Read The Glimmer Palace for Free Online

syllabus, which included the habits of the fruit fly, German poetry, and a minor German painting school that specialized in the portraiture of dogs, did not make a rounded education. But until she could offer an alternative, she wasn’t in any position to rectify it.
    One day in May, when the children were lining up to be taught about ammonites by a young geologist, Tiny Lil was summoned. Sister August was clutching a letter with a military crest as a letterhead. She turned and surveyed Tiny Lil, taking in the scuffed boots, the stained apron, and the plaits she had slept in for two nights running.
    “Here’s a clean pinafore,” she said, and handed one to her. “Now go and wash your face, brush your hair, polish your boots, and be back in the front hall in ten minutes.”
    The pinafore was freshly laundered and stiff with starch. The nun had changed into a clean tunic and veil. Not a single strand of fair hair escaped from her wimple.
    “The Number Eighty-two will take us there,” she told Tiny Lil as she buttoned up her coat. “We won’t have to wait long.”
    It didn’t occur to the nun to tell the orphan where they were going. There wasn’t enough time for Tiny Lil to ask. The streets outside the orphanage were quiet in mid-morning. A horse and cart piled with coal trotted past, followed by a lone dog with a bone in its mouth. No one else was waiting at the tram stop.
    Of course, Tiny Lil immediately decided that she had finally been claimed. A parent with amnesia, a favorite fantasy of hers; a distant relative; a set of rich and kindly foster parents had recovered their memory or accidentally discovered her existence or chosen her from afar, and now she was going to meet them. Why else would she have been singled out and taken from class with no notice? It had occasionally happened to other children, so why not to her?
    Sister August was staring into the distance, her beautiful long-lashed eyes fixed on a point where apple blossom was blowing across the elevated train tracks like snow. As if she felt the girl’s gaze physically, the nun turned her head and glanced down at her companion. Tiny Lil grabbed hold of her hand and held it tightly. She was too old to have her hand held, they both knew that, but Sister August didn’t pull away. Tiny Lil felt her cheeks burn and her heart beat faster. And so she lifted Sister August’s hand to her lips and kissed it.
    “I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered.
    But the nun didn’t hear. A tram was approaching and came to a halt right in front of them with a screech of brakes and a sigh of pressurized air.
    “Right on time,” said Sister August.The doors opened and the nun used both hands to propel Tiny Lil up the steps and onto the lower deck.
    The tram was packed and there was only one seat. Several men immediately stood but Sister August would not take their place. Instead she sat Tiny Lil down and then grabbed hold of a leather loop that dangled from the roof. The heavy gold crucifix around her neck swung backward and forward like a circus performer.
    As they sped away from the orphanage, Tiny Lil was struck by the difference between the city outside the walls and the one she had imagined. She rarely left the grounds and had become so used to the noise of trolley cars, the rattle of the S-Bahn, the regular rhythm of construction, and the thrump of military marches outside that she saw them in her mind as children’s toys, tin soldiers, train sets, and toy men scaling building blocks.
    But when she boarded the Number 82 to Schlesisches Tor, it was as if she had stepped right out of her childhood.The city they crossed was bigger, much bigger than she had ever imagined. They passed huge palaces, black stone monuments, and enormous parks.The tenements seemed to lean inward and block out all the sunlight. The road was wide but maybe not wide enough. Polished automobiles, horse-drawn carriages, and dozens and dozens of bicycles sped past them and occasionally