SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition Page 2

  After he had ordered a ticket over the airline’s check-in hotline, he used his foot to push the basket, which was usually used to transport me to my annual check-up at the nice doctor, from behind the doorjamb. I acted like I didn’t have a clue about his intentions. Satisfied about the fact that apparently I wasn’t about to bolt, he came towards me, grabbed me around the waist and put me into the box. A last checking glimpse at the turned off gas range and the turned off lights, and off we were in our old Citroën CX-2000 to our purportedly oh so different destinations.

  I have to admit that the place, which was situated in a former bakery, didn’t quite look like the dungeon of Dr. Fu ManChu from the outside. Through a big showcase, passing pedestrians were able to assure themselves of the proper care of the prisoners and enjoy their sight with endless »aww-how-cute«-whoops. That boundless boredom counted as a form of torture wouldn’t cross their minds.

  Inside at the welcome counter stood a skinny, graying old woman who was dressed totally in black and might have a good chance to win »Ms. Knotweed« at the Night of the Witches. She smiled the smile of a marionette, at which her lower jaw jerkily flapped up and down while the rest of her face stayed absolutely fixed. For the one-month-care the animal lover told Gustav a price, which easily might have bought 80 hectare of the best spruce forest in Canada. While my false friend battled against the hypertensive impact of the price shock, he opened the grill of my box in passing so I could have a look at the dungeon and, in his belief, was able to acclimate.

  Everything was exactly like I had expected it to be – just as fatal. It was a big room with a terrace-like, gradient wooden platform divided by several barriers. On that there were doll’s beds and pillows, in which about thirty fellows (in misery) dozed towards delirium. Those who were awake stared ahead apathetically. Food and water bowls as well as litter boxes lay about everywhere on the floor so that the smell in the air reminded of a giant just having thrown up here and simultaneously having answered the call of nature. Almost depression-triggering appeared some »toys«, which were dangling from the ceiling like bells and looked as new as on the day they were bought. Those who resided here didn’t play anymore.

  I walked by a gray-headed Persian who was standing in one of these cute doll’s beds and was keeping the ceiling in view.

  »What attracts your attention like that, brother?« I said, likewise fascinated by his strong grimacing that ranged between fear and great expectations.

  »They’re coming closer«, he replied.

  »Who?«

  »Well, the mice.«

  I raised my head and inspected the ceiling for anything mice-like. Without any result.

  »But I don’t see any mice up there.«

  »They aren’t normal mice.« His white whiskers vibrated in tension like they were carrying power current, yeah, his whole matted head shivered so much in fever as if he was to explode any second.

  »They come from Planet Nagor-X and can stay invisible – and penetrate solid matter.«

  »Got it«, I said, nodded compassionately and intended to leave himself completely to his studies of extraterrestrial mice.

  »Don’t listen to the nutcase!«

  I turned around and faced an attractive Egyptian Mau. Her green eyes seemed to reflect the seaweed fields of all oceans. Her dark patterned tail, which grew out of a sand-colored, cheetah spotted body, brushed my face.

  »They should have showed this guy the rope a long time ago«, she said, approached me very closely and acted most conspiratorially. »There’s no Plant Nagor-X. Actually they come Planet Harfohr-X. And they aren’t mice but cockroaches. Plus they can’t penetrate solid matter like this douche bag keeps insisting, no, they shoot laser beams from their eyes!«

  So much for the state of mind of the »guests« at this establishment.

  »I already thought as much myself, honey«, I comforted her. »But it could be worse. Imagine you’d have to pay taxes!« I moved on.

  A red colored fellow, who crossed my path and seemed somehow awake, was actually just giving his lifetime confessions.

  »... and then Mommy said, don’t go too far from my teats, Otti, oh yeah, I remember very well that she said that, because in the backyard there are dogs, she said, you know what dogs are? My son, they are very big animals who make very big poop but in opposite to us don’t bury it so that humans will step in it which dogs find very funny, me too actually, Mommy said ...«

  Gustav could as well have brought me to a nuthouse which by the way would have been much cheaper for him anyway, if I was interpreting his angry bargaining with the Night Witch correctly. A total waste of time and energy. Because I would have rather poisoned myself with the consumption of dog poop than to endure just a single hour with these morons. Therefore I instantly entered the next level of my plan.

  Like I already mentioned, Gustav was very busy with persuading the old witch to give him a price deduction before the plane took off with him inside. Both didn’t pay any attention to me because naturally they assumed that there was no escape from this clink. But there was, and what a simple one!

  Sweating and blushing from all the disputing stress, Gustav had put down the backpack next to his feet. The essential time slot seemed to have opened for me. During a couple of gasps I felt far away from the view of the two discomposed negotiators as well of the nuthouse inhabitants. The latter preferred to watch the various threats from outer space anyway. I sneaked to the welcome counter very slowly, and when finally I reached the striking distance of my can opener’s elephant feet, I was out of danger that anyone might notice my secret mission. So I crawled inside the open backpack and made myself comfortable.

  After a while I heard through the fabric that apparently they agreed on a price and now exchanged some final pleasantry. Eventually, my absence got noticed, too. Gustav worried about that a little, but the villainous guard said that it was quite usual for newcomers, shocked by the change of territory, to hide underneath the platform for the first couple of hours. Hunger would then cause them to leave their hideouts for the food bowls. With that she produced a guttural sound like a hyena in darkest night, which apparently seemed to be wicked laughter. He should care about catching his plane, because usually it would take a short eternity to find his little friend’s hideout in the middle of this mazed arrangement. Gustav kept acting somewhat worried but in his mind seemed to be far away already. In short, he willingly swallowed this Everything-is-fine-message. Or to put it differently: My plan had succeeded. But when he actually showed the impertinence to protest full of hypocritical sadness, that he would have loved to say a dearest goodbye to his beloved Francis, I would have liked nothing better than jumping outside of this damn backpack right into his hippo face, sinking my sharpened claws into it with ultimate passion.

  2.

  The end of a friendship must be one of the most painful experiences a sensitive creature can have. Of course this doesn’t mean that one can’t exploit this friendship while it’s going down the drain as long as it’s still useful. Trapped in Gustav’s backpack I followed this motto, squeezed between dirty socks and underwear, which due to their size of a moist sky diving school could have easily rescued me from my misery. Relying on the Night Witch’s calming words far too willingly, my ex-friend had left »Guesthouse Paw« head over heals as if he was getting rid of his sickening grandpa at the nursing home.

  But the grandpa was still close on his heals, respectively was stuck in his backpack in the backseat of his Citroën. On the way to the airport I was able to stick my head out a couple of times and watch the highway, which seemed to fly by like a monotonous movie, without being noticed myself. The happily back and forth swinging motions of his neck already showed me that for the driver the dreary monotony was long-forgotten, and so was my humble self. Which even confirmed my resolution! Along the way I thought of the Guesthouse chick’s stupid face when after a long search she still wouldn’t be able to find me in her »establishment« and would begin to sweat over a g
ood answer she would give her customer about his pet’s disappearance about a month from now.

  We arrived at the airport, parked at a collective garage and took the escalator to the terminal upstairs. Although I had never entered an airport before I wasn’t really stunned by the giant complex. The school of the public, TV, apparently had robbed me of one of the last tangible adventures. Nonetheless, the mass of humans in front of the check-in desks offered a couple of quite interesting sights. During my longterm togetherness with Gustav I had lost track of his fellow humans’ lifestyles, especially as he wasn’t true to type at all. Now I saw with horror that all of these vacation-hungry, scantily dressed people were tattooed. Incredible, this tacky desecration of the body, which had once been a custom along sailors and prisoners, meanwhile had mutated into an ideal of beauty! In my mind’s eye I traveled through time about thirty or forty years to a nursing home in which old people suffering from Parkinson’s and incontinence kept triggering spontaneous laughter from their nurses due to their withered body paintings on their wrinkled rolls of fat. The employees at the morgues would also have a ball.

  What also stood out was the raging baldness-craze around men, even with guys who weren’t naturally bald at all. Because all of them had their noggins shaved, which didn’t just make them mistakable but in this frequency looked like a still life of deodorant sticks. Had our good old Bruce Willis sensed what he was about to trigger when at that time he made a virtue out of necessity and decided to chop those last three halms on his head, he probably would rather have stapled a mop to his scalp!

  Gustav waddled towards the counter and received his booked ticket. He checked in and joined the line in front of the security check. Then suddenly things started to get turbulent. Before he walked through the metal detector, he dragged the backpack on the conveyor that transports baggage towards the X-Ray scanner. By the way, he did that in such a rude manner, I was forced to do a couple of full turns inside. I have to admit that my great plan didn’t go any further than up to this point. I had been so greedy of the expectation to see my dream city for once in my life, I had totally forgotten about the inevitable challenges that lay on the way there. Now what the situation needed was some talent for spontaneity, because as the backpack was moving towards the scanner, above me I could already see the security guy’s face in front of his monitor. His keen eyes, which were trained on the fast recognition of Kalashnikovs and maybe even foldable atom bombs, must have started to brim at this moment. Because inside the backpack he saw something he had probably never caught a glimpse of before: the (moving) skeleton of an animal, surrounded by a colorful beaming silhouette of sharp claws, pointed ears – and eyes that stared right back at him!

  Instantly I heard the alarm go off with a howling noise. The security guy had recovered from his shock and had pushed the panic button. Now I needed to act fast. But how? And in which direction? Nimbly I sprang out of the backpack and onto the conveyor. I didn’t mind the omnipresent darkness, as despite my progressing age I still boasted my eyes, which also featured X-Ray. In front of me hung the fringed rubber curtain that guaranteed optimal dim-out for the scanning. I stuck my head out and noticed a big unlocked leather bag right in front of my nose that was placed ahead of the backpack. If I hid inside, would its owner notice my few pounds when he got it back? Whatever, I didn’t have time for any more finicking speculation.

  As quick as a flash I scurried inside the bag. Just in time, because just after I had hid inside, the bag was picked up off the conveyor and carried away without hesitation. I could only pray that my savior was also traveling to Rome. Despite the tenuous situation, I insisted on sticking my head out and looked back. Four security guards attacked the backpack as it came out of the scanner and picked it to pieces full of as much dedication as if they were disemboweling a pig. Gustav stood there in complete astonishment, observing the scene unbelievingly, and as he actually felt like he had been smuggling a foldable atom bomb, at the end he even put up his hands.

  The last thing I could see was that the situation began to calm down after they couldn’t find an animal or its skeleton inside the backpack and apparently they started to believe in an optical illusion or a technical breakdown. Nevertheless, Gustav’s stupid facial expression revealed that he somewhat had an idea about what just had happened without knowing anything about it.

  I let my eyes wander across the hand that held the bag up to its owner. How nice, I was carried by a young man of God. The black suit with the white round collar, that emerged a little from underneath the shirt’s collar, proved it. It was a young man of handsome appearance. His face resembled that of an angel in a Pre-Raphaelite painting and only his gold-framed glasses indicated something earthly about him. His hair was brushed back with gel in an elegant way so that it was shining in thin flicks, his delicate hands of such stainlessness as if they didn’t abstain from a manicure and fine creams for just a single day. A silver cross dangled around his neck, looking like bling jewelry. Years ago, a guy like him would have been called a »Yuppie«. But who knows, maybe after the tanked stock market and Internet booms the Yuppies had found their salvation at the Good Lord’s meanwhile.

  As he headed for the departure lounge he talked to another suit walking next to him. This guy was a little older though and, in all likelihood, not a churchman. Quite the contrary, military insignia on the snow white-haired, butch man’s lapel marked him as being a member of the US Army. If my long lasting studies of TV shows hadn’t fooled me, he even belonged to the top brass of this club. The conversation between these very different fellows resolved about some event at some church. But I didn’t try to overhear it, as I was too busy with figuring out where they were carrying me. At some point, the two men’s paths went separate ways and, oh gracious wonder, on the display above me blinked in neon writing: »Rome«!

  I considered myself lucky, as my new partner didn’t deposit the bag inside an overhead bin but on the empty chair next to him. Accommodation inside another darkroom had certainly triggered some irreparable claustrophobic trauma. Pleasant also that he traveled Business Class, as if he had known how much I set value on journeys befitting my rank. This way I had saved myself the brashly impertinent redneck chatter of an all-inclusive-tourist including his constant jingle for the stewardess to bring him cheap hooch in a plastic cup. But the lucky coincidences wouldn’t come to an end. The dear priest wasn’t at all led into temptation to grab inside his bag and expose the blind passenger. As far as I could see through the slot, during the whole flight he kept typing some complex calculations into an uber-modern laptop with a plastic pin. He was probably calculating today’s income of the collection box. After about an hour and a partially nibbled serving of lobster meat, he stood up and went to the board bathroom.

  Finally, I spotted a chance to gasp some air and stuck my head completely out of the bag. As I hadn’t had a single bite in a whole day and already hallucinated about how I attacked a grownup manatee and ate it up including the bones, I wanted to feast on the remaining lobster before the man of God returned. What he was about to think when he faced a plastic bowl that had been licked clean as a whistle by now mattered as much to me as if the plane was about to land in Baghdad instead of Rome. So I crawled outside the bag, put my forepaws on the armrest and stretched my snout towards the tidbit on the tray.

  At that point a shadow was cast upon me. A tremendously big shadow. And a well-known one! Gustav, coming from the rear of the plane and apparently also on his way to the bathroom, stared directly back at my pupils. His facial expression showed a certain similarity of an ox that had just been run over by a tractor. His eyes had widened to the size of espresso cups and his lips moved without bringing out a single sound. Spontaneous sweat was brought to his brow.

  »Francis ...« he said eventually. And then again and again while shaking his head: »Francis? Francis? Francis? ...«

  As I assumed that he already knew my name I didn’t bother to answer him.

  Suddenly he moved
his head like a bizarre bird. Being relieved, he laughed out and began some muttered monolog that apparently was aimed at comforting himself. That what he saw wasn’t even possible because his darling was placed miles away from here, and very securely, and by the way pretty expensively, but this resemblance, really, if he hadn’t known for sure, he might think that his little Francis had followed him directly to the airport, which of course was ridiculous because how could that even work ...

  »I got one of your kind at home«, he eventually ended his monolog loudly.

  »I got one of yours, too!« I replied.

  Of course I didn’t, I just thought to myself before Gustav winked at me and disappeared.

  If I had had the anatomic ability, I would have crossed myself three times after this stressful episode. Or I would have aligned myself with the devil, which had been much more appropriate given the insights of hell that were lying ahead of me in the City of God.

  3.

  The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful. Shortly before landing the pilot managed to maneuver the plane in a way that allowed the passengers to enjoy the view of the sun kissed city. My heart beat a couple of ranges faster when I glimpsed out of the bag and saw this magnum opus, which seemed like an opulent model of an urban layout masterpiece for the very first time. O what pleasance! There they were: the thousand churches, the ruins, which emblematized the perpetual echo of the Ancient, the by several bridges tied green snake called Tiber and the warm color of the countless palazzi, daffodil yellow, ruby, red violet, rose ... A rag rug braided from treasures, which left every beholder speechless.

  Then on the ground the big disillusion. The airport didn’t differ one bit from the one we had departed from – functional architecture with insignia that simulated circuitousness. All over the place hung oversize advertisement in which rather germfree looking human actors performed a Don’t-worry-be-happy-slogan for some dodgy property fund. Restaurants, whose delicacies were owed to the invention of the microwave only, were lined up next to each other. I guess all airports in this world got this boring charm. And when someday there will be the first flights to Mars, the first thing humans will see there will be a five dollar bill for a cup of coffee or a tour poster with the mug of Robbie Williams.