The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  Vera has found employment making men’s suits for a Jewish tailor who pays her a decent wage and lets her work at home. Andre is designing ads for a toothpaste manufacturer. He scribbles brief greetings on the final page of her letters and always tries to be humorous.

  Tonio writes once a month. He is still in Sudetenland, though he gives me hints that he might soon be leaving for Prague. I fear that he will end up murdering Jews. In my first letter to him, I beg him to make sure the Czech Jews are treated respectfully in his presence. “If not for me, then for all our fond memories of Raffi.”

  In mid-June 1939, Isaac becomes disoriented. My first clue is that he gets the pages of Berekiah Zarco’s manuscripts badly mixed up and pleads for my help in ordering them.

  “I can’t read Hebrew letters,” I remind him.

  “My memory must be going,” he replies, knocking himself in the forehead.

  He works alone at reassembling the manuscripts, his hands shaking from the strain. His crinkled brow and constant smoking mean he’s worried that he’ll never locate the incantation he needs inside the jumble. Forensic accounting is one thing; forensic kabbalah, quite another.

  In his search, he’s now employing a medieval system called gematria, which takes advantage of the numerical values of Hebrew letters, all of which are also numbers. He calculates the sums of key words, then looks for words or expressions of equal, double, or half their value and tries to interpret what these correspondences mean. On a hunch, he’s also translating Berekiah’s references to the Sixth and Seventh Gates into Aramaic to analyze hidden possibilities.

  Toward the end of that month, he asks me if I want to meet his son. “Your son?”

  I sense us both caught in a trap that’s been waiting for months. “Where … where is he?” I ask hesitantly.

  “At school, of course. We’ll meet him when classes let out.”

  I decide to see how far afield his mind has wandered. As we near the Jewish high school on Große Hamburger Straße, he finally realizes he’s made a mistake. “My son’s dead, isn’t he?” he asks me, his face blanching.

  “Yes, he died in the war.”

  “Oh, Sophele, I don’t know what’s happening to me.” He reaches out a straining hand.

  The poor man is so scared that he falls to his knees onto the Auguststraße sidewalk. On reaching home, I call Dr Löwenstein, who has recently been released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He comes over that evening, and he’s gotten so thin that his tweed coat hangs around him like a clown suit.

  He takes Isaac’s pulse, listens to his heart, and asks him a series of questions: What year is it? How old are you? If it was four o’clock three hours ago, what time is it now?

  Isaac gives the correct replies. “And what would you like to happen to the Chancellor of Germany?” Dr Löwenstein finally asks.

  Dryly, Isaac replies, “His eyeballs should drop out, and his ears fall off, and pack horses should eat them.”

  The doctor turns to me with a grin. “The good news is he’s got his mind back. The bad news is he curses like a Yid.”

  Dr Löwenstein has a long talk with Isaac about his need to take things easier. “And you’ve got to get out of this apartment more often!” he orders him. “Your bedroom smells like old socks. I bet you don’t even stick your head out the window more than once a week.”

  Isaac agrees, but he still never leaves the apartment. Until, that is, I begin secretly putting half a luminal in his supper, which stops the occasional tremors in his hands. He even enjoys the taste of food again and puts on a few pounds, which means, among other things, that his cock gets hard when I touch it. He starts going back to work two mornings a week. On my absolute insistence, he studies his manuscripts at a more measured pace.

  In July, the rhetoric in our newspapers against England and France turns virulent. We hear frequent radio bulletins about supposed attacks on Germans living in Poland. My favorite is of a German baker’s widow allegedly raped by a rabbi and a gang of Warsaw Jews. It says a great deal about the Volk that they believe this sort of fiction. Germany As the Victim—that’s the way Dr Goebbels has decided to sell the coming all-out war, and judging by public opinion, he’s having good success.

  Tonio reaches Prague in early August. From the way he describes the friendliness he meets everywhere, you would think his tank is made of chrysanthemums. He never mentions abuses against Czech Jews, but in stiff, formal language, he refers to “enemies of the Reich who are being made to pay for spreading vicious lies about the Fatherland and its goals.”

  On the 21st of August, Benni Mannheim’s daughter, Deborah, comes over to inform us that her father has committed suicide. Isaac reaches behind him to steady himself and, finding nothing but air, crashes backward against the wall.

  Deborah says that Benni took a kitchen knife to his wrists while lying in the bathtub. She sits in front of us, her hands clutched in her lap, and she explains in a lost voice about the cost of repairing his cello being beyond their means, and of his visit to the British Embassy, where he was told that it was unlikely, given his blindness, that he’d get a visa for England, Palestine, or anywhere else.

  After she’s gone, and after I’ve cried over all the Bach, Mozart, and Telemann we’ll never hear again, and over Benni’s talent about to be buried under the earth forever, and over all the nights I spent listening to him and wondering who this miracle man was, I ask Isaac, “Why didn’t he come to ask us for help?”

  He hangs his head. “I don’t have any answers anymore.”

  “And why in a bathtub?”

  “No stains. The blood … it goes down the drain with the water. Since his accident, he feared being a burden.”

  * * *

  “I understand now,” Isaac says, putting down his newspaper. Three days have passed since Benni’s suicide and Hitler and Stalin have reached a pact of nonaggression.

  “What do you understand?” I ask.

  Isaac is in his pajamas; he hasn’t dressed or shaved since Benni’s funeral. Our mirrors are covered with black cloth.

  “Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin,” he states definitively.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “In the First Book of Samuel, Saul kills himself with his own sword. But in the Second Book of Samuel, Saul tries to take his own life and fails, so he is given a death-blow by an enemy of Israel, by an Amalekite.” He gives me a hard look. “Benni took his own life, but he was also murdered by the Nazis. His death is a sign from Samuel and Saul that the waters have risen. And this pact between Hitler and Stalin … it is the sky descending. Hitler will be free to make war on England and France and America. First Binah will shatter, then Hokhmah, and finally Kether Elyon. Wisdom and insight will disappear from our world. The Crown of God will lose all meaning. Both inside and outside are collapsing. God is about to recoil into Himself.”

  “But Benni’s suicide can’t have such important consequences. He was just one man.”

  “Sophele, you once told me that whether Benni knew it or not, his message was that the world has chords whose sound and structure obey physical laws, and scales that cannot be altered no matter what Hitler might say or do. You remember? You had reached a great truth that day, but Benni’s death … Silence will descend over all our voices now. The physical laws are coming undone.”

  “Isaac, I think you need to stay calm,” I say, fearing he’ll become disoriented again. “You’re finding symbolism that simply isn’t there.”

  I expect him to shout, or to rush to Berekiah Zarco’s manuscripts, but he walks to me with a warm radiance in his eyes that I haven’t seen in months. “Sophele, I am going to leave you now. I will not be able to love you the way you deserve, but I want you to know I am aware that I’m failing you. And that I’m sorry.” He takes my hands and shakes them playfully. “I also want you to know that I haven’t lost my marbles.” He grins. “At least, not any more than a few.”

  “You’re worrying me,” I tell him.


  He presses his lips gently to my eyes and then my lips. “I’ll be gone from you for as long as it takes, but don’t be concerned. I feel strong now that I’ve seen the sign. I have been washed seven times in the River Jordan, and I have seen the desert blossom, and I am clean again.” He caresses my cheek. “Bless you for leading me back to myself. But there is one thing I do want from you.”

  “What?”

  “You have to leave Germany. The breaking of the vessels … If you stay here, you’ll be killed. I want you to go to Istanbul. Berekiah, in his last manuscript … Wait, I want you to hear what he says.” Isaac fetches Berekiah’s seventh manuscript, an account of the Lisbon massacre of 1506, and translates part of the last page for me into German: “‘The European kings and their hateful bishops will never stop dreaming of the Jews. They will never allow you and your children to live. Never! Sooner or later, in this century or five centuries hence, they will come for you or your descendants. So face Constantinople and Jerusalem and start walking. Cast out Christian Europe from your heart and never look back!’” He gives me a resolute look meant to enforce his meaning, then carries the manuscript back to his desk.

  “But Berekiah wrote that in the sixteenth century,” I protest.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he replies, exasperated. “His words are still valid. You must go to my cousins in Istanbul. You must leave Christian Europe. Take Vera and Andre with you. Will you do that for me?”

  “Only if you come with us.”

  “I can’t. I must stay here in Berlin. I need to be here to do any good.”

  “Then I won’t leave. You’ll need me to look after you and …”

  “I can live on next to nothing for longer than you think—for years if I need to. How is an old Jewish man like a camel?” he asks.

  “No jokes!” I warn him. “And I can’t go. I have to consider Hansi.”

  “He’s doing much better now. He gets around the city all by himself, and he has friends. If all goes well, you can come back here after a year or two. And if the worst happens, I’ll send him to you. I promise.”

  “I’ll need time to prepare Hansi for my going. I’ll need to stay at least a year.” That’s a lie; what I really believe is that Isaac will either be too exhausted to fight me or completely mad by then.

  “A year is out of the question!” he declares. He clamps his pipe in his mouth to certify that decision.

  “It’s now the end of August. Give me nine months, till May. We’ll celebrate Purim and Carnival. We’ll have Passover together and then I’ll flee for your Promised Land.”

  “No. Three months maximum.”

  “That’s too soon for all I’ll need to do. Give me six.”

  “Only if you agree to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice if I sense the worst is happening.”

  “All right.”

  “And you promise not to back out at the last minute?”

  “I swear. But I want something from you in return.”

  “What?” His eyes open wide with amused curiosity. Maybe he thinks I’ll make him promise to have sex with me as often as I want.

  “I want your child,” I tell him, which makes his jaw drop and his pipe fall. As I retrieve it, I add, “I’ll leave Germany only if I am carrying your baby.”

  He raises a hand to his cheek in horror. “A child … ? But I’m … I’m seventy years old!”

  “Abraham had Isaac when he was a hundred.”

  “I’m no Abraham.”

  He flaps his hands at me, but I catch them and grip them tight. “I won’t go otherwise. Those are my terms. Take it or leave it.”

  My secret belief is that he’ll never send me away if I’m pregnant with his child. He sits on the bed and opens his arms to me. I lay my head on his lap, and he kisses me on the top of my head. I expect him to say no as gently as possible, but he never does.

  “All right,” he finally agrees, “we’ll make a baby right away. And you’ll leave after you’ve missed one cycle of the moon.” Eyeing me purposefully and speaking as if it’s an order, he adds, “Even if six months aren’t up yet.”

  “Two cycles,” I bargain. “To make sure I’m really pregnant.”

  We shake on our agreement like gentlemen, and that afternoon Isaac writes a long letter in Ladino to his family in Istanbul. Isaac’s aunts and uncles are long dead, but he has several cousins and is particularly close to his Aunt Luna’s eldest son, Abraham. Only after he’s sent it does he warn me that he’s told his relatives I’m Jewish. “It’ll make life easier for you and the baby.”

  On the 27th of August, our neighborhood superintendent distributes food-ration cards. Five days later, on the 1st of September, Germany invades Poland. Air-raid sirens go off across the city because France and Britain are rumored to have sent bombers to attack Berlin. Hansi and I take our emergency supplies into the shelter. These include his jigsaw puzzle of Michelangelo’s David and the cane that Rolf gave him. Isaac, the Munchenbergs, and our other Jewish neighbors are forced to sit in the corner, and most of them dare not even look at those of us in the Aryan section. When the all-clear sounds, the gray-uniformed warden instructs them to wait without talking for the Aryans to leave before they stand up.

  We have our first blackout that night, and I rush out onto Prenzlauer Allee to see what Berlin looks like. No streetlamps, no neon signs, no car headlights. We are living now in a dark forest, and the moon above us is an eye. Prenzlauerberg and the Mitte, Schöneberg, Neukölln and Wedding, the KuDamm and Unter den Linden … Berlin has become the setting of a fairy tale, but is the story being told by the Opposite-Compass or by Isaac and me?

  Chapter Nineteen

  England and France declare war on Germany on the 3rd of September. Tonio comes home on a one-day leave three weeks later, just after a conquered Poland is partitioned by Germany and Russia. I’ve had my period, so I’m feeling disappointed in myself. I’m nervous, too, because I don’t want to sleep with him now that I’m trying to have Isaac’s baby. We meet at his father’s apartment, but when I rush up to embrace him, he pushes me away.

  “We need to talk,” he says in a grave voice. Almost the first line I was going to use.

  I drop down on the bed. He takes the armchair. He crosses his legs and sits up straight. The German Soldier On Leave. The title of a sketch I’ll try to make of him several days later.

  I am expecting a heroic speech, imagining that Tonio will tell me—in a voice choking back tears—that I must make a life for myself if he should die, because he is being sent to do battle in France. And I already know that if that’s the news he has, I’ll make love with him one last time in the hopes that our union will magically keep him safe.

  “Tell me what’s wrong?” I ask, leaning forward and smiling so as to show him I plan to listen closely—to play the part he expects of me.

  “I just found out what you’ve been doing while I’ve been fighting for our country,” he begins in a coarse tone.

  “And what’s that?” I ask. I’m expecting him to say I’ve been teaching Jews at a school for genetically unfit children.

  “My father told me you’ve been having an unnatural relationship with Mr Zarco.”

  He uses those exact words: unnatural relationship. Ein widernatürliches Verhältnis. A strange phrase, but adequate in its way. And a tonic for me, too, because I feel unnaturally revitalized by the truth finally coming out.

  “What we do together is certainly illegal,” I tell him, “and perhaps by your standards even sinister and odd, unheimlich, but I assure you that nothing we do is unnatural. Or, at the very least, no more unnatural than what you and I do together.”

  “But he’s in his seventies!” he shouts.

  It’s a relief that his false calm is gone. We will be honest with each other now.

  “That’s true, and I do wish sometimes he were a bit younger.” I almost add, So we could make love for hours on end, but I decide not to hurt him unnecessarily. As I’ve said, Volker, Hansi, and my other students
have taught me to be gentle.

  “Stop trying to be clever!” he snarls.

  “I’m sorry. Cleverness is a personality defect of mine. I realize that it can be irritating. But I would think you could overlook it after so many years together. After all, I haven’t complained about a single one of your flaws since you joined the army.”

  He stands up and joins his fingertips together. He looks like his father when the old Prussian tyrant is preparing to give him a lecture. This is usually where Dr Hessel would ask me to leave his apartment so he can talk to Tonio alone. No such luck now.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Jews will always be your downfall,” he tells me, and he begins to pace. “So that if …”

  Who would have thought that Tonio would ever become pompous? “I do mind,” I interrupt. “In fact, I mind very much.”

  He gives me a startled look; I’ve broken the rules of discourse by interrupting before he’s found his rhythm. He coughs purposefully, then continues: “It’s a kind of disease in you, this fondness for Jews. I thought you might be cured in time, by my friendship and love, by the influence of the Führer. That’s why I gave you Mein Kampf all those years ago. I really did think that Hitler’s fine words could Aryanize you. I still may think so, but I can no longer be a part of that project. That’s what I’ve come to tell you.”

  “So you regard me as a project?”

  “Don’t look so horrified! I regard you as part of the Führer’s project for us all.”

  I haven’t a clue who this man pacing in front of me is. I hadn’t realized till now how I’d left so much of my intuition and sense outside the door of this apartment over the years. “So I was to be part of the victory over what we once were,” I observe.

  “In a way.” He glares at me. “But if you could sleep with a swine three times your age, then I’ve failed!”

  “Who told you about Isaac and me?”

  “My father.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “He says it has become obvious over the past two years. Apparently, you and the old Jew have become less careful. Everyone knows.”