“Why do you want to fend the fellows off?” Lilo asked, looking at Isabelle with a frown. “I wouldn’t have any objections to a dashing cyclist.”
The others laughed.
“If that’s all it was . . .” said Isabelle, when they had calmed down again. “The young men my father considers to be suitable candidates for marriage are almost certainly not cyclers. They’re the kind who wear top hats and balance reading glasses on their noses so they can study their companies’ balance books more closely.”
“If that’s what they’re like, you can keep them then,” said Lilo.
The bicycle was glossy and black and smelled vaguely of fresh chain oil. Like the Rover Safety, it had a saddle, handlebars with two handgrips, and two identical wheels. It wasn’t as high as the Rover, nor did it look as stable, but there was something far more agile about it. It was beautiful.
Like a circus director extolling the next act, Moritz Herrenhus presented the bicycle to his daughter.
“It’s your birthday present!”
Isabelle’s expression managed to combine speechlessness, rapture, and fascination.
“A bicycle . . . for me?”
“Or should I have bought you a sewing machine? I’m a modern man, so you shall have a modern gift from me. And the bicycle is as modern as anything, especially this one. The tires are the latest invention—they are filled with air instead of being solid rubber. Thanks to them, you’ll sit more comfortably than in a rocking chair. There can’t be more than a dozen bicycles like this one in all Berlin, if that!” He puffed out his chest like a preening peacock. “I told the salesman, for my daughter, only the best is good enough.” Looking for additional kudos, he turned to his dumbstruck audience, which consisted of Josephine, Clara, and Lilo.
The machine gleamed like black silk beneath the summer sun. Josephine swallowed. She had never seen anything so beautiful. Her desire to inspect the bicycle more closely was so strong that her hands were practically shaking. The tires were not the only innovation, she soon realized. This model was designed without the top tube that the Rover had. Instead, the stabilizing tube ran in a kind of V between the front and rear wheels. Josephine immediately understood the benefit of this new type of construction: because they could mount the saddle without lifting their leg over the top bar, women in skirts could easily ride the bicycle as well. The wheels were also covered with a kind of wire mesh, which reduced the danger of catching one’s skirt in the spokes.
This bicycle had been built for a woman.
Isabelle sat on the saddle with unaccustomed ease and without doing anything to secure her lace-trimmed skirt. She squealed with delight as she rode her first lap around the yard. Clara and Lilo applauded.
“In a white dress on a shining steed, Isabelle . . . you’re as pretty as a princess!” Clara called.
“A princess? Our Isabelle has been one of those for a long time,” said Isabelle’s mother, Jeanette, who had just joined them. She was wearing an elegant, dusty-blue outfit with a matching hat that made her look quite intrepid. “I must say, I still find this new hobby a little eccentric,” she said to her husband. “But if things are really as you say, and men from the finest circles are indulging, then . . . I’m sure our princess will strike up some very interesting friendships. She might even find her prince.”
Josephine said nothing. “Our princess,” “men from the finest circles,” “her prince”—Mrs. Herrenhus could spout such nonsense! Cycling was about the wind in your face and the feeling that you could ride away from all the cares of the world, just as Isabelle was doing at that moment on her very own bicycle.
Deep down, Josephine felt a craving that she had never experienced before. Something at once covetous and passionate. Envy. She wanted a bicycle like that, too.
Finally, Isabelle stopped and dismounted. “Thank you, Father. It’s wonderful,” she said and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Moritz Herrenhus patted his daughter’s shoulder patronizingly. Then he clapped his hands once and said, “Now it’s time for your birthday party. We’ll take your friends along with us. They should enjoy a treat once in a while, too!”
The trip in the four-in-hand carriage, which had been specially rented for the day and had enough space for eight to ride, took half an hour and led eastward through the sun-drenched city. The streets were full of pedestrians. Everyone seemed to be out strolling in Berlin’s parks and gardens. Children knocked steel hoops along in front of them with sticks and set paper boats afloat in the Spree, while their fathers smoked pipes or strolled arm in arm in with their wives along the shore. Street vendors had set up their stands on the busiest corners and were doing a brisk trade in red fruit jelly, lemonade, and pastries. Spend a penny here, another there, and very soon you felt like a real gentleman or fine lady. Tomorrow they would all go back to their factories, the drone of the machines in their ears, the fumes from the motors in their noses. But today, Sunday, was a day to celebrate life.
Josephine also spotted a few cyclers. Gentlemen defying the heat in their elegant suits, with top hats on their heads and silk scarves around their necks. Once, Jo believed she had spotted a woman on a bicycle, but on second glance it became clear that the cycler was wearing pants.
Feeling miserable, Josephine turned away from all the hustle and bustle. The high spirits of the others only made her own dark mood worse.
“The bicycle cost two hundred and fifty marks,” she heard Moritz Herrenhus say. “So you can see how much you’re worth to us!”
“Oh, Papa, you’re the best.”
“So much money,” Clara sighed.
Moritz Herrenhus looked over at Clara. “Isabelle will let you ride it, I’m sure. I have to justify spending two hundred and fifty marks somehow!” He laughed at his own joke.
Clara let out a small, self-conscious cough. “Maybe . . . you could lend me your bicycle? The new shape finally lets women ride with some decorum. Then Isabelle and I could practice artistic cycling together. We could decorate the bicycles with flowers and colorful ribbons.”
“That would certainly be très chic!” said Jeanette Herrenhus. “I’ve heard that some theaters in Berlin are already including artistic cycling in their stage shows. I gather they are very impressive performances.”
Colored ribbons on bicycles? Isabelle and Josephine looked at one another for a moment, and a smile united them.
“You are so lucky to be here in the city. New things only make it to my village years later. You probably had gas lamps when we were still making sparks with flint,” said Lilo, putting on a tragicomic face.
Most of the girls laughed.
But Jo was angry. As if Clara’s babbling wasn’t enough, now Lilo was doing it, too. She wanted to tell her friend that her homeland was hardly a backwater. After all, she had seen her very first velocipede in Schömberg! But it was like her throat was blocked. If Moritz Herrenhus mentioned how expensive the bicycle was one more time, she thought she would scream. She shook her head like an impatient horse. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she be happy for Isabelle? Or grateful to her friend’s father? It was actually very decent of him to invite them all along on this jaunt. You envy her! whispered a nasty little gnome inside her head. And Josephine could not deny it.
Josephine was relieved when they reached their destination. She couldn’t have put up with Isabelle’s giggling a minute longer. She pushed the door open without waiting for the coachman. But then she stopped and looked around, perplexed. Where was Berlin’s latest attraction?
The way Moritz Herrenhus had described it, Josephine had expected a huge hall with polished floorboards. Or an enormous, empty warehouse, or perhaps an auditorium with high windows and a high ceiling. But the cycle track was an open-air affair surrounded by nothing more than a low fence. Gesticulating broadly, Moritz Herrenhus paid for his little group, announcing loudly as he did so that this excursion was a birthday present for his daughter. But apart from the cashier, a portly woman with her gray hair
tied in a bun, no one paid any attention to him—the spectators were far too busy cheering on their favorite cyclers, who were already speeding around the sandy oval on their bicycles.
“Go, Willy, go!”
“Faster, Joseph, faster!”
“Keep it up, Karl-Heinz!”
The visitors were all well-dressed, many of them outfitted in high-quality suits, and Josephine even saw one gentleman in a tailcoat and top hat. There were also several women present, all of whom were at least as nicely turned out as Jeanette Herrenhus. And though she found the gentlemen somewhat intimidating, Josephine soon found herself infected by their relaxed, lively mood. She had just turned to watch the racers on the track when Isabelle approached her.
“Father has invited a few business friends, so I have to be a good girl and go say hello to them. But he’d like to offer you, Clara, and Lilo a glass of sparkling wine—that will be nice, won’t it? See the grandstand there, where my parents are standing? They’ve got sausages and fish sandwiches there, what they call a cycler’s snack—I’ve never eaten such a thing in my life!” Isabelle laughed. “This is just my kind of birthday party! I can hardly wait to tell Irene and the others about it tomorrow. They’ll be green with envy! But I have to go and greet our guests, or Father will be cross with me again.”
Instead of following Isabelle up to the covered grandstand, Jo stayed down below, beside the oval track. She was captivated by the men on their bicycles, who were completing each lap faster than the one before. Almost all of them were riding a Rover Safety. Unlike the sartorially minded guests, the wheelmen wore short pants, shirts, and tight vests over the top of them. On their feet, they wore close-fitting boots that covered their ankles. Bending low over the handlebars, with their arms bent almost at right angles and tucked in close to their bodies, they reached incredible speeds. Jo blinked. She would never have thought of riding in such a bent-over fashion herself.
“So, have you already sniffed out one of these racetrack heroes?” Lilo asked, laying a friendly arm across her shoulders. “One thing I’ll give you Berliners—you all have some really remarkable experiences.”
Josephine laughed. “The men don’t interest me a bit, but the way they ride is amazing. They’re so fast!”
“But is it just because of the way they’re bent over? Unlike us, the men don’t have to deal with big puffy skirts. And those outfits they’re wearing couldn’t weigh more than ten pounds. Our dresses weigh can twice as much, and then some,” said Lilo quietly.
“You’re right,” Josephine sighed fervently. “I suppose we should probably be happy that we get to ride bicycles at all.”
They watched the riders in silence for a while. Some of them are certainly attractive, thought Josephine. One tall blond fellow in particular had caught her eye. He and his bicycle seemed almost fused into one being, and he took the curves with more grace than any of the others. She watched him intently as he flew past on every lap, but he seemed not to notice her at all.
Lilo leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. “Can I tell you a secret? Lately, I haven’t just been borrowing Mr. Braun’s bicycle. I’ve also been borrowing an old pair of gardening pants of his that he keeps in the shed for when he’s working out in the garden.”
For a moment, Josephine thought she must have misheard her friend. But when she turned to look at Lilo, she realized she had heard exactly right.
Lilo’s eyes sparkled. “It’s a completely different experience, riding like that. What’s even better is that if I put on a hat and wrap a scarf around my neck to hide my chin, no one even recognizes me. Just the other day, I passed my teacher out on the road when I was dressed like that—you know I’m doing an apprenticeship as a nurse’s assistant in the new sanatorium—and when I saw Dr. Jacob, I nearly had a heart attack! But he greeted me like I was just a patient.”
An apprenticeship as a nurse’s assistant. Cycling in disguise. A trip to Berlin to visit her great-aunt Frieda—Lilo certainly led an exciting life. “One thing I have to give you . . .” said Jo. “You’ve got some spunk. What I wouldn’t give to be able to go cycling through a forest again. Or along an open road toward the horizon . . . I’ll never forget that feeling of freedom.”
“Then why don’t you do it?” Lilo replied, a hint of challenge in her voice. “I’d die of boredom if all I could do was ride in a circle. It doesn’t matter if it’s on a racetrack like this or in Isabelle’s father’s yard. And oh, that artistic cycling that Clara keeps going on about!” She made a face as if she’d tasted something sour. “In any case, I’ve got a new plan. The next time Mr. Braun goes away, I’m going to ride from Schömberg to Pforzheim in my own clothes. We’ll see what people have to say about it.”
“You’re what?” said Josephine, loud enough that she drew puzzled looks from the people nearby. Even one of the riders on the track who was riding by just then looked over at her. As he did, he swung dangerously close to the rider on his right, and the front wheels of their two bicycles touched. A moment later, the young man slammed into the fence. It was the blond man whom Josephine had been admiring.
Josephine threw both hands over her mouth. “My goodness, are you all right?” she said. Leaning over the fence, she suddenly found herself gazing into a pair of gray-green eyes more enchanting than anything she had ever seen before. A strange and not unpleasant feeling ran through her. She blinked and reached out to help the young man up, but he ignored her hand and got to his feet on his own. He brushed the dust from his clothes and gave Josephine an unfriendly look.
“Why don’t you take your gossiping elsewhere? We’re engaged in some serious sport here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“But . . .” Josephine tried desperately to find an appropriate reply, but the young man with the beautiful eyes climbed onto his bicycle and rode away without a backward glance.
Chapter Nine
The accident happened a week later.
It was a sweltering, sticky summer evening. Clouds swelled over the western part of the city, the sun long since vanished behind them. Occasional lightning cut through the sky overhead, and the outside walls of the houses almost shimmered in the heat. Not a single leaf moved, and in the silence before the storm, the machines inside the factory halls seemed to drone even more loudly than usual. The storm would break very soon.
Isabelle and Josephine stood a little more than arm’s length apart in the yard of the Herrenhus villa. Each held a broom in the air, the brush ends crossed in the space between them while Clara and Lilo ducked and rode through this makeshift gate on the bicycles. Isabelle had told the others she thought it would improve their sense of balance. Of course, she had been the first to try it, and she passed through it with flying colors. The girls had already tried riding in the stooped position of the racers, but they did not like it.
“This isn’t so hard,” Clara whooped as she steered Moritz Herrenhus’s bicycle through the narrow gap—wobbly but with success.
“Then let’s make it harder,” Lilo said and let go of the handlebars. “This will definitely help your balance!” With her head high, she rode with no hands across the yard.
“My new bicycle! Watch out!” Isabelle shouted after her.
Josephine lowered her broom with relief. The new exercise certainly didn’t need an honor guard. Normally, she would have wanted to match Lilo’s feat immediately. But she was tired, her clothes were clinging uncomfortably to her body, and her arms ached from the long hours in her father’s workshop. It had been oppressively hot all day, and more than once she had felt as though she was glowing with heat—much like the horseshoes her father held in the fire. The horses had all been skittish, constantly flicking their heads to fend off the flies. A brown gelding had thumped her in the side, and her ribs still hurt.
She’d had enough for today. One more glass of lemonade, then I’ll go home, she thought. Just then, she heard Clara shouting from behind.
“I can do that, too! Look at me, look at me!”
Clara had actually succeeded in letting go of the handlebars. Although her friend’s hands hovered only a few inches above them, Josephine would not have credited Clara with so much pluck. But the handlebars suddenly swerved to the left, and before Clara could grab them, the front wheel turned, the bicycle came to an abrupt stop, and Clara was thrown headfirst over the handlebars. She lay in the dusty gravel, whimpering, her right leg strangely twisted.
Josephine ran to her friend. “Are you hurt? Clara, what’s the matter? Say something!” They registered Clara’s grazed, bloody knees and the small stones, dirt, and threads that clung to them. Blood was running down her right calf.
“My leg. It hurts so much . . .”
While Lilo held Clara’s head, Josephine tore frantically at Clara’s skirt, which had gotten caught in the spokes of the front wheel. She finally pulled it free with a loud rip. Carefully, she tried to stretch Clara’s twisted leg straight, but Clara shrieked with pain at the first touch. Josephine let it go.
“I think her leg’s broken,” said Lilo softly. “I’ve seen something like this before, with a cow. The poor creature. We had to—”
“That’s enough,” Isabelle broke in harshly.
They crouched and looked at their friend helplessly as she lay crying on the gravel. Just then, the heavens opened, and fat, penny-sized raindrops began pelting down on them.
It was Isabelle who recovered from the shock first. She looked frantically from Clara to the others.
“We have to get her away from here. And the bicycles have to go back in the shed right away. If my parents find out how Clara hurt herself, they’ll never let me ride again.”
While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Page 10
