SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition Read online

  It was about time to say goodbye to my man of God. The travelers loped out of the plane, towards the jet bridge and finally towards the hallway huddle like they were escaping the Last Judgment. I, however, had to manage the flying change out of the bag back to Gustav’s backpack without being noticed. But now, where was my litter bearer?

  Suddenly I saw him! No, just his rear view, consisting of a silly golf cap on a watermelon head, giant backpack and pale, very hairy calves which grew out of silly shorts. Gustav let himself drift towards the exit with the flow of hurrying people. Almost telepathically, I forced the churchman to approach him, which I succeed in little by little. I only had to wait for the perfect moment to get from one point to the other in a single bound. Because I didn’t even want to think about what would happen to me in this foreign and confusing place far away from the city, if I failed to make the break. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to indulge in wanderlust to such a radical extend. For a moment, I even caught myself craving for the opportunity to seriously argue about the mice from Nagor-X with the other nutcases at the »Guesthouse Paw«.

  And so I used the very moment, when the churchman got in close contact with the other hastening people and wouldn’t misinterpret the vibration inside his bag, to jump out of the slot sideways. I shot through the air and landed head first inside the open backpack without anyone noticing it. Technically, a really great success. Then why did an inner voice tell me that something was wrong? In the darkness of the backpack I followed this steadily rising voice. The feeling that it created began to scare me. But it weren't my brains, which finally set me on the right track, it was my nose.

  Exactly, neither did it smell like unwashed socks and undies nor could I sense Gustav’s specific sourish body-odor, which used to conservingly stick to his things for ages. After all, nothing in here smelled of Gustav. Quite the contrary, I had the smell of clean laundry and freshly blackened leather in my sensitive nose. Shortly, I found myself in the baggage of a very well prepared traveler. Panic began to rise inside me like the malodor of a creepy substance. Oh my God, where had I ended up?! And where was this journey headed?

  I decided to let go of all protective measures and stuck my head outside the backpack again to gain certainty. By now, I didn’t care if I got noticed. I shouldn’t have done it though because what I saw right in front of my nose horrified me more than the uncertainty inside.

  Gustav, who was waddling right behind the guy who carried me without knowing it, was staring right back at me, again. So he was sort of following his Doppelganger. I had jumped inside the wrong fat guy’s backpack! From afar and from behind they could actually have been identical twins because they were so much alike. So this came from getting involved with a throng of humans: They all were the spitting images of each other.

  When he saw me, he screwed up his can opener-face like someone who had just hugged a steamroller whilst crossing the street. Again his eyes widened in shock, again his head vibrated like a clanged bell and again his mouth closed and opened without something coming out of it. One could watch in his bewildered mien how a couple of different explanations of the impossible were battling inside his featherbrain. But following the motto that which must not, cannot be – eventually he settled once more for the theory he had found the first time we had met on the plane. I was one who looked a lot like his pet. Thereupon, the worry lines disappeared, a melancholic smile showed on his face and he even dared to pet my head.

  »You again!« he said finally. And as he was a paragon of originality, he repeated his go-to phrase: »I got one of your kind at home.«

  Then – I couldn’t even realize as fast as the story took its course – our paths separated. As Gustav didn’t have any more baggage than his backpack, he pulled ahead of us towards the exit and disappeared. This meant that my further fate was at the total mercy of the new fat guy’s traveling plans. He forced himself inside a fully air-conditioned shuttle bus after he had grabbed his suitcase off the luggage belt – and off we were to the highway.

  While the Roman suburbs, which didn’t differ too much from the bourgeois blemishes at home, flew by the window, I gave thought to the immediate future. Despite the towering IKEA and McDonalds billboards at the roadside, the plague-spots of the modern world, it was pretty obvious that we were on our way to Rome. The street signs said it clearly. And that inspired me with confidence. Because I knew where Gustav was going to work within the next weeks. So I only had to leave my wrong fat guy at the next opportunity and now and then show up at the right fat guy at the Forum Romanum. As soon as he was done with his work, I would only have to secretly slip inside his backpack and start my trip home with him. Perfect! Though the question how I was going to fill my stomach in the time between arrival and departure remained a mystery even after intense thought.

  Little by little the discrete hints on Swedish home-centers and US-burger houses vanished, the seething traffic began and we found ourselves in the middle of my longings’ land of milk and honey. Finally, finally, finally I got to see these worn out cobbled streets that were shining golden in the afternoon sun and this ochery-steaming sea of houses with my own eyes! No newly built house, no concrete disturbed this heavenly sight, and had I so far understood only in theory that here time was measured in ages, that it was sort of a horizontal sandglass, now I felt it. Of course the bus was still using the main arteries, where there were neither famous sights nor the artful bowels of the city viewable. Anyhow, side-glances inside some cross-alleys allowed me a good first impression of the esthetic adventure that was waiting for me.

  The bus stopped at a station in one of the busiest streets. In the distance I could see a big junction. A gigantic sea of cars joined by a chorus of horns and ribald scolding was moving at a crawl. As the wrong fat guy was obviously related to the right one, he did the worst possible at the worst time and place: He left the bus in the middle of this inferno. What he expected to find here, was totally beyond me. Maybe a 1star hotel featuring a complimentary all day exhaust-shower. Me, I was done with both fat guys by now, and after he had crossed the street after what had felt like a small eternity, I simply jumped out of the backpack and onto the sidewalk. With my back tightly against a wall so I wasn’t run over by pedestrians, I gazed after my leaving involuntary carrier. Strange, I hadn’t even seen his face. Probably for the better!

  I had a look-around the melee of crawling cars and hurrying people. The whole thing didn’t quite look like a glossy in a holiday brochure. Inside me panic slowly rose anew. Somehow I had expected a different start into the vacation. However, for all it’s worth I couldn’t just yield to despair because in a foreign country and without the belonging to the noble human race this could turn out as deadly luxury. I set worries of any kind aside and focused until my whiskers started to smolder.

  In all these past years I hadn’t just been dreaming of Rome. When Gustav opened his books for research, I usually pretended to be asleep on his desk. In fact, screwing up my eyes I committed the locations of the famous sights, and even more so the complex network of the most important roads to my memory. This knowledge should come to my rescue now. I looked around for a street sign and found one right off the bat directly above my head: Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. Like a lost ghost the name flattered through the street map inside my memory in order to find the right spot. I thought and thought and thought ...

  At some point it clicked. But this click wasn’t just satisfaction because I had partly won back some orientation, no, it almost felt like my body was trembling. I could hardly believe it. Should I actually have found such fortune in the middle of misfortune? Quickly I scurried to the left to take a look around the corner. If I didn’t see what I expected to see, I’d want to die on the spot.

  My head slowly moved around the ledge – and had I been a great critic of God’s plan up to this point, now I abruptly turned back to orthodoxy and could only jubilate: Hallelujah! In front of me lay nothing less then the first address in Rome for my kind,
so to say a drop-in center for members of the Felidae, who happened to have gotten into the awkward situation of being without a can-opener.

  Like a blood orange the setting sun shone on a place, which one might expect in a myth painting from the nineteenth century when the masters, fascinated by classical antiquity, combined mythological themes from the Ancient World with European landscapes. But contrary to that art idyll, this impressive temple complex was bathed by heavy rush hour traffic; it was an oasis in the middle of noisy ugliness. The Largo Argentina within the so-called Area Sacra was famous, and I had heard so much about it. While I headed for it, behind barriers I only saw oxide red, ionic columns, which soared towards the sky like stumps with flutes and capitals that had been blemished beyond recognition by Barbarian hammers, but above all by the ravages of time. The Republican temple complex is one of the oldest ancient monuments in Rome, which is why it is located about 13 to 16 feet below today’s street level. According to my memory the first excavations took place in 1929. By the way, strained by a nice guy called Mussolini. Yet, these ruins aren’t open for tourists, as there still happens to be some digging now and then. But for my kind!

  Eventually I reached the cobblestone square, which rectangularly ran around the excavation site, and looked into the ditch through the barriers. The rudiments of two broad stairways that used to lead to the former temple were flanked by rows of pillars. The temple itself and everything around it had to be imagined on the basis of remains. As there couldn’t much specific be spotted except for clinker extraterrestrials and heavy blocks of stone, truncated columns, a ground on which big flagstones and simple lawn took turns, and the already mentioned columns in different phases of disrepair. The whole scene was framed by high circular arcs and gates, which lay in darkness. Twilights’ reddish curtain had covered the stony witnesses of the former Rome, which by now cast very long shadows.

  However, the reason I was praising the name of the Lord in this desperate situation wasn’t that I got to see this famous site. As I knew that around here there were treasures like this in front of almost every doorstep. No, Largo Argentina had something very special to it. Because shortly after the first excavation straying and abandoned fellows of mine had begun to seek sanctuary in this deserted place where they were safe from both humans and cars. (There are about one hundred fifty thousand unsheltered of my kind in this metropolis!) And it stayed like this. Ever since, a couple of hundreds regarded this temple complex their natural refuge, and soon this matter became an even bigger tourist attraction than the historic site itself. Nevertheless, it also caused offence to the city administration. Thank God, there were the »gattare«, women with heart and mind, who provided food and medical aid for the poor creatures, like unforgotten Anna Magnani who passed away in 1973. Back in the beginning of the nineties the city administration finally issued a statute by which all Romans are under the duty of looking after the urban animals. This way they put an end to the scolding wrangling whether the feeding with leftovers at Largo Argentina was reasonable and legal. I had heard that nowadays even celebrities from politics and the showbiz posed for the press whilst feeding the finest delicacies to the »abandoned«. Which by the way fattened up a lot more than they had at their former »masters’«. So I had every reason to shout out »Hallelujah!«

  Because by now, my growling stomach had taken control of my brains and insisted on the fact that the only real holiday treasure is what can be juicily crunched between my teeth.

  It didn’t take long to find the usual suspects. A couple of dozen lay stretched on the cover plates of the stone battlements, which parted each barrier from the others. They let the last rays of daylight warm up their fur and used the occasion to string out their afternoon nap. At the bottom of the battlements and on the stairway, which excavation professionals used to enter the temple complex, I saw a bunch full of littered, almost molded Spaghetti Bolognese. It looked like a sick cow’s bowel movement. Though I was hungry, someone would have had to turn me into a limp zombie to make me eat this filth. Seemed like the Italian generosity wasn’t up to much. And no Paolo Conte or Eros Ramazotti showed up with sliced turkey breast.

  I didn’t abandon hope yet, though. In the distance I noticed a bulk of the temple inhabitants, yes it was a real throng, which had gathered on the podest-like level slightly above the ancient staircase between the columns. Roughly fifty fellows formed an impressive cluster around... well, guess what? My life experience told me that it could just be a matter of lovely food when so many solitaries weren’t scared of close fur-contact and stood tightly packed. Seeing that, I didn’t intent to emphasize being a foreign snob and deny the local eating habits on my very first day.

  Quickly I slipped through the metal lattice fence, ran down the staircase, always carefully paying attention to not stepping in one of the Spaghetti hills with a hint of green, and headed towards the excavation site. Across boardwalks, which hovered above cleared walls, and decapitated stone heads of the size of giant snowballs, I eventually reached the gallery. There I was expected from a bunch of diversely colored hair, which swung and drifted back and forth like on high seas. Like it was my style, of course it didn’t occur to me to queue up in a well-behaved manner and wait for my turn. To be honest, I was scared I would drop dead from exhaustion if I had to wait in line.

  Recklessly I squeezed and pushed myself forward through my colleagues, which didn’t quite make me the store sign of my home country. I didn’t worry about communication problems in the case someone in line gave me a hard time because of my rude behavior. As we all spoke the very same language everywhere in the world. Though, colored by different regional and rural dialects.

  Little by little I began to see the center of the crowd behind all these heads and straightened up ears: a little uncrowded circle, which everyone was headed to. Meanwhile my mouth wasn’t just watering, the spit actually dripped from its corners. I somewhat found it irritating though that despite of the banquet and the expectable friction in front of us my fellow (almost-) crowd surfers were in a rather subdued mood. Nobody hissed at his neighbor in pure jealousy about food or even dealed out, and nobody made a sound. It seemed like everyone had a rough time. There was no backlash when I pushed someone aside, they just put up with it.

  Eventually I found the reason of this reservation. Just then the last rays of the descending sun disappeared. Darkness sank onto Largo Argentina and blanked out not only the artful details of the site but also the buzzing noise of the traffic around us, yes, every sound, until there was a creepy dead silence. I struggled through the crowd until I reached the first row, but what I saw in the center was not the demanded grande bouffee but a dead body that couldn’t have been any worse mutilated. It was a Siamese sister. She had the typical dark mask-like face, which reached from the snout to the forehead covered by vanilla fur. Ears, legs and her tail were shadowed, too. Out of this beautiful silhouette azure blue eyes stood proud – widened and frozen.

  She lay there as if she had curled up for a nap in the midday heat and had fallen fast asleep. Something so cruel proved that this didn’t accord to reality that the sheer sight of it threatened to madden me. On the left side of her head, where the auricle usually is located, gaped a hole in the size of a child’s fist. But not just the ear itself was missing but the whole part of the head that covered the ear canal, the eardrum, the ossicles, the cochlea and all those nerve pathways, which lead to the brain. All gone! The smashed skullcap seemed like it had been blown up and revealed a bloody abyss where one could see the rose matter of a demolished brain, tiny bone splinters and some layer of slime. A monster couldn’t have had caused worse devastation.

  My eyes filled up with the first hot tears and a shiver took control of my body like abruptly the south had just turned into the coldest north.

  »Scusi, Signore!« I suddenly heard a voice from behind my back out of the circle of those who were still alive. I turned around and looked into a face that was cluttered with scars and grooves due to cou
ntless fights and untreated infections. Out of this smoke-colored war theater two bright cupreous eyes stared right back at me.

  »You seem to be a foreigner, Signore, and you have probably never seen anything like this«, they gray stranger said, whose whole appearance reminded of a down feather explosion. »But here in Rome such sights aren’t rare events.«

  »You’re wrong, Signore«, I replied, while tears streamed down towards my snout and dripped off my head. »I have seen things like that before. But I had a deal with God that he wouldn’t show me anything like it ever again. But as usual he didn’t keep his word.«

  4.

  Meanwhile darkness had taken possession of the whole temple complex, though here and there violet cirrostratus clouds glimmered in the sky. The constant buzzing of the traffic had lessened and only now and then the annoying honking and bawling of motorbikes interrupted the almost-silence. The crowd around the dead body began to break up. Only a few could bare the sad view, partially due to nosiness, partially because their discomposure sort of paralyzed them. The rest of them disappeared between the rudiments, moping and without a word. By this cruel mess, the ancient place let its legend live up once more. And this legend has it that Julius Caesar was killed by his enemies right at Largo Argentina in 44 BC.

  The fellow I was looking at directly also seemed to be stricken with the awful sight but stuck to his stoic mien. He was of butch built, a real chunk whose scars and hairless spots in his fur gave him the looks of a reckless pirate. His face, which was scarred by stigmata and badly healed inflammations, was a frightening monstrosity. Only his cupreous eyes in the size of big glass marbles beamed so flawlessly as if they had just been delivered ex works. No doubt, I was up against an old warrior who had reached this age because his toughness had always beaten his foes. Whereas foes also refers to untreated illness and the hard life on the street. Ill weeds grow apace! One might want to yell at him and pet his shoulder, wouldn’t his frightening sight in dirty gray forbid such a gesture without saying. His Scusi-Signore-ado seemed like a friendly visor only.