While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) (40 page)

“My medicine man looked more like a Viking,” replied Jo with a laugh.

“Who knows? Maybe Susanne rubs her whole body with that horrible stuff, and that’s what makes her so fast,” said Luise, standing up with a groan.

Lilo set off again a short while later. She wanted to take the last third of the course slowly but without another nap. She had done it that way on her previous long-distance races and wanted to do the same here in Denmark.

Josephine, however, decided to grant herself a few hours of sleep. Irene and Luise did the same.

Only when Charles Hansen had personally assured them that he would wake them again at midnight did Jo lie down in the barn. The hay smelled wonderful, and it felt softer than the finest feather bed. Neither Luise’s snoring nor the rustling of mice around her feet stopped her from falling into a deep sleep in minutes.

Something was different. Jo sensed it almost instantly as she mounted her bicycle again. But what? She pedaled away with a sense of foreboding.

The air was moist and heavy, and Jo’s lungs hurt when she breathed. It was a dingy, overcast night, not at all like the night before. There were no stars in the sky, and her gas lamp only dimly lit the road ahead.

“There’s rain in the air,” said Irene, pulling up on her left.

Jo nodded. That’s what it was! The weather had been so glorious up to now that the possibility of rain had never crossed her mind.

To avoid endangering each other on the gloomy road, Jo, Irene, and Luise had decided to keep a distance of several yards between them and to take turns riding in front. Irene was the first to take the lead. Jo pedaled along mechanically behind her clubmates. She felt like screaming with pain every time she made the slightest movement in the saddle. She had rubbed her skin so raw that it stung. Her bones ached like an old woman’s, her eyelids were heavy, and her eyes burned with exhaustion. The night—which she otherwise loved so much—stretched ahead of her in terrifying endlessness.

First, she heard a roar from the east, the direction of the sea. Then the wind came up and began lashing Zealand’s coast. Josephine soon felt as bent from the wind as the bizarrely formed trees she’d seen throughout the area. At first, she tried to brace herself against it, which cost her a lot of energy and didn’t help. She rode on, hunched over, her left leg working harder than her right. Irene, banked crookedly ahead of her, rode and swore. Jo had to smile.

Jo was just passing Luise to take her turn at the front when she felt the first raindrops. Every drop was cold and painful on her chafed skin, and her fingers were soon so ice-cold and stiff that just holding onto the handlebars was agony.

“Shouldn’t we get under cover?” she screamed over the wind and rain.

“Yes, but where?” Irene yelled back.

Jo narrowed her eyes. Irene was right. They were riding through a barren dune landscape, and there was not a house, barn, or even large tree in sight.

“Maybe we should ride side by side for a while,” Luise shouted, coming up on Josephine’s left. Irene joined them. “Now let’s be sure we don’t have an accident,” she said, spitting out a wet strand of hair from between her lips.

They rode on through the rain in silence. Soon they were soaked through to their underwear.

I can’t go on.
Josephine didn’t know whether she had just thought the words or spoken them aloud. She looked first to Luise, then to Irene, riding doggedly beside her, stubbornly looking straight ahead.

The words must have been in her head. But even in there, they were dangerous enough . . .

“I can’t go on . . .”

Josephine turned her head in surprise.

“Yes you can!” Irene hissed.

Her face twisted in pain, Luise pedaled on.

Jo felt like crying. “My chest . . . Breathing hurts so much . . .” She wanted to throw herself onto the wet sand and never get up again.

“You think I’m doing any better?” Irene snapped at her. “Pull yourself together, damn it!”

Jo nodded, feeling dismal.

Dawn began to break around six o’clock. The wind and rain stopped as if someone had thrown a switch. The three exhausted women looked at one another. Was God just fooling with them?

Two hours later, Copenhagen came into view. Copenhagen—the start and the end of the race—but only once they had completed the long loop north of Copenhagen a second time!

What I wouldn’t give to have the race be over now . . .
thought Jo. For the first time in all the years that she had been riding, she had lost her love of cycling. All she wanted was for the pain to stop. And to sleep. She was so tired . . .

“Eight hours to cover less than eighty miles. What a miserable section,” said Irene when they stopped to warm up and reenergize themselves with a glass of schnapps in one of the fishermen’s shacks on the harbor. “We’re not going to win anything by riding like that!”

Jo, who had recovered a little in the warmth of the shack, looked up in surprise from her herring sandwich. “What do you want to win? It’s been clear from the start that Susanne Lindberg will come in first.”

“Exactly,” said Luise, pushing her empty schnapps glass back across the grubby counter. “Besides, it’s the principles of the race that matter more. Cooperation. And a common goal.”

“Everyone who sticks it out for six hundred miles is a winner,” Josephine added.

Irene snorted. “If you don’t care about finishing with a decent time, that’s up to you. I won’t think any less of you for it. And as far as Susanne’s concerned, she can win whatever she likes. But speaking for myself, I want to cross the line as soon as possible behind her.”

Josephine rolled the last mouthful of schnapps back and forth over her tongue. Perhaps it would take away a little of the bad taste she’d had in her mouth the last couple of hundred miles. If she were honest with herself, she’d been hoping to finish as close behind Susanne as she could, too. But the trials of the previous night had made her question her plan.

“Well . . .” said Luise slowly. “You’re right. If we’re going to all this trouble in the first place . . .”

“Do you really think we can do it?” Jo asked tentatively, feeling new strength even as she asked the question.

Irene grinned. “Want me to show you how?” She threw a few coins on the counter and jumped up from her chair. A moment later, she was out at the bicycles.

Josephine put down her half-finished sandwich and looked at Luise. “Shall we?”

Luise nodded grimly. “You bet!”

It was as if someone had thrown a switch not only on the weather but inside the women. Suddenly, Josephine found riding fun again. Her legs once again did what they were supposed to do, namely, to pedal on, strong and steady.

As they were given their final stamps, Josephine’s heart swelled with pride. Every empty square was now filled—a visual record of her accomplishment.

From there, it was a mere thirty miles to their goal. They were in the home stretch!

It happened ten miles outside Copenhagen. The culprit was a large rock. Irene managed to dodge it with her front wheel, but her back wheel slammed into it. A metallic clang sounded and all three women stopped.

“Damn, it’s buckled,” said Irene, inspecting her back wheel.

Jo let out a quiet sigh. Then that was that . . .

Irene’s eyes sparkled. “Don’t think a little thing like this is going to stop me, or even slow me down!” She swung herself back onto her saddle.

“But . . . you can’t!” Jo and Luise cried out simultaneously. Both of them had suffered buckled wheels before, and they knew how horribly the bicycle vibrated afterward. Fadi Nandou had once described it as like being like having a thousand bumblebees in your behind. But Irene didn’t care.

“What’s taking you so long?” Irene called from a hundred yards ahead, and she even managed to take one hand off the handlebars of her wobbly machine and wave back at them. With her rump swaying back and forth like the rear end of a cow, she looked ridiculous. Josephine and Luise began to giggle uncontrollably.

“Now we know which one of us is
truly
obsessed,” said Luise, and she set off in pursuit of her clubmate.

The finish line had been constructed from two freshly cut trees, to whose leafy branches someone had tied many golden bands that fluttered merrily in the wind.
I’ll never forget this image,
thought Josephine, and she felt a lump form in her throat.

A loud cheer went up when the three women crossed the line. After sixty hours and six hundred miles, they were at the very limit of their strength but also elated.

Tears of joy rolled down Jo’s face as they waved to the crowd. She was laughing and crying at the same time, and had goose bumps all over, from her toes to her scalp. Had they really done it? Yes, they had done it. They had crossed the finish line, undeterred by all manner of obstacles. And in just sixty hours!

Jo dismounted painfully from her bicycle, her entire body so tired and overstrained that her arms and legs were trembling. Then she, Irene, and Luise threw their arms around each other and danced with joy. It did not dampen their spirits in the slightest to know that Susanne Lindberg and two other women had reached the finish just under six hours ahead of them. Hearing that she had come in three hours ahead of Leon Feininger and the other men was the best news of all. Veit Merz had had to drop out early with a knee problem, and fourteen other men and women had also withdrawn. Others were still pedaling; only half of those who’d begun the race had a chance of making it to the finish.

“Thank you,” said Josephine to Irene as they made their way to the improvised changing rooms. “Without you, I probably would have given up.”

“Nonsense,” Irene replied brusquely. “A Neumann never gives up! And the way I see it, you’ll be one of us soon enough. Look, there’s Adrian . . .”

Her tired legs were forgotten. Josephine ran to the man she loved.

“I’m so proud of you,” Adrian whispered after a fervent embrace. “Six hundred miles on a bicycle . . . You’re among the first women to do it, ever! With this race, you’ve shown that women are just as capable as men.”

Jo looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Do you think so?”

Adrian nodded. “We’ll have women lining up to be our customers when they hear what you’ve done. This race is the best free advertising for women’s cycling! And you are the best spokeswoman imaginable.”

Josephine frowned in mock indignation. “Me? A spokeswoman? And who said anything about my being free? You’ll have to offer me at least a little something. After all, I’m a
winner
now!” She said the last words with feigned arrogance.

“How about this?” With an elegant flourish, Adrian took a leather case from his pocket and opened it.

Josephine had to muffle a cry when she saw the gold ring set with a ruby.

“The ruby stands for your fighter’s heart,” said Adrian, his voice heavy with emotion. “You taught me how important it is not only to dream my dreams but to fight for them. Without you, I’d probably still be sitting in my father’s offices, pushing numbers around.”

Jo looked at the ground. “That’s not—” she began, but Adrian laid one finger gently but firmly to her lips.

“To me, you are the most beautiful, the best, and the most wonderful woman in the world. I can’t imagine my life without you anymore, but my life with you becomes clearer every day.” Adrian’s face was infused with love. “Will you marry me?”

“Oh,” said Jo in a small voice. “If that’s how it is . . .” She threw her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoes, and kissed him on the lips. “Yes, I will.”

Epilogue

Berlin, four weeks later

Josephine ran out of the warehouse for the umpteenth time. It was just before one in the afternoon, and they wanted to open the doors at two. Still no guests in sight. Good. That gave her a chance to check everything one final time. She wanted everything at their opening party to be perfect, down to the last detail.

She and Adrian had been busy with the preparations all week. Working together was so much fun that they regularly lost track of time and worked until late in the night.

The first thing they did was rid the bikes of the dust they had accumulated on their long transatlantic journey and polish them until they gleamed. They were fortunate that all of them had arrived in perfect condition. The warehouse in the industrial area of Feuerland that Irene had rented only as an interim solution turned out to be perfect for their purposes, and Adrian had immediately signed a long-term lease with the owner.

Men’s and women’s bicycles stood neatly separated into two distinct sections. The sight of all the elegant Crescent Bikes lined up side by side made Josephine’s heart beat a little faster every time she looked at them.

When Adrian had first shown her the bicycles, she had immediately taken one of the women’s models for a test ride. She fell in love with it right away. The Crescent Bike was elegant, agile, and fast—Josephine felt completely stable and safe. As for the price . . . They would sell the bicycles for one hundred and eleven marks, Adrian decided. It was below anything else on the imported bicycle market, and given their own purchase price of fifty marks, they would still earn a tidy profit, said Adrian, who was hoping for high sales.

Who knows? Perhaps we’ll make our first sale today,
Josephine thought, as she admired the colorful pennants she and Adrian had strung over the entrance. Large vases filled with sunflowers stood on the floor to the left and right of the main door. Their sign—eight feet long and three feet high, emblazoned with “Neumann’s Crescent Bikes and Repair Shop”—gleamed yellow and blue in the sun.

Everything was ready . . .

“Jo? Josephine, where are you?” Josephine’s heart fluttered when she saw Adrian striding toward her. He already seemed so much nimbler than just a few weeks earlier. The therapy that the doctors in the Charité had prescribed really seemed to be working.

“You haven’t changed yet?”

Josephine laughed. “Aren’t I pretty enough for you like this?” she said, displaying the oil-smeared dress she had worn to clean the bicycles. Her ruby engagement ring sparkled in the sunlight as she gave a playful twirl in the grimy outfit.

Adrian had officially announced their engagement as soon as they returned from Denmark. He had not allowed himself to get into any discussions with his father. “Either you welcome my bride or you don’t say a word,” he had said, which had stopped the old man in his tracks. But the magnate had fought enough wars to know when he was beaten. With a slightly cantankerous air, he had accepted Josephine into his family, but he had grown friendlier when he heard that Josephine had built up her own workshop from scratch. “I started that way myself, way back when. Beginnings are always the best,” he had said with a sentimental note in his voice. Then he shook both her and Adrian’s hands firmly and wished them the best of luck.

“The wine is cold, and the plates of hors d’oeuvres will be here in half an hour . . .” Adrian looked over the long tables covered with white tablecloths. “You’re really sure we shouldn’t open your workshop today?” he said and looked at Josephine with his head tilted inquiringly.

She nodded. “That door stays closed. We don’t want to give people the impression that the first thing a Crescent Bike needs is a workshop, do we?”

Adrian laughed. “But I’m allowed to mention it, aren’t I? It’s a service bonus we’re offering, after all: ‘Free repairs for a year!’ ” He swept his hands in the air as if displaying a banner. “I doubt any of our competitors can match that.”

It had been Adrian’s idea to move Josephine’s workshop out of Luisenstadt. The move had been a difficult decision, because it meant losing several of her favorite customers, including Oskar Reutter. But from a business perspective, the move was the right one. She consoled herself with the knowledge that Adrian wanted to move into Frieda’s house with her after their wedding in December.

“Certainly you can mention it. But our cleverer customers might already know we do repairs from our sign!” Josephine said. She looked toward the entrance. “Do you think Isabelle and Leon will come?” She hadn’t seen her old friend since their return from Denmark.

Adrian shrugged. “No idea. Maybe she’s calmed down, maybe not. I ran into Leon at the club a few days ago. He told me that Isabelle is back on her feet again and doing fine. The doctors in Copenhagen chastised her for going too far with all the dope. Too much kola syrup can cause not only a circulatory collapse but death from cardiac failure.”

For a moment, they stood in troubled silence.

Then Jo, suddenly anxious, said, “What if no one comes at all?”

“That’s the last thing I’m worried about,” Adrian laughed. “The minute you offer free food, people will be there, believe me. Besides, our friends and clubmates wouldn’t let us down!”

“Then maybe I really should go and change,” she said. And she hurried off toward the office, where she had stowed her dress.

Clara took a deep breath. Then she knocked on the door of her husband’s office.

Gerhard was sitting at his desk, as he always did on Saturday afternoon, finishing up the weekly accounts for the practice.

“I’ve dropped Matthias off with my mother. He can stay there until this evening,” said Clara, setting down a cup of tea beside him. Black tea, steeped for three minutes, with a slice of lemon, just the way he liked it.

“Hmm,” he said without looking up from the rows and columns of numbers.

“No doubt you saw the big announcement in the paper,” Clara went on. “The one about Adrian Neumann’s grand opening of his new business. That’s where I’m going now.” She held her breath as she waited for his reaction. It wasn’t long in coming.

“What do you mean? I forbid you—”

“But I won’t let you forbid me, never again,” Clara broke in. She was shaking so hard on the inside that she had to steady herself on the edge of his desk. It took all her effort to keep her voice calm. “I’ve been thinking about a great deal over the last few weeks. About you and me and my friends Josephine and Isabelle. You know, they’ve become real heroines since the race in Denmark! You’re such a keen newspaper reader . . . No doubt you’ve seen the articles praising what they did.” She couldn’t do anything about the slightly hateful tone of her voice. “No, I will not let you stop me!” she said sharply as soon as Gerhard opened his mouth to reply. “Fine, be an enemy of women’s cycling for the rest of your life. And you don’t have to like Jo and Isabelle. They don’t like you, either. But they are
my
friends, and they will
stay
my friends. I will not let you deny me those friendships.” She pulled on her gloves as if such a scene between them was the most normal thing in the world. But her heart was pounding. She saw his expression growing darker, and she stepped quickly back to the door before he could lay a hand on her. With her fingers already on the handle, she paused. “And there’s something else I’ve been wanting to say to you for a long time.” She took a deep breath. “Don’t you ever hit me again. Do you hear me? Never again.”

She left the room. Unfortunately, she did not turn back, or she would have seen the look of utter dismay on her husband’s face.

“Stop the coach. We have to pick something up,” said Isabelle when they were in front of the best flower shop in the city.

“You ordered flowers? Great!” said Leon, jumping out of the carriage to hold the door open for Isabelle. How fortunate that women thought of such things!

“Not flowers,” said Isabelle, taking hold of his hand and stepping out. “Something better.”

“A laurel wreath?” said Leon, heaving the wagon-wheel-sized arrangement into the carriage. Across the wreath was a silken banner. “ ‘Laurels have a bitter reek, for those who have, and those who seek,’ ” Leon read aloud. “That’s a strange saying . . . What does it mean?”

“It’s an old folk adage,” Isabelle replied. “Jo will understand what I’m trying to say.” As the coach rolled off again, she looked out joylessly at the passing city.

Leon, who had grown accustomed to Isabelle’s strange frame of mind in recent weeks, sighed. Whatever he said or did, however charming he might be—he had only rarely managed to make her laugh since their return from Denmark.

“I looked death right in the eye!” she had screamed when he had complained about her bad mood. “Nothing is the same after that. Nothing, don’t you see?”

Yes, he saw. And no, he didn’t.

She had survived. So why did she have to suddenly start thinking so deeply about everything?

Another thing he didn’t understand was his own reaction to her strange behavior. Normally, if he found himself involved with a moody woman, he would simply have packed up and left. But with Isabelle . . . there was something about her that held him back. Was it his guilt over not being with her in her hour of need?

Leon was not the kind of man to think long or hard about his own feelings, but he had known for a long time that a great deal more bound him to Isabelle than to his previous liaisons. Her titian hair, her catlike eyes, and her striking cheekbones. Her full lips and the way the top one could curl so saucily—Leon never tired of looking at Isabelle. He couldn’t get enough of her, it was true, and that had nothing to do with guilt.

But there was more to it than that: the fact that she came from a rich family, that she had good morals, a good education—those were all things that Leon secretly admired, though he would never openly admit such a thing. She had the courage to stand up to her father, and the fortitude to not let anyone dictate how she ought to live her life. Weren’t they alike in that regard? He, too, had no intention of working himself to death in his parents’ vineyard! They were two kindred souls . . . Was that the root of the attraction between them? Or did the fact that Isabelle was a “good match” play a role?
At the very least, a rich wife can’t hurt,
he thought with a grin. Cycling was an expensive pastime. If he’d had better equipment, there was no way Susanne Lindberg would have gotten the better of him in Denmark!

Leon searched his mind feverishly for something to cheer Isabelle up. It was rare for him to find himself at a loss for words. But before he could come up with something, Isabelle signaled to the driver to pull over again and stop near the Victory Column.

With her arms folded across her chest, she looked at him sullenly and said, “What do you have in mind for our future? Do you think I’m the kind of girl you can string along forever? I want clarity. Certainty. I want a future. A future worth living for. Look around!” She made a sweeping gesture toward the city around them. “Everyone here has plans! Everyone except me.” She sounded desperate, but a little like a sullen child, too.

Leon found her simply enchanting. “Who says so?” he heard himself answering. “You’re coming with me, of course. Berlin is a wonderful city, but I miss the forests and mountains of the Rhineland-Palatinate. I’m overdue for some training in the mountains. Besides, in June they start cutting back the foliage in our vineyard, and every hand is needed.”
What am I going on about?
he asked himself. He’d always tried to dodge the work in the vineyard. But suddenly he felt a strange urge to hold a pair of pruning shears in his hands again. His nose longed for the smell of the fire they made from the vine cuttings.

Isabelle looked at him wide-eyed. Her future lay in his hands—her eyes told him nothing less.

Leon straightened up. “Now that I’ve gotten to know your home, it’s time you got to know mine. Who knows, maybe you’ll like life in Rhineland-Palatinate so much that you’ll want to stay longer?” Leon doubted that very much, but he was finding so much pleasure in his speech that he didn’t question it anymore.