Golden Biker

by Alexander Von Eisenhart Rothe

  Hermann held the pages in quivering hands and incredulously read them again. The content did not change. Find the ‘primeval Aryans’? Why in God’s name was he, a fit and well-trained soldier, having to lead a search mission? He had trained every day for months, he was able to assemble his weapon blindfolded; he could even shoot blindfolded. (He lacked in the hitting department, but still.) For months he had been thinking about seeing the whites of the enemy’s eyes, leading attacks, storming fortresses, becoming a hero—but now he had been lumbered with this utterly pointless assignment. ‘Strictly avoid enemy contact’? Hermann wanted enemy contact—and plenty of it! He wanted to slaughter, to kill and murder, shoot and stab, pummel and punch the enemy—he was even ready to bite them in the arse if they turned to flee. But now this! Moping around mountains with a bunch of scientists, looking for some primeval Aryans and their ‘super-weapons’? Hermann became so angry his gums started to bleed, an affliction inherited from his mother.

  Foaming with rage he fell back in his bunk—only to look straight into the severe face of the Fuehrer and his autograph.

  ‘Don’t you dare let me down now, Hermann!’ he seemed to be saying. ‘I’m counting on you.’

  Hermann sighed deeply. “Of course my Fuehrer” he said sorrowfully. “You command, and we shall follow YOU...”

  4. 33,000 feet above the Indian Ocean—present

  One of the particular wonders of modern civilisation happens more than a thousand times each day high above our heads. People are shuttled over vast distances, from continent to continent, within a couple of hours. Journeys that took several months only 100 years ago are now covered in less than a day—and all whilst watching a movie, sipping a glass of wine or taking a nap. If you’re guessing what particular wonder is being referred to here: it’s the wonder of Business Class.

  Business Class is the flying proof that all men are not created equal. It is not meant for mere mortals but for flying kings.

  (OK, so this means First Class must be for flying Gods. But I like to believe that First Class does not exist at all. It’s just some kind of Shangri-La for the business traveller, some mystical magical kingdom, invented for one reason only: that it would just be too frustrating for business travellers to have nothing more to aspire to in life. First Class is a business travellers’ life-long wet dream and for most will always remain wishful thinking. The author would be more than happy for airlines to convince him of the contrary.)

  Oh, what bliss it is to be reassured, even before check-in, that the world is divided into ‘We, the elevated ones’ and ‘You lot back there in economy’. Advancing directly towards the check-in counter, whilst waltzing along the plush red carpet, passing endless queues of plebs, we can feel their envious looks in our backs. The experienced business traveller savours this moment to wave benevolently to the crowd, giving them a momentary illusion that they are basking in the light of his grandeur. Some business travellers will actually reach out into the waiting queue to shake a hand or two, maybe kissing a baby. This is strictly not advisable since it can lead to a false impression of chumminess later on.

  Having received our gold-embossed boarding pass, having allowed servile porters with an eager-to-please attitude to load our four tons of excess baggage onto a ‘Priority Baggage’ cart, all the while being serenaded by a group of musicians playing Renaissance music, we now enter The Lounge. A Mount Olympus of waiting halls; a Garden of Eden for the idle, where scantily clad virgins feed grapes to the male guests, and well-built underwear models whisper sweet nothings into the ears of the female traveller. Here we wait for our inevitably delayed flight.

  Ordinary folks are already complaining about their back pains even before they board. Little wonder, since many have spent the four-hour wait trying to get into a ‘comfortable’ position lying across three moulded chairs, which have been specially designed to prevent any anatomically normal person from doing so. Boarding is announced, and 180 people including hysterical children who have endured a seemingly eternal wait, become increasingly aggressive. Then—the sound of a fanfare and the relaxed business traveller appears accompanied by the CEO of the airline, bowing and apologising for the delay.

  “Wait!” airline staff shout as they approach the gate, “make way, plebeians, for the high and mighty!” Nobody from economy is allowed to move, since the esteemed guest has to be the first to board the plane.

  On board—uhh, ahh... a seat, designed with the console chair from the Starship Enterprise in mind. An array of knobs, levers and switches all serving one purpose only: To allow the business traveller to rest in orthopaedic comfort on the long journey ahead. Oh, and if it’s all right, would we be so kind as to overlook and excuse the airlines’ effrontery in not having offered a private jet? A glass of champagne appears magically before take-off and is quickly gulped down—even though no one ever normally touches a sparkly drink at 10 in the morning.

  Time to find something interesting to read. It is vitally important to concentrate deeply on the page because the Safety Procedures are about to be demonstrated. Anyone who actually watches these is immediately outed as a hopeless greenhorn. The meticulously built-up nonchalance of the frequent-flyer, the jaded ‘I’ve heard this a thousand times and it bores me to death’ look; this is what ultimately distinguishes the Business traveller. It is a look that attracts hordes of excited groupies together with invitations to the ribbon-cutting opening ceremonies of bridges and highways. But all this will fall apart like a house of cards with even a single glance at the safety demonstration. Seriously—who doesn’t know how to buckle up?

  Finally the rumble of jet engines, subduing those tiresome noises from the section behind where sardined plebs are already suffering from stiff necks, slipped discs and thrombosis.

  Ahh, business class...

  There exists however one word which scares the screaming daylight out of every Business traveller, whilst bringing a peculiar glint to the eyes of the common economy-class prole. God’s even hand. The lottery ticket that propels the mere mortal into the stratosphere of the elite. Its name: ‘upgrade!’

  Every once in a very long while, the luck fairy winks mildly at one of the nobodies in the never-ending queue in front of the check-in counter. In this extremely rare event, rarer indeed than being struck twice by lightning, economy is overbooked and some lucky bastard gets upgraded. But even then, business class asserts itself. Bizarrely, when someone flies Business Class as an ‘upgrade’, he still receives ‘economy’ food when meals are served. Everyone around him receives princely service and fine cuisine; ‘upgrade’ gets just a plastic-wrapped bun. This is just to make it absolutely clear to everyone that THIS PERSON is an absolute exception. He is—and always will be—a pariah. He does not, and never will, belong to this exclusive, important circle, which paid serious dosh to sit up front...

  Gerd Lauterbach was smiling at the flight attendant.

  “No dessert for me, thank you.”

  Instantly the upstart ‘upgrade’ sitting next to him said: “Oh, if you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”

  Gerd exchanged a quick glance with the airhostess, a glance that mixed both pity and the worry that he was sitting next to the mentally disturbed.

  “Well alright, give it to him then,” he sighed before continuing to pore over the pages of the Financial Times.

  The stranger next to him smacked his lips around a parsimonious parfait.

  “I was in the newspaper business myself, once.”

  “Uh-uh,” Gerd grunted, diving deeper into his paper.

  “Made the rounds at night, selling, you know?”

  “Aha,” Gerd replied.

  “Packed it in, though.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Bye the way, I’m Arthur.” The stranger extended his hand towards Gerd.

  Without looking up Gerd gave it a quick shake—“Pleasure,”—and co
ntinued reading.

  “And what’s your name?”

  Gerd looked up for an instant. “Lauterbach, Mr Lauterbach to you.”

  Arthur ordered another Gin Tonic. Quite nice actually, this Business Class. Well, all right, the plastic-wrapped bun hadn’t been up to much but you could order as many cocktails as you wanted, and the seats were super-duper comfy. In short, everything was just about perfect.

  Hadn’t he been extraordinarily lucky? The first flight of his life and straight into Business Class! Ever since that night when he’d made the decision to turn his life around, everything seemed to be going right for him. He’d given up his job, sold his furniture, cleared out his apartment and now he owned nothing except a backpack, some essential clothing, and a bank account containing the meagre funds from selling all his things. Oh, and a solid plan: to get rich with Golden Biker. He hadn’t felt this good in ages. So... liberated. He was filled with the desire to tell everyone he met how wonderful everything was and how perfect life could be. Hell, he could have kissed the whole world, even that stuffy suit sitting next to him!

  “Clouds, man, aren’t they beautiful?”

  “Yes indeed...” muttered Gerd without looking up.

  “Did you ever think how it would be if you could fly, I mean like really fly with your arms out like Superman. Right through the clouds. Man, wouldn’t that be awesome?”

  Terrific, thought Gerd while trying to avoid eye contact with his neighbour. Why is it always me that gets to sit beside the lunatic?

  Gerd’s day was already a complete disaster. In fact, the whole mess had begun the afternoon before, when he received a phone call from the executive board of the pharmaceutical company he worked for. Negotiations with Bombay had come to a standstill. It was a challenge for Gerd who, three months earlier, had set the whole thing in motion. After a series of tough negotiations, India Medical Enterprises had finally agreed to buy up the pharmaceutical company’s complete stock of ‘Hormonium Forte’. For the board of Gerd’s company, this deal was a real win-win. Not only would they be able to buy half ofLuxembourg from the proceeds—they would be getting rid of tons of hormone product which, after having passed all necessary safety tests, had proven to have about the same effect as a bag of M&Ms—i.e. none. “If only it was harmful,” Gerd’s boss, Mr Seligheim had said despairingly, “it would at least have some effect.” Gerd’s ticket to the executive board depended entirely on the positive outcome of the deal.

  But alas, his dream was shattered by yesterday’s phone call. The boys from Bombay were now reluctant to sign the contract and were insisting on re-negotiations. Gerd had no clue what the Indians were up to. But he knew that if he were to get his hands on his own key to the private facilities of the boardroom, he needed to make things happen. He decided to fly to India right away. He had his secretary book him onto the next flight to Bombay; he left his office and drove home to pack.

  His wife, Beate, received him with frozen disdain. Partly, this was due to the sub-zero emotional state that epitomised their relationship for the past few years, but mainly it was a result of several facelifts, which severely limited her range of emotional expressions.

  “Have to go to Bombay tomorrow morning, won’t take long.”

  “Yeah?” she said distractedly, flipping through the pages of a book.

  Twenty years ago when they first met, Gerd had been at the beginning of a promising career. Each year, the company’s policy was to offer only four of what might fairly be described as Europe’s most exclusive apprenticeships. Those who qualified had a ticket into top-level management. Gerd had been one of 5,000 applicants. After numerous tests in which his proficiency in mathematics, general knowledge, foreign languages and even his social skills were minutely scrutinised, he made it to the next level along with just fifty others. At this moment Beate took notice of him for the first time.

  Test after test followed, each one more difficult than the last. Gerd passed them all with distinction. He was now amongst the top twenty applicants. At this moment Beate spoke to him for the first time.

  There followed psychological profiling, high-pressure role-play and a course in creative thinking. Gerd breezed through it all and found himself amongst the last ten candidates. At this moment they had had their first kiss.

  For the final round, each one of the candidates was invited by the CEO to spend the weekend at his holiday home. Here he held long, intensive, personal talks with the candidates on a one-to-one basis. On the first evening he provided an unlimited supply of fine champagne or beer, whichever they preferred. All had champagne—except Gerd. He took a beer bottle, opened it with his belt buckle and drank from the bottle. On their last night, he and the CEO ended up pissing against a tree in the garden, drunk as skunks. The next day, Gerd was offered his apprenticeship. At that moment Beate asked him to marry her. He took that job as well.

  That was twenty years ago, but it felt like an eternity. Beate’s demands and expectations grew in line with Gerd’s paycheques. It got to a point, where the mailman needed an assistant once a month when her credit card statements were delivered. Beate’s expenses for shoes, dresses, cosmetic surgery, parties, mid-sized and sometimes not so mid-sized cars, were soon comparable to the gross foreign debt of some smaller African nations. Gerd could have tolerated, even lived with, such expenditure. But what really made him suffer was the dried up love life between them. In the early years of their marriage, the only reason they got out of bed at all was to do it in the back seat of cars, on kitchen floors, on living room tables, even in the changing rooms of public baths. Nowadays their love life confined itself to a passionless grope about once every six months. Gerd began to immerse himself even more in his work. To deal with her marital emptiness, Beate went shopping. In short, they both enjoyed a quiet, normal, totally screwed-up marriage.

  Despite years of success at work, Gerd still felt unfulfilled, although he would never have admitted it to anyone. But as time went on, a dream began taking shape in his mind’s eye. A dream that seemed so bizarre, so crazy, he would not have dared share it with anyone, least of all Beate. A dream so absurd that he tried to talk himself out of it time and time again. He knew it would not have looked good for a respected businessman who day by day dealt with fortunes that could be counted in the billions. But sometimes when he was alone, he let his thoughts run free, filling out the details of this dream landscape—only to feel deeply ashamed afterwards like a schoolboy caught with his hands under the blankets. Outwardly, there existed just a single clue to his dream, one clue only: The secret password he used to log into his computer every day.

  On the evening before his flight, the Lauterbachs were, as usual, lying in bed side by side. She was reading a self-help book, ‘Be Happy and Beautiful with Curd’, he was working, the laptop on his knees.

  “What will you get me from India?” Beate asked without looking up from her book.

  “I’ll be in India for eight hours, max,” Gerd said wearily. “I land in the morning, listen to what they have to say, persuade them to finally sign the contract and fly out in the evening.

  How am I going to go shopping?”

  “Then don’t!”

  Both went silent again.

  She lowered the book onto her much-enhanced bosom. “A carpet would be nice. Just get me a carpet.”

  He shut his notebook and put it on the floor beside the bed. “I am not lugging a carpet back from India.” With a sigh he turned out the light.

  “Silver jewellery. They have lovely silver jewellery there.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Gerd yawned and turned onto his side.

  “The Forsthoevers bought some very pretty furniture in India, handmade, inlaid with Pietra Dura.”

  “With what?” He was already half asleep.

  “Pietra Dura, inlays, be-au-ti-ful! Antique. Just have a look around and if you fi
nd something like that—are you listening to me?”

  “Mmmh?”

  “Are we talking about souvenirs or are we sleeping?”

  “You’re talking about souvenirs. I’m sleeping.”

  “Great. How are you going to know what to bring back from India if we don’t talk about it now? It’d be typical of you to bring something back that’s totally inappropriate.”

  Gerd made an effort to raise himself up. “Look, I’m only going to be in India for a couple of hours!”

  “Fabrics. They have wonderful fabrics in India, saris. You can use them for decoration.”

  “Right then, fabrics. Can I go to sleep now?”

  “On the other hand, you brought me saris last trip. It wouldn’t kill you to think of something different this time!”

  Gerd’s left eyelid began to twitch uncontrollably. “But didn’t you just say...?”

  “I’m thinking aloud for God’s sake, is that still allowed or what? It was your idea to bring me back something from India, and now I have to work out what it should be all by myself, just so Mr Big Shot here doesn’t have to think about it.”

  The twitching frequency of Gerd’s eyelid increased dramatically. “Listen” he said between gritted teeth, “I have to get up really early. I’ll find something nice for you in India. Okay?”

  Beate switched off her bedside lamp. “Well don’t you worry about me, I don’t really need anything anyway.”

  At that moment, Gerd would have liked nothing more than to throttle his wife into a coma, screaming hoarsely while doing so, but instead he satisfied himself with strangling his pillow silently in the darkness. Some hours passed before his eyelid calmed down enough to let him fall asleep.

  He found it hard to wake up at eight the next morning, at which time he realised that he was already an hour late. He jolted out of bed—and stepped right on top of his notebook. There was a snapping sound as the screen developed a complicated diagonal crack. Swearing, Gerd collected up the broken bits and pieces and switched it back on. At least the hard drive seemed to be okay. Trying to button up his shirt with one hand, he prepared a cup of instant coffee with the other, jumped into his trousers, got tangled up in one leg, fell down cursing, got up again, took a slurp of coffee, burnt his mouth, spat it out again, changed his coffee-stained shirt, and grabbed his small travel bag. He searched desperately for the memory stick containing all the necessary information about the India deal; flung open a wardrobe door, fished out an obsolete old notebook, and ran to the garage. He jumped behind the wheel of his Mercedes, started it, roared out of the side street where he lived on to the main road—and was immediately stuck in a traffic jam.