Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition

by Akif Pirincci

  'He's killed him!' she cried. 'The shit! He really has, he's finished Rhodes off!'

  Clearly this was more than she could understand, and she was unable to stop weeping and wailing over what couldn't be undone now. The rest of the mob joined her lamentations, uttering curses and loud, confused expressions of dismay, and competing with each other in suggesting suitable reprisals. As they did so they nodded their heads in time again. Finally the boss felt impelled to rise from his place, with the morose bearing of a small-town judge sick and tired of the squabbles of the local gentry, and uttered a welcome cry of, 'Shut your mouths, will you?' This duly took effect, suddenly silencing the mob which had been thirsting to lynch me. There was an oppressive stillness, broken only by the scratching of claws on the stony ground as the patriarch slowly made his way over to the scene of the crime.

  'You've got us into a nice mess now, little one,' he said rather sadly, as he ceremoniously inspected the corpse with his nose.

  'Well, if I hadn't, he'd have made me into a nice mess!' I defended myself. 'And you should really be grateful to me. There's your breakfast at last. Ought to be enough for everyone, and you can keep me for harvest festival or whatever.'

  'What the hell are you talking about? One of those clever-dicks who think their powers of deduction something marvellous, are you? You won't do much more thinking when your head's jammed up your arse. Maybe you're smart enough to snuff out a poor old sod who could hardly stand on his feet, but do you think you can put on the same show with every single one of us?'

  'I kind of thought we might stop for the regulation breaks between rounds.'

  'The death penalty, that's what I say!' screeched Lady Boss, and her claws shot past my nose just a hair's breadth away. 'Let's kill the bastard now, before he can do any more harm.'

  'Gently, gently,' Golden Earring soothed her. 'Up to this point we just had a troublesome witness, and we were going to deal with him painlessly. The situation's quite different now. We now have before us someone who's sent one of ourselves across the Jordan. So his death must be celebrated with all due ceremony, if only in honour of the memory of Rhodes. What's your name, then, little fellow?'

  'Francis,' I said.

  The wiry witch froze in the middle of her nervous movements. The Chartreux suddenly raised his head, and he too remained perfectly still in that posture. An excited whispering arose from the middle of the assembled company and spread like the wind to its farthest corners. After a while His Majesty, obviously partaking of the confusion felt by his companions in misfortune, began on a series of what they call displacement activities. He licked the root of his tail like one possessed, scratched vigorously behind his ears, and paid great attention to washing his balls. We perform these displacement activities spontaneously when we have to make a difficult decision or size up some unusual situation. Human beings perform various displacement activities too, without being aware of it: for instance, when they're in some kind of difficulty they will rub their ears, massage their foreheads as if in pain, make acrobatic movements of the tongue outside the mouth, and last but not least they go in for smoking, smoking and more smoking.

  'Francis?' said the leader, more to himself than to me. 'You don't mean the Francis?'

  'Well, I'm not the sailor or the film director. Just Francis,' I said, shrugging my shoulders. Maybe they were thinking of some particular brand of tinned food.

  'The Francis who solved the most complicated crime ever to take place in our ranks? The Francis whose deeds are legendary? Francis the genius?'

  'There was certainly a dark period in my past when I encountered a lord of darkness who had forgotten that light could ever exist. Compared to you lot, though, he suddenly seems about as diabolical as one of Steffi Graf's ball-boys.'

  'Why didn't you tell us at once?'

  'I hate personality cults - particularly when the idea of the cult is to eat the personality.'

  'I'm afraid you've got quite the wrong impression of our community, Francis. I suppose it's partly our own fault. Still, since we met in such unfortunate circumstances you were bound to misunderstand certain things, including our real nature. If you're to get the true picture we shall have to tell you a long story. Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Saffron.'

  'And yours is Cardamom, right?' I said, turning to the warrior queen beside me. She didn't seem at all keen on the idea of making peace, far from it: it was more as if the revelation of my name had spoiled the game for her. She moved her head back and forth suspiciously, ready to strike again at any moment, eyes narrowed to slits, and performed an orientation manoeuvre to make sure she could still locate my exact position. To this end she employed the radar effect of her vibrating whiskers, which can register even the smallest changes in air circulation. When she 'read off' the results, they provided her spatial imagination with a three-dimensional diagram of the object of her interest. It was almost like seeing without eyes.

  'Wrong, Sherlock. Niger, that's my name. I was once called Cindy like that man's daughter - the girl who wanted something cuddly for Christmas. She lost interest in me on Boxing Day, so the man put me in a plastic bag and threw me in the river. Luckily the bag was torn, and I managed to swim to the bank and hide in a drainpipe. But you needn't think I decided to take the name of Niger so as to identify with an underprivileged race of humans. It was just because the name suits me, being the Latin word for ... '

  'Black,' I said.

  'Yes, well, goes to show you deserve your reputation as a clever-dick,' Saffron interrupted. 'Hostilities over now, right? We've been waiting a long time for someone like you. You see, we have a job for you, Francis.'

  'A job? Look, I'm sorry, Your Highness, but I gave up detecting ages ago. The only cases now solved by yours truly Mr Marlowe concern the mysterious disappearance of smoked salmon from the larder.'

  'That's OK; we don't want you to solve a case, we want you to find someone. But before we go into detail there's a final ceremony I think we should perform.'

  Before I could protest and assure them that all I intended to find was the goddam exit from this damp realm of shadows, Saffron approached the corpse of Rhodes, raised his head to the vault above and intoned our familiar and musical 'Yeeeoooowl!' This time that mysterious cry lasted longer than the usual short burst, because it was taken up by the blind animals encircling us as if they were singing a round and went on and on, becoming an endless lament. If one of the singers struck up a sequence of notes but had to stop for breath, his neighbour stepped into the breach. It was like a musical relay. They wove a moving tapestry of sound which finally dissolved entirely into the shrill howls peculiar to us, which we utter when we're particularly excited. No doubt about it, they were howling a funeral dirge, a requiem for one of our own kind, and one I had killed.

  Saffron lowered his head and gave Rhodes a gentle push with his nose. As if this were only a symbolic gesture, like a politician laying a wreath, several of his subjects came up from various directions and pushed the dead body on before them with their own noses. The corpse rolled over the ground, and was finally tipped over the side of the stone walkway to fall into the sewer. 'Yeeeoooowl!' sang his blind friends, bidding farewell to their companion for the last time as Rhodes floated away downstream like a rudderless raft, and although I had a lump in my own throat by now I sang along with them as loud as I could.

  'It wasn't your fault, Francis,' said Saffron quietly. 'Or rather, we're all equally guilty. Rhodes certainly had more blood on his paws than you'd find on Charles Manson's hands. His IQ didn't exactly qualify for the Guinness Book of Records, and we found he came in handy to do the rough stuff. He'd probably have died of his injuries and deformities in a few weeks' time anyway. However, we must justify ourselves before God, even for the death of such a bloodthirsty being. Why, I ask myself, is our species doomed to show hostility, indeed brute force, when it encounters strangers of its own kind? Is it because of our origins - because we were once hunters in vast territories where a sing
le competitor could endanger our survival? No, clever scientific arguments don't really explain anything. Misunderstandings, misunderstandings! And always violence. Yes, violence seems to be in our nature.'

  Once the mourners, tears in their eyes, had dispatched their defunct Angel of Death into the maw of the sewers they formed a dense crowd around us again. I felt a vague excitement rising among them, as if some pleasing event were about to take place. I had lost sight of Niger during the funeral ceremony, but now she pushed her way out of the crowd again and made straight for Saffron.

  'Scout come back?' he asked when she was beside him.

  'Yes, it's main inlet number thirty-four this time, over to the west of the city. They've finished the repair works at number seventy-eight and sealed it off again.'

  'Then we have quite a way to go. You come too, Francis, and en route I'll tell you why you mustn't refuse our request.'

  'But can't we discuss it here, Saffron? Where are we going?'

  'From darkness into light - for the sake of our health.'

  And saying no more, he set off at a determined trot. As if all the rest were just waiting for that signal to start, total chaos broke out among the company, who had hitherto displayed all the exemplary discipline of consumers queuing outside food shops in the former Communist countries. Instantly some of the blind animals leaped over our heads, like salmon going upstream, to get a front place in the mad rush, and there was much excited pushing and shoving on the path, which was far too narrow for such a crowd. It was as if a fire had broken out near by. However, theirs was a cheerful excitement motivated solely by anticipation, so in spite of everything courtesy and consideration were the order of the day. Everyone made sure no one else got shoved too hard or came too close to the left-hand side of the walkway, where you might get pushed off into the sewer. Above all, they took the greatest care of the babies who made up a kind of fluffily mobile substructure in this milling throng. I could account for the sudden restlessness of my blind acquaintances only by assuming that there was a prospect of some reservoir of food in the distance.

  Saffron, Niger and I had soon dropped back to the rear of the column, a place the boss obviously found congenial; it meant he could start on his story in peace. By now I'd spent so much time in the dark that my optical sensitivity to light was at its highest, and I could make out the winding ways of the sewers more clearly. For instance, I was surprised to see, in the distance, a fork where three streams met and flowed into the tunnel where we now were. Three identical tunnels led from this fork to goodness knows where, and in their turn must branch off into several other winding tunnels, making the underground maze complete. I was beginning to realise that my original plan of getting out of this labyrinth under my own steam had been an illusion, and I'd never see the light of day again without the aid of my blind friends.

  'I expect you're wondering why we're blind, Francis,' said Saffron reflectively as we trotted after the rest of the enthusiastic procession. Niger, pacing along at my left, was listening attentively, her head bent, although she must have known the story already. 'The answer's simple: we live permanently in the dark, so in the course of time our visual nerves atrophy and become useless. You might not think it, but we're happy to make that sacrifice if it spares us having to live with human beings. We've all enjoyed human hospitality in the past, you see. Even I did. My owner was a well-known painter, regarded as a tremendous aesthete in artistic circles. My twin brother and I were a finishing touch for the sinister décor of his flat - a kind of live eye-catching device. This artist went in for kinky leather and sado-masochistic sex, and he admired a slim figure. The mere sight of someone well-nourished made him feel quite ill. He sometimes starved us for days on end so that we'd live up to his physical ideal too. When he went away for a long weekend he usually left us locked in the flat, and on one of these weekends my brother died of thirst because our owner hadn't even left us a bowl of water. Another time he went on holiday to Egypt in search of inspiration, but the only inspiration he brought back came from the goddess Bast, whose statue wears earrings. He thought this was a brilliant idea, and pierced my own ears for rings the very next day. After that I could never scratch behind my ears again without catching my claws in the rings and making my ears bleed. I was a great hit at his parties, all the same. Then things got rather nasty: the artist suffered a creative block - or rather, to put it bluntly, he went off his head. To stimulate his imagination he started torturing me and observing my reactions. He enjoyed it. He always wore his leather outfit and mask for these sessions, using a fondue fork heated on the stove for his experiments. After one such orgy my wounds burned with such intolerable pain that I ran all over the flat howling, frantically looking for something to cool me down. In my desperation I finally jumped into the lavatory bowl, plunging my whole body head first in the water. It soothed my wounds and my other injuries, but next moment I realised I was stuck in the S-bend. I couldn't go on, and I couldn't go back - now what? But then I saw for the first time the advantages of the anorexia he'd forced on me. I felt sure I could squeeze on down that squalid outlet if I helped myself with my forepaws and didn't panic. Eventually, half drowned, I reached the main drain, and when someone up above flushed the cistern, the rush of water washed me right into the sewage system. Down here I soon found companions in misfortune who'd suffered a similar fate. I haven't been back to the world above since then.'

  He'd put a bit of weight on since then too, I silently added. But I didn't feel at all like laughing. I'd always known what kind of things went on in the world beyond the safety of Gustav's four walls. I was only too well aware that humans published meticulous records of dreadful things done to my own kind in their media, and though they might shed crocodile tears about it over a good meal and a glass of expensive wine it was only symbolic, like turning a prayer mill. They kept quiet about the everyday torments inflicted on animals because no one was really interested. By now the awe-inspiring word 'creature' had become a term of abuse.

  Meanwhile the procession had reached the place where the tunnels divided, and the blind animals were jumping the sewers in pairs, with artistic ease. As this astonishingly precise manoeuvre was performed at high speed and they jumped one after the other in rapid succession, it looked from a distance as if bridges were rippling up and down over the three streams, bridges whose colour was constantly changing. At the end of our path, a corner where two of the streams met at an acute angle, Saffron and Niger catapulted themselves upwards too, flew through the air with limbs outstretched, like bats, and landed on the other side with the elegance of griffins. Now that my turn had come, my admiration was tempered with sheer fright, because I suddenly realised that the distance across the sewer to the path on the opposite bank, which also started at an angle, was at least two and a half metres. It was very dark here too, which made calculating even the simplest jump more difficult. At the same time, however, I felt ashamed to be bringing up the rear, and after a moment's hesitation I finally imitated the others. As a result, I was literally left dangling: my forepaws came down on the other side according to plan, but my back paws hit the void. Flailing frantically, I tried to correct my error, and for a split second, as my claws touched the side of the walkway, I thought my awkward acrobatics would do the trick. However, they were sabotaged by the slime deposited on the stone. I slipped and fell in the sludgy water. Fortunately there was a kind of swimming-pool ladder close to the place where I'd had fallen in, so I was able to haul myself up by it, like a monster emerging from the lagoon. I thanked my stars no one could see me doing this slapstick act, because otherwise more than one revision to the legend of Teenage Mutant Ninja Francis would have been called for.

  When we set off again, padding after the pack along another nameless stone walkway, I fancied for a moment that even Saffron was wrinkling his nose. I shook myself as if a thousand fleas were attacking me, because the unique smell of the water in my fur after my bath caused deep offence to my already pretty paranoid obsess
ion with cleanliness. I kept stopping, licking my coat frantically and combing my fur with my teeth to remove small lumps. The thought of the unspeakable substances I was swallowing in the process made my stomach churn. While I was trying to get perfectly clean and keep up with the others at the same time, Niger took up the story.

  'We represent the conscience of our species, Francis,' she said belligerently. 'Even more: we grant final asylum, the last refuge from torture and death. For we are the Company of the Merciful. You see, Francis, the inequality that divides human beings into children of fortune and poor unlucky sods doesn't stop at them; it affects animals too. Though it's worth wondering whether the thoroughbred Arab in the royal stud who's had a dozen operations on his legs since falling in the Derby is really any better off than a forest squirrel facing hunger daily. Alas, we're all equal in suffering. You've seen nothing but the chocolate-covered side of life so far, Francis. But not many of us lie about on velvet cushions dozing ourselves blotto in sunny conservatories. Not many of us can afford to philosophise about the ideal ingredients of tinned food. You may think Saffron's escape down the S-bend sounds particularly tricky, but humans themselves sometimes use that way of getting rid of pets when they're not wanted any more, or there are too many of them. Drowning a whole litter in the bath is something that practical, inventive humans find rather unpleasant today, so they may just dispose of the little ones down the loo - painlessly, they think. After a nightmare journey through the drainage system, the babies reach us and we give them another chance of life - those who haven't drowned already. Or sometimes humans breed us into weird-looking specimens prized only for their extravagant deformities, like our unfortunate relatives of the hairless Sphynx breed, and individuals who don't fit the breeding programme get thrown into the dustbin half dead. Some of these victims, though badly injured, just manage to escape from their stinking coffins with the last of their strength, and then they find their way down to us through the gratings over gutters in the street. Living in the dark all the time has made us infertile, and we can't have children of our own. So instead we take great care of the children we've adopted and of our older brothers and sisters from the vivisection laboratories. They can spend the evening of their days peacefully here in the catacombs. The greatest risk we run is discovery by the sewage workers. They'd report their amazing find to the powers that be at once, and the powers that be would feel obliged to carry out a rigorous cleansing operation. We eat rats; luckily humans haven't found any foolproof way of exterminating rats yet. Hunting them is quite dangerous and sometimes leads to bloodshed, because they've grown abnormally large and heavy in the Promised Land of the sewers. But all things considered we can feel quite pleased with the success of our mission - or we could if sinister shadows from the past hadn't surfaced a little while back ...'