The Shy Millionaire is Coming - ukázka
Here comes the Czech millionaire
Long have I hesitated, waiting for the most opportune moment. That today at
last I appear on the stage does not mean that moment has come.
Though they say hope springs eternal, mine lay down and died long ago. With no
fanfares, no famous last words, no prepaid safety nets. In short I have come to
realize that we millionaires will never have many supporters in this country.
Like moles we live deep in the ground; we know very little about one another.
But this has been going on for too long! We have a desperate need to draw air
into our lungs, to run about freely in the streets, to burst into joyful
laughter!
What it needs is for someone to declare this on behalf of us all. And this
someone will have to be me. Not that I stand to gain anything by it; indeed,
I may stand to lose. But it needs to be done because … because … we are
just like the rest of you. There, I've said it.
Sometimes we're happy, sometimes we're sad. We're full of bold plans, yet we
worry about that sandblaster we bought; is it not a bit superfluous to our
needs? Like everyone else we're as sharp as a knife, as thick as a plank, we fly
cut-price and last-minute, we party with old friends, we go on diets, and we
have a household budget which sometimes we exceed.
A couple of months back I and a colleague (also a millionaire) were in Moscow,
where we dined in a Georgian restaurant. The meal was plain but tasty, and it
set us back thirteen thousand. As we were paying I had to agree with my rich
friend: you only live once and we weren't going to have our evening spoiled by
the Russian government's stupid embargo on Georgian wine when the Italian
Barolo was only a little more expensive.
It's the way of the world; one man's a baker, another paints pictures with a
hand hot with love, another happens to be a millionaire. The communists made a
bold, no doubt creditable attempt to change this system, and we all know how
that turned out: before you could say Jack Robinson the most noble-minded
paupers were sucked into the merciless pump of history and spewed out at its
other end in the villas of their millionaire predecessors.
But things have changed since then, haven't they? So why is it still impossible
for us rich to echo Mozart in declaring to the world that our Czechs understand
us?
But the fault is not on your side only; we millionaires, too, have some
improvements to make. After all, what do you ordinary folk actually know about
us?
In the belief that you nourish your view of millionaires on kitsch images of
runaway sons bent on evildoing and leering, drug-addled idiots, I am not
surprised at the aversion you feel. But as Lenin knew before us, it's never too
late to make amends.
So let us cry, good and loud a splendid „Heave ho!“, thereby joining forces
to lift the barrier that divides us. In the incredible event of our success,
I would ask you to stay on your own side; your reward, a treasury of tales from
the lives of your richer compatriots, will appear in this space every Tuesday.
And I can promise the occasional excursion into philosophy. (Even millionaires
sometimes feel the need to slam the brakes on the Audi and meditate on life.)
I've decided to open wide my window on the world to give you a clear view in
close-up of the life of a rich Czech at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. So fingers crossed that this unprecedented experiment works out. Next
time we'll get stuck into our subject good and proper.
Hero of the skies
When you're a millionaire, flying is unavoidable. To begin with most of the
flying you do is for business. Later you fly because zooming about the world
with no clear object in mind is a good way of spending lots of money.
There's something quite interesting about my own experience of all this, which
I would like to share with you. When I still had to work at making my millions
(‚work‘ in the sense of having to do anything at all in their service),
I used to find the cool blue heights a wee bit intimidating. I'm hardly the
hysterical type – and you meet a fair few of those in the air – but the
fact remains that a number of aeroplanes on which I have travelled bear in
their armrests an exact cast of my palms and fingers. If the whole business
surrounding take-off and landing were a little less frantic, I'd be absolutely
fine; these people just overdo the speed thing. Once during take-off I placed a
request with the stewardess that they take it more slowly, but she refused to
convey this to the captain. Snooty cow. I would struggle, too, to get over the
firm conviction that the very plane I was travelling in was destined to fall to
earth. I still remember my first experiences of turbulence, how I began to
compile a mental list of all the people I'd ever wronged prior to asking their
forgiveness. At the very top of that list was Eva Novotná, who was forced to
perform the cha-cha-cha with me three times in the dance classes.
It's interesting, too, that as soon as I began to fly out of sheer boredom,
everything came right as if by the wave of a magic wand. Not long ago I was
sitting in an Aeroflot airbus during a heavy storm. Just before we were due to
reach Moscow the plane dropped forty metres (my somewhat terror-stricken
colleague, also a millionaire, claims it was a least two hundred). I laughed
like a drain and joyfully adjusted the sick-bags under the chins of my fellow
passengers. In the last few years I've learned to say „It'll be all right“
in eight world languages and in more drastic cases I'm able to perform the last
rites in English and Italian. I've become something of a Rider of the Heavens, a
fact that was brought home to me on a recent return flight from San
Francisco.
The flight was proceeding more or less smoothly … a fall suffered by a
stewardess who tripped over the leg of one of the passengers notwithstanding.
(The flight down a narrow aisle of a well-endowed, six-foot-tall figure is a
sight to see. The great machine withstood it with but the slightest tremor.) But
when shortly afterwards there appeared alongside us, on both sides, fighter
planes whose wings bore the national emblem of China, most of the passengers
became visibly agitated.
I, on the other hand, had the feeling that my time had come. I hastened to
unfasten my safety belt and stepped over the spread-eagled stewardess; wearing
the smile of a soon-to-be victor I rushed onwards. Calmly I opened the door to
the cockpit, inclined my head by way of greeting (time was at a premium), and
said: „Let us pray, chaps.“ The first pilot tightened his grip on the
joystick. Then the three of us intoned: „Our Father, which art in Heaven
…“
I was woken by a gentle bumping, produced by the plane on its soft landing on
the runway of Munich's Franz Josef Strauss Airport. No praise is too high for
this Hypnogen stuff! I stretched, opened wide, gave my oral microflora a good
squirt of Healthy Mouth, and began to look forward to the next wonderful
flight.
Uncle Karel's visit
He comes but once a year and he spends exactly two days with me. Never any
longer, but nor does he ever miss – that's my Uncle Karel from Krnov. Uncle
Karel's „church calendar“ includes a visit to the only millionaire in our
extended family just as it contains Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
The spiritual ground plan of a visit hasn't changed for many years. In the
floweriest of language my uncle praises to the skies my perceived ability to
earn money and I dispute this. I try to explain to him – every year,
practically in the same words – that I was inundated with money by chance;
every year my uncle chuckles and tells me what a wag I am. Assuring myself it
was ever thus and ever thus shall be, I soon become mellow … and assume the
role demanded of me, that of a proper millionaire.
Uncle Karel finds money terribly exciting, and that's why you have to assume an
air of indifference towards it, as if handling lottery tickets that are no
longer valid and haven't been for ages. It's not about how much of it you
spend. The important thing when paying up is how you draw it from the back
pocket of your shabby old jeans, toss the crumpled notes on the table and stare
at it for a moment or two as if you're not quite sure what to do with it. Then
you use two fingers to fish out a five-hundred, much in the way you'd pluck a
pickled gherkin from a jar, and after this you siphon out a twenty-three-crown
gratuity. By now patently bored by the whole transaction you grunt at the
waiter, „That's fine, thanks“; his good-natured features luminous, Uncle
Karel chirrups that he's been looking forward to this all year. Quite simply,
my uncle from the north likes to see a rich man putting himself through his
paces. Sometimes I get the strong impression he's fighting back the desire to
ask me for my autograph.
Needless to say there was a time when he was persistent in his attempts to get
me up to Krnov, claiming the need to repay my hospitality. But it was clear to
me from the beginning that what he really wanted was to lead me around the
town's pubs like some kind of dancing bear and show me off to his friends. So
every time he asked I declined politely. He found this difficult to take until
he came to understand that my permanent preoccupation with the earning of more
and more millions was on the one hand perfectly excusable, on the other a
splendid source of stories – or fibs – that he could work on ad
infinitum. Before long these trips to Brno and dinners with a millionaire
became an object of myth beside which a private audience with the Pope was a
mere bagatelle. Interesting; the less I performed the bolder became my
uncle's flights of fancy.
The funniest thing about all this is that Uncle Karel is ever less heedful of
the prototype out of which his fable has evolved. With the result that I learn
every year about my many achievements of previous years, the hands I shook, the
sums I spent and what wonder I wrought by my actions. The mind boggles at some
of these stories. Once or twice I've even caught myself thinking what a pleasure
it would be to dine with such a marvellous chap …
Thanks to my Krnov uncle I lead an extra life, and this explains why I have
stuck with him for all these years. This millionaire of his is a pretty
good guy.
The millionaire and his calvary of eroticism
Some people lack the courage to enter a brothel, others stay away because
they lack the money for adventures of this sort. Among millionaires, of course,
visits to the knocking shop are a favourite pastime, so it was pretty clear that
sooner or later certain friends of mine would draw me into their depraved
company. I held them off for as long as I could – until the recent birthday
of a press magnate who shall remain anonymous. And then I lived through my
calvary of eroticism, to which I shall now bear witness.
As a Czech literary classic Karel Poláček would have it, there were five of
us. No sooner were we through the door than our path was blocked by a mountain
of not-too-bright flesh, so it was hard to believe we entering the gates of
Paradise. Seated downstairs in the spectral light of the stroboscope were three
women in red satin, who ten years earlier had been dismissed from their jobs on
a building site for „unsightliness“. The fact that they were hanging around
in their underwear in this small subterranean space I ascribed to some
unfavourable combination of circumstances. I wasted no time in asking my more
experienced friends when the young lady tarts would appear. I learned in no
uncertain terms that I was an idiot, that the tarts were the persons I have
just described – what had I been expecting, then? I thought it best to
avoid the subject. Without further ado – on the verge of tears and with a
fistful of small change – I headed for those poor creatures parked there in
the corner like three small tractors. Two of them looked so apathetic their
engines might have been borne away for an overhaul. The third was a little more
welcoming: she showed me her crooked teeth and coughed – like a miner hawking
coal dust after his shift. Then to my astonishment one of the less lively ones
stood up and swept away to a nearby podium, where she took hold of a pole.
It is a struggle for my pen to form the words to describe what followed. My
friends claim to this day it was an example of what is known as the
‚striptease‘. But from close up it looked like an overfed maggot boring its
way into a shoulder of beef. Then Slippery Sam the barman insinuated his way to
our table. He asked us if we wanted company, if we would be ordering cocktails
for the ladies. In the general rush of tenderness I requested a teddy bear, but
the barman just pulled a face and directed the lace cavalry and its drinks over
to our table. The moment the women sat down I was reminded of the night I'd
spent locked in a pantry as a punishment. Within half an hour I would come to
consider the recollection of my claustrophobia one of the most beautiful of my
childhood; at least no one spoke to me when I was in that pantry. The ladies'
flesh was pushing me deeper and deeper into the cushions of despair.
Over the next hour various offers were made. I responded to each with a refrain
of We Shall Overcome. The ladies were obviously amused by this. When
some time later out of sheer desperation I declared myself to be homosexual,
they embarked upon a giggling fit to burst a piston and all three of them wanted
to take me to their room. In the face of such dismal odds, things as a whole
ended reasonably well.
The birthday-boy and two more magnificent men went off with the ladies „to
perform the act of love“ and I fell into a pleasant doze right there on the
black faux-leather upholstery. Then we handed over a sum which might have bought
us a moped and staggered out together to face early-morning Prague.
But there's no doubt it was worth the money. No moped, no matter how fast it
is, has as much to tell of the hardships of being as this agreeable night-time
panopticon.
A millionaire child minder
I've got a great fondness for small children, perhaps because I have none of
my own. I'm well known for it – I play uncle for an hour for dozens of my
most fertile friends. Mostly they take this with a light smile on the face but
deep sorrow in the heart. I'm kidding, of course. When I'm with kids, the kids
feel like they're in heaven. Unlike me their parents don't hide behind fig
plants and pepper young bandits with gunfire, nor can they stuff four Smarties
up their nostrils, to say nothing of accompanying the shaman's dances of their
children by beating a wooden spoon against a tin drum.
Soon the hour is up and the time feels right to stop. I glance in the hallway
mirror, smooth down my hair and hurry off to an all-night party at the
Hunter's Rest, because, after all, I'm a popular guy there as well. The parents
are left with an exceptionally playful little darling who long after I leave
will consider any normal behaviour an act of aggression.
My flight tends to be as rapid as it is unflinching; I'm well aware that from a
certain moment on every minute weighs a ton, that to spend a whole, unbroken
half-day with any child is sheer torture.
Only once in my life have I made an exception to this. For reasons of personal
gain I agreed to mind a six-year-old angel called Leonka. As her delectable
mummy was heading through the door she assured me the girl was „no trouble at
all“; then she went off to find harmony and orderly love at a Bernd Hellinger
seminar.
I took a deep breath … then decided to begin with a kickabout. To my surprise
Leonka seemed to be amused by this, but only until the first time I struck the
ball against her head. Once I'd managed to quieten her monstrous bawling, it was
time for us to move from the hall to her room. Leonka's child's instinct
told her I wouldn't be doing the bossing for a while, so she announced that
from now on we'd be playing only girls' games. We spent the next forty minutes
preparing a talking doll for bed. While Leonka told it stories, the doll
whimpered and whined …
Then I tried to hide myself in the toilet, but within two minutes Leonka was
knocking at the door. It just wasn't the same thrill if I wasn't there with
her. A pity I was given the role of mere spectator; whenever I tried to put
one of my talents to use, Leonka shrieked as if I were dragging her around by
the leg. All that was expected of me was to express delight at every stupid
thing the brat thought up. So I cawed with enthusiasm (and rage) at the
‚princess‘ dress in which she looked like a scarecrow, I showered her wacky
little dances with applause, I made a point of seeing a giraffe in an actually
rather good picture of Mummy.
We ended up cooking in a plastic kitchen.
If our earlier games had suffered from a lack of imagination (and
that's putting it mildly), in the role of cook no sacrifice was too small for
Leonka. It took her about an hour to concoct a special „soup“, and after
this it was up to me to taste it. To give you a clearer idea of what this
„soup“ was like, here's how it is prepared. Take three bowls of water, one
of which will end up on the carpet. Add two fistfuls of flour, two strips of
plasticene and a large serving of potato crisps ground to a powder using the
book Matthew and the Flying Elephant. Strain the mix thoroughly through the
fingers before serving, then be on the alert to ensure that everybody eats it
up.
Teddy ate and ate till it was coming out of his ears, and I was expected to
keep up with him. Three times I was forced to swallow and show that my mouth
was empty.
By the time Leonka's mummy got home I was as green as a week-old corpse.
I took my leave as quickly as I could because I prefer to be sick in my own
toilet.
„It was divine!“ I managed to honk as I passed through the door. „You
were right, Leonka was no trouble at all.“
To my regret there was to be no hard-earned reward that evening.