The Glass Pearls, by Emeric Pressburger
It's 1965 in London, and German gentleman Karl Braun arrives at his lodgings on a street in Pimlico. He has greying hair, a taste for opera, a charming way with women, and a job as a piano tuner. A little eccentric perhaps, but by all accounts Karl Braun is a perfectly normal man - one of the many who came to England to flee Hitler. At least, that's what his fellow lodgers think, and that's what Helen Taylor believes as she begins courting him. The more we read, the more it becomes apparent that Karl Braun is not who he says he is: the charming piano tuner is a complete facade, and this man is on the run.
Pressburger feeds us the truth in flashes, moments of relived memory. As Karl's mind flits back to his past, we reach the sickening understanding that this harmless-seeming man is in fact a war criminal. Our piano tuner Karl Braun is none other than the infamous Nazi doctor Otto Reitmuller, who conducted brutal experiments on the brains of prisoners in a concentration camp and has been running from the police for years. The feared name is still on the lips of the lodgers who read the newspapers: they wonder when this ruthless murderer will finally be apprehended, none of them realising that he resides under their own roof.
The fascinating thing about this concept is that, as a reader, it ties you into moral knots. The novel is a powerful form because it creates empathy: when we read a novel, we are necessarily positioned as seeing the world through someone else's eyes. We invariably end up rooting for the main character: even if we don't particularly like them, we get to know them and their cares and their motives, we feel their feelings. The most compelling narratives work precisely because we are human, and so are the characters that we are reading about. So what happens when a novel's main character is a Nazi? We are torn between the automatic sympathy that the novel demands, and our own moral compass that cries out against our protagonist. Pressburger has written Karl Braun as someone we are horrified by, afraid of, and yet morbidly fascinated by and inexplicably sorry for. It's a deviously unusual reading experience.
One thing that really interested me about Pressburger's writing was the way he sneaked in references to Karl's real background in the very prose. Karl has an analytical mind, and the way he deconstructs events in his narrative voice is often very scientific, with a noticeable focus on the brain. He will muse about how his neurons sparked when he made a certain decision; he will observe how humans appear programmed to do certain things. These little quirks are actually clues to his real identity as a crazed brain surgeon, and it's very unsettling to read.
What's also chilling is the dramatic irony, by which I mean that whilst we know who Karl really is, his fellow characters are none the wiser. There's one particularly clever moment when Karl is talking to Helen, and regaling her with reminiscences about his halcyon days in Paris (which are entirely fabricated, not that Helen knows it). Karl tells a story of a prank he used to play on his women acquaintances, where he would gouge the pearls out of oysters and replace them with glass ones - see where the book's title comes from.
His tale does not go down well with Helen, who reacts that it's inhuman to do such a thing. Karl winces at the word. Helen, ever sensitive, explains how she knows that oysters have living, feeling flesh: 'You just squeeze a little lemon on them and you can see how they twist in pain.' Karl's response is scientific of course: 'Nothing of the sort. It's the reaction of citric acid on any fibrous substance...', to which Helen cuttingly retorts, 'you might know a lot about music, but your knowledge of the flesh and blood of living things is next to nothing.' Bam. I mean, what a line. Blissfully unaware of just how right she is, Helen hits the nail on the head (and drives a nail into Karl's heart). The unwitting pertinence of her offhand comment makes the blood run cold - and was my favourite moment in the whole book.
The dramatic irony is one thing, but the real thread that binds this whole book is paranoia. With each turning page, Karl gets increasingly afraid of being found out. Pressburger ramps up the intensity with a mastery that would be well-suited to a thriller. Karl repeatedly revises his learnt stories and obsessively practises his false signature. He hears voices whispering Herr Doctor, thinks he sees strange men trailing him. He invents a whole character and persona of the policeman he imagines is after him, and makes outlandish plans to avoid being predictable or traceable. As the book reaches its climax, Karl's fear of being caught is overwhelming, and it's such an exciting read - particularly because you almost find yourself hoping he evades capture, before you are reminded once again what a monster he is!
Overall, this was a really good book. It was dark (noir, even) and chilling, macabrely exciting, and morally extremely challenging. A subversive and surprising book, that I'm pleased I've been able to review.
