SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition

by Akif Pirincci

  »Right over there on the right the Via dei Fori Imperiali leads to the Piazza Venezia, Francis«, my Roman lover said, and agitatedly she looked around as if it was possible that she got sucked into the metropolis’ dangerous whirl any second. »There are traffic lights in abundance. You just need to wait long enough until a moped with the Vatican license plate number stops at one of them. The letters SCV and the Vatican crest are stamped in them. Most of the time, a cleric sits on the moped, on the back there’s usually a basket for the daily shopping. Just hop in, be quiet as a mouse during the drive, and eventually you will end up in Vatican City. However, how you are going to find Miracolo once you got there, I leave to your aptitude.«

  We rubbed at each other’s cheeks and moist noses for one last time.

  »Vale, Francis!« she said and gave me a long melancholic look. Then she turned to go.

  »No, not farewell, Sancta!« I replied. I guess that my facial expression was also dripping with melancholy now. »I will come back to you and induct you in the pleasures of chaos. And not only that. You are in Rome, the culinary Mecca of the whole planet. You are going to shovel so many delicacies into your stomach that you will eventually long for a rotten fishbone. I know some restaurant with an excellent cuisine. In other words, I ask you to dinner!«

  The jubilant smile that spread on her face resembled the midday sun.

  »O, just one more thing«, I said. »Do you maybe know the reason for Umberto’s life crisis, which made him become a priest?«

  »I don’t really know details. But he once talked to himself, and at that he mentioned very sad things. He said he used to have a family who were killed three years ago in a catastrophe abroad. His wife and his three little children apparently died in the most awful way one can imagine.«

  A pause ensued, in which all sounds around us seemed to be sucked off by a vacuum pump and as if time stood still. In my mind’s eye, the movements around us, but above all the movements of my lover expanded into intolerable slowness, when she spoke to me with her sweet black mouth:

  »Nisi ad me redibis, non melior eris quam stupida mortuaque larva, Francis!«

  And the slow motion effect still lasted when she turned her back at me and finally disappeared between the line of columns and rampant bushes. It’s certainly true what people say about the korat cat and its halo. When she was gone, it seemed to me as if someone had suddenly turned off the light at this idyllic tableau. But also her last words to me were true. If I didn’t come back to her, then I certainly wasn’t better than some stupid dead ghost. At that one that was to be dipped into sulphur and lava in hell every day!

  But I would come back. For that reason alone that not for all coffee in Brazil I wanted to miss out on watching this petite body bloat like a pumpkin in ideal weather conditions two weeks from now. And exactly with this alleged blemish I would constantly tease the mother of my future children. At our morning meeting, Sancta had been on the climax of her fertility, which I had sensed. A thing that made me even more happy than sprouting father’s pride was something not a single dad nowadays can hope for: My children would speak Latin fluently! (4)

  12.

  Sancta’s tip turned out to be worth a mint. I scampered along the busy Via dei Fori Imperiali to the Piazza Venezia, where the artificial mountain Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II made from light travertine towers with its giant perrons. The Italians also disdainfully call this »the typewriter«, due to its unusual shape. Here, I only had to wait next to a traffic light for a cab with a Vatican car sign, and off I was to the state of the Impeccable.

  The churchman on his moped, who stopped next to the sidewalk because of a red sign, shared Gustav’s petite figure so the motorbike’s suspension prostrated a little. Yet, I didn’t have to pass on convenience in two respects. Firstly, there was a wire basket attached to the carrier, just like Sancta had predicted. In a single soundless bound I was in it and made myself comfortable between potatoes, leeks and eggplants. On the other hand the modern moped didn’t have anything in common with the loudly rattling motorino with a frugal suspension, which provoked slipped disk at every bump, which I knew from old Sophia Loren movies. Our pope mobile for average pay grades literally hovered over the asphalt.

  And that’s how my chauffeur and I flew along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in God’s name – half of Rome was named after this Emanuele II apparently –, reached the good old Tiber, which flowed away in the most impervious moss-green, crossed the, guess what, Vittorio-Emanuele-II-bridge, made a turn to the left at the Castel Sant Angelo, and finally found our way into the Via della Conciliazione. There must be few people in this world who have ever heard of this street name, however, many who have a picture of these street in their minds. As this street offers the free and billionfold photographed view at St. Peter’s Square and the dome of the St. Peter’s Cathedral. Even the Protestant poet Schiller once raved about this estate of the pope: »A true kingdom of heaven is his house. As these shapes are not from this world.« And so it comes apparent again that a good architect is well worth the money.

  As I drove towards the capital of the Catholics, I remembered that of all things this access was due to the signature of a previously mentioned nice guy, namely the fascist dictator Mussolini, who had hoped to gain broader support from the people by aligning with the Catholic church. On February 11, 1929 he granted the Vatican autonomy with all consequences according to international law. Fortunately, today wasn’t Wednesday, when the pope usually blesses pilgrims from all over the world at St. Peter’s Square. There had been no getting through otherwise. There was a lukewarm stir on the broad boulevard, while St. Peter’s Cathedral with its titanic dome towered next to us like a massif hewed by Michelangelo. Groups of priests, nuns and pilgrims made their way to the cathedral or were already on their way home, with enraptured faces after hours of sightseeing. There were devotional objects of the pope or Christian bookstores all over the place; such a density of crucifixes and rosaries must be unique in this world.

  To me being hurled from one millennial kingdom to another caused a proper dizziness. There’s the following reason for the control center of the latter kingdom, which in contrary to the Roman empire hasn’t lost any of its influence, is situated so far from the city center: In the year 280 or so the wealthy family Laterani had given some buildings and their garden to one of all sects, who believed that a man from Nazareth had been God’s son. And according to the apostles Saint Peter had suffered the ordeal in this spot in either 64 or 67 AD. It’s true that I store God in my heart, regardless of where I’m standing or going, and I feel embraced by Him even though I don’t go to church on a regular basis, but only those, who have once faced this biggest church in the world, are able to conceive the power of faith. At the end of the street my driver made a turn to the left and decreased the pace down to step speed. I jumped at the opportunity and out of the wire basket, and ran towards St. Peter’s Square!

  The Piazza San Pietro is a perfect creation – regardless of it being filled with tens of thousands, sometimes even with hundreds of thousands or being rather deserted like right now. At full tilt, the May sun shone on the 790-feet-long ellipse with the high Egyptian obelisk in its center and caused striking shadows. 284 pillars and 88 travertine piers, which looked like widely outstretched arms, encompassed the oval in rows of four. White striped intarsia imbedded in the pavement functioned as dividing sections and led towards the middle. Two tall fountains with giant granite bowls on their sides enlivened the square with their high plumes of water.

  The black-dressed clerical people, here and there also some tourists and pilgrims, who usually were chased in groups from one sight to the next by tourist guides, petered out in the broad square. In its middle, I stood like petrified and almost wasn’t able to break away from the cathedrals about 165 feet high monster-facade with its differently shaped pillars, columns, windows, doors and balconies. It was an unbelievable decoration, its pieces stepped back and forth, inwards and outwards in eve
ry imaginable way, without any reason or cause. The facade was crowned by 20-feet-high statues of Christ with the cross, John the Baptist and the apostles. Through the five doors with brazen railings I saw that through the dome windows sunlight flooded the inside in the shape of giant lances. The builders of this house had used all their creativity to create the impression that the Almighty didn’t live anywhere else but here. And what I can say, I also believed in that now!

  After the first enchantment had subsided a little, I remembered my mission. Miracolo – where in the nucleus of the Catholic universe might His Holiness be? After all Vatican City embraces 0,17 square miles, and besides St. Peter’s Cathedral there are countless buildings, parks and gardens, yeah even a train station and a heliport in the lateral and rear areas. I was tempted to use the tasteless comparison with finding a needle in a haystack but quickly noticed that my plan actually was even more desperate. It seemed unlikely that the colleague, who according to Sancta behaved even more papal than the pope, would just run into me by accident. In this minute, he probably sat in the pope’s lap and bathed in his glory. Maybe I had made a mistake when I had rushed here reflexively at the mentioning of his name instead of adoring my Roman goddess a little longer.

  Before I let myself get totally overwhelmed by desperation, I decided to at least do my Christian duty and have a look at the cathedral’s inside. As to be in Rome without seeing the workshop of the deputy of Christ, would indeed have verged on blasphemy. The only question was if the soldiers of the Swiss Guards, who were standing in front of the church’s doors would allow a fellow to pass who wasn’t just hairy on his head, at his armpits and a little further down. I had heard that they sometimes couldn’t stop school of pigeons from flying inside and that because of that there was a certain tolerance towards animal invaders from time to time. If this applied to representatives of the Felidae, I was about to find out.

  I raised my right paw in order to boldly kick it off ...

  »Il Pius stupido ha trovato morto! Il Pius stupido ha trovato morto! ...« I suddenly heard some drowning yelling from both sides, which made my raised paw freeze in motion. The yells probably wouldn’t have shocked me so much, hadn’t they been uttered by my kind and if it hadn’t been for the little word »morto«. »Stupid Pius found bodies!« What was that supposed to mean?

  I put my paw back to the floor and moved my head from side to side. And when I looked back again, two fellows on each side of me streaked pass me and nervously ran towards the Bernini Colonnades on our right. It was a piebald, a fat gray one, and two more figures that I wasn’t able to identify in regard of color, race or sex. Totally taken by surprise at first, I quickly composed myself and ran after them.

  »What is all this buzz about, folks?« I shouted to my fellow runners after I had caught up on them.

  »Stupid Pius has found bodies!« the piebald panted while he ran like it was for his life.

  »I already got that. But who is stupid Pius? And who are these bodies anyway?«

  »What? You don’t know stupid Pius?«

  I was afraid the guy might have a coronary any minute.

  »Guess what, no! Will I get excommunicated now?«

  He gave me a suspicious look as if I was a wacko Muslim.

  »Everyone here knows stupid Pius«, he said. »And if you don’t know him, then you’re not part of the Vatican circle and better go fry an egg!«

  »O my, I beg your pardon a thousand times, but did your Reverence have some nasty problems taking a shit this morning or why are you behaving like this?«

  The four shared confused looks, which also contained a little fear. Having to listen to impious talk right after the jeremiad of the discovered bodies seemed too much for them. One of them eventually indicated with a lukewarm nod that I was to follow them.

  Meanwhile we had passed the sprawling arch of the colonnade and slipped through the holes and cracks inside the sidewall, which were just as big enough to fit our girth. The cathedral, mostly its dome, still towered above our heads like an omniscient observing Goliath, but the surroundings had turned into less gorgeous renaissance functional buildings. The Vatican Bank Instituto per le Opere di Religione and the sleeping sheds of the Swiss Guards already lay behind us. Some doors stood open so that we could rush through the buildings. Passing clerics had to brake sharply in the nick of time so they didn’t trip over us. At that they cursed worse than Roman truckers.

  Other openings turned out to be less comfortable. We had to enter dark cellars in the size of halls and had to leave through open windows. Just as we passed through a dark hole between thousands of upended paintings, I realized that we happened to be in the fund of the Vatican Museum, one of the most important art collections in the world. Wait a minute, wasn’t that a genuine Botticelli, that peeked out of this endless appearing gallery of dusty canvas? The picture illustrated the almost-binding of Isaac through his own father’s hand. How beautiful! Had I taken this great daub to Sotheby's, I would have been able to afford an original Ancient Christian catacomb as a toy for Gustav as well as an inflatable Forum Romanum on a scale of 1:1. But no time, no time, we had to run to this stupid Pius.

  Meanwhile my piebald fellow runner had come off his high horse and had deigned to bandy some words.

  »You will presently see Pius«, he said. »Usually he isn’t even able to find his own tail. The Almighty must have led him this time.«

  We left the buildings behind us and eventually reached the Vatican gardens. Miniature woods took turns with extended lawn areas, picturesque allies led to renaissance gardens which with their artfully cut bushes and pergolas, spherical, conical and pyramidal trees as well as several plays of water seemed to have arisen from the obsessions of a stickler for order rather than from Mother Nature. To our right lay the stirring nunnery from the Middle ages, to our left lay the office of the Governor of Vatican City.

  Finally we reached a meadow that was embraced by a square which was planted with trees in lose intervals. In the middle of this square stood a Saint Bernard dog in the size of a grizzly! If this creature with its pendent chaps and its wrinkled face, that reminded me of melted plastic bulges, didn’t weigh at least 220 lbs, I wanted to be called Scrooge McDuck from now on. The friendly giant had sat down and looked at the ground. In his gaze, emptiness, astonishment and cluelessness took turns at intervals of seconds. There were about ten representatives of my kind sitting with him in a circle, who also stared at the middle with bowed heads.

  »Pius is the dog of a retired French cardinal, who enjoys his twilight years at Saint Martha’s House«, the piebald said while we now made for the group. »He is totally harmless and holds a, well, doglike kindness, but unfortunately he got the brains of a grub. The other day he mistook the Holy Father in his white gown for a snowman and howled the whole day because he was worried that he might melt in the sunlight. Turns out he made an explosive find about half an ago at one of his routine bone-digging missions.«

  That was more than an understatement, as when we reached the site of the find and I was confronted with the result of Pius’ digging, the shock made me lose ground. I settled myself on the lawn and stared at the pit as horrified and quiet as all the others. The Saint Bernard and the fellows that had arrived before me had meanwhile enlargened the pit with their paws so that I could face the horror full-frontal. About two palms beneath the ground lay more than a dozen dead fellows, one superimposed on the other. Their number was hardly definable as the killer apparently hadn’t been the diligent gravedigger and had scooped the pit just as deep as to squash all of the bodies inside. It was a classical mass grave, even though a very straitened one.

  The bodies were still partially covered with dirt, decayed and oozed a sickening sweet scent. At some of them worms, germs and decomposing gas had made amazing progress. Between yellow shimmering bones, extensively burst sections on the backs and stomachs by now offered sheer obscene insights into inner organs, which partially were barely existent anymore, partially still well »inha
bited«! Leaked eyeballs, that dripped from the orbits like transparent wax, scalps along with fur, which had scaled off partially and revealed cranial bones, torn open mouths with blackened ivories ... Given this horror everything whirled around me like the clappers, just as if I had been sitting inside a spin top. The same seemed to go for the others.

  But although I felt so bad and I was close to let the inside of my stomach see the sunlight again, the organ of curiosity gave some witty thought about the tableau of horror: 1. The killer of the Siamese at the Largo Argentina and the killer of these brothers and sisters here must be one and the same person. As even though the decay of the body was far advanced, it couldn’t hide the butchers gross signature feature. The hearing aids of all bodies had been completely removed at one side. The worms must have fulsomely taken a call at this discovery, as they were able to get to the tasty brain right away.

  In contrary to the dead Siamese the newly found victims showed a tiny and yet very important difference though, one that only occurred to someone, who had really gotten to the bottom of the incident: 2. In regard to the »deseeding« the killer apparently had been in the early stage of his crimes. Let’s call it »the rough period«. The much clumsier manner of surgical intervention proved this assumption: some skulls were half-open, some even totally wrecked. So could it be that Signore X had wildly and maybe unsuccessfully experimented in Vatican City at the beginning of his project? And one step further: Could it be that he first wanted to gain surgical skills before he turned the removing of hearing aids into a career? 3. Although Vatican City was a secret kingdom hidden in itself, he had dared to entrust the great butchery and his experiments with the other clerics. In the history of Christianity animals had always played an ambivalent role. (5) By now the great atonement was the order of the day even in this relationship, so he had rather kept his crimes to himself and had buried the victims in the park. But where did he move his experiments after that? According to the phase of decay of the bodies, he must have changed his operation room about a year ago.