Wayward Papa

MY DANISH FATHER (255 pp.)--Karl Eskelund--Doubleday ($2.50).

Eighty-five years ago, Schoolmistress Anna Leonowens (Anna and the King of Siam) went to Bangkok to spread the blessings of "the English language, science and literature" among members of the royal family. It was more than half a century later when young Dr. Niels Eskelund arrived in Siam from Denmark.

Anna's influence had all but disappeared. From Dentist Eskelund, who became "royal tooth puller" to the court, the Queen demanded a set of false teeth--black, because she chewed betel. But when he commanded her to "open the royal mouth" she refused, finally consented with the understanding that he would not raise his head above her own. Crouching, the young Dane maneuvered his tools into the "foul interior" of her mouth, stood clear while she spat betel juice into a golden spittoon. When it was over, she asked him about his love affairs. He replied by recounting some imaginary infatuations which delighted the Queen as much as her new teeth.

Life with Olla. Papa Eskelund's real affairs are told in this book, prised out of him by his son Karl, with the help of some good stiff drinks of a Guatemalan liquor called olla. As the story of a wayward parent, My Danish Father is a lineal descendant of the family-chronicle light biography (Papa Was a Preacher; Mother Wore Tights). Son Karl, a lanky, amiable onetime United Press correspondent in China, made the best-seller lists 18 months ago with a variation on the theme called My Chinese Wife. In My Danish Father, he has mixed a frothy mortar of sex and exodontia. Readers are likely to find Dr. Eskelund's love affairs (he was thrice-married, had many mistresses) less picaresque, however, than his adventures in oral hygiene, although there were times when it became hard for the dentist himself to distinguish between them.

As royal tooth puller, Eskelund was one of the few foreigners allowed inside the "forbidden city," where, by the somewhat purple account of his son, languished thousands of doe-eyed beauties of royal blood. Papa told Karl: "When I entered their quarters with my foot drill and instrument box . . . a whole flock of them immediately came running to greet me [with] a come-hither smile full of promise." Later, when the young dentist scaled the betel off the teeth of a native girl in Bangkok, he unwittingly started a fad for gleaming teeth. He was soon swamped with "shy little Siamese ladies" in search of the smile of beauty and the smile of health, who took up so much of his time that he trebled his price.

Elephant Rumbles. Between extractions and fillings, Eskelund carried on a romance with a half-caste native girl named Oolong, went on elephant hunts ("You must stand still . . . until you hear the rumble in the elephant's belly"), drank Haig & Haig with the King. Later he moved to Shanghai, where he built a prosperous practice among the Chinese by knocking 10% off his bill (after first adding 10% to the charge). When his son went out from Denmark to join him in 1935, Dr. Eskelund's prestige was already high. Said the sign of one Chinese practitioner: "Dr. Chu, Dental Surgeon, former chief assistant to Dr. Eskelund, former dentist to the King of Siam."

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