SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (7 page)

Although I didn’t support Antonio’s arrogant behavior and although I felt awfully sorry for the pirate right now, my current state didn’t allow the moralist in me to come out and play. To be honest, Antonio’s list of restaurants had already ki
lled any morality inside of me.

Yet, it took some time before I was able to break away from dead Siamese’s black mask-like face with its widened azure blue eyes. This time I blanked out the big hole in her head, imagined how she used to enjoy the sun and the balmy air, and the lovingly rubbing of those whom she cared for. I pictured to myself how she, like the desirable lady she was, tested her impact on hotheads, edgily posing in this ancient oasis. I imagined how she had jauntily celebrated every single day in her life. But at the thought of the black nothing that she had entered, my fantasy slackened and let me sink into the depths of depression despite the urgent physical necessity. A last goodbye, a last glance at this wasted beauty, then I followed Antonio on the stony hill of trash, which lead towards an inte
rsection.

»Oh, Francis«, I heard Giovanni’s voice behind my back. I turned around and saw him desertedly standing next to the body like the last watchman of a sunken kingdom.

»You asked if I had noticed any special skills at the victim when she was still alive. Now I remember one thing. Well, she couldn’t juggle a ball on her nose, but she was quite acrobatic.«

»What do you mean?«

»Well, these young chicks are all pretty limber but not even a circus monkey could have beaten this sister here. I have never seen a fellow who could balance on poles or the tops of the pillars so well. She was capable of doing a couple of full turns during a jump and then land on four paws. O yeah, extraordinary acrobatic, that she was. And gorgeous.«

He looked down sadly at the Siamese, and suddenly I knew that neither the smart-alecky Francis nor the vain Rome-expert Antonio nor any of the dirt eating pack at the Largo Argentina would attend the wake for her, no one but this scar f
ace who got mocked by everyone.

A
lukewarm night in Rome means pleasure. This I had already guessed beforehand. And Antonio showed me that they could turn into a real surprise at any time. After we had left the Largo Argentino and had crossed Corso Vittorio Emanuele II with a suicidal sprint right through the cars, which kept flashing by, we plunged into Rome’s pulsing heart. Oh I wanted to kiss them, the many alleys whose cobbles shone golden in the streetlights. I saw the triumphal arches, which reminded me of entries to palazzos, well, even to utterly normal houses, promising a romantic as well as a scary interior. I marveled at the baroque churches on every street corner, which had once been endowed by churchmen who had been much more focused on earthly glamour than on Christian asceticism but still represented God’s glory in the world better than anything else. And finally the old sea of houses itself: yellow, ocher-colored facades with darkish green blinds, small balconies on every floor, and roof gardens with real jungles of pot plants all over the place. Who wasn’t able to enjoy themselves in this very spot, might as well blow their brains out with my blessing.

Antonio had decided on the
Ristorante Piperno
close to the Tiber Island at the Monte de' Cenci, where apparently they served Roman cuisine which had more to it than usual home cooking. Although by now I felt like a gourmet who gets close to a mental breakdown when he has to decide on a restaurant, the whole thing still seemed pretty hilarious to me. Not with the best will in the world I could imagine us marching into some location and flagging down the waiter with our raised paws. In this context I’ll skip the joke about the »cat’s table«.

»Dear Antonio, your man-about-town-show is really quite matchless, but can you maybe tell me how we are supposed to have dinner at a restaurant? I’m afraid that we will already fail at pushing the door handle.«

We passed by some small and still open grocery stores where thick salamis and gammon were hanging from the ceiling like stalactites in a dripstone cave. And those nom noms in the shop windows! No wonder these people, alongside the French, spent triple the money on eats than the rest of Europe. In piazzas, always decorated with artful fountains, sat people in front of cozy trattorias and had a good bite or gulp, let the comforting twilight from the windows of the time-honored houses around them shine on them, and not seldom one of the stretched hands petted our backs affectionately. Compared with this, my home reminded me of socialist military housi
ng.

»Who said we’d have to push any door handles at all, Francis?« Antonio replied with a malicious smile. »And who said we will use the front door like any average blockhead? Trust me,
il mio amico
, a restaurant is like a well-filled tummy. But you won’t find the truth by visiting its belly, but its butt!«

Finally we arrived. Through the windows I saw cushioned chairs surrounded by silver and fine wainscot from pre-war times. People in clothes of refined taste pushed all kinds of delicacies into their mouths and toasted each other. Waiters with handlebar mustaches and ankle-length aprons bustled around the mostly southern looking customers. Without a doubt, this was
one of the classier locations.

»Follow me«, Antonio said giving me a suggestive look and disappeared in a narrow back alley. I obeyed, and after a few feet we found ourselves at the back of the restaurant, in a small and dark backyard. Just at this moment an assistant inside yanked the door open. The man dragged a hatchless trash bin towards some other bins, which had already formed a group close to the yard wall.

»Leftovers!« Antonio said when we were by ourselves again. »The people ate what the cardinals left over. This is how the Roman cuisine emerged, from leftovers.
Pagliata
,
coratella
,
trippa
, all entrails. You can still find them on the menu of every Roman trattoria. Still it’s not just poor man’s food, it’s more like reduced food with traditional ingredients and without nick-nack.«

He no
ticed how I frowned in my mind.

»Don’t worry, this is not trash, it’s so fresh it can’t get any fresher. The fine people who eat here are so supersaturated that they leave half of their dishes behind. So the good stuff ends up in the trash. This happens in all fine restaurants.«

Well, in that case ... We lunged at the unwanted like members of a prehistoric clan used to lunge at their foes. Our hind paws vaulted us right on top of the trash bins with their excessive tripes, half eaten and perfectly filleted fish, the lamb bowels consisting of heart, ris, milt and lungs. A side-glance was enough to make sure that Antonio had let gone of his noble table manners just like me and had transformed his snout into some kind of power shovel, which he used to plunge deeply into these paradisiacal dishes without hesitation. I didn’t work with less zeal. But while my tongue tried to celebrate this masterful wonder food, my greedy stomach unceasingly forced me to gulp it down at breakneck-speed. And to be quite honest, I didn’t even care who was going to win this battle. In short, I had never eaten this many delicacies in such a short time.

After about fifteen minutes our bellies had assumed the shape of bellows, which were bursting at the seams. Full and jaded, we sat down next to the trash bins, sucked on one or two bones and let our eyes wander about the by now star-strewn sky. In front of us the dark alley stretched like a never-ending tube with some bypassing people who from the distance looked like a pattern of dark and light to us. Soft Latin guitar sounds mixed with the clinking of glasses. Antonio burped happily. And as this stated my current condition just perfectly, I burped back.

»You saved me from starving, Antonio«, I said. »For that I will feel obliged till the end of my days. I just wonder why the fellows at Largo Argentino don’t take a similar approach and line up in the fine restaurants’ backyards.«

»Why, why – because they’re stupid! Although they live in a mega city where the word »food« is sort of a bad word considering its refinement, they have no freaking clue of where to find these treasures. They follow their conservative instinct of territorial persistence, stay at the ruin site and wait for charity.«

»Which is quite less than one can say for you.«

»Too right. Rome is my pleasure garden. There isn’t a spot I wouldn’t know, not a secret kept from me, and not a single delicacy, which I haven’t tried. I’m a wanderer and
il cronista di Roma
, I’m the whiskered Marcello Mastroianni. I am Rome! And you, Francis, you investigative tourist, I will take you by the paw and let you in on the sweet and bitter aspects of my beloved city.«

The tapered black face seemed euphoric, and the green eyes beamed as if they were two lights that were supplied with more power than they needed. Indeed, Antonio apparently was a stroke of luck to me because in this moloch I couldn’t have asked for a better guide. Especially as I had, without words and out of pure self-respect, promised to reveal this murder mystery, and therefore depended on a Rome insider.

Meanwhile I believed that there was a deep sad gulf between Antonio’s laud on
his
city and what I thought to be the circumstances in his biography. As it had been this very city where he must have experienced the biggest trauma in his life. Due to his cultivated manner of expression and his sophisticated attitude, the idea of him being born as a stray seemed absurd. So he had been abandoned just like the others. But which nutcase abandoned such a pretty guy whose superior intelligence couldn’t have been a secret for long? And why?

»Okay, okay, I got it, Antonio«, I said. »You love Rome more than cable TV. Still I can’t get the idea out of my head that in a former life you weren’t a wanderer and
il cronista di Roma
at all but had a real home. And this home belonged to one of these wonderful Romans. Right?«

Promptly, his curtain of happiness rang down like theatrical scenery. The silky head sank low, and so did his eyelids, narrowing his eyes to slits, his snout trembled softly. I guess I had twisted the knife in a still festering woun
d.

»O yes, Francis, I used to live with a human«, Antonio said, his voice shaking, while he turned his head away from me so I wouldn’t see his desolated face. »He was my
Signore
, my best friend, my idol. He was a real Roman. I still remember how he used to dress up for the night in front of his mirror and asked for my opinion, half kidding, half not, without suspecting that I really understood. Rolled up sleeves with his Rolex on or rather pulled down with cuff links? The red Brioni tie or just an open collar with two buttons undone? Then he tried on some stylish suits, always joking with me like with an old pal. I remember the smell of his aftershave, tangy and understated. I will never forget the beautiful ladies, which he brought home from his nighttime expeditions. Each of them a petite Roman goddess. And never will I forget the parties at the loft, when they opened bottles of champagne with knifes and when I was the beloved center of attention. In this home I was the cheerful soul and the icing of the cake that was his life.«

»Sounds like a refugee from a natural reserve for critically endangered machos«, I said sort of unaffected. »I’m sorry, Antonio, but the description of your former owner somehow sounds like some Jesus constructed by Ferrari. On the face of it, between the tying of Brioni ties and opening of champagne he still found time to get rid of you. Can you maybe tell me why?«

»What a hottie!« Antonio burst out suddenly.

He yanked up his head, and automatically I followed his eyes, which focused on the distant end of the alley. Although the darkness was making it quite hard to see, we faced a feline couple, which were enjoying themselves there. The snow-white female and her reddish brown lover, a pretty muscular guy, gently rubbed themselves at each other, swatted each other on the nose and took turns in hissing sensually. It wasn’t hard to guess what was about to happen shortly. My good breeding allowed me to watch the scene from the corners of my eyes only; actually I wanted to get up right awa
y and slip off.

But not Antonio. His face that had just been full of melancholy just a moment ago had abruptly gotten sucked into a rising wave of fascination. His eyes were literally popping out of his head, and he watched the couple’s ado with undisguised l
ust and with a clicking tongue.

»What a hottie!« he repeated, a little quieter this time, and whistled from the corner of his snout.

»Yeah, great body«, I admitted in duty bound. »But apparently we’re too late.«

»Unfortunately. But a little fantasizing won’t hurt. As I still need a red one for my collection.«

»So do I«, I babbled untruthfully as the awkward situation disabled my brains. But then I got aware of the mistake and made sure that the female was a white fellow. Being the neurotic I am, of course I couldn’t stop myself from correcting both our mistake loudly.

»Uhm, I guess you mean you still need a white one for your collection. The red one, that’s the guy, Antonio, the girl is white.«

»Yes, you heard right, Francis«, Antonio replied distantly, without stopping his meditative observation. »I still need a red one for my collection!«

I opened my snout to disagree but suddenly noticed that my jawbones were locked like an open steel trap. For a long moment there seemed to be a quiet wind blowing inside my head. Then the feelings of disbelief, horror and, even more, disgust made a dead set at each other like people who are leaving a burning house in panic. Antonio was no Marcello Mastroianni, more like a whiskered Helmut
Berger
.
 
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Could this be real? Did I know anything comparable from my rich experience? Had I seen anything like this on Discovery Channel?