Josephine hung on every word. If the carriage drivers were complaining, then riding bicycles was far more widespread in Berlin than she had thought!
Suddenly, a shrill whistle sounded, scaring up some birds in a blooming forsythia bush and making Clara jump, too.
Josephine looked toward the factory. Everything had been so quiet, but now she heard the groaning of machines and the clang of iron on iron. Gray smoke began rising from one of the chimneys.
Moritz Herrenhus cast a glance at his gold pocket watch. “The Sunday afternoon shift,” he said.
Ignoring the din, Isabelle spoke up. “If a bicycle caused our horses to shy while Mother and I were sitting inside our coach, you wouldn’t like it, either. Maybe bicycles should simply be banned from the streets?”
“Rubbish!” Moritz Herrenhus practically shouted, turning on his daughter. “I’m delighted that cycling is once again permitted in Berlin. It was prohibited as recently as 1858. Even today, one has to follow countless rules, many of which I consider to be ridiculous. And you have to have a license.” Not without a touch of pride, he withdrew a small piece of paper from his breast pocket and opened it.
“Velocipede License for Mr. Moritz Herrenhus,” Josephine read from the right-hand side of the license. On the left stood the date of issue and the name of the local authority that had issued it.
Josephine swallowed. Angry coachmen, cycling licenses—riding a bicycle in the city seemed considerably more complicated here than in the sparsely populated Black Forest.
The businessman was about to push his machine back into the shed when Josephine summoned up all her courage and said, “May I . . . be permitted a brief turn as well?” Her own courage almost made her dizzy.
“You? Ride my bicycle?” For a moment, Moritz Herrenhus seemed at a loss for words. Isabelle and Clara could only look on, aghast.
“It’s late,” Clara finally managed to whisper. “And it’s getting cold. Come, let’s go home.”
Ignoring her friend, Josephine quickly continued, “I was allowed to do it in the Black Forest. Don’t worry, I won’t damage it.”
“Cycling is no sport for young women,” said Moritz Herrenhus sternly.
“Oh, Father, there you’re mistaken,” said Isabelle in a tone sweeter than sugar. “My friend Irene rides a bicycle. She borrows it from her brother.”
“Irene Neumann? The daughter of Gottlieb Neumann, owner of the Elektronische Werke Berlin?”
Isabelle nodded. “Irene told me about it just this afternoon. She says it’s good to break with convention now and then.”
The businessman scowled. “Break with convention? I can’t imagine Gottlieb would be pleased about that. The man’s as stiff as if he swallowed a walking stick.”
The girls suppressed a giggle. Adults rarely spoke like that around them.
“Well, I doubt that Gottlieb Neumann knows everything his daughter gets up to,” said Isabelle. “Irene probably borrows Adrian’s bicycle secretly. So she’s not exactly flaunting convention.” She gave her father a challenging look. “But if you were to allow Josephine to try your bicycle officially, that would truly be progressive!”
Moritz Herrenhus eyed his daughter suspiciously. Then he squared his shoulders and blustered, “My sentiments exactly! It is my bicycle, and I decide who may or may not ride it. I don’t care a jot if the rest of the world likes it or not. Come on, I’ll help you mount up.” And he held his hand out to Josephine.
In the golden light of the setting sun, Josephine swung one leg over the bar of the Rover Safety, then she bundled her skirt—already mended in several places—and pushed it along with her petticoat beneath her rump.
Clara let out a gasp at the sight of Josephine’s stockinged legs. She stepped forward and began frantically arranging Josephine’s skirt back over her legs.
“One has to be very careful not to let the material catch in the spokes,” Josephine said, pushing the skirt back up a little higher. She looked at Moritz Herrenhus and shrugged apologetically.
But Isabelle’s father just laughed. “It’s no sport for a young woman, as I said. But no one will see you here.” Then he nodded to Josephine. “Now show us what you learned down in the Black Forest. I’ll brace you as you ride.” He took a step toward the bicycle, but before he could even reach out to support her, she pedaled away without him.
“I don’t believe it.” Moritz Herrenhus could only look on in astonishment as Josephine confidently steered his bicycle around the yard.
“The girl rides like a man! The strength, the physical control . . .”
“But what if she falls and breaks something?” murmured Clara, wringing her hands helplessly.
“Can’t you see that your friend can ride like the devil? Or better!” said Isabelle, who was also watching in disbelief. “She’s not about to fall.”
Josephine grinned from ear to ear. It was so good to be back on a bicycle!
“Excellent, Josephine. Phenomenal! If you lean a little farther forward, you’ll find it even easier to keep your balance. Yes, just like that.” Moritz Herrenhus clapped appreciatively. Turning to Isabelle, he said, “Your friend is a real natural talent.”
As Josephine rode past the small group again, Isabelle stepped directly in her path. With an abrupt hop, Josephine jumped off the bicycle, the front wheel spraying small gravel stones.
“What the . . . ?” her father snapped at his daughter. “A bicycle has no brake. Josephine almost crashed because of you.”
“Sorry,” said Isabelle indifferently. “But now that she’s had her turn, how would you like to let me try it? I may not be a natural talent”—she pronounced the words as if they were an insult—“but with a little help and some practice, I’m sure I’ll get it.”
That day marked the beginning of a friendship, one that each of the girls—not to mention the people around them—saw very differently.
Isabelle’s mother found it rather disconcerting that her daughter was now associating with two “street girls,” as she put it. But because Moritz Herrenhus tolerated Isabelle’s friendship with the pharmacist’s and the smith’s daughters, she could not really say much against it. As long as Isabelle did not neglect her numerous other duties—her secondary-school studies, her dance and ballet lessons, and her language and etiquette classes—she was quite welcome to ride a few laps in the yard with the bicycle, he said. Besides, he enjoyed demonstrating his Rover to the young women and keeping them up to date about the world of cycling.
Isabelle was happy to have found in Josephine and Clara two uncomplicated friends with whom she did not feel the constant need to strive upward, as she did with all her schoolmates—who were all the daughters of diplomats, or from aristocratic circles, or whose fathers were from the officer classes or captains of industry. Compared to any of them, her father was a little fish among sharks, and they all made sure she knew it. All that aside, Isabelle had also developed a desire to outshine Josephine on the bicycle. Cycling was a lot of fun for her, as well.
For Clara, who attended and loathed the home-economics school, riding bicycles made no sense at all. She was frankly afraid of the machine and quite satisfied to simply watch the others ride. Her mother, however, was overjoyed at Clara’s newfound friendship with the wealthy factory owner’s daughter. She dreamed of Clara finding her way into the upper circles of Berlin society and someday finding herself an affluent husband there. She did not know that the girls met to ride Mr. Herrenhus’s bicycle. If she had, she would probably have fainted from fear for Clara’s health.
Josephine was simply happy. She had not dared to hope that her dream of riding a bicycle in Berlin would come true so quickly. Although Herrenhus’s backyard hardly compared to the wide-open roads of the Black Forest, it was better than nothing. She did not tell her parents anything of what she did in the evenings when she was done with her work, as they would have put an end to it immediately.
Only Frieda was allowed to know. Josephine went on and on to her about
Moritz Herrenhus’s generosity and his knowledge of bicycles and cycling sports. She would never have found out otherwise that cycling schools—and even dedicated cycling paths—existed.
Several weeks after riding Moritz Herrenhus’s bicycle for the first time, Josephine made her way along Görlitzer Strasse toward Frieda’s house. Although the sun still shone from a brilliant blue sky, most of the street already lay in shadow. A balmy breeze whirled scraps of paper through the air, which smelled of machine oil and sweet, rotting trash. Josephine nodded to the neighbor digging weeds out of her tiny vegetable garden in an attempt to give the beans and kohlrabi half a chance of ripening in the scant summer sunlight filtering down between the houses. Young girls with swinging skirts and ruffled hairbands strolled arm in arm toward Schlesischer Busch Park while the young men still stood at the entrances to their homes and brushed the day’s dirt from their shoes. A few whistled at Josephine as she passed, which she ignored with a smile. It was summer.
Frieda, too, was out in her garden, although she was not digging up a vegetable garden. She was digging a grave.
“It flew into my kitchen window, the silly thing,” she said and gestured with her chin toward a blackbird lying dead on an old handkerchief, its claws outstretched. Sweat glistened on the old woman’s forehead, and her face was flushed with exertion.
Josephine kneeled beside her, took the trowel, and dug deeper. The earth was dry and crumbly, the going tough. When the little grave was big enough, she laid the handkerchief and bird together inside, then shoveled the excavated earth back over the top. She marked a cross in the earth with the tip of her forefinger.
For a moment, Frieda stayed on her knees in silent prayer. Then she climbed to her feet with some difficulty before Josephine could help her up.
“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten all about me, what with all your bicycle riding.” A warm embrace followed, then the old woman pulled a letter from the pocket of her apron. “Lieselotte is coming next week. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“She wrote to me, too,” said Josephine. “I can hardly wait to see her again. She’ll be amazed when I show her Moritz Herrenhus’s Rover! Oh, I’m so infinitely grateful to him for letting me ride it, even if it’s only in his yard. He keeps telling us that there’ll be hell to pay if he ever catches us out on Berlin’s streets.” She was smiling as she followed Frieda to her table in the garden, although her thoughts were already moving on to the Herrenhus villa.
“Infinitely grateful? I’m sure the great Moritz Herrenhus likes that. He loves being adored, that man, and if it’s a young, pretty girl like you doing the adoring . . .” Frieda set a plate of gooseberries on the table.
Josephine glared at Frieda. “Isabelle’s father is a gentleman. Those hours on the bicycle mean the world to me. I’d have gone crazy in the smithy by now if it weren’t for that. It’s always so dark and dusty in there. Do you have any idea how dreary it is? One old plug after another, from morning to night, the same routine. Holding the hooves, front right, front left, back right, back left. Then there’s the monotonous banging of iron on the anvil, and the shushing sounds you have to make to calm the horses—sometimes I fear I’ll go mad! And the pain in your back and your arms after the fourth or fifth horse . . .”
“Why don’t you look for a job that you actually enjoy?” Frieda asked, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Josephine lifted her hands in resignation. “I can’t just leave my parents in the lurch.”
“Can’t you? Are you just going to let your father bark orders at you for the rest of your life? Let him slap you around like some idiot apprentice? You’re young and you’re smart. Do you really want to spend the rest of your days holding onto horses’ hooves and sweeping up their shit?”
How did Frieda know her father slapped her? Josephine shrugged. “As long as I can still ride the bicycle . . .”
“And what about your dream of owning your own bicycle one day?”
“The tips I get from the coachmen will never add up to enough for such an extravagance. But the cyclers will eventually win out over the horses—at least that’s what Moritz Herrenhus says. And then bicycles will become much more affordable. Can you believe there are already cycling schools? And Mr. Herrenhus says the demand is huge. Gentlemen practice their riding in large halls away from the wind and the weather. A cycling instructor watches over everything, and there are assistants to help, as well. He didn’t say anything about women practicing there. But regardless, bicycles seem to be getting more and more popular.”
“Quite frankly, dear, I don’t care,” said Frieda. “But what I do care about is you. And the fact that you are doing nothing with your life.”
Josephine popped a gooseberry into her mouth and frowned. “You’re being far too pessimistic. Some unimagined opportunity might be looming just around the corner,” she added, but only for Frieda’s benefit. She herself did not believe any such thing.
Frieda reached across the table and took Josephine’s hand in hers. “Even if riding a bicycle means a great deal to you, you must listen to me: don’t let yourself be blinded! All that glitters is not gold, they say, and it’s true. Moritz Herrenhus might well talk up how progressive he is to you young things, but he rules his clothing factory like an old general. The seamstresses aren’t allowed to make so much as a peep while they work, and woe betide them if he catches any of them actually chatting. They’re only permitted to go to the ladies’ room twice a day, and as far as I can tell they have no meal break at all. It’s hot inside that factory and hard to breathe with all the fluff flying around, but they’re forbidden to open the windows. Herrenhus is apparently afraid someone might smuggle out a piece of his valuable cloth! Tell me now, how progressive is that?” Frieda gazed piercingly at her.
Josephine said nothing. As far as she was concerned, the workers were better off staying inside their factory. She was terrified that one of them might look out and see her on the bicycle in Isabelle’s garden. What if one of them snitched to her father? She could kiss the cycling good-bye.
“And you can well imagine that none of them would dare complain about the working conditions or suggest any improvements!”
Josephine sniffed. “Have the neighbors been crying on your shoulder again? Do you think my ‘working conditions’ are any better? I’d be happy to work for a gentleman like Moritz Herrenhus. At least I’d get a wage for all my toil. Oh, you have no idea!” She stood up then and left without saying good-bye.
The last thing she needed was to waste her precious free time listening to speeches from Frieda. Herrenhus had opened up a new world for her. If Frieda didn’t understand that, there was nothing she could do about it.
Chapter Eight
When Lilo arrived a week later, Josephine greeted her with tears in her eyes. It was so good to see her friend again. Much to Frieda’s annoyance, Jo spirited Lilo away on her very first evening in Berlin to visit Isabelle. Clara met them there, and they all became fast friends. Shortly after they arrived, Isabelle pushed the Rover out of the shed to show it off to their guest. After Lilo had duly admired it, she pulled a newspaper out of her bag and showed them a full-page article about bicycle riding. Both Josephine and Isabelle wanted to snatch the paper away from her, but Lilo wasn’t about to give it up.
Relishing the moment, she opened the newspaper and read aloud to the spellbound girls. The article described a form of artistic cycling performed in teams, then went on to cover road racing, track cycling in velodromes, and other variations on the sport. Lilo looked up. “Now here it is! It says here that several military officers are planning to ride from Vienna to Berlin. But it’s not just a ride. They’ll be racing an Austrian military officer on horseback.” Lilo’s eyes sparkled as she looked at the girls gathered around her. “The headline reads, ‘Who Will Ride the Three Hundred and Sixty Miles First? Horse or Wheelman?’ ”
“Three hundred and sixty miles on a bicycle? That’s almost to the moon and back!” Jo
sephine exclaimed.
Lilo nodded. “They still haven’t set the start date. It seems they haven’t collected enough money for it yet. But if it actually takes place, I’d give anything to be at the finish line.”
“I’d come, too,” said Josephine, spontaneously reaching out her hand to Lilo.
Isabelle extended her hand in agreement, too, but Clara held back. She was still skeptical about bicycles, and she was perfectly content to go about her life without participating in follies like long-distance cycling races.
“What makes you so sure the horse won’t win?” she said sullenly.
Lilo glanced at her, then rolled her eyes in adulation. “Long-distance cycling is the absolute top, the real art. I’m determined to try it myself someday.”
“As if a woman could ever do such a thing,” Josephine sniffed.
“Why not?” Lilo retorted. “We just have to fight for it!” She looked intently at the others. “We have to show people that women can ride bicycles just as well as men. But people will never change their minds if we continue to ride in secret.”
“And in the meantime, we’re supposed to let them throw stones and spit at us?” said Isabelle. “That’s exactly what happened to my friend Irene when she went riding through the Tiergarten last spring. She’s only ridden in secret ever since.” She straightened up. “But I’ve got some good news for you! I’ve managed to persuade my father to take us all to the new cycling track in eastern Berlin for my birthday next week. It’ll be wonderful! Of course, a few very important businessmen will be coming with us, and no doubt they’ll be bringing their eligible sons along—Papa would never do anything like that without ulterior motives.” She sighed extravagantly. “But I know how to fend them off.”
While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Page 9
