her daughter’s slaves, her one remaining possession. Anna knew finally the reason for Wani’s tears and silence when she had been asked about Mae Noi. By some means, probably spies, the matter had come to the King’s ears. His rage was insane, not because he loved the child, but because he hated the mother.
He shouted an order to lash the concubine. Two Amazons with heavy thongs advanced to execute the sentence. The first blow, delivered with savage skill, raised a long and bloody welt across the back of the woman on the floor. Before the thong could descend again Wani sprang forward and flung herself on the bare, quivering body of her mother. She clasped her arms around her mother’s neck and called in a voice shrill with pain, “Strike me, O my father! Strike me instead!”
Into the deathly silence that followed came an anguished cry from Boy, who was seeing for the first time in his short life an act of insensate cruelty. His piercing threne of horror hung suspended in the air like the whips of the Amazons. Then its agonized and wordless protest shivered through every heart and was still. Louis, sick with loathing, buried his face in the folds of Anna’s skirt.
Anna and the King of Siam Page 32