Katya & The Prince of Siam

We spent a morning at Jim Thompson’s house. He was the American who brought to profitable life the Thai silk industry, and mysteriously disappeared in 1967 in the Cameron Highlands. Lisba and Chula knew him well, used to dine there and found him a genial hospitable host. Although it now seems improbable that it will ever be known what became of him, he left as his lasting memorial, not only the thriving silk industry, but his exceptional house which, though open to the public, retains the imprint of a very personal private home.

Standing in one of the many countrified lanes on a quiet reach of the river where boats pass, piled with country produce, poled by women in traditional straw hats, the thud of looms was constant and skeins of brilliant red and purple silks hang on the balcony and reflect in the rippling water. Apparently Thompson had architectural training and assembled the house from fragments of ancient houses, fretted windows and carvings he discovered in remote parts of Thailand. The rooms are small and intimate, filled with treasures: screens, statuary, bronzes, pictures, old prints, all evidence of a refined and instinctive taste. Fresh flowers filled vases in every room and somehow the atmosphere conveyed a sense that, given up by the rest of the world, Jim Thompson’s house awaits him still and has not lost faith in his return.

One evening we attended the Winter Fair – so popular in Katya’s day, but no longer a social event where grand personages presided over stalls. Now obviously less refined, it was a bedlam of noise, jazz, drumming, a Ferris wheel, barkers shouting, groups squatting on the ground and frying food, spiralling smoke, smell of cooking oil, vanilla and everywhere the elusive spicy scent of Asia itself. Most remarkable of all were the Chinese fit-up theatres: two equally melodramatic plays being given within one hundred yards of the other, the actors screaming yet almost inaudible due to drums and cymbals throbbing and clashing below stage. Heavily padded garish costumes, mask-like make up ending at the jaw line, women crude white, black arched brows, carnation pink on cheekbones and voices never pitched below a sobbing shriek. Warriors in gold, emerald and scarlet, in weighty head-dresses topped by a single emotionally wagging feather. A blasé shirt-sleeved stage manager came on stage to lay down matting on which in dreadful throes of tongue wagging and eyeball rolling, a dying hero could more comfortably expire, the matting promptly removed when the corpse arose and exited. Clearly visible throughout were characters backstage, smoking, chewing, spitting, occasionally cuffing or kicking small boys who hung about, no less entranced than we were.

We lunched and dined out frequently: with Queen Rambai, and at several embassies. The British Embassy is a fine building with an impressive double staircase and a real punkah swishing above the dinner table. In the centre of the front courtyard sits a coal black statue of Queen Victoria. And once, when paving was being relaid to guard Her Majesty from harm, she was protected by a wooden cover. The Thai workmen on hearing the statue was that of a great queen, made two slits on a level with her eyes so that she might see out!

Although it is true that much of the old city of Bangkok, laid out by Chulalongkorn with tree-lined boulevards and rimmed with canals has been intruded upon by the West, its civilised plan defaced by huge cinemas, grotesque advertisements, modern hotels, massage parlours and the everlasting screech and grind of traffic, its original elegance still asserts itself in places as a reminder of that illustrious monarch.

The countless brilliantly glittering temples are seldom empty but full of people of all ages who make offerings, light candles, prostrate themselves or chat quietly to one another, seated gracefully on the ground. For here, the full inner life of the soul is not set apart but always present and acknowledged as though Thailand, pervaded by guardian spirits, maintains ties with her past that, like silken cords, twine and thread their way through daily life.