While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

“I hope that will teach you not to answer back. And just so you know: There’ll be no cozy potato peeling in the kitchen or ironing in the laundry for you. I’m assigning you to our caretaker. Let’s see what your shoulder says to a bit of hard labor . . .”

Although it was shortly before midday, gas lamps were still burning in every house in Luisenstadt—it was one of those November days that seemed unwilling to brighten. Isabelle’s lips were white with cold and her eyes were tearing up from the icy east wind. She pulled the collar of her coat closer around her neck.

“Where have you been? I’ve been twiddling my thumbs for ten minutes out here—next time I’ll go by myself!” she said, when Clara finally emerged from the pharmacy.

“Stop complaining. I had a lot of trouble getting out at all!” Clara answered breathlessly as she straightened the strap on her bag. Inside it, in addition to a few medicine bottles, were a block of chocolate and some peppermint candy for Josephine. She had told her parents that she was going to deliver the medicine to several of their older, disabled customers. And before they could question her as to who and where, she was out the door.

The two young women strode quickly toward the tram stop and were just able to jump aboard before the tram rolled away.

“When I think of all the trouble I got into with my father because of Jo, I hardly feel like going on this little jaunt at all,” said Isabelle as they crammed in beside the other passengers on a hard wooden bench. “She got me in serious hot water, and if my parents knew I was visiting her now, it would start all over again.”

“Then why didn’t you just stay home?” asked Clara. Her mother, too, would rake her over the coals if she knew where she was really going. But a year ago, when she had been lying in the hospital with a broken leg, Josephine had visited her every day. She couldn’t turn her back on her friend now . . .

A shudder ran down Clara’s spine. Josephine in the Barnim Road Women’s Prison—the very thought made her cringe. That place was full of prostitutes, con artists, and other lowlifes. Josie didn’t belong there, not her best friend for as long as she could remember!

“Besides,” Clara said, “you’re partly to blame for Josephine’s being in prison in the first place. You were the one who was always filling her head with crazy ideas and all just because you were bored.”

“That is . . . outrageous,” Isabelle answered indignantly. “
I
certainly didn’t make Josephine steal from my father. Just the opposite, in fact. I tried to stop her from going out that night. But all you could think about was your work. It made no difference to you what Jo was up to.”

Clara looked away, clearly hurt. She’d accused herself of that very thing plenty of times—it was true that she hadn’t tried hard enough to get through to Jo. Isabelle didn’t have to rub it in.

“And that old neighbor, Frieda, the one Josephine liked so much—she could just as easily have said something to her,” said Isabelle. “Frieda knew about Jo’s obsession. She just chose not to do anything about it.”

At the next station, they transferred to another tram. They had hardly sat down when Isabelle, keeping her voice low, picked up where she had left off. “Even if we had all used all our powers of persuasion, it wouldn’t have made any difference—she was insatiable and completely immune to reason.”

“Then why did you ever let it go so far? Opportunity makes the thief—that’s what they say, right?” Clara said bitterly. “Besides, you certainly could have done more to stick up for Jo with your father. If you had, maybe he never would have reported her.”

Isabelle let out a short, shrill laugh. “How do you know whether—or how much—I stuck up for Jo?! I . . .”

The girls continued bickering, throwing more recriminations at each other. When they arrived at the Landsberger Allee station—several tram changes and more than half an hour later—the mood between them was as chilly as the east wind.

“Friedrichshain Park looks so grim in winter,” Isabelle murmured, glancing in the direction of the empty park, where a few stray dogs were the only sign of life. There was an unusual glimmer of trepidation in her eyes.

The girls began walking through the early winter wasteland toward the forbidding building with its many small windows. The prison exuded an aura of menace. Clara’s steps grew heavier.

The man inside the small gatehouse looked up from his newspaper. His eyes narrowed to slits, and he looked the two young women up and down.

“What do you want?” A reek of decay escaped through the small window with each word. The man’s mouth contained rotten black stumps where his teeth should have been.

The sight made Clara’s skin crawl, but she forced herself to smile. “We would like to visit a friend—”

“This ain’t a hotel. No visitors. Get lost.”

“But . . .” Clara began. “How dare you speak to us like—”

Isabelle pushed her aside. “Please accept my apologies. My companion doesn’t always choose her words wisely. We are from the . . . Committee for the Social Rehabilitation of Delinquent Girls. Our mothers sit on the committee’s board of directors. They have sent us here to find out whether donated monies are being put to good use. Our visit is devoted solely to this end.” She looked at Clara disdainfully, then took out her purse. With a sweet smile, she slipped a few marks across to the gatekeeper. “Your employer would certainly be grateful to you, were you to lend the efforts of such an indispensable committee your . . . unbureaucratic assistance. Which is to say, please let us in. The young woman with whom we would like to speak on behalf of the committee is named Josephine Schmied.”

The gatekeeper’s face contorted into an unpleasant grin. “Well, then, if that’s how it is . . . though I’m going to have to convince my colleagues over at the main building of the importance of your committee. And one or two of the guards, too . . .” He held up the money suggestively.

“Get on with it, then. We’re in a hurry.”

“Josephine Schmied!” The guard interrupted the lesson and looked from Krotzmann to the assembled class. Josephine hesitantly raised her hand.

“Come with me.”

Josephine fled the room under the teacher’s wrathful eye. What was this about? Was this the end of her ordeal? All of it just a misunderstanding? Had Moritz Herrenhus withdrawn his complaint? Josephine sighed quietly—what a pleasant thought.

The guard unlocked a small, narrow room where a table and a few chairs stood.

“Isabelle? Clara!” At the sight of the familiar faces, Josephine’s heart skipped a beat. She threw her arms around Clara’s neck. “You came . . .” Tears welled instantly in her eyes.

“Sit down, all three of you! Physical contact is forbidden,” ordered the guard before leaving the room.

“What happened to your hands? You’re bleeding!” cried Clara the moment she sat down.

Josephine hid her hands beneath the table. “That’s from the accident . . .”

“But . . . an injury like that can get infected before you know it. You must have it treated right away.” Clara looked from Jo to Isabelle, who sat beside Clara, looking aloof.

“It’s not so bad,” said Josephine. “I’m so happy you’ve come.” She felt a lump rise in her throat and fought back her tears.

“It wasn’t easy, take my word for it,” Isabelle said. “My father’s as angry as a bull. He couldn’t talk about anything else at breakfast—you and the damage you’ve done. If he knew I was visiting you . . .”

Jo lowered her eyes. “I . . . I wish the earth would swallow me here and now when I think about what I did. I was so stupid . . .”

“Sadly, your epiphany is a little late,” said Isabelle in a chilly tone.

“Isabelle didn’t mean it like that,” Clara rushed to say and shook her head brusquely at Isabelle. “How are you? Are they treating you well? When are they letting you out? Before Christmas? The man at the gate said they don’t actually let anyone visit at all. We don’t know if we’ll be able to come again . . .”

Didn’t her friends know that she’d been sentenced to three and a half years? “They’ve—” Jo began, then broke off. “We’ll see,” she said as breezily as she could.
Don’t think about it. Don’t talk about it.
Maybe then she would wake up from this nightmare. To change the subject, she said, “Clara, is it true that old Dr. Fritsche passed away? When I asked my mother to send for him after the accident, she told me he’d died. Strange that I didn’t hear about it earlier.”

“Does that surprise you? All you could think about was your own obsession,” Isabelle replied. Clara jabbed her sharply in the ribs.

“Jo practically never gets sick, so it’s hardly surprising. I, on the other hand, found out the very day . . .” Clara said, a tragicomic look on her face.

“He was a regular visitor to your place until the very end, wasn’t he? Your mother would have just
loved
for you to marry old Fritsche. Then she would have had a doctor in the house for every little cough and cold you caught. Remember how we all used to joke around about that? Those were the days . . .” Isabelle looked at her two friends and smiled.

“Joke around? You two teased me mercilessly!” Clara replied in mock outrage.

The three young women laughed, and for a moment their old familiarity returned.

“Here. This is for you,” said Clara and handed Josephine the block of chocolate.

If Adele sees that . . .
thought Josephine. “Thank you. But I insist on sharing it with the two of you,” she said firmly. Her hands ached as she set to work unwrapping it.

“Ever since Dr. Fritsche died, everyone’s been coming to my father as a substitute,” said Clara as she popped a square of chocolate into her mouth. “He’s asked me to help him meet the extra demand by making the medicines, even if it means I have to stay up late in the laboratory every night.”

Josephine looked fondly at her friend. “Don’t go pretending you don’t enjoy it. There’s nothing you like more than stirring up some potion or other.”

“Or crushing herbs with a mortar and pestle,” Isabelle added.

Clara smiled. “You’ve caught me!”

As the banter flew back and forth, Josephine felt a pang of admiration for her friend. Ever since Clara first helped her father boil soap years before, it had been clear that she would someday go to work in his pharmacy. Her mother, however—who considered such work to be beneath her daughter’s dignity—had sent her off to a home-economics school to prepare her for her future responsibilities as a housewife. Clara had nearly perished there from boredom. With a tenacity that nobody had seen in her before, she had finally managed to prevail against her mother’s will. And now, she stood side by side in a fresh, white apron with her father in the pharmacy. Clever Clara had made her own dream come true, while she, Jo, had simply thrown her own dreams in the gutter.

Clara sighed. “But my father will be back to his old ways soon enough—being a know-it-all and hovering over my shoulder when I’m boiling soap or making liniment. A new doctor’s coming by this evening as Fritsche’s successor. It’s taken so long to find anyone willing to take over his practice . . .”

None of them could think of anything else to say on the subject, and a silence settled over them. The illusion that they were just having a casual chat burst like a bubble, and all three of them suddenly felt self-conscious.

I’m sorry,
Josephine wanted to say. She felt the words on her lips, but she kept them inside. “I’m sorry” was what you said when you stepped on someone’s foot. In her case, it would never have been enough.

Isabelle cleared her throat. “We should probably be getting along. I . . . I still have to study my French vocabulary—Madame Blanche has set a test for tomorrow. Again! And there’s an English test coming up, too. I’d like to know what the point of all these foreign languages is. I’m never going to get out of Berlin. Besides, we’ve been invited to a ball this evening, and we’ll need time to get ready.”

Josephine smiled. “Your hair is already perfect. Please don’t tell me you’re going to spend hours getting it done again.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes. “It is my father’s wish that I always look perfectly turned out.”