Read Online The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow by David Michie - Free Book Online

foreground!”

    At 7:00 P.M. the following Friday night I was in pride of place on the top shelf of the magazine rack in the Himalaya Book Café, which had been arranged cabaret-style, with the piano near the reception counter. Tea lights in decorative colored-glass holders flickered on the tables, lending the room an intimate atmosphere. Almost all the people there were locals, friends of Franc’s, café regulars, or people who had been invited especially for . . . no one knew exactly what.
    At one table sat Sid, immaculate in a white, Nehru-collared shirt, chatting with Mrs. Trinci and her good friend Dorothy Cartright. Serena busied herself in the front of the house. Ludo and at least a half dozen students from the Downward Dog School of Yoga occupied several of the tables—including Merrilee, dressed in flamboyant crimson and quaffing copious quantities of champagne. Several members of His Holiness’s staff were present. Tenzin and his wife, Susan, a classically trained violinist, were engaged in an animated conversation with Oliver, His Holiness’s new translator. For the first time ever, His Holiness had hired a Western translator. Oliver had been born in England but fully ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk fifteen years before; apart from being able to switch effortlessly between Tibetan and English, he was also fluent in a half dozen other languages.
    Franc arrived shortly after seven wearing a fawn-colored jacket, an emerald-green cravat, and the broadest of smiles. As soon as Ewing arrived, looking dapper in a dinner jacket and bow tie, Franc wasted no time in escorting him around the room. As a longtime McLeod Ganj resident, Ewing already knew many of those present, and there was a tide of good feeling as they circulated. They didn’t skip greeting its most highly placed occupant.
    Reaching the magazine rack, Franc gestured toward where I was sitting, paws tucked neatly beneath me. “And this is Rinpoche,” he said, using the name by which I was best known at the café, a word Tibetan Buddhists give their beloved lamas, meaning “precious.”
    â€œOr Swami, as she is known at the Downward Dog School of Yoga!” Ewing brought his palms together and bowed. “We’re already well acquainted.”
    A short while later, Franc announced the start of that evening’s proceedings through a microphone.
    â€œIt’s curious how different people come into our lives at different times . . . ,” he began. “Although many of you have been friends with Ewing for years, I met him only recently. And I discovered that, in addition to being the most wonderful pianist, he can also sing.”
    There were whoops of encouragement from Ewing’s fellow yoga students, for whom this was also, evidently, fresh information.
    â€œEwing used to be a prompter. I’d never heard of a prompter before, but his job was to follow every note of an opera or musical and to step in if a singer forgot his or her lines.”
    â€œ Whenever a singer forgot his or her lines,” Ewing observed drolly, causing a burst of laughter.
    â€œPrompters must have great voices and tremendous range. Ewing, who has lived so long in the world of music, has reconnected me to something that was the most important part of my life when I was growing up,” Franc said with feeling. “And for that I am truly grateful. And so it is my privilege to invite to our inaugural soiree Mr. Ewing Klipspringer.”
    Ewing, already seated at the piano, played the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony , to general amusement.
    â€œI feel sure he has some wonderful things in store for us.”

    I don’t know what word I can use to describe the music that evening, dear reader, except for “enchanting.” None of us who had come had any idea what to expect, but from the moment Ewing began singing Bononcini’s aria “Per la gloria d’adorarvi,” it became