Imagine the sight of them now: This band of feral cats in the villa’s hallway. They moved as stealthily as they could, even the fat cat, cocking their ears and sniffing the air to orient themselves to their surroundings. There was a very clear and distinct scent, but it was of dog, not boy. The cats followed their noses through the house, out the front door, and down to the long, winding driveway.
And there in front of them was Thor the German Shepherd, ambling down the path with Beyza on his back. On catching sight of the big German Shepherd the cats froze in their tracks, hissed, and stood up on their hind legs. Thor came to a halt as well, cocked an eyebrow, and regarded them with curiosity. The wild cats stood facing the dog with its prisoner across the mutual divide of language, culture, and species. Then they began hissing in unison, ready to attack. Thor couldn’t help himself. He too now began to growl and gnash his teeth. Granted, while he might have been a pacifist in principle, principles were one thing, but instinct and a pack of feral cats hissing at him were another.
A tiny, impossibly cute voice was trying to be heard above all the noise. It was, of course, Beyza. “Please, cats, stop! Fellow felines, puh-leeze! Felicia, listen!”
But this was to no avail. It’s hard to say what the precise signal was, because there didn’t really seem to be one, except that as one conjoined body, the wild cats attacked Thor, jumping on his torso, clawing, scratching, and biting.
“Listen to me! He’s my friend! He’s trying to help me!” Beyza squealed.
“Oh Beyza, tish-tosh, I’m your friend!” Magyar said joyously, not listening to her either. In a rather swashbuckling sort of a move, he leapt up and grabbed Beyza in his big orange paws, carrying her to “safety.”
The big German Shepherd was meanwhile struggling to fend off the wild cats. Of course individually he could have beaten any of them. But all the feral cats attacking simultaneously, now that was a different matter. He’d lost the end of one of his ears already, thanks to Dragan, who’d bitten it off and promptly swallowed it. Thor felt like he was going to black out because of the pain. He had begun to sink to the ground and the sky was spinning. If this kept up, it would soon be lights out for the German Shepherd, who, it had turned out, wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.
“Magyar, if you don’t save him, you will never be my friend, my special friend, again,” said Beyza, grabbing the Hungarian tabby cat by the scruff of the neck.
Magyar didn’t need to be told that twice over.
“IN THE CAT OF NAMES WHO ON THE MOON LIVE! CAAAAAAAATS! OUT IT CUT! (In the name of cats who live on the moon, cut it out, cats!)” Magyar shouted at the top of his old Hungarian windpipes. This had the desired effect right away. The cat-scratching and cat-clawing and cat-biting all stopped instantaneously. It turned out that the only thing supporting Thor had been all the cats holding onto him, and so the big dog now flopped unceremoniously to the ground. He lay there, still conscious, with one eye open.
“In the name of cats who live on the moon? What are you trying to tell us, Magyar?” Felicia was the first to ask. “In the name of ‘lunar felines,’” Magyar replied, which more or less meant in the name of everything the wild cats held sacred. What had come over the Hungarian tabby cat, coming to the defense of a German Shepherd dog?
9
The Merchant of Venice
In which the reunion of those two starstruck lovers, Magyar and Beyza, finds unexpected symmetry on another plane.
By now, dear reader, you will have formed the notion that the moon is very important to the wild cats of Piran: the moon and its cycles, from new moon to full and back again. Surely too, you have noticed the shadows on the surface of the moon form the shape of a cat’s face? If you can’t see the resemblance straightaway, well then, tilt your head to one side slightly and squint. You see? There, the two eyes, the little snout nose, and the jowls of a cat? So it’s hardly surprising the moon is important to cats, now is it?
So when Magyar cried out to the other cats, telling them to stop attacking Thor the German Shepherd—and did so in the name of cats who live in the moon—it had an instant effect.
“What are you trying to tell us, Magyar?” Felicia had asked, a little out of breath. But it was Beyza who answered.
“This fine German Shepherd’s name is Thor, and really, his bark is much worse than his bite.”
“Thank you, Beyza. You do me too much kindness,” said the wounded and exhausted dog, and every cat there took a step back at the sound of a dog speaking in their own tongue.
“If you are such a friend to cats, then why do you bark and chase us so whenever we see you?” This was Felicia speaking now.
“You have seen who my master is, I take it? Beyza is correct, though. I bark a lot more than I bite. Indeed, I do as little damage as I can, and I help smaller animals as and when I can. Now don’t be alarmed, you cats, but I’m going to get up now.”
All the cats noted, just as Beyza had, what a kind-sounding voice the German Shepherd had. It may be that their sensitivity will one day be their undoing, but the wild cats of Piran all of a sudden felt very sorry for the bitten and battered dog that struggled to its feet in front of them. They really are very kind and decent cats. That is, unless you happen to be a rat, mouse, insect, or fish. Or you happen to get on their wrong side. Other than that, they’re great.
“It’s alright, Thor, is it? I will assist.” This was Leopold, in diplomat mode.
“So will I,” joined in Beyza.
“Mean you to say a dog has taken my place?” grumbled Magyar. Felicia ignored the ridiculous exchange that followed, with all its obvious jealousy and separation anxiety. Instead, as usual, she concentrated on what must be done next. “Come on,” she eventually said. “Let’s all get out of here. You might as well come with us.… Thor?”
“But … But … But how would we live, where would I sleep?” the German Shepherd asked.
“Never mind any of that. Just get out of here now—and come with us!”
“Oh, alright.”
“Dogs,” thought Felicia. “They’re so easily led.”
She was in for another surprise, though. Just as they reached the front gate, Thor changed his mind for a final time.
“Wait,” he said, “I must stay. It’s all become clear to me. I am much better off to you inside the villa, where I can keep an eye on the boy.” Felicia, considering this, saw the sense in it at once.
“Tell me where your hideout is, and I will come visit you when I have information. Besides, if I go with you now, Fisko might trace my scent to your hideout. He is half-animal, that boy, but not in a good way. More like a lycanthrope, or werewolf. Really it is better I stay here.”
Felicia decided she would trust Thor. So she told him the location of their hideout, the crypt in the Basilica of Saint George, before herding all the other cats away from the villa and on their way to safety.
AFTER THE BOY FISKO HAD RETURNED TO DOGBOY VILLA, there had been a lot of screaming and shouting and throwing of things audible from within, but eventually that had settled down.
From thereon in, it was an evening on which anything other than celebration would have been out of order. So, in the stillness before dawn, Magyar and Beyza went skipping on all fours across Piazza Tartini, much as they had done just three nights before—when she, of course, had been captured. But on this night their hearts were filled with joy at the prospect of playing together again. Seeing what time it was by glancing at the moon’s position in the night sky, Magyar suddenly remembered something.
“My darling Beyza,” puffed Magyar as he drew to a halt on the piazza, “there’s something you should see … but quiet be we must.…”
Beyza was about to tell him she would decide when to be quiet, when she saw what he was pointing at. Just as the very first hint of morning light tinged the clouds in the night sky, there was movement, or what looked like movement, on the balcony of the Venetian Merchant’s House. It was the ghost of a young maiden, the same one as had ap
peared the other night. Beyza was as swiftly entranced by her as Magyar the tabby had been, the first time he laid eyes on this beauteous lass.
She did the same thing as before, this maiden, this comely young lady from another century. She stretched her hands out imploringly, her eyes shining with tears, her face a picture of unfulfilled longing. Then, as before, a smile began to play on her lips, and her face began to literally light up with delight.
Magyar, seeing the flicker of a smile and expecting the young maiden to vanish any second, rushed to comfort Beyza. For she, too, would no doubt experience the same feeling of emptiness as had he following the maiden’s disappearance.
But then a strange thing happened. Instead of vanishing, the girl stayed on the balcony, which was flooded with light, like rays of sun peering through the clouds after a storm. The smile on the ghost lady’s face grew even wider, as if she was so happy that she was only just managing not to laugh out loud. Then she began waving at something in the middle distance, something that seemed to be coming from the direction of the Adriatic Sea. The same thought occurred to both Magyar and Beyza. They both turned their heads at the same time toward the source of the light, toward the sea. What they saw, no feral cat of Piran—and certainly no human being—could have possibly seen in centuries.
Out on the sea, sailing toward the market square of Piran, was a fifteenth-century Venetian sailing ship. It was a single-masted, square-rigged merchant ship, flat-bottomed with a straight keel and a shallow draft. Its mainsail blew in an imaginary wind, and more than twenty-five pairs of oars rowed by sailors stripped to the waist helped propel her closer and closer to the shoreline. Fluttering above the mast were flags or, rather, pennants decorated with the Venetian colors. And can you guess, or do you perhaps already know, dear, inquisitive reader, what the Venetian flag looks like? Well, above a burgundy red background, and weaved in a golden thread, is a picture of a lion, with wings. “The winged lion that grasps territories, seas, and stars.” The lion of Venice! To so many humans it was merely a symbol of the past, but to the wild cats of Piran, it represented everything they’d once been and could be again one day.
It is important to mention, of course, that this was indeed a ghost ship, a phantom vessel, so although it sailed as if plowing through the sea, the water was untouched by its presence. Indeed it created not a single ripple on the waves. Magyar and Beyza watched, awestruck, and the Venetian galley ghost ship glided over the embankment on the piazza and drew up outside the Venetian Merchant’s House.
An imposing figure stood on the poop deck of the galley, his hands at his side and his legs apart. He had a trim beard, was dressed in a velvet cap and heavy fur coat, and his gloves were encrusted with jewels. Indeed he was the very image of a wealthy, fifteenth-century Renaissance gentleman. Neither Magyar nor Beyza would have described him as handsome, perhaps, but he was a striking sort of figure. Certainly, the beauteous woman standing on the balcony must have thought so. For after blowing him a kiss, in a most dainty fashion, she ran inside, only to reappear a few minutes later at the front door of the rose pink fifteenth-century house.
The ghost ship hovered above the piazza, having sailed as close to port as it would have done in the fifteenth century (before the inner harbor was filled in and replaced with Piazza Tartini). The door of the Venetian Merchant’s House opened, and the golden-haired maiden ran toward an invisible waterline. This was where the old fifteenth-century wharf had ended. A plank shot down from the side of the ship, and this merchant of Venice (for surely he could be no other) walked briskly down it, barely able to contain his excitement as he hurried to her side.
They embraced, and as they did, three trumpeters stood up on the deck of the boat, which, incidentally, was called the Venus. A fanfare blasted forth from their flag-draped horns.
Then, the sound of a violin drifted down from Tartini House. It must have been the old violinist Giuseppe Tartini himself or, rather, his ghost. No one else either living or dead could play as beautifully as that. A heavenly choir and invisible orchestra joined in with the glorious noise coming from Tartini’s window. Down on the piazza Magyar took Beyza by the paw, sweeping her off her hind feet.
As they danced, a shooting star sped across the night sky. The merchant of Venice and the maiden of Piran stood on the deck of the Venetian galley, which then sailed away into the horizon of the dawn’s early light.
It was as if the night sky and the ghost world had joined in league with Magyar and Beyza’s happiness.
MAGYAR AND BEYZA’S REUNION WAS, you might say, always meant to be. Whatever the faults of these two, their affection for each other was genuine, and had been ever since they had first met. That was years ago, and hundreds of miles away, on the Hungarian puszta. When he met her, Beyza was struggling to survive, having been mislaid by her owner, a very wealthy and silly woman who thought of her cat in the same terms she might have thought about a new handbag.
“Accidentally abandoned” and now pelted by the puszta’s late-winter winds and rain, the little Angora was getting rather desperate when he, Magyar, had shown up. He taught her the ways of the wild: how to be self-reliant and not depend on humans for home comforts—all the tricks of their trade. Progress had been slow at first, but eventually Beyza caught on. As we have seen, in her own way, she was now quite a tough customer.
Not content with the Hungarian countryside, she had longed to visit the great capitals of the earth, and to see its wonders. So, together they had headed south, eventually jumping a train that took them all the way to the Turkish city of Istanbul. Here, in the ancient city, they had dined every night on sweetbreads and sultanas. That part of the trip had been all right, as far as Magyar was concerned. In fact, he could have settled happily in the old port city, but Beyza had scarcely begun her wanderings. Yet it was as if something, all along, had been pulling them toward Piran.
A change was now wrought in Magyar with the rescue of Beyza; for finally he realized that Piran had become his home, and he longed for no other. He belonged with Beyza, and they belonged here, in this enchanting, and enchanted, place.
FELICIA, DRAGAN, AND LEOPOLD HAD WATCHED the ghost ship from a discreet distance.
“Do you hear that violin?” asked Leopold. “That’s Tartini.”
“He can certainly scratch out a tune,” said Dragan, in his rough way.
“Come and meet him properly some time,” said Leopold, looking directly at Felicia.
“I’ll think about it,” she replied, looking directly back at him.
“I heard he was in league with the Devil,” Dragan said. “Or a devil, anyway. That’s why I always stayed away from his house.”
“Anche io (me too),” said Felicia, much to Leopold’s chagrin. But then: “My, listen to that. He does play beautifully—too beautifully to be all bad. So, perhaps one night you will take us to him, Leopold.”
“I’m coming, too,” said Dragan, “whether you like it or not.”
“Of course, Dragan,” Leopold replied, “but I didn’t know you cared for music.” He would have much rather just gone alone with Felicia, as Dragan must surely have known.
“It’s not up there with eating fish, I’ll give you that. But I do like a nice tune.” In fact, what Dragan liked more than anything was to see Felicia happy and taken care of. If Leopold’s return to the colony made her happy, that was fine with him. But he wasn’t sure what to make of this Tartini business. After all, the old legends really did say Tartini had taught the Devil how to play the violin. What were they getting themselves into?
This troubled Dragan, but at the same time he could see there was much to celebrate. They had survived a rat onslaught and rescued Beyza. The feral felines of Piran had also gained an important new ally in the battle against rats. This, of course, was the German Shepherd Thor.
“So, Thor is not man’s best friend, then?” Dragan later remarked, just as they were all drifting off to sleep in the crypt.
“S’pose not. Might be our new best
friend, though,” said Felicia. And, later: “He’s right, though, this Thor. There is something very wolfish about that boy.”
“Maybe he really is a wolfman?” suggested Dragan, only half seriously.
In any event, eventually Thor got into the habit of sneaking out of his kennel and out the back of his villa to join the wild cats of Piran in the crypt that was their crib. He often had useful information. He would tell them about the rat that he had caught and eaten that day. Just as usefully, he’d let them know if the lad Fisko was going to be away for a night—or on the warpath again.
At first, some of the wild cats of Piran felt a bit apprehensive about a dog calling on them most evenings. After a fairly short while, however, Thor’s forthright but gentle manner won them over, and Thor was universally well-liked. “Who’d have thought? My best friends, a pack of feral cats,” Thor would laugh to himself occasionally.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Well, no more than we already have. For while it can be safely said the wild cats had won their last round of battles, they were a long way from winning the war.
That, as they say, is another story; indeed, another entire book full of stories. But, gentle, sweet, kind, and intelligent reader, for now all you need to know is that, while they still lived in a constant state of danger, this whole colony of cats remained as composed and as nonchalant as ever. Felicia, Dragan, Leopold, Magyar, Beyza, and all the others still comprised the most impressive feral feline fighting force on the Adriatic, a reputation they intended to maintain. There may have been arrivals and departures in Piran, but the wild cats of Piran endured, somewhere in the deep of night, playing in the shadows and the moonlight.
Now wouldn’t it be a shame if it were any other way?
POSTSCRIPT
Surely that cannot be “it,” you cry, for the wild cats of Piran and their adventures? After all, if that was Chronicle One, surely its very name hints at the existence of a Chronicle Two? We haven’t properly met Tartini, the violin-playing ghost, and who can say whether the boy Fisko will be on the warpath again!? Surely there will be more trouble from General Rat and his rodent army? The General doesn’t seem the type to give up easily. And what about the storyteller, whose presence may be felt in these pages? Will he ever be so kind as to reveal his true self? Well, all good things come to those who wait. The Wild Cats of Piran: Chronicle Two will be available before all too long. And what a relief that will be!
The Wild Cats of Piran Page 8