A lengthy silence followed before Sid said, “The only thing I don’t understand is why you’re doing this, Mr. Patel.”
“Doing what?” He tried appearing combative but only came off sounding feeble.
“I’ve had my lawyers look over our construction contract. They tell me I would have a very high likelihood of success if I were to sue you through the Courts for Deceptive Conduct. Breach of contract. Unconscionable behavior. Violation of several building codes.”
The builder lowered his face to his hands, leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and exhaled heavily.
“I’m guessing someone put you up to this. Paid you off . . . ?”
“Not paid.”
“Something else, then?”
“Threatened.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can’t afford to lose their business.”
“You may not have to, if you tell me who they are.”
Mr. Patel looked up, surprised.
By this time it wasn’t only Sid who was staring at him. It was Serena, Zahra, and me, too.
“You can keep this project, too,” Sid told him, “if you commit to finishing it by the end of the month. But first I need a name.”
When the builder made his confession, he didn’t so much say it as breathe it. He held his head in his hands so the word was barely audible, but it came as confirmation nonetheless.
“Wazir,” he whispered.
If either Sid or Serena were surprised by this revelation, they didn’t show it. But Zahra was distraught. Wriggling away from under me, she rushed to her father and threw her arms around his shoulders.
“Why, Daddy?” she cried. “Why is Granny being so horrible?”
“It’s all right, my petal,” he told her, holding her close to him. “No lasting harm done.” As he said this, however, his eyes met Serena’s. The expression in them seemed to form an acknowledgment—along with a fiery determination.
Within a few minutes Mr. Patel was on his way back to his van, his apologetic gait very different from the bravado with which he’d arrived. Zahra was still clinging to her father, and Serena sat looking out across the garden with far greater equanimity than might be expected of someone whose darkest suspicions had just been confirmed. In her eyes was a meditative expression. I realized that her composure was cultivated deliberately—a technique she had learned from a visitor to the Himalaya Book Café several weeks before.
The revelation that Mrs. Wazir had been behind the complaint to the local Council about my presence at the Himalaya Book Café had left Serena stunned. She had been on shift at the café that afternoon, and the unflappable Kusali had needed to step into the breach to cover her tables after the visit from the inspector. For all her usual equanimity, Serena had been shocked to the core to discover that she, personally, had become a target of Mrs. Wazir’s malevolence.
Serena happened to be sitting at the rear banquette, nearest the kitchen, deep in contemplation—as it happened, the banquette that was also closest to the magazine rack whose top shelf I currently occupied—when Ani Drolma made one of her infrequent visits to the bookstore. Despite the Tibetan name, Ani Drolma was an Englishwoman who had visited the Himalayas in her early twenties—and decided to live here permanently. Famous for having spent more than a decade meditating alone in a cave above the snow line, in recent years Ani-la, as she was affectionately known, had established a nunnery not far from Dharamsala so that young women from all over the Himalaya region might have the same opportunities as their male counterparts. “Ani,” her adopted name, meant “nun” in Tibetan. Despite her birdlike figure in her red robes, diminutive stature, and shaven head, Ani-la was a force to be reckoned with. Vital, energetic, clear eyes seemed always to penetrate to the very heart of things. Ani-la also had the most compassionate presence.
“How is your lovely mother?” she had inquired as she approached Serena, who rose to her feet so the two could exchange a warm hug. “I heard about her being in the hospital.”
“Much better now, thanks,” Serena told her. Mrs. Trinci and Ani-la went way back. “She’s on beta-blockers for blood pressure. She’s even meditating regularly now, too.”
“Very good!” Ani-la’s eyes sparkled. “I have no doubt she will benefit.”
“She already has.”
“And you, my dear?”
“Oh, um, generally well,” she said as she glanced at the floor. “But I’ve just had some disturbing news.” Serena knew there was no point in pretending with Ani.
The nun studied her intently. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” she had said. “In the meantime, guard your mind.”
As she spoke, I recollected what Yogi Tarchin had told Serena only days before, about how, in times of trouble, she should practice mind watching-mind-meditation.