Read Online The Glimmer Palace by Beatrice Colin - Free Book Online
Authors: Beatrice Colin
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neither one having shifted even one centimeter.
On the second Wednesday in January, twenty children aged from seven to eleven waited patiently in a classroom. The Shakespearean costumes hung limply on a rail. The room was cold, as one of the teachers, a philosopher who had spent all day talking about Hegel, had insisted on a window being opened. Time ticked by. At half past four, they realized that the actor wasn’t coming. Two bottles of brandy the night before with a dancer from Dresden had wiped clean his memory. He did remember three days later and made his way to the orphanage immediately with a scrawny bunch of daffodils and multiple excuses.
The following week ten children including Tiny Lil waited for the actor in the freezing-cold classroom. Although he was hungover, he was just ten minutes late this time. He looked at his possible daughter. She looked back.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Anybody read any Grimm? Or maybe we should do a few musical numbers instead.”
It was soon clear that the cabaret artist had absolutely no experiencein teaching children. Although he was a member of a troupe, he took no part in devising anything, either. They spent the first class learning a song called “The Major’s Pants,” which he only half remembered. It was no fun for anyone.
“I don’t think Sister August would like us to sing about underwear,” said his possible daughter.
She had a disarming manner, he noted. Her large gray eyes seemed to bore a hole into his skull.
“She might think it’s funny,” he replied, and laughed.
Judging by the children’s response, that might not be so. He rubbed his chin with his hand. His possible daughter didn’t seem to like him.This was something he hadn’t foreseen.
“Well, if anyone has any suitable ideas, then please tell me,” he said.
The next week Wernher Siegfried had an even worse hangover, caused, he had decided when he woke up, by the anxiety of the situation.
His possible daughter was waiting for him, clutching a sheaf of paper.
“I think we should do a play,” she said.
“A play,” he said in a patronizing tone.
“Yes. I’ve written one,” said Tiny Lil. “But you have to promise me that it will be a secret.”
The day after his first visit, Tiny Lil spent the afternoon in the orphanage library, a room under the stairs that had been set up in the last century and rarely visited since. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she found it. But she did, at the back of a musty old volume, in a section where the pages had never been read and had to be torn apart with a finger.
And so he didn’t tell Sister August that the orphans were not rehearsing a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, as she had suggested, and were in fact working on a play written by Tiny Lil. For his part, Wernher was baffled and yet charmed by his possible daughter’s choice of material. And although he found her pious and uncooperative, stubborn and single-minded, he did his best to be helpful by donating props, suggesting staging, and even offering to play the part of the king.
It was also Wernher Siegfried who showed her how to use her face. Like her mother, she had high cheekbones and a small, determined mouth. But, unlike her mother, she had those eyes, eyes that could reveal everything, or nothing.
“Acting is a language,” he told her. “A silent language. Speak with your eyes.”
One stifling August afternoon eight months later, thirty dutiful adults sat on children’s chairs in the gym hall.The orphans who were not in the play filed in and sat on the floor in front of the stage. Sister August stood at the back along with the director and another brand-new secretary.
“So, which one of Grimm’s tales is it to be?” asked the secretary.
“I’m not sure,” the nun replied.
“You haven’t seen it?” she asked.
“It’s a secret. I wasn’t allowed to.”
Sister August stared at the red velvet curtain of the makeshift stage with only a
On the second Wednesday in January, twenty children aged from seven to eleven waited patiently in a classroom. The Shakespearean costumes hung limply on a rail. The room was cold, as one of the teachers, a philosopher who had spent all day talking about Hegel, had insisted on a window being opened. Time ticked by. At half past four, they realized that the actor wasn’t coming. Two bottles of brandy the night before with a dancer from Dresden had wiped clean his memory. He did remember three days later and made his way to the orphanage immediately with a scrawny bunch of daffodils and multiple excuses.
The following week ten children including Tiny Lil waited for the actor in the freezing-cold classroom. Although he was hungover, he was just ten minutes late this time. He looked at his possible daughter. She looked back.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Anybody read any Grimm? Or maybe we should do a few musical numbers instead.”
It was soon clear that the cabaret artist had absolutely no experiencein teaching children. Although he was a member of a troupe, he took no part in devising anything, either. They spent the first class learning a song called “The Major’s Pants,” which he only half remembered. It was no fun for anyone.
“I don’t think Sister August would like us to sing about underwear,” said his possible daughter.
She had a disarming manner, he noted. Her large gray eyes seemed to bore a hole into his skull.
“She might think it’s funny,” he replied, and laughed.
Judging by the children’s response, that might not be so. He rubbed his chin with his hand. His possible daughter didn’t seem to like him.This was something he hadn’t foreseen.
“Well, if anyone has any suitable ideas, then please tell me,” he said.
The next week Wernher Siegfried had an even worse hangover, caused, he had decided when he woke up, by the anxiety of the situation.
His possible daughter was waiting for him, clutching a sheaf of paper.
“I think we should do a play,” she said.
“A play,” he said in a patronizing tone.
“Yes. I’ve written one,” said Tiny Lil. “But you have to promise me that it will be a secret.”
The day after his first visit, Tiny Lil spent the afternoon in the orphanage library, a room under the stairs that had been set up in the last century and rarely visited since. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she found it. But she did, at the back of a musty old volume, in a section where the pages had never been read and had to be torn apart with a finger.
And so he didn’t tell Sister August that the orphans were not rehearsing a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, as she had suggested, and were in fact working on a play written by Tiny Lil. For his part, Wernher was baffled and yet charmed by his possible daughter’s choice of material. And although he found her pious and uncooperative, stubborn and single-minded, he did his best to be helpful by donating props, suggesting staging, and even offering to play the part of the king.
It was also Wernher Siegfried who showed her how to use her face. Like her mother, she had high cheekbones and a small, determined mouth. But, unlike her mother, she had those eyes, eyes that could reveal everything, or nothing.
“Acting is a language,” he told her. “A silent language. Speak with your eyes.”
One stifling August afternoon eight months later, thirty dutiful adults sat on children’s chairs in the gym hall.The orphans who were not in the play filed in and sat on the floor in front of the stage. Sister August stood at the back along with the director and another brand-new secretary.
“So, which one of Grimm’s tales is it to be?” asked the secretary.
“I’m not sure,” the nun replied.
“You haven’t seen it?” she asked.
“It’s a secret. I wasn’t allowed to.”
Sister August stared at the red velvet curtain of the makeshift stage with only a
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