The Glimmer Palace Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I’ll do it immediately.”
    And so it was left to Sister August to deal with the ever-increasing volume of children on a fixed budget while the director drank his coffee, stroked the shiny sole of his embroidered Turkish slipper, and contemplated a series of particularly becoming behinds.
    New beds were ordered on credit and a dormitory was set up in the gymnasium. Boots had to be bought for those who came barefoot, and more food had to be prepared in the kitchen than it could realistically produce. God, the factory owner’s widow—who was growing increasingly parsimonious—or, as a last resort, the Sisters of St. Henry would have to provide. If only, Sister August thought to herself when she was well away from the chapel, men and women would stop fornicating. The director was almost sixty. And once he had retired, she would take the seat behind the mahogany desk and quickly fill up the drawers with leaflets on abstinence.
    Nuns joined her and nuns moved away, claimed by poor health, rheumatism, or nervous exhaustion. Few had the vitality or tenacity of Sister August. Her blue eyes were chipped with determination; her full mouth was a straight line unbroken by the exercise of smiling; and her hands, although often chapped and blistered, were long-fingered and dexterous. She had just one indulgence, just one: in the long, quiet afternoons, which she had set aside for paying bills and transcribing medical records onto thick green cards, her mind would start to drift and her index finger would slip down between her legs. She did not consider it a sin. She would always stop herself or, more usually, be interrupted by a crying child or a ringing telephone well before she reached the place her body longed to go. And so Sister August was often breathless and a little flushed, as if she had just run up a flight of stairs or been informed of some awful tragedy.
    “Hello?” she would sob into the receiver. Without a word, many women would replace the handset, lift up the baby they could not afford to keep, and reconsider.
    Tiny Lil had known for as long as she could remember that when they were fourteen, the children had to leave the orphanage. The girls went to work in the owner’s underwear factory and the boys to a chemical plant or military service. Some, like Otto, left willingly with a round of kisses and a promise that he’d come back and visit. Others had to be forcibly removed and were led out after dark when it was thought that no one would hear their distress. But Tiny Lil couldn’t imagine a life outside St. Francis Xavier’s or a single day without Sister August.
    By the time they left, most of the orphans could read and write. It was written into the factory owner’s legacy. He had learned to his own cost that a workforce that could read the safety signs was preferable to one that could not.
    Because of the rise in population, all the local schools and gymnasiums were full.The orphans were educated instead in a couple of large attic rooms. Sister August taught the younger children literacy and the elder ones elocution. They all learned to write using India ink and chancery cursive and could drop their guttural vowels when required and speak with the softer accent of Sister August’s native Munich.
    In 1909 the orphanage had half a dozen teachers on loan from the university. They had only one thing in common: they had fallen for Sister August’s dynamic charm and agreed to teach at St. Francis Xavier’s on an ad hoc, no-fee basis. Some immediately regretted it and secretly considered it unwise to educate the children and give them false expectations. Others were worried that they might catch an incurable disease, and opened the windows whatever the weather. But, despite their grievances, the orphanage did have one thing going for it: it was a place where they could practice lectures or just waffle on about their own particular passions without any scrutiny whatsoever. Sister August knew that the 1909