While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1)
Read While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Online
Authors: Petra Durst-Benning
ALSO BY PETRA DURST-BENNING
The Glassblower Trilogy
The Glassblower
The American Lady
The Paradise of Glass
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2012 Petra Durst-Benning & Ullstein Buchverlag GmbH
Translation copyright © 2016 Edwin Miles
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as
Solang die Welt noch schläft
by Ullstein Buchverlag GmbH in Germany in 2012. Translated from German by Edwin Miles. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2016.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13 (hardcover): 9781503953338
ISBN-10 (hardcover): 1503953335
ISBN-13 (paperback): 9781503953321
ISBN-10 (paperback): 1503953327
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant
Contents
Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world . . . It gives [a] woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance . . . The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle . . .
Susan B. Anthony, social reformer, 1896
Chapter One
Berlin, November 1891
Barnim Road Women’s Prison
Josephine looked around anxiously. Beds lined up side by side, thirty in all. Iron bars gleaming coldly in the light cast by the single bare bulb that dangled from the ceiling in the center of the room. The scene outside the barred window promised nothing better—a thin, dirty curtain was no more than a makeshift veil obstructing the view of a barren wasteland enclosed by a high wall.
Farther back in the prison dormitory, she could hear someone sobbing quietly. Jo turned and saw a haggard, red-haired young girl with the round belly typical of pregnancy. They had been admitted at the same time. A picture of misery, the girl lay curled and crying on a bunk. Josephine was tempted to console her, but then she changed her mind.
She had been awake for more than forty-eight hours. Her eyes burned and her head hurt. Her right shoulder was swollen and throbbing. Jo tentatively raised her arm a little, testing the joint. She could move her shoulder; at least nothing was broken.
She made her way hesitantly toward the bed marked “14,” the one the prison guard had told her was hers. She pushed back the thin sheet that was supposed to serve as a blanket. The mattress was covered with stains, and when she lowered herself onto it, it sagged in the middle, slack from the bodies of the many girls who had cried themselves to sleep on it, night after night. It was so cold that Josephine’s breath hung in the air in little clouds.
So this was where they were going to try to cure her of her “conceit” once and for all. Josephine fought back tears as she lay down on the bed and wrapped her arms around her legs in a futile attempt to stave off the cold. She closed her eyes and waited for merciful sleep to come, but what came instead were memories of the night before.
Early that evening, she had been undecided: Should she go out, or would she be better off staying home? The weather had been wretched all day, and the endless drizzle and wet autumn leaves had made the roads slick. The wind carried with it the first bite of winter—making for less than ideal conditions. Still, she had decided to go out. An error of judgment, as it turned out.
Despite the foul weather and the fact that it was well after midnight, several local people had witnessed the accident and ran out into the rain from their warm houses. Someone put a blanket over Josephine while others ogled her as they would some strange species in the Berlin zoo.
“What do we have here, then?”
“My, did you ever see such a thing?”
“Leave her! What’s she doing around here?”
“The cops! Someone has to call the cops!”
Most of the people had been extremely hostile to her. But, in a thick Berlin accent, one old man said, “You’re luckier than you know, girl. If you’d spent the whole night lying on this icy street, you’d likely have frozen to death.” He wore pajamas and looked as if he’d jumped straight out of bed. Beside him stood an older woman with a bawling infant in her arms and a shocked expression on her face. She had plucked at Jo’s coat with her sharp claws.
“Young lady, what’s the likes of you up to at this time of night? And in that getup! That’s not right at all.” Her voice was shrill and full of reproach. It was she who bustled off to find a policeman. When the officer arrived, he fixed Jo with a suspicious eye and bombarded her with questions. “What’s your name? What happened? Why are you dressed in men’s clothes?”
All she had told him was her address. A horse and cart appeared, the horse’s mane tangled with straw. Josephine was lifted up beside the coachman on his box seat, and the officer squeezed up beside them. She summoned the last of her strength to hold herself upright on the box and not fall over backward. Only then did she notice that the skin of her right hand was scraped all over. The knuckles of her left hand were caked with blood and muck from the street. Maybe she would die of blood poisoning.
Let it happen right now,
she had thought.
When they had reached her home, the officer pounded on the door with his fist. A moment later, a window on the second floor opened and her mother, Elsbeth Schmied, stuck her head out.
Josephine had been so afraid that she nearly threw up on the spot. She wanted to drop dead then and there. Instead, she let the policeman lead her into the parlor, where she stood with her head hanging low, her shoulder throbbing.
“My daughter had what? An accident? In those clothes? We won’t have any of that in this house,” her father had said. “We’re honest people. I’m a farrier by trade, and I’ll be hanged before I let such a creature set foot in my house.” When her father finally looked at her, his eyes were filled with repugnance and contempt.
“This has to be some kind of mix-up. Our daughter does not go wandering around in the middle of the night,” her mother had said harshly. Then she had pulled her robe more tightly around her chest, pressed her lips together into a thin line, and stared straight ahead. Neither Josephine’s father nor her mother had said a word directly to her.
“Don’t go getting upset. The fact of the matter is that your daughter was involved in an accident out on Landsberger Allee,” the policeman had said with some irritation. “And she’s injured herself and very likely broken her shoulder. Don’t you think you should send for a doctor?”
Josephine’s mother glared at the officer. “If what you say is true, you can just take the little tramp away now!”
Josephine massaged her damaged shoulder as she lay on the prison bed. Now that she had stopped moving, it had begun to hurt even more.
The previous night her parents had not wanted to call a doctor. They would much rather have handed their daughter over to the officer on the spot, but he had given instructions that Josephine was to spend the rest of the night at home and then appear at the police station next to Görlitz train station at eleven in the morning the following day.
With heavy steps and a heavier heart, Jo had trudged into the laundry room. She did not immediately recognize herself when she looked in the shard of mirror on the wall. The grime and dried blood had transformed her otherwise striking face into an ugly mask. Her beautiful blond hair hung in dirty, matted locks. Josephine tried to contain her distress as she washed herself with cold water.
Later, in her room, she finally had broken into tears. It was all over! She had lied to her parents repeatedly. She had stolen. She had deceived. Because of her, Isabelle would get into serious trouble, and maybe even Clara, too. Isabelle, with her lust for life and short temper. And pretty, petite Clara. They had been through so much together over the years, and now she had betrayed them. And how was she ever supposed to pay for the damage she’d caused? She’d probably be in debt for the rest of her life. Or would her father have to settle her bill?
Tormented by a thousand questions, Josephine had lain in bed and waited for the night to end.
She had made her way to the police station the next morning, accompanied by her mother.
Josephine moaned quietly. Had that only been a few hours before? It felt like a lifetime ago.
“Don’t even think about getting comfortable,” one of the officers had said when she went to sit on the narrow wooden bench. “They make short work of young miscreants like you.” Then he had personally escorted her and her mother to the local court on Park Street, where her trial was to take place that same day.
From that point on, Josephine had experienced everything as though through a fog. The judge had been pale and young and very busy. His desk was covered with towering stacks of files, and he had to push one aside to see her at all.
“The question in this case is whether or not one can speak of insufficient insight into her actions,” he said after hearing the report from the officer. “If that were the case, an acquittal would certainly be conceivable . . .”
The officer frowned. “Your honor, the accused is no longer a girl of thirteen or fourteen; she will turn eighteen in a matter of months and be criminally liable for her actions. And according to her father—a respected farrier, incidentally—she was fully aware of the seriousness of her offense.”
“Well,” said the judge, turning to Josephine’s mother. “Why hasn’t the accused’s father come in person to share his view of the matter?”
“My husband has to work,” she replied in a brittle voice.
“And how is it possible that your daughter is able to leave the house in the evening without your noticing? Your daughter is still a minor, which means you bear a certain degree of supervisory responsibility.”
“Don’t talk to me about supervisory responsibility! She’s always been a brat and a troublemaker! Our daughter never cared for rules. She has always put her own pleasure first,” she added bitterly. “What is it they say? Pride goeth before the fall. After all that has happened, I declare that our daughter is dead to us.”
Josephine had struggled desperately to come up with a suitable defense. Hadn’t she labored day after day to the point of exhaustion to ease her father’s workload? Hadn’t she accepted any onerous task her mother had given her, in or out of the house? But she knew none of that counted anymore, that it had never counted. So she held her tongue.
The judge shifted another stack of files across his desk, then rose to his feet. As if at some secret cue, his secretary took out her pen to take down his judgment in writing.
“In accordance with the Penal Code of the German Empire, section fifty-six, paragraph one, and section fifty-seven, paragraphs one and two, and in consideration of the gravity of the offense, I hereby order that the accused be incarcerated forthwith in the Barnim Road Women’s Prison. Given the young age of the prisoner and my unwillingness to deny her a certain potential for improvement, she is to be quartered in the newly created juvenile division. Daily work and lessons are to be undertaken. The period of incarceration is set at three and a half years.”
He had looked sternly over his desk at Josephine as he spoke. “The Barnim Road Women’s Prison is a great opportunity for young people like you who have slipped from the path of righteousness. I hope that during your stay there you will develop the spiritual maturity that is necessary to live an honorable life in peace and humility.”
When two officers led Josephine away, her mother did not even turn her head.
They had taken her clothes from her and handed her a coarse woolen dress. She was only allowed to keep her underwear and her shoes. A guard then led her to the dormitory and told her that she was too late for the evening meal and that she had better get ready for bed.
Josephine was indifferent to all of it.
She heard footsteps approaching, then a voice behind her, rough as sandpaper: “Well, well. A newcomer. Bet she’s still got her own underwear, too. Not the miserable scraps we have to wear.”
A peculiar smell stung Josephine’s nose. A mixture of bad food and sweat—it seemed that her fellow inmates had surrounded her bed, but Josephine kept her eyes fixed stubbornly on the wall. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
“What d’you think you’re staring at?” said a second voice. Someone jabbed her in the back with a sharp fingertip, and she heard the laughter of several young women.
“What the hell is this?” Josephine spun around in a fury and sat up on the edge of the bed. She recoiled at the sight of the ragged figures in front of her. These were the people she was supposed to share her life with?
There were ten or twelve of them, girls and young women, some of whom looked like they were her age, some younger—still children. But their faces looked unnaturally wasted and hostile. Deep furrows had formed where the fresh bloom of youth should have been. All of them were unnaturally pale. One girl had a broad, red streak across her cheek, like a stroke from a whip. Another had a scabby chin and forehead, as if she had just gotten through some kind of pox. Their hair was unkempt, their hands dirty—some actually bloody—and their fingernails neglected. The girls reminded Jo of the hordes of alley kids all over the city who had thought it funny to pelt her with stones or spit on her. She and Isabelle had made off as fast as they could whenever they saw them. A shiver of fright ran through Jo. It was hard for her to believe that not one of these girls was older than eighteen.
“Number fourteen’s my bed, so get up!” a tall, lean girl snarled at her and kicked her in the shins. The girl had deep-set gray eyes and no more than stubble on her head, as if her hair had been shorn to get rid of lice. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were pale, almost transparent. Josephine detected intelligence in her eyes, unlike the dull faces of the others, but they were ice-cold, too. The girl was not much older than Jo, but she looked thirty.
“But the guard said—” Josephine began.
“No one cares.
I’m
the one who decides what goes here. I’m Adele, and I say that this bed belongs to me,” the girl said firmly. She gave a nod to two girls, who positioned themselves on either side of Josephine. But Josephine stood up of her own free will before they could take hold of her. The last thing she wanted was a fight.
“Then where am I supposed to sleep?” she asked.
“Do I look like I care?” Adele replied.
Josephine looked around the dormitory. She was tired. All she wanted was to lie down and close her eyes. She saw the red-haired girl cowering at the far end of the room. It appeared that several of the beds down there were free.
Josephine was halfway down the aisle when she realized that Adele was following her. Jo abruptly stopped and spun around. “What do you want now?”
The leader of the girls grinned and pushed past, blocking her path. “I’m not done with you. Give me your petticoat. I’m sure I can use it.”
“You’re out of your mind! I will do no such thing. If you want something from me, you’ll have to come and get it.” She planted her feet and stared at Adele.
Adele hesitated. After appraising her rival for a moment, she waved dismissively. “You’re so big, your clothes wouldn’t fit me anyway. Show me your other stuff!”
“What other stuff?”