SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (5 page)

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 differe
nt 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 h
eat 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 hav
e 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 countless fights and untreated infections. Out of this smoke-colored war theater two bright cupreou
s 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.«

M
eanwhile 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 rig
ht 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 see
med like a friendly visor only.

»You surprise me,
Signore
«, he said gallantly. »Other foreigners would have passed out at this sight immediately. This gentlefolk don’t know the local customs and much less the merciless rules of the streets. Lucky ones!«

»Believe my, my friend, evil isn’t a Roman invention«, I replied and brushed away some last tears with my paw. »And as for murder, there’s definitely no Roman patent.«

»
Murder ...?«

For a moment his face threatened to crumple. He seemed bewildered. Until the visor o
f politeness folded down again.

»
Ah si. Si, si, assassinio
. Murder is a daily occurrence in this
città misera
. And do you know why,
Signore
? Because
molta semplicione
think that they can live without protection. Although it is so easy to get protection.«

With his head he performed a conspirational gesture and made sure that nobody was watching us. Then he leaned towards me and talked quietly out of one corner of his mouth as if he was sha
ring the most well kept secret.

»Trust me,
Signore
, I can easily arrange protection for you. That is to say, I belong to the organization. Of course you would have to share one half of t
he food you find with us. Well,
concreto
you would have to share it with me.«

I had an idea of what he was getting
at but thought he was kidding.

»What kind of organization?«

He gave me that pitiful look. He had explained the difference between male and female to a chi
ld, and it still didn’t get it.

»Well, the organization,
Signore
, the
Mafia
, the
Cosa Nostra
, the Black Hand. Never heard of that?«

»Am I right in assuming,
Signore
, that you are going to make me an offer I can’t refuse?« I replied.

»Exactly!« it burst out of him. »You may have heard that in Italy we keep to some old tradition – well, apparently this poor sister didn’t ...«

»And as you also may have heard, the nuthouses in Italy were scrapped in the mid-seventies. Ever since the former patients are allowed to roam freely among the workers and enjoy insanity without having to fear electroshocks.«

At first, the one
who spoke stayed out of sight.

The pirate cringed as if Don Corleone himself had pissed on his parade. Within seconds his corny Mafia-ado deflated like a half-baked cake outside the oven. All of a sudden he wasn’t the frightening chunk anymore but a frustrated actor whose mask had been ripped off. Who had done this to him?

I looked around, expecting an even more frightening braggart. Meanwhile, even the most persistent gazers had left the scene. The pirate, the exsanguinated body with the giant whole in the head and I were an island in the middle of the ancient rubble. Then he stepped out of the darkness. He must have been among the crowd of gazers and had waited until those had cleared out.

»Giovanni, you Lord of the morons«, he said. »How often did you put on this show for tourists? And how often were you successful? Never or never ever?«

An elegant stripling approached us. As beautiful and clean as an early morning. The Oriental Shorthair with shiny onyx fur resembled an only slightly modified hound. His head was a narrow wedge, with giant funnel-like ears and glowing turquoise eyes, which had the brightness of emeralds. The slim, smooth torso was strung-out like a pipeline, the legs as well, not to forget the tail that looked like a never-ending skinny snake. He was the Pomp and the Glory, and if Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, or any other luxury fashion brand whatsoever, chose someone of our kind as a top model for the presentation of their rags, he’d be the beau. Although I enjoy smoothies as much as nausea, I
liked him from the very start.

»Antonio,
tu figlio di fornicato
, do you have to kill all joy every time?«, the pirate yelled and seemed so an
gry he was close to an infarct.

»Why every time?«, Antonio said. »Would I look this stunning if I watched this sad performance of yours
every time
? One can get acne from that!«

He turned to face me.

»
Sia salutato
, stranger! Welcome to Rome, the most beautiful city in the world. It’s a real shame you were plagued by two disasters right at the outset. First the sight of this poor sister, and then Giovanni’s Marlon Brando for morons.«

Giovanni’s facial expression couldn’t decide whether to keep showing anger or resignation. Right in front of my eyes, the frightening pirate
had dwindled to a poor codger.

»You have to excuse him, stranger«, Antonio said and circled
around us in mannered motions.
His »easy-pawing« style, his feminine voice and his witty parlance, his whole appearance made him a terrific dandy. »The unscrupulous swine, which just left him here, was from Sicily. That’s some water-surrounded wasteland where people don’t do anything else than eating pepperonis, speaking a language that consists of 25 words and watching these moldered Godfather movies without a single break. I’m afraid this rubbed off on good old Giovanni way too much.«

»Well, I am a stranger«, I said. »But I also have a name: Francis! I already know who you are.«

I nodded towards the body.

»And by now, unfortunately I also know that Rome is quite the hotspot.«

»Oh that ...«

His voice did carry some sadness but one of a kind that accepts fate with dignity. Antonio didn’t seem as battered by the horror as me. To him this incident wasn’t more than unfortunate routine.

»Yeah, that’s actually distressing, Francis«, he said, while he helplessly stared at the body with his phosphorous green eyes. »But in a big and chaotic city like this one incidents of that kind are normal. Rome is a whore and a monster. But also an angel. My experience tells me: It was a bad accident in one of the busy streets around us. Or maybe a fatal fight. Must have happened around noon when the others took a siesta and were dreaming of the Vatican bells. Also, she could be the victim of some maniac who calls killing his hobby. What do I know? Anyway, there’s no reason to let it drag us down.«

»Maybe there is«, the pirate joined back in, after he had apparently
recovered from his humiliation.

»I do get about a lot. And from the one or other corner I hear a lot of whispering. Recently, more and more bodies, which are battered like this, keep showing up around town. Of course I don’t know if this one has a lot in common with the others. And of course I can’t tell what the wounds of the others looked like.
Aiutaci dio
!«

Yeah, may God help us. But above all I wanted to be hit by a descending meteoroid right now –
if I gave in the temptation to play detective again. Because without exhausting my »savvy box« too much, I immediately noticed some conflicts in Antonio’s list of explanations. I felt the never really extinct fervor blaze up again, a fervor called curiosity. All my life this damnable illness had went along with me, and like every bad illness in the end it hadn’t brought anything but pain and despair. Often I had rebelled against it and decided to keep my sensitive nose out of bloody mysteries. And yet, in the end I had always given in and had let curiosity eat myself up completely. Terrible scars – most of them in my soul – had always been the consequence. So should I again ran towards disaster with my eyes open when my original plan had been a cheerful »Salve Roma!«?

»One of your guesses probably is dead on target, Antonio«, I said after some contemplation. »Unless ...«

I turned away from the body, whereat I almost got sick as I purposely turned a blind eye to the evil. I was about to sin against my own principles and to approve of an evil crime remain unpunished. But blame it on age, blame it on the hedonistic prospect of the upcoming holiday, for the very first time I didn’t get the urge to trace blood.

»As a matter of fact, I’m here to distract myself from the evil world, guys«, I continued. »And like you may have guessed already, also for me the best distraction is some that can be corroded by stomach acids. Seriously, I’m starving.«