The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  That notion seems to halt all my thoughts, and we don’t speak for a while. He offers me some challah bread. A discovery—we can sit together without having to fill up the silence.

  “Why is there a peacock on the cover?” I finally ask.

  “Berekiah saw God most clearly in birds—in those creatures of light and air.”

  “And what’s the title?”

  “It’s called The Bleeding Mirror.* It’s about the pogrom in Lisbon. Berekiah gives his interpretation of what it means on the very last page. Two thousand Jews were murdered, you know.”

  “So what did it mean?”

  “Berekiah believed it was a warning for the Jews to leave Europe. Because the kings and bishops here would never let us live in peace … which is why he and his family moved to Istanbul.”

  “But one of your ancestors must have come back to Europe.”

  “Papa. While he was traveling through Germany, he met my mother. They fell in love, got married, and …” Isaac taps his chest, “a certain someone then came along. Though I can’t help thinking at times that there must be some greater significance to Papa’s returning to Europe.”

  I put down The Bleeding Mirror gently and pick up the second manuscript, which has a flower designed with black ink on the cover—six petals within a wheel.

  “Why is there no title on this one?” I ask.

  “Look more closely, Sophele. All the contours of the flower are made with tiny Hebrew letters—a technique called micrography. A different petal spells out the title for each of the six manuscripts that make up what Berekiah calls his Six Books of Preparation.” Isaac points to the topmost petal, which is more darkly inked than the others. “This one here says The Book of Birth.”

  “Why birth?”

  “Birth is our first gate.” He opens his hand. “We enter the world. The Seven Gates of the universe are at work inside our bodies, of course.”

  “And our second gate?”

  He lifts up the second manuscript and points to the petal to the right of the one whose letters he’s just deciphered. “When a young girl like you first recognizes herself in a mirror, she passes through the Second Gate. She knows she is alive. So this manuscript is called The Book of Selfhood.”

  “And the third?”

  “That’s the gate you’re walking through at the moment. The Gate of Union. You are becoming a woman and you want to join together with another person.”

  “What gate have you reached?”

  “Me?” He laughs as though surprised and gratified by my question. “I’ve passed the sixth and am hurtling on my way toward the seventh like a comet.”

  “So each of these manuscripts is about one of the Seven Gates?”

  “Only the first Six.”

  “What about the Seventh?”

  “When I inherited the manuscripts, there was no text about the Seventh Gate. And my father didn’t remember there ever being one. Maybe it was lost, though lately I’ve begun to suspect that Berekiah didn’t write one—and for a very good reason.”

  “Which is?”

  “That any intelligent young girl like you who had access to the manuscript and who followed Berekiah’s instructions for reaching the Seventh Gate might be able to rise into Araboth. She could see what’s in store for the world and have a wish granted by the Lord. That could prove disastrous—even for God. I think that’s why Berekiah makes just two direct references to the Seventh Gate. Both of them are in his difficult-to-decipher code—deep under the surface of the words written under the glass. Though he may have written other things so far down that I haven’t been able to find them yet.”

  “What’s he say about it?”

  Isaac turns to the second-to-last page of The Book of Memory, which is about the Sixth Gate. “Here’s the clearest reference Berekiah gives the reader … ‘The Seventh Gate opens like wings as we begin our conversation. It speaks with a million bleeding voices and yet just one. Only he who hears the voices with the eyes of Moses may enter Araboth.’”

  “It sounds a bit like a riddle.”

  “It is in a way—the most important riddle in the world. And on the last page, there’s a bit more. Listen …‘On the arch of the Seventh Gate you shall write my final words, and you shall hold on tight to the silver winds of mesirat nefesh, and as you do the winds shall cease to cause your hands to tremble. The music you hear will be the souls speaking in Araboth, readying to greet you. Fear not the shadows that come to pursue you, because these shadows are light. And fear not how you shall be cast into the earth, because that fall is the ascent you have so long been seeking. Welcome the fires around you because they mean life for those who come after you.’”

  Isaac’s voice is like none I’ve ever heard—deep and sure. As though every word he speaks might have the power to create life or destroy it. When he talks to me like this, it often even seems that the words between us have shed their usual veils and become as tangible and generous as the gleam in his eyes when I’ve understood him. When I think back to those days it seems as if the light coming in his kitchen window from the city that we both loved were telling us: Remember this time and this place, for you may never have this sense of discovery again.

  And so sadness, too, filled our conversations on occasion—the sadness of knowing that our hours together would someday be only a distant memory.

  “What’s mesirat nefesh?” I ask.

  “Hebrew for the willingness to sacrifice oneself.” Isaac reaches for The Bleeding Mirror and opens it to the Preface. “Berekiah mentions it here. ‘The occult power of mesirat nefesh rests in the tradition among kabbalists to risk even a journey to hell for a goal that will not only help to heal our ailing world but also effect reparations in God’s Upper Realms.’” He lays the book down. “You see, Sophele, whoever desires to pass through the Seventh Gate must be willing to sacrifice himself.”

  “Do Berekiah’s manuscripts tell you where the first Six Gates are?”

  “Yes. He researched for years in the writings of other kabbalists in order to find them. The First Gate is in Paris, as I’ve told you. In the façade of Notre Dame.”

  “But a cathedral isn’t for Jews.”

  “All the gates were consecrated on the façades of churches.” He gives me a cagey look. “Putting them on synagogues might seem more natural, but that would have been short-sighted, because our temples have been destroyed so often by Christian kings. So they were consecrated where no one would guess, but where they’d be easy to find for anyone who knew where to look, and safe from destruction.”

  “And the other ones?”

  “The Second is at the Cathedral in Barcelona, the Third at the Cathedral in Worms, the Fourth at the Ambrosian Basilica in Milan, the Fifth at the Prague Cathedral, and the Sixth at the Church of Mary Magdalene in Lisbon. One must walk through each of these gates before trying to go through the Seventh. Unless … unless the aspirant is a sage, in which case he needs no geographical or physical help.”

  “Have you gone through all the geographical gates?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Seventh … don’t you have any idea where it is?”

  “Berekiah gives a veiled clue that it was somewhere in southern Europe, perhaps Spain, but that it was destroyed and never reconsecrated. He could be wrong, however. Maybe it’s in London or Budapest, Rhodes, Dubrovnik …” He opens his hands as though presenting me with a gift. “Or perhaps even here in Berlin! In any case, one thing is certain—until it’s found, my only hope of passing into Araboth is in my own head.”

  On a Friday afternoon when we’re not in the mood for Jewish studies, Isaac tells me more about the guests at his Carnival party, including Rolf, Heidi, Vera, K-H, Marianne, and Roman, the blind tightrope walker. It turns out that Julia—the Tunshan woman—is an expert on herbal medications, and she has her own shop next to the New Synagogue.

  Nearly all of the friends he invited to the party were members of The Ring. By now, I’m convinced that one of the
m informed the editors of Der Stürmer that he was behind the shredding of swastika flags across Berlin. And told the Nazis that Georg was ready not only to take up arms but also to make public the names of party members who’d accepted Raffi’s bribes.

  Isaac may suspect this, too, so I’m listening for doubt or mistrust in his voice as he talks of his party guests, but I hear none.

  On my request, we go to visit Georg’s apartment on Schlesische Straße, a block south of the Spree and the brick, medieval turrets of the Oberbaum Bridge. “He could see both sides of the river from his bedroom window,” Isaac tells me, pointing to a fourth-floor, corner apartment. “He loved the view.”

  As I gaze up, I see Georg dressed in Cesare’s scarlet cape, his eyes ringed by kohl. Was his murderer’s costume a conscious reference to his decision to start using violence against the Nazis?

  “How many people are in The Ring?” I ask.

  “About thirty.”

  Too many to interrogate individually. Maybe I should begin by talking to Georg’s neighbors.

  “I want to know more about how you’re planning to fight the Nazis,” I say.

  I’m hoping that Isaac hears in my voice—and sees in the determined way that I don’t turn away from his questioning eyes—that I’m not simply curious. We’re friends now, and friends need to protect each other … That’s what I want him to understand in a way beyond words.

  Glancing down at his watch, he mumbles to himself, “Almost time to go.” Looking at me in a beseeching manner, he says, “Sophele, would you mind coming with me to an appointment I have? I’d like to talk with you along the way.”

  Amidst the sliding and shifting of the underground, Isaac talks to me about The Ring as if I’m his equal. And from now on that becomes his way with me—to speak to me as if I’m adult enough to understand his full range of emotions and thoughts when we’re alone and to be more elusive when we’re in the presence of Vera and his other friends.

  I learn right away that destroying Nazi flags, though symbolically important, was just a sidelight to The Ring’s more pressing work.

  “Our efforts have to do with the military build-up Hitler has called for,” Isaac whispers to me as we pull out of the Alexanderplatz Station. “He’s going to need vital minerals and metals from overseas, and know-how, too.”

  “So you think he’ll become Chancellor.”

  “The signs are pointing in that direction.”

  We talk in hushed tones, because the carriage is filled, though that doesn’t stop some of the riders around us from trying to eavesdrop—this is, after all, the busybody capital of the world.

  “So we’re preparing the ground to ask key foreign governments to deny Hitler the raw materials he’ll need,” Isaac explains to me.

  “An embargo?”

  “Yes. We’ve recently started presenting our point of view at various embassies, though it hasn’t been easy. Very few ambassadors will see us. Even those who should know better … the British and French, for instance. They think that Hitler is not the threat we know him to be. They’re certain he’ll be restrained by the other political parties.”

  Do words whispered far under the surface of a city take on special meaning? I soon begin to see what he meant about the shattering of our world. “So you think Hitler isn’t going to be gone in a few months? And that there’ll be a war?”

  “Unless a great many of us act now to prevent it.”

  Twenty minutes later, Isaac hooks his arm around mine as we pass through the chilly shadows cast by the linden trees in Savigny Platz. I feel privileged to be walking beside him. To the west, the sun peeks through some clouds just above the roof of a handsome brick building under a curtain of thick ivy. It is still only early December—not even winter—yet Berlin is already making its descent into an unforgiving darkness.

  Our destination is the Portuguese Embassy at Kurfürstendamm, 178. Isaac has told me that each member of The Ring has been assigned at least one embassy. The Portuguese and Turkish ones were the obvious choices for him, since he’s fluent in both languages. Roman has been given Italy, and Vera, who grew up speaking Spanish with her mother, chose Spain. Rolf and Heidi have taken Holland. Before he died, Georg had made visits to the English, French, Polish, and Czech embassies, since he was conversant in all those languages. He had been given some friendly—but off-the-record—responses, particularly by the English cultural attaché.

  Might he have been murdered because the Nazis learned he was having some success?

  “What will Hitler need from Portugal?” I ask Isaac as he purchases tobacco at a kiosk on Kantstraße. He points up to the S-Bahn tracks, which are above ground here. “To make steel for train tracks and weapons Hitler will need wolframite ore. Portugal is where Germany already gets it, and he’ll need as much as they’re willing to sell him. If war breaks out, he may also try to use Lisbon and Porto as bases for his operations in the Atlantic.”

  “And the Portuguese Ambassador … has he been friendly to you?”

  Isaac makes an irritated puffing sound. “So far, I’ve spoken only with his assistant for trade. I’m meeting with him again today. He thinks the Nazis have some fine ideas but that they go too far when it comes to the Jews, and I’m supposed to be grateful for that concession. You see the ignorance I’m up against? So I’m trying to educate him about the consequences of Hitler’s policies. At the same time, I’m working on his Turkish and English counterparts.”

  “So you’ve taken over England from Georg?”

  “Yes, though my English is an embarrassment.” He gazes up as if asking forgiveness from God. “Every time I go to the embassy, I sweat buckets because I’m petrified I’ll make some terrible gaffe. But I’ve no choice. We need to set the stage for an embargo.”

  “Maybe you should invite the Portuguese cultural attaché to a meeting of The Ring, so he can see how strongly all of you feel about the Nazis …”

  Isaac nods appreciatively at me. “I thought of that, Sophele, but I think that Vera and some of the others might just scare him off.”

  A couple blocks before our destination, Isaac stops talking. His eyes grow worried, as if he’s reached an impasse within himself. On the sidewalk in front of the Portuguese Embassy, he takes my head in his hands and kisses my cheeks. “Thank you for coming with me. You won’t have trouble getting home by yourself, I hope.”

  “I could find my way home blindfolded. But are you all right?”

  “I confess, Sophele, there are many things I may not be capable of doing. If Georg were still here, this would all be easier.”

  As Isaac starts away, he looks so tired and lost that I realize what ought to have been obvious to me—even confident adults can sometimes be the most fragile of creatures.

  The next day I return to Georg’s apartment house. My knocking on every door soon pays off; a tiny, elderly Lebanese man named Habbaki tells me that although he heard no quarrel during the days prior to the murder, on the evening before the body was found, a truck was parked outside. Mr Habbaki, who lives below Georg’s apartment, invites me in and pours me a cup of mint tea from a tall silver pot. Clutching a red silk pillow over his lap, as if for protection, he says, “Georg and a couple of his friends carried a round table up the stairs and into his apartment. They came in and out a few more times, but I didn’t look to see what else they had with them.”

  “Could you see the faces of his friends?” I enquire.

  “No, it was already dark. But there was a gigantic man wearing a black headscarf and cloak. My goodness, he must have been nearly seven feet tall.”

  It’s not hard to figure out who that must have been. But was it just a coin­cidence that Georg received new furniture the day before he was murdered?

  Early that evening, I visit Isaac, who has already changed into his fraying pajamas. When I tell him about the giant who helped Georg move his furniture, he narrows his eyes to suspicious slits.

  “How do you know all this?” he asks.

&nbs
p; “I talked to Mr Habbaki, Georg’s neighbor.”

  “Sophele, the Nazis do not like snoops whose fathers are Communists. You better stick to portraits. Much safer.”

  “The Nazis have much more dangerous Berliners to spy on than me—as you well know. So were you one of the people taking furniture into Georg’s apartment?”

  He crosses his arms over his chest as if he’s not going to tell me anything. He seems to have reconsidered his trust in me. I’m hurt, which is why I speak more harshly than I intend when I say, “So you and Vera helped Georg. Anyone else?”

  “Sophele, I know you’re annoyed, but I worry about you.”

  “Everybody is always worried about me. You, Mama, Papa … The only one who lets me get on with my life is Hansi.”

  “So what makes you think there’s a connection between Georg’s furniture and his death?”

  “Nothing. For now, it’s just a curious fact.”

  “Good, then you can stop snooping.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can and you will!” he bellows like a tyrant.

  He has never raised his voice to me before. I’m awestruck. And near tears. “Sorry, Sophele,” he says, gazing down glumly. “But now is not the time …” His voice cracks. He rubs his pipe stem across his lips—a gesture of distress.

  Someone else is dead, I think, terrified it may be Vera. “What’s happened?” I ask desperately.

  “Sit with me and we’ll talk.”

  He leads me into his kitchen. Once we’re seated at his table, he says, “I’ve had some bad news.”

  The words tumble out of him: Heidi has had a miscarriage and was rushed to the hospital, where she became gravely ill. She had to have an operation a few days ago because her hemorrhaging might have caused her to bleed to death.

  “But she’s okay now?” I ask hopefully.

  “Yes.”