While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) (33 page)

Adrian recoiled like a beaten dog, and Josephine immediately regretted her harsh words. “I’m sorry, that was cruel of me. I don’t have any right to speak like that. But . . . it’s because I don’t want you to leave!” she cried desperately. “I’m scared for you. What if something were to happen to you on your travels? Without you . . . without you, I cannot imagine what my life would be like.”

Adrian took her in his arms, and for a long moment each took pleasure in the warmth and closeness of the other.

“It’s thanks to you that I even have the courage to undertake such a journey,” Adrian murmured into her hair. “You were the one who showed me how important it is to follow one’s own path, not to always heed what others say, but to follow one’s own inner convictions. Maybe, in my place, you would act differently. But I have to follow this path that leads to America. It is my way.”

Josephine nodded. What else could she possibly say to keep him there?

“I haven’t told you everything yet,” Adrian continued. “I’m going to take my bicycle with me and board a ship to New York in Hamburg. From New York, I’m going to cycle up to Boston to visit Pope. Once I’ve wrapped up negotiations there, I’m going to ride one of his machines down the East Coast to the South, then back up to New York. I’ll be covering a good two thousand miles altogether.” In his excitement, he shifted forward to the edge of the bench. “I’ll be able to show the whole world that the bicycle is the best means of transport there is! Think of what I’ll be able to tell my customers. It’s an unbeatable sales pitch!” He laughed triumphantly.

“And you think you’ll be back by autumn? You’ll never manage that!” Josephine pulled free of his embrace. “Have you gone completely mad? Are you, too, giving in to this craze for doing everything bigger, faster, farther? The whole cycling world is being taken over by it! Didn’t you read that article about the man who wanted to travel the world by bicycle and was murdered by highwaymen? America is a dangerous place, and . . .” At a loss for words, she waved her hands wildly in the air.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. When I get to New York, I’ll buy a revolver, then anyone who tries something stupid will get a dose of lead,” said Adrian with a grin. He tried to pull her close again, but Josephine pushed him away.

“A revolver? Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked, her voice trembling. It took everything she had not to burst into tears. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Then I guess all I can do is wish you bon voyage.” She smiled sadly.

“I’ll think about you every day,” he said quietly. “About you and about our future together.”

His lips were soft, softer than she had imagined. All thoughts of America vanished as Josephine lost herself in Adrian’s embrace.

At the beginning of April, everyone gathered at the station to make Adrian’s send-off a memorable one. The club members were all present, waving a large pennant embroidered with the words “Bon Voyage, Adrian!” Even Adrian’s family had come to say good-bye to their son. Conspicuously absent, though, were Moritz Herrenhus and his wife. A brass band played a brisk marching tune, and it seemed everyone wanted to clap Adrian on the shoulder, shake his hand, or give him a piece of good advice. The mood was bright and animated, and a sense of adventure filled the air.

Josephine stood on the platform a little off to one side, watching the scene with mixed feelings. Had it been her words that had caused Adrian to come clean with his father?

The week before, Adrian had gone to his father and revealed to him that he was planning to travel to America, to try his luck over there.

“He took it remarkably calmly,” Adrian had reported to Jo later. So, he wanted to prove himself. To build something of his own . . . He was more his father’s son than he’d thought, old Neumann had said, then given Adrian an approving clap on the shoulder. When the old man had asked him what the story was with the wedding, Adrian had merely shrugged.

“Postponed or canceled, I don’t care either way,” his father had declared to his baffled son. Then he explained that he had paid back the loan from Moritz Herrenhus down to the last cent, and they owed the family nothing.

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.”

Cha
pter 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!”

I
MPORTANT
: T
O ALL
C
LUB
M
EMBERS

N
EXT
S
ATURDAY
, S
USANNE
L
INDBERG WILL BE DELIVERING A TALK IN OUR CLUBROOMS
. W
E 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.