The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (21 page)

I reflected on how, after Sid and Zahra returned from the garden, Zahra had happily accepted her ice cream from Serena and wandered through the house while she enjoyed it. Sid and Serena, meanwhile, spoke in low voices. I had never seen such cold fury in Sid's eyes as he told Serena of Mrs. Wazir's betrayal. This, declared Sid singlemindedly, was the end of it. He was not going to allow his daughter to be manipulated, nor would he be used as a doormat.

Serena had stepped over to hug him. There was relief in her face as he held her tightly. Not that it was a moment of melodrama—more a gentle letting go of what she could feel, hear, and see, right then. Ani Drolma's advice had seemed to deepen that understanding, with the recognition that a thought
is
merely a thought, not a truth, nor something to be entrapped by.

There was a gentle knock on the Dalai Lama's door. His Holiness glanced up from his desk, as did I from the sill, to see Oliver at the door. “You wanted to see this book, Your Holiness?” He brought in a recently published book on quantum physics.

“Very good, thank you,” said His Holiness as he smiled and accepted the book from him. He studied the cover.

“You have read it?”

“Parts of it.”

“Useful?”

“Some interesting insights.” Oliver hesitated for a moment before continuing. “I was particularly struck by the quotation from Erwin Schrödinger along the lines that ‘Every man's world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence.' The way he seems to be saying that if we change our attitude toward things, we change the things themselves.”

The Dalai Lama considered this with an earnest expression on his face before rising from his desk, stepping over to the sill, and sitting beside me.

“Good quote,” he said. “But I think I prefer the version by Buddha himself: ‘The objective world rises from the mind itself.'”

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “Identical concept, expressed more succinctly.”

His Holiness chuckled as he reached out to stroke me. “And more accurately,” he said, “Buddha's version includes the minds of all sem-chens—not only humans.”

“Oh, I see what you're saying.” Oliver smiled.

“May the world arising in the mind of little Snow Lion, and all living beings, be very happy.” The Dalai Lama spoke softly, as though in prayer.

At the doorway, Oliver paused. “Is there any particular reason you wanted to see this book today?”

“Oh yes,” the Dalai Lama said, nodding. “I am studying the terma that was brought to us recently. The more I study, the more parallels I find with quantum science. I think it will prove to be one of the most remarkable discoveries in recent times . . .”

C
HAPTER
N
INE

It was the middle of one of those brilliant Himalaya mornings when the skies are perfectly azure and the air, having blown from the ice-capped mountains, is so crisp that it seems to sparkle. I was on the filing cabinet, watching Tenzin and Oliver pore over their paperwork.

“That completes the returns from Sera, Ganden, and Drepung,” announced Tenzin, pushing aside a thick set of printouts he had just finished checking. “A minor celebration is called for.”

Opposite him, in the chair previously occupied by Chogyal, Oliver looked up with a smile. “I know you may think me perverse, but I'm actually quite enjoying this. It's something different for me.”

“Doing the work is celebration enough, you mean?” tested Tenzin.

“Oh,” Oliver said, his eyes twinkling. “I wouldn't go that far!”

Two weeks earlier, the Dalai Lama had invited both men into his office.

“They say that no one is indispensable, but still we can find no one to replace Chogyal,” His Holiness had observed.

“It has been difficult,” agreed Tenzin, looking somewhat embarrassed. He had been leading the search for an adviser to His Holiness on monastic matters but so far had been unable to find a person with the rare combination of organizational knowledge, people skills, and the quiet authority needed for such a sensitive role.

“I know you have been doing a lot of his work yourself,” acknowledged the Dalai Lama, “but we have the census coming up, and you'll need much help with that.”

Tenzin nodded. Every two years a census was held of the
sangha
, or Buddhist community, within every monastery in India and the Himalaya region. The results were sent to Namgyal to be aggregated and analyzed. It was a massive undertaking that took Chogyal several weeks of concentrated effort.

“Oliver, would you be willing to assist?” His Holiness turned to his translator. “This job does not require your language skills, but you may perhaps find it interesting.”

“I am very happy to help in whatever capacity you wish,” agreed Oliver. “If you like, I can hand over the translation of the Tsongkhapa exposition to that very promising young monk from Ladakh.”

Oliver had been training a linguistically talented young monk as an assistant in recent months.

“You will supervise him?” His Holiness confirmed.

“Yes.”

The Dalai Lama looked from one to the other of them with a level expression. “The two of you are happy working together like this?”

As Tenzin and Oliver nodded, they exchanged an expression of amused anticipation.

In the months since Oliver had arrived as official translator, they had spent an increasing amount of time in each other's offices. Not only that, they had taken several extramural excursions together. The soiree at the Himalaya Book Café had been one. On a different occasion, they had both gone to watch a cricket match at the local grounds. And two weekends before, the two of them had traveled down to Delhi to watch a special performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Mikado
.

Within days of taking on this new assignment, Oliver began sitting in the chair once occupied by Chogyal. He pored over spreadsheets, transcribed figures from printouts onto a computer, cross-checked them for accuracy, and compared them to the previous years' data.

“If we could only automate this, it would save a huge amount of time and cut down on human error—by which I mean
my
errors,” Oliver observed during his second day on the job as he pushed his chair back from the desk.

Sitting opposite, Tenzin looked at him over the tops of his glasses. “Chogyal used to say exactly the same thing. But getting all the monasteries to use the same software is where things come unstuck.”

“Legacy issues?”

“Precisely.”

“You don't think a request from above would be enough to get it over the line?” Oliver asked, tilting his head toward His Holiness's office.

“Only if combined with a lot of diplomacy. We're already imposing on the abbots' goodwill to get the figures sent. Asking to receive them in the format of our choice . . .”

“Well, if anyone is up to that task,” observed Oliver, “it would have to be you.”

“Hmm . . . ,” Tenzin mused as he returned to his own spreadsheets.

Oliver and Tenzin were looking at the completed set of census printouts that Tenzin had just checked when Tenzin's posture suddenly shifted. He turned toward the open window near the filing cabinet, his head slightly raised. His brow furrowed and his eyes closed in concentration.

At the very same moment I caught the scent, too. Lifting my head, I flared my nostrils. There could be no doubting. It was an unmistakable aroma.

We exchanged a glance.

“Mrs. Trinci?” queried Tenzin.

Oliver glanced at the calendar on his computer. “We have Russians coming for lunch . . .”

Tenzin pushed his chair back, stood up, and headed for the door. “Her first event since she took leave after her heart attack,” he confirmed.

Hopping down from filing cabinet to desk to floor, I followed him as fast as my somewhat unsteady gait would allow me.

“How do you know she's here?” Oliver wanted to know.

“I caught a whiff of her famous chocolate-chip cookies,” said Tenzin. “I'm going to investigate.” Then, as he stepped into the corridor, he said, “If there are any on offer, I'll bring a couple back.”

“Minor celebration,” Oliver reminded him.

“Elevenses!” called out Tenzin, using the very English term for a midmorning snack.

Oliver chuckled.

A short while later, I followed him into the kitchen downstairs. Sure enough, Mrs. Trinci was standing in the middle of it, and, to my surprise, Serena was there chopping vegetables on a countertop.

“Mrs. Trinci!” Tenzin greeted her with an outstretched hand. Even at his most cordial, diplomatic protocol was so engrained in Tenzin that there was always a touch of formality about him.

“My dear Tenzin!” Mrs. Trinci said, ignoring his hand and kissing him on both cheeks.

“May I be the first to welcome you back! Serena has been wonderfully generous to help us in your absence. But you have been greatly missed.”

At that instant, Mrs. Trinci caught sight of the tip of my bushy, gray tail behind the counter. “Oh, my little
dolce mio
! Have you come to welcome me back, too?” she crooned.