SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,36
a primitive hall clock. There was a real tower of ponderous old cogs, which were moved by chains with weights on them, rusty cranks and flywheels. Steel ropes ran from here through rings at the ceiling up to the hatches. Above all, the four massive levers on a panel caught my eye, as they were relevant for the opening and closing of the ventilation hatches. The first one was turned up, so I concluded that it must operate the open hatch. Somehow I had to get the other ones into the same position.
»Samantha, come here and give me hand, quick!« I said and noticed at the same moment that she was already standing next to me, full of expectation.
»We got to move this lever!«
»But why?«
»Bad atmosphere!« was all I said, while I jumped up with stretched forelegs. My paws hit the lever at full tilt. But it only moved in a narrow angle. I was falling down when I saw with a glimpse to the side that Samantha shot up and gave the lever another trouncing, using the same technique as I. With a dull snapping sound it finally veered! On the ground I watched how the cable control mechanism began to move, the cogs creakily meshed and began to turn, the heavy weights moved downwards, and a steel rope tightened. The second compartment slowly moved upwards.
Samantha, who took turns in watching my satisfied face and the situation she created, had become a cartoon of skepticism by now.
»And what is this about?« she said. It wasn’t a question, it was criticism.
»The infiltration phenomenon«, I replied shortly and shrugged.
Down in the vault a silent wind got up. The flames of the candles began to gutter, and even the fire of the torched on the walls got gradually plagued by a flicker. The batmen’s silk scarves were gyrated to the side and their capes were blown up a little. Some of them grabbed the brim of their toppers, so the good piece didn’t take off. Even the hooded guy paused his ritual, turned away from the cage and let his eyes wander to find the cause of the interference.
This created a little bit of hope inside me. But I wasn’t allowed to pause now, if I wanted my plan to succeed.
»Keep going!« I cheered Samantha up, who still didn’t get what I was aiming on but apparently sensed that I had something sensible in mind.
Our hind paws vaulted us skywards once again, and our front paws hit the third lever. This time it was real torture. The thing hardly moved an inch. We had to jump again and again. I felt my paws begin to glow from the pain of hard jumps, they’d turn numb soon. Little by little the damn lever shifted upwards in the end, and with a little inching it leaped up. The rope started moving, the third hatch moved up and another airflow caused one more eddy within the already existing wind-chaos.
It was a spectacle according to my taste! Based on their impact, we were able to study the roaring strength of the air so imposingly as if they had a physical appearance. Half of the candles in the room went out, after the flames had battled against the wind without a chance, also a couple of torches. But it was the textile part of the panoramas that amused me. As if all of the brothers had been brought into microgravity at once, the toppers took of from their heads, flew up in the air in dancing motions, gyrated in a circuit inside of a tornado, then drifted apart and hovered along before the whole game began anew. The capes were exposed to a sheer hurricane and streamed in the wind, trying to outdo each other. It wouldn’t be fair to say that they panicked. But among the passel of theosophists notable concern arose. They had stopped singing by now. Heads were raised or shaken nervously. The initial dumbness turned into some awkward whispering, and from that some excited and loud chatter emerged. A couple of the old buddies even took of their mask because they just couldn’t believe their eyes. Ours inside the cave watched the spectacle as astonished as us, but unlike the humans they seemed to sense that this windy turn happened to be in their favor. The hooded guy stood in a hurricane of flying bills and inched the edge of the stage, prepared for flight in case the situation sharpened.