“That’s a very long time. And the originating cause was a fire to which you were exposed. Did I understand that correctly?” He leafed through some documents and Josephine wondered where they had come from and whether they related to her.
She nodded. Before she knew it, she was shaken by a new coughing fit.
Dr. Homburger took his stethoscope and placed it against her back. “Strange,” he murmured to himself once the coughing had subsided. He signaled to Josephine to follow him to a small, round table by the window. As he poured her a glass of water, he said, “We specialize here in the treatment of tuberculosis. I don’t know what you know about the disease—what some people call consumption . . .”
Josephine shrugged. “In some quarters of Berlin, where people live very close together, an epidemic breaks out from time to time. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. When that happens, the residents of the city’s other neighborhoods are told to avoid going into the area. And if they must go there, they’re told they should do so with a cloth over their faces and not shake hands with anyone who looks as if he might have consumption.”
The doctor nodded. “In the past, tuberculosis was seen as a disease of artists or romantic souls, an image that still appeals to some of our guests.” He laughed heartily. “But the fact of the matter is that consumption is mainly a curse of the poor these days. Until a few years ago, it was considered incurable. However, scientists now believe that recovery is possible, especially in places that are immune to the disease, meaning places where no case of consumption has ever been recorded. Schömberg, with its pure mountain air, was practically predestined to become a sanatorium village.”
Josephine frowned. An immune place—how sterile that sounded. It seemed at odds with the lush greenery she could see outside the window.
“Tuberculosis continues to be highly contagious. The fact that you are not suffering from it means that the danger of infection represents an immediate and unnecessary risk for you, especially in light of your weakened condition. It would probably be for the best if I were to send you straight back home again . . .”
“Please don’t!” Josephine looked at the doctor in horror. She had only just gotten used to the idea of spending some time in this strange and beautiful region. “How am I supposed to get well again if you send me away? No one can help me in Berlin. I’ve put all my hopes in this sanatorium. Please, I beg you!” When the doctor did not immediately reply, she went on, “I want to finally feel well again, to be free of the load crushing my chest so hard that I can barely breathe. I used to be strong, and I want to be strong again, but I don’t have the slightest idea how to make that happen.” She slumped in her seat, a picture of misery.
The doctor flicked through his paperwork again. When he looked up, he told her, “I see that your expenses have already been paid in advance for several weeks. Given that that is the case, perhaps we should do what we can.”
Josephine nodded eagerly.
Dr. Homburger leaned back with a sigh. “All right then. We’ll make an exception. But only if you stick to the most important rule of all.”
Josephine nodded again. “What is it?”
“You must exercise the greatest of caution among our other patients. Tuberculosis is transferred by airborne droplets, meaning the liquid human beings spray into the air every time they sneeze or cough. So no hugging. Keep your distance at all times. Outside your room, you should keep a handkerchief over your nose and mouth at all times, and if someone should accidentally cough near you, turn and move away immediately.”
Josephine nodded again; she was starting to feel like a nodding fool. If that was all there was to it . . .
“No resting on the balcony, and hip baths are out of the question. In both cases, our patients lie side by side,” the doctor continued in a businesslike tone. “For your kind of cough, fresh air and light exercise are the best kinds of medicine. Take lots of walks! Around the village at first, and then, as you get your strength back, go out into the woods. With plenty of rest, a nourishing diet, and the Black Forest climate, we’ll take care of your cough in no time. I will write out a plan for you, and I expect you to follow it to the letter. Have I made myself clear?”
Josephine cleared her throat. “I should take walks. To be honest . . . I’ve never just taken a walk. Not for exercise. Can you please tell me how that works?”
In the following weeks, Josephine came to know something that she had never experienced before: leisure. And she came to know something else as well: herself.
The first time she set off for a walk, after a hearty breakfast, she felt rather strange. Walking around in the middle of the day, just like that! Doing nothing while everyone else was busy. She had retreated to her room after only half an hour. But on her next outing, her guilt lessened. There was so much to discover. Schömberg was a pretty place situated in a wild, natural landscape. It didn’t matter that Josephine was a city child. She instinctively recognized the special character of the place and fell in love with it. She had no trouble walking—if her coughing became too harsh on a steep part of a track, she simply stopped and waited for it to pass. Apart from her cough, she was reasonably fit, which Josephine put down to her work in the smithy. As the days passed, she went out on longer and longer walks. Occasionally, she ran into one of the villagers or a woodsman cutting wood. If she happened to see one of the sanatorium guests, Josephine took another path. She did not want to stop and chat—not about God and the world, and certainly not about death.
As ordered by Dr. Homburger, she took long breaks between outings. She went to the library and read for hours—a new pastime for the girl who had practically never picked up a book at home. She was particularly taken by a novel by Gottfried Keller titled Green Henry. She felt she had found in young Henry a true kindred spirit. In the book, the young man is sent by his mother for an extended stay in the country, where events transpire that change the course of his life. During the more exciting passages, Josephine let the book sink into her lap and wondered whether she might follow a similar path. Nonsense, she would think, smiling. But now she finally understood the pleasure Frieda took in reading.
The reading also gave her a way to avoid getting pulled in to too many conversations. Dealing with the sick—and often incurable—guests was a burden for Josephine. She knew just how brutal and unkind death could be, and she wanted to keep her distance from it. So for the first time in her life, Josephine spent a great deal of time by herself, and she discovered in the process that she got along quite well on her own.
It was December 31, 1889. The last decade of the century would begin in a few hours. All across the empire, people were taking time to reflect or look ahead. The newspapers were brimming with prognoses about a rosy future or bleak days ahead, depending on the mood of the writer and the position of the newspaper.
In the Schömberg sanatorium, too, a small New Year’s Eve party was planned for that evening. While some of the guests decorated the dining room with paper roses and colorful streamers and the cook mixed a fruit punch, Josephine put on a coat, scarf, and cap and went out walking. A final stroll in the old year. But was she ready to look back on the past year? Perhaps up at the lookout in the forest. She always felt so lighthearted up there, and her thoughts practically flew up into the skies above.
Although it was only two thirty in the afternoon, the chill of dusk was already beginning to creep through the village. It had not yet snowed, but a thin layer of frost had settled over the whole region like icing. The snowless winter was a constant topic of conversation among the patients and employees of the sanatorium. According to Roswitha, there had been nothing like it in more than forty years.
Candles were burning in the windows of many houses, and Josephine wondered whether this was some special New Year’s custom specific to the Black Forest. The smoke that spiraled from the chimneys and dissipated in the winter air smelled of pine needles.
Josephine stopped and gazed at one particularly stately house
. No doubt a family was gathered peacefully inside . . . A gentle longing tugged at her. How was her family doing? Had Clara made the same pretty paper angels she had made the year before? And who was helping Frieda carry in the wood for her fire now that Josephine wasn’t there to do it for her?
Hitching up her skirts, Josephine marched on toward the forest. She still had to stop occasionally on the steep slopes until her coughing subsided. Despite all her outings and the good Black Forest food and all the peace and quiet she enjoyed in Schömberg, her cough had not noticeably improved. Dr. Homburger now frowned in vague annoyance whenever he saw her, as if it were her fault that she had not yet recovered. But no one was more annoyed about it than Josephine herself.
She had just reached the first trees when she heard a crunching sound somewhere to her left. This was quickly followed by a swish and a grating crashing noise. Then a large shadow shot past so close that Josephine felt a rush of air as it passed.
A second later, the speeding shadow tumbled to the ground a few yards away.
Josephine gazed at the scene in shock: a young woman, her skirt disheveled, her face twisted in pain, lay bare-legged beside some kind of contraption made of wheels and metal rods.
“What in the world is that?”
But all she got in reply was a moan.
“Are you hurt? Can I help?” Josephine ran down to the young woman, who looked to be about Josephine’s age, and tentatively reached out her hand. She had hair the color of wheat, which, now that she had lost her wool cap, fell in a tangle over her stunned face.
“It’s all right,” the girl groaned as she slowly pulled herself together and clambered to her feet. “It’s not the first time I’ve fallen off. I just hope nothing’s happened to the velocipede.”
“The . . . what?”
“The velocipede. It belongs to Mr. Braun.”
Josephine nodded, grateful for a piece of information that she could begin to understand.
“Mr. Braun is a businessman who comes here a few times a year. He doesn’t just own the bicycle, he also owns the yellow house with the wrought-iron balcony, the last house on the street. You must have walked right past it. My father looks after the place when Mr. Braun’s not here. I took the opportunity to borrow his velo,” the girl explained as she pulled the strange machine up by one of its metal rods and scrutinized it thoroughly.
The thing that the girl had first called a velocipede and then a bicycle consisted of a curved, tubular-steel bar to which a seat was attached. It had two wheels, with the front wheel somewhat larger than the one at the back. Both wheels were considerably narrower than the wheels of a coach. They looked more like the wheels on the handcart of the milkman who plied his wares in Josephine’s neighborhood back in Berlin. It looked very strange . . .
“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 res
t. 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.
While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Page 6
