Golden Biker

by Alexander Von Eisenhart Rothe

  “Hey!” Arthur rejoiced, “So I’ll roll myself a joint in front of everybody’s eyes and if anybody comes along, I’ll tell him its my religion!”

  Bear gave him a pitiful look. “Arthur, just because they’re tolerant doesn’t mean they’re stupid!” He turned back to the Jain. “So, how can we be of help?”

  The Jain bowed slightly. “Well, I would like to travel on to Jaipur, unfortunately however, I lack the financial means allowing me to buy a bus ticket!”

  “Holy or not holy,” Gerd whispered to Arthur, “they all want your money!”

  “As it happens” said Bear, “we are on our way up North as well, If you like, we could give you a lift. I mean, if you don’t mind the discomfort!”

  “Not at all!” The Jain exclaimed merrily. “Myself, I rode a motorcycle, long time ago. Very nice. I like it airy!”

  “That’s hard to miss!” Arthur said aloud and instantly Gerd cracked up again.

  “Just like kindergarten...” Bear sighed accusingly. He kicked up the side stand of his bike and motioned to the Jain to get up behind him. The Jain swept some invisible microorganisms off the seat cover and happily took his seat.

  “Hey Bear” Arthur whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “I still got some of those camomile wipes in case you want them later. Him not wearing any pants and all, one does not really know how clean they are down there... I’m just saying, that’s all—not hygienic, siting bare assed in the saddle like that!”

  “Shut up and drive!”

  During the night after they had realised the three foreigners had disappeared for good, Rajnesh, Number One and Number Two decided that they should deliver the beautiful Sherie to Bábaa. Sherie tried to make them change their mind, pleading as well as offering certain favours, but all to no avail. She had a pretty good idea as to what Bábaa in his notorious anger would do to her. To be sewn inside a sack and thrown into the open sea seemed thereby to be the most merciful of scenarios. So she decided to flee. She brought her heel down hard on Rajnesh’s foot and started to run. But since she was manacled, it took Number Two only a few seconds to catch up with her and consequently boxed her ears. With brute force she was thrown into the trunk. Rajnesh sat at the wheel, even though with his blemished foot he could hardly operate the gas pedal. After fifteen minutes they had to stop again because Sherie, screaming oaths in vile Hindi was using every body part to produce a hell of a racket in trunk.

  They gagged her, which at least stopped her from running off her foul mouth. After another fifteen minutes Sherie got tired of kicking against the inside lid of the trunk. Finally, silence.

  “Dammit! Traffic jam!” Rajnesh pointed at the end of the row of cars they were approaching.

  Number Two lazily opened his eyes looked out front and said: “Nothing unusual, we’re almost at Ajmer, there is always heavy traffic!”

  Ajmer, the most important Muslim place of pilgrimage was as usual jam-packed with hordes of pilgrims; all roads leading in and out of the notoriously overstrained city were blocked.

  Rajnesh decreased his speed, stop-and-go... “Now what?” He turned round to Number One on the back seat who had just woken up.

  Number One fetched the road map and studied it. “We could drive around Ajmer!” he said eventually. “There is a turn off to Pushkar coming up, from there we circle around Ajmer until we hit the highway again!”

  “Okay!” Rajnesh nodded in agreement, “How’s the girl?” he asked for the hundredth time.

  Number One grinned. She has not made any racket for ages. Guess she’s fine!”

  “And if she suffocates? Maybe, we better check!”

  “Look where you’re going and watch the traffic. There, we’re moving again!”

  However the road to Pushkar turned out to be heavy going as well. It was camel market time, which meant that everybody who happened to be in the area at that time, was well advised to bring plenty of time. Camels in all different sizes cluttered the small narrow road, wrongfully labelled ‘Highway’. Camel herders with big shiny red turbans and elaborately twisted facial hair were pushing the decorated animals out through the city gates and onto a wide area where the market was to be held. The dust raised from thousands of hoofs turned the air opaque and the sun was basked in a milky-yellow hue.

  “Camels...” Number Two disgustedly spat out of the window, “I praise my motorcycle, can’t imagine what these desert dwellers like about those spit drooling critters?”

  “Listen” Number One came up from the back seat, “just in case we’re getting stopped by anyone: This here is gypsy country, okay? Could be, they might not like guys like us roaming around their territory. You know how gypsies are. I don’t want any trouble, so if anybody wants to know why you’re here, come up with something normal!”

  “And why am I here then?” Rajnesh wanted to know.

  “I have no idea, you should think of something!”

  “Yes, but maybe give me a hint?”

  “Gods in heaven! Can’t you even think of a normal prof... I’ll be damned!” Number One suddenly jerked upright, hectically pointing at the small parking lot near the market they were just passing. “Look there, the three motorbikes! One of them is Bear’s!”

  At one Rajnesh hit the brakes, turned into the small parking lot and stopped right next to the parked machines.

  All three jumped out of the car and looked around. The market was huge, reaching far into the horizon, camels, shacks and people noisily haggling prices, offering their wares or generally just adding to the level of clamour. No sign of the three foreigners though.

  “All right then!” Number One said. “I’ll be covering the area from the left and you...” he nodded towards Number Two “You go around from the right! We’ll meet again back here!”

  “And what am I supposed to do?” Rajnesh wanted to know.

  “You stay with the car!” Number One ordered and started to walk away with a stern expression on his face.

  “And who is going through the middle, eh?” Rajnesh frustrated called after Number Two, who already had disappeared to the right and into the crowd.

  He was angry. They would probably catch Bear and his friends and his only heroic action would have been to watch the car. It was obvious that they wanted the glory for themselves.

  But he also realised that if he was to leave on his own now, he would run the risk of missing Bear and the others right here, before they would be spotted.

  And then they would have escaped again… His brain worked feverishly until he finally came up with the solution. He would sabotage the motorbikes! That way they could not escape… oh, it was so easy! He searched around to find something with which he could damage the motorbikes. At last he found a big round stone, lifted it over his head and swung it against the engine block of Bear’s bike. A crash... and the tailpipe was bent off in a sad angle. Rajnesh gave a satisfied smile. This was working quite well. He lifted the stone a second time over his head but before he could let go his arm was wrenched from behind and the stone fell into the sand. More in surprise then in anger Rajnesh turned around. A half circle of dark looking ruffians obviously in a foul mood was fixing him with an angry stare. Some of them wore big bright red turbans, one exception being the one who had wrenched back his arm he was wearing a bandana with screaming colours. Heavy earrings and other jewellery of considerable size and tastelessness were dangling around them. Rajnesh froze. Gypsies... Number Two had only just warned him about them. Stay cool…don’t loose your nerves.

  The bandana guy stood right in front of him and through his long and matted hair cast him an angry look.

  “Listen up” he hissed thereby exposing a row of brownish teeth, “we don’t know who you are or whose motorbikes these are. But what you are doing here is damaging personal property... and that in our territory. We don
’t go for this at all!” Apparently he was the leader of this unkempt gang.

  “I thought... I only wanted... I, ehm ...!” Rajnesh stuttered frightfully.

  “Ever heard of ‘Neighbourhood-Watch’? The gypsy came closer, the tips of their noses almost touching.

  “N... no!” Rajnesh answered jittering.

  “Comes from America! Every neighbour looks after the other people’s stuff. Crime rates rising everywhere nowadays. Quite bad actually!”

  “Yes, right,... I, ehm... agree!”

  “So we introduced it here. And then sometimes we catch hoodlums like you. And do you know what we do to hoodlums like you?”

  Rajnesh did not know what gypsies normally do to guys like him, but images of torture and ritual killings began to appear before his inner eye.

  “Do you want to find out?” the leader’s stinking breath wafted in Rajnesh’s face.

  “I... I don’t know!”

  “We turn him over to the police. And then there is a hefty fine!”

  The gathered circle of gypsies raised their fists and in unison roared: “Yeah, a hefty fine!”

  The leader grabbed Rajnesh by the collar. “When will you rascals learn, that you cannot get away with everything? Respect, respect for other people’s property, that’s what’s missing with you hoodlums! You have any idea who we are?”

  “Well... you, you’re gypsies!”

  Instantly the whole group uttered a loud “Buuuh!” Now the leader got really upset. “That term is totally politically incorrect! We are ‘Roma’ and ‘Sinti’, just so you know! And do you know who you are?”

  “A passenger happening by?” Rajnesh tried.

  “You are a juvenile delinquent with an underprivileged social background, whose aptitude for responsible citizenship has not been sufficiently developed, that’s what you are!”

  Some shouts from the group were heard: “Buh, juvenile delinquent with an underprivileged social background! Buh! Let’s give him a thrashing!”

  But the leader calmed them down. “No, no, violence is not the solution. We have to talk about this. Its the only way to settle any differences in an orderly fashion!”

  Some amongst the group were frustrated. Ever since their boss, Ashok had been to the USA, thanks to a study grant from the World Bank, gypsy life somehow had lost its fun appeal. He had returned with strange new ideas, always going on about ‘political correctness’ and trying to settle the ever on-going disputes among the tribes in ‘circles of discussion’. Although this was far less interesting than the earlier methods where at least there was plenty of bloodshed, but one had to admit that this method came from the US of A. And if that was how they were doing it over there, it surely must have some merit. (Besides it was less hair brained then Ashok’s other plan: Somehow for reasons unknown in the USA he had been busy carrying toads suffering from the threat of extinction across well travelled highways. Since in North India endangered toads were hard to come by on the quick, Ashok was taken by the idea of carrying other endangered species across the road. Unfortunately tiger babies and their mothers had not caught on to the idea quite so favourably and three members of the gypsy gang had found an untimely bloody end).

  Ashok looked Rajnesh up and down with a despising air. “Your sort, one of those hooligans... you probably don’t even know, you’re only looking for a valve to take your mind off of your own frustrations. Let me guess: You’re unemployed, correct?”

  Rajnesh shook his head. “Nope, I’m not!”

  “Oh yeah? What do you do then?

  Number One’s warning shot through his head. Not to disclose your true profession! So what could he be? What profession could he have? Commodity broker? Software specialist? Much too complicated! Rajnesh’s overwrought brain went into high gear.

  It had to be something ordinary! But, like what?

  “I... I am... a musician!” he suddenly spurted out.

  A murmur went through the group and Ashok’s eyes began to gleam.

  “A musician?” suddenly his attitude had completely changed. Overwhelmingly he fell around Rajnesh’s neck and gave him a bear hug.

  “My friend, if I only had known. What a coincidence, so are we, we are musicians too!

  Come, our tent is nearby, you must be hungry!”

  And so before Rajnesh had any time to protest, the gypsies pulled him away from the parking lot in order to douse him with such comforts as befitting for a fellow musician abroad.

  The Indian in uniform greeted with an outstretched arm as he had been taught to do.

  “Respectfully report: No enemy sightings!”

  Hermann, bent over a small chart table studying the roadmap of Rajasthan, angrily broke the tip of his pencil.

  “But they must be quite close!” he thundered, “They did not have that much of a head start!”

  Hermann and his convoy were not advancing quite so well, although they had been driving all through the night. A luxury the ‘enemy’ in this case Bear, Gerd Arthur and Sherie on their motorbikes could not have enjoyed. Secretly Hermann feared that he had accidentally passed them during the night and that they would by now be behind his back or at his flank, whilst he had thought them to be in front of him. He had halted the whole convoy at a rest area somewhere between Ajmer and Jaipur and after ordering to put up his command tent he had deployed reconnaissance commandos.

  However one after the other reported back without having made ‘enemy contact’. He was getting desperate. Gradually he started to have second thoughts as to what his visitor’s had told him about their appointment with the ambassador from UNICEF. The world was a rotten place

  His gaze wandered over to the small oil portrait of his Fuehrer, which he had hung on the wall of the tent.

  “Now what am I going to do?”

  How should I know, he heard the Fuehrer saying, why don`t you go to Vienna and become a postcard illustrator. You’re pretty much useless for anything else!

  “But my dear beloved Fuehrer” he whined, “I am doing everything I can. I am not a young man anymore!”

  So? And what about me??? If you had not blown it, you know when, I’d be enjoying my retirement. We would have won the war and I would be sitting comfortably in my mountain retreat with Eva and...

  “... and you would be having tea, yes I know!” added Hermann despairingly.

  In front of the tent entrance someone was ostensibly clearing his throat.

  “Herr-rrrein!” Hermann ordered and instantly the tent flap was tossed aside. One of his soldiers entered the tent, saluted and reported: “Sir, there’s a representative of the local constabulary here to speak to you, Sir!”

  “One moment!” Hermann bellowed, reclined on a folding chair, trying out some casual poses, but not being quite satisfied, put one sidepiece of his spectacles into his mouth appearing as if ‘concentrating’, thought about that, got up again, took the broken pencil, bowed over the maps and tried to look like he was shrouded in deep thoughts of strategic planning. He seemed to like this posture best and he motioned to the soldier that he was ready.

  ‘The representative of the local constabulary’ e.g. the village copper had been watching the whole charade through the half-open entrance of the tent and was wondering as to what this strange old man was up to. With a slight nervousness he entered, the old man however, who before had been hectically sliding around in his chair now seemed totally absorbed over an old road map and not noticing nothing at all. Not sure what to do, the policeman remained at the entrance and waited to be noticed.

  “Ehm, hello?” the policeman tried to attract attention.

  Hermann did not react and increased his hectic scribbling on the map’s edge, drawing arrows, circling names of places and adding exclamation marks.

  “Excuse me, Sir!” The policeman tried for a second time.r />
  “Hmmmjaa?” Slowly Hermann turned to the policeman as if coming up from extremely deep thoughts and with badly acted surprise remarked: “Oh, a visitor! I had not noticed you at all!”

  Out of reflex the policeman stood to attention. “I am not trying to disturb you for long, Sir!”

  “Oh, you are not disturbing me. Just hef to get zis campaign planned out!” With a short gesture he pointed at the opened map, “A bit of tactic, a little planning and a big amount of strategic creativity—zat is how a war is won, wouldn’t you agree?” Nonchalantly he slapped the policeman on the shoulder and offered him a seat. They both sat down and the policeman’s gaze fell on the map covered with Hermann’s cryptic notes.

  “Well now, how can I be of help?” Hermann asked radiating a welcoming smile.

  “Actually, Sir, there is just one question!”

  “Please go on, as long as it is not confidential information, I am quite open!”

  “Uhm, well, it’s like... what are you doing here actually?”

  One of Hermann’s eyebrows shot up. “We have set up a temporary command post. Looks like this could be the ideal base for further tactical measures!”

  The village policeman was confused. “Well, I am afraid I have to ask you to put down your tent. This is a public parking space next to a very busy highway. The truck drivers need this urgently...”

  Hermann waved him off dismissively. “The local civilian population supports us. I regret any short-term inconveniences; payments of reparations will be attended to after the final victory!

  Until then the parking space is confiscated.”

  “Confis...? What?” The village policeman was staring at Hermann. What was this bapu in uniform babbling about? “Listen you,” he declared, slowly loosing his patience, “I have no idea who you are or what you are doing here. But now you better pack up and get lost!”

  Hermann jumped up. “Who do you think you are dealing with here? I have a campaign to lead here. Do you think you can stop me from doing so, you defeatist? Either you are with me or you are against me and just in case you are against me I am going to show you somezink!” Angrily he stomped out of the tent. The village policeman got up shaking his head and followed him outside.