While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

“The bicycle survived the crash just fine, and I’m not hurt. What about you?”

Josephine spread her arms out as if to say,
no harm done
.

The girl sighed with relief. “Thank God for that! If I’d crashed into you . . . But I couldn’t have known that someone would be walking around here, and the bicycle doesn’t have a brake, unfortunately. What are you doing out in the woods by yourself? You’re staying at the sanatorium, aren’t you? I’ve seen you marching through our village a few times now. I wanted to catch up and have a little chat, but you’d always disappeared by the time I got outside.”

Josephine smiled and introduced herself.

“Jo? From Berlin? I thought so. You’re the girl my great-aunt Frieda sent down here.” The young woman tossed her hair, which just made it stand out even more wildly from her head. “I’m Lieselotte, but everyone just calls me Lilo.”

Lilo’s handshake was so hard that Josephine grimaced in pain.

“You’re the daughter of Joachim Roth, our caretaker? I didn’t even know he had any children. And Frieda never mentioned you, either . . .”

Lilo snorted in disgust. “Terrific. Just goes to show what they think of me. My father doesn’t surprise me—he doesn’t want me coming into contact with the sanatorium’s sick guests.” Lilo grabbed her bicycle and began pushing it down the hill. “And he doesn’t know anything about this—so don’t breathe a word of it!”

Josephine had to hurry to keep up with her. “I’m no snitch. But hold on a second. What
is
that thing? I’ve never seen anything like it. And what were you doing with it before you fell off? You were faster than lightning!”

Lilo stopped abruptly. “Are you kidding me? You come from Berlin, right? There must be tons of bicycles there. I just read in the newspaper about some women who were supposedly riding velocipedes in your city park. It seems the other people in the park pelted them with stones, and the man who wrote the article talked about a ‘scandal for the female sex.’ You didn’t hear about that?”

“No, really, not a word. I . . . We don’t read any newspapers at home. It’s the first time I’ve seen such a . . . velo.”

Lilo frowned, still skeptical. Then, in a more forgiving tone, she presented her vehicle. “This is a velocipede, also known as a pedal bicycle. You sit here on this saddle, then put one foot on each side, on these pedals. With your hands, you hold onto the handlebars, which you use to steer in whatever direction you want to ride. Pressing on the pedals sets the bicycle rolling. I believe it’s faster than a horse. And
awfully
expensive, too,” said Lilo, her eyes glowing with pride.

Josephine shook her head in disbelief. “But it’s so narrow! Don’t you fall over as soon as you’re on the saddle?”

Lilo grinned. “Well, it takes a bit of skill and practice, of course. You have to keep both feet on the ground until you’re ready to pedal, and then you have to get going very quickly. Come on, I’ll show you!” She turned the contraption onto a level path that led into the forest.

Josephine watched in fascination as the strange girl lifted her skirt and stuffed as much material as possible beneath her rear end, which did not look very becoming at all . . .

Then the caretaker’s daughter swung both feet up onto the pedals and began to turn them. With a labored and not very elegant motion, the bicycle started to move, and Josephine realized why Lilo had gone to such trouble with her skirt. She did not want to imagine what would happen if the material caught between the spokes of the wheel. The bicycle’s wheels turned faster and faster, and before Josephine knew it, Lilo was out of sight around a curve.

She set off after her at a trot, but Lilo had already turned and was pedaling back. She was grinning from ear to ear, her blond hair billowing in the slipstream. She laughed and called out to Josephine, “Get out of the way, or I’ll run into you after all!”

Lilo pedaled back and forth along the path another three or four times while Josephine watched, her heart pounding with excitement. She wanted to try it herself. She
had
to try it herself! But when she asked Lilo if she could, the other girl shook her head.

“It isn’t that easy. Riding a velo takes practice. Besides, I’ve never let anyone else try it, because it doesn’t belong to me. What if something happened?”

“Nothing’s going to happen. I’ll be careful,” Josephine replied. The longer she looked at the shining velocipede, the greater her desire to sit on its saddle grew.

“But I hardly even know you. You’re probably one of those chatty girls who can’t keep a secret. Then there’ll be hell to pay. For me.”

Josephine looked Lilo in the eye. “I swear by God above that I won’t breathe a single word to a soul about this, ever, anywhere.”

Lilo hesitated for a moment, then said, “All right. But tomorrow, not now. I have to get home soon. Let’s meet again here tomorrow morning. And if you utter so much as a single traitorous word . . . !” She climbed back onto the bicycle, then rode off down the hillside without turning back.

Josephine lay awake for a long time that New Year’s Eve. But it was not thoughts of the year before or the one ahead that kept her from falling asleep. And it was not her cough, nor her homesickness, that disturbed her rest. It was the thought of sitting on that bicycle the next day.

“Hold both hands tight on the handlebars.
Tight,
I said. And stop shaking like that. Now put your left foot on the left pedal.”

Josephine laughed nervously as she followed Lilo’s instructions. Her skirt was crushed into a wad beneath her, but despite the many layers of cloth, she felt the hardness of the saddle between her legs.

“I don’t know . . .” She looked at Lilo in embarrassment. “Is it decent . . . sitting on this thing with my legs apart?”

Lilo laughed. “Do you want to try it sidesaddle? Like the fine ladies on their fine nags? I’ve tried it. It doesn’t work. Either you do it like this or you don’t do it at all.” The firmness in her voice drove the last scraps of doubt out of Josephine’s mind. She tensed the muscles in her thighs to get a better grip on the saddle. But as she did so, those same muscles began to tremble and—

“Look, no one’s here to see us,” Lilo practically shouted. “Focus on the path ahead of you, then go.”

Josephine nodded uncertainly. The forest path that Lilo had used the day before to demonstrate the bicycle looked a lot narrower today. It had rained overnight, a cold rain that had frozen into a thin layer of ice in the higher parts of the forest. Josephine had slipped and almost fallen several times on her way here. Perhaps the conditions were not suitable for riding?

“As soon as you swing your foot up onto the right pedal, you have to start pushing. Go on!”

Josephine ordered her right foot to rise from the ground. Nothing happened.

“There’s no need to be afraid. I’ll be running alongside, holding you, so nothing can happen.”

“I . . . don’t know. I’m sitting so high. I’m going to fall over as soon as I lift my foot . . .” There was no way that petite Lilo would be able to hold her up.

“You won’t fall over. I showed you how it works,” said Lilo with touch of impatience.

Josephine nodded miserably. “I know, I know. But I don’t trust myself.” While her left foot rested on the pedal, her right remained on the ground as if it had put down roots.

“Then get off and let me ride. I don’t get this opportunity often, either. I won’t get to ride anymore once Mr. Braun comes back to Schömberg.” Lilo was already reaching for the handlebars.

Josephine chewed her bottom lip. If she didn’t trust herself now . . . she might never get another chance.

“Just a little ways, straight ahead, OK?” said Josephine, looking beseechingly at her new friend.

Lilo grinned. “Do you think I’d let you ride down the mountain on your first try? And riding around a corner is also an art. You won’t master that the first time, either. Just go as far as that cluster of three trees up ahead, then stop pushing the pedals.”

That didn’t sound too difficult. Josephine took a deep breath, lifted her right foot, and set it on the right pedal. Now she had to be quick.
“Push, push, and don’t stop pushing,”
Lilo had told her.

The bicycle started to wobble forward. With every turn of the wheels, the movement became more fluid.

“I think I can . . . do it!” Josephine laughed, moving her legs in vigorous rhythm.

“That’s good. But hold the handlebars straight. You’re all over the path!” Lilo ordered as she ran along beside Josephine.

“So what? That’s why the path is there!” Josephine shouted. Then she let out a cry of joy. Elation filled her heart, her head, her entire body. “This is amazing! Lilo, I feel like I’ve grown wings.”

“Crazy, isn’t it? Now stop pushing on the pedals and you’ll slow down,” said Lilo.

“Slow down? What for?” Instead of following Lilo’s instructions, Josephine pedaled harder and harder. She wanted to fly. She wanted to see the trees zooming past as if she were inside a train.

“Don’t! Stop!” With the hand she’d been using to stabilize Josephine, Lilo now tugged at the handlebars. For a moment, Josephine almost lost her balance, but then she found her rhythm again.

“In a minute, just a bit farther . . .”

The last thing she wanted was to stop. She wanted to ride! To feel the slipstream, the icy prickling of the air against her cheeks, her hair lifted by the wind.

“Stop now, you silly fool! After the next curve the path starts to go downhill. It’s much too danger—”

Before Josephine knew it, she was already in the bend in the path. The track, which had been going more or less straight through the trees just a moment earlier, now wound down to the village in a series of steep curves.
Oh my Lord, what now?

From one second to the next, Josephine started gaining speed, and it was only with a huge effort that she managed to scrape around the first three or four curves. Handlebars left, right, farther right, left. Her feet were off the pedals and scraping desperately over the crusted surface, but they found no grip, and she slipped and slithered on. She was leaning far forward over the handlebars. She would soon go headfirst over the handlebars and . . .

“Lilo! Help!”

“Into the forest! Steer left! You have to turn the velo uphill!” Lilo’s voice was shrill and frightened—and very far away.

Uphill? Left, right, left . . . Everything was going so fast, faster than Josephine could think. She saw trees everywhere and no way through. With a jerk, Josephine yanked the handlebars to the left. The front wheel slammed into a fir tree and she was flung over the handlebars and onto the forest floor, her cheek scraping the hard bark of the tree as she fell.

“Jo? Josephine?”

Someone was shaking her right arm. Searing flames shot through her skin. Groaning, she opened her eyes.

“Have you broken anything? Can you move your arms? And your legs?” Lilo bent down over Josephine’s curled body, her eyes wide with dread.

Josephine moved her right foot first, gingerly, then her left. Her shoes were ruined, that much was clear. She had the metallic taste of blood on her tongue. All her limbs, especially her right arm, hurt. Her joints ached and her lower back felt like it might break in two, but otherwise . . .

Groaning, she pulled herself up until she could lean against the tree that had so brazenly stood in her path moments earlier. She looked at Lilo, eyes shining.

“Can I have another go?”

The bicycle was intact, aside from a scratch on the front of the frame that Lilo said she could hide with some paint from her father’s workshop.

Josephine, who had so often struggled with God above, said a silent prayer of thanks that she had been so lucky.

Lilo was furious. She complained bitterly the whole way home, as she pushed the bicycle, and Josephine, dejected, hobbled along beside her. How could anyone be so senseless? Hadn’t Lilo said loudly and clearly that Jo should ride more slowly? She had gone to all the trouble of giving Jo a riding lesson, and that was how Jo had repaid her?

The businessman’s house, from which Lilo had “borrowed” the bicycle, was already in sight when Lilo suddenly stopped. She took a deep breath and grinned mischievously at Josephine.

“But it was fun, right?”

Back at the sanatorium, Josephine sneaked up to her room. She examined her shoes gloomily. They were positively shredded from her attempts to slow down. Thank God she had a second pair with her.

Next, she carefully washed her blood-smeared face. Her right shoulder still throbbed, the pain growing by the minute. What if she really had broken it?

“I slipped on some ice,” she said to Sister Agatha, who immediately bent and twisted the arm in every direction and pronounced it to be nothing more than a sprain. Painful, certainly, but not as bad as a broken bone. An ointment bandage with comfrey would take care of the worst of the pain.

“Well, don’t you know how to start off the new decade,” said the nurse, at which Josephine burst out laughing. Sister Agatha could only shake her head in incomprehension.

The two young women met up again at Mr. Braun’s house at the edge of the village the very next day.

“Can you even ride with your arm like that?” Lilo asked, pointing at the sling wrapped around Josephine’s right arm.

Jo slipped her arm out of the sling. “I’m just wearing it to please Sister Agatha. It’s fine,” she said, suppressing a squeal of pain.

“I must be insane, letting you back on the velo after your last escapade,” said Lilo, unlocking the shed in which the bicycle was stored. “But I’m telling you, from now on, we practice on level ground! I know a street where hardly anyone ever goes. It used to connect the village with a house in the hills, but the house has been empty for years. It’s quite a ways out of town, but the road is perfect for riding.”

Josephine didn’t care, as long as she got to ride the bicycle again. As she pushed the heavy machine along the uneven country lane flanked by thick hedges, she thought about how wonderful the handlebars felt in her hands. So soft and round and heavy all at once.