Point to Point Navigation by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online Page A

though less admiringly of the beautiful queen and her plastic surgeons. Apparently, one day during the Vietnam War, the queen called out some units of the army in the northeast of the country and went to war on her own against Communist rebels. It was said that her troops had also leaked over into Laos. Somehow or other, Kukrit persuaded the warrior queen to come home and peace was restored.
    Since Thailand, also known as Siam, has never been conquered or colonized by Europeans, it has developed a society unlike any other in Southeast Asia. There are no resentments of the European powers or the “white race.” The Chinese, of course, are regarded with a somewhat beady eye while Kukrit liked to repeat an old Thai saying: “If you are in the jungle with only a stick to defend yourself and you are suddenly approached by an Indian and a cobra, kill the Indian first.” But diplomacy and subtlety are the principal Thai weapons of defense; and so they kept the American war party at a distance during the Vietnam episode.
    Chumbhot said, “Is it true that Mrs. Cartland was not invited to the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana?” How well I thought the late Truman Capote could have handled all this. He lived for gossip and he was also a marvelous liar. No fact ever gave him pause. When truly inspired, like Joan of Arc attending to her voices, he would half shut his eyes and start inventing stories about people whom he had often never known or, indeed, even heard of. Although he felt himself to be the heir to Proust, a reference I once made to Madame Verdurin drew a blank. I saw him perhaps every other decade, usually by accident. Jackie Kennedy, whom he claimed to have known since childhood, actually met him at a lunch in New York just before the 1960 election. Truman had spun a number of fantastic stories to a table of bemused ladies. At the end of lunch, he asked Jackie if she had a car and, if so, could she drop him off on her way home? She had. She did. In the car, he gave a great dramatic sigh. “Now you’ve seen me singing for my supper!” He became Pagliacci. Since Jackie had enjoyed him, I warned her, “Just remember all those scurrilous stories you found so interesting about other people he’ll now start to invent about you.” Luckily, Jackie was never innocent about the Capotes whom she regarded as so many denizens of a zoo which she liked occasionally to patronize. When Jack and Jackie moved to the White House, her stepsister observed that, “This will be the most disdainful administration in history.”
    Chumbhot is waiting for my answer. Am I to turn Capote-esque? “No,” I said, “Mrs. Cartland was not invited.” I recalled Princess Margaret, cigarette holder in one hand, a gin and tonic in the other. It was her gift to extract some joy from whatever hand, no matter how bad, life had dealt her. “Of course we were going to invite the old thing,” she said, “but the bride’s family said that if
she
came,
they
wouldn’t and since you can’t have a wedding without a bride…”
    Finally, Mrs. Cartland, escorted by an amiable grown son, made her entrance on a sudden gust of hot air from the garden. As tribute to the heat she wore neither hat nor wig, only wavy tufts of pale hair adorned her gleaming rosy pate.
    “
The traffic!
” Cartland was accusing.
    “Good afternoon.” Chumbhot was demure. In Bangkok, “The traffic!” is almost a greeting. A stickler in print for etiquette, preferably royal, Mrs. Cartland did not curtsey to Chumbhot, so different from the court lady’s beached-crab number:
Autre temps
as E. Nesbit’s Psam-mead liked to murmur at such moments. Mrs. Cartland and son were apparently in the neighborhood in order to check on the distribution of her books throughout Southeast Asia, a formidable task, they sighed, considering her alleged popularity.
    In the dining room. I sat on Chumbhot’s left, Mrs. Cartland, a monument draped in damp pastel colors, on her right.