Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition (29 page)

He seemed very tired now, indeed he seemed to be drifting off into another dimension. The blood welling out of him made a large pool round his head, as if he were drowning in the bloodbath he'd been covering up for, if not actively encouraging, over the years. Yet I didn't shrink from him in horror; I would not condemn him. It is a characteristic of intelligent beings that they learn to understand the nature and constitution of the world and then come down on one side or the other. Ambrosius was right: you don't really want to know everything or you end up looking foolish.

'So why did they spare me, my friend?'

'Are you sure they did? Alcina told them about you, and wh-wh-what a keen brain you had. With that in mind, I thought it would be a po-po-positively brilliant idea to turn your detective inquiries into propaganda for the Black Knight. I encouraged you to believe that only he c-c-could be responsible for such cruelties. Unfortunately you were always a step ahead of my fabrications, until th-th-things got out of hand. That's why Aurelia told you about the cave. She knew the lynx lived there, and he's a sworn enemy of the Wild Ones. She expected he'd take you for one of them and ki-ki-kill you on the spot.'

'But why did they do this to you, Ambrosius? I thought you were their saviour!'

'They don't want to leave any tr-tr-traces behind. No witnesses. And I wasn't wholly innocent of creating the murderous vortex into which they were drawn. They are cl-cl-closing this chapter in their dreadful past and setting off for Scandinavia sooner than they meant to. So they told me they w-w-wanted to say goodbye and asked me to sw-sw-switch off the alarm system. Di-Di-Diana had it fitted because she herself was afraid of ...'

Another jet of blood surged out, stifling his words. As if pulled upright by an invisible claw, he reared in his death agony, gurgled horribly, spat out more bloody mucus and finally collapsed, eyes tightly closed.

'Don't die, Ambrosius, please don't die!' I cried, weeping. I still believed in a miracle, hoping his wounds might close of their own accord.

For the last time, he opened his bright amber eyes and looked at me with a mild expression, as if death were tantamount to a sweet drug.

'What's so bad about it, Francis? All animals wi-wi-will die soon. Death is coming d-d-down on us like a poisonous cloud. It's enfolding us, smothering us. And God won't s-s-send another Ark. The battle's over. We've lost. They outnumber us. One day humans will look at their world and s-s-see something strange: an Earth without animals

And so he drew his last breath, letting it out with a sound of indescribable contentment. The tears I was shedding mingled with his blood, and my final prayer with his departing soul. Carefully I laid his head down in the pool of blood, bent over him and rubbed my nose against his. But in spite of my grief I refused to accept the truth of his depressing last words. There was no need at all for total annihilation to be the inevitable fate of animals. We had allies all over the world. And even if he were correct, who gave the Wild Ones authority to usher in the apocalypse, as proxy for humanity? Did two wrongs make a right? Ought we to judge wicked deeds less harshly if they're committed by the victims of other wicked deeds? No, never. I wasn't going to let the Wild Ones get away with it, although I realised there wasn't a lot I could do against a whole horde of murderers. But one thing I
could
do: I could curse them, look them in the face and curse them. And my curse would go with them everywhere, wherever they went, to the end of their days.

I made the same adventurous leap as last night, shot through the open window to the roof, and from there dropped in daring flight to the ground. The storm still hadn't stopped raging. Rain was falling in such torrents you might have thought there was a burst pipe of giant dimensions up in the sky. Lightning was flashing all over the place, and you could hear trees exploding as they were struck. As I raced through the forest at breathtaking speed, I concentrated utterly on my infallible instincts. I thought they'd soon pick up the murderers' trail, and they did. Without making a single conscious decision, I changed direction several times, made my way through thick barriers of bushes, crossed unknown forest paths, passed farmyards where hysterical dogs barked at me, skirted the Fossilised Forest again, clambered up sheer cliffs and jumped rushing streams. I finally left the forest behind and came to arable land. And there, exhausted and breathless, on the edge of a bare ploughed field rising steeply up a slope, I saw them about two hundred metres away from me.

Veiled by the rain, they were trotting at a comfortable pace towards the top of this sloping field. When they had left the crest of the hill behind them, they would be lost from my sight. I didn't know if I would be able to summon up the strength to follow them then. Strictly speaking, the whole situation resembled a more or less covert form of suicide. If they found out that I was still alive, the last person to know their secret, they'd certainly kill me. Well, so be it. There was more of the detective in me than, with my usual cynicism, I liked to admit. And detectives have to track down murderers at all costs.

While I was getting my breath back, they had reached the top of the rise. Now they really did look like the 'grey ghosts' who had struck fear and terror into humans for so long. Hundreds of backs shone with a silvery gleam in the distance, like the last troops of a defeated army retreating, and hundreds of wet tails swung gently to and fro in time like crumpled windscreen wipers struggling in vain against the rain.

'Hey, you murderers, where do you think you're going?' I yelled at the top of my voice, and then I began slowly marching towards them. They all stopped abruptly and turned to me. There was no surprise on their faces, only something like annoyance that for all their efforts a troublesome problem still hadn't been solved. The sight of all these desperadoes gave me a nasty sinking feeling, but I'd rather have died than let them go without a word of loathing.

Suddenly it stopped raining. A stiff breeze got up, and the lowering black clouds began to drift apart. Through the gaps in the cloud cover you could see the majestic deep blue of the sky with the full moon in it. What did this impressive picture remind me of? The ploughed field, the dark night sky, the full moon with dark clouds driving across it ...

'Don't come any closer if you value your life, Francis!' cried Aurelia. Hobbling, she pushed past the females around her. When she had made her way through she stood there in front of her troop of bedraggled and rather weary-looking queens and looked at me reproachfully. We were all wet through, and the strong wind cut into us like the Snow Queen's frosted fingernails.

'You won't get away scot-free from the last person to know your cannibalistic past, Aurelia. Here I am, and this tale of blood won't really be over until you've killed me.'

'I had no idea you could be so sanctimonious, my son. It's all very well for people living in palaces of full feeding bowls to condemn the low moral standards of the starving. Have you ever spent a winter in the forest, Francis? In a forest so heavily managed that it looks like a germ-free idyll on sentimental wallpaper? Do you really think you could survive even a week in this deceptive paradise - in rain and ice, pursued by hunters with guns, terrorised by cars, caught in traps? How would you hunt with hordes of humans looking for fun kicking up a racket with their bicycles, kites, caravans and camping gear and scaring your prey away? Would you just give a weary grin when you saw your children starve to death at your side? Or your own parents? Or are you only a conceited detective bent on bringing killers to justice however much necessity made them act as they did?'

'Oh, so it's necessity that justifies such barbarism. In that case I suppose you tore Ambrosius to pieces like a hare in a dog-race out of necessity too.'

'Don't paint the dead better than they were in life, Francis. Of course we were the ones who actually killed your brothers and sisters, but Ambrosius set up the gory, archaic atmosphere and the cult. He gave us our medieval names and acted as if the Black Knight really existed, as if he was a deity we must worship. He was so crazy he came to believe in his own masquerade. He made us think we were a chosen people, so we had a right to decide on the life and death of other animals. Ambrosius didn't force us to commit murder, that's true. But he helped us do it in every way he could.'

'It was your own idea to make mincemeat of Alcina, though, right?'

'Yes. After meeting you she was a changed character. She said we ought to drop our destructive ways because they were sinful. We regarded her attitude as treachery, executed her, and left the corpse outside the house in the forest as a warning to you. And as a way of laying a false trail too. But then we thought some more about what she'd said, and we saw the hopelessness of our situation. Suddenly we felt as if our view had been blocked by a great black wall all this time. When you turned up, large cracks began appearing in that wall, and we recognised our dreadful guilt. Gradually we understood what cruel monsters we'd become, how far we had left the innocence of the animal kingdom behind. The only thing we still had in common with other creatures was our animal appearance, a deceptive mask hiding bestial pariahs and rivers of blood. We felt deep shame when we realised that, Francis; oh, we were dreadfully ashamed of ourselves. We wanted to forget it all and obliterate everything that might remind us. So we sent you off to the lynx, expecting him to eat you, and we dealt with Ambrosius ourselves. We know it's easy to find reasons for doing evil, my son, but now we also know that survival won't excuse everything. We are guilty, intolerably guilty. And you are right to condemn us, Francis. I only ask you to remember that we were already condemned before we touched a hair of the coats of your own kind.'

Once again I had tears in my eyes. Oh, what hard decisions life called for! It was all so difficult. The sheer will to live had caused injustice that cried out to heaven, and lovely forest elves had turned into morbid monsters. So that was the solution of my case, the answer to the riddle. It gave me no satisfaction, though; on the contrary, it caused me great pain. Whatever torches we may kindle, I thought, however far their light may reach, our horizon will always be bounded by darkest night. For the answer to the last riddle in the world must necessarily deal with things in themselves, not appearances. The concepts of good and evil disappeared, leaving only my own little feelings behind. Feelings of mourning for the victims, hatred for the killers who themselves were victims to be pitied, and so on and so forth until everything lost its meaning in a tunnel with no light at the end of it, also known as the world.

I felt that events had changed me. I was not the Francis I had been before my flight. So I no longer wanted to go back to Gustav and enjoy a comfortable life, closing my eyes to all the suffering outside the door. At the same time I felt deep revulsion from these creatures, who might be naively described as innocent animals. A stone or a clover leaf could be innocent, but not a living creature. We were all guilty, through no personal fault of our own, just because we were here in this world, because we needed, rejected, loved and killed each other. No, I would turn my back on the incomprehensible world and content myself with a hermit's life. All I wanted was to go back to the lynx's cave and spend the rest of my life in obscurity there.

However, a sober look at my surroundings induced severe doubts of my ability to achieve this reclusive ambition. I suddenly noticed that my present location was the precise scene of my vision of death: the field apparently going on and on to infinity, the silvery light of the full moon broken only by stray black clouds. My God, this was it. I was going to be torn into blood-stained mincemeat by hundreds of claws. What a way to go!

This fear, in its turn, was immediately nipped in the bud when the Wild Ones did something I hadn't for a moment expected. First Aurelia and then all the sisters of her tribe began moving slowly backwards, as if at a signal. Were they really so scared of me? Or were they perhaps more afraid of themselves, feeling tempted to try instant elimination of the last person who might interfere with their journey, thus breaking with the past once and for all? But that would mean they'd really suffered a change of heart and didn't want to solve their problems by force any more.

'Francis, you must have heard the tales of old or sick elephants who go to a certain spot when they feel death approaching,' said Aurelia, as she carefully put one paw behind another, just like all the other Wild Ones behind her. Half the company had already disappeared over the brow of the hill. I stood there in the middle of the field, watching them in silence.

'Such places are called elephants' graveyards. The place where we are going is said to have more prey animals than this dark land of misfortune, and the human population is lower. But more likely, much more likely, it will be our graveyard. We still don't really know how to hunt and lead the natural life of our species. So basically we're on the way to our death. But come what may, good fortune or bad, we're never going to injure anyone but our proper prey again. We are leaving madness and murder behind, and we hope that for all our sins, an unspoiled nature will take us to its heart.'

All the Wild Ones except Aurelia had now gone over the top of the hill and were out of my sight. Aurelia stopped there on the crest of the field, giving me a long look from grey-green eyes in which all hope was extinguished. Behind her, a cloud drifted away, exposing the huge moon whose reflected silvery light made Aurelia only a silhouette. Then, suddenly, she got up on her hind legs and reached out her forepaws as if to embrace me from afar.