Point to Point Navigation by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online

don’t know, but don’t mind observing if only briefly, keep showing up. I reassured our hostess that I was ready for Mrs. Cartland who was famous for her splendid costumes, intricate wigs, dramatic makeup, Rolls-Royces, and innumerable romantic novels about well-born virgins, male as well as female. A Cartland law of matrimony insisted that the bride be totally virginal and inexperienced on her wedding night while, simultaneously, her groom must be equally virginal
but
experienced. Millions of Cartland fans were known to debate this contradiction with Talmudic zeal. Later, at lunch, the author herself joined in the debate. “After all, an experienced older lady
could
have contributed, in the purest way, to the hero’s education.” This was cryptic, to say the least. Mrs. Cartland was also currently celebrated as the mother of Lady Diana Spencer’s stepmother and so, in the eyes of the tabloids, an authority on the royal family whom she ceaselessly defends in the press even when they are not under attack. Recently she had objected to hints in the press that her
dearest
friend, Admiral the Lord Mountbatten, late Viceroy of India, had had perhaps too great an interest in the welfare of navy lads. She was also outspokenly anti-American because she believed that we had not sufficiently aided England in World War Two. Chumbhot was looking forward to a few decorous fireworks at table.
    Howard and I arrived for lunch with a relative of the hotel manager’s wife; she was another British-educated Thai lady attached to the court. Chumbhot was waiting for us in her stone pulpit. She led us inside where, suddenly, the Thai lady, no young woman, promptly dropped onto all fours in front of Chumbhot who stood very straight like an effigy to herself. The lady then proceeded to writhe like some beached crab across the floor until she arrived at Chumbhot’s feet. Then, limbs intertwined, she slowly rose. For a moment I feared that she was going to levitate like Saint Teresa who was so famous for her levitations that the Pope sent for her. But then, just as she was entering his presence, she began uncontrollably to rise in the air, higher and higher. “Oh, Lord,” she cried, “not now, not now!” But at the Crown Princess’s gesture, the court lady remained earthbound. Also on hand for lunch was Chumbhot’s nephew, the architect Tri, whose Royal Yacht Club Hotel has apparently been swept away by the tsunami.
    Since Bangkok traffic was the worst in the world in those days, one is never on time. But Mrs. Cartland, stepgrandmother to the new Princess of Wales, arrived more than two hours late. Chumbhot was royally gracious but seething. The heat of the day, despite fans in the sitting room, did not improve the general mood. But should Cartland misbehave Chumbhot and I had prepared a trap.
    While waiting for Cartland, Chumbhot and I talked of Kukrit Pramoj who had been prime minister during many of the bad years of the American war in Vietnam, where he maintained a kind of suave neutrality despite his dislike of our crude imperialism not to mention his simultaneous Thai edginess about the Communist empire to the north, the China of Mao Tse-tung. Kukrit also published a major newspaper while supervising a dance company that he’d founded in order to preserve ancient Thai dances. He had, with brio, played the part of a prime minister in
The Ugly American
: “It was bliss,” he reminisced. “One rests in an air-conditioned trailer, unavailable for a real prime minister, and one’s hair is constantly trimmed, no matter how sparse.” He was amused by his co-star Marlon Brando.
    The Thai royal family number in the thousands and are ranked according to which king they descend from: Rama One or Two or Three and so on. Kukrit and Chumbhot liked to quarrel over which of the two was the most royal. The current king is revered by all and treated like a living god, even by the sharp-tongued Kukrit who always spoke respectfully of his kinsman