SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,9

bag, to jump out of the slot sideways. I shot through the air and landed head first inside the open backpack without anyone noticing it. Technically, a really great success. Then why did an inner voice tell me that something was wrong? In the darkness of the backpack I followed this steadily rising voice. The feeling that it created began to scare me. But it weren't my brains, which finally set me on the right track, it was my nose.

Exactly, neither did it smell like unwashed socks and undies nor could I sense Gustav’s specific sourish body-odor, which used to conservingly stick to his things for ages. After all, nothing in here smelled of Gustav. Quite the contrary, I had the smell of clean laundry and freshly blackened leather in my sensitive nose. Shortly, I found myself in the baggage of a very well prepared traveler. Panic began to rise inside me like the malodor of a creepy substance. Oh my God, where had I ended up?! And where was this journey headed?

I decided to let 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 uncertainty 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 Doppelganger. 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 mystery 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 longings’ 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