SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

go of all protective measures and stuck my head outside the backpack again to gain certainty. By now, I didn’t care if I got noticed. I shouldn’t have done it though because what I saw right in front of my nose horrified me more than the unce rtainty inside.
    Gustav, who was waddling right behind the guy who carried me without knowing it, was staring right back at me, again. So he was sort of following his Doppel ganger . I had jumped inside the wrong fat guy’s backpack! From afar and from behind they could actually have been identical twins because they were so much alike. So this came from getting involved with a throng of humans: They all were the spitting images of each other.
    When he saw me, he screwed up his can opener-face like someone who had just hugged a steamroller whilst crossing the street. Again his eyes widened in shock, again his head vibrated like a clanged bell and again his mouth closed and opened without something coming out of it. One could watch in his bewildered mien how a couple of different explanations of the impossible were battling inside his featherbrain. But following the motto that which must not, cannot be – eventually he settled once more for the theory he had found the first time we had met on the plane. I was one who looked a lot like his pet. Thereupon, the worry lines disappeared, a melancholic smile showed on his face and he even dared to pet my head.
    »You again!« he said finally. And as he was a paragon of originality, he repeated his go-to phrase: »I got one of your kind at home.«
    Then – I couldn’t even realize as fast as the story took its course – our paths separated. As Gustav didn’t have any more baggage than his backpack, he pulled ahead of us towards the exit and disappeared. This meant that my further fate was at the total mercy of the new fat guy’s traveling plans. He forced himself inside a fully air-conditioned shuttle bus after he had grabbed his suitcase off the luggage belt – and off we were to the highway.
    While the Roman suburbs, which didn’t differ too much from the bourgeois blemishes at home, flew by the window, I gave thought to the immediate future. Despite the towering IKEA and McDonalds billboards at the roadside, the plague-spots of the modern world, it was pretty obvious that we were on our way to Rome. The street signs said it clearly. And that inspired me with confidence. Because I knew where Gustav was going to work within the next weeks. So I only had to leave my wrong fat guy at the next opportunity and now and then show up at the right fat guy at the Forum Romanum. As soon as he was done with his work, I would only have to secretly slip inside his backpack and start my trip home with him. Perfect! Though the question how I was going to fill my stomach in the time between arrival and departure remained a myst ery even after intense thought.
    Little by little the discrete hints on Swedish home-centers and US-burger houses vanished, the seething traffic began and we found ourselves in the middle of my lon gings’ land of milk and honey. Finally, finally, finally I got to see these worn out cobbled streets that were shining golden in the afternoon sun and this ochery-steaming sea of houses with my own eyes! No newly built house, no concrete disturbed this heavenly sight, and had I so far understood only in theory that here time was measured in ages, that it was sort of a horizontal sandglass, now I felt it. Of course the bus was still using the main arteries, where there were neither famous sights nor the artful bowels of the city viewable. Anyhow, side-glances inside some cross-alleys allowed me a good first impression of the esthetic adve nture that was waiting for me.
    The bus stopped at a station in one of the busiest streets. In the distance I could see a big junction. A gigantic sea of cars joined by a chorus of horns and ribald scolding was moving at a crawl. As the wrong fat guy was obviously related to the right one, he