Golden Biker

by Alexander Von Eisenhart Rothe

  Rajnesh looked at the weapon in his hand. His family had been in the gangster business for generations. Was he going to be the first of his line not to uphold the tradition? Would he be the first, to finally put an end to this spiral of violence, the continuous threats, shoot outs and blackmailing. Would he be the one to break this circle of pompous power plays, blind fascination for weapons of every kind, death and despair, for once and for all?

  His hand glided along the barrel of the Walther P38.

  Yes, that is what he would do…eventually, for sure, one day. But not right now!

  “Uncle?”

  Shaki looked at his nephew expectantly. “Hmh?”

  “Let’s show these bastards!” Rajnesh loaded the gun and looked for someone to shoot at.

  “What? Dead? Why is he dead?” Arthur cried out. “Has he been hit by a ricochet? Has a bullet hit him?”

  The monk shook his head. “No, it is the heart! What do you expect? He was well over ninety, and should not get excited like that!” Cautiously, he removed the Golden Biker’s mask. They were looking into the face of a very old man.

  “But” said Bear, taken aback; “I thought the Golden Biker is cruising through this valley, since times eternal. I thought he couldn’t die!”

  The monk gave him sour look. “My dear fellow, where did you learn how to think? Naturally there were generations of dignified men, not one and the same—the last day of the Golden Biker will be the first day of the Golden Biker... this is what the prophecy says!”

  Arthur jumped, looking around. “Where is he? Who will it be?”

  The monk only smiled and sat down in the lotus position. “Only the Golden Biker himself decides the shell of his new manifestation!”

  Bear pulled Arthur aside. “Arthur. Just think... there is no more Golden Biker!”

  Arthur frowned, hitting his open palm with his fist. “Shit! Dammit! All for nothing!”

  “Don’t be an ass, man!” Bear hissed at him, “All this weed. If it doesn’t belong to the Golden Biker anymore, who’s is it then, eh?”

  A glint came into Arthur’s eyes. “Ours!” he answered in a deeply satisfied tone. “We are rich, richer then... then, well I can’t think of anything at the moment, but extraordinarily stinking rich, that’s for sure!”

  Gerd came over, putting a friendly arm around their shoulders. “Guys, I hate to undermine your high flying schemes but I think your missing out on some elementary facts here.”

  They both looked at him.

  “And what would that be?” Bear wanted to know.

  “That we won’t see the end of this day!” And as if to make a point to Gerd’s statement, the building shook vehemently from a detonation very close by.

  “But—we could, we should...!” Arthur stammered and shut up, because he could not think of anything to finish his sentence with. They all looked at each other in silence, listening to the noise of rattling guns, exploding shells and the hurling sounds made by the rockets flying overhead. Outside, the rifle bullets were hitting the temple wall. It would not be long before the first shell would hit the building, blowing everything, including them, to smithereens.

  Bear sadly shook his head. “No Arthur, he’s right. We stand no chance of getting out of here!

  Put one foot outside and you’re a sieve, it’s only a question of time before the temple will suffer a direct hit or one of these trigger happy maniacs will march right in. The only thing we can take some comfort from is, it probably will happen quite fast.”

  Arthur laughed despairingly. “Come on you guys, now that we got so close... we’ve been in a tight spot before, haven’t we! Now think, someone has to come up with an idea, any idea!”

  They all looked down sheepishly. Gerd quietly shook his head.

  “Nothing?”

  Silence. Somebody sighed.

  “Ab-so-lutly nothing???”

  Everybody was looking sideways, avoiding each other’s eyes.

  “But we got to do something!” Arthur whined.

  “Sure we do!” eventually Sherie answered, “Just look at the monk!”

  Arthur turned around, full of hope. The monk was sitting in the lotus position, opened palms in his lap, eyes closed. A mild smile was playing around his lips.

  Arthur looked at Sherie questioningly. “Am I supposed to sit on the floor and smile?”

  “No, of course not, you nitwit! He is meditating, preparing himself for his end in a dignified manner. Arthur, we have made it this far, so we should not hang around bemoaning ourselves, but do something sensible instead!”

  Arthur nodded quietly and went over to the bales of grass, weak in the knees. He felt like crying. “Almost there. The best weed in the world. Bear, we were so close!”

  Bear nodded forcing a smile. “You are right, we almost made it! At least I for myself know how to exit in style!”

  “Like how?”

  “I am going to build us the biggest joint you have ever seen, with the best grass in the world, how about that?”

  Bear pulled out his papers and began gluing eight of them together.

  “And what about us?” Gerd asked Sherie.

  Sherie gave him a long and promising look, put on her most alluring smile which sent tingling waves down Arthur’s spine, right into his pelvic regions. Carefully, she grabbed his growing bulge pulling him along into the sweet smelling grass, maybe the most expensive love nest in the world.

  “But I didn’t bring any rubbers!” Gerd moaned, letting himself fall into her arms.

  Rajnesh and Shaki were still standing behind their tree engaged in a serious gun battle with Bábaa.

  “There is something you should know” Rajnesh cried over to his uncle, while firing a salve into the dead Jain, “I only tried to please you all along. But now, I have realised what kind of idiot you really are!”

  “Yes, you’re right probably!” Shaki laughed, “if you think about it, all this, because I burnt my mouth! How stupid is that?”

  “Well, I haven’t always been easy on you either, I must admit!”

  “Listen you two!” Bábaa shouted out from behind the corpse, “I am perfectly fine with you shooting back at me, but can you cut the small talk? Can’t concentrate otherwise!”

  “Sooorry!” Shaki and Rajnesh shouted back in unison peppering him with another salve.

  At that moment came the sound of a rattling machine gun, turning the treetop directly above them into a rain of wooden confetti. “Much too high!” they heard a familiar voice cry out in anger. “I said: Lower. Do I always have to do everything by myself?”

  “Ashok?” Rajnesh asked perplexed.

  Ashok snatched the machine gun, which they had nabbed from the Indian army, away from one of his men.

  “Yes, it’s me! And I am very disappointed that you have obviously lied to us!”

  “No, it’s not what you think!” Rajnesh tried to defend himself; “I have made peace with my uncle!”

  “Well, I am delighted to hear that!” came Ashok’s ironic reply and he took aim.

  “Hey!” Bábaa interjected, “Are we shooting off our mouths or are we shooting for real?”

  This question bellied no further answer...

  “ATAAAACK!!” the Indian commander shouted at his unit and with a great “Hurray!” the whole lot were setting off towards China.

  “ADVAAANCE!!” shouted Li Xiao and with the intonation of the latest hymn, ordered especially by the Peoples Party, for occasions such as these, the Chinese army set into motion towards India.

  “Yesss! Let them have it! Get on with it, you glorious soldiers!”

  Moshe and Ephraim had their noses flat against the windows relishing the stupendous show, unfolding for them down in the valley. They had grabbed a beer from the mini bar, had rolled
up a joint and were now cheering their individual ‘favourite team’.

  “Go for it, India!” Moshe shouted.

  “Hang in there, China!” Ephraim responded.

  “Wow!” Moshe exclaimed exited, “that’s better then going to the movies!”

  “True that! Hey sweetie!” Ephraim yelled over to the pilot. “Can you do a low sweep over the soldiers, just like in ‘Apocalypse Now’?”

  The pilot grinned back and pulled down the tip of the helicopter grazing through the valley, very low indeed.

  “Uuuiii!” Moshe and Ephraim screamed with joy and started to sing Wagner’s ‘Ride Of The Valkyries’. “TADADADAADAA—TADADADAADAA!!!”

  Their hee-hawing stopped abruptly, when they were staring into the barrel of a gun. Solomon’s facial expressions showed he was not going to join in on their fun. “You will SHUT UP at once or I swear, I will put you down as collateral damage! Is that clear?”

  Both silently nodded. “Fine, I am glad we understand each other!”

  He grabbed the radio and barked at his unit the order to advance down in the valley below.

  “That’s funny!” said Arthur, looking at the huge, half smoked joint, blowing out a trail of smoke. “I don’t feel anything. I should be flying high, spaced out in orbit, judging by how much I’ve smoked already!”

  “I don’t feel anything either!” Bear wondered. “What the fuck?”

  “Excuse me, if I am to interrupt your... session!” The monk, who had been sitting in the corner contemplating, was suddenly standing above them, smiling his inscrutable smile. “Am I right to assume, that both of you have already been enlightened by the Golden Biker?”

  Arthur nodded. “If that translates into, if we have smoked his grass before, the answer is in the affirmative!”

  The monk spread his arms out. “In a lifetime, how often can one get enlightened? How often can one reach moksha? The Ganja of the Golden Biker is the portal to enlightenment. Just like being reborn, to eventually break the cycle of life, the holy Ganja enables us, only once, to get a glimpse of one’s personal path to enlightenment. Afterwards, never again!

  Bear knitted his brows. “I have a question here...”

  The monk looked at him benevolently. “Yes?”

  “Say wha’!?”

  The monk sighed. “The holy Ganja is like enlightenment, like a premature glimpse into your personal moksha. The holy Ganja allows you to catch a glimpse at that, but only once. After that, you know, what to expect. You will never be the same again. Eternal peace residing within your bosom!”

  Arthur looked at the joint in his hand and back to the monk.

  “Me too, I have a question!”

  The monk turned his head towards him. “Please, go on!”

  “Say wha’!?”

  Even years of meditation did not help the monk to respond to this kind of thick headedness in a detached sort of way. Visibly pissed off, he rolled his eyes. “What I am trying to say is this, you might as well be smoking dried Yak shit, my dear foreign friends. Golden Biker only works once in a lifetime!”

  Sherie’s high-pitched shriek in the grass had everybody jump.

  “Have you come yet?” Gerd, who was lying beneath her, asked politely.

  But Sherie put her hand over his mouth. “Zip it, that was no orgasm, I had an idea!”

  “What... right now?”

  “Sure, I get my best ideas while I’m screwing!”

  Niftily, she jumped off, ignoring Gerd’s disappointed groans (Just when I was about to...), straightened her Sari as best as possible and began crawling through the grass towards the monk.

  “Do tell me holiest of the holy men, where exactly did the fog in the valley come from, you know, earlier? And the music?”

  The monk shrugged his shoulders obviously embarrassed. “Well, we just wanted to have some special effects, that’s all...!”

  But Sherie insisted. “It’s quite alright, but how does it work, where are the controls?”

  The monk went to a small wooden shrine, standing nearby the temple wall. “Here!” he said, opening a hidden wooden latch. “From here you control the music as well as the ventilation shafts down in the valley. That is how we can spread the fog from the fog machines everywhere within seconds!”

  Bear shook his head disapprovingly. “I... I am rather disappointed!”

  The monk gave him a questioning look. “Why? We had the best special effects guys from Bollywood to set this up for us!”

  Sherie took a closer look at the setup. “How long would it take to—I mean theoretically—to blow the fog throughout the whole valley?”

  “Come on, Sherie!” Gerd sighed, trying not to fall over his trousers, which were still dangling around his knees. “You seriously think a little fog will stop those guys out there?” Thick as pea soup so that they get lost, no way!”

  “Maybe I can’t make the fog thick enough!” Sherie smiled, “but those guys out there, for sure!”

  She took a torch from the wall, holding it above her head. “Ok, now turn the ventilators on full blast!” she called over to the monk. “And we’ll need something, that will detract them for a moment, something awesome!”

  Arthur jumped up “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m setting the house on fire!” In a high arch she tossed the torch into the dust-dry hemp.

  Sizzling flames shot up instantly.

  “NOOOOO!!!” Arthur and Bear cried out in unison, turning towards the quick spreading fire in a totally futile attempt to stomp it out.

  Sherie ran over to another torch, tearing it off the wall. “What would you rather be? Poor and alive or dead millionaires.”

  “How about a satisfactory compromise between the two?” Arthur coughed, looking at the flames in anguish.

  “Sorry, can’t do!” Sherie tossed the second torch into the Marihuana. Golden shimmering smoke arose, billowing thickly underneath the high ceiling. The fire was spreading rapidly, flames already licking at the wood panelling.

  “Ok!” Sherie wheezed, “Now we need some diversionary tactics, so that we don’t get grilled in here! Arthur?”

  “Hmmh? Arthur was about to weep. Stunned, he stared into the licking flames, which were about to turn the biggest treasure in doper history into ashes.

  “I need your Walkman!”

  “WHAT?”

  From the right as well as from the left side, the two enemy armies were moving in on each other. They were shot at by the oddly camouflaged soldiers, as well as by the gypsies and for some inexplicable reason even Hermann’s soldiers and Bábaa were firing a couple of rounds at them every once in awhile. Slowly but surely, Babu, Willie and the freelancers were losing their nerves, understandably so, albeit being pros, this sort of mess was definitely outside of bounds. Again and again they had to duck from incoming shells, exploding everywhere around them. They did put up a honourable fight however, but honestly, how much can you do with only a crossbow and one pistol whatever big the calibre.

  Willie had long before shot his last arrow and stayed put in a crouched position.

  “Babu?”

  “What?”

  “I want to go home!”

  “Babu stared at him. Somewhere a truck exploded. “Are you nuts?”

  “No, I’ve had it. I quit!” He got himself up.

  Babu grabbed him by his arm, pulling him back into cover again. “You have a death wish?

  “You’ll never get out of here!”

  Willie shook himself loose and got up again. “Never mind, I’m still going. I’ve had enough!”

  He started to march off, right across the battlefield. Babu stared after him. “Come back!”

  But Willie did not even turn his head. Bullets flying around his head, he could not have cared less.
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  “Willie! Duck for cover, now, you idiot!”

  Willie stopped. In midst the countless people shooting at each other, he stood like a tree and turned around. “No Babu! I cannot go on like this any longer!”

  “Okay, okay”, Babu, shouted desperately at his partner. “As soon as we’re finished here we’ll stop, I promise! Now please come back!”

  But Willie spitefully crossed his arms in front of him. “First, I want you to admit to it”

  “Admit to what, for heaven’s sake?”

  “That... that you harbour deeper feelings for me!”

  “WHAT?”

  “I notice, every time I look at you. You just won’t admit it. But I am going to tell everyone now: You...”

  “No!” Babu yelled

  “... are...”

  “Don’t say it” Babu warned

  “... gay! So now they all know!”

  “That’s not true!!!” Furious, Babu jumped up.

  “Of course it is! And...” he breathed in deeply, yelling:

  “... we love each other!”

  By now Babu was quite prepared to shoot his very own partner. From behind every cover and out of every hollow on both sides of the battlefield he heard riotous laughter. Someone behind a tree started a singsong: “Nancy-pansy, fudge-packers, batting for the other team...!” releasing a salve from his machine gun, just to make his point.

  Ashok, who had given his undivided attention to Shaki, whirled around and saw Willie and Babu standing there unchecked in the open line of fire.

  “I always knew you were poofters!” he hissed maliciously, taking aim at Willie, his finger bent around the trigger, when all of a sudden an ear-splitting hymn filled the valley: An invisible massive choir was singing the chorus of Gustav Mahler’s second symphony at such a volume that smaller rockslides were coming down the mountain flanks.

  All eyes turned towards the small temple, by now totally engulfed by the fire. From it, golden shimmering smoke billowed out, spreading quickly throughout the valley, just if on its own accord. Within seconds, thick clouds had swallowed up the entire temple. Accompanied by the sounds of the choirs, cascading upwards into ever-higher registers, the smoke suddenly separated and a golden figure on a motorcycle was coming down the hill, driving on a road made out of fog and light.