Dear friends of the English language,

it may be only a week or two until THE BACK DOOR will turn up as a Kindle eBook at Amazon. Please stay tuned and occasionally look on the net.

Best regards!

Akif





Coming soon 24. September

»Keine Zeit, keine Zeit . . .« Nach einem Unfall läuft für Kater Francis plötzlich nicht nur die Zeit rückwärts, nein, die gesamte Welt funktioniert von nun an »umgekehrt«. Leidet er an Halluzinationen, ist er einfach senil oder gibt es dieses höchst mysteriöse Universum, in das ihn sein neuer Bekannter Pi einführt, wirklich? Der Klugscheißer scheint auserkoren, das große Geheimnis um die Herkunft seiner Art zu lösen – unter Einsatz seines Lebens.

Kater Francis steht in der Tat vor einer schwierigen Aufgabe, denn die Zeit läuft zwar rückwärts, doch das jeweils nur exakt 8 Minuten und 56 Sekunden lang, dann ist alles wieder wie gehabt. Zudem sind nicht alle Zeitsprünge so ohne Weiteres nachvollziehbar, was das Leben deutlich erschwert. Im Grunde fühlt sich Kater Francis eh viel zu alt für solche Abenteuer. Doch kneifen geht nicht. Denn da warten noch Pi und der Geheimbund der Schwarzen: Zwar sehen sie aus wie normale Katzen, tatsächlich verfolgen sie aber eine gefährliche Mission. Jedem, der die Zeitsprünge am eigenen Leib erfahren hat, trachten sie nach dem Leben. Und das ohne Ausnahme. Erbarmungslos. Beim ersten Mal entkommt Francis seinen Häschern nur durch Zufall. Dann ist sein Pioniergeist entfacht. Er will dieses große Geheimnis lüften. Koste es, was es wolle. Nur so viel sei verraten: Katzen sind keine gewöhnliche Haustiere.

http://www.amazon.de/G%C3%B6ttergleich-Ein-Felidae-Roman-Akif-Pirin%C3%A7ci/dp/3453268466/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335600982&sr=1-1



Find out about the publication of the novel in the coming months at Facebook (Akif Pirincci) and at www.akifpirincci.blogspot.com Thank you for your loyalty!

To Rome! As Francis' master receives the call to supervise the excavations of newly discovered catacombs in the Roman Forum, he wants to accommodate his Francis in a cat's pension. However, the sly cat does not take part in the play and escorts him as a stowaway on the trip to reach, finally, the city of his dreams. The pointy-eared tourist lands safely on target at the Largo Argentina, where countless homeless stray cats live and the dangerous cat's mafia controls everything. Soon it turns out that the scattering community protects a cruel secret. For some time now a series of murders rages among the homeless cats. Francis' detective instinct is kindled. With the help of a newfound friend who knows the lanes and catacombs confusion of the metropolis very well, he takes up the track of the uncanny butcher.

After seven Felidae novels Akif Pirinçci is for the interface group of thriller reading cat lovers what Stephen King is for the followers of the cultivated horror: Cult. Seamlessly his fifth Felidae adventure Salve Roma! falls in line with the former ones and this time leads the reader to the streets and basements of Rome – it goes without saying through the eyes of our four-legged detective. Salvo Roma! if is a classical Felidae novel with a pinch of cat's philosophy which looks at the life and at the activities of the people with humorously sceptical eye and will satisfy beside cat's friends every crime film lover and even people addicted to Rome. With Francis, Akif Pirinçci has created a hero of which one is not getting enough - who then does not long for being a tomcat himself, or even better, a cat?

Press

“For the fifth time Akif Pirincci succeeded to create a miraculous book about Francis, the detective on four paws." (Cosmopolitan)

 "Pirincci has created a feline parallel universe. Those who engage in it

will be entertained with wit and elegance." (Die Welt)

“These cat mysteries are extremely exciting, funny, touching and linguistically on a very high level." (Rheinpfalz)

Akif Pirinçci

SALVE ROMA!

A Felidae Novel

U.S. Edition

Teaser (Chapter 1)

Akif Pirinçci

SALVE ROMA!

A Felidae Novel

U.S. Edition

Teaser (Chapter 1)

First American eBook-Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Akif Pirinçci, Bonn, Germany

Translation Copyright © 2012 by Jennifer Willms

Cover design by Ursula Pirinçci © 2012

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions.

Life is beautiful –

Mankind is ugly.

Unknown Philosopher

1.

Humans plan. Though everyone knows that life wouldn’t follow any plan. And though everyone also knows that above all the best things in life accrue from unscheduled events. Why, at least when looking back – and, well, sometimes anyway. Then again, life and this world apparently can’t be overmastered without having any plan at all. Everything is just too complicated as to simply leave the handling of our future to chance. Even the most enjoyable moments, waiting for mankind like eerily wonderful air holes, need some planning. That’s what makes humans tick.

     Yeah, humans plan. But what about us, about my own kind? I admit, we aren’t any better! We also have fallen for scheduling, though in a somewhat more relaxed manner. And as for me, I’m positively obsessed with making plans. When things don’t go according to plan, I freak out. As a matter of fact, this happens all the time. Because if anything goes according to plan anyway, it’s the fact that our bodies one day will make the delicious acquaintance of worms!

     So this was the plan: Springtime, oh thou gorgeous May, oh thou homeopathic Viagra for elderly men, oh thou young Prince of Seasons, capable of vitalizing my old blood! So this welcome monarch stood at the gates of our district, and towards us he had already blown his fresh breath in the shape of wildly budding flora and luxuriant sunshine. Gone were the icy Christmas holidays, when like narcotized I had been lying on, underneath, beside and – as I remember dimly – occasionally inside the heater, and when I had been sucking for days on those bones of the Christmas goose in a size of a cow that Gustav had prepared. Also gone were January, February and March, the period of these boorish brothers, who always seemed to fight about if it was to rain, snow, freeze or fog. May had a foot in the door, and I had my head in the clouds.

    Through the open bathroom window I squinted at the backyards behind our Gründerzeit building, which positively exploded with luscious color and stimulant redolency. Swarms of butterflies fluttered above the clinker brick walls that formed a maze. The weather-beaten, mostly brick-lined back facades of the old houses, which had been built in a square, beamed skeptically like a blind man after the saving surgery. Families of birds tried to out-tweet each other, human families sank down on their loungers and got their first sunburns. And family of mice bred like there were no tomorrow or, more accordingly, us.

    Oh yes, the plan! To outsiders it might sound a little trivial. More precisely, it wasn’t so much a real plan but quite honestly more of a longing for paradise. More detailed, the pipe dream which comes to haunt me each year in springtime: sleeping underneath shady trees in the afternoon, lazily snatching at flies, rambling the territory carefree at sunset, taking one or two colleagues by surprise whilst their rackers and giving them a clip round the ear, and eventually tracing a sweetheart and becoming one with her in sunrise. In short: enjoying the warm days.

    I admit that at my age such expectations have as little relation to real life as the childlike belief in angels. After all there exists an undeniable coherence between the real season and that in which one is stuck in age-related. And bringing to mind the recent teasing comments of my highly admired fellows, the burning lack of interest on the part of the whiskered ladies and the steadily increasing, pitiful miens of „animal-loving“ humans at my sight, I had found myself in arctic winter long ago. But whatever, I stuck to the plan because even if it didn’t dangle an Indian Summer, at least it promised a somewhat Indian Fall.

    However, there was a big time contrast. Namely between my cheerful mood and the desperate situation, Gustav found himself in recently. Gustav? Well, that’s the 290 lbs heavy, almost bald 58-year-old „can opener“ afflicted with the looks of an industrial silo approved for demolition, who – guess what – usually opens my food cans. He has everything a successful man at his age doesn’t have: a tattered terry bathrobe from the era of Boris Becker, in which, due to his gory red-wine-hangover and his pale stubble face, in the mornings he somewhat looks like a prisoner of war finally facing execution after months full of torture. Being the responsible guy he is, he always carries a condom 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 for a restart. Despite the stunning sunshine, the shadow of a dark cloud dampened our spirits.

    I was in two minds about the lure outside and my sense of duty for assisting Gustav in his darkest hour. I saw him at the desk in his office, staring into space, stony-faced. Again, two conflictive impulses were battling inside me. What should I do? Quickly run outside, like it was in my plan and nature, and try to forget about everything while hitting at a beauty with pointed ears? Or walk through my collapsed friend’s legs to comfort him my way? But how would that change this bad situation?

    The phone rang. Apparently some guy at the phone company had slipped his mind and totally forgotten about our arrears. Yet! Gustav let the phone ring and kept staring outside the window like he was cast in resin. In the backlight of the streaming sunshine he became a silhouette of a sad Buddha. The phone kept ringing sharply and cruelly, and I was tempted to run there and pick up the stupid thing myself, just to restore calm.

    Eventually Gustav answered the phone, moving intolerably slow. He still seemed like narcotized when he put the phone to his ear and moonily and quietly answered „Uh huh... uh huh... uh huh“ and „Yes...Yes...Yes“.  Usually nobody called him, and when someone did, they only brought bad news. Maybe the sleepy head at the phone company had noticed their failure and called to disclose that our landline will be shut down immediately.

    Then something seemed to happen inside Gustav. The sad Buddha’s posture showed some spectacular change. The massive upper body straightened up little by little, bend forward and backward nervously as if he was devoting himself to something, the melon shaped head sea-sawed and nodded like crazy, and the bloated face was haunted by a thousand twitches. Oh my God, they wouldn’t disclose the launch of capital punishment by lethal injection for clients in arrears! Then he stood up and indicated a movement that looked a lot like a salute. At the end of the conversation he once more said „Uh huh... uh huh... uh huh“ and „Yes... Yes... Yes...“, though this time almost euphorically. Supposably, the double blind of life had finally driven him insane.

    He kept standing motionless for a long time after he had hung up. Turning his back on me, a gigantic silhouette in the with dust particles compound light of the window, framed by floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall, each holding at least two thousand books and pictorials. A defeated king in the kingdom that he was soon to be banned from. And so was I. Alas, I was close to bursting out in tears – mainly because of myself, as I thought of this kingdom and one square mile around it more as being mine rather than his.

    Suddenly Gustav turned towards me with an elegant twist, and I was afraid he might make heinous faces, begin to bleat or something like that, just like it was to be expected from someone stark raving mad ... But no, none of that. He smiled blissfully, like someone who just had happened to answer the one-million-dollar-question.

    And as my lifetime companion just didn’t have any listeners to share his happiness with (something he never happened to have by the way), without further ado he made do with me.  In a soliloquy the good news from the call came bubbling out of him, although of course he didn’t know that I understood every word. I listened to him observingly, while I gave the impression of a creature with an IQ of a balloon. After he had finished his report, he ran to the bedroom and began to pack. Thunderstruck I stood behind and tried to not fret too much about the loss of the rope that the bailiff had taken at that time.

    Just now the object of my sympathy, within just a few minutes Gustav had managed to get in line with some of the worst sleazebags of the human race. So what had been the topic of the telephonic twitter that had cast out the darkness at Gustav Lobel’s house one hundred percent? Quite simply: The two hundred percent foiling of my plan!

    The first part of the message still sounded like a literal last-minute rescue. The call had been from Bella Italia, from Rome more precisely, and to be even more precisely, from the »Sopraintendenza Comunale ai Monumenti Antichi e Scavi«, thus the Roman Administrative Agency for Ancient Buildings and Excavations. As far as I understood Gustav’s hasty mumbling, he had been told that they had found hints on a so far overseen, early Christian catacomb at the Forum Romanum. In fact, on the very spot in which Gustav had believed it to be in one of his academic papers a few years ago. The Roman archeologists therefore looked at my good old jinx as the intellectual father of this discovery and insisted that he will personally jet there and supervise the excavation. His services would be worth fifty thousand Euros from the agency. They would even be willing to immediately pay half of the money in advance, if he left for the Eternal City this very day. So far so paradisiacal.

    All our problems seemed to have solved at a single blow. And so it seemed for the problems in the near future. What more could I want? Two things: First of all, see Rome and die. Because over the years I hadn’t been able to resist Gustav’s passion for places which’s names were already firing my imagination. Rome – that wasn’t just a name but a dream that I had been longing for due to secret reading at his library. The Capitol, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Villa Borghese, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Campo de’ Fiori, the nooks and grannies of Trastevere, the thousand churches, the glorious palazzi, the dignified weather-beaten bridges across the Tiber, the countless fonts, the Vatican ... Yes, I felt like in a former life I myself had been purring in Rome and had spent my days on earth on those with pillar rudiments fitted roof decks of this Capital of the World. All roads, even mine, led to Rome; that was something I had always been sure of. As to die without having seen Rome would have been a life and death of no importance.

    Gustav, provided with the sensitivity of an anvil, sure enough didn’t have a premonition of my longing when he told me about his working vacation. And he even took it to the next level when he confessed that he didn’t plan to take me with him. That already was an infamy beyond compare! He should stick his reasoning that I would disturb his work on the excavation where the sun doesn’t shine. Shedding streams of tears, I had still been willing to sit tight, wait for his return and keep only dreaming of Rome. If he had just left me my plan.

    But he didn’t intend to. With what we come to the second reason why I didn’t just wish him the rope around his obese neck but the complete torturing routine of the inquisition. My can opener had something vicious in mind. He wanted to give me over to other can openers during his absence. But not even to Archie, a straightjacket hedonist, who lived upstairs and probably earned his money by lending his body to prospective physicians as an incarnation of a chart about drug abuse. Because this guy had already left for the south a few weeks ago, as apparently the call of spring had reached him a little early. You know... dwelling on nonsense and ripping off people also works well under southern skies.

    No, Gustav, really had something evil in mind for me. During his absence, he wanted me to be in „professional care“. At a home for my kind, called - disgustingly cute -„Guesthouse Paw“. Irresponsible humans brought their pets there during their holidays or stupid business trips. Incredible! Shocking! Animal disregarding! I was to be send to jail and listen to the tragic lifetime confessions of lonely, soft-minded fellow prisoners day in, day out, so my so called owner could be celebrated as the Einstein of Archeology in beautiful Rome. My answer to that: Absolutely out of the question!

    As early as one second after Gustav had finished panting about the happy news and left for the bedroom to pack his clothes that for the most part were remains from the seventies, a new plan stirred in my brain cells. Yes, this might work... Though only if the animal foe would carry the backpack that looked like the monstrous hunchback of a gnome from a fantasy movie, like he usually did. Also, only if he, like the scatterbrain he was, forgot to lock it at the top. This way it really might work. And if it did, then not only would my plan become reality, but more than that it would even outdo itself.

    Loaded and dressed like the most stupid tourist ever, Gustav was back in the hallway only about half an hour later and looked at me full of phony pity. On his back I saw the backpack, probably left over from his blessed times as a hitchhiker, when as a young blue whale he had senselessly tramped through the world. Of course it wasn’t locked at the top. A stage win! He was wearing a golf cap and multi-colored shorts as if he was leaving for a concrete castle at the Costa del Sol. When the Roman scholars saw him, they would probably push him into this early Christian catacomb and fill it up again.

    After he had ordered a ticket over the airline’s check-in hotline, he used his foot to push the basket, which was usually used to transport me to my annual check-up at the nice doctor, from behind the doorjamb. I acted like I didn’t have a clue about his intentions. Satisfied about the fact that apparently I wasn’t about to bolt, he came towards me, grabbed me around the waist and put me into the box. A last checking glimpse at the turned off gas range and the turned off lights, and off we were in our old Citroën CX-2000 to our purportedly oh so different destinations.

    I have to admit that the place, which was situated in a former bakery, didn’t quite look like the dungeon of Dr. Fu ManChu from the outside. Through a big showcase, passing pedestrians were able to assure themselves of the proper care of the prisoners and enjoy their sight with endless „aww-how-cute“-whoops. That boundless boredom counted as a form of torture wouldn’t cross their minds.

    Inside at the welcome counter stood a skinny, graying old woman who was dressed totally in black and might have a good chance to win „Ms. Knotweed“ at the Night of the Witches. She smiled the smile of a marionette, at which her lower jaw jerkily flapped up and down while the rest of her face stayed absolutely fixed. For the one-month-care the animal lover told Gustav a price, which easily might have bought 80 hectare of the best spruce forest in Canada. While my false friend battled against the hypertensive impact of the price shock, he opened the grill of my box in passing so I could have a look at the dungeon and, in his belief, was able to acclimate.

    Everything was exactly like I had expected it to be – just as fatal. It was a big room with a terrace-like, gradient wooden platform divided by several barriers. On that there were doll’s beds and pillows, in which about thirty fellows (in misery) dozed towards delirium. Those who were awake stared ahead apathetically. Food and water bowls as well as litter boxes lay about everywhere on the floor so that the smell in the air reminded of a giant just having thrown up here and simultaneously having answered the call of nature. Almost depression-triggering appeared some „toys“, which were dangling from the ceiling like bells and looked as new as on the day they were bought. Those who resided here didn’t play anymore.

    I walked by a gray-headed Persian who was standing in one of these cute doll’s beds and was keeping the ceiling in view.

    »What attracts your attention like that, brother?« I said, likewise fascinated by his strong grimacing that ranged between fear and great expectations.

    »They’re coming closer«, he replied.

    »Who?«

    »Well, the mice.«

    I raised my head and inspected the ceiling for anything mice-like. Without any result.

    »But I don’t see any mice up there.«

    »They aren’t normal mice.« His white whiskers vibrated in tension like they were carrying power current, yeah, his whole matted head shivered so much in fever as if he was to explode any second.

    »They come from Planet Nagor-X and can stay invisible – and penetrate solid matter.«

    »Got it«, I said, nodded compassionately and intended to leave himself completely to his studies of extraterrestrial mice.

    »Don’t listen to the nutcase!«

    I turned around and faced an attractive Egyptian Mau. Her green eyes seemed to reflect the seaweed fields of all oceans. Her dark patterned tail, which grew out of a sand-colored, cheetah spotted body, brushed my face.

     »They should have showed this guy the rope a long time ago«, she said, approached me very closely and acted most conspiratorially. »There’s no Plant Nagor-X. Actually they come Planet Harfohr-X. And they aren’t mice but cockroaches. Plus they can’t penetrate solid matter like this douchebag keeps insisting, no, they shoot laser beams from their eyes!«

     So much for the state of mind of the „guests“ at this establishment.

    »I already thought as much myself, honey«, I comforted her. »But it could be worse. Imagine you’d have to pay taxes!« I moved on.

     A red colored fellow, who crossed my path and seemed somehow awake, was actually just giving his lifetime confessions.

    »... and then Mommy said, don’t go too far from my teats, Otti, oh yeah, I remember very well that she said that, because in the backyard there are dogs, she said, you know what dogs are? My son, they are very big animals who make very big poop but in opposite to us don’t bury it so that humans will step in it which dogs find very funny, me too actually, Mommy said…«

    Gustav could as well have brought me to a nuthouse which by the way would have been much cheaper for him anyway, if I was interpreting his angry bargaining with the Night Witch correctly. A total waste of time and energy. Because I would have rather poisoned myself with the consumption of dog poop than to endure just a single hour with these morons. Therefore I instantly entered the next level of my plan.

     Like I already mentioned, Gustav was very busy with persuading the old witch to give him a price deduction before the plane took off with him inside. Both didn’t pay any attention to me because naturally they assumed that there was no escape from this clink. But there was, and what a simple one!

    Sweating and blushing from all the disputing stress, Gustav had put down the backpack next to his feet. The essential time slot seemed to have opened for me. During a couple of gasps I felt far away from the view of the two discomposed negotiators as well of the nuthouse inhabitants. The latter preferred to watch the various threats from outer space anyway. I sneaked to the welcome counter very slowly, and when finally I reached the striking distance of my can opener’s elephant feet, I was out of danger that anyone might notice my secret mission. So I crawled inside the open backpack and made myself comfortable.

    After a while I heard through the fabric that apparently they agreed on a price and now exchanged some final pleasantry. Eventually, my absence got noticed, too. Gustav worried about that a little, but the villainous guard said that it was quite usual for newcomers, shocked by the change of territory, to hide underneath the platform for the first couple of hours. Hunger would then cause them to leave their hideouts for the food bowls. With that she produced a guttural sound like a hyena in darkest night, which apparently seemed to be wicked laughter. He should care about catching his plane, because usually it would take a short eternity to find his little friend’s hideout in the middle of this mazed arrangement. Gustav kept acting somewhat worried but in his mind seemed to be far away already. In short, he willingly swallowed this Everything-is-fine-message. Or to put it differently: My plan had succeeded. But when he actually showed the impertinence to protest full of hypocritical sadness, that he would have loved to say a dearest goodbye to his beloved Francis, I would have liked nothing better than jumping outside of this damn backpack right into his hippo face, sinking my sharpened claws into it with ultimate passion!

Find out about the publication of the novel in the coming months at Facebook (Akif Pirincci) and at www.akifpirincci.blogspot.com. Thank you for your loyalty!

By the age of forty,  the once celebrated painter Alfred Shollow is at a dead end: his
marriage is broken, his art has become unsalable. Then suddenly he is given the opportunity to start again from scratch. The dream of the second chance, however, soon turns into a diabolical nightmare scenario ...
Alfred Shollow called Al has ruined his life. And he has done a great job. The recently successful painter, swarmed by the drones of the art world, overwhelmed with money, hailed by critics, has lost all that has ever meant anything to him: his wife Ida has left him, his son was killed in an accident, for which Al blames himself, and the crowd turned against him. Al now lives alone in a run-down apartment and tries as best to drown his sorrows in alcohol. As he once again after an inebriated night makes his way home, he accidently gets to an area that appears strangely familiar to him, and he realizes that he is near his former home. He  is suddenly shaken, injures himself at an iron garden fence, a mishap that could have ended fatally. But the shock does not seem to have made him sober. On the contrary, Al perceives a strange light that breaks the dim twilight of the spring morning and seems to attract him closer to a never before trodden path to his former home. What Al then observes, he can hardly believe: A moving truck which he still can clearly remember stops in front of the house. And the movers are well known to him, just as the couple who now emerges from a yellow Citroen: It is himself and Ida: younger, carefree, at the beginning of their happiest time. Al can not understand what he sees and yet knows that no mistake is possible: He watches his own way into the house of his dreams, he watches his past. Horrified and fascinated, he sets out for the way home, confident to have found a way into his past with the strangely lit path. When he talks about his experience, Ida does not believe a single word her still plenty drunken ex-husband is telling. But at a joint visit to their former neighborhood, she can convince herself that Al has told the truth. And suddenly it is obvious to her what kind of opportunity is  provided to  them. Al and herself could return to this point of their former lives. They could avoid all their mistakes, hold on their luck forever, take their destiny in their own hand. But they would have to eliminate their younger self. As unimaginable as this seems at first, so enticing is the idea to be able  to start from scratch. So Ida and Al actually conceive a murder plan that they implement in the same night, despite all their scruples. But even with this bloody act the hopeful new beginning starts to turn into a nightmare. An unwelcome witness to the crime must be silenced, and mysterious voices seem to transmit puzzling messages to them. On top of that, a strange smell hangs over the whole scene, which is increasingly troubling Al, but which he can not explain. Although on a very short time it becomes clear that hat there is something strange here, Al and Ida ignore all the horrors - the nightly cries, the unexplained changes in their neighbors. But the more they adhere to their supposed fortune, the higher the price they must pay for it. And finally, Al must realize that he is on a veritable descent into hell. Or is everything completely different as a matter of fact? What actually happened on that cloudy morning when Al looked into the past for the first time is even more incomprehensible than the horror of his newly restarted  life...

Akif Pirinçci

THE BACK DOOR

A Novel

U.S Edition

Teaser (Chapter 1)

Akif Pirinçci

THE BACK DOOR

A Novel

U.S Edition

Teaser (Chapter 1)

First American eBook-Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Akif Pirinçci, Bonn, Germany

Translation Copyright © 2012 by Sabine Eismann

Cover design by Ursula Pirinçci © 2012

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions.

To Cedric, the future.

“In every dream home a heartache

And every step I take

Takes me further from heaven”

BRYAN FERRY,

In Every Dream Home a Heartache

1

A bar at six-thirty in the morning wasn't the right place for a happy start to the day. A bar at six-thirty in the morning wasn't the right place for the closing of a successful night, either. A bar at this hour, on a Monday in March, when the coldness outside was even more unbearable than in December and the sky covering the city resembled gray blotting-paper, was the very picture of the cliché: a tomb for losers.

   The smoke of innumerable cigarettes, which had made the large room feel like an oriental bath for the last few hours, was still hanging in the air, though in a weaker dose, like a threatening cloud. The tables, orphaned now and covered with what looked like wet wreaths left from emptied glasses, had become dusky islands of desolation. The voice of a jazz singer wafted through the emptiness, carried by the scattered tinkling of the piano. The bar counter, however, gleamed downright brightly, as it was being polished with a dish towel by the equally immaculate bartender. He was a burly man, with a well-fitting black velvet vest, and a bow tie in a deep fire-engine red around his neck. A walrus mustache decorated his roughly hewn face, while his long hair, drawn back into a ponytail with an elastic band, emphasized his sophisticated side. In short, he got along with all kinds of guests — as long as they brought the same nonchalance to his establishment as the jazz singer from the loudspeakers did.

   The hand that wiped the countertop in circular movements grazed past freshly filled bowls of peanuts, leather jars full of toothpicks, cards advertising cheap cocktails, and spotless ashtrays. Finally, they waved past the fingers of the last guest, which held an empty glass of vodka so hard that it seemed as if they wanted to test its breaking point.

   “We’re closing,” the barkeeper said in a tone which made clear that no objection would be tolerated. “Do you want one last drink?”

   “Vodka,” the man on the stool demanded for the seventeenth or eighteenth time since entering the bar the evening before. While the barkeeper was turned toward the back shelf, which was filled with an impressive array of liquor, the man turned his gaze towards the slanted mirror hanging from the ceiling.

   Alfred Shollow, or simply Al, as he liked to be called, looked damn good, as was to be expected. In spite of the massive amounts of alcohol he’d had and the circumstances that justified his excessive consumption of booze every night, Shollow was still an attractive man. The jet-black, sleek hair that hung to his neck always looked as if it were treated with gel and, even when tousled, as if a celebrity stylist had arranged it for a photo shoot. His cobalt blue eyes were always half-lidded, giving him a slightly sleepy yet cool appearance. His Roman nose — the result of a fracture during a teenage brawl — lent his face character; it would have been a nose worthy of Caesar. And the few crow’s feet around his eyes, as well as the lines around his mouth, added that certain touch of maturity to his tanned face that was so popular in advertisements for dream cars.

   Shollow was surprised about that. How could you feel so down and still look so fantastic? Apart from his disarming appearance, he had lost everything he had ever loved, possessed, or imagined to have deserved.

   Even after such a desolate night, thoughts like these would only have theoretically nourished suicidal intentions, if it hadn't been for a few uncomfortable facts. Shollow was forty-two years old now. Ever since his fortieth birthday, whenever he woke up, a demon seemed to let him know that the beginning of the day — though most of the time, it was more like midday — would pass uselessly, and that every attempt to start anew would be a mere illusion. Secondly, he was suffering from such intense depression that every David Lynch movie would seem like an uproariously funny comedy to him. And finally, he was all too aware all that was left of his fortune could fit into his wallet –– Bills, singles — the last of the money he still owned.

   Shollow gave a quick thought to the question of whether the money left in his wallet would be enough to pay for the vodkas. It surely would. The brains of sorry sots like him still worked well enough to handle the financial concerns of the daily ration of alcohol, even after the seventeenth or eighteenth vodka. During the day, he made careful arrangements for his nightly boozing. But what then? There would not be enough money left to pay the rent for his 160-square-foot room in one of the derelict tenements on the outskirts of the city, which looked and smelled as if passing giants regularly urinated on it. This bitter truth would come to light by the end of the month. That was when his landlord, a sixty-year-old man whose skin was red from hypertension and who radiated more aggressive greed than an eighteen-year-old gang member, would take a look at his account statement and would see that the number connected to Shollow's name was missing. Surely, Shollow could stave off the whole affair. He could make up excuses, play dead, make use of loopholes in the contract between him and his landlord. It would take a year, maybe more, until he could be driven from that dump.

   Would he still be alive in a year? He no longer had any wish to be. From this point of view, he didn't need to worry about his financial problems. Something positive at last! But what if he didn't have the guts? What if he was only staging a bit of self-pitying theater; what if he only played with these thoughts of suicide to keep up the illusion of a fast and painless exit? Painless? Who said the whole thing would go off without pain? Usually, the opposite was expected from dying. And you had to be a pretty clever suicide to keep your exit free from any suffering. Al, however, wasn't. After all that had happened within the last years, after his life had imploded, after he’d lost everything he had loved and cherished, after his bankruptcy and the depressing aftermath, that was just what he needed: more pain!

   How had all of this happened? pretty Al asked himself for the umpteenth time, but yet again failed to find a plausible answer. “How could this happen?” he mumbled into his hands, which were crooked as if trying to scoop up water, just as the last vodka was pushed into them.

   “Hurry up, I'll be closing in five minutes,” the barkeeper admonished, with a mixture of disgusted sympathy for the obligatory last drinker and a gasp of relief that he would soon be able to call it a day.

   Shollow set the glass to his lips and tried desperately to think of something beautiful, something warming to brace himself against the gray coldness that lurked outside like a psychopathic surgeon from a horror movie. He found a memory, and his heart promptly warmed.

   He saw the well-worn wooden step in the old kitchen so clearly and distinctly that it was as if someone had projected the image into his head. The single step beneath the glass door leading to the garden, serving as a threshold. It was higher than an ordinary step, and Al had always sat on it to smoke a cigarette, whenever he needed a short break or was waiting for meals. Now he sat there again, in memory-land, smoking, and the rays of the October sun that fell through the glass panes warmed his back, bathing the whole place in harmony. And suddenly he stood in the middle of the room. He came toward him with clumsy steps, a smile on his face that alternated between amazed joy about his father clowning around and infinite bafflement about his own awakening consciousness, and — so small, so small. The sight of this apparition, half cute troll, half lighthearted kid, as he himself had once been, had the effect of an upper on Al, and it made him, atheist though he was, send fervent prayers of thanks to God.

   But it was the wrong memory, the one he could not allow under any circumstances, never, because then…

   Shollow looked at himself in the mirror over the liquor rack. He found that he didn't look so fantastic anymore. Streams of tears had changed his face into that of someone suffering from a severe flu, puffed up with red spots, as if feverish. Aside from that, his cheeks were hollow, like those of an inmate in a terror camp, and tired, so endlessly tired.

   He pulled his wallet from his trousers, grabbed all of the notes that were left within, and threw them on the counter. The barkeeper, watching him from the other end of the counter and unaffectedly polishing a glass, didn't give the impression of one who laid too much importance on petty-minded counting. It would surely be all right; all that mattered was that the last guest had finally left the bar.

   Shollow walked out of the bar into the cold darkness of the March morning, filled with only one thought: back then, then, then …

Watch THE BACK DOOR-Trailer from the German Movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9gAxHy4u6g