SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,1

in his wallet, which after fifteen years of inviolacy appears like some ornate imprint. Even more, he has some impeccable sense of opportunities to earn money, which really offer everything but earning money. Did I mention his job as »cake face« at the local amusement park, when hyperactive kids could throw cakes at his face for as less as 3 bucks? Or the one where he sold Swiss cuckoo clocks from Sri Lanka on the Internet?

And why this whole lot of misery? Because the good man is a scientist without appreciation, a misjudged genius, which has as much talent for merchandising his knowledge as a vocal cord amputee has for belting out arias. Gustav, a globally respectable archeologist, had never been able to snatch a stable job at an institute, despite his detailed knowledge of Egyptian gods and the Roman Empire. Now and then a short interlude as in writing a reference book, but that’s it for serious breadwinning. The rest contained a tragicomic sequence of efforts to fill both our stomachs, which I have to admit to our own disgrace occasionally enclosed the creating of bizarre diet sheets for women’s magazines. Maybe you remember the so-called »air diet«: One pants for air ten times before each meal and then imagines being full. For a guy having the appetite and the shape of a blue whale, who totally freaks out if he’s not having at least 3000 calories with each of his meals, this truly is the climax of self-denial. It was a miracle that he could afford this pretty though run-down pre-war apartment.

Am I being ungrateful? Does this sound like the contemplation of a posh creature that mocks the hand that feeds it? If I gave the impression, it applies only partially. Sure enough, it doesn’t take great skills to mock an allround loser like Gustav. Just envision the slapstick-like event, when a figure reminding of the Michelin Man forces himself into the bathtub, squeezing out the water with his several cubic meters so that the whole bathroom quickly looks like the showdown in the Book of Noah. In the end he even remains stuck inside the damn hutch and can only be dragged outside by neighbors after hours of crying for help. Or think of the miserable suicide attempt which of all things failed because of the rogue – just contrary to popular belief: Occupational lack of prospects combined with chronic financial straits propel him to this unholy act, and as he is aware of his impressive weight, he spends the very rest of his bucks at the hardware store to get a high-quality rope that could easily hold entire trucks. At home (and in the face of his horror-stricken pet) he ties a solid knot to the lamp hook in the living room, climbs on a chair, babbles muddle-headed parting words, sticks his neck through the loop – as it knocks at the door. Surprise, surprise, here comes the bailiff! This guy, being the unemotional civil servant he is, searches the whole apartment for seizable treasures but doesn’t discover any. Until he notices the brand spanking new rope and takes the good stuff with him. Well, even suicide nowadays is a matter of money.

May his deeds sound as ridiculous as it gets, Gustav himself isn’t ridiculous at all. It was him, who accorded me some princely shelter from childhood on, whereat I sure enough had to help along by hunger strikes due to inferior food presentation or by rancorous war for room on our favorite armchair. And it was him, who granted me the much-needed tender loving care after hard fought battles, who cheered me up on desolate days and gave me security in a world full of horror and madness. Yes, it was Gustav who had made me the center of his life and had settled for being a servant.

So it was even more depressing to watch this loyal, though rather limited companion reaching the point in his life where there was no chance of progress whatsoever. Neither descending to the hollow of selling rubbish »made in Bangladesh« on the Internet nor desperate calls at museums around the globe, begging to at least employ him as a tourist guide during the summer months, were going to help now. The day finally had come on which they threatened to cut off our landline thanks to unpaid bills, the day on which Gustav finally went bankrupt. He was simply too old for another suicide attempt, as well as