SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,56
too much for them. One of them eventually indicated with a lukewarm nod that I was to follow them.
Meanwhile we had passed the sprawling arch of the colonnade and slipped through the holes and cracks inside the sidewall, which were just as big enough to fit our girth. The cathedral, mostly its dome, still towered above our heads like an omniscient observing Goliath, but the surroundings had turned into less gorgeous renaissance functional buildings. The Vatican Bank Instituto per le Opere di Religione and the sleeping sheds of the Swiss Guards already lay behind us. Some doors stood open so that we could rush through the buildings. Passing clerics had to brake sharply in the nick of time so they didn’t trip over us. At that they cursed worse than Roman truckers.
Other openings turned out to be less comfortable. We had to enter dark cellars in the size of halls and had to leave through open windows. Just as we passed through a dark hole between thousands of upended paintings, I realized that we happened to be in the fund of the Vatican Museum, one of the most important art collections in the world. Wait a minute, wasn’t that a genuine Botticelli, that peeked out of this endless appearing gallery of dusty canvas? The picture illustrated the almost-binding of Isaac through his own father’s hand. How beautiful! Had I taken this great daub to Sotheby's, I would have been able to afford an original Ancient Christian catacomb as a toy for Gustav as well as an inflatable Forum Romanum on a scale of 1:1. But no time, no time, we had to run to this stupid Pius.
Meanwhile my piebald fellow runner had come off his high horse and had deigned to bandy some words.
»You will presently see Pius«, he said. »Usually he isn’t even able to find his own tail. The Almighty must have led him this time.«
We left the buildings behind us and eventually reached the Vatican gardens. Miniature woods took turns with extended lawn areas, picturesque allies led to renaissance gardens which with their artfully cut bushes and pergolas, spherical, conical and pyramidal trees as well as several plays of water seemed to have arisen from the obsessions of a stickler for order rather than from Mother Nature. To our right lay the stirring nunnery from the Middle ages, to our left lay the office of the Governor of Vatican City.
Finally we reached a meadow that was embraced by a square which was planted with trees in lose intervals. In the middle of this square stood a Saint Bernard dog in the size of a grizzly! If this creature with its pendent chaps and its wrinkled face, that reminded me of melted plastic bulges, didn’t weigh at least 220 lbs, I wanted to be called Scrooge McDuck from now on. The friendly giant had sat down and looked at the ground. In his gaze, emptiness, astonishment and cluelessness took turns at intervals of seconds. There were about ten representatives of my kind sitting with him in a circle, who also stared at the middle with bowed heads.
»Pius is the dog of a retired French cardinal, who enjoys his twilight years at Saint Martha’s House«, the piebald said while we now made for the group. »He is totally harmless and holds a, well, doglike kindness, but unfortunately he got the brains of a grub. The other day he mistook the Holy Father in his white gown for a snowman and howled the whole day because he was worried that he might melt in the sunlight. Turns out he made an explosive find about half an ago at one of his routine bone-digging missions.«
That was more than an understatement, as when we reached the site of the find and I was confronted with the result of Pius’ digging, the shock made me lose ground. I settled myself on the lawn and stared at the pit as horrified and quiet as all the others. The Saint Bernard and the fellows that had arrived before me had meanwhile enlargened the pit with their paws so that I could face the horror full-frontal. About two palms beneath the ground lay more than a dozen dead fellows, one superimposed on the other. Their number was hardly definable as the killer apparently hadn’t been the diligent gravedigger and had scooped the pit just as deep as to squash all of the bodies inside. It was a classical mass grave, even though a very straitened one.