Adrian had been utterly mystified. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
Old Neumann had looked at him in surprise. “I thought you liked the girl!”
Adrian had said nothing about Josephine to his father. “Everything at the proper time,” he told her.
Everything at the proper time? Josephine sighed deeply. What if his time ran out in America? Would Adrian return at all? Or would he find a new love over there? Don’t be so pessimistic! she chided herself silently.
When Isabelle and Adrian embraced in a farewell, his eyes met Josephine’s. A moment later, Adrian came over to her. When he held out his hand to her a little stiffly, Jo wanted to wrap her arms around him and never let him go.
“Never doubt my love for you,” he whispered. “Don’t worry about me, promise me that. I’ll come back to you. And that will be the start of the rest of our lives.” His voice was more intense than she had ever heard it.
All at once, Josephine’s heart felt light. Everything would work out; she was sure of it!
“You’re in big trouble if all you think of is the men, and you don’t bring back a decent number of women’s bicycles! I like to fix those the most,” she said. “Now go, or your train will leave without you.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Adrian arrived in New York after a largely uneventful nine-day crossing. He allowed himself two days to visit the city that the whole world seemed to be talking about. There were plenty of bicycles vying for the roads with the coachmen and horsemen, just as they did in Berlin. When Adrian finally set off for Boston, he drew a great deal of attention on his bicycle. He was often stopped by people who showered him with questions. Once, he was even interviewed by a newspaper reporter who’d been sent to write an article about the German on his bicycle. What a pity that he would probably never get to see the article himself, he thought with regret.
The streets were not as smooth as those back home, but he still made good progress. Because he was riding along the coast, he was frequently rewarded with sweeping views of the ocean. He spent the first two nights in simple hotels and dined on freshly caught fish grilled over an open fire. He arrived at the Pope Manufacturing Co. on the third day, having ridden more than two hundred miles.
Adrian was puzzled as he pushed his bicycle between two stone pillars. On the right, hanging by a loose nail, dangled the factory sign, so burned and blackened that only a few letters on it were still legible. The gate itself—probably an artistically wrought affair once upon a time—was full of melted, misshapen blobs. Adrian stopped. He gripped the handlebars of his bicycle, feeling a rising panic as he tried to orient himself amid the enormous cloud of dust that hung over the site. Where were the huge warehouses, the offices? All he saw were mountains of rubble strewn with charred metal and scorched rubber. Adrian watched as dozens of men with dust-smeared faces and grim expressions loaded wheelbarrows with rubble one shovelful at a time, pushed them out to the road, and loaded the contents onto countless horse-drawn carts. The work was dirty and hard, and the men looked worn out.
When Adrian had more or less recovered from his shock, he stopped the next man to walk by. The man was wearing a dusty suit and had a notebook in his hand.
“Excuse me, sir, but . . . I wanted to visit the bicycle factory.”
The man looked up at him. “Then you must be blind. The factory’s gone,” he said in a cold voice. “The fire destroyed everything back on March twelfth. Our warehouses, thousands of half-finished and complete bikes, our offices . . .” The man made a sweeping gesture with his hands. “All burned to the ground, down to the last receipt. There’s nothing left, not a goddamned thing.”
It would not have taken much for Adrian to burst into tears. This was what he had crossed the ocean for? But he pulled himself together. “I’m terribly sorry. It’s just . . .” He briefly outlined his situation, then asked about other bicycle factories in the area.
“There are none. Nothing anywhere around here. Mr. Pope made quite sure the competition did not survive. Good luck to you, mister,” the man said, though it sounded more like a taunt. Then he walked away.
Adrian pushed his bicycle back out between the pillars of the gate. He was about to hop on when someone beside him cleared his throat.
“Excuse me, sir . . .”
Adrian looked up.
“I overheard your conversation just now, as I rolled my wheelbarrow past. You’re looking to buy bicycles?”
Adrian nodded. “In Germany, they say that the bicycles here are turned out more or less continuously, instead of being made by hand. And Pope’s prices are apparently unbeatable. And now this!”
“It’s a disaster! We were truly the fastest, the best, and the cheapest. I am . . . uh, I was an engineer here, but Lord knows where we go from here. Though for what you have in mind, would you settle for the second fastest, second best, and second cheapest bike manufacturer in the country?”
“Who . . . who do you mean?” Adrian held his breath. Had the blowhard with the notebook lied to him? Was there a second company somewhere around here?
“I’m a Chicago man. I worked in a bike factory there, too. It’s called the Western Wheel Works. Pope poached me away from them, and look what happened. Had I not been swayed by his overtures and money, I’d still have a job to do, instead of . . .” The man sighed. “Anyway, the Crescent Bikes that the Western Wheel Works makes are just as good as Pope’s. When I left the company, production was up to fifty thousand a year.”
Adrian felt the seedling of hope growing in him again. “Western Wheel Works . . . Do you happen to know how much your old employer sold its Crescent Bikes for?”
“The depends entirely on how many you’re willing to order. The more bicycles, the bigger the discount. That’s how we do business in America! But on average, I think a Crescent’ll set you back . . .” The man grinned and named a sum that was so low that Adrian nearly fainted from surprise.
“Chicago, you say?” He tried to place the city on his mental map of the United States. Wasn’t that in Illinois? By a gigantic lake? He would have to ride halfway across the country, east to west . . .
That made no difference! Eager to get started, he looked at the man.
“Can you tell me which road I have to take to get to Chicago?”
The man frowned. “Which road? We’ve got roads here on the East Coast that connect the main trade centers. I guess they’ve got the same out west. But there are no roads that cross America!”
IMPORTANT: TO ALL CLUB MEMBERS
NEXT SATURDAY, SUSANNE LINDBERG WILL BE DELIVERING A TALK IN OUR CLUBROOMS. WE WOULD LIKE ALL MEMBERS TO BE PRESENT!
Josephine turned from the poster to Isabelle. “Do you know this Susanne Lindberg?”
Isabelle shrugged. “Not personally. She’s a well-known Danish cyclist.”
“So what does she want by coming here? And what kind of talk is it?”
“How should I know?” replied Isabelle. “Ask Irene, she’s the one who got in touch with her.” Isabelle’s mood soured at the thought of her former future sister-in-law. She had thought that their relationship would improve once her engagement to Adrian was off—after all, Irene had been against their relationship from the start—but Irene blamed Isabelle for Adrian’s departure, claiming that Isabelle had driven him away with her moodiness—what a lot of rubbish!
“I think I’ll go. A talk about cycling is always interesting,” Josephine said, pulling Isabelle out of her ruminations.
It was Saturday afternoon. With the glorious summer weather, the racetrack was very busy. Though some of the men still grumbled about it, women and men had begun using the velodrome together, considerably extending the training times and opportunities for the women. But Josephine and Isabelle had spent the morning on a long cycling tour through the outskirts of Berlin. It had been Jo’s idea to go out riding together again. Isabelle had only agreed after some hesitation, but she soon found herself greatly enjoying the ride. They had even decided to go out
together more often. On their return, Isabelle had suggested that they pay a spontaneous visit to the clubhouse and treat themselves to a glass of lemonade. Jo had agreed, though she replied that she needed to go by her house first to pick something up. After their stop, they rode on to the track, with Josephine holding a long tube tucked under her arm.
“Frieda’s world map. I think we’ll get a lot more use out of it here,” said Josephine, rolling out the map. She pinned it to the clubroom wall, then took the postcards that had been trickling in from Adrian and attached them beside the map.
Satisfied, Josephine stepped back and admired her handiwork. “Now we can plot Adrian’s route based on where the postcards are from.”
“I really don’t know why you find all that so fascinating, but if you want to follow Adrian’s route, then be my guest,” Isabelle said.
“You could show a little interest. I know he isn’t your fiancé anymore, but he’s still a member of the club. And a trip like this isn’t something that’s done every day.”
Isabelle waved dismissively. What did she care about Adrian’s trip to America? She began leafing through a magazine on the table.
“Clara’s charming husband is at it again. Listen to this one,” she said and began to read aloud: “ ‘Until just a few years ago, no decent woman left her house without a chaperone or male relative at her side. These days, however, we see viragoes cycling around utterly unescorted, and carrying on far-too-familiar acquaintanceships with the opposite sex. Where are these girls’ parents, you ask? They are sitting back and watching as their darling daughters succumb to their sexual perversions. It is my view that such paragons of parenthood are themselves sick and in need of a proper upbringing!’ ”
“Sexual perversions?” Josephine cried. “The man’s mad. The only perverse thing is him.” She grabbed the magazine from Isabelle. “When Luise and Gertrude see this . . .”
Isabelle looked indifferently at her friend. While the others got terribly worked up every time such an article appeared, she just thought they were ridiculous. No sensible reader would give any credence to something like that; in fact, the doctors who wrote such diatribes degraded only themselves. Not a single one of them had come up with any proof for their scandalous claims.
As it was, she found it all very tiresome and boring. Much like her life. For a while, things had looked so promising. She had felt nothing but relief when Adrian had sailed away. Finally, she was free again! Isabelle loved once again being the center of attention at balls, receptions, and parties, and she flirted and danced her way through the nights.
Of course, the fact that Adrian had stood her up at the last moment was the subject of gossip wherever she went. But given her high spirits, she quickly took the wind out of the sails of anyone who tried to taunt her. They were forced to see that the jilted bride did not seem to be suffering overly.
Her father, on the other hand, had flown into a rage, screaming as he never had before, to the point where the servants had fled to their rooms and locked the doors. To the outside world, however, Moritz Herrenhus put on a brave face, going so far as to claim that he had always been skeptical of their engagement.
Thinking about her father’s performance made Isabelle feel ill. She knew perfectly well that he was silently keeping a lookout for a new marriage candidate. Then the whole miserable game would start again.
“That’s strange,” Josephine murmured. “Adrian wanted to ride down the East Coast.”
“So? Isn’t he doing that?” asked Isabelle.
Josephine traced her finger over the world map. “Judging from his postcards, he’s riding west. What do you suppose it means?”
The door opened and Isabelle was spared any conjecturing.
In the doorway stood a man whom Isabelle guessed to be in his midtwenties. His hair was dark brown and curly, and it hung rakishly over his shoulders and face. His eyes, too, were brown, and rimmed by thick eyelashes. He was remarkably handsome with an adventurous look to him . . . as if he would shrink from nothing and no one. He was of average height, with broad shoulders and powerful forearms and even more powerful cyclist’s calves. The backpack he wore, and was just then removing, gave the impression that he’d just walked in from a long cycling journey. When he looked around inside the near-empty clubhouse, he almost turned around and left.
He was about to close the door behind him when Isabelle straightened up in her chair and asked so hastily that she nearly choked, “Can I help you?”
“I heard that Berlin was good for cycling,” said the man in a dialect that she did not recognize. “My name is Leonard Feininger, but everybody calls me Leon. You might have heard of me.”
His voice sounds like warm honey, thought Isabelle, instantly enraptured.
“Well here’s someone who thinks a great deal of himself,” Jo whispered in her ear as she joined Isabelle at the table.
Isabelle threw Jo a look that said, Shouldn’t you be doing something with your map?
Leon Feininger . . . She had, in fact, heard the name before. She swept a lock of red hair out of her face and said, “You’re in the right place! Our club is the best in Berlin. Our riders are represented in all the big races, mostly in the front ranks. We even have a very successful women’s team.” Oh God, what was she doing? She sounded like she was trying to impress him! She felt her cheeks flush. The man must think she was a silly fool.
“Ah, your own women’s team. Just the two of you?” Leon Feininger raised his eyebrows and smiled.
Isabelle shook her head sheepishly.
“Of course not! There are a lot more of us,” Josephine answered belligerently. “But just as it should be in a good cycling club, they’re all out training. Which the two of us already have behind us for today, right, Isabelle?”
Isabelle, who had collected herself somewhat, looked at Leon’s backpack. “You look like you’ve come a long way. Would you like to stay a short while?” She gestured toward the chair opposite her own. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me why I’m supposed to have heard of you over a cup of coffee.” She gave him her most charming smile, together with a well-practiced bat of her eyelashes.
Leon Feininger didn’t want coffee. He asked for a glass of red wine, which he sniffed at length before draining it in a single gulp. Only when he had a second glass in front of him did he begin to tell them about himself.
He was the son of a winemaker in the Rhineland-Palatinate region. But he had left the region because, as a sportsman, he saw no future for himself there. He had heard that in Berlin he’d find not only a lot of track racers but also many long-distance cyclists. He had come here with the intention of pitting himself against Berlin’s best. He wanted to find—or perhaps invent—a new challenge there.
Isabelle hung on his every word, mesmerized. How the man could talk . . . Suddenly she saw in her mind’s eye the photographs of a cyclist grinning at the camera, his bicycle held victoriously over his head.
“I know who you are!” she cried. “I read about you in a magazine! The writer called you the ‘Hero of Road and Mountain.’ You’re . . .” She waved her hand in the air as if the words she was looking for were hovering there to be caught. “You’re the one who rode his bicycle over the Alps to Italy. And . . . weren’t you also the man who once rode from Vienna to Berlin in record time?”
“There wasn’t just one article written about those rides. There were dozens.” Leon smiled complacently. “But it’s really no surprise. I did the Vienna to Berlin stretch in just under thirty-one hours, after all, which was less than half the time of the previous record holder, an officer on horseback.”
“Really?” said Josephine, leaning closer. “That’s very interesting. When was that?”
Isabelle felt like jabbing her friend in the ribs. “Didn’t you want to go and visit Clara?” she hissed. Actually, they had planned to go visit the young mother together—it was a good time to pay a visit, because her horrible husband was away at a medical conference—but all tho
ught of visiting Clara had vanished from Isabelle’s mind. She turned back to her intoxicating guest.
“My last adventure—which was also covered in all the papers—was the race from Paris to Brest. I came in with the leading group.”
“Paris to Brest,” purred Isabelle breathlessly.
“And here I am. Seeking new adventures.” Leon leaned forward across the table. Playfully, he took her hand and turned it so that he could look at the rings she wore. Isabelle returned the challenge in his eyes.
“Who knows? Maybe you’ve already found the first.” She smiled like a cat lapping cream.
“You should have seen Isabelle. She was laughing like you wouldn’t believe. She practically threw herself at the man. And the looks that flew between them! What was it I read in one of Frieda’s novels? ‘They sank into each other’s gaze.’ ” Josephine frowned. “I’ve never seen Isabelle quite like that before.”
“Sounds to me like they were falling in love,” said Clara airily, covering her son in his bassinet with a pale-blue blanket. They took turns rocking the child.
“He’s asleep, thank God,” Clara whispered a little while later. They tiptoed out of the child’s room into the sitting room next door, where Clara had set out everything for coffee.
“You look tired,” said Josephine, pouring the coffee, which was by now completely cold. Clara let her do so without protest. The currant cake was soaked through and had taken on an unappetizing brown shade. Fruit flies swarmed around it. Jo flapped her hands to shoo the insects away. She had no appetite for it at all . . .
“I am tired! Matthias sleeps three hours a night, if that. He starts howling the moment he wakes up. I tried ignoring him at first, thinking he would eventually stop on his own. But Gerhard gets all in a huff as soon as Matthias starts crying, and he does need to sleep at night. So I have to hurry out and pick him up from his cradle as soon as makes a peep. And because I’m so afraid of missing that first peep, I hardly get to close my eyes at all. It’s not much better during the day, as you’ve just seen.” Clara was unable to suppress a yawn.
While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Page 32
