While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) (41 page)

“Was that a proposal of marriage?” asked Isabelle breathlessly.

Leon screwed up his face as if he had a toothache. How he hated that word! He’d managed to avoid it successfully all these years. But now he merely shrugged and said, “I guess it probably was. Not that I would have lasted much longer as a free man! But you need a fellow as crazy as me beside you. That doesn’t leave me with much choice but to marry you, does it?”

A moment later they were in each other’s arms. Having Isabelle’s body pressed so close to his went straight to his core. With a groan, he tried to slip his right hand under her skirt, but his exertions were interrupted by the clearing of a throat.

“Should we be gettin’ along now, or what?” the coachman shouted down to them.

How quickly the tide could turn . . . Isabelle could have hugged the world! From the depths of despair one moment to a bright and beautiful future the next. She pictured herself as Leon’s wife. A winemaker in beautiful Rhineland-Palatinate. She gave a giddy laugh as they walked across the large yard that led to Adrian’s bicycle shop.

She had been terribly jealous of him and Josephine and all their plans. But then again, wasn’t running a bicycle shop rather average?

“We won’t stay long, all right?” she said and smiled meaningfully at Leon. “My parents are away in Potsdam for the weekend.”

“And what does that have to do with how long we spend at Adrian’s party?”

“Well, it means two things. First, we’ll have the house to ourselves,” she said, casting him a coquettish look. “And second, no one will be there to stop me when I pack my things.”

“Pack your things? You mean . . . you want to fly the coop? Just like that?”

“Yes,” said Isabelle plainly. She had rarely managed to really throw Leon, which made this moment even more delicious. “My father would never allow me to marry you. He dug up a new marriage candidate for me long ago.”

“But . . . you’d be risking a serious rift! Wouldn’t that cause some trouble? I mean, brides get a dowry, don’t they? And—”

“As if I care about my father’s money,” Isabelle scoffed. “Besides, you said yourself that you miss your home. The sooner we go, the better. As far as I’m concerned, we can leave tomorrow!” She grinned. “Oh, there are our young lovers now,” she said, pointing to Adrian and Josephine, who were just stepping outside.

After a rather stiff greeting and congratulating them on the opening, Isabelle handed them the laurel wreath. “Here. For you,” she said to Josephine. “Thank you for saving my life in Denmark. Whatever else might come between you and me, I will never forget that.”

“It was nothing, really,” murmured Josephine. She held up the silken band with the saying printed across it. “ ‘Laurels have a bitter reek, for those who have, and those who seek.’ ”

Isabelle shrugged. “Well,
one
victory isn’t enough. The next one has to come sometime. And then the next. It can put you under a lot of pressure. That’s not for me!” she said with deep conviction. “From now on, I’m only going to ride a bicycle for pleasure. There are great adventures to be had away from the road. Isn’t that true, darling?” She looked fondly at Leon.

“Ahem.” The sound made all four of them turn.

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to disturb you,” said a stout young woman. She had calloused hands and the red cheeks of someone who spent most of her time working outside. “I’m a washerwoman. One of them bicycles would sure come in handy for bringin’ the wash back to my customers. Could you help me choose one?”

Josephine and Adrian exchanged a look and smiled. Then Adrian said, “My fiancée will be very happy to take care of you.”

Isabelle smiled as Josephine walked off with her very first customer.

Notes:

If anything [can] change the German character, it will be the German woman. She herself is changing rapidly—advancing, as we call it. Ten years ago no German woman caring for her reputation, hoping for a husband, would have dared to ride a bicycle: today they spin about the country in their thousands. The old folks shake their heads at them; but the young men, I notice, overtake them and ride beside them.

Jerome K. Jerome,
Three Men on the Bummel
, 1900

• 1958—The German Cycling Federation (Bund Deutscher Radfahrer) lifts the ban on competitive cycling for women that had been in place since 1896.
  
• 1984—Women’s cycling becomes an Olympic sport.
  
• 1984—The inaugural Tour de France for women takes place but is discontinued a few years later.
  
• For those wanting to find out more about the state of long-distance riding today, I would recommend visiting the website of my technical advisor for this book, extreme cyclist Christian Mayer:
  www.christian-mayer.net
  (in German). Through his diary entries, one can experience what it is like to take part in races like Paris–Brest–Paris (PBP), the Kelheim twenty-four-hour race, or the biggest of them all, the Race Across America (RAAM).
  
• From Christian, I learned that, from a technical standpoint, bicycles have improved tremendously in the last hundred years. Long-distance races, however, are still a long slog; ultimately, they start and end in the cyclist’s head.
  
• Schömberg’s role as a location for mountain-air sanatoria really did begin in 1888. It was Hugo Römpler, a businessman from Erfurt, Germany, who recognized the potential of Schömberg’s healthy climate. More sanatoriums began to appear starting in 1890. “Germany’s Davos” was brought to my attention in a nice letter from one of my readers, M. Vögele from Schömberg, and I would like to thank her here and now for the information she sent!
  
• The two cycling clubs mentioned by name in my book are fictional. It is true, however, that Berlin was a mecca for competitive cycling at that time.
  
• Women’s cycling also had its beginnings in Berlin, and it found a very popular spokeswoman in journalist Amelie Rother.
  
• The Marschütz & Co. bicycle factory in Nuremberg really did exist, producing bicycles in large numbers from 1896 onward. Their Hercules bicycle soon became a well-known brand.
  
• The idea of sending Adrian Neumann to America was suggested by the book
  Meine Radreise um die Erde—Der Bericht des ersten deutschen Fahrrad-Weltreisenden anno 1895
  (
  My Bicycle Journey Around the World—The Report of the First German to Travel the World by Bicycle, 1895
  ) by Heinrich Horstmann. A reprint of Horstmann’s book was published by Maxi Kutschera Verlag, Leipzig.
  
• The Western Wheel Works in Chicago and the Crescent Bike both really existed. The founder of the Western Wheel Works, Adolph Schoeninger, who originally came from Württemberg in Germany, introduced a form of assembly line ten years before Henry Ford did.
  
• The Pope Manufacturing Company of Boston, founded by Albert Augustus Pope, was likewise real. Thanks to aggressive tactics, the company grew to become the largest manufacturer of bicycles in America. However, the company’s fortunes waned following a fire in 1896 that destroyed the offices and a large number of bicycles.
  
• Susanne Lindberg and her fiancé really did organize a one-thousand-kilometer (approximately 621-mile) race in Denmark in 1897. Josephine’s participation is fictional. The actual route they followed is unknown; at least, I was unable to find any unequivocal source. I have described what I imagine to be the most probable route.
  
• The Barnim Road Women’s Prison was officially called the Königlich-Preußisches Weibergefängnis (Royal Prussian Women’s Prison). It had maternity and mother-and-child wards, but I was not able to discover whether it really had a juvenile division. Such institutions for young offenders were first established during the German Empire.
  
• My cycling hero, Leon Feininger, is based on the real racing cyclist Josef Fischer, who first rode from Vienna to Berlin in 1893.
  

The fortunes of Jo, Clara, and Isabelle continue in volume two of the trilogy, to be published in 2016.

About the Author

Photo © Privat

Petra Durst-Benning is one of Germany’s most successful and prominent authors. For more than fifteen years, her historical novels have been inviting readers to go adventuring with courageous female characters and experience their exciting lives for themselves. Her books have enjoyed great success overseas as well, and several have been adapted for television. Petra Durst-Benning lives with her husband in Stuttgart.

About the Translator

Photo © 2012 Ronald Biallas

Born in Australia but widely traveled, Edwin Miles has been working as a translator for more than ten years, primarily in film and television.

After studying in his hometown of Perth, Western Australia, Edwin completed an MFA in fiction writing at the University of Oregon in 1995. While there, he spent a year working as fiction editor on the literary magazine the
Northwest Review
. In 1996, he was shortlisted for the prestigious Australian/Vogel Literary Award for young writers for a collection of short stories.

After many years living and working in Australia, Japan, and the United States, he currently resides in his “second home” in Cologne, Germany, with his wife, Dagmar, and two very clever children.