The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  “How can you not like it? I’ve made you German food all your life!” I tell him, feigning outrage, because he likes me pretending to be angry. That he did inherit from me.

  He exclaims, “But not this crap!”

  He uses the word tref for crap, though it really means unkosher food, an idiosyncratic usage picked up from Georg and Vera. I admit it’s both slightly rude and Yiddish, but an elderly vamp smoking a cigarette in a silver holder, a white silk scarf hiding her turkey-skin neck, gives him a look that could set the poor boy’s underwear on fire. Is she irritated because she has heard that a few thousand of Berlin’s big-nosed, thick-lipped Jews have escaped the purifying ovens of the Reich and this boy might be one of them? She continues to stare at us, so I say, “Can I help you, madam?”

  “I just think you ought to teach your son some manners,” she tells me.

  Should I laugh or cry? The Nazis have murdered half a million German Jews and God knows how many distant children, and she wants proper Prussian etiquette. This woman is why I need a gun, I think, but all I tell her is, “Your complaint is noted so now you can go back to your crappy German food!”

  On the way out, I promise to make Hans his favorite meal, manti, if I can find yoghurt. When he continues to moan I beg him to stop being such a nudnock, which makes him snort with laughter. Our similar sense of humor remains our bridge even at bad times.

  In the afternoon, we take a bus to Rolf’s apartment. Hans lays his head on my lap and takes a nap. The ease of his breathing calms me, and passengers look at him sweetly. “He’s handsome,” one young woman whispers to me. I’d never have expected so many smiles around me. I suppose it’s the sense that we’ve all survived a shipwreck. A lie, of course, because some of us were in the luxury cabins and others were tossed overboard. But I smile back.

  “Oh, Sophie, thank God you’re here!” Rolf says, and he tugs me inside. His spine is so bowed now—and his hunchback so bulky that he’s unable to lift his eyes to see me.

  Hans is terrified, though I’ve warned him what to expect. I feel his shivering through my hand, which is resting on top of his silken, auburn hair.

  “Come in, come in…” our host says excitedly. “Is this your son?” he asks, smiling.

  “Yes, and Isaac’s. His name is Hans.”

  Rolf, overjoyed, asks my son what he’d like to drink but the boy can’t form an answer.

  I’m gripping his hand tight and we’re standing by the sofa. Rolf asks us to sit and we do. To calm Hans, I say, “Rolf is the man who taught me my magic tricks. He’s a wizard!”

  The frightened boy leans into me and won’t look at him. So I ask Rolf to just make us some tea or coffee, whichever is easier. I mouth for him to give me a minute alone with my son.

  “Do you want us to leave?” I ask Hans as soon as Rolf is in the kitchen. “I can come back alone later.” He shakes his head.

  “If you want, you can go into Rolf’s bedroom and play there by yourself. I’m sure he won’t mind, and maybe you can find some picture books.”

  He nods, so I take him down the hall. Hans’ mouth falls open at seeing the tiny furniture. Clothes and books are everywhere. Plenty to keep him amused.

  “Don’t get lost,” I tell him, which is what I say whenever I leave him alone, but he’s already lifting up a red shirt and showing it to me. “Can I put on some of Rolf’s things?” he asks in Ladino. He tends to speak Ladino whenever he’s nervous or excited. The clothes are just about the right size for him, so his question makes sense.

  I translate for Rolf, who gives his permission.

  “Yes,” I reply to Hans in German, “but don’t make a mess.”

  “Mama, it’s already a mess,” he points out solemnly. I love it that he doesn’t even know he’s funny.

  As Rolf hands me my cup of tea, he says, “I know what you think, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t turn Isaac in.” He goes on to say that after Isaac fled the Nazis hunting for him at his boathouse, he went straight to Rolf’s apartment. “It was the 7th of August, 1940,” Rolf tells me, and I can tell from the momentous way he says that date that it has been branded in his memory. “He came here to hide, in part, out of kindness to me. He gave me a chance to make up for the evil I’d done. He stayed here for a few days, looking over those manuscripts of his. Then he said he was going to have himself arrested. I tried to reason with him, but he told me, ‘It is not my decision to make.’”

  “Did he say whose decision it was?” I rush to ask.

  “Maybe he meant the Nazis. Or that ancestor of his who wrote the manuscripts he was studying. I don’t know. He prayed all that first night. In fact, for the next two days and nights he did nothing but chant and pray, facing Jerusalem. At times, he’d breathe in a special way and shout out syllables in Hebrew. It was odd, and a bit scary. He fasted, too. He would drink only warm milk and honey. Then, on the third morning after his arrival, he began talking to me again. He took a bath and shaved, and we ate together. He was very playful. You know how he could be. And he laughed a lot. He was in a kind of vibrant, ecstatic state. And he ate all I could feed him, as if he was storing up for a long journey. When he got dressed to go out, he put on a nice coat, very stylish in an antiquated way. It may have been his father’s, or maybe Vera made it for him. And he put on a beret that he said you’d bought for him, though it was August and it was really too warm to wear. I gave him one of Heidi’s red silk roses for his lapel, which made him happy. When he hugged me to thank me, he was vibrating, like … like a kind of tuning fork. And his eyes, they were water, clear water …” Rolf shakes his head. “I can’t describe his appearance well, but I’d say that in his head he was flying … flying very high. Then he asked me for two more favors. The first was to accompany him to the Reichstag. He said that he needed to make his way to the center of Hitler’s power, that the Reichstag was a first level. He used the word Stock, as if it was a floor in a building. And from there he said he’d descend ever closer to the center until finally he would enter what he called the vessels. He said that would make sense to you.”

  “It does—more or less.”

  “I begged him not to go, but he told me he had no choice. And then he asked me his second favor, which was to tell you what I’m telling you now. There was no time to write to you. And anyway, there was too much to explain, and he didn’t feel he could control himself enough to write the long letter you deserved.” Rolf holds out his hands and makes them shake. “He was too volatile. Though he did hand me an envelope with a few lines he’d written for you. I will give them to you in a moment, but he told me to talk to you first and describe what happened to him.” Rolf takes two quick gulps of his tea. “So then Isaac took a copy of the Torah from his suitcase, and we left together. We walked west toward the center of the city, talking of old times. He was happy, like a man off to meet an old friend. I pleaded with him again not to go to the Reichstag. He just shook his head and smiled. And he told me that this was why his father had moved back to Europe, for this chance to keep the world from ending. As we got closer to our destination, while we were crossing the Friedrich Bridge, he put his hand on my shoulder and said he wouldn’t be able to talk to me any longer, that he needed to prepare himself. I didn’t know what he had planned, so I still had some hope that nothing bad would happen. Then, as we were walking down Unter den Linden, his lips began to move. He was praying in Hebrew and breathing in his funny way. He began walking so fast that it was hard for me to keep up. It was as if he were being tugged forward by a cord … or by a power beyond him. I had to run to stay even with him. He strode straight through the Brandenburg Gate, and just after we emerged on the other side, he turned back for me and said, ‘Rolf, this next gate is for me alone. It would be dangerous for you because you haven’t prepared. Wait in the Tiergarten. And thank you for your help.’ Those were his exact words. I wrote them down because I knew I’d tell them to you one day.” Rolf takes a big breath and straightens up as best he can, so he can look me in the eye. “I
saac then squatted down next to me and he … he kissed me on the lips.” Rolf looks down to compose himself. At length, he says in a quivering voice, “You’ll think it strange, but I remembered that scene in The Kid, where Chaplin kisses the tiny boy he’s just rescued. After that, Isaac said, ‘That kiss was for both you and Sophele.’ You can imagine how stunned I was. It was like I might never breathe again. It was as if my heart … as if my heart were beating outside of my chest. And when he walked on without me, I could feel that force that was tugging him forward, because my legs and arms … they were tense with the need to go after him. But I stayed where I was, as he had instructed me. He walked to the Reichstag, which was guarded by soldiers, and turned west, then continued on until he reached the center of Königsplatz. There, he turned around to face the Reichstag and put on the beret you’d given him. He opened his Torah and began to chant. I rushed to the edge of the Tiergarten to watch him.”

  “Do you know what he was chanting?”

  “No, I wasn’t close enough to hear. I was standing at the edge of the park. And anyway, it must have been in Hebrew. Two soldiers approached him and talked to him, but he wouldn’t look up from the Torah, so one of the men knocked it out of his hands. The other pulled off his beret and threw it down. Isaac raised his head and looked up into the sky, and he began to chant louder. And he wouldn’t stop. So the men grabbed him and rushed him away, past the north side of the Reichstag. He didn’t resist. And I never saw him again.”

  * * *

  Barren winter branches and frozen lakes, and welcoming words never to be spoken—these are my surroundings in the world that descends over me. Hans races into the room to show me several hats he’s found, including a floppy yellow one with bells that I remember well. I put that one on him and say he looks handsome, but I am miles and years away from the here and now. And I don’t fully return while I’m in Berlin.

  Rolf brings me Isaac’s last note and the beret I’d given him. “I retrieved it after the soldiers took him away,” he explains. “I couldn’t let it just lie there.”

  Inside the sealed envelope are two gold wedding bands. “Sophele, one of the rings is for you and the other is for our son or daughter,” Isaac tells me, his usual neat handwriting wobbly and erratic. “I’ve been wearing both of them since you left. Know that I am happy and well, and that I am on the road that Berekiah has asked me to follow. Enclosed is a second note for our child. Give it to him or her when you feel the right time has come. I have begun to hear the winds of Araboth in the sky around me and must go now. You’re schön, schön, schön, and I love you. Isaac.”

  The note for Hans reads: “Your mother will tell you about me, and maybe you will hear about me from other friends of ours. I hope so. Know that you were made in love. And inside that love may you always remain. I want you to know that I would be with you if I could. And I will come to you if I can. Wear my ring. I have placed my love in its band, because it is a circle, and as you know a circle has no end and no beginning. Your father, Isaac Zarco.”

  Hans and I walk home. Rolf has let the boy keep the yellow hat—the same one he wore when I met him thirteen years before. Hans wears it proudly, like the king of the elves. When I tell him Vera made it for Rolf, he dances around. Then he starts skipping and jumping down the street. So much energy he has! Passersby point and smile.

  We meet Vera and Georg back at our rooming house, as we’d agreed. I explain about Isaac while Hans naps in Georg’s lap. “That’s it, then,” Georg whispers, as though it means Isaac is dead, and he begins to cry.

  But I grew up on Hollywood plots, and I keep thinking, there is still a chance …

  We sleep at Else’s place over the next week. Hans sleeps clutching his hat. Vera and Georg stay with an old friend of his in Wilmersdorf. How am I to find out where Isaac was taken by the Gestapo? Surely a concentration camp, but which one?

  When I tell Else I want to buy a gun, she suggests the black market behind the Friedrichstraße Station. There, we find the scrap metal seller who’s renowned for his stash of weapons. Else returns from the man’s “office” in the shell of a nearby building with a P08 Parabellum pistol and two bullets. Its wooden handle fits perfectly in my hand.

  We discover the Jewish Old Age Home has been shut down. Neighbors tell us that Nazis used the building as a collection point for Jews being transported to the camps. Thousands passed through there. Maybe Rini and her parents, Mrs Kauffmann, and the Munchenbergs. Maybe Isaac.

  The River Jordan bakery is boarded up. Weissman’s Fabrics, where we tried to break the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops, is now a small beer hall catering to boisterous Russian soldiers. The King David School was damaged by Allied bombs in 1944 and has been bulldozed down as a public hazard. Greta does not phone.

  Georg helps me ask French, American, and British soldiers how I can find lists of Jews transported to the camps, but they’ve been informed that the Nazis destroyed most of their records. Some of the Americans speak Yiddish. They tease me merrily and sometimes suggestively, but they could be my younger brothers. And in any case, I am as dry as a desert inside.

  Hans is bored and restless, as well he should be. He wants to play in the rubble of burned-out buildings, like the German street children he watches, but I don’t let him. He asks if we can see if the zoo is open yet, and when I tell him that I’ve been informed that it won’t be ready for visitors for months, maybe even years, he punishes me with silence. He could be his Uncle Hansi. If only he liked jigsaw puzzles, but he thinks they’re stupid.

  Else leaves her apartment every evening after supper to work on Unter den Linden. I’ve never seen her in makeup before. She wears bright pink lipstick. “I know, I look like a neon sign,” she tells me, laughing.

  “You’re beautiful,” Hans tells her in Ladino—És fermosa.

  She kisses him for that, then explains to us that Russian soldiers don’t appreciate subtlety. Using a kind of coded German, so Hans won’t understand, she tells me that she works with an old high school friend because the soldiers will pay a week’s salary for two women at once. She also sells them watches that she buys on the black market. “As best I can tell, Russian boys think only about sex and showing off their German timepieces,” she says.

  I make no judgments of her and she knows it. Still, she tells me, “I’m saving up so I can leave Germany and never come back.”

  “You could join us in Istanbul,” I tell her, and Hans and I take turns describing the wonders of Büyükada.

  But she has her heart set on Palestine. “I read about a kibbutz near the Dead Sea with so much sun that even the shadows there are a lesser form of light. That’s where I’ll go.”

  * * *

  Isaac’s factory is unoccupied, but the sewing machines and furniture are gone. A dozen handwritten notes are taped to the walls, along with two photographs. Hans runs right to the pictures, points to one, and turns to me excitedly, exclaiming, “Tia Vera!”—Aunt Vera. But another photo has already captured my attention: it’s from the series K-H took of Isaac in which I had to pin back his silver hair in order to show his “Semitic” left ear. Between the two photos is a note from K-H himself: “I’m looking for information on Isaac Zarco and Vera Moeckel.” I jot down the address of the factory in Charlottenburg where he’s staying. Hans has been standing on his tiptoes and pleading with me for a closer look at the photos, so I lift him up, but I point to Isaac instead of Tia Vera: “Your father,” I say in Ladino. Tu papá. And I repeat my words in German and Turkish when Hans gives me a puzzled look.

  “The Day We Lost Our Sight” and “Portraits of Men Who Have Sold Their Minds” are two of the exhibits K-H wanted to create before the war. Banners hand-painted with those titles are hanging over the entranceway to an empty factory in Charlottenburg. Was beer produced here or is the scent of hops a part of me now? Photographs are taped to the walls. Mr Weissman is the subject of the first picture. He’s gazing down, his shoulders hunched as if he’d like to recoil into himself, and the s
ign around his neck reads: Kauft nicht bei Juden, kauft in deutschen Geschauften! Don’t buy from Jews, shop in German businesses. Next is the burly storm trooper who grabbed my arm when I tried to break the boycott. He is shouting, his mouth open, teeth ready to bite, like a flesh-eating demon in a medieval fresco. Then comes an angry young Nazi, frowning at Arnold Muller, who is passing by in his wheelchair. The fourth photo is Hansi reaching down for Minnie as the rose of blood blossoms on her belly, his face torn open by misery.

  “Look, it’s you, Mama!” my son yells.

  The boy is already ten paces ahead of me, pointing up. This must be an astonishing day for him; photos of his mother and her friends are appearing all over the city …

  I can’t answer him. I’m sitting on the ground because I wasn’t prepared to see Hansi. My son climbs onto my lap because he’s scared. “Too many memories,” I explain to him.

  He leans into me, catlike, and I take off his hat and scratch his head. He loves that. After a while, he puts his arms around me. God only knows what he sees when he closes his eyes, but I picture the Büyükada beach he loves. Nothing can harm us. Not even German-speaking ghosts.

  “Sophele?”

  My name has been spoken as a question, and when I look up K-H is smiling down at me, tears in his eyes. He’s still hollow-cheeked and handsome, and he’s wearing bright red suspenders.

  Hugging him is like discovering that this nightmare will one day end. After a while, he wants to look at my face, but I press my head to his shoulder until Hans starts tugging at my skirt.

  “This is Karl-Heinz,” I tell the boy. “The photographer.”

  When I introduce Hans, K-H says, “Wait here, I’ll get my camera!” And he dashes off. We pose beside a photo of Isaac lifting Hansi into his arms.

  “To show that there is an after-time,” K-H explains to me.

  “You talk funny,” Hans tells him.

  “Because I’m deaf,” K-H replies.