Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition (7 page)

With studied indifference, as if I'd seen enough of some breathtaking natural scene, I turned away from the waters of the sewer and marched straight into the dark. It was like plunging into some amorphous living mass with the terrible certainty of never getting out again. Now and then I took a surreptitious backward glance, looking about as inconspicuous as a shoplifter hiding a fridge under his T-shirt. As I did so I thought I saw shadows of an even more dubious nature flitting around the bottom of the sewer shaft, which was filled with blue light and growing smaller and smaller behind me. Was the paranoia that had surely been caused by the claustrophobic conditions of these catacombs already turning to outright hallucinations? I'd happily have invested total conviction in this theory, putting my persecution mania and the way my teeth chattered with fear down to the shock of finding the corpse, if only ... if only I hadn't heard that nerve-racking rustling again. But it wasn't a rustling this time. It was a shuffling and a secret scuffling, a growling and a scratching. And suddenly it wasn't just coming from behind me but from everywhere, every nook and cranny. As I quickened my pace and finally broke into a frantic gallop, I risked another glance behind me. This time I couldn't pretend I was suffering from optical illusions and nervous tension induced by fear. For now I saw distinct moving silhouettes outlined before the lighter background. What made my heart hammer to the rhythm of a heavy metal beat was the fact that
they
, whoever they might be, were emerging from their hidey-holes in such numbers, as if a signal had been given. All of a sudden there was a gigantic army of shadows close on my heels. And though I couldn't see anything ahead of me in the dark I could feel, with physical certainty, that an equally large troop was approaching from that direction. Good God, where had these bastards sprung from all of a sudden, and what were they?

Rats! Of course, a sewer without rats would be like a cemetery without well-fed worms, the kind of worms who on reaching pensionable age have the nerve to demand high premiums from their successors for their own particular sections of a grave. With the delightful little difference that rats of this sort obviously ate my kind. For safety's sake I kept up my high speed, hoping the way out of this horrible nightmare which I longed for might appear before me any moment, like an oasis appearing to someone dying of thirst in the desert. But the mob on my heels seemed to be highly motivated too and was rapidly closing in. A last glance back made me shudder. Like a severely overweight black snake, an apparently endless legion of indefinable creatures was moving along behind me, and the word 'legion' really hit the nail on the head, since this pack was obviously running in orderly ranks; there would be no headlong rush with individual members of the pack getting in each other's way. It was an army marching on soft paws, a purposeful army, driving me into a corner and already sure of victory. No doubt its strategy of quiet attack had proved successful more than once before. The light behind these soldiers shone on their backs and showed the outlines of hairs, from which I concluded that like me they had fur. Unusually for mammals of my category, however, their eyes did not shine in the dark. In my kind, that effect is caused by the reflective layer in our eyes, a mirror-like structure extending behind most of the retina. It is present in most other nocturnal animals as well, and reflects light which is not absorbed by the retina when it first enters the eye. This gives the retina an additional luminous stimulus, increasing the sensitivity of vision in poor light. Of course there was very little brightness here anyway, so the eye-shine effect wouldn't necessarily have been on view, but I'd have bet my own peepers were shining like the Stop signals at a level crossing right now. There seemed to be something in my theory of a bestially mutated consumer group after all.

Then the miracle happened! About twenty metres ahead I actually saw a ray of light emerging from the bottom of the wall on my right and shining diagonally down into the sewer like a dazzling lance. It probably came from the inlet of a drainpipe slanting down from the street to carry off rainwater. Since day must have dawned some time ago, light could now come into the sewers through the drainpipe. With a bit of luck I might be able to wriggle up it to the world above and escape my pursuers. In sudden euphoria I switched to turbo drive, like an athlete putting on a final spurt at the end of the thousand metres, and raced on as fast as my tired joints would go. The lance of light, which was getting brighter every moment and seemed to cut the gloomy sewer in two, was approaching at amazing speed, and I was delighted to find that the sound of the mob after me soon died away. Another ten metres, another five metres, another two metres; that shining hole in the wall looked more and more like a magic gate beyond which outright madness would drop away, and such unjustly criticised phenomena as addiction to TV, the weekend glooms, Monday-morning feelings, in fact the normality of ordinary life would begin again. At last I reached the longed-for passage to freedom and prepared for a sharp right turn. The monsters could seethe in bitter frustration or eat each other up for all I cared ...

The colossus emerged from the bright hole in the wall as suddenly as a super-tanker from a bank of fog just before a collision. As I tried to slam the emergency brakes on I thought I'd run straight into some goddam dog - a dog which had gone to the bad and turned into a monster, though. About a metre before this imposing figure I stumbled, lost my balance, fell over, turned a full somersault and finally landed in front of its shaggy paws. Expecting it to be already bending down to smash my head in, I opened my eyes a crack, out of sheer masochism, and looked straight at its face. It looked even freakier and more dangerous from ground level than stomach level, a phrase to be taken literally, because even on my feet I only came up to its belly. Despite its monstrous size I immediately saw that it wasn't a dog at all, but one of my own species, a Chartreux.(
5
) This fellow had his breed's typical and enviably dense short, smoky blue coat, although it was so full of sewage sludge that the soft and downy texture of the fur was largely lost. His type also showed in the healthily compact build often regarded by the ignorant as obesity, although in this particular specimen the muscle and extra fat tissue had combined so happily that it was hard to be sure if you were facing a tub of lard or a muscle man boasting resilience and elasticity. In any case he was incredibly large, in fact massive, and above all he was absolutely terrifying. He did, however, differ from the usual variety of neighbourhood tyrant in three respects, and they froze the blood in my veins. The first difference seemed pretty harmless compared to the other two: this giant stank so much you'd have thought he went diving for treasure in the sewers every day of his life. I didn't know whether to throw up straight away or wait until he'd exercised his own operating technique on my oesophagus. The second difference was more alarming. He had no eyes. I mean, he had eyeballs all right, but they were covered with a milky film, like a lighter version of cataract. Set in his blue-grey face, these milky orbs had a particularly grotesque effect, giving their owner the scary look of a sinister medieval dabbler in the black arts. My intending murderer was blind as a bat. Unlike human beings, however, he didn't necessarily need eyes to get his bearings - and certainly not to kill! Third and last, there were his earrings; golden earrings, strangely clean for all his dirt and shining in the eerie light. His earlobes were very ragged; the earrings probably got caught in various objects from time to time and had made more space for themselves.

The executioner of my fate stood there in the flood of light, a mighty, indeed almighty figure, and as improbable a sight as a Christmas goose found horrifically resurrected when you open the fridge door. He stared intently down at me with his white eyes, as if wondering which of my organs would taste best. His pale coat, patterned with encrusted dirt and bare patches left by rat-bites, gave his huge body the look of a threadbare Bruin costume as worn by 'resting' actors performing at children's birthday parties. After a while he raised his head with extraordinary grace and looked around him. I imitated him, following the direction of his blind gaze. What I then saw made my bladder want to empty itself again with the shock, but unfortunately it was empty already. The army which had been chasing me had caught up and formed a dense crowd around me. Each member of the audience seemed to be a faithful copy of the big boss. Only a few of them were of the Chartreux breed, of course, so far as you could tell one breed from another at all in this dim light, and none of them wore gold earrings, so I concluded that my opponent must be someone quite out of the ordinary. But they all stank to high heaven, they all had scarred coats matted with sewage sludge, and all of them, absolutely all of them, were blind, staring at me with those milky, useless eyes.

There was a disturbance of some kind behind the front row of the circle. Apparently the dinner gong had sounded and the troops at the back wanted to get their noses in the trough. The awesome old character with the matted whiskers bent down to me, a sardonic smile crossing his broad and dirty face.

'Your hour has come, little one!' he said in a deep bass voice reminiscent of the growling of villainous actors in movies about the drugs Mafia.

Instead of trying a retort - such as: 'Listen, I can tell you where to buy really fabulous tinned food' - I asked myself for the nth time why I'd ever been fool enough to run away. By now I could have come round from the anaesthetic, admired my new streamlined anatomy in the mirror, eaten a hearty meal and entered upon a new life free of all the fuss and bother of sex. I could have survived, dammit! And above all I could have followed the advice of the ever-reliable Schopenhauer, who unerringly spotted the dangers of making vital decisions without sufficient thought, over a century ago, and warned idiots like me that: 'We may not have to atone for evil-doing until the next world, but we pay for stupidity in this one ...'

CHAPTER 3

'
... a
lthough justice may occasionally be tempered with mercy.' I finish the quotation just to make things tidy, but expecting mercy from a horde of cannibals was rather like requesting estate agents to turn over three-quarters of their profits to a charitable housing project. These blind restaurant critics - probably from the
Good Carrion Guide
- were staring at me in a manner which suggested it would be a merciful act if they tore my head off first and started tucking into Fillet Steaks Francis later.

A gazelle-like creature came into view behind Big Daddy Golden Earring. Obviously she couldn't wait for the gruesome buffet to open. Swift as an arrow, however, the boss's great club of a paw shot up. It struck the eager lady's chest with a hollow thud, stopping her in her tracks. She was a sinewy young thing, still growing, and her matt coat was even blacker than this black inferno itself could ever be. Her ears, once so sensitive, had lost their original funnel shape and were now ragged and shredded, either by countless battles with other warriors or the furious resistance put up by rats at bay. A scarf which had been lying in a drawer for years providing a home for moths couldn't have looked worse. There was an ugly scar across her face, perhaps a memento left by some startled sewage worker's sharp metal tool. Her muscular figure resembled that of a pure-bred greyhound; she must be an Oriental. She might have a punk look, but her eyes, icily iridescent as neon, and the claws protruding like murderous sickles from her paw pads, told me I'd come out of a duel with this wiry lady as mincemeat. This, in short, was a young witch who liked to cook herself up some blood broth on occasion.

'Come on, little one, aren't you going to make a break for it?' asked the Prince of Darkness with mock concern. Misty vapour seemed to swirl in his eyes.

Well, guess what! He had a sense of humour. Not being the melancholy sort myself, I replied, 'Certainly not, old chap! It's quite a treat to meet comrades in a lonely spot like this. Inspires one with confidence.'

'You'd have a fair chance, though. After all, our eyes aren't in working order, and we'll give you a start to add to the fun.'

'Ah, but you see I've always wanted to meet you lot. When I heard you were so clean you actually lived down the loo I abandoned my bungee-jump training right away and came straight here.'

The virago got sick of hearing me answer back. Angrily, she laid her ears back, showing the perfect wedge of her head, and opened her eyes wide. Then she raced out in front of the assembled team, claws like scalpels reaching longingly for yours truly.

'
That's enough silly jokes! We must eliminate him or he'll give us away, like all the others.'

I had the suicidal nerve to suggest, 'If that's all that's worrying you, ma'am, surely amputation of the tongue would do the trick?'

Suddenly the boss lost his sense of humour. His milky eyeballs seemed clouded, as if with some dark liquid, and the mockery in his bulldog face suddenly and alarmingly changed to deadly earnest. At this the monstrous rabble fell perfectly silent and waited, motionless, as if to make sure the emperor of the sewers wasn't distracted from passing sentence by such irritating sounds as the rumbling of stomachs. In fact even though I was in such desperate danger, I couldn't help rather liking them. The light from the drainpipe gave their matted coats a silvery shimmer, making them resemble fans of a heavy metal band famed for its excesses on stage. Their pale eyes, hundreds of pairs of pale eyes standing out in the dark, might have been sparklers lit during the performance of a favourite song, and their bitten ears symbolic of the injuries you risk by indulging in too much consumption of such loud music. At bottom these children of eternal night were an extreme example of our own nature, representing us all as we wander silently in the dark realms of our souls.