While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

Clara let out a gasp at the sight of Josephine’s stockinged legs. She stepped forward and began frantically arranging Josephine’s skirt back over her legs.

“One has to be very careful not to let the material catch in the spokes,” Josephine said, pushing the skirt back up a little higher. She looked at Moritz Herrenhus and shrugged apologetically.

But Isabelle’s father just laughed. “It’s no sport for a young woman, as I said. But no one will see you here.” Then he nodded to Josephine. “Now show us what you learned down in the Black Forest. I’ll brace you as you ride.” He took a step toward the bicycle, but before he could even reach out to support her, she pedaled away without him.

“I don’t believe it.” Moritz Herrenhus could only look on in astonishment as Josephine confidently steered his bicycle around the yard.

“The girl rides like a man! The strength, the physical control . . .”

“But what if she falls and breaks something?” murmured Clara, wringing her hands helplessly.

“Can’t you see that your friend can ride like the devil? Or better!” said Isabelle, who was also watching in disbelief. “She’s not about to fall.”

Josephine grinned from ear to ear. It was so good to be back on a bicycle!

“Excellent, Josephine. Phenomenal! If you lean a little farther forward, you’ll find it even easier to keep your balance. Yes, just like that.” Moritz Herrenhus clapped appreciatively. Turning to Isabelle, he said, “Your friend is a real natural talent.”

As Josephine rode past the small group again, Isabelle stepped directly in her path. With an abrupt hop, Josephine jumped off the bicycle, the front wheel spraying small gravel stones.

“What the . . . ?” her father snapped at his daughter. “A bicycle has no brake. Josephine almost crashed because of you.”

“Sorry,” said Isabelle indifferently. “But now that she’s had her turn, how would you like to let me try it? I may not be a
natural talent
”—she pronounced the words as if they were an insult—“but with a little help and some practice, I’m sure I’ll get it.”

That day marked the beginning of a friendship, one that each of the girls—not to mention the people around them—saw very differently.

Isabelle’s mother found it rather disconcerting that her daughter was now associating with two “street girls,” as she put it. But because Moritz Herrenhus tolerated Isabelle’s friendship with the pharmacist’s and the smith’s daughters, she could not really say much against it. As long as Isabelle did not neglect her numerous other duties—her secondary-school studies, her dance and ballet lessons, and her language and etiquette classes—she was quite welcome to ride a few laps in the yard with the bicycle, he said. Besides, he enjoyed demonstrating his Rover to the young women and keeping them up to date about the world of cycling.

Isabelle was happy to have found in Josephine and Clara two uncomplicated friends with whom she did not feel the constant need to strive upward, as she did with all her schoolmates—who were all the daughters of diplomats, or from aristocratic circles, or whose fathers were from the officer classes or captains of industry. Compared to any of them, her father was a little fish among sharks, and they all made sure she knew it. All that aside, Isabelle had also developed a desire to outshine Josephine on the bicycle. Cycling was a lot of fun for her, as well.

For Clara, who attended and loathed the home-economics school, riding bicycles made no sense at all. She was frankly afraid of the machine and quite satisfied to simply watch the others ride. Her mother, however, was overjoyed at Clara’s newfound friendship with the wealthy factory owner’s daughter. She dreamed of Clara finding her way into the upper circles of Berlin society and someday finding herself an affluent husband there. She did not know that the girls met to ride Mr. Herrenhus’s bicycle. If she had, she would probably have fainted from fear for Clara’s health.

Josephine was simply happy. She had not dared to hope that her dream of riding a bicycle in Berlin would come true so quickly. Although Herrenhus’s backyard hardly compared to the wide-open roads of the Black Forest, it was better than nothing. She did not tell her parents anything of what she did in the evenings when she was done with her work, as they would have put an end to it immediately.

Only Frieda was allowed to know. Josephine went on and on to her about Moritz Herrenhus’s generosity and his knowledge of bicycles and cycling sports. She would never have found out otherwise that cycling schools—and even dedicated cycling paths—existed.

Several weeks after riding Moritz Herrenhus’s bicycle for the first time, Josephine made her way along Görlitzer Strasse toward Frieda’s house. Although the sun still shone from a brilliant blue sky, most of the street already lay in shadow. A balmy breeze whirled scraps of paper through the air, which smelled of machine oil and sweet, rotting trash. Josephine nodded to the neighbor digging weeds out of her tiny vegetable garden in an attempt to give the beans and kohlrabi half a chance of ripening in the scant summer sunlight filtering down between the houses. Young girls with swinging skirts and ruffled hairbands strolled arm in arm toward Schlesischer Busch Park while the young men still stood at the entrances to their homes and brushed the day’s dirt from their shoes. A few whistled at Josephine as she passed, which she ignored with a smile. It was summer.

Frieda, too, was out in her garden, although she was not digging up a vegetable garden. She was digging a grave.

“It flew into my kitchen window, the silly thing,” she said and gestured with her chin toward a blackbird lying dead on an old handkerchief, its claws outstretched. Sweat glistened on the old woman’s forehead, and her face was flushed with exertion.

Josephine kneeled beside her, took the trowel, and dug deeper. The earth was dry and crumbly, the going tough. When the little grave was big enough, she laid the handkerchief and bird together inside, then shoveled the excavated earth back over the top. She marked a cross in the earth with the tip of her forefinger.

For a moment, Frieda stayed on her knees in silent prayer. Then she climbed to her feet with some difficulty before Josephine could help her up.

“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten all about me, what with all your bicycle riding.” A warm embrace followed, then the old woman pulled a letter from the pocket of her apron. “Lieselotte is coming next week. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“She wrote to me, too,” said Josephine. “I can hardly wait to see her again. She’ll be amazed when I show her Moritz Herrenhus’s Rover! Oh, I’m so infinitely grateful to him for letting me ride it, even if it’s only in his yard. He keeps telling us that there’ll be hell to pay if he ever catches us out on Berlin’s streets.” She was smiling as she followed Frieda to her table in the garden, although her thoughts were already moving on to the Herrenhus villa.

“
Infinitely grateful?
I’m sure the great Moritz Herrenhus likes that. He loves being adored, that man, and if it’s a young, pretty girl like you doing the adoring . . .” Frieda set a plate of gooseberries on the table.

Josephine glared at Frieda. “Isabelle’s father is a gentleman. Those hours on the bicycle mean the world to me. I’d have gone crazy in the smithy by now if it weren’t for that. It’s always so dark and dusty in there. Do you have any idea how dreary it is? One old plug after another, from morning to night, the same routine. Holding the hooves, front right, front left, back right, back left. Then there’s the monotonous banging of iron on the anvil, and the shushing sounds you have to make to calm the horses—sometimes I fear I’ll go mad! And the pain in your back and your arms after the fourth or fifth horse . . .”

“Why don’t you look for a job that you actually enjoy?” Frieda asked, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Josephine lifted her hands in resignation. “I can’t just leave my parents in the lurch.”

“Can’t you? Are you just going to let your father bark orders at you for the rest of your life? Let him slap you around like some idiot apprentice? You’re young and you’re smart. Do you really want to spend the rest of your days holding onto horses’ hooves and sweeping up their shit?”

How did Frieda know her father slapped her? Josephine shrugged. “As long as I can still ride the bicycle . . .”

“And what about your dream of owning your own bicycle one day?”

“The tips I get from the coachmen will never add up to enough for such an extravagance. But the cyclers will eventually win out over the horses—at least that’s what Moritz Herrenhus says. And then bicycles will become much more affordable. Can you believe there are already cycling schools? And Mr. Herrenhus says the demand is huge. Gentlemen practice their riding in large halls away from the wind and the weather. A cycling instructor watches over everything, and there are assistants to help, as well. He didn’t say anything about women practicing there. But regardless, bicycles seem to be getting more and more popular.”

“Quite frankly, dear, I don’t care,” said Frieda. “But what I do care about is you. And the fact that you are doing nothing with your life.”

Josephine popped a gooseberry into her mouth and frowned. “You’re being far too pessimistic. Some unimagined opportunity might be looming just around the corner,” she added, but only for Frieda’s benefit. She herself did not believe any such thing.

Frieda reached across the table and took Josephine’s hand in hers. “Even if riding a bicycle means a great deal to you, you must listen to me: don’t let yourself be blinded! All that glitters is not gold, they say, and it’s true. Moritz Herrenhus might well talk up how progressive he is to you young things, but he rules his clothing factory like an old general. The seamstresses aren’t allowed to make so much as a peep while they work, and woe betide them if he catches any of them actually chatting. They’re only permitted to go to the ladies’ room twice a day, and as far as I can tell they have no meal break at all. It’s hot inside that factory and hard to breathe with all the fluff flying around, but they’re forbidden to open the windows. Herrenhus is apparently afraid someone might smuggle out a piece of his valuable cloth! Tell me now, how progressive is that?” Frieda gazed piercingly at her.

Josephine said nothing. As far as she was concerned, the workers were better off staying inside their factory. She was terrified that one of them might look out and see her on the bicycle in Isabelle’s garden. What if one of them snitched to her father? She could kiss the cycling good-bye.

“And you can well imagine that none of them would dare complain about the working conditions or suggest any improvements!”

Josephine sniffed. “Have the neighbors been crying on your shoulder again? Do you think my ‘working conditions’ are any better? I’d be happy to work for a gentleman like Moritz Herrenhus. At least I’d get a wage for all my toil. Oh, you have no idea!” She stood up then and left without saying good-bye.

The last thing she needed was to waste her precious free time listening to speeches from Frieda. Herrenhus had opened up a new world for her. If Frieda didn’t understand that, there was nothing she could do about it.

Chapter Eight

When Lilo arrived a week later, Josephine greeted her with tears in her eyes. It was so good to see her friend again. Much to Frieda’s annoyance, Jo spirited Lilo away on her very first evening in Berlin to visit Isabelle. Clara met them there, and they all became fast friends. Shortly after they arrived, Isabelle pushed the Rover out of the shed to show it off to their guest. After Lilo had duly admired it, she pulled a newspaper out of her bag and showed them a full-page article about bicycle riding. Both Josephine and Isabelle wanted to snatch the paper away from her, but Lilo wasn’t about to give it up.

Relishing the moment, she opened the newspaper and read aloud to the spellbound girls. The article described a form of artistic cycling performed in teams, then went on to cover road racing, track cycling in velodromes, and other variations on the sport. Lilo looked up. “Now here it is! It says here that several military officers are planning to ride from Vienna to Berlin. But it’s not just a ride. They’ll be racing an Austrian military officer on horseback.” Lilo’s eyes sparkled as she looked at the girls gathered around her. “The headline reads, ‘Who Will Ride the Three Hundred and Sixty Miles First? Horse or Wheelman?’ ”

“Three hundred and sixty miles on a bicycle? That’s almost to the moon and back!” Josephine exclaimed.

Lilo nodded. “They still haven’t set the start date. It seems they haven’t collected enough money for it yet. But if it actually takes place, I’d give anything to be at the finish line.”

“I’d come, too,” said Josephine, spontaneously reaching out her hand to Lilo.

Isabelle extended her hand in agreement, too, but Clara held back. She was still skeptical about bicycles, and she was perfectly content to go about her life without participating in follies like long-distance cycling races.

“What makes you so sure the horse won’t win?” she said sullenly.

Lilo glanced at her, then rolled her eyes in adulation. “Long-distance cycling is the absolute top, the real art. I’m determined to try it myself someday.”

“As if a woman could ever do such a thing,” Josephine sniffed.

“Why not?” Lilo retorted. “We just have to fight for it!” She looked intently at the others. “We have to show people that women can ride bicycles just as well as men. But people will never change their minds if we continue to ride in secret.”

“And in the meantime, we’re supposed to let them throw stones and spit at us?” said Isabelle. “That’s exactly what happened to my friend Irene when she went riding through the Tiergarten last spring. She’s only ridden in secret ever since.” She straightened up. “But I’ve got some good news for you! I’ve managed to persuade my father to take us all to the new cycling track in eastern Berlin for my birthday next week. It’ll be wonderful! Of course, a few
very important
businessmen will be coming with us, and no doubt they’ll be bringing their eligible sons along—Papa would never do anything like that without ulterior motives.” She sighed extravagantly. “But I know how to fend them off.”

“Why do you want to fend the fellows off?” Lilo asked, looking at Isabelle with a frown. “I wouldn’t have any objections to a dashing cyclist.”

The others laughed.

“If that’s all it was . . .” said Isabelle, when they had calmed down again. “The young men my father considers to be suitable candidates for marriage are almost certainly
not
cyclers. They’re the kind who wear top hats and balance reading glasses on their noses so they can study their companies’ balance books more closely.”

“If that’s what they’re like, you can keep them then,” said Lilo.

The bicycle was glossy and black and smelled vaguely of fresh chain oil. Like the Rover Safety, it had a saddle, handlebars with two handgrips, and two identical wheels. It wasn’t as high as the Rover, nor did it look as stable, but there was something far more
agile
about it. It was beautiful.

Like a circus director extolling the next act, Moritz Herrenhus presented the bicycle to his daughter.

“It’s your birthday present!”

Isabelle’s expression managed to combine speechlessness, rapture, and fascination.

“A bicycle . . . for me?”

“Or should I have bought you a sewing machine? I’m a modern man, so you shall have a modern gift from me. And the bicycle is as modern as anything, especially this one. The tires are the latest invention—they are filled with air instead of being solid rubber. Thanks to them, you’ll sit more comfortably than in a rocking chair. There can’t be more than a dozen bicycles like this one in all Berlin, if that!” He puffed out his chest like a preening peacock. “I told the salesman, for my daughter, only the best is good enough.” Looking for additional kudos, he turned to his dumbstruck audience, which consisted of Josephine, Clara, and Lilo.

The machine gleamed like black silk beneath the summer sun. Josephine swallowed. She had never seen anything so beautiful. Her desire to inspect the bicycle more closely was so strong that her hands were practically shaking. The tires were not the only innovation, she soon realized. This model was designed without the top tube that the Rover had. Instead, the stabilizing tube ran in a kind of V between the front and rear wheels. Josephine immediately understood the benefit of this new type of construction: because they could mount the saddle without lifting their leg over the top bar, women in skirts could easily ride the bicycle as well. The wheels were also covered with a kind of wire mesh, which reduced the danger of catching one’s skirt in the spokes.

This bicycle had been built for a woman.

Isabelle sat on the saddle with unaccustomed ease and without doing anything to secure her lace-trimmed skirt. She squealed with delight as she rode her first lap around the yard. Clara and Lilo applauded.

“In a white dress on a shining steed, Isabelle . . . you’re as pretty as a princess!” Clara called.

“A princess? Our Isabelle has been one of those for a long time,” said Isabelle’s mother, Jeanette, who had just joined them. She was wearing an elegant, dusty-blue outfit with a matching hat that made her look quite intrepid. “I must say, I still find this new hobby a little eccentric,” she said to her husband. “But if things are really as you say, and men from the finest circles are indulging, then . . . I’m sure our princess will strike up some very interesting friendships. She might even find her prince.”

Josephine said nothing.
“Our princess,”
“men from the finest circles,”
“her prince”
—Mrs. Herrenhus could spout such nonsense! Cycling was about the wind in your face and the feeling that you could ride away from all the cares of the world, just as Isabelle was doing at that moment on her very own bicycle.

Deep down, Josephine felt a craving that she had never experienced before. Something at once covetous and passionate. Envy. She wanted a bicycle like that, too.

Finally, Isabelle stopped and dismounted. “Thank you, Father. It’s wonderful,” she said and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

Moritz Herrenhus patted his daughter’s shoulder patronizingly. Then he clapped his hands once and said, “Now it’s time for your birthday party. We’ll take your friends along with us. They should enjoy a treat once in a while, too!”

The trip in the four-in-hand carriage, which had been specially rented for the day and had enough space for eight to ride, took half an hour and led eastward through the sun-drenched city. The streets were full of pedestrians. Everyone seemed to be out strolling in Berlin’s parks and gardens. Children knocked steel hoops along in front of them with sticks and set paper boats afloat in the Spree, while their fathers smoked pipes or strolled arm in arm in with their wives along the shore. Street vendors had set up their stands on the busiest corners and were doing a brisk trade in red fruit jelly, lemonade, and pastries. Spend a penny here, another there, and very soon you felt like a real gentleman or fine lady. Tomorrow they would all go back to their factories, the drone of the machines in their ears, the fumes from the motors in their noses. But today, Sunday, was a day to celebrate life.

Josephine also spotted a few cyclers. Gentlemen defying the heat in their elegant suits, with top hats on their heads and silk scarves around their necks. Once, Jo believed she had spotted a woman on a bicycle, but on second glance it became clear that the cycler was wearing pants.

Feeling miserable, Josephine turned away from all the hustle and bustle. The high spirits of the others only made her own dark mood worse.

“The bicycle cost two hundred and fifty marks,” she heard Moritz Herrenhus say. “So you can see how much you’re worth to us!”

“Oh, Papa, you’re the best.”

“So much money,” Clara sighed.

Moritz Herrenhus looked over at Clara. “Isabelle will let you ride it, I’m sure. I have to justify spending two hundred and fifty marks somehow!” He laughed at his own joke.

Clara let out a small, self-conscious cough. “Maybe . . . you could lend me your bicycle? The new shape finally lets women ride with some decorum. Then Isabelle and I could practice artistic cycling together. We could decorate the bicycles with flowers and colorful ribbons.”

“That would certainly be
très chic
!” said Jeanette Herrenhus. “I’ve heard that some theaters in Berlin are already including artistic cycling in their stage shows. I gather they are very impressive performances.”

Colored ribbons on bicycles? Isabelle and Josephine looked at one another for a moment, and a smile united them.

“You are so lucky to be here in the city. New things only make it to my village years later. You probably had gas lamps when we were still making sparks with flint,” said Lilo, putting on a tragicomic face.

Most of the girls laughed.

But Jo was angry. As if Clara’s babbling wasn’t enough, now Lilo was doing it, too. She wanted to tell her friend that her homeland was hardly a backwater. After all, she had seen her very first velocipede in Schömberg! But it was like her throat was blocked. If Moritz Herrenhus mentioned how expensive the bicycle was one more time, she thought she would scream. She shook her head like an impatient horse. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she be happy for Isabelle? Or grateful to her friend’s father? It was actually very decent of him to invite them all along on this jaunt.
You envy her!
whispered a nasty little gnome inside her head. And Josephine could not deny it.

Josephine was relieved when they reached their destination. She couldn’t have put up with Isabelle’s giggling a minute longer. She pushed the door open without waiting for the coachman. But then she stopped and looked around, perplexed. Where was Berlin’s latest attraction?

The way Moritz Herrenhus had described it, Josephine had expected a huge hall with polished floorboards. Or an enormous, empty warehouse, or perhaps an auditorium with high windows and a high ceiling. But the cycle track was an open-air affair surrounded by nothing more than a low fence. Gesticulating broadly, Moritz Herrenhus paid for his little group, announcing loudly as he did so that this excursion was a birthday present for his daughter. But apart from the cashier, a portly woman with her gray hair tied in a bun, no one paid any attention to him—the spectators were far too busy cheering on their favorite cyclers, who were already speeding around the sandy oval on their bicycles.

“Go, Willy, go!”

“Faster, Joseph, faster!”

“Keep it up, Karl-Heinz!”

The visitors were all well-dressed, many of them outfitted in high-quality suits, and Josephine even saw one gentleman in a tailcoat and top hat. There were also several women present, all of whom were at least as nicely turned out as Jeanette Herrenhus. And though she found the gentlemen somewhat intimidating, Josephine soon found herself infected by their relaxed, lively mood. She had just turned to watch the racers on the track when Isabelle approached her.

“Father has invited a few business friends, so I have to be a good girl and go say hello to them. But he’d like to offer you, Clara, and Lilo a glass of sparkling wine—that will be nice, won’t it? See the grandstand there, where my parents are standing? They’ve got sausages and fish sandwiches there, what they call a cycler’s snack—I’ve never eaten such a thing in my life!” Isabelle laughed. “This is just my kind of birthday party! I can hardly wait to tell Irene and the others about it tomorrow. They’ll be green with envy! But I have to go and greet our guests, or Father will be cross with me again.”

Instead of following Isabelle up to the covered grandstand, Jo stayed down below, beside the oval track. She was captivated by the men on their bicycles, who were completing each lap faster than the one before. Almost all of them were riding a Rover Safety. Unlike the sartorially minded guests, the wheelmen wore short pants, shirts, and tight vests over the top of them. On their feet, they wore close-fitting boots that covered their ankles. Bending low over the handlebars, with their arms bent almost at right angles and tucked in close to their bodies, they reached incredible speeds. Jo blinked. She would never have thought of riding in such a bent-over fashion herself.

“So, have you already sniffed out one of these racetrack heroes?” Lilo asked, laying a friendly arm across her shoulders. “One thing I’ll give you Berliners—you all have some really remarkable experiences.”

Josephine laughed. “The men don’t interest me a bit, but the way they ride is amazing. They’re so fast!”

“But is it just because of the way they’re bent over? Unlike us, the men don’t have to deal with big puffy skirts. And those outfits they’re wearing couldn’t weigh more than ten pounds. Our dresses weigh can twice as much, and then some,” said Lilo quietly.

“You’re right,” Josephine sighed fervently. “I suppose we should probably be happy that we get to ride bicycles at all.”

They watched the riders in silence for a while.
Some of them are certainly attractive,
thought Josephine. One tall blond fellow in particular had caught her eye. He and his bicycle seemed almost fused into one being, and he took the curves with more grace than any of the others. She watched him intently as he flew past on every lap, but he seemed not to notice her at all.