The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  “Absolutely.”

  So it is I discover that the idea of burying yourself is far more terrifying than the act itself. It’s really just like sleeping, which is all I want to do at the moment anyway. I don’t care about Nazis, Communists, Georg’s murder, Isaac, or even myself.

  Papa leans toward me from his chair, takes my hand, and presses his lips to my palm. “I hated having to hurt you,” he whispers.

  He’s not the least bit convincing, but until recently I never minded Garbo’s wretched acting, so why should I hold this poor performance against him?

  “I know you did,” I assure him.

  “But I have to be strict now. There’s too much at stake. Häschen, I promise you I’ll never hit you again as long as you do what I ask. You have my word.”

  I smile gratefully, but what’s his word worth, given that he was a Communist until three months ago?

  As though in reply to my cynicism, he spends most of the night on a chair in my room so he can care for me. I’m burning with fever by now, so he holds a cold compress to my brow, and when I tremble with chills he makes me tea, holding the cup to my mouth while I take mouse sips.

  In the morning, my breathing is all stuffed, so he mixes mint leaves into a bowl of boiling water, holds a towel over my head and makes me inhale. A baby bird under a bower. When I look in his eyes, I realize he may not be the man I always knew, but he’s close enough—and that I still love him. In a sense, it’s only fair that he’s changed, since I’m no longer the girl I was either. We are very alike, after all. A father and daughter surviving on secrets.

  I wear my swastika armband for the first time on the 1st of May, for the May Day celebrations. Mama, Papa, Hansi, and I watch row after row of storm troopers goose-stepping down Unter den Linden. A monsoon of patriotism so dense that we’re unable to see beyond them, which is the whole point, I’d guess.

  “It’s like Germany is being born again,” Mama tells Papa, awestruck. We all are.

  Our women and girls come marching behind the men, which is when Papa turns to us and exclaims, “I can hardly wait to start my new job and be part of this!”

  “What exactly will you be doing?” I ask.

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  No, after all, I might still be the enemy.

  Mama and I have pinned swastika corsages to the collars of our blouses. And who can deny the simple cleverness of a mother who fastens two carnations to a brass badge to make the prettiest propaganda you ever saw? And what those tiny pink flowers mean—to anyone who wants to think below the surface—is that all the gardens of Europe will one day belong to our Opposite-Compass. Every hedge, flowerbed, and potted plant. Every weed along the Rhine, Danube, Seine, and Ebro. Even Isaac’s pelargoniums, which must be spying on him even now.

  My brother has been given the duty of holding up a tiny flag, but he keeps letting it fall.

  “Higher!” my father barks at him, and Mama lifts the boy’s arm. Papa’s emotions are out of control of late, largely because of his troublesome daughter, of course, but also for any number of other good reasons, not the least of which is that he’s still trying—and failing—to stop smoking. Hansi, the poor boy, is more interested in scratching his bottom than patriotic gestures, which makes Papa ready to burst. The astonishing thing is that our father has forgotten that his son must see little more than meaningless bent lines in the swastika—a symbol nearly as incomprehensible as a dachshund soaked in blood who won’t get up no matter how much you kiss her furry face.

  Behind us in the crowd is an old grandfather with pouches of ruffled skin under his eyes and war medals on his chest. He grins with pride and salutes me when I turn to him. Not a single person is complaining about hunger or joblessness. A miracle of unity. Germany as a dead forest bursting into life all at once—just like Mama said.

  After the rallies across Germany on May Day, the Semitic wall finds its permanent and natural home in the vision center of everyone’s brain. Jews and Aryans as separate species.

  Rini and I walk past each other at school without even glancing. And I stay away from Isaac’s apartment as if it’s the head office of the world Jewish conspiracy we hear so much about on the radio. All of us have been told to imagine a roomful of big-nosed, hairy-eared racketeers playing poker to see who will take Germany’s riches. Filled with pipe smoke and Yiddish blasphemies against Hitler, Aryan Superiority, and the German spirit. Our new Trinity.

  Secretly, however, I’ve pledged to myself that it will take more than armbands and beatings from my father to keep me from Isaac, Vera, and my other new friends. And from investigating Georg’s murder. Though I will have to bide my time … And I pray that when this is all over Rini and I will transform back to the people we were, and that Papa and Mama will become themselves, too. All of which means that my hope is dependent on a magic act. Is everyone in Germany counting on a return to normal or am I the only one who still believes the black dove named Hitler can flutter back into the hat? Frau Mittelmann is Jewish and my favorite teacher, so I take a chance with her one day after class and ask when all the other students have gone.

  “Sophie, I don’t even recognize this damn country anymore!” she replies bad-temperedly, as though my question were an attack, then, seeing she’s hurt me, adds quickly, “I’m sorry. I’m under a lot of pressure at the moment.” She holds a finger to her lips, closes the door to the classroom, and turns around, her hands behind her back. Her face is grave. “I’m leaving Germany. My husband and I … we’ve just arranged a visa for France.”

  “When will you go?”

  “In two weeks. I’ve handed in my resignation to Dr Hildebrandt.”

  “Where will you be living?”

  “Outside a town called Libourne. It’s not far from Bordeaux. My husband’s brother has a house there. He’s in the wine business.”

  “Isn’t Bordeaux where Goya was exiled?”

  She smiles warmly. “What a wonderful memory you have, Sophie!”

  “I could never forget the things you told us about Goya.”

  My implication that she’s had a vital role in my life makes her wipe her hand nervously through her hair. She walks back to her desk and starts putting the sketches we’ve made today in her big black portfolio. Efficiency as her antidote to despair.

  “What … what will you do in France?” I ask hesitantly.

  “Learn French, for one thing,” she replies with a bitter laugh. “And give drawing lessons to anyone who wants them.”

  Every sketch she slips into her portfolio steals one more of my fantasies about becoming a great artist. Soon, she’ll carry them all across our border.

  “And what about our classes here?” I question.

  “I’m sure the substitute will be very competent.”

  “I don’t want someone competent!”

  “Sophie, you’ve got talent, and you’re an intelligent girl. And you’re an Aryan. Just keep working hard.” Echoing our favorite quote from Cézanne, she says, “Make the faces you draw speak of the fields they have left behind, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen.”

  She ties the portfolio’s laces in a tight bow and slips into her bulky old coat, then throws the gray silk scarf around her neck that she’s worn since I first met her. Her antique clothing used to seem so Bohemian. Our local Picasso. But now she’s just a middle-aged teacher who will have to start her life over a thousand miles away. If I were writing the dialogue between us, she would begin to talk to me now about Dürer. One last time.

  From her point of view, of course, I’m a pupil who has worn a Nazi armband to school and who no longer even looks at her Jewish best friend.

  I’m still me and I still love Dürer! I want to shout, but why should she believe that?

  “Is there something more?” she asks me.

  “Can I have your new address?”

  Across the space of almost seventy years, I can see her taking out from her coat pocket a tiny red address book�
�only a bit bigger than a cigarette lighter—and tearing out a page from the back. Is it so small so that she can hide it in her shoe if the Nazis catch her drawing some vicious caricature of Hitler?

  Le Grand Moulin, Libourne. The Big Mill. She hands me the paper and I read her address out loud, in my best French accent, so I can never forget it.

  “If you’re ever in the neighborhood, come look me up,” she says cheerfully.

  Frau Mittelmann doesn’t add, you can stay with me or I’m really going to miss you. A conversation that’s given depth by what’s omitted. Especially no final kiss.

  On the way home from school, more confused than I know at the time, I rip up her address and toss it into the garbage in Frau Koslowski’s grocery. A heavy drinker getting rid of her last bottle of gin. Or one last shovelful of earth on my grave. Either way it doesn’t matter; the Jews are running away, and why should I fight their battles for them?

  Chapter Eleven

  Twenty thousand books are burned by university students in Berlin’s Opernplatz on the 10th of May. Sigmund Freud, Max Brod, Alfred Döblin, Klaus Mann, Peter Altenberg, Oscar Blumenthal, Richard Beer-Hofmann … If you don’t know all their names, then the Nazis succeeded in turning more of our culture to ash than you may want to admit.

  Tonio leaves a red rose for me on our doormat every Saturday morning, together with a note, which he always signs, Faithfully yours. My father and mother are impressed by his loyalty, and they let me see him again long before my three-month sentence has elapsed.

  I drag Tonio to see Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus in early June, and as revenge, he makes me come with him to see King Kong. We take Hansi with us, since I don’t see why I should suffer alone.

  “The era of Jewish intellectualism is now at an end,” says Dr Goebbels in the newsreel before the film. “The future German won’t just be a man of books, but a man of character.”

  Our Propaganda Minister is addressing a throng of students exalted by this chance to destroy a thousand years of poetry and prose they never wanted to read in the first place. Or could it be that Dr Goebbels is talking directly to that pile of ash in the center of the screen—the smoldering jumble that was Germany’s culture until three months ago? It’s hard to tell from the camera angle and no one would put it past that madman to have a conversation with cinders. As Isaac once told me, “Goebbels’ mind is urine.”

  “Absolutely wonderful!” Tonio whispers to me as the minister reaches his final cadence, which means I’m in love with a young man who likes the scent of piss.

  My patriotic boyfriend then moves my left hand over the expanding bulge in his pants, confirming a little-known fact that no one will ever write about, not even after the war: Dr Goebbels knows how to arouse the men of Germany better than the most experienced Neapolitan prostitute on the Kurfürstendamm. That’s his most intimate secret, and ours.

  Then King Kong comes on and Fay Wray is pretty in a mousy way, and the towering gorilla is terrifyingly realistic—almost as realistic as that other wind-up toy, Dr Goebbels—and Tonio, Hansi, and I, and everyone else in a thousand theaters across the country can be scared of something that will end in less than two hours, and forget about the importance of books for a while. Or forever, depending on whether we are men and women of character.

  * * *

  One afternoon after school, Tonio meets me so that we can hunt for old car and movie magazines in the back room of an overstuffed junk shop on Karlstraße that we sometimes explore when I can bear the dust. Afterward, since we’re only a minute from Julia’s shop, we go there, and I explain to Tonio that I met her and her son at Isaac’s Carnival party, though I’m careful to call him Mr Zarco. We stand across the street, under the awning of a café.

  “What are you up to?” he asks me suspiciously.

  “Nothing. I just want to watch for a while.”

  Julia helps a man in a derby hat choose tea for whatever problem has made him touch his elbow twice. She’s wearing a brown woolen skirt and black blouse, and her dark hair is bound tightly on top of her head. Unless the traitor in The Ring slips up, I realize, we’ll never find out who he or she is. So I will have to start things in motion …

  I begin to track Julia’s movements over the next weeks, always in the afternoon, but only irregularly because of commitments at home. She eats lunch in her apartment, which is directly above her shop. An assistant—a pale, petite young woman—substitutes her at this time but stays for only an hour and a half. At six in the afternoon, Julia closes up and fetches Martin. Often pausing for coffee at Wolff’s Café on Lothringstraße, she walks to a whitewashed, five-story apartment house behind the Bötzow Brewery on Saarbrücker Straße, where the stink of hops and malt is so intense that it brings tears to my eyes. A friend there must tutor the young man during the day, or simply watch over him. The mother and son then walk home leisurely, occasionally arm in arm, though Martin sometimes pauses at shop windows, his hands flat against the glass. They talk as they walk and Julia’s laughter is frequent and free. She seems to be a woman who has gotten what she wanted out of life. She usually buys Martin a treat at the Hengstmann Bakery, just next door to Wolff’s Café. He adores cream puffs, and she keeps a white handkerchief in her leather bag to wipe his face afterward, though he sometimes insists on doing it himself and shakes his hands as if they’re on fire when he doesn’t get his way. Anyone can see she is devoted to her son. Sometimes she watches him as he runs ahead of her, his arms flailing, and her eyes aren’t worried, like my mother’s used to be. They’re radiant with an emotion I’d never have expected—admiration.

  I try to remember that a contented woman who adores her son might still commit a murder—could even be conspiring with the Nazis. After all, we all have a double life in Germany. And yet, I soon begin to doubt she had anything to do with Georg’s death.

  Julia’s days are confined by a small area of Berlin. Only once does she make a deviation. In early June she fails to fetch Martin at the usual hour and instead walks east down Oranienburger Straße, glancing up briefly at the shimmering golden dome of the New Synagogue. She threads her way through the confusion of shoppers in the Hackescher Market and strides up Rosenthaler Straße like a woman on a mission. As I navigate past the pushcarts, apologizing to the people I bump into, I realize with an electric jolt where she’s headed and what might be about to take place. So I slip into a beer garden before I’m spotted. After all, if my hunch is correct, then Isaac or Vera could be right behind me.

  I force myself to drink a glass of wine so that I’m not tempted to jump up too soon. My legs are tense with the need to catch up to Julia. But being caught now would ruin my plans.

  I find Karl’s Cellar as dingy and dimly lit as ever, which is a bit of luck since it reduces my chances of being spotted. I’m standing just inside the front door, which is separated from the dining area by an American-style bar. Far at the back, submerged in the watery light from the table lamps, are the people I’m after. They seem elongated, almost dreamlike, as though they’re trapped in a canvas of red and reflective black, and a kind of liquid gold that burnishes their skin. They’re seated round a long rectangular table, and I hold my hand above my eyes as I count them so no one can see my face. Twenty-two members have arrived. Vera is easy to spot, a head taller than everyone else. Next I notice Isaac, and seated on his right, chatting with their hands, are K-H and Marianne. Heidi doesn’t seem to be there, but Rolf is seated across from Vera, who’s whispering something to Roman. Julia is there, too, of course.

  A big-bellied waiter comes up to me right away and tells me that the restaurant is closed until seven-thirty, which is an hour away. I tell him in a beseeching tone that I’ve agreed to meet a friend here, but he replies coarsely that I’ll have to wait outside. It’s plain from his tone that he is protecting The Ring.

  “Please, I have a bad head cold,” I tell him. “Just let me wait here a few minutes.”

  “I’m sorry—Karl makes the rules and I can’t break them
.”

  “Then can I speak to Karl?”

  “You are speaking to him,” he shoots back—unfortunately, without humor. He raises his arm to prevent me from entering. “Please, Fraülein,” he says forcefully, “just wait outside.”

  The last thing I see before leaving is a black hat being passed around the table, brim up, and K-H placing his hand into its hollow.

  On the way home, I realize they must have been drawing lots of some sort, which means I’ll have to defy my parents and visit Isaac to find out why. Late the next afternoon, I spill a full bottle of milk down the sink when Mama isn’t looking and tell her I’m off to Frau Koslowski’s grocery since we’ve none left. Rushing like a madwoman, I slip off to Isaac’s apartment, but he isn’t in. Over the next few days, he never answers my knocks. I worry that he has been arrested, but Mrs Munchenberg tells me that he asked her to take in his mail for a few weeks, so he must be on a trip.

  I hope Vera or some other friend will come to our apartment house to water Isaac’s pelargoniums so I can ask after him. But I never spot anyone.

  Two more weeks pass without any word from Isaac. Meanwhile, in late June, Hansi’s headmaster gives us the news I’ve long been fearing, that the boy will not be admitted back to school after the summer vacation. “If he doesn’t speak or even react to what is happening in class, what are we supposed to do with him?” Dr Meier tells us.

  We have no answer, and Papa tells Hansi—kneeling down to his height to soften the blow—that he’ll be spending his days at home now. Does my brother care? I can’t tell from his hollow stare. I’m sure, however, that he’s fading from us. Still, Mama tells him cheerfully, “Don’t worry, you’re far better off here with me.”

  Probably just what the witch told Hansel and Gretl, I think.

  Once Papa gives me permission to open my sketchbook again, I get Hansi to pose for me all the time. Among other benefits, it helps me count off the days while Isaac is gone without growing frantic.