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

H
umans plan. Though everyone knows that life wouldn’t follow any plan. And though everyone also knows that above all the best things in life accrue from unscheduled events. Why, at least when looking back – and, well, sometimes anyway. Then again, life and this world apparently can’t be overmastered without having any plan at all. Everything is just too complicated as to simply leave the handling of our future to chance. Even the most enjoyable moments, waiting for mankind like eerily wonderful air holes, need some planning. That’s what makes humans tick.

Yeah, humans plan. But what about us, about my own
kind?

(
1
)
I admit, we aren’t any better! We also have fallen for scheduling, though in a somewhat more relaxed manner. And as for me, I’m positively obsessed with making plans. When things don’t go according to plan, I freak out. As a matter of fact, this happens all the time. Because if anything goes according to plan anyway, it’s the fact that our bodies one day will make the d
elicious acquaintance of worms!

So this was the plan: Springtime, oh thou gorgeous May, oh thou homeopathic Viagra for elderly men, oh thou young Prince of Seasons, capable of vitalizing my old blood! So this welcome monarch stood at the gates of our district, and towards us he had already blown his fresh breath in the shape of wildly budding flora and luxuriant sunshine. Gone were the icy Christmas holidays, when like narcotized I had been lying on, underneath, beside and – as I remember dimly – occasionally
inside
the heater, and when I had been sucking for days on those bones of the Christmas goose in a size of a cow that Gustav had prepared. Also gone were January, February and March, the period of these boorish brothers, who always seemed to fight about if it was to rain, snow, freeze or fog. May had a foot in the door, a
nd I had my head in the clouds.

Through the open bathroom window I squinted at the backyards behind our Gründerzeit building, which positively exploded with luscious color and stimulant redolency.

Swarms of butterflies fluttered above the clinker brick walls that formed a maze. The weather-beaten, mostly brick-lined back facades of the old houses, which had been built in a square, beamed skeptically like a blin
d man after the saving surgery.

Families of birds tried to out-tweet each other, human families sank down on their loungers and got their first sunburns. And family of mice bred like there were no tomorrow or, more accordingly,
us
.

Oh yes, the plan! To outsiders it might sound a little trivial. More precisely, it wasn’t so much a real plan but quite honestly more of a longing for paradise. More detailed, the pipe dream which comes to haunt me each year in springtime: sleeping underneath shady trees in the afternoon, lazily snatching at flies, rambling the territory carefree at sunset, taking one or two colleagues by surprise whilst their rackers and giving them a clip round the ear, and eventually tracing a sweetheart and becoming one with her in sunrise. In short: enjoying the warm days.

I admit that at my age such expectations have as little relation to real life as the childlike belief in angels. After all there exists an undeniable coherence between the real season and that in which one is stuck in age-related. And bringing to mind the recent teasing comments of my highly admired fellows, the burning lack of interest on the part of the whiskered ladies and the steadily increasing, pitiful miens of »animal-loving« humans at my sight, I had found myself in arctic winter long ago. But whatever, I stuck to the plan because even if it didn’t dangle an Indian Summer, at least it promised a somewhat Indian Fall.

However, there was a big time contrast. Namely between my cheerful mood and the desperate situation, Gustav found himself in recently. Gustav? Well, that’s the 290 lbs heavy, almost bald 58-year-old »can opener« afflicted with the looks of an industrial silo approved for demolition, who – guess what – usually opens my food cans. He has everything a successful man at his age
doesn’t
have: a tattered terry bathrobe from the era of Boris Becker, in which, due to his gory red-wine-hangover and his pale stubble face, in the mornings he somewhat looks like a prisoner of war finally facing execution after months full of torture. Being the responsible guy he is, he always carries a condom in his wallet, which after fifteen years of inviolacy appears like some ornate imprint. Even more, he has some impeccable sense of opportunities to earn money, which really offer everything but earning money. Did I mention his job as »cake face« at the local amusement park, when hyperactive kids could throw cakes at his face for as less as 3 bucks? Or the one where he sold Swiss cuckoo clocks from Sri Lanka on the Internet?

And why this whole lot of misery? Because the good man is a scientist without appreciation, a misjudged genius, which has as much talent for merchandising his knowledge as a vocal cord amputee has for belting out arias. Gustav, a globally respectable archeologist, had never been able to snatch a stable job at an institute, despite his detailed knowledge of Egyptian gods and the Roman Empire. Now and then a short interlude as in writing a reference book, but that’s it for serious breadwinning. The rest contained a tragicomic sequence of efforts to fill both our stomachs, which I have to admit to our own disgrace occasionally enclosed the creating of bizarre diet sheet
s for women’s magazines.
Maybe you remember the so-called
»
air diet«: One pants for air ten times before each meal and then imagines being full. For a guy having the appetite
and
the shape of a blue whale, who totally freaks out if he’s not having at least 3000 calories with each of his meals, this truly is the climax of self-denial. It was a miracle that he could afford this pretty tho
ugh run-down pre-war apartment.

Am I being ungrateful? Does this sound like the contemplation of a posh creature that mocks the hand that feeds it? If I gave the impression, it applies only partially. Sure enough, it doesn’t take great skills to mock an allround loser like Gustav. Just envision the slapstick-like event, when a figure reminding of the Michelin Man forces himself into the bathtub, squeezing out the water with his several cubic meters so that the whole bathroom quickly looks like the showdown in the Book of Noah. In the end he even remains stuck inside the damn hutch and can only be dragged outside by neighbors after hours of crying for help. Or think of the miserable suicide attempt which of all things failed because of the rogue – just contrary to popular belief: Occupational lack of prospects combined with chronic financial straits propel him to this unholy act, and as he is aware of his impressive weight, he spends the very rest of his bucks at the hardware store to get a high-quality rope that could easily hold entire trucks. At home (and in the face of his horror-stricken pet) he ties a solid knot to the lamp hook in the living room, climbs on a chair, babbles muddle-headed parting words, sticks his neck through the loop – as it knocks at the door. Surprise, surprise, here comes the bailiff! This guy, being the unemotional civil servant he is, searches the whole apartment for seizable treasures but doesn’t discover any. Until he notices the brand spanking new rope and takes the good stuff with him. Well, even suicide
nowadays is a matter of money.

May his deeds sound as ridiculous as it gets, Gustav himself isn’t ridiculous at all. It was him, who accorded me some princely shelter from childhood on, whereat I sure enough had to help along by hunger strikes due to inferior food presentation or by rancorous war for room on our favorite armchair. And it was him, who granted me the much-needed tender loving care after hard fought battles, who cheered me up on desolate days and gave me security in a world full of horror and madness. Yes, it was Gustav who had made me the center of his life and had settled for being
a servant.

So it was even more depressing to watch this loyal, though rather limited companion reaching the point in his life where there was no chance of progress whatsoever. Neither descending to the hollow of selling rubbish »made in Bangladesh« on the Internet nor desperate calls at museums around the globe, begging to at least employ him as a tourist guide during the summer months, were going to help now. The day finally had come on which they threatened to cut off our landline thanks to unpaid bills, the day on which Gustav finally went bankrupt. He was simply too old for another suicide attempt, as well as for a restart. Despite the stunning sunshine, the shadow of a dark cloud dampened our spirits.

I was in two minds about the lure outside and my sense of duty for assisting Gustav in his darkest hour. I saw him at the desk in his office, staring into space, stony-faced. Again, two conflictive impulses were battling inside me. What should I do? Quickly run outside, like it was in my plan and nature, and try to forget about everything while hitting at a beauty with pointed ears? Or walk through my collapsed friend’s legs to comfort him my way? But how would
that change this bad situation?

The phone rang. Apparently some guy at the phone company had slipped his mind and totally forgotten about our arrears. Yet! Gustav let the phone ring and kept staring outside the window like he was cast in resin. In the backlight of the streaming sunshine he became a silhouette of a sad Buddha. The phone kept ringing sharply and cruelly, and I was tempted to run there and pick up the stupid thing myself, just to restore calm.

Eventually Gustav answered the phone, moving intolerably slow. He still seemed like narcotized when he put the phone to his ear and moonily and quietly answered »
Uh huh
... uh huh
...
uh huh« and »
Yes
...
Yes
...
Yes
«.
Usually nobody called him, and when someone did, they only brought bad news. Maybe the sleepy head at the phone company had noticed their failure and called to disclose that our landline
will be shut down immediately.

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