“Tell her I’d like to see her.” It came out before I could edit it.
“I don’t guess she’s that sorry.”
His idea of humor didn’t always send me into laughing fits. “Tell her anyway, okay?”
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
My off-hours—what few there were—I spent exploring. I rose early and climbed Mount Adams to see the city before foundries began pumping out smoke and was entranced by sunlight glowing on church steeples and glimmering on the river. I poked around the riverfront and stood gazing at the huge side-wheelers’ twin stacks and curved decks, imagining what the glory times must have been like, back when Twain was a Mississippi pilot. I walked through slums spreading above the river enbankment: Rat Row, Sausage Row, Blacktown, Helltown; through alleys where anything could be bought, where honky-tonks and whiskey groceries abounded, and where derelict blacks and whites mingled without distinction.
I also made forays to Over the Rhine, into teeming German neighborhoods. None of the Stockings could tell me where to find what I needed—though Brainard and Waterman knew all the leading beer palaces. Since little English was spoken in the district, I made next to no progress—until the morning a most improbable individual nearly ran me over.
I had just stepped from the plank curb onto Mulberry when he careened downhill around the corner on a battered velocipede that bounced crazily on the cobblestones straight for me. I froze for an instant, then tried to leap back to the curb. He skidded and swerved, grazing my hip as he bucked wildly past, his feet splaying off the pedals. The velocipede toppled sideways. Through some quicksilver shift of weight he stepped away just as it crashed. Ignoring it, he lifted green goggles and looked at me calmly.
“Johann Sebastian Bruhn,” he said in a high-pitched voice, “at your service.”
I forgot about my hip as I stared at him. He was skinny and angular, a mulatto with light-coffee skin, yellow mud-colored eyes, and a lopsided grin. His hair was orange-red and kinky where it poked out from under his jockey cap, and his ears stuck out from his narrow head like enormous pressed flowers. He wore a patchwork jacket of reds, yellows, and blues; baggy pants were wrapped at his ankles; long square-toed shoes made his feet look like paddles. All in all, probably the silliest-looking character I’d ever seen—which is saying something, considering I went to school in Berkeley. I couldn’t help returning his grin.
“Getting in trim for the county heats,” he explained. “Sometimes I forget myself coming down Mount Auburn. You hurt?”
I rubbed my hip. “Not really.”
“Everybody around here knows Johnny.” He gestured at the storefronts. “I’m good for any damage I do, just ask.”
“You know people here?”
“Sure as beans.”
“Okay if I ask you a few questions?”
“Least I can do.”
He picked up his bike—it was wooden, with iron-rimmed wheels—and wheeled it to the top of a steep street where he opened a gate below a sign, gasthaus zur rose, and led me inside a tiny courtyard. We sat at a table in the shade of a grape arbor. I could see a slice of the city below.
“Helga!” he shouted. “Kommen Sie bitte heraus, wir haben Besuch!”
It couldn’t have astounded me more if he’d burst out singing like Marlene Dietrich. His German was convincing—but he looked like he should be spouting pure Stepin Fetchit. Within seconds a plump woman bustled from a doorway, apron flapping. Her cheeks were red, her graying hair pulled into a bun. Something in his tone, and in her familiar deference to him, suggested they were intimate. Did he live here with her? She went off and reappeared with mugs of steaming chocolate.
“Helga keeps the best lodge in Over the Rhine,” he said. “Ever need a place, you can’t do better’n Gasthaus zur Rose.”
“What does it mean?”
“Inn of the Rose,” he said, pointing at trellises where tree roses were covered with blossoms. Banks of primroses and geraniums spilled over planters and window boxes. I looked around, aware of his scrutiny. “Not many non-Dutch come up here, except to the beer gardens on Sundays. What brings you?”
After ascertaining that by “Dutch” he meant German—I would come to find that it was a commonly used derivative of Deutsch—I gave him a general idea what I was looking for. He said it was no problem at all, he could arrange everything in a matter of hours. When I told him it involved the Stockings, he grew excited.
“Brother athletes!” he said, gripping my arm. “Keepers of our bodies!”
“You’re a bicycle racer?”
“Velocipedist,” he said proudly.
“You make a living at it?”
“Haven’t made a dime—yet.” He grinned. “Been a mainstay with old John Robinson’s till lately.”
“With who?”
“You don’t know?” He took a breath and launched into a frenetic barker’s spiel. “John Robinson’s Leviathan World Exposition! Mastodon Menagerie! Cosmographic Caravan! Monster Musical Brigade! The Animal, Arenic, Antiquarian, Aquarium, Aviary, and Amusement Aggregation of the Age! Acrobats, Funambulists, and Olympiads! Worlds of Wonder under a Continent of Gaslit Canvas! Carloads of Curiosities! The Albino Moor! The Living Skeleton! No Humbug! No Ventriloquial Frauds! A STRICTLY MORAL CIRCUS!!!”
He had me laughing by the end. He said he’d worked for years as a clown and tumbler in Robinson’s Circus, which wintered in Cincinnati. This spring when it departed he’d stayed behind, intending to become a racing champion.
“Velocipede matches are nearly as big as baseball,” he said. “Right up there with billiards, horse racing, and pedestrianism.” The latter, it turned out, meant track events. “I’m saving for a racing wheel now,” he said enthusiastically.
“But how do you live since you’ve left the circus?”
“Oh, there’s lots of jobs in Over the Rhine.”
“What sort of jobs?”
“Connecting, you might say.” He explained that his language fluency enabled him to operate as a sort of agent, putting people in touch with whatever they sought. “You, for instance,” he said, grinning. “I’m just the one you need.”
I eyed his ragtag coat. “You really named Johann Sebastian Bruhn?”
“The Dutch called me it in fun, and I liked it,”
