The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  “In all these years, I’ve never asked myself that,” she replies. She gives a little laugh.

  “Maybe little demons! It would be nice to have tiny demons around your neck—curled inside the pearls. They could make your wishes come true.”

  “That would be good, wouldn’t it! What would you ask them, Sophie?”

  “I don’t know … to make me a love potion.”

  “Are you in love?”

  “No,” I lie, “but a potion might come in very handy some day.”

  “Smart girl—plan ahead.”

  “Where’d you get your jacket?” I ask.

  “I made it. I make all my clothes. The shops have nothing that fits me.”

  “My mother sews me clothes sometimes, but I can’t imagine her ever making something so beautiful for me.”

  “Then I’ll make you one. I’ll just have to measure you.”

  “When?” I rush to ask, which makes Vera laugh with pleasure.

  A man calls her name from across the room. He’s slender, with broad shoulders and the erect posture of a dancer. His sinister green eyes are ringed by kohl and a mop of thick brown hair falls over his ears. He wears a scarlet cape, and he looks vaguely familiar—as though he’s condensed out of a recent dream. He says something to Vera in German-accented Spanish, then grins.

  “Do shut up, Georg!” she shouts back, though I can tell she’s not really angry. He lifts his glass to Vera, as though to toast her, then goes back to sipping its cloudy liquid.

  “What did he say?”

  “That I’m taking too much of your time. Am I?”

  “No. Who’s he supposed to be?”

  “Cesare, the sleepwalker from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.”

  “That’s right!” I exclaim. “His costume is perfect! What’s he drinking?”

  “Absinthe. He thinks it’s romantic.” She rolls her eyes as if he’s absurd. “Let’s get to work now. I’ll see if I can get a tape measure. Wait here.”

  She passes Mr Zarco, who is talking with Papa and a white-haired woman with a peacock feather in her hair, then disappears through a doorway. A powerfully built, blond young man wearing dark glasses and holding a silver cane is now talking with Cesare, who winks at me when he notices me staring. He knows I’m wondering about him—about men who dress up as sleepwalking murderers—but he doesn’t seem to mind. After a moment, Rolf waddles up to me. His chest is so squashed that his head seems to sit directly on his legs, a Hieronymus Bosch creature come to life. He’s holding his floppy yellow hat in his hand. He has short, graying hair and might be forty or even fifty, but I don’t think I can tell the age of a dwarf very well.

  “Would you like something to eat?” he asks in his Rhineland accent.

  “I don’t think I should,” I say. “My mother is making supper.”

  “My wife baked a heavenly chocolate cake,” he says, licking his lips. His eyes radiate glee, and I realize I like him. “Come sit with us and have a small slice.”

  Vera is nowhere to be seen, so I nestle between Rolf and Heidi, who cuts me a piece of her cake. Her fingers are stubby, like those of a doll’s. So are Rolf’s, but he has tufts of hair on his knuckles. I imagine his compact chest is furry, too, though that seems impossible in someone three feet tall.

  “Do you like to bake?” Heidi asks me.

  “Sometimes,” I reply. “Once, I made a kugelhopf with my mother.” I take a big bite of the cake. “Delicious,” I tell her, and it is.

  She whispers, “The secret is to add chopped hazelnuts to the melted chocolate.”

  Her revelation seems to welcome me into a world exclusively for women and girls. “Heidi, would you ever let me go to the movies on a weekday evening with my boyfriend?” I ask.

  “You have a boyfriend?” She smiles with delight.

  “I think I do, but I’m not sure what he thinks. So would you?”

  “If you promised not to be home late. And if I knew exactly where you were.”

  Fair enough. And a more sensible reply than I’m ever likely to get from my mother.

  Heidi introduces me to some of the other guests. Across from us sits a young man with a barrel chest and a small, pear-shaped head, wearing a bright blue shirt and white bow tie. “I want another piece,” he says, interrupting our conversation with the imploring voice of a neglected little boy.

  “That’ll be your third,” Heidi replies in a mildly scolding tone, and she looks at the woman next to him for approval. Her billowy pink blouse has a ruffled white collar and she wears golden rings on all her fingers. She’s raven-haired, with a slight almond-shape to her eyes—very regal looking.

  “Martin can have as much cake as he likes tonight,” she says.

  While Heidi cuts the young man a slice, he stares at me, afraid to speak.

  Rolf whispers to me, “On my last two tours with the circus, Martin and I had an act in which he’d hurl me across the ring. He’s very shy, poor boy.”

  “Hi,” I say to him in a little voice, trying to coax him from his hole.

  He folds his lips inside his mouth and looks away until Heidi hands him his cake. Then, his deep brown eyes catch fire and he gobbles it down like a wolf.

  “I’m Julia,” the regal-looking woman tells me. “And this is my son,” she adds, taking Martin’s shoulder.

  Julia and I get to talking about her homeland. She’s a Tunshan, which is a tribe that lives near the Caspian Sea. She tells me that she grew up on the Asian steppes. She worked as a fortune-teller in the circus, but now she owns a shop selling herbal cures.

  “Everyone here was in the circus?” I whisper to Rolf after Julia turns back to her son.

  “Most of us. Even Vera, though now she works for Isaac. Once he discovered she made her own costumes, he gave her a job as a seamstress.”

  “I thought Mr Zarco worked at Heitinger’s department store.” That’s what I’d heard from Papa.

  “He supplies Heitinger’s and some of the other fancy shops with women’s clothes. He has a small factory on Dragonerstraße. And a warehouse right across the street.” Rolf puts his festive yellow hat on my head. “Vera made these for me and Heidi.”

  The flannel makes me itch, but being able to tinkle when I shake my head is a likeable sensation—like giggling every time I move. With the rim of the hat over my ears, the voices in the room mix together into a buzz if I don’t pay close attention. Maybe this is what it would sound like if I could hear the golden bees inside the poet’s heart.

  Heidi introduces me to Marianne, who removes her snout to exchange kisses with me, and the bullfighter, Karl-Heinz, who smells pleasantly of spicy cologne. I’m jealous of the way he and Marianne talk to each other with their hands—butterflies dancing. While they converse, her emerald eyes glow like a cat’s. They kiss all the time. I’ve never seen people so in love. It makes me feel as if I’m snooping.

  Mr Zarco comes over and talks to Karl-Heinz, who rushes off. Rolf tells me that Vera used to sit in a big armchair on a platform while people paid money to gape at her, which makes me shudder. She was called die Menschenfresserin Maltas—the Ogre from Malta.

  “Is she from Malta?” I ask.

  “No, but it sounds a lot more exotic than Cologne,” he replies, laughing from his belly. “As long as Vera never spoke, no one could find out she was German, and it was in her contract that she was never to utter a word—even if people called out mean things to her.” He gazes down, uncomfortable, maybe thinking he’s about to reveal too much to me, but he says it anyway. “She spent nearly a decade on that stage. It was no good for her.”

  Years later, Vera would show me the famous article on her in the Morgenpost from the 3rd of June, 1928, and even a biographical note on her in German Circus Performers by Horst Brun, and all I can remember was how much more important she looked than the people around her. How they could not have noticed that remains a mystery to me even today.

  “So after all those years of enforced silence, we now have difficulty gettin
g Vera to keep quiet,” Heidi tells me, smiling cheekily. She brushes the hair out of my eyes with her doll’s hand. Such a delicate person she is. “Anyway, she survived all that humiliation and made a better life for herself—that’s the important thing.” To me alone, she whispers, “Getting even a little of what you want can be a big accomplishment for people like us.”

  Karl-Heinz attracts our attention by tapping the box-shaped camera he’s brought with him. It stands on a wooden tripod. With precise gestures, he directs Heidi to put her arm over my shoulder and implores Rolf to sit up straight. Marianne kneels behind us and lays her head lightly on Rolf’s shoulder, which makes him blush.

  “Karl-Heinz has just started taking photographs for Die Stimme, a newspaper for the deaf,” Heidi tells me, afraid to move an inch lest she provoke his impatience. Die Stimme means The Voice. “Until a few months ago, he was a police photographer.”

  He ducks underneath the black curtain at the back of the camera, fiddles with his plates, then pops back out. “Everyone look at me!” he says in his distorted voice.

  My eyes open wide in anticipation, and the flash makes them tear, but it’s thrilling to have been photographed by a professional.

  When Vera returns, Karl-Heinz gestures for her to drop down next to me.

  “I can’t!” Vera snaps. “My knee joints are made out of papier-mâché.”

  Rolf tugs on her leg.

  “My goodness,” Vera snarls, “it’s like being attacked by poodles. I wish you people would just leave me alone.”

  “You’re impossible!” Marianne says.

  “You have never said a truer word!” Vera declares, and with her hands on her hips and eyebrows raised, it’s clear she’s referring to her physical form as much as her temperament.

  Martin embraces a black leather armchair in a bear-hug, lifts it up to his shoulder with a grunt, and carries it past those of us sitting down. I hold my breath, imagining all that weight falling onto Heidi or Rolf—or me—and the tragic headline the next morning: Fourteen-Year-Old Girl Crushed by Circus Strongman—Two Dwarfs Injured.

  I’d be dead but I’d have my own page-one story. Not too unfair an exchange.

  With another grunt, Martin places his load on the ground next to Vera and says, “For you.”

  “Finally, a gentleman!” she exults, and she places a big kiss on his sloping brow. The young man smiles and presses both hands hard against the spot, as though he wants to push her affection deep inside his head.

  Vera drops down and fusses in her bag till she comes up with a cigarette. When she looks at Karl-Heinz, he motions for her to lean forward.

  “I’m not a trained seal,” she tells him testily. “Just take the damned photo.”

  “Your problem is you’re not trained at all,” Georg, the man dressed as Cesare, calls from across the room.

  “And you just missed another great opportunity to keep your opinion to yourself!” she yells back.

  From the delighted way he teases her, I think he might just be in love with Vera.

  “What does Georg do?” I ask Heidi.

  “He works in an advertising agency, but he used to be a talented trapeze artist. He broke his wrist and hip in a fall last year and is unlikely to perform ever again.”

  “And the blond man next to him—with the cane?”

  “He’s a famous tightrope walker—a main attraction at the Krone Circus in Munich. His name is Roman Bensaude. He’s just moved to Berlin.”

  “But he’s blind, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he sees the rope with his feet.”

  Georg without his Cesare makeup

  So it is that I learn that the first major circus star I’ve ever been in the same room with is a man with eyes in his toes.

  In the photograph, Vera is glowering. You will notice that first, and you will be forgiven if it’s all you notice for quite some time. After all, it’s hard to turn away from her earthworm lower lip curling down, and those fearsome hooded eyes under her awning of forehead. Do not cross me! she is saying.

  Perhaps she regards defiance as the only option for a lopsided amazon.

  Like me, you might also hear Vera’s thoughts coming out to you as you stare at her. You don’t have any right to know anything more about me than my refusal to be acceptable, because whoever you are, I don’t want or need your approval.

  In the foreground of the photograph, Heidi is hugging me tight, Rolf is fighting a grin, and Marianne is blowing a kiss at Karl-Heinz, and by extension at the viewer. I’m at the center, doing my best to look angelic, since I see this photograph as a chance to transform a lie into the truth. If I can’t be perfectly sweet in real life, why not in black and white?

  Next, Karl-Heinz makes Papa and me pose with several of the guests, then alongside Mr Zarco. Our neighbor pulls on the tip of my hat at the very last moment, so that we’re both caught laughing. A serious man who likes to startle people with his playfulness. Attractive to a girl like me.

  When the photographer moves on to a portrait of his blue-snouted beloved, Vera gets her chance to take my measurements. She moves my arms and legs as though I’m a puppet.

  “How tall are you?” I ask her as she measures my arms.

  “Six foot five and a half. And you?”

  “Five foot one. But I’m still growing.”

  “Me too!”

  As we laugh together, Georg comes to talk with her. “Vera, I’m going to the Botanical Gardens on Saturday to look at the flowers in the hothouse. How about coming along?”

  “At nine in the morning again?” she asks skeptically.

  “That’s when the blossoms wake up and are most active.”

  “But that’s when I’m least active. And besides, you know I don’t go out during the day.”

  “Please … You’ve got to think like an azalea and open yourself to the sun. Look, I’ll come around to your apartment. We’ll go for coffee first. If you want, we can have lunch at my place afterward.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Georg turns to me. When he pokes a teasing finger into my shoulder, I notice he’s wearing a stunning topaz ring. The stone is the color of the sun. “You want to come, too?” he asks.

  “I don’t know anything about looking at flowers.”

  In a Yiddish accent, he says, “What’s to know? You see a flower, you look!”

  He smiles so eagerly and warmly that I’m charmed. And a bit stunned, too.

  “I’ll call you,” Vera says. “Now leave us alone—I’ve work to do.”

  Before he can reply, Papa calls me from across the room. “Sophie, it’s time to go. Your mother must be thinking we’ve been kidnapped by Nazis.”

  An innocent enough comment, since the Nazi Party is little more than a red and black fringe to the tattered flag of German politics at the moment, but Vera starts at hearing Papa’s little jest. Georg reaches for her arm and gives it a reassuring squeeze, whispering, “Don’t worry, we’ll push them back into their caves.”

  And with that one gesture, I decide he’s a good person.

  “Just one more measurement,” Vera calls back to Papa, holding up her tape.

  After she encircles my wrists and jots down some notes, she embraces me. Her hot breath on my neck raises gooseflesh, but I hug her back. That’s when my cheek brushes against hers, chasing a snake up my spine. When we separate, her eyes are moist, maybe because she detected my spasm of terror. Before I can apologize, she says, “You’ll have to have a fitting for the jacket. Isaac will let you know when I’m ready.”

  Then she rushes away, so my apology is never spoken.

  Raffi Munchenberg enters the apartment as Karl-Heinz makes Papa and me pose for a last photo. He’s got his hat and coat back from Tonio.

  “Raffi!” I call out, waving and jumping; he’s safe, which means I am too.

  “Stop moving!” Karl-Heinz orders, glaring at me, and Papa grabs my hand tight. He and I are standing in front of the crammed bookshelves, beside a bespectacled j
ournalist named Ludwig Renn, an old friend of Mr Zarco’s. Communists come in all shapes and sizes, and Papa and the famous writer call each other comrade.

  As soon as the flash goes off, I run to Raffi, who’s talking now to Mr Zarco. He gives me a big kiss on each cheek.

  “So you’re all right!” I exclaim.

  “Oh, I was just dramatizing,” he scoffs.

  “I didn’t know you knew Mr Zarco.”

  “Oh, we’re old friends. Watch this …” He wiggles his pink ears. He and Mr Zarco laugh. I don’t.

  “So I’m not funny anymore?” Raffi asks, pouting comically.

  He’d like me to think his escape was just a joke. “You can’t fool me,” I declare, scowling.

  “No, you’re too grown up now,” he says, grinning like a proud older brother. “So when can I get my things?”

  “Papa and I are going now. Come down with us, or I can bring them to you later.”

  He and I take the stairs two at a time, racing, just as we always have, with Papa patiently bringing up the rear. Raffi kisses my mother effusively at the door, which pleases her and makes her arrange herself in the mirror afterward. Hansi charges into his arms like a long-lost orphan. “Help me with my jigsaw puzzle,” he pleads.

  “In a couple of days … maybe Monday. I can’t tonight.”

  “I’ll help,” I jump in, because I adore the challenge of beating him to the right pieces.

  But his big sister is hardly special and Hansi sulks until Raffi adds, “I’ll give you a bath then, too, if your mother and father say it’s all right.”

  “Can he, Mama?”

  My mother could never refuse my brother’s shining eyes. “As long as you don’t leave a flood!” she says, pretending to be severe.

  Our guest puts his hand over his heart and promises to keep the bathroom dry. Hansi imitates him. Raffi and I then go to the room I share with my brother and close the door behind us. I hand him the envelope. “The folded paper is in there too,” I explain.

  Hansi in his Carnival mask

  “You’ve opened it,” he says, frowning.

  “You know how Tonio is when he gets excited,” I reply, and though Raffi does, he still gives me a disappointed look. I defend myself by saying hotly, “If you didn’t come back, we had to know what was inside!”