Chapter Twenty-Eight
Roads made of nothing more than slippery clay that clogged his spokes and brought his wheels to a standstill. Prairies where his bicycle sank so deeply into sand that he had no choice but to dismount and push his bicycle for miles.
Parched landscapes where the only things that grew were thorn bushes. In one day, he had to patch his front tire three times because of the needle-sharp barbs.
Deep gorges where no daylight penetrated and the sound of his wheels on the dry riverbed echoed ominously off the bare rock walls.
Roads littered with human waste and animal bones, rutted stretches dotted with twisted sheets of iron, smashed bricks, and broken glass.
A few miles outside of one town, the street disappeared into nothing. Though the land was crisscrossed with thousands of miles of rails for trains, the road system hobbled along far behind Europe. Often, Adrian had no choice but to ride along the railway embankments and hope that he would be fast enough to dodge approaching trains.
He carried a dog whip, which he had to use zealously to keep stray dogs and packs of coyotes at bay.
Around Pittsburgh, the air was black from coal dust, and breathing made his lungs burn; the fine grit settled in his eyes and filled every pore. Just before Cleveland, he rode into a plague of locusts, the air turning dark with the chirping, prehistoric-looking insects that greedily ate the land around them bare. Adrian had pedaled on quickly, not only to escape the locusts, but also the devastation on the faces of the farmers, who could only stand and watch as a year’s work was destroyed in a matter of hours.
Once, he got caught in a wildfire, and he pedaled like never before in his life. He was able to escape the raging flames, but his skin was red and swollen from the heat for days afterward.
The journey from Boston to Chicago took him from May until the start of September. Luckily, he had kept his health and not suffered any serious accidents along the way.
He had met Americans who had outdone each other with their hospitality, had passed through towns where he had drawn a crowd in minutes, everyone wanting to know everything about his great journey. People had bought him beer, and they had served him hot chili beans and deliciously spiced steaks that had been grilled over an open fire.
He had also encountered Americans who had set their dogs on him. One farmer had aimed a shotgun at him and growled, “Git off my land.” Adrian was only too happy to do so. But that was the gravest threat he had faced.
America. What a huge, crazy country.
Now he had ridden almost twelve hundred miles, and Lake Michigan lay blue and glittering before him in the cold autumn light. On the shores of the lake, Chicago spread its wings, its many-storied buildings looming skyward. An icy wind nearly blew him off his bicycle, and his bicycle lamp swung wildly from left to right as he pedaled along Wells Street, which led him into the very heart of Chicago. He could not stop grinning.
He had done it! He had reached his goal.
He dismounted in front of the Hotel Victoria, which was owned by a German man who told Adrian where to go buy some decent clothes and food, and where the best whores in the city were to be found. Adrian thanked him for all his tips, but he waved off the last one with a laugh. He had other things in mind!
The tailor Adrian went to visit was German as well. As he was fitted for a pair of pants, they got to talking, and Adrian explained his goal of visiting Western Wheel Works and importing bicycles to Germany.
“Oh, I know the owner of WWW well. Adolph Schoeninger. We’re both in the German-American Society. He’s got a reputation as a hard-nosed businessman, and it’s true that he runs his factory with a strict hand, but he’s a fair man. A handshake means as much as the written word. That’s people from Württemberg for you.”
“He’s from Württemberg?” Adrian stared at the tailor in surprise.
“You didn’t know that? You’ve come all this way just to buy bicycles from a countryman.”
Despite his hunger, Adrian denied himself the luxury of a long lunch. He wolfed down a frankfurter from a stand, then climbed aboard one of the city’s many trams, eager to pay a visit to Adolph Schoeninger as soon as he could.
He gazed out at the city from his seat as it passed by. There were bicycles everywhere! Young men, older men, elegant women, maids in plain uniforms, children, top-hatted gentlemen, and gentlemen with nothing covering their heads at all—all riding along as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Chicago was a boomtown in every sense, the tailor had told him. Now Adrian knew what he had meant by that. The energy the city and its inhabitants radiated was so powerful that Adrian caught it like a contagious disease. When the huge sign reading “Western Wheel Works & Crescent Bikes” came into view, he leaped out of his seat.
“How many bicycles did you have in mind?” Adolph Schoeninger waved over a foreman and shouted something in his ear so quickly in English that Adrian didn’t understand a word. The man immediately ran over to a gigantic machine and began frantically turning various knobs. An octopus-like arm that had been lowering to a table and rising again stopped in midair.
“I’m not sure,” Adrian yelled back as he looked wide-eyed around the factory. Many of the machines were completely new to him and looked to have been specially built for manufacturing bicycles. The noise from the countless sheet-metal presses and stampers was deafening. All around them, at long rows of tables and using smaller machines, men were hard at work bolting, welding, assembling. Adrian estimated there were several hundred of them.
Schoeninger said, “I’ve currently got about six hundred workers here, in two shifts. But I’m always searching for new hands. Last year we produced sixty thousand bicycles. This year, I want to increase that by another ten thousand. To do that, I need good men.”
Adrian was speechless.
“Americans are mad about bicycles. Everyone wants one. Someday, the roads of America will be so full of wheels that no one will be able to get through,” said Schoeninger with a grin. “And we export on a large scale, too,” he went on. “To France, Denmark, most recently to Sweden. And to Germany, of course. But don’t worry, I don’t have an importer in Berlin yet,” he added, when he saw the panic on Adrian’s face. “You should know that we look for only one wholesaler for each sales region. That wholesaler then sells our bikes to individual customers and to subdealers.”
Adrian relaxed. These were things he understood! In Schoeninger’s office, they got down to the details: prices, delivery times, terms of payment. The financing was in place; Adrian had organized a loan with EWB’s bank before he left. The bank’s senior director had been far from convinced by Adrian’s “bicycles for all” concept, but his son, who was also the junior director, had shown a great deal of enthusiasm for the idea.
With financing assured and given the mutual goodwill each man felt for the other, a contract was quickly signed, and Adrian Neumann soon became the licensed wholesaler for Crescent Bikes for Berlin and its environs. They’d start with two thousand bicycles at a converted price of fifty marks per bicycle. The numbers made Adrian a little dizzy. If his vision turned out to be wrong, he’d find himself sitting on a mountain of Crescent Bikes and in debt for the rest of his life.
Adolph Schoeninger swept aside his doubts with a flick of a wrist. “If the Germans are even half as mad about bikes as the Americans, you have nothing to worry about. Do the math!” he challenged Adrian. “At a hundred sales a month, you’ll have sold twelve hundred in the first year alone. You sell the rest to subdealers. Believe me, you’d only regret a smaller order.”
They agreed to a first delivery in March 1897. That was fine with Adrian, as long as the first bicycles arrived for the start of the following season.
The two men parted like old friends. Schoeninger presented Adrian with a factory-new bicycle, which Adrian gladly accepted. His old machine was so worn out after its long cross-country journey that the only person who’d be pleased to see it now would be a Chicago
scrap dealer.
Adrian could hardly wait to try out his new bike. Schoeninger had assured him that the roads from Chicago to Indianapolis were good. And from Indianapolis he could take the train back to New York in style.
That same evening, he marched into the telegraph office. To the man on duty, who turned out not to be German, Adrian dictated:
All well. Assignment completed successfully. Looking forward to getting home and to the future. Adrian.
The addressee was Miss Josephine Schmied, Görlitzer Strasse 27, Berlin, Germany.
Adrian stood helplessly beside his bicycle. An hour earlier, he had passed a tree on which had been nailed a roughly hewn sign that read “Lafayette, 12 miles.” He should have reached the town by now. Had he taken a wrong turn? Tired from riding into a constant headwind, he pedaled on.
He was not, he knew, concentrating as well as he should have been. He had had difficulty focusing on the road ever since leaving Chicago. His mind was spinning with plans for the future.
Soon, he could only vaguely make out the road in front. But there was no trace of a town anywhere. Hadn’t he seen that barn before? He sensed he was riding in circles.
Adrian stopped and lit his lamp. His senses were much sharper than they had been during the day. Every sound in the bushes startled him, and he began breathing faster. He squinted to see better. The road widened a little, then curved. Some way ahead he could see a farmhouse, or perhaps just the ruins of a farmhouse, like so many he had passed. He jumped when he heard a rustling noise behind him. But when he turned around, he saw nothing. Don’t start imagining things! he admonished himself and pedaled faster. Just beyond that little clearing in the woods up ahead, he might—
There were three of them. Evil-looking men with hard faces, ragged clothes, and a demeanor that made it clear they had nothing to lose. Two of them jumped out of the spiky bushes and onto the road in front of Adrian, blocking his path. The third came out behind him. Adrian was trapped.
“Money, watch—give me everything you have!” one of the men said, waving a rifle in Adrian’s face.
Adrian pulled his watch from his wrist and handed it over. He could only stand and look on, his heart hammering in his chest. The men stank of whiskey. Oh God . . .
The leader felt the leather wristband of the watch, which had grown limp with wear. “Not good,” he said. “Gold! Give me your gold watch!”
“I don’t have a gold watch!” said Adrian. “Here, my money . . .” With shaking hands, he took out his wallet, and in a move that was both courageous and contemptuous, he tossed it at the men’s feet. There wasn’t much left in it, anyway. He’d have more money wired from Germany when he got to Indianapolis.
As the man who had taken the watch from him bent down to pick up the wallet, the other two laughed and said something in a slang that Adrian didn’t understand.
It was now or never! Adrian took advantage of the moment to make his escape. He took off, pedaling madly, heedless of everything except getting away. But he had to get off the street. He swerved into the bushes. Thorny branches whipped him in the face. One scratched his left eye, but he kept going. A moment later, he was riding across an open field. If only he knew where to go next . . . He could hear the heavy steps of the men some distance behind him. Adrian pedaled even harder.
The shot came without warning and hit him in the back of his left knee. His leg was knocked off the pedal, and he fell backward over his rear wheel. He landed on his back on something hard, a rock or a branch.
Then he passed out.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Ow, you stuck me!” Isabelle spun around as if she’d been bitten by a tarantula, not jabbed with a pin.
Josephine sighed as she took one of the pins she was holding between her lips and attached a large pocket to the back of Isabelle’s jacket. When she was finished, she pulled over a kitchen chair and asked Isabelle to sit down and lean forward.
“All right, imagine that you’re sitting on your bicycle. Put both hands out in front of you. Now reach back with one hand and try to reach the button on the pocket.”
“No problem,” said Isabelle with a shrug. “Look, I can even close it again with one hand.” She jumped up and gave Josephine in quick kiss on the cheek. “You’re a treasure! The jacket’s just perfect. I can fit a sandwich in the pocket, with a bit of fruit and some chocolate, and then we can eat whenever we want, without having to get off. We’ll have the best cycling clothes of them all!”
Jo beamed. “Don’t forget the two breast pockets I sewed on. You can stuff a handkerchief and a few caramels in those. A backpack would restrict you a great deal more, so this will give us a real advantage.”
Each of the women competing in the race was to wear a discreet riding outfit. Susanne Lindberg had explained that each rider would have to supply a pair of dark-colored bloomers for herself, as well as a jacket in dark blue, black, or gray. A red scarf around their necks would identify them as participants in the six-hundred-mile race. Charles Hansen would hand out the scarves to every participant in Copenhagen. When Josephine asked if they would be allowed to wear pants instead of bloomers, Susanne Lindberg had told her no. They did not want to shock the Danish country people unnecessarily. It was most important that they leave a good impression wherever they went.
Jo could not object to that.
Still, if she had to wear bloomers and a jacket, then she would make them as practical as possible. Because they had been unable to find anything suitable in the catalogs, she had decided to modify standard items of clothing to suit her needs. She bought herself a sewing machine at Reutter’s Emporium and went to work, adding pockets, a buttonhole in the cuffs, and a button at the elbow. Now she could easily roll up the sleeve of her jacket, push the button through the buttonhole, and turn it into a short-sleeved jacket. For the bloomers, she had sewn a wide belt of thin but flexible waterproof leather, with a hidden pocket for important documents. That way, neither sweat nor rain could damage them. When Isabelle saw Jo’s practical riding outfit, she absolutely had to have the same thing, so Jo set to work on a second set of clothes.
But when Isabelle then said to her, “Look . . . do you think you could also modify Leon’s things?” Jo had had enough.
“I am not a seamstress! Besides, your Leon is such a vain piece of work that nothing I do would be good enough,” she replied, more harshly that she intended.
Instead of getting huffy, Isabelle laughed. “My dear, sweet Leon certainly has a sense of style. The best is only just good enough for him, and he knows exactly what suits him and what doesn’t. I have never met a man with such unerringly good taste.” Her eyes had taken on a dreamy look, and she let out an adoring sigh. “But why should that surprise us? He comes from a large wine-growing estate, after all. His family’s roots go back hundreds of years, and they’re deeply connected to their traditions. My God, you can’t compare Leon to the pale fellows around here. He’s in a class all his own.”
Josephine did not even have a chance to protest, because Isabelle went on.
“His family live like the landed gentry in England. I could listen for hours to his stories about the harvest, when everyone pitches in to gather the grapes into the big presses. And then there are the traditional feasts, when all the villagers sit together at long tables and eat and drink and celebrate.” She sighed longingly. “Oh, I would love to see it all with my own eyes one day.”
Jo furrowed her brow. “A city girl like you out in the country? It wouldn’t be fun for long. I admit I don’t know much about rural life, but when I was down in the Black Forest, all the farmers I saw worked hard. Slogging away in their fields from dawn till dusk, first afraid that a cold spell in spring would freeze the buds on the fruit trees, then fearing thunderstorms and hail in summer. A farmer’s life is no bed of roses, I’m sure of that!”
“Leon’s family lives in Rhineland-Palatinate, not in the Black Forest. And everything in Rhineland-Palatinate is much better and nicer. Besides,
I can scarcely believe that the family personally slogs away, as you put it, in the vineyard from dawn till dusk. That’s what you employ other people to do,” Isabelle said haughtily.
Josephine dropped the subject. She went to the oven and took out the baked potatoes she had put in an hour earlier. Jo sprinkled them with a few herbs that she had picked in summer in Frieda’s garden and dried in the garden shed. They smelled irresistible.
“My mouth is already watering.”
While Jo put the potatoes onto two plates, she said over her shoulder. “Leon this, Leon that . . . Don’t you worry that it’s all moving too quickly? You hardly even know the man. Your father would never agree to your marrying him, would he?” She thought of what Clara had said about having to sleep in the bed you had made. But she had no desire to sound older than her years just then.
“You’re starting to sound like Irene,” said Isabelle. “She doesn’t like the idea of me seeing Leon, either. Last weekend, she said to me, ‘The moment Adrian leaves, you throw yourself at the next one!’ Outrageous, isn’t it?”
Josephine gave a neutral shrug. Actually, Irene wasn’t that far off . . .
“She’s just very loyal to her brother. That’s a good thing,” Jo said. “Maybe she’s worried that you’re so in love that you’ll neglect your training. We’ve all got a big goal ahead of us, after all.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that love can give you wings?” Isabelle asked, beaming at Josephine over the top of her plate. “Oh, Jo, you overthink these things. You know, when you’re in love—no, I’ll put it another way—when you love, the world suddenly looks completely different. It looks fresh and rosy, like it is covered in icing. All will turn out for the best. I’m sure of it. In the spring we’ll ride in a grand race and show the entire world what we women can do. And as far as Leon and I are concerned—everything will work out there, too.” She patted Jo’s hand patronizingly. “Just wait. The first time you feel Cupid’s arrow, you’ll know where my optimism comes from.”
While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Page 34