Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition (31 page)

I saw Ambrosius quite close to me - an Ambrosius shining as brightly from within as a defective light bulb just before it explodes. He was sitting on a stack of paper under a tree, busily scribbling with his paw. I called his name, but he simply looked at me without a word and smiled. There stood Alcina, up to her knees in the water of a glittering stream, hooking fish out with her paw and throwing them on the bank. I called her name too, but she was too busy to hear me. All the animals here, whether chimpanzees, polar bears or iguanas, were going about their natural business as they did in real life. But there were no humans getting in the way. There was no more fear in this place, only blessedness and light.

Suddenly I saw movement in the distance, and the blurred outlines of a shape making purposefully in my direction. My gaze followed it, fascinated, for I instinctively felt that its appearance had something to do with my arrival. The figure came closer and closer until I could see it perfectly clearly, and finally it stopped in front of me. It was the spectral apparition of a magnificent white member of our species, shining so brightly that you had to narrow your eyes at the sight of it. The apparition had shining turquoise eyes and a phenomenally full, fluffy coat. He looked at me for a while with an enraptured smile. The other animals didn't seem in any way disturbed by this ghostly figure, but just went on with their former activities perfectly calmly. He probably turned up here at this time every day.

'Welcome, Francis! Had a good journey?' his voice suddenly echoed in my ears. It was a musical voice, a voice full of promise.

'Fabulous, except that the air hostess never once showed up,' I replied. Next moment I asked, 'Is this Heaven?'

'If you like.'

'And are you God?'

'Would you be very disappointed if I said no?'

'No, there are worse things in life.'

'Life?'

'You mean I'm dead? I thought I smelt a rat - if I may make a little in-joke.'

'Do you think you're dead, Francis?'

'Well, last time I saw anything like this was in a whiter-than-white detergent ad on TV.'

'Do you really want to be dead, Francis?'

'Yes,' I said sadly, surprised to find how suddenly my euphoria had worn off. 'To be honest, yes. Where I come from, people with more than two legs aren't as well off as here in this radiant zoo. I'm tired of the sight of suffering. I can't even feel hatred any more; the breath of humanity blights all feelings. And when it strikes an animal the whole species perishes, not just the individual.'

'But what about all those unsolved cases, Francis? What about the harmony and order you were so keen to promote among your kind? Who'll do all that now? Remember your old friend Schopenhauer, who said: "All certainly wish to be delivered from a state of suffering and death, they desire, as the fine phrase has it, to attain eternal bliss and go to heaven, but not on their own two feet. They prefer to be taken there in the natural course of events." Are you going to make things so easy for yourself?'

'To be honest, I haven't stopped to think about it yet. So am I dead now or what?'

'You must answer that question yourself, Francis. This isn't a magical place where your every wish can be read in your eyes. If you want to come in, then come in. First, however, remember that there's still a lot of work waiting for you on earth. But a lot of fulfilment and love too.'

'A lot of work sounds to me like a lot of trouble.'

'Are you used to anything different?'

'No.'

'Then make up your mind. The decision is yours alone, Francis.'

The ability to make decisions was something that had rather failed me since I was shot. The radiant scenery I saw before me was more than tempting: I dared not even speculate about the delicious kinds of food that might be found there, or the dizzying variety of my own kind. All the same, the white apparition's words had given me something to think about. Had I really bidden farewell to our gloomy planet just to escape the struggle like a coward? What had become of my compulsive curiosity? I might have cursed it soundly on many occasions, but secretly I'd always carried it pinned on me like a medal. Wouldn't my dear old grey cells very soon get bored in a land flowing with milk and honey? And the most important question of all: was Gustav to get off so lightly after all the torments I'd been through? Life might not be anything to write home about - but then neither was death.

The shining god of the Felidae slowly began to dematerialise. His questioning glance was still fixed on me, but his kindly countenance was unsteady, rippling as if reflected on the surface of water when you've thrown a pebble in. And not only was the only god I ever met floating away, this whole El Dorado suddenly seemed to be in the process of dissolution. In spite of the brightness, I could still distinguish the outlines of the fabulous landscape and its happy inhabitants quite clearly, but they were slowly overlaid by an even more blinding light, as if someone were trying to burn out the picture and my retinas too.

'The decision is yours alone, Francis,' repeated the celestial philosopher, just before a glaring whiteness blotted everything out and I could see nothing but the light, the light, the light ...

The light which was shining into one of my eyes, my eyelid being propped open by a finger, was the beam of a torch. A little old man wearing glasses was staring with professional curiosity into my reluctant organ of sight and also, or so it seemed to me, into my inmost being. Then he nodded with mingled surprise and satisfaction and let my eyelid close again. Full of extremely terrestrial pain, I opened my peepers again just a slit and saw the man with the torch leaving the room. The room ... I knew this room! Good heavens, I knew the whole place! It was none other than Gustav's bedroom, and I was lying curled up on his bed, which smelled as musty as ever. Squinting down at myself I saw that my body was almost entirely wrapped in muslin bandages like an Egyptian mummy. The pain started in the region of my belly, where the bullet had hit me, and then marched in a persistent and purposeful manner straight to my head. However, I was clearly under the influence of some kind of pain-killing drug, so I didn't have to start screeching right away.

I heard voices in the living room. One of them was a woman's voice, but not Francesca's, thank God. I listened for a few minutes, and began to understand what had happened. The woman talking to Gustav in agitated tones was Diana. She was telling him about the environmental programme of reintroducing animals to the wild and its tragic consequences, which hadn't even spared her own pet Ambrosius. Sadly, she told him how in the dark, and in her last desperate desire to shoot the Wild Ones, she had mistaken me for one of them, particularly as the satellite pictures had shown her the whole pack migrating from their forest home. But when she looked more closely at her victim the spirit of the veterinary surgeon she had once been revived in her. She had taken me straight to her house and patched me up in an emergency operation, and in the process she happened to come upon the number tattooed on my rump. That number had led her to Gustav.

Gustav thanked her fervently, his voice shaken at regular intervals by tears of joy. Of course the agonies he was now suffering were the merest pin-pricks compared to what lay ahead. Even in my drugged state, my imagination was working overtime devising various schemes for reprisals. I wondered how long I could spin out my convalescence. Two months, maybe? Four months? Even a whole year? Oh, how I'd hammer home my revulsion, how guilty I'd make him feel! What demands I'd make, what merciless fads and fancies I was going to think up! He'd have to whip cream for me, every day at that, he'd have to buy me fresh lobster straight from the fish market. I'd have it lightly broiled. As for the tap water he usually put in my water bowl, he could tip that down his own throat for all I cared: I was going to insist on nothing but Perrier. And I'd demand a saucer of vanilla ice cream every evening, not just any old variety either, it would have to be Häagen Dazs. If he didn't do as I had every right to require, I'd make a casual movement revealing my scars and look deep and reproachfully into his eyes. That'd do the trick, as sure as I'd set eyes on the Eternal Hunting Grounds!

You may be wondering why I was enthusiastically indulging in revenge fantasies of this nature, when I must surely assume in my present situation that Francesca's nut-cracking project was still poised above my head like a sword of Damocles. The answer is simple. My infallible instincts told me that the problem had solved itself while I was away. At this point in time, of course, I didn't know the precise circumstances. But Gustav was a real old gossip, and the information he felt impelled to impart to visitors who came asking after the invalid over the next few weeks gave me a detailed picture. The sad event had occurred on the night of my flight. Woken by the howling storm, my companion was very worried when he couldn't find me anywhere in the flat. The open bathroom window made him fear the worst, and he tried a hackneyed old ruse. Hoping to lure me back indoors, he made a great deal of noise about opening a fresh tin of food, and in the process he inadvertently spilled half the delicious contents on the floor. Then he went back to bed, but that woke Francesca. She was cross about having her night's rest disturbed, and this time she was the one who couldn't get back to sleep. Feeling an urgent need to relieve herself, she went to the lavatory, and as luck would have it, she trod on the spilt trail of food in the dark. She slipped, fell over and cracked the back of her head on the edge of the toilet bowl. The poor woman died on the spot.

Sad, very sad, but most accidents do occur in the home. To see it as the act of a higher power punishing her wicked designs on a certain species is sheer nonsense, if you ask me, although I must admit that the dispensation-of-providence theory isn't to be dismissed out of hand. I must also admit that I didn't exactly burst into tears when I heard of her bizarre accident. You have to be very careful how you move about in a world ruled by the laws of gravity if you don't happen to be as super-supple as me and my kind. And most of all you want to be even more careful how you tangle with the likes of me, or you may break your own neck and not just other people's hearts. There are some things in heaven and earth to which only my race has access. I will just mention the term psi-trailing.

So I need never have run away at all. But on reflection I came to the conclusion that my flight had been necessary. It introduced me for the first time to those who have to live without a bowl full of food every day. Some of them, like the blind Company of the Merciful, do heroic things for their brothers and sisters in spite of their own sad fate. Whereas others ... no, I didn't want to keep only those dreadful memories of the Wild Ones alive in my mind. I wanted to dwell on memories of a different kind. For instance, my first meeting with Alcina when she lay there on the heap of leaves like a forest queen, the rays of the sun making her an unreal, radiant being, her pale green eyes narrowed to enchanting slits. I wanted to imagine the members of her tribe finding plenty of prey and the solitude they so desperately needed in the impenetrable forests of Scandinavia. And a few potent males too, to keep the species from dying out. Sometimes inaccurate memories were better than ugly ones. Ambrosius had said, 'One day humans will look at their world and see something strange: an Earth without animals.' What a nightmare notion! I still respected Ambrosius, in spite of what he'd done, but at the same time I sincerely hoped his last words would never come true. I didn't want to live in a lonely world like that, and the funny thing was that humans themselves didn't really want to either.

Gustav, Diana, and the second vet who'd been called in to give me another thorough examination came into the room. I immediately closed my eyes and uttered a pitiful whimpering sound. Thereupon my fat friend began whimpering too, although less from physical pain than from a properly guilty conscience. And quite right too. He bent down, stroked my head carefully with trembling hands, and promised to do all sorts of things to please me if only I'd get better soon. Good Lord above, he even mentioned live mice! I just smiled secretly to myself, thinking: and that's not all you're going to give me, my stupid friend, oh no, that's far from all ...

And with these rosy prospects in view, the Francis Detective Agency temporarily closes its doors. Should you suspect your wife of straying, or your husband of his forty-third murder, kindly turn to other detectives for now. You may find one quite close to home. But there is one striking feature whereby you can tell real detectives from the inefficient sort: the good ones have sharp claws.

To be continued with

CAVE CANEM

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1
. Of all mammals, cats are world champions at sleeping. They spend about sixteen hours a day in the arms of Morpheus, thus beating even the large and lazy panda, which spends just ten hours of the day asleep. Being switched off for two-thirds of its time, so to speak, a nine-year-old cat has in effect spent only three years awake. However, quantity is not the same thing as quality, so the comfortably laid-back cat cannot relax as thoroughly as its two-legged retainers. Cats do not take their sleep all at once, like humans, but in the short snatches sometimes known as cat-naps. During these naps, which consist of several sleep cycles, their brains are nowhere near as completely 'disconnected' as the human brain. So far as bio-signals are concerned, the cat's deep sleep is more like our own light sleep. And appropriately for a hunter, the cat's 'radar' remains alert even during a siesta. If even a distant mouse-like rustling is heard, the alarm system immediately comes on, and the tiger on stand-by is wide awake at once.