SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (15 page)

All these thoughts brought my last dream to mind. For me, dreams had always been the key to solving a mystery. Just that I had never realized this in time. In my last dream anyway the attack on the twin towers in 2001 had been pretty prominent. And maybe all that had happened in the world after the terroristic act had found expression in a mental echo. Sometimes I feel like Dr. Freud’s soul mate, but of what importance was Antonio’s transformation from a comic hero into a rocket, which averted the catastrophe last minute? Was there a possibility to gain »definitive peace« for the world like the master had mentioned in his speech? What might such a pacifier look like? And how did Antonio’s cruel former master fit into this bizarre concept? Should I worry about him looking like an Italian macho or maybe better about the fact that Antonio had been happily curling up just in the guy’s lap who had on
ce abandoned him so recklessly?

I had ducked the next and crucial question until last, as I couldn’t even find an explanation to some extent. Why this bestial killing method? Why of all things the ear or better the whole hearing aid, which the killer removed in total? Certainly the feline ear was unique, or to speak in the language of advertisement: a hit product. It is nature’s most sensitive hearing aid and outshines every other species’ aural sense in the aspect of distinguishing single sounds. So it was comprehensible that humans took a closer look at this aural wonder and maybe even abused it for their dark deeds. But, and this but trashed my theory like a big wrecking ball: 1. The feline ear was researched by scientists right down to the last detail ages ago and was taken even the slightest secret. So nobody needed to arrange cruel experiments with »living material« but could easily download every information in that score from the internet. 2. I had every reason to be proud on our ear trumpets and to praise them to the skies, but, that’s only fair, humans had developed even more sensitive listening devices by now and had come first in the winner’s podium at the Eavesdrop Olympics long ago. If one meant to do it, with the appropriate high-tech device one could easily listen from outer space to a worm burping 30 feet below ground level. In this regard w
e couldn’t teach them any more.

Thoughts of this kind buzzed through my head while I began to wish for finally seeing something else than darkness and the monotonous linear stone corset of a catacomb. I had attended a clever quiz, but as a candidate I had failed miserably. Yet, the game didn’t count for nothing, as I had gotten a feelin
g where the journey was headed.

One question, a concrete one this time, still bothered me. Where would I end up at the exit of this ancient Christian tube? Hopefully not in the middle of Rome’s killing traffic, which was as considerate of four-footed road users as much as a lava flow was of proud homeowners. But I suddenly realized where I was located, and at one go I smelled fresh air and from afar I saw the first contours of a place, which made me gasp in awe. »In truth!«, I shouted like the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca did in 1337, » Rome is greater, and greater are its ruins than I imagined! I no longer wonder that the whole world was conquered by this city«.

The catacomb ended at a wall that was covered in spider webs and in which a hole in the impressive size of Gustav had been smashed. The fallen rubble still lay everywhere around the threshold. I jumped outside into the night and via a ramp I finally, finally reached the Forum Romanum! Fronting me the mighty triumphal arch of Septimius Severus towered, which was to remind of the victories over Parthians, Arabs and the tribes in former Assyria. Moonlight dipped the 75x82-feet-giant, which was situated across the church Santi Luca e Martina, into a bluish shimmer. Impressive about the three-gate building were the four giant marble reliefs, which showed scenes from these wars with superior plasticity. The victory goddesses sat enthroned above
those, holding their trophies.

Quickly I jumped onto a little hill of broken pillars, turned south-east bound and let my eyes roam over the heritage of the empire, that so shortly before sunrise outranked every sword and sandals film’s technicolor-panorama. It was epic! It was titanic! It was ... gorgeous! What a wide plain, surrounded by ruins, gardens and temples, covered with fallen capitals, upright lonely pillars, trees and silent desert. It seemed as if the agitated rubble from the poured out ashtray of time and the flinders of a big world had been knocked about. Crickets tried to out-clitter each other, the warm wind audibly petted the ruins that were mainly covered with grass. I got a lump in my throat from happiness, that I actually made it to this sanctum of civilization, and the gun salute, which I would have loved to shout out into the night, stuck in my throat: Hail ye, Rome!

Halfway up I had the chance to open myself to the ruins of this central square: from the three temples below the Senator’s Palace and Tabularium, the Dei Consentes (the twelve gods of Greek origin), the emperor Vespasian and the goddess Concordia, over to the Imperial Fora on the other side of the Via dei Fori Imperiali up to the Arch of Titus and the Colosseum. All this testimonials of the Western world’s origin towered in front of me like dark silhouettes, which began to reveal their secrets little by little with the beginning dawn. I pretended they were secrets. Actually, I had spent countless nights with Gustav in front of the fireplace, when he had revealed every secret of this golden Epoch with the aid of tons of books, and I, who I pretended to sleep in the middle of the docu
ments, had done the same.

At the
Forum the whole power and history of the city of Rome and the empire was reflected. The site had been a weely valley in the middle of the seven hills, on which the humans had settled at first. Here, the close connection of economy and justice, religion and politics, the increasing power and influence of the Roman state was documented with splendid buildings and gorgeous art. The representatives of public life, the tribune of the plebs, clerks, senators, consuls and emperors had been prettifying the center of their empire with impressive building and monuments for ages, where now newly built things right next to ancient and organized right next to accidentally originated built
a densely developed complex.

Now the former
hub of the world had become a ruined city, a dead city, in which at this lonely time maybe ghosts assembled, saw their life’s work crumbled and forfeited, and wept bitterly about that in a heart-touching choir.

»O you emperors, o you noble citizens of Rome, o you slaves, and not to forget o you fellows with pointed ears, who you certainly put the fear of God into the damn rats back in the day, o you masters of the universe!« I yelled at all those sad dead souls in my mind’s eye and believed my voice to resound quite impressively. »Don’t cry, you unrivaled, as your doing won’t be for the birds, nor for the cats if I’m allowed to throw in this pun. We are all doomed to die, and even the little we will deliver to posterity, like for example the Afro hairdo or the word ›Girlie‹, won’t last. Everything decays. The beautiful created by an aesthete will last forever and always. But also the poor devils who once had to carry and beat these rocks the whole blessed day and who after work probably never thought about the right color of wallpapers, shouldn’t be forgotten. You used to be a superpower, and no superpower in the world has ever created something more beautiful. If it was worth conquering the whole world for this, your excessive gods may judge that. But whatever you created, you always spoke for the whole mankind. Not much will last in the breathless stream of history, but this will!«

Thus I talked to the ghosts in moonlight and believed to get a note of thanks from them in the shape of a suddenly upspringing gust of wind. From my elevated position I couldn’t see either the any sign of a human soul or of any other creature in this ancient silhouette landscape. Even the birds hadn’t started with their singing and chattering yet, so at the silver shimmering giant square I began to feel like at an abando
ned megalomaniac stage setting.

And again I was about to hold a rather elegiac speech: »O Antonio, you pink black one, you
cronista di Roma
, where are you now that I need you so much? You queen of my heart, who let me eat delicious trash, you, who feathered my nest with velvet cushions just like you had promised, can you maybe stop snoring, move your butt and kindly look for me! Otherwise I will develop some serious aversion for you queers! God, I need you so!«

Yeah, that was the desolate state of affairs. What on earth was I about to do in this El Dorado for Latin inscriptions lovers? Samantha was gone, Giovanni was too, and without another useful hint or a guiding paw, which led me through the mysterious maze of Rome, I was in a fix. Technically, I should have ruefully went back to Gustav and get in his good books so he would take me back to the manageable backyard idyll. Then the case wouldn’t be solved but let’s face it between you and me and the rest of the criminologists, more than half
of all crimes remain unsolved.

As often the case in these tricky situations I suddenly got an idea, which wasn’t related to the actual case at all: The Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre and is protected against robbery by a security system that probably leaves even Bill Gates clueless. And the isle of Manhattan is probably under such high guard that not even a sewer rat can get inside without proper papers. And here at the Forum Romanum, in the cradle of humanity ... nothing, simply nothing! There weren’t security guards patrolling, no reddish light barriers glowed in the dark, and no CCTV could be seen. Didn’t those responsible for this cultural heritage worry at all that one of these nights guys with fancy names like »Toothpick-Eddy« or »Monocle-Max« showed up, loaded one of the temples on a truck and disappeared? I mean, even a statue’s head from the Forum would bring that much money at the archeological black market that a gangster would be set for life. Or did even the biggest gangsters think it was a sacrilege to steal from Cesar’s treasure chest?

I just couldn’t find a good answer to this, and I didn’t know if I hadn’t missed a hint. In that regard I realized that I found myself in a far more privileged position than a tourist who had to force himself, surrounded by his kind, through the solid masses of the Ancient World under the sun that stole all mystic glamor. Yeah, might as well. Now that I was here and the site was open for me alone, I might as well go for a stroll, and let my memory be my guide. Actually I didn’t have much of a choice anyway, as I had lost my sense of direction as well as my
Roman friends in every aspect.

I left the pile of pillars with an elegant leap and began to walk the Via Sacra. Right in front of me was the Lapis Niger, the black stone, a black marble square on the ground. They say that underneath the grave of Romulus, the founder of Rome can be found. The spot shimmered opaque in the moonlight, and it gave me the creeps. To my left hand side I saw the Basilica Aemilia, the only remaining building from the Republican Age. The name probably means »hall of the kings«. The basilica had functioned as stock market an
d courtroom among other things.

And so it went on, one famous site after the other viewed by me with widening eyes and enjoyed while catching my breath. The fundaments and the truncated columns of the big Basilica here, the remains of the Temple of Caesar there. Then eventually the Temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals – this monopteron had enshrined the »holy fire« in Ancient Roman times under conservatorship of the Vestal priestesses. The virgins, who were chosen for the duty of the holy fire, came from the noblest families in Rome. They were admitted as pre-teens and had to stay for thirty years; if they were to breach the rule of chastity they were buried alive in a dungeon. T
he things you do for tradition!

When I reached the eastern part of the forum after a while, I decided to rest right below the Arch of Titus. In the background the giant silhouette of the Collosseum towered like the just landed spaceship of an alien authority. The sky above the site was still sapphire-blue, and the big old moon still catered for a pale, yeah creepy shine. She was the only one who had seen everything in its whole splendor and glory. The crickets by now were in a real singing frenzy, and here and there a firefly sent mysterious signals. The ghosts were still on the road, they were everywhere, but soon the sun would rise and ban them back to their interstati
on.

My eyes wandered along the height of the triumphal arch. Titus, another emperor of the emperors who had always wanted jam on it, too, ultimately had defeated the Jewish people with his conquest of Jerusalem and by that initiated their expulsion from Palestine and their century-long dispersion all over the world. Thus, to the Jews the Arch of Titus is a saddening memorial; they avoid passing it. The old wounds still suppurate
...

Suddenly there was a shrill cry that cut the air like poultry scissors! Never-ending echoes resounded from the walls of the monuments. I was so frightened that for a couple of moments I could only hear the wild hammering of my heart. Another cry, a little quieter this time, and then an almost infinite whining chimed in the breaking dawn. Although these cries sounded somehow familiar, I could hardly calm down. The whole area had become a dangerous jungle from one second to the other, hiding a blood-minded monster b
ehind each tree and every bush.

After I had been running headlessly all over the place, I braced up a little and decided to get to the bottom of it. An about 5 feet high pillar that had been broken in the middle seemed to be a pretty good lookout to me. I used the catapulting function of my strong rear legs, and within seconds I was on the pillar. Restlessly, I kept observing the place, looking for something suspicious or a brief movement. But I couldn’t spot anything in
this varied landscape of ruins.