SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (2 page)

Then something seemed to happen inside Gustav. The sad Buddha’s posture showed some spectacular change. The massive upper body straightened up little by little, bend forward and backward nervously as if he was devoting himself to something, the melon shaped head sea-sawed and nodded like crazy, and the bloated face was haunted by a thousand twitches. Oh my God, they wouldn’t disclose the launch of capital punishment by lethal injection for clients in arrears! Then he stood up and indicated a movement that looked a lot like a salute. At the end of the conversation he once more said »Uh huh
...
uh huh
... uh huh« and »Yes
... Yes
... Yes
...«,
though this time almost euphorically. Supposably, the double blind of life had finally dri
ven him insane.

He kept standing motionless for a long time after he had hung up. Turning his back on me, a gigantic silhouette in the with dust particles compound light of the window, framed by floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall, each holding at least two thousand books and pictorials. A defeated king in the kingdom that he was soon to be banned from. And so was I. Alas, I was close to bursting out in tears – mainly because of myself, as I thought of this kingdom and one square mile around it more as
being mine rather than his.

Suddenly Gustav turned towards me with an elegant twist, and I was afraid he might make heinous faces, begin to bleat or something like that, just like it was to be expected from someone stark raving
mad
...
But no, none of that. He smiled blissfully, like someone who just had happened to answer t
he one-million-dollar-question.

And as my lifetime companion just didn’t have any listeners to share his happiness with (something he never happened to have by the way), without further
ado he made do with me.
In a soliloquy the good news from the call came bubbling out of him, although of course he didn’t know that I understood every word. I listened to him observingly, while I gave the impression of a creature with an IQ of a balloon. After he had finished his report, he ran to the bedroom and began to pack. Thunderstruck I stood behind and tried to not fret too much about the loss of the rope that the b
ailiff had taken at that time.

Just now the object of my sympathy, within just a few minutes Gustav had managed to get in line with some of the worst sleazebags of the human race. So what had been the topic of the telephonic twitter that had cast out the darkness at Gustav
Lobel’s
house one hundred percent? Quite simply: The two hundred percent foiling of my plan!

The first part of the message still sounded like a literal last-minute rescue. The call had been from Bella Italia, from Rome more precisely, and to be even more precisely, from the »
Sopraintendenza Comunale ai Monumenti Antichi e Scavi
«, thus the Roman Administrative Agency for Ancient Buildings and Excavations. As far as I understood Gustav’s hasty mumbling, he had been told that they had found hints on a so far overseen, early Christian catacomb at the Forum Romanum. In fact, on the very spot in which Gustav had believed it to be in one of his academic papers a few years ago. The Roman archeologists therefore looked at my good old jinx as the intellectual father of this discovery and insisted that he will personally jet there and supervise the excavation. His services would be worth fifty thousand Euros from the agency. They would even be willing to immediately pay half of the money in advance, if he left for the Eternal City this very day. So far so paradisiacal.

All our problems seemed to have solved at a single blow. And so it seemed for the problems in the near future. What more could I want? Two things: First of all, see Rome and die. Because over the years I hadn’t been able to resist Gustav’s passion for places which’s names were already firing my imagination. Rome – that wasn’t just a name but a dream that I had been longing for due to secret reading at his library. The Capitol, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Villa Borghese, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Campo de’ Fiori, the nooks and grannies of Trastevere, the thousand churches, the glorious palazzi, the dignified weather-beaten bridges across the Tiber, the countless fonts, the
Vatican
...
Yes, I felt like in a former life I myself had been purring in Rome and had spent my days on earth on those with pillar rudiments fitted roof decks of this Capital of the World. All roads, even mine, led to Rome; that was something I had always been sure of. As to die without having seen Rome would have been a life and death of no importance.

Gustav, provided with the sensitivity of an anvil, sure enough didn’t have a premonition of my longing when he told me about his working vacation. And he even took it to the next level when he confessed that he didn’t plan to take me with him. That already was an infamy beyond compare! He should stick his reasoning that I would disturb his work on the excavation where the sun doesn’t shine. Shedding streams of tears, I had still been willing to sit tight, wait for his return and keep only dreaming of Rome. I
f he had just left me my plan.

But he didn’t intend to. With what we come to the second reason why I didn’t just wish him the rope around his obese neck but the complete torturing routine of the inquisition. My can opener had something vicious in mind. He wanted to give me over to other can openers during his absence. But not even to Archie, a straightjacket hedonist, who lived upstairs and probably earned his money by lending his body to prospective physicians as an incarnation of a chart about drug abuse. Because this guy had already left for the south a few weeks ago, as apparently the call of spring had reached him a little early. You
know
...
dwelling on nonsense and ripping off people also wo
rks well under southern skies.

No, Gustav,
really
had something evil in mind for me. During his absence, he wanted me to be in »professional care«. At a home for my kind, called
–
disgustingly cute
–
»Guesthouse Paw«. Irresponsible humans brought their pets there during their holidays or stupid business trips. Incredible! Shocking! Animal disregarding! I was to be send to jail and listen to the tragic lifetime confessions of lonely, soft-minded fellow prisoners day in, day out, so my so called owner could be celebrated as the Einstein of Archeology in beautiful Rome. My answer to that: A
bsolutely out of the question!

As early as one second after Gustav had finished panting about the happy news and left for the bedroom to pack his clothes that for the most part were remains from the seventies, a new plan stirred in my brain cells. Yes, this might
work
...
Though only if the animal foe would carry the backpack that looked like the monstrous hunchback of a gnome from a fantasy movie, like he usually did. Also, only if he, like the scatterbrain he was, forgot to lock it at the top. This way it really might work. And if it did, then not only would my plan become reality, but more than t
hat it would even outdo itself.

Loaded and dressed like the most stupid tourist ever, Gustav was back in the hallway only about half an hour later and looked at me full of phony pity. On his back I saw the backpack, probably left over from his blessed times as a hitchhiker, when as a young blue whale he had senselessly tramped through the world. Of course it wasn’t locked at the top. A stage win! He was wearing a golf cap and multi-colored shorts as if he was leaving for a concrete castle at the Costa del Sol. When the Roman scholars saw him, they would probably push him into this early Christian
catacomb and fill it up again.

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 purportedl
y 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 tortu
re 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 re
sided 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 betwe
en 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 i
f 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 st
udies 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 fun
ny, 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 ent
ered 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 backpa
ck and made myself comfortable.