Der Tankerkönig [English translation]

It was a spring morning when I had my first breakdown. I had thought about myself and life for a bit, when I suddenly became nauseous and something was pressing on my throat in a way that I thought I was being strangled.

I fell onto the street, gasping for air like a maniac but it just got even worse. I was getting dizzy, I spun in a circle ten times and thought everyone was pointing their fingers at me, until I realised I wasn't wearing any clothes.

I ran and ran, found an open ground level window, climbed inside and hid, shaking from fear and the cold, in some corner.

It took a while until I realised, that I was in a pawn shop. The room was full of old clothes, and I immediately dressed in harem pants, top boots and chain mail, slung an old crossbow over my back and immediately felt relaxed and invincible again.

I marched out onto the street and suddenly was at the personnel entrance of the mall, where I had been working the garbage incinerator. As I saw it, I was getting nauseous with anger, I ran through the security guard, ripped all telephone cables out of the wall, smashed the control clock out of the wall and continued to rage through the salesrooms.

As I came to the candy shop, the first cashier stood half hidden behind a pillar on a ladder to better catch the children stealing. He always brought them in to the administrators for a large bonus for everyone he caught. His dirty smile as he spotted me made me so angry, I fired my crossbow at him without aiming, and the bolt barely missed his neck and went through his suit jacket collar and nailed him to the pillar. I kicked away the ladder underneath him, so he just hung there like a wet bag. And while he thrashed and screamed I threw over one shelf after the other and distributed the toys among the children.

And in the middle of the big turmoil the boss of the house came to me and hissed at me: "What are you doing there? Come with me into my office immediately, you idiot!" I loaded my crossbow and said: "Suck my ass, you motherfucker! Raise your hands and move!" Then he saw the cashier hanging from the pillar and became pale as a corpse. I pushed him into the cargo elevator without the customers wondering about it as they thought it to be a publicity stunt, drove with him to the paper incinerator, gave him a kick pushing him through the big incinerator door, and as the police sirens were howling outside there was already nothing left of him.

I ran outside, threw the crossbow away, jumped onto a ladies' bicycle without a master and chased across the city to the town entrance and after one hour of cycling I fell off the bike half-dead and fell asleep under a shrub. The morning after it was cold as ice outside and with that came fear. I had killed a leading executive! Now I would be chased and hunted everywhere! And in my panic I stumbled further and further into the forest and around noon I found an abandoned air shelter. The door was open and in the corner of the room was a sub machine gun wrapped in oil paper and a case of ammunition. I assembled the gun. It worked and I immediately felt invincible again. I decided to move into the bunker and get supplies, to survive in hiding.

And on the same day I robbed three banks. I forced my way through the doors with the bicycle every time, drove in a circle, fired the SMG into the ceiling so that the plaster splashed around and screamed: "I am the pied piper of Hamelin, where are the mice here?!" ["mice" being a slang term for money in German]

And as I acquired around 100,000 Marks like that, I went shopping at the supermarket and managed to get back to my shelter on hidden paths.

(Guitar Interlude)

I remained invisible, until no more newspaper articles about me were published, then started to acquire what I needed in small chunks and lived some very calm months. I grew hemp in a flower pot, smoked a joint every now and then, relaxed in my hammock and listened - with my SMG on my belly - to the charts on a mobile radio and I was happy. But just like most happy people I was also getting dumber and dumber after a while, and to work against that I was writing letters to the editor by the truckload and took a bath in a fenced-off lake near me, that was owned by the Tanker King.

So, one day at noon - I was sitting really calmly in the water with my SMG - suddenly there stood some guy in a shirt, green apron, straw hat, spade over his shoulder and told me, this was private property, and what would happen if everyone acted like I was acting there. I said: "Yeah, if everyone acted like that, then the Tanker King would soon be out of the picture here with his view of the lake." I asked him if he really needed to degrade himself as a gardener servant to the Tanker King. Then he said: "I'm not the gardener, I am the Tanker King!" I said: "That's just unbelievable, firing the gardener, flowering the dahlias yourself and letting your money work in your stead! That's going to end now!" I wanted to pull the trigger right then and there, then hesitated and couldn't do it after all and instead I just forced him to smoke a joint as thick as a chimney. And I said: "So! And now I want to see how billionaires are living!"

We walked the few hundred meters to his mansion and as we arrived, he was already high as a kite. He staggered around in front of me into a giant patio towards a luxurious sitting area, where the Tanker Queen sat and relaxed. With a small doggy in her arms, with a blue ribbon and a pink asshole and she mumbled without opening her eyes: "Rudy, is it you? I'll say, Ari Onassis has invited us to a Safari!" The Tanker King stared at his wife first as if he didn't understand a word, then started to dance around her and mimicked her voice: "With Ari on Safari!" The Tanker Queen opened her eyes, spotted us and fled up the stairs, screaming. The Tanker King took a battle axe hanging on the wall and went, Ari Safari, after her.

Then I thought "That drama I have to watch from the outside!" I sat down on a swing hammock and already I saw the Tanker King crawl out of a window on the roof. The bloody axe in his hand he spread his arms, jumped and - splat - hit the ground directly in front of my feet. I went back to my bunker for now and went back to sleep.

The morning after I heard the news broadcast. Half the world was upside down. They also talked about me. The Tanker Queen had given testimony. Her husband had not killed her with the axe, but only the doggy and people were talking about an economic catastrophe caused by the sudden death of the Tanker King. And further they said all state police were searching with hounds, radar, helicopters and tanks after the insane murderer with the chain mail and top boots. I was getting really anxious and I closed up the bunker and didn't dare to come out for weeks.

After a while I felt so miserable and lonely, that I started talking to myself. I desperately needed someone to talk to! But someone who would be able to understand the whole affair with the Tanker King! And I didn't know anyone like that. But then I had an idea: If there was no one alive like that, then maybe I could talk to someone dead. So I sneaked out of the forest around midnight to the next town. I knew a house there, in which people were holding séances on a regular basis.

And I got lucky too, the séance was underway already. I pushed the door open with my foot, SMG in my hand and shouted: "Don't panic, gentlemen, and put your hands on the table!" But just as they put their hands on the flat surface, the table started to shake and levitate all by itself a few meters above the floor. I said: "Come on, children, don't fool around, put your hands above your heads!" Immediately all hands went up into the air and the table plummeted back to the ground and I said: "So, who of you lot is the supreme druid? Gimme a line to Che Guevara, I want to finally talk to a reasonable human!"

First they weren't sure who I meant, but then applied themselves and finally I heard a noise in the line and I heard the voice of Che Guevara: "What do you want of me?" I told him who I was and what I did and that I needed guidance. And the voice asked me a bit annoyed what the big idea was and if I ever heard of organised class struggle. I said, nope, I never did. The voice went silent for a moment and then continued a lot more comforting and friendly: Yeah, then it would be hard to help me, I was sick and it would be best if I visited a psychoanalyst soon.

Totally depressed I crawled back to my bunker, as I heard the metal cans ringing that were attached to the alarm wire I set up around my hiding place. With my whole body shaking from fear I went there and saw a Volkswagen car standing there, with a naked couple on the front seat. The bumper had gotten tangled up in my alarm wire, so the cans were ringing without pause.

I was so offended that I pushed my SMG into the back of the guy and screamed at him: "Stop this immediately! Far and wide nothing but the most beautiful untouched nature and you are doing gymnastics in your stinky car. Get out of there, immediately, into the bluebells!" The poor guy began to whine into my ears: "Why did you scare us like that? Now my acquaintance here has a cramp and we are stuck!" That was just what I needed.

We talked a while about what we could do and decided it would be best to stick the bride with a needle into her leg, as a shock therapy, but of course no one of us had a needle with them. This was taking too much time for my taste and I said: "Enough! If you want a needle, you will have to crawl the few hundred meters to the sewing box yourself!" The operation succeeded in the end. And only after the two left the shelter I realised, I had made a horrible mistake...

• Artist:Hannes Wader
• Album:7 Lieder (1972)