SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition Page 7

  My pulse rate by now reminded of the rhythm of a drum solo. My whole body shivered and I tossed and turned in my seat. Of course I knew what was about to happen a few seconds from now.

  Then I heard this sound ...

  I averted my eyes from the towers and looked at the clear sky. Something black sheered up very fast. At first it was just a vibrating spot in the infinity of the blue firmament, but then I recognized Antonio, who was flying towards us like Superman or maybe Batman. While flying he also seemed to rotate in a couple of full turns. In doing so, he laughed triumphantly, as if he actually was a comic hero who was about to save the earth in the nick of time. He came closer and closer, and I saw that his wedge-shaped head had assumed the shape of missile head. With a loud crash he pierced through the plane window and landed, carefully targeted, in his master’s lap.

  Outside the scenario suddenly seemed like spirited away. The sun again was petting fluffy fields of clouds; harmony seemed restored. My neighbor’s hair flapped wildly in the puff of air from the hole in the window. The fine gentleman hadn’t let the incident interfere with his meditative mood. He still smiled mildly behind his dark sunglasses, calmly nipped his red wine and now lovingly caressed his pet. I also calmed down a little due to the restored chime, although I just wasn’t able to grasp the last minutes’ absurdity. Yeah, when I looked at snuggled up, contentedly purring Antonio, I somewhat relaxed.

  But then the lonely passenger ripped the glasses of his face, grabbed Antonio by his neck and violently, like it was a restive screw cap, turned his head towards me so I could see his profile. Instead of the ear there was a gigantic hole in the black fur. Through the open skullcap I could look right at the rosy shimmering brain. A flush of blood and some slimy material oozed out of it, ran down the Oriental’s throat and wetted his master’s pale pants. The grotesque of this sight was that Antonio’s beaming green eyes still moved and that despite all this he still kept his foxy smile on his snout.

  »We have too many of your kind at home, Francis!« the man said and raised his glass at me. At the same moment Antonio burst in thousand pieces in a deafening explosion.

  7.

  It would hardly surprise anyone if I said that I woke up from this nightmare yelling and crying. But that wasn’t the case. Instead totally reasonable sounds wakened me, though so subtle that they were audible only for the hypersensitive, hunting-tested ears of my species. Some rustling and crackling, almost unhearable and mysterious. The visions still in my mind, I looked around the dark room. Antonio had snuggled down in the cushion next to me and apparently shifted from one sleep phase to another. He neither snored nor farted like it appertained for an adonis in any situation, and of course he looked gorgeous even when he was fast asleep.

  The room door stood ajar, and through it pale light shone on the floor in the shape of a fan. The strange sound also came from somewhere behind the door. I must have been sleeping for a couple of hours because forgotten were the strain of traveling and former tiredness. After a little stretching which equally lubed all of my muscles and strings, I sneaked towards the door and risked a glimpse outside.

  In the matte light of an ancient carriage lamp I could see Samantha at the stair head. She stood right beside the elevator cage and nervously pattered back and forth on the marble floor. Doing this, her eyes never seemed to let go of the lower level underneath the winding staircase. Without a noise, as if I was hovering on air cushions, I left the room and approached her from behind. Then I stopped at her back and reduced breathing to a minimum so that she couldn’t hear me. I wanted to see what she saw, and so I also got the lower level in my sights.

  The glimpse through the halfway open door to the Prince’s room offered an insight, which was fairly strange, if not to say sensational. The old man had taken off his dressing gown and was changing clothes. This very fact was weird enough at so late an hour – I guess it had been about three or four a clock in the morning. Even stranger though was this new clothing or should I say his costume. Of course the Prince was part of an aloof elite, and of course it wasn’t that strange that a lonely old man did strange things now and then. Still, I found this whole masquerade to be as bizarre as it gets.

  The Prince wore a Fin de siècle tailcoat with almost floor-length laps, white silk shirt and a giant bow tie. Now he only needed to put on a black cape, don a topper and ... While I imagined this, it be became reality! He grabbed a cape and a hat from a stand and completed his gothic outfit. Now he stood there like Count Dracula, apparently looking for the glass he put vampire teeth and some denture cleaner in, or for a cozy coffin with a heating blanket. However, his glazed eyes apparently seemed to be looking for something inside the room. Suddenly he rushed forward, found a vintage walking stick with a golden handle in the shape of a lion’s head, slipped on some white velvet gloves and put on a black mask.

  I reckoned that the Prince was heading to some costume party. From experience, parties like that usually come to an end at this late hour. I was about to slap nervous Samantha, who was still sitting in front of my nose, on her shoulder and ask her for the answer to this mystery, when suddenly there was another link added to this chain of weirdness.

  The masked man left the room, entered the elevator and went downstairs. At first, I thought he was too weak to cope with the staircase to the lower level. But then I watched through the artfully forged cage how the elevator went past the ground level towards the cellar and finally disappeared in murky darkness. As if she had been waiting for this very moment, Samantha shot ahead and ran down the stairs. Startled for a moment, I quickly recovered myself, followed her and cut her off halfway.

  »What the hell is going on here, Samantha?«

  »Francis, what are you doing here? Go back to sleep!«

  The Blue-Point-Burmese was past all recognition. The elegance, which the light, smoky figure had just exuded a few hours ago, had given room to a churned up, terrified creature. By now, every single hair on her body stood on end like quills, and she shifted from one paw to another with excitement.

  »You really want to tell me that, considering this hanky-panky, sleeping would be the best thing to do, Samantha?«

  »You have no idea, Francis, and I don’t have the time to explain the whole complex story to you here and now. You and Antonio, you’re certainly not the only ones wanting to stop the cruel crimes towards our kind. But unlike you I’m a couple of steps ahead, and I’m not in the slightest mood to stand still and wait for you. So if you would excuse me now ...«

  She tried to push past me and follow her Prince downstairs. But again I blocked her way.

  »I won’t excuse anything«, I said. »You either explain to me how this whole Mardi Gras-thing is related to the murders, or I won’t budge an inch. And by the way, I won’t butch an inch either after you’ve explained everything to me!«

  »I wish I hadn’t let you stay the night!« she said, pushed me aside and ran down the stairs. Now that I was back in form, her white butt with the bushy tail triggered certain emotions inside me. More than that. Suddenly the investigative jack in the box jumped out of my soul with such intensity that I was lost in rapture and so keen on the upcoming adventure that I would have loved to personally follow the Prince here and now. Just like in the good old days.

  »Don’t you dare come in my way«, Samantha said while rushing down the staircase. I had trouble keeping in step with her. By now we had reached the big salon.

  »What is the princely penguin planning to do in the cellar, Samantha?«

  We went around the elevator and headed further downstairs towards the basement of the palazzo.

  »Cellar? Savoyen isn’t going to the cellar.«

  »But usually there is a cellar underneath the ground level of a house.«

  »Exactly, and usually there is simply nothing underneath the cellar of a house.«

  »I’m fed up with this! Could you maybe please give out information that I can understand without having to find the philosophers’ stone first
?«

  Again, I forced her to stop. The twitches in her face showed me that she was to burst with excitement.

  »Follow me«, she said and didn’t let me hold her from walking downstairs. »These houses were built at a time when Rome hadn’t yet been dissected by legions of archeologists like coroners do to an Egyptian mummy. When raising theses buildings, the clients sometimes came across the mazed system of catacombs below ground that invisibly pervades this city. So they made a virtue out of necessity and had themselves built a secret door to the underground. Who knows when it might come handy, they thought.«

  We reached the cellar, which consisted of dark corridors and exposed brickwork, which again indicated junctions towards moldy rooms. My eyes, which according to my nature turn into low-light amplifiers in the dark, detected that the elevator shaft really let further down. Samantha crawled through the lattice and sprang down. Utterly fearlessly, like I just happen to be, I did the same. We landed on our four paws on the top of the elevator, whereat the free fall had felt like almost 10 feet to me. Through slots on the side, we squeezed ourselves inside the elevator cage and left it through the open door.

  First of all I noticed the brightness. It wasn’t quite the fireball, but at least it wasn’t total darkness either. From somewhere, light was coming to the underground. We found ourselves in something like a vaulted cellar, in a cold facility, which was built in cyclopean structure, with stones of various shapes and sizes. Instantly the rheumatism-benefiting mold of several ages reached my nostrils, and spider webs tickled my nose. As far as I could see, several round arc-doors let from this place to the catacombs. And from there the light seemed to come.

  »Some people rather live in the past, mainly those who are facing death«, Samantha said and rushed towards the light. We passed one of the round arcs and faced a corridor, which didn’t seem to come to an end. Neither hide nor hair of the Prince. Burning torches rose from angular, iron baskets, which were attached to the walls at wide intervals. The guy in front of us must have lightened them.

  »Does the word ›theosophy‹ ring a bell, Francis?« Samantha said and set a brisk pace as usual. I panted for air in the corridor behind her.

  »Well, Latin and Ancient Greek probably are the only fields I can shine at.« I replied. »Can’t help it when you live with an archeologist who knows the languages of these sunken kingdoms like they were his own. Theo means God, Sophia means wisdom, Theosophy means the Wisdom of God or the Wisdom of Gods.«

  »Exactly, known as the divine in man«, Samantha explained, while we got lost deeper and deeper inside the tunnel. The flickering light of the torches didn’t really help to keep the fear inside me within a limit. Quite the contrary, the patchwork of rough-hew pavers, that rocked back and forth in the warm shimmer, started to keep me from finding my bearings. Our claws, partially protruding from our toes, pawed the stony soil, so that our steps caused some eerie echoing. Afar I could see a junction, which actually raised the panic inside me. Samantha though stayed totally unaffected from the danger of our excursion and crossed the underworld like a fired bullet, which for sure wouldn’t miss its target.

  »Theosophy goes back to the last quarter of the 19th century. It’s the attempt to create one united religion for mankind out of all existing religions. Arisen from spiritism, which back then had affected the whole world. This already had been characterized by the longing for the ability to test religious messages with scientific methods, for example the immortality of the soul and life after death. With the help of human psychics, the spiritists tried to get in contact with the netherworld and learn about its creatures. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, the German-Russian founder of Theosophy, was such a psychic. The common statements on the netherworld weren’t enough for here, so she tried to bring light to the history of mankind and the cosmos. This is how they exceeded Spiritism and gave birth to Theosophy.«

  »Alright«, I said. »But maybe we should go back and listen to La Traviata once again before we attend some resurrection of the dead?«

  »I would love to laugh at it if it wasn’t such a serious matter, Francis. This club is dangerous, even more than that, meanwhile they’ve become a mean cult. No surprise, as Theosophy is also the mother of all strange New-Age-movements and the pseudo-scientific foundation of racial ideologies. The Nazis already referred to Theosophy, and Hitler was an ardent admirer of this theory. The members considered themselves to be knights of a new order. The meaning of life, according to them, is learning and reaching higher levels through incarnation, until they’ve become an angle-like being. Just that their believes are rather evil. It starts with seven so called root races which seem to exist in the theosophical view: the Polarians, the Hyperborean, the Lemurians, the Atlantiens, the Aryans and two that will come in future. Goes without saying that the theosophists belong to the Aryans, descending from the first kingdom which is said to have been built in the Atlantic Ocean, namely in legendary Atlantis. The rest of the humans though belong to the sub humans and aren’t of great value. Considering the big refugee and foreigner issue in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, this is an explosive charge.«

  We now reached the first junction inside the maze. The arced ceiling divided our way into a dark side on the right and a bright side on the left, which was partially lightened by the torches. We kept on the Prince’s tail and took a turn to the left.

  »Yeah, it’s a shame«, I said. »The world becomes weirder and weirder. But hasn’t it always been weird? I mean, there have always been weird cults with weird beliefs, Samantha. What’s so special about this one? And what in the world is the connection to the rampant murders?«

  Samantha smiled one of those askance smiles that indicated that I was too stupid to put one and one together.

  »First of all, the explosive force is that this theosophy-plague has infected high-level conditions of this city by now. Politicians, members of the judiciary, leading businessmen, aristocrats, as you have noticed, mighty wealthy people and parts of the young priesthood within the Vatican. Torn between their church’s strict dogmas and the temptations of an increasingly fast pulsating world, these young people have turned away from their true belief and joined up a hidden faction within the Catholic Church. They have actually become the driving force of Theosophy.«

  As early as after just a short while, I stopped counting the many ramifications and crossways, which, guess what, crossed our way. Also the path we had left behind us so far wasn’t comprehensible to me anymore. The torches caused enough light to get some glimpses into the gaping dark holes long the sides of the corridor. Chambers, from which towering skulls with open jaws laughed at us, fluttering spider webs, behind which unspeakable things seemed to happen, and almost endless corridors full of rats, which choked off any hint of hunting instinct inside of me due to their mere majority. We also passed burial niches with loose bones and flagstones, in which Latin or Aramaic inscriptions had been engraved. I almost feared that any minute Gustav might stagger towards us with a petrol lamp in his hand, wide eyed cackling, finally bananas from his exciting discovery.

  Despite my ruffled up fur I tried to keep my composure as much as possible and hide that I was so anxious that I was close to enrich the underworld with an ecofriendly spurt.

  »So can we now come to the murders, Samantha?« I said in a tone that was supposed to sound relaxed but somewhat sounded like pathetic cawing. »If these murders actually happened.«

  »I can’t really tell you how many of these murders occurred, Francis«, Samantha said. »No police in the world count dead cats. And did you ever come across a detective who wasted his working hours on what caused the death of pets? At least you don’t find anything about it in the newspapers. I’m dependent on visitors like you and Antonio in order to get more information. According to what I found out recently, they seem to be ritual murders. The victims’ ears have been ›deseeded‹ every time, yes, I guess, this word sums up the facts of the case pretty well. And as my master lives rather hermitical and is pretty fon
d of occultism, I hit on the idea of nosing him a little. I started with the literature at his giant library, which he is busy reading every day. From there finding the connection was a cakewalk.«

  »What connection?«

  »Theosophy is about incarnation, Francis. According to it, after death the soul just wanders next door; it’s reborn in another body, most of the times as a perfectly new creature, an animal for example. That’s when we get into the game. As our kind has been linked to witchcraft and supernatural ever since, and we are seen as the carrier of the netherworld’s secrets, they share the belief that it’s mostly us who carry the souls of the human ancestors. A superstition, which is pretty resistant. By sacrifice of our kind during their occult ceremonies, the theosophists therefore try to free the noble souls, get in contact with them and maybe even catch them.«

  The corridor descended steeply now. We were getting close to our destination, I could feel it very strongly. It got brighter and brighter, and we felt a fresh breeze. The further we went down, the better the air became. I asked myself how this underground necropolis was ventilated. But I didn’t forget to ask the most important of the questions I wanted to ask Samantha.

  »Have you ever witnessed such a sacrifice or were you threatened to become a victim yourself?«

  »No, I’m too much soul-candy and ›inventory‹ for the Prince. Also I have been spared from such creepy demonstrations so far. But I studied all the crude things that Savoyen reads every day. That way I got to know that even the Ancient Egyptians, but also many other cultures that were characterized my mysticism, thought of the ear as being the door to the soul. According to tradition the soul leaves the dying body through the ear. And if someone lends a hand with dying, maybe the good soul can be trapped right at this point. Do you understand what this is about now? All of this is adding up, Francis, especially with regard to tonight. A herald came to tell Savoyen, that there would be another ritual at this time.«