The Art of Purring (The Dalai Lama's Cat 2)

For a while Mrs. Finlay wept quietly into her tissue. Serena gestured toward Kusali for a glass of water.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized after a while. “I’m so …”

Serena shushed her.

“We had a little one, just like her,” Mrs. Finlay said, gesturing toward me. “It took me back. All those years ago in Scotland, Sapphire was so special to us. She used to sleep on our bed every night.” She gulped. “Things were different then.”

A waiter arrived with a glass of water. Mrs. Finlay took a sip.

“They are very special,” agreed Serena, glancing at me.

But Mrs. Finlay wasn’t listening as she stared at the table while putting down the glass. She seemed transfixed. Until, that is, she somehow felt moved to confess, “Gordon—that’s my husband—is hating being here.” She said it as though unburdening herself of a terrible admission.

Serena allowed a moment to pass before telling her, “That’s not an unusual reaction, you know. For Western visitors coming here, not sure what to expect, India can be a real shock.”

Mrs. Finlay shook her head. “No, it’s not that. We both know India well.” For the first time she met Serena’s gaze. “Gordon has been here many times over the years. That’s why he chose it as the place to spend our first month of retirement. Only … it isn’t working.”

She seemed to be drawing strength from Serena’s compassionate presence, her voice less broken as she continued. “He’s just had a big success, you see, selling a business after twenty-odd years building it up. Gordon’s a very hard-working man. Determined. You can’t begin to imagine the sacrifices he’s made. Years and years of eighteen-hour workdays. Missing out on vacations. Always having to leave birthday parties and dinners and family celebrations early. ‘It will all be worth it’—that’s what he’s always said. ‘I’ll retire early, and we’ll have the time of our lives.’ He always believed it. I did, too. It didn’t matter how much we had to give up. We’d be happy when …” She looked pensive for a while, then began again. “It was all right for the first couple of weeks. He was a changed man, free to do as he liked. But it didn’t last. Suddenly there were no calls or messages or meetings. No decisions to make. No one wanting to know what he thought. It was as if an elastic band that had been stretched to the limit suddenly let go.

“When he was working so frenetically,” she went on, “the idea of all the time in the world seemed like heaven. Instead, he’s finding it a terrible burden. He didn’t bring his laptop with him. It was a part of his old life. But when he goes out in the mornings—he says for a walk—I’m sure he’s going to one of those Internet places.” Mrs. Finlay was looking at Serena, whose even expression gave not the slightest inkling that she knew Mrs. Finlay’s suspicions were correct.

“And he drinks. He’s never been like that before—drinking during the day. I know it’s because he’s bored and miserable and doesn’t know what to do with himself. He said as much this morning before he left the hotel. I’ve never seen him so unhappy.”

As she welled up again, Serena reached out and squeezed her arm. “This, too, will pass,” she murmured.

Not trusting herself to speak, Mrs. Finlay nodded.

Mrs. Finlay left the café a short while later, and the couple didn’t appear for lunch that day. Only time would tell exactly how she and her husband might resolve their unexpected disappointment; although the subject of the miserable millionaire came up again later that evening at the café.

It was approaching 11 P.M., and the half dozen or so tables of diners remaining were on dessert and coffee. Serena looked up to where Sam was sitting on his stool behind the bookstore counter and caught his eye with a questioning gesture. He responded with a thumbs-up. Only one browser remained in the shop: a pair of ankles and the bottom of a monk’s red robe peaked out from beneath one of the bookstore partitions.

Serena headed toward the bookstore for the end-of-the-day ritual. Two heads lifted up from the wicker basket under the counter; Marcel and Kyi Kyi were focusing on the promising direction of Serena’s footsteps.

She reached the top of the short flight of steps to the bookstore at the same time the last remaining customer was leaving.

“Lobsang!” She greeted him warmly, stepping forward to embrace him. Lobsang had become a frequent visitor to the bookstore, finding on its shelves a range of Buddhist and recent nonfiction titles that were dazzling compared to what had previously been available in Dharamsala. And thanks to the fact that he and Serena went way back, she had insisted he be given the most generous available discount.

Since their early teen years when they had gotten to know each other while working as Mrs. Trinci’s kitchen hands, their lives had taken them on very different trajectories. While Serena had been away in Europe, Lobsang, whose incisive intellect and outstanding language skills had been evident early on, had won a scholarship to Yale to study semiotics. Returning to India to work as the Dalai Lama’s translator, he had also evolved in other ways. In particular there was a calming quality about his presence to which other people invariably responded, sometimes visibly leaning back in their chairs and relaxing their shoulders or breaking into a smile.

“Sam and I are about to have a hot chocolate. Would you like to join us?” asked Serena.

For all Lobsang’s tranquility, I noticed that something about Serena brought about a change in him. He seemed to find her company a cause of great amusement.

“That would be wonderful,” he replied enthusiastically, as he followed her toward the two sofas.

A short while later Kusali arrived with hot chocolate for the humans and a saucer of dog biscuits, which he held over the coffee table for a suspenseful moment, inciting the dogs’ desperate anticipation, before placing it down with a Pavlovian clink that triggered their frenetic scramble toward the bookstore.

For my own part, I hopped off the shelf and stretched out my back paws, flaring one claw then the other, before crossing the room and nimbly leaping onto the sofa, landing between Serena and Lobsang, who sat facing Sam.

“HHC is very lucky to have you,” observed Lobsang, as Serena leaned forward to pour my saucer of milk. “Especially with His Holiness away.”

“We feel lucky to have her,” said Serena, stroking me. “Don’t we, Rinpoche?”

She hadn’t yet placed the saucer on the floor, so I stepped onto the coffee table and began lapping up milk.

“Do you allow cats on the table?” Lobsang asked, amused by my audacity.

“Not as a rule,” replied Serena, regarding me with an indulgent smile.