The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

“Who’s Isaac?” I ask Sophie that evening.

  She’s got on her big black-rimmed glasses and is trying, unsuccessfully, to thread a needle so she can sew the cuffs on my pants; a few minutes earlier, when I brought her a bowl of raspberry Jell-O, she noticed that the stitching was coming undone.

  Only when she’s got the needle all ready and is satisfied with her length of thread do I repeat my question. She lowers her hands into her lap.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she replies.

  “You mentioned an Isaac while you were in the hospital.”

  She shrugs. “What did I say about him?”

  “You said he disappeared. You implied that he wasn’t coming back any time soon.”

  She pulls my pants across her lap and huddles over them, daunted by the prospect of the task ahead. She looks like a rabbit planning strategies for a leaf of lettuce too big to fit in its mouth.

  “Was he a family friend?” I ask.

  “He was my friend. A neighbor in Berlin.”

  “Jewish?”

  She nods.

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “More or less, but now isn’t the right time to talk about it.”

  Once my pants are sewn and I’ve modeled them to Sophie’s satisfaction, she heaves an exhausted sigh and tugs her shawl over her shoulders. “I can’t seem to get warm.”

  “Put your beanie on.”

  “Then my head itches.”

  “That’s from not shampooing your hair for ten days. I’ll give you a shower later today. Put the hat on for now.”

  It’s blue, with a white tassel. My mother dug it out from the nether regions of her closet. It looks like something a high school cheerleader would wear.

  Sophie gazes around unhappily. “I must look ridiculous,” she says.

  “You look fine. You’ll just have to forget about your career in high fashion for a while.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m not long for this world. This is it.”

  Turning away from emotional meltdown, my mind seizes on a plan: If I can just fatten her up she’ll be fine …

  “What do you want for dinner?” I ask her.

  “What have we got?”

  “I bought tuna steaks. And potatoes for baking.”

  She looks stymied. Maybe she’s weighing the advantages and disadvantages of fish. Protein and useful oils, but also mercury …

  “I could go buy a barbecue chicken if you like.”

  At length, she replies, “Tuna with a baked potato would be perfect. Can you stay for dinner?”

  “Only if you don’t talk about dying again.”

  “How can I promise that?”

  “It’s easy,” I tell her. “You say, I promise to keep my Schnauze shut.”

  Sophie giggles. A minor victory.

  Slumb’ring deep in everything, dreams a song as yet unheard, and the world begins to sing, if you find the magic word … Aunt Sophie recites this poem to me—translating from German—while I’m giving her a shower. “I learned those verses when I was fourteen,” she tells me with an amused smile. Then she asks, “Did you ever see The Cabinet of Dr Caligari?”

  “No.”

  “See it sometime. It’s about a sleepwalker trained by a circus magician to commit murders. The movie is all shadows climbing up walls and irrational angles, and spaces that don’t make sense … a nightmare come to life. We Germans should have memorized every scene, but we didn’t have the courage.” She gives me a withering look. “Now, all your American films are comic books. The sleepwalkers have become little children.”

  My aunt eats like a crocodile over the next few days—zucchini latkes, moussaka, salmon steaks, sweet potatoes, microwave popcorn, coffee yoghurt … Her mouth opens and the food disappears. Her favorite meal becomes spaghetti with Buitoni tomato sauce, and the moment she licks the last traces of pasta from her plate, she looks up at me, my mother, and Maria with famished, hopeful eyes and asks what’s next. She’d make a good Oliver Twist in an old-age-home production. In between meals, she snacks. I joke that she’s set Cinnamon Crisp stock soaring on Wall Street.

  “Well, I’m hungry,” she replies by way of explanation.

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Maria is patient and cheerful. She makes wonderful lumpia—Filipino spring rolls. Maria grew up in Manila and worked for a wealthy banker in Saudi Arabia before moving to New York. She also takes over Jell-O preparation from me.

  One afternoon, while Sophie and I are sipping tea on her bed, she hands me a folded scrap of paper. “Open it,” she says.

  I find an Istanbul address for her nephew Hans.

  “But Hans lives in Berlin,” I say. “Don’t you remember?”

  “No, he lives in Istanbul.”

  “But you used to go to Berlin every year to see him.”

  “I would fly to Berlin for a few days and then go on to Turkey. I never told you or your mother. The address and phone you have is for his summer place.”

  “Why all the secrecy?”

  She puts her tea down and breaks off a square of her Ghirardelli chocolate bar. Dark chocolate has become her new obsession—an inheritance from her father, she has told me. “It would take days to explain all the reasons to you, and even then … You didn’t live through the war, you wouldn’t understand.” She nibbles at her square.

  “I might understand if you try to explain. I’m not an idiot.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it. The important thing is that if Hans doesn’t make it here in time, there are some things I’ll want you to tell him.”

  “In time for what?” I demand, annoyed by her pessimism.

  “You know what I mean. If … if something bad should happen.”

  “All right, so what does Hans need to know?”

  More nibbling. “I’m leaving three-quarters of what I have to him. The other quarter is for you and Ruthie.” Ruthie is my mother. “I’ve named you as the executor, and I want you to make it easy for Hans to collect his inheritance. Also, I’ve left 1,000 dollars to take care of my brother’s grave. It’s all in my will—you’ll find it upstairs in Ben’s file cabinets.”

  “Your brother? I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  “When did he die?”

  “A long time ago. My son was named after him.”

  “Sophie, I think maybe you’re getting confused. You and Ben … you never had children.”

  “A great deal happened before the war. Forget it.” She twirls her hand in the air as if explaining is useless.

  Did Sophie really have a son and did he die during the war? “Talk to me,” I plead, an ache opening in my gut. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I can’t—not now,” she replies. “Give me time.”

  Sophie has put on nine pounds by Christmas and has the beginnings of a rear end again, which is good since she no longer has to use a cushion every time she sits down. But her feet are swollen like water balloons. She can hardly hobble around, even with her walker.

  Maria coats my aunt’s feet with moisturizer at night to keep the reddened skin from tearing. Sophie wears my slippers, size ten and a half.

  She has me sit with her one afternoon and asks, “What did I tell you in the hospital about before the war?”

  “Mostly gibberish. You told me you tried to kill your father.”

  “Odd.”

  “Do you remember what you were thinking?”

  “No.”

  We sit in silence. On her request, I rub her back, which hurts constantly—the result of being permanently arched into a letter C.

  “Oh, shit!” she suddenly says.

  She’s peeing on herself, and not for the first time since she’s come home. She can’t control her bladder because of the double dose of diuretic she’s on—the cardiologist’s attempt to shrink the swelling in her feet. I help her hobble over to the commode, then get her pants and underwear down as quick as I can
.

  “I’m a mess,” she says, starting to cry. “I can’t take any more of this. This is not a life.”

  I clean her up with paper towels. Maria helps her change her clothing. When she’s under the covers again, her beanie back on, I sit next to her.

  “Sophie, you said you were friends with that neighbor of yours, Isaac, implying that maybe your parents didn’t like him.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “You haven’t ever told me much about your childhood, you know—just a few stories about your mother. I want to hear more.”

  She rolls over away from me. “No, I think I’d better keep my Schnauze shut.”

  I’ve coaxed Sophie out of the house for the first time since her return from the hospital, and we’re sitting around the table in my mom’s kitchen watching River of No Return, a movie we haven’t seen in years. I’d forgotten completely that the doe-eyed boy in the film was Tommy Rettig, who later played the kid in the Lassie television series. This is the sort of trivial revelation that somehow helps me fight off despair.

  Sophie’s wearing her shawl around her shoulders and eating her Cinnamon Crisp. After a while, Mom yawns. “I’m beat,” she tells us. “I’m going up to nap.” To Sophie, she adds, “You can lie down with me if you want—or take a snooze on the sofa.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not sleepy.”

  Once we hear Mom close her door, Sophie points the remote at the television and turns off Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum being attacked by Hollywood Indians.

  “I’m not Jewish,” she announces. “My parents were Christians.”

  This confession bursts out of her. “Sophie, I think maybe you need to take a nap after all,” I reply. “You’re overtired.”

  “Ben and I let your mother and everyone else think I was Jewish. After the war, it was easy to remake my identity. A bit … a bit like Andre now that I think about it. Though in his case he was able to become himself again once he fled Germany. Not me.” She shakes her head bitterly. “I think a part of me died when I left Berlin.”

  “Who’s Andre?” I ask.

  “Someone I knew when I was young. And a character in an old silent movie, The Student of Prague. It’s about a sorcerer who brings a young man’s reflection to life.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “Sorry. I really only meant to apologize to you for lying about my father the other day.”

  “Lying? You hardly said anything about him.”

  “I said it was odd that I’d told you I tried to kill him, but it wasn’t odd at all.” She takes off her beanie and heaves it angrily at the television, as if it has been preventing her from thinking. She scratches her head with both hands, raising her hair into a tangled gray crest. “I’ve got a lot of things I need to tell you before I get any worse. The problem is that there’s just too much to say.” She leans toward me and knocks her fist on the tabletop between us, as if she’s just played her hand at poker and is waiting for my move.

  “We can talk anytime you like,” I say.

  “When do you have to get back home?”

  “I should go in another few days.”

  “Do you have a tape recorder?”

  “Upstairs, in my old desk.”

  “Come over to my house with it tomorrow.” She struggles to her feet and takes my hand. “Not a word of this to anyone for now!”

  THE FIRST GATE

  The First Gate appears as birth, and through its archway all other openings and levels come into view.

  One is the point of a pyramid; Noah’s ark; the language of paradise; and the horizon line between inside and outside. One is the mystery of the self and the union of Adam and Eve.

  One is the first word of every story—including yours …

  The one God is hidden, concealed, and transcendent. He may be known only by unlocking the gates. Gaze far across the Promised Land and you may see Him, waiting for you to take a first step toward yourself.

  The First Heaven is Vilon, the veil, which descends at dusk and rises at dawn. It is presided over by Joseph, who had the wisdom to listen to the dreams and men and women, and the courage to enter them.

  There was a time when all the world spoke a single language and used the same words —Genesis 11.

  Berekiah Zarco, The Book of Birth

  Chapter One

  It may take me fifteen minutes to thread a needle, but I have a hunter’s vision for the past. So I can see the low sky of that frigid afternoon in February 1932 as if the clouds were within my reach, and I am aware, too, that my mother’s troubled face is pressed against our kitchen window, since she is anxious to shout out a warning to me in the courtyard below.

  Regret, too, squeezes my heart; there was so much about Mama that I’d been too young to understand.

  “It is very difficult to get rid of destiny once it has entered you, and you will need the grace of God to do so,” Isaac Zarco once warned me with his hand of blessing resting on my head, and he was right. For the gray clouds of that day have never fully cleared. And my mother has never stopped gazing down at me.

  I see Tonio, as well, sprawled on the ground, and Vera turning away from him. Do these images come to me because of their symmetry? After all, Vera and Tonio were destined to pull me in opposite directions.

  Cloaked by the darkness of a December night in America, I can feel the rabbit-quick breathing of the eager fourteen-year-old girl that I was, and her depth of belief in herself—just as I can feel the absence of the same confidence inside the woman I would become. I am heading out with my best friend Tonio on another after-school adventure in a childhood built out of curiosity. Tonio, who has just turned fifteen, is small and lithe, with a sweet, thoughtful mouth and large chestnut eyes that often seem to show a suffering way beyond his years. They are an inheritance from his sad-natured Russian mother, and so there is an exotic appeal to him, as well—my chance to voyage far east of Germany.

  He and I are stomping over the flagstones of our building’s courtyard, talking excitedly, dressed in our heavy woolen coats and boots, vapor clouds puffing out of our mouths. Like most apartment houses in our neighborhood, the courtyard lies between a front building facing the street and a rear one that’s hidden. My parents, my brother, and I live in the front. Tonio and his parents live in the back.

  We are on our way to Straßburger Straße, where Tonio has heard that a broad linden tree has fallen, crushing a spiffy red American car. Small catastrophes like this etch tiny marks into our childhood, and he and I also extract a sweet, secret joy from making our parents wonder if racing to the scene of fires, burst water mains, and tramway collisions isn’t a sign that we aren’t quite right in the head. In fact, fear for the safety of her excitable, wayward daughter is why my mother will not turn from the window. I don’t wave, of course; I resent her lack of trust the way some kids resent not getting enough attention.

  Before Tonio and I reach the door to the front building—intending to walk through the entranceway to the street—it opens and two tiny children step toward us, twins most likely, since they are wearing matching Carnival costumes; most parties and balls in Berlin are scheduled for this evening—Saturday the 6th.

  “Hello there,” one of them says with an odd, adult-sounding voice.

  We don’t reply; their beautiful clothes leave us awestruck—checkerboard jackets and pants in scarlet and black, and floppy yellow hats topped with tiny silver bells. Curiosity overwhelms us. And jealousy too. Why didn’t we think of putting on our costumes?

  Stepping forward in a waddling way, they pass us and walk toward the rear building. When the larger of the two—barely three feet tall—turns around to smile, the diffuse northern light catches his face and we see that he has whiskers on his cheeks.

  “Dwarfs,” Tonio whispers to me.

  They penguin-walk into the apartment house, and we follow them. Starting up the staircase, they talk in hushed voices about the ill-bred children behind them, most likely. Up three flights they go,
laboriously, each step a hurdle that makes them seem to throw their hips out of joint.

  We pursue them only to the first-floor landing, our rudeness finding a temporary height limit. “They’re unheimlich,” Tonio says. Unheimlich, meaning weirdly sinister, is his favorite word.

  Rushing back to the courtyard, we see lights go on in Mr Zarco’s sitting room. He lives alone on the third floor. Both his wife and son are long dead.

  “Mr Zarco must be having a party,” I tell Tonio.

  “A very small party,” he replies, laughing at his wordplay.

  I laugh too, but only to keep him company. Tonio is the first boy I’ve had a crush on, but I’ve recently had to admit to myself that we do not share the same sense of humor. I’ve also concluded that I’ll have to hide that difference from him if our marriage is to have any chance of success.

  “I wish I’d gotten a better look at them,” I say, casting my gaze up to my mother’s now empty window. I resent that, too—that she nearly always misses out on the adventures that a mother and daughter should share.

  The door to the courtyard opens again, and a couple in their twenties step out. The woman, slender with short blond hair, wears a sequined blue snout over her nose. The man, dressed as a bullfighter, has on a gold brocade vest and tights, and a tricorn black hat. He is gaunt and pale, and handsome in a desperate way, like a starving student in a romantic novel. They say hello, but their voices are hard to understand; the consonants and vowels seem smudged. We return their greetings this time. The woman smiles at us and makes quick hand signals to the bullfighter. Then they, too, cross the courtyard, enter the rear building, and climb up the staircase to Mr Zarco’s apartment.

  We’re jittery with excitement by now, and we decide to wait to see who’ll come next. Tonio lifts his nose and sniffs at the air, which smells of hops because we have a dozen breweries in the neighborhood. “Schultheis,” he says, frowning.

  He claims to be able to tell which brewery the scent is coming from and prefers the more pungent, stinging odor of Bötzow. I don’t drink beer. I prefer wine—just like Greta Garbo, I always tell people.