When he met Jess during a solo road trip through America, he had the feeling, for the first time in his life, that he was ready to settle down. All the other women he'd dated before had the opposite effect and had him running screaming in the other direction. Jess was different. She wasn't just his lover; she was also his best friend. He had found what he had been looking for. He went to live with her in Connecticut, and less than a year and a half later, they got married. Since Eleonore was born, traveling the world wasn't an option anymore. Aidan had always known he wanted to have children, but when it was happening, he realized he wasn't ready. Slowly but surely, the restlessness was seeping in. At the beginning of their relationship, he and Jess often made road trips together, and once in a while, a relaxing vacation to Hawaii or Mexico. Now his life revolved around working, getting his daughter to and from school, giving her baths, and tugging her into bed. Even though they could have easily left Eleonore with Jess' parents for a few days, he wasn't able to get his wife out of the house anymore. Only her daughter counted. Being married and having a kid was all she needed. With each passing year, Aidan felt the urge to travel become increasingly stronger. There was still so much he wanted to see, particularly in Asia, South America, and Africa. Once a nomad, always a nomad. He didn't want to live those travel dreams without Jess and Eleonore, but he couldn't shake off the feeling that the best part of his life was over. More than 11 years he had stayed in America and all these years, he'd hardly left the confines of his house and cabinet. However, he had never given up trying to convince Jess to move abroad and to take on the adventure. Originally she'd refused, but after years of persuasion, she was starting to give in. Because of Eleonore, exotic destinations were out of the question, but Europe or Australia were options she could accept.
Now, finally, they were living the dream.
At least he was. Jess glanced at him briefly, as if she somehow knew what he was thinking, and he saw his wife's sadness reflected in the green of her eyes. She was here to do him a favor, and she still needed to get used to the situation.
In under half an hour, they would arrive in Clervaux where they had rented a two-bedroom apartment. The meandering roads on their way almost all led through the forest. The cottages they passed were quaint. Apart from the major cities, he didn't have the impression that most towns counted many residents. A few thousand at the most, probably.
Aidan liked the idea that they were right in the middle of Europe, which meant they'd be able to reach cities such as Paris, London, Barcelona, or Amsterdam in only a matter of hours. Not that they were going to travel anytime soon. Their move to Europe and Eleonore's International School tuition had cost them almost all their savings.
Aidan drove silently down a winding road. Houses became more and more scarce. Before long, they followed a river, which Jess stared at almost the entire way.
The Volkswagen coiled up a series of twists and turns, ascending a hill with pines shining in the crisp autumn air. The clouds that had been thousands of feet overhead were suddenly nothing but a fog slithering around the bases of tree trunks.
The lush green landscape closed in on the car the farther they drove. At times, tree branches leaned over, creating a thick, oppressive canopy.
Aidan almost missed the turnoff sign but made a quick turn that sent him bouncing down a narrow, rutted road heading into a thick thatch of trees and dense vegetation. Just as he began to worry he had taken a wrong turn, the forest thinned out, and the car emerged into a clearing.
A small town seemed to have sprouted out of nowhere. Nestled beside the banks of the river Clerve on one side and towering hills on the other, it seemed perfectly isolated from any approach but from the dirt road. He spotted a ramshackle wood sign reading CLERVAUX announcing they had arrived at their destination.
As they approached the pedestrian zone, he noticed another sign: ATTENTION! PASSAGE DE CHATS! Caution! Cats crossing! In other parts of Luxembourg, Aidan had seen signs warning against crossing game as the surrounding area was teeming with deer and wild boar. But in Clervaux, apparently, it wasn't the wild animals you had to pay attention to because at least 20 cats were strutting about in the middle of the road and on the sidewalk. If you weren't careful, you could easily hit one. He supposed Clervaux's inhabitants had the bad habit of letting their animals run wild. Maybe, as a veterinarian, he could educate them on the importance of spaying and neutering.
Apart from the clowder of cats, the sight of his new town pleased him. The houses were a mix of yellow, red, brown, pink, and orange. A stone fountain graced a small square, and around it sat four wooden benches. With its impressive height, a white-plastered medieval castle pointed up from Clervaux and bore witness to a long history of mighty counts.
Aidan eased the Volkswagen as far into the town as possible, but the tiny alleys in and around the center weren't accessible to cars. Aidan parked at an outlying parking lot. “I can't bring us any further, but our apartment is down the street here.” He gestured with his finger toward where they were supposed to be heading.
Aidan scrambled out of the car, inhaling deeply. The smell here was different from that in America. Aromatic undertones of pines and moss predominated, then came aftertones of game.
“Wow,” he said. “Is this ever pretty?”
“It is,” Jess agreed.
Aidan opened the door to the back seat and softly shook Eleonore awake. “E? Wake up. We've arrived.”
She slowly opened her eyes. “I feel a lot better now,” she mumbled. Her eyes were wide, and she looked fixedly in front of her, still not completely awake.
“Are you thirsty?”
She didn't respond.
Avalon had woken up too, and he made a long stretch with his back before giving Eleonore kisses on her right cheek.
“Hi, Avalon,” she said.
“You want to haul your cat back into his carrier so we can bring him inside?” he asked.
She nodded in approval and opened the plastic cat box on the seat beside her.
Aidan went to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk. They had a lot of luggage. They wouldn't be able to get it all to their apartment in one go. A pity Eleonore wasn't old enough to help them move some of the bags. However, she made a conscious effort to carry her cat, which was at least half her weight.
Aidan looked at his family and felt awash in an incredible sense of love and gratitude that they had chosen to join him on this journey. Now it was his turn to make them happy.
***
The new apartment sat in the main “shopping street” of Clervaux. When Jess first heard they would be living in a town center, she had expected lots of noise and activity. In reality, though, there were only a handful of shops. Apart from the weekends maybe, it would be quiet here. Though their street wasn't even half a mile long, it was called Grande Rue or Big Street, which said enough about the size of the town. Clervaux truly was minuscule – nothing more than a handful of roads and alleys. Almost as soon as Jess entered the street, which started at the beginning of the town, she could already see the end point of Clervaux, a square dominated by a stately 1920s hotel with yellow plastered walls. Behind the plaza and the hotel were the hills with silver spruce trees, which screened Clervaux off from the rest of the world.
No matter how small this town was, you couldn't deny it was a tourist destination. Jess had to admit the cozy sight pleased her. Though she still wasn't keen on living in Europe, it was a relief to know they could call such a quaint, quiet place their home. She only agreed to come here because she knew it would make Aidan happy and because it would be an opportunity for Eleonore to learn French, and maybe some German, too. Europeans were always better at languages than Americans. Home-loving as Jess was, she would have preferred to stay in America, in the proximity of her family and friends. Why shake things up and risk losing everything for an adventure abroad? However, when Aidan was offered a job as a veterinarian in a cat hospital in a small country between Belgium, France, and Germany,
she knew she couldn't say no. Aidan and Eleonore had always been the most important to her, and if she wanted to keep her family together, the best option was following her husband to Europe.
When she looked at Aidan leading the way to their new apartment, she felt lucky he had chosen her over all these other women, and that he continued to do so after more than 11 years together. Aidan's age made him more attractive than ever. The tiny wrinkles that decorated his 42-year-old face suited him. His messy, dark-brown hair always looked as if he had just got out of bed. He had an arrogance about him that was very attractive, although the truth was he could be quite sweet.
After a minute walking, they arrived in front of their new apartment. The building had yellow plastered walls and a quaint, wooden balcony.
An obese, ginger and white cat was casually lapping water in front of the bakery next door. Momentarily frozen, the animal met Jess' gaze and did a few steps forward to greet them.
Aidan immediately squatted next to him and glanced at his name tag. “Romero. A beautiful name for a beautiful cat,” Aidan said while extending his hand to stroke it.
Romero gazed up at him appealingly and stood up on his hind legs to better receive the caress. He returned to a sitting position to scratch an itch behind his ear. Fur puffed out from where it had touched its coat, leaving a tuft of orange and white on the cobblestones.
“I guess we just met our first neighbor,” Jess told Eleonore. Her daughter kneeled down to greet and stroke the cat as well.
A man of about 60 years old came up to them. The gray of his hair was almost as dark as his original color. Jess suspected he was their landlord. “You must be the Burns family?”
“Indeed we are,” Aidan said and immediately stood up to greet him.
“Carl Fehrenbacher. Your landlord.” The man shook Aidan's hand and then did the same with Jess. “You had any trouble finding it?”
“Not too much, no,” Aidan remarked. “It was quite easy.”
“So you wanna see the inside of your new apartment?” Carl Fehrenbacher’s accent revealed German origins.
Jess looked at Aidan and then at their landlord. “Sure. Let's go.”
The landlord unlocked the front door. They took the stairs and entered the apartment on the first floor.
Eleonore opened the cat carrier as soon as she got in. As if Avalon somehow knew each hiding place before he even got there, he ran off toward the kitchen and hid under the oven. Chances were they wouldn't see him for days.
“Wow! Look at this place!” Jess exclaimed.
“You like it?” Aidan asked.
“Absolutely.”
The apartment was more than enough for the three of them. Two bedrooms – one small and one large. The living room had something warming about it with dark brown brick walls and wood on both the floor and the ceiling. The kitchen, too, was entirely made out of wood, and for half a second, Jess feared Avalon might use the cabinets as a scratching post.
At the back, the view gave over the surrounding hills. Below them was a vegetable garden and from previous communications with the owner, they'd learnt it would be possible to have a spot where they could grow their potatoes and vegetables. In the front, a balcony overlooked the town.
The apartment came furnished – which was a necessity considering they couldn't move their furniture – and Jess was glad to see all the pieces were brand-new and quite stylish. She particularly liked the white polyester sofas and armchairs, the umber-colored dining table, and the multitude of storage areas.
“I had to drag my wife up here. Can you believe that?” Jess heard her husband say.
The landlord looked at her. “It's nice, though, huh?”
“Oh, a fireplace!” Eleonore squeaked. “Grandma used to have one like this.”
“It needs a little updating,” the landlord said. “It's old, but it works.”
Jess smiled at her husband, thus giving him her seal of approval.
Jess opened the doors to the balcony to let in the fresh air. She stepped outside, perched on the balcony, and looked out over the town. The smell of fresh bread and croissants from the bakery next door permeated the air. A little further to her left, a waitress at a restaurant was writing the daily specials on a chalkboard. Everything they needed was right there within walking distance. She detected a small grocery store, a chocolate shop, a pharmacy, a bank, and several restaurants and hotels. Only Eleonore's school was many miles away. The rest of the small town was functional enough to her liking, much better than what she'd seen in the pictures.
Like the outskirts, the center of Clervaux was overrun with felines. Apparently, they liked to have tourists around because they let themselves be stroked and posed when photographed. Many lay on the visitors' laps on the alfresco areas of the cafés or bugged them for a snack. Others curled up in the middle of the square to enjoy the sun. A slightly older white cat with scattered ginger spots stood up and loitered toward one of the plaza's many water bowls.
The view reminded Jess of the Japanese cat islands Aoshima and Tahirojima she'd seen pictures of on the Internet. The population had massively imported cats onto these islands to keep mice at bay from the silkworm farms. When the industry had left, so had the people. That's when the cat population had boomed. These days the cats outnumbered humans by a ratio of approximately 6:1. The few remaining islanders, mostly fishermen, fed the semi-feral cats with part of their daily haul, believing it would bring them good luck and prosperity. Like Clervaux, these cat islands had become popular attractions, with tourists going on day trips with specially laid-on boats and shop owners selling cat-related souvenirs. Even some of the houses were cat-shaped. No dogs lived on these islands and bringing them along was being frowned upon. This made Jess wonder if dogs were allowed in Clervaux, because she couldn't espy a single canine. Only cats. Lots of cats. No self-respecting dog would ever put a paw inside this town.
However, despite her good first impression of Clervaux, Jess felt exactly like those dogs: as if she didn't belong.
CHAPTER 2
Friday morning. As Eleonore wouldn't be going to school till Monday, Jess took her daughter on a guided tour of the town, the castle, the church, and the Saint-Maurice Abbey. Though the church offered the best views, Jess' favorite part of the tour was the castle as its white walls had a soothing effect on her. According to their guide, the castle dated back to the 12th century but was destroyed by fire during the Second World War, during the Battle of the Bulge. It had been entirely rebuilt and was now used partly as a museum - the south wing housed an exhibition of models of Luxembourg's castles, the old kitchen was a museum devoted to the Battle of the Ardennes, and the upper floor displayed a selection of photographs. The remaining rooms were used for the services of the local administration.
The tour had lasted three hours. After that, they had seen everything there was to see in Clervaux and went home, which was probably for the best considering Jess had had a terrible first night. She had heard strange sounds she couldn't identify. After a while, she had even closed the bedroom window for fear that a bat or any other animal would attack her in her sleep. She missed the familiar sounds of Connecticut and had lain awake for hours, wondering why she had agreed to come here in the first place.
For the rest of the day, Jess kept herself busy by unpacking and arranging their belongings while Eleonore sat on the living room sofa watching a show on television that looked like a children's version of Penny Dreadful, complete with dragons, elves, unicorns, and vampires. It was funny how Eleonore seemed to be developing the same taste for fantastical stories as her father. She couldn't understand a single word as the show was in Dutch or German or something. Nevertheless, Eleonore was transfixed by the screen.
Avalon was curled up next to Eleonore, snoring loudly. Apparently, their cat already felt at home in his new surroundings.
Jess retired to the kitchen where she grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured herself a glass. She pulled out all the kitchenware
from the overhead cabinet, washing them off and piling them back on their designated places. She didn't want to imagine how long they had been there without having been cleaned.
The sound of something scurrying across the floor broke her concentration from the task. She stiffened.
Was that a rat?
Jess narrowed her eyes at the noise.
At first, it seemed like it was coming from near the front door, but as soon as Jess approached the area, it shifted to another part of the house.
Her rat chase led her from the hallway to the bedroom and then to the living room.
Jess stopped short of the couch. “Did you see a rat?” she asked Eleonore.
Her daughter didn't seem to have noticed she'd spoken at all. She was too concentrated on her show.
“Ad Inferos!” the elf on television yelled and she stretched her arm forward to send the monsters back to hell with her magical, light-eluding jewels.
Eleonore mimicked the elf's movements and repeated the words: “Ad inferos!”
Apparently, Eleonore had shouted a bit too loud because Avalon ran away.
Jess wished she could use those words to send the intruding rat to hell, too.
As soon as she pinpointed where the noise was coming from, it was in the bedroom again. This animal knew it was being followed.
Eventually losing track of the noise's location, Jess shook her head in exasperation. She had wasted a good ten minutes chasing rogue scuffling, as though finally cornering the rat would make it disappear.
Clowders Page 2
