The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  I give birth to Hans Berekiah Riedesel Zarco on the 14th of September, 1940, only five days shy of my twenty-third birthday. He’s fragile, compact, and as deeply creased as Üstat. The good news: he weighs six pounds, eleven ounces, and has all his fingers, toes, and private parts. Graça says he’s small but perfect—petit mais parfait. The bad news: Vera says he looks like a hungry Tiergarten squirrel.

  Everyone in Isaac’s family comes to see Hans over the next weeks: Magi bearing gifts. The women admit me to the international club of mothers with their warnings about colic, worms, head colds, and a hundred other ailments harder to name. What a time I have trying to decipher their Ladino, Turkish, and French! Graça informs me that by Jewish law I’m not permitted to leave the house for forty days after Hans’ birth.

  “Did the SS write that law?” Vera asks, which makes the delicate old lady laugh out loud.

  When Graça visits our apartment, we stay inside, so Lilith and other demons cannot carry off either Hans or myself, I’m not sure who. Otherwise, on warm days, I risk dangers both mundane and otherworldly and venture outside. I often walk down to the Bosphorus to watch the ships from all over the world. I wish my mother could see my Hans. Our quarrels have ended, even in my head.

  I miss Isaac on waking more than at any other time. The shock of finding myself alone—with no idea of where he might be or what he might be suffering—leaves me frenzied. At times, I picture him a prisoner in Dachau, just like Raffi. Or working in a munitions factory or mine. I write him long letters in my mind.

  A month of waiting becomes two and then four … By now, German troops have taken control of Romania and Hungary, and both puppet governments have passed anti-Jewish legislation. In Poland, Jews are being confined in ghettos. Georg reads in a Zurich newspaper in November that a Warsaw neighborhood has been sealed with half a million Jews inside, and that a similar fenced-in area of Lodz holds 230,000. But I have trouble understanding how these ghettos work. “If they’re sealed,” I ask him, “then how do the people inside get food deliveries or medicines?”

  “I don’t think they do,” he replies ominously.

  Given my lifelong battle with sleeplessness, who could have predicted that Hans would slumber so peacefully at night? Vera and I take turns walking him around on those occasions when he does cry or fuss, and she helps me change his diapers. Each gigantic, bread-dough hand of hers is as big as he is, and it amuses me to see the two of them together. “The Amazon and the Tiergarten Squirrel,” Georg calls them, which I think would please my brother.

  Sometimes Vera entertains the baby by singing lieder in her gravel-toned baritone. What does Hans make of the giant with the cavewoman forehead and German melodies?

  Vera’s delicacy with my son—treating him if he’s made of whispers—allows me to steal some tranquil moments for myself and even take a nap now and again. Once, I awake to find tears rolling down her cheeks and Hans cradled in her arms. When I ask what’s wrong, she replies, “Being ugly makes no difference for the first time in my life. I feel as if my heart has been ransomed.”

  The birth of Hans is my excuse to write letters to Else, Dr Hassgall, the Munchenbergs, and Roman. I even send a card to Frau Mittelmann at her mill. Are my letters arriving? It seems doubtful because no replies arrive. Though maybe my friends don’t write back because they’re sure their letters will be confiscated or read by the police.

  Finally, a long, congratulatory letter comes from Roman in December; he’d been traveling with the circus and couldn’t write until now. “I am in love!” he tells me, underlining that sentence. His friend—who has written the letter for him—is a twenty-eight-year-old acrobat named Francesco, and when they’re not on the road performing, they live with Francesco’s parents in the family home in Frascati, an ancient town in the hills high above Rome. “Francesco and his mother both cook like angels!” Roman adds. “I have learned how to eat well.”

  God bless Roman for proving that happiness is still possible!

  We soon learn that in each new territory claimed by Germany the Jews are rounded up and massacred, often by local troops only too pleased to delight their new rulers with ever more horrific atrocities. Only after the war will I learn the extent of this genocide, and that disabled people are being shot and gassed as well. For now, the distant children of Poland and German-occupied Russia fall even below Jews and Gypsies on the list of priorities held by European diplomats and journalists. Garbage, as Isaac once said.

  Georg devours everything he can find about the concentration camps during 1941 because he’s certain that Isaac must be a prisoner. He reads excerpts of articles to me about men and women forced to dig in quarries with their hands, typhus outbreaks in the barracks, children freezing to death …

  A Romanian Jewish refugee named Lucian whom Georg befriends soon tells us the kind of stories that will become so well known after the war—of Jewish children tossed into pits and buried alive; of thousands dragged into forests and shot, their bodies left to rot. “It’s the same story all over Europe,” he tells us in his broken, urgent German, desperate to shake us awake. Lucian is painfully thin, with the thoughtful black eyes of a Picasso harlequin. In his presence, I often think of how important geography is: here we are, safe in Istanbul, while a few hundred miles to the north and west Jews are being slaughtered.

  One story Georg reads to me—and that becomes symbolic of evil for me—dates from late June 1941: after the German army takes Biolystok, troops set the Jewish quarter on fire and hunt down all its residents. Some 800 of them are locked inside the Great Synagogue and the building is set ablaze. All of the trapped Jews are burned alive.

  “No more stories,” I plead with Georg after that, and he abides by my wishes. But over the next months, not even begging stops Lucian. I rush out of the room whenever he visits and eavesdrop only on the parts of his stories I can bear. But Lucian does me a service; it’s thanks to him that I come to believe that Hitler is deadly serious when he tells an enraptured audience at the Sports Palace in Berlin: “The war will end with the complete annihilation of the Jews.”

  Lucian has tugged me below the glass to get a good look at what has been waiting for us to see since 1933.

  The not knowing is the hardest part—harder even to bear than my regret at leaving Isaac. Would learning he was dead be preferable to the still-born futility in my gut? That’s a question I do my best to subdue by telling myself over and over that Hans ought to be enough for me, but the truth I admit to no one is that he isn’t. Even when we’re most joyful together—when I’m feeding him from my breast or watching him as he reaches for a fire-colored tulip that Vera’s holding—real happiness, of the kind we don’t need to think about, still walks a dozen paces ahead of me.

  Am I burdening him with a legacy of sorrow?

  In November of 1942 racist legislation comes to Turkey: Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and other minorities will have to pay a special wealth tax called Varkik, which is assessed not only on a person’s salary but also on savings and equity. Officials proud of being “pure Turks,” our local equivalent of “pure Aryans,” demand up to half of a person’s holdings. Moslems, however, are taxed at a maximum of only 12.5 percent. The penalty for those who fail to pay is forced labor in eastern Turkey and confiscation of all property.

  At our Hanukkah dinner in early December, Abraham tells us that he and Graça will be moving out of the family home in Ortaköy. They will rent it out in order to earn enough extra income to maintain their textile business. David is selling his home in Beyog˘lu and will move with Gül and their two teenagers to a small house in Balat, the old Jewish quarter. He’d bought two dilapidated properties there two years before and is nearly finished fixing up one of them. Abraham and Graça have been loaned a small flat near the Galata Tower by Moslem friends.

  The entire Zarco family is in a state of shock, and greatly offended, since their ancestors have lived in Turkey for 450 years. Graça falls into a deep, silent despondency because she’ll hav
e to dismiss their cook, Safak; driver, Konstantin; and housekeeper, Solmaz. These three servants have been working for her for more than thirty years and, given their advanced ages and the country’s faltering economy, are unlikely find work elsewhere. “My children have always called Safak abla, big sister, and now I’m sentencing her and the others to an old age of poverty,” Graça explains to me while gazing forlornly out the window at the Asian shoreline.

  When the day comes for the servants to leave, she gives the two women gold earrings and Konstantin a magnificent silver pocket watch. Graça is dry-eyed and regal until they leave, then runs to her room. Shortly after that, Abraham gives Vera, Georg, and me the additional bad news that—as foreigners—we, too, are to be taxed at fifty percent. After discussing our options, we decide to take David’s offer and move into the house in Balat that he has not yet fixed up.

  Hans is two years old when we move. It’s October 1942. Our house is squat and damp, with a foul white fungus splotched on the furniture, and ceilings so low that I can jump up to touch them. We have no shower or bath, and a pencil-thin stream of rusty water comes out of each of the two sinks. On the first floor, where I have my room, the soot-covered windows are so tiny that, even when I wipe them clean, they hardly let in enough light to read. When I gaze out, I see a grimy little street of tilting houses, most of which look as though they’re sure to fall over in the next stiff wind. Mouse droppings are all over the floor, and the drawers of the dresser in my room are fly cemeteries. Vera calls our house the Mushroom Cave. Our first purchases are buckets, mops, and soap. Gül and her kindhearted kids help us scrub everything.

  Living on the ground floor are Graça’s brother and sister-in-law, Solomon and Lisa Lugo, as well as their twenty-one-year-old son, Ayaz. Ayaz was studying architecture at Istanbul University until a month ago; now, he is apprenticed to a carpenter so that he can help with the family’s finances.

  Next door, David’s house has been completely remodeled. He has two new bathrooms with white marble floors and walls. All of us make use of them: eight adults, two teenagers, and one infant. On good days we are a Marx Brothers comedy. On bad days Hans and I pee into milk bottles.

  My son has colds all winter from the Mushroom Cave, and he gives me most of them. Heat, light, and health—my three wishes for him and me. But how am I supposed to earn money to afford better lodgings with a two-year-old in my arms running a fever? Georg rides to my rescue once again. He takes some old pastel portraits of mine to his office and secures a commission from one of his clients, a wealthy olive oil baron. Haydar Zeki has a thick mustache and jowls, and a saber scar across his cheek. He poses at his office in a matching white shirt and bow tie, black jacket, and derby hat. “It’s in fashion to look like Ataturk,” David explains. On his advice, I slim Mr Zeki’s face, erase his scar, and add a mysterious glint to his eyes. Overjoyed with the results, he has his wife and children pose for me.

  Mr Zeki and Georg spread the word about my shamelessly flattering portraits. After my first six pastels are paid in Turkish lira, I buy coal heaters for our bedrooms; although spring has brought out the yellow daffodils and violet crocuses in the city’s gardens, the nights are still chilly.

  In June, I continue my work on the island of Büyükada, where Abraham has kept his summer home. Leaving our dank lodgings for that sunlit island of pine, catching a horse-buggy up the hill from the port to his magnificent house, I feel as if I’ve leapt off the gloom of van Gogh’s Potato Eaters into the awestruck ecstasy of Starry Night. The moment I see Hans sitting on the beach, putting stones in his pail as if he’s found his spot on earth, I know I’ll never leave the island again until Berlin is free.

  Vera and I live on Büyükada for the rest of 1943 and all of 1944. I sketch portraits of wealthy Turks; she designs and sews. Hans learns to walk and talk. He tells me what he wants in German, Ladino, and Turkish. His laughter is like rays of light to me, and he rarely fails to giggle when I pull magic eggs from behind his ears or out of his elbows. He has Isaac’s radiant blue-gray eyes, which is both good and bad, since they are as deep and beautiful as the Marmara Sea but also a constant reminder of the affection that lies far beyond my reach. Georg visits us on weekends, and he has lost his war-induced gloom; in fact, he has fallen in love with a Greek waitress named Nitsa and spends most of his time in her flat in Fener, near the Golden Horn. Such is his delight in her that when they’re together he sings and dances as if life has turned into a musical.

  On collecting all my possessions from our home in Balat and moving them to Büyükada, I hand Berekiah Zarco’s manuscripts to David, telling him, “The pages are still in a bit of a jumble, but we don’t have time to straighten them out. We need to hide them right away in case the government starts burning books.” He thinks I’ve left part of my mind back in Berlin—which is true enough—but cedes to my wishes. We seal The Bleeding Mirror and its complementary mystical texts in a silver tik—a Torah case that’s been in his family for hundreds of years—and David buries it in the cellar, behind a false wall.

  By the middle of 1944, the newspapers report that Germany will soon lose the war, and Vera, Georg, and I share a bottle of champagne to celebrate. As we get a little tipsy, we begin to discuss our return to Berlin, but I fear for Hans’ safety; after all, he’s half-Jewish, and the massacres may continue long after the armistice. “When I get there, my first purchase will be a gun,” I tell Vera, but she thinks I’m joking.

  By now we’ve heard stories about the death camps, and I’m convinced that all of Jewish Europe—the people, theaters, cafés, bakeries, synagogues, and old-age homes—has turned to ash. The distant children and adults, as well. I see their faces below the glass when I close my eyes—Hansi and Raffi most clearly. But I don’t tell anyone, because successfully destroying the Jews may mean that Hitler has achieved his real goal—and won the war even if he loses.

  Germany signs an unconditional surrender on the 8th of May, 1945. We celebrate on Büyükada with a Zarco family picnic, complete with a whirling dervish performance by Sufi friends. Hans makes himself sick by eating an entire plate of baklava. In the bathroom, cleaning his face and hands, I take a good look at myself. I’m amazed I don’t find gray hair, and that I’m still a young woman. I am twenty-eight. Isaac is seventy-seven if he is still alive.

  Georg has heard that Berlin is without electricity and food, so he, Vera, and I wait until early July to go home. We convert our savings to American dollars on the black market and board a train to Budapest. From there, we’ll go on to Germany. I can’t speak for the others, but I know already that I will not stay there unless I can find Isaac. I won’t raise Hans in a country that murdered his father.

  We bribe officials along the way when they say our papers aren’t in order. At stations in Romania and Hungary, Georg asks passengers boarding our train if any Jews are left in their towns. Shrugs are what he gets from most of them, their puzzled faces saying, “Jews? What Jews?” Then one tattered-looking Romanian border guard with a pencil behind his ear, either mis­understanding the intent of Georg’s question or mistaking him for an official of the Reich, says in an eager voice—and in quite good German: “No, sir, by the grace of God we are Jew-free now!” Nein, mein Herr, durch Gottes Gnade sind wir jetzt judenfrei.

  THE SEVENTH GATE

  Seven are the heavens, palaces, and pairs of archons; the gates to the soul and the Holy Temple; the days of the week; the notes of the scale; the seas and the continents; the ages of the body and spirit. And seven are the rulers of the material world.

  Beyond the threshold of the Seventh Gate lies Araboth, the inner landscape of prophecy, resplendent with light from the Throne of Glory.

  Prepare well all who seek to enter Araboth before death lest you drown in your own ignorance or be burnt by the guardians for speaking one false word.

  At the Seventh Gate your story ceases to be told and listened to, though every word is destined to be reborn.

  Six years you may sow your field and
six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield, but in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest —Leviticus 25.

  Berekiah Zarco, The Six Books of Preparation

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  We arrive in Berlin in the late afternoon of the 10th of July. The train stations and ministry buildings seem to have been hit particularly badly by Allied bombings. As we walk through the government district to Unter den Linden, past all those jagged piles of brick and stone, past the ruined columns and the doorways leading nowhere, past a way of life that will never be repaired, I have the sensation I’ve returned to a damned city that will have to be razed before it can hope to rise again. The façades of many buildings have been blown off, so we have X-ray vision now, too. It is with the eyes of an astonished thief that we gaze into an office at the shattered desks and chairs, or into a bedroom at a ruined mattress and what’s left of a wardrobe. We say nothing as we walk by the carcass of the State Library on Unter den Linden; those angels given earthly form as books that were fortunate enough to survive the Nazi burnings must have been turned to ash by foreign bombers. In front of the main entrance is an old man in a derby hat sitting on a bench reading the shreds of a colorful magazine. Beside him looms a wrecked and twisted German tank. Looking far west, we see that the Brandenburg Gate seems to have survived reasonably well, but to the east the cathedral has had its dome and spires shattered. As we cross over to Museum Island, we confirm that the Spree has not changed its course. Nature, as Isaac told me, is on our side—the side of life. And yet the water seems so still, so indifferent. Though maybe that’s a good thing.