The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  “Mama, please look at all the photos. You can’t judge from just one.”

  “Sophie, I only have a single picture of Claudette Colbert, but I can assure you it’s enough for me to know she’s as glamorous as can be. As far as I’m concerned, it’s obvious that you’re beautiful.”

  Mama makes my eyes pop open with that nearly perfect answer, and when she grins at me over her shoulder, I realize that I do love her, after all. If only she had more patience for me. An eager tide swayed by too distant and cautious a moon—that’s how life is between Sophie Riedesel and her mother Hanna.

  Before my father comes home that evening, I discover that the strict order I’d put K-H’s pictures in has been disturbed. Mama isn’t aware that I collect incriminating details like this. The country girl who grew up to be my mother is too naïve to understand that her every move is being recorded by her Berliner daughter.

  I put the picture of Papa and Ludwig Renn on top of the small pile and save the one with Vera and me for last—the grand finale. And Papa is impressed. Most of all that he’s been forever linked to a famous Communist journalist. I give that one to him as a gift, but he hands it back. “No, I want the picture in which you’re sitting on my lap,” he tells me. “I’m going to have that one framed and keep it on my desk at work.”

  A man who knows how to delight his daughter.

  On Friday, I sneak out of school early and head back to the Neue Museum. Two hours go by before Dr Gross receives me in his cluttered office. Bits of walnut shell are spread over his desk, and he’s clutching a rusted iron nutcracker. He hands me his handwritten translation of the first twelve lines of Raffi’s sheet of hieroglyphics. I’ll always remember the first line, which reads: R-S-I-A-K, B: 31-17-11, 10.

  Noticing my puzzlement, he says, “It had me stumped for a while, too.” He cracks a nut, which sends shell flying, then comes around to my side of the desk, munching away. “The first word is spelled backwards, you see.”

  “K-A-I-S-R?” I ask.

  “Yes, the hieroglyphic triangle is K, the eagle A, the two feathers I, and so on. In other words, Kaiser without the e, presumably because whoever wrote this out decided that particular vowel wasn’t necessary.” He digs walnut pulp out of its shell with his thumb. “The first words are all names. In the case of common ones, a first initial is usually added, in this case B. Now, are the numbers that I’ve separated by commas backwards too?” He holds his hands apart and shakes his head to indicate he doesn’t know. “I’m afraid you’ll have to figure out the rest, young lady. I haven’t time.”

  “What about the last lines—there’s no translation at all.”

  “I didn’t bother writing it out—it’s just more German names.”

  “So who are all these people?”

  “A good question.” He tosses bits of shell onto his desk, wipes the palms of his hands on his pants, and sits down. “Now, before you go, why don’t you tell me where you really got this?”

  I give him the answer I’ve been practicing. “It’s from my father … it’s a kind of birthday game. Every year, he gives me a coded message and if I can find out what it means, I get a big present. Last year, I got this watch.” I hold out my mother’s old wristwatch, which I pilfered from her drawer that morning since it’s more impressive than my own.

  “Your father knows hieroglyphics?”

  “No, but he obviously knows someone who’s an expert!”

  * * *

  Does Dr Gross buy my explanation? To be safe, I copy the names and numbers on the inside cover of Emil and the Detectives: B. Kaiser, H. Günther, A. Brueggen … Then I burn my copy of Raffi’s hieroglyphics and take a hot bath to calm myself.

  Sitting on my bed, I try to work out what 31-17-11, 10 might mean in relation to a Herr or Frau B. Kaiser: thirty-one might be his or her age, of course; or it might signify last year, in which case 17-11 would probably be the month and day backwards. Did someone named Kaiser do something special on the 17th of November, 1931? In that case, ten might be the time of day.

  It’s while I’m helping Mama with supper that I consider that maybe a man or woman named Kaiser received a shipment of ten somethings on the 17th of November. Or made a payment of ten British pounds …

  And just like that, I foolishly believe I’ve put the last puzzle piece in place.

  Tonio comes up to our apartment early on Saturday, while I’m writing my thank you note to K-H. His stylish forelock has been cut off. But his thick skullcap of short black hair is so handsome that I secretly prefer it. I’d babysit for Hansi for a whole month just for the chance to run my hands over those soft needles.

  I want desperately to tell him what I’ve learned about Raffi’s hieroglyphics, but as soon as we’re safely seated on my bed behind my closed door, he pounds his fist into my pillow and says glumly, “It’s so unfair. Look at me.”

  His eyes are glassy, which brings me close to tears myself. “What exactly happened?” I ask.

  “When I refused to go to the barber, my father held me down and ordered my mother to cut it. He even tied my hands behind my back with a belt when I got free. I fought, but he’s stronger than me, and anyway he’s my father, so I couldn’t hit him.”

  “You ought to punch him right in the face sometime, you know. Or your mother should.”

  He shakes his head as if I don’t understand, and he’s undoubtedly right—after all, I don’t have a father who’d tie me up. Though it’s true that Mama once told me that she occasionally wanted to have me arrested. Before I know what I’m doing, and while he’s not looking, I kiss Tonio’s cheek, which makes me feel as if I’ve robbed something vital from him. Maybe he feels the loss of whatever it is I’ve taken, because he frowns.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “It’s not your fault. I just wish I had your parents. Sophie, I think I’m going to be mean to you today.”

  “I don’t mind,” I reply. “I got some photographs in the post,” I add, to cheer us both up and get him ready for my big announcement. “The ones from the party in Mr Zarco’s apartment.”

  Tonio makes no reply and goes to the window, so I bring them to him. He doesn’t laugh at Heidi and Rolf, which is a relief, but then he asks, “Which of them are Jews?”

  “How should I know?” I reply, disappointed; I want him to be impressed by my having posed with such amazing people.

  “How could you not know?” he demands, and he walks across the room to stand by the foot of my bed, obviously intent on distancing himself from me.

  “Tonio, in that picture there are a dwarf and his wife from the circus, a giant with a deformed face, and probably the most gorgeous deaf woman in Berlin. So why would I care which of them goes to a synagogue?”

  “Because a Christian dwarf is just a dwarf, but a Jewish one is … is from a different race. They don’t belong in Germany.”

  It suddenly doesn’t seem such a good idea to tell him what I’ve discovered about Raffi’s shopping list. “So where do you want the Jews to go?” I ask instead, and to lighten the mood, I say, “To Mars or Venus, maybe? Did you learn something at the planetarium I didn’t?”

  “Sophie, this is serious,” he tells me, adopting a know-it-all tone that makes me grind my teeth. “Jews take jobs away from Christians. They betrayed us in the Great War and will betray us again if we give them the chance.”

  “Mr Zarco served in the army. He was given a medal for bravery.”

  I invent the medal because I’m not above inflating the facts for a good cause.

  “The exception that proves the rule,” he says pompously. “Everyone knows about the Jews.” He makes a beak with his hand and holds it to his face.

  “Mr Zarco doesn’t have a hooked nose. And neither,” I add in a menacing tone, “do Rini or Raffi, so be careful what you say.”

  Irene Bloch, whom I call Rini, is my best friend; we’ve been inseparable since we first met in a school playground and took turns pushing each other as high as we could on the squeaky o
ld swings.

  “Someone in their families must—it’s genetics,” he replies triumphantly.

  I know there are people who dislike Jews, but I’ve never actually met one—just as I’ve never come across anyone who would think any less of me for daydreaming about moussaka or wanting to be a vampire bat or having a little brother who can barely peel potatoes. So I look at Tonio hard, wondering why he’s voicing opinions that he can’t really have. And that he must have acquired out of nowhere. Unless nowhere is really his father.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice heavy, as if I’m a burden to him.

  Sadness washes over me; I don’t want a lout for a boyfriend. “Mr Zarco has lived in Berlin since he was born,” I tell Tonio.“And he gives jobs to people. He gave a job to Vera—the giant we saw the other day in our courtyard.”

  “He gives jobs only to Jews probably, and that monster must be one of them. He puts on that Berlin accent, too, so we think he’s a Christian.”

  “Tonio, the Comedian Harmonists are Jewish,” I say, referring to our favorite singing group. “Do you want them to go to another planet too?”

  “Only three of them are Jewish,” he declares.

  He’s obviously been doing research. Unheimlich …

  “The other three would have to be at least part Jewish,” I add slyly.

  “Why?” he asks, falling into my trap.

  “Because they’re so talented!” As my coup de grace, I add, “Even Lillian Harvey is Jewish.” She’s Tonio’s favorite movie star.

  “She’s not!”

  “Her real name is Sarah Rabinowitz!” I declare, with enough oomph to make it sound like the truth.

  Tonio’s eyes light up with rage. I’m determined to stand up to him, however—though not for the benefit of Mr Zarco, Rini, Raffi, the Comedian Harmonists, or Lillian Harvey-Rabinowitz. After all, it’s only the beginning of 1932 and our Jewish friends, neighbors, and movie stars are not yet in real danger, and even if they were, they would hardly need the likes of me to fight their battles. No, I hold firm simply because I don’t want Tonio to become the kind of selfish young man who doesn’t appreciate astonishing photographs of his girlfriend.

  And why are we arguing politics in the first place, when we should be watching Grand Hotel at the Alhambra Theater on the Kurfürstendamm, sitting in those plush velvet seats like two pashas? Going to the movies was what I planned to propose to Tonio before we began this absurd quarrel.

  “You don’t know anything!” he says snidely. “And your father is a Communist,” he adds with a dismissive wave of his hand. “My father says that they’re Germany’s enemy, too.”

  So this is all about what god-awful Dr Hessel believes!

  Tears of frustration cloud my vision, because Tonio has gone too far; I could never allow a boy who thought Papa was a traitor to come any further into my life. Everything between us has gone wrong before we’ve even had the chance to become a real couple.

  I don’t ever want to see you again!

  I say that line in my head to see how it will sound when I shout it, but Tonio comes to my rescue. “I told you I was going to be mean to you,” he says gently. “I’m sorry.” He reaches for my shoulder and kisses my brow. “Let’s not talk about the Jews or my father.”

  And so I learn that certain subjects will become taboo between us.

  But one question remains: has he given up his right to think for himself in order to avoid having his hands tied behind his back the next time he mounts a minor rebellion? Maybe I’ve fallen in love with a coward.

  “Hey, did you find out anything about Raffi’s hieroglyphics?” he asks excitedly.

  “No, nothing,” I reply, giving him a good shrug of disappointment. “The man at the museum said it was all nonsense. I’ve given up trying to figure it out.”

  Lying to him feels terrible. Still, when I lift my gaze, we look hard at each other, and there’s that intimacy again, like a blanket of silence that we can hide in whenever we want. I lean into him and he presses his lips to mine, and because of our quarrel it’s as if we’re making a vow not just to love each other but also to respect each other’s beliefs no matter how difficult that may be. Which ought to be a beautiful vow for two young people to make.

  On the street outside our school on Monday, I ask Rini what she makes of all the names I’ve scribbled on the inside cover of Emil and the Detectives. For now, I don’t mention any hieroglyphics, though I do tell her that a Nazi was after Raffi. As she takes a good look, she twirls her hair by her ear. Handing my book back, she says, “No Jews at all.”

  Rini has a sultry, world-weary manner of speaking and a sensual way of playing with her thick auburn hair that I adore. And a slouchy posture that defeats my sketches every time. She wears a necklace of stunning tourmaline beads given to her by her mother when she wants to look more adult, which is most of the time, and she steals cigarettes from her father. She even inhales the smoke, to my great envy. I’m nearly a year older than Rini, because I was sick for three months with whooping cough when I was six and lost a year of school. Yet she looks more adult than I do, especially in profile; I’d guess that Marlene Dietrich looked and sounded like Rini when she was fourteen. I have great plans for her and am counting on her to become the biggest cabaret star in Berlin by the second reel of our life stories. She won’t even have to learn how to carry a tune, since Dietrich has proved that a voice like a submarine engine can be captivating.

  “What do you mean, no Jews?” I ask.

  “No Jewish names, though one or two could be Jewish, you can never know for sure.”

  The dramatic way she speaks—as if this particular insight means some of the people might have double identities or secret ancestry—heightens my sense of having stumbled on something important.

  “We should start with the two most unusual names,” she adds.

  “Why?”

  “Because there are probably a hundred H. Günthers in Berlin, for instance.” She gestures for me to hand her the list, then scans it quickly. “I’d start with von Schirach and … this is a perfect one—Cnyrim. There can’t be too many Cnyrims. It ought to be possible to find out what links him to von Schirach. Ask your father about them, and I’ll ask Papa.”

  “You think your father will help?”

  “Of course, silly. Papa knows hundreds of people and he loves untangling things—especially for me.”

  Rini’s father is a political journalist at the Tageblatt. And he truly is mad about his only daughter. Just like my father, I’d have said at the time.

  “Please don’t tell him this comes from Raffi,” I tell her.

  “What am I, an idiot!” She lights her cigarette professionally, then hooks her arm in mine and pulls me close, which makes me feel as if this will be an adventure we’ll one day be able to tell our children about. “We’ll only give our fathers a few names. We won’t tell anyone about the full list!” she exults.

  That evening, in response to my question, Papa says he may have gone to high school with a von Schill whose father was a carpenter. “Or was he a plumber?” He holds up his newspaper between us to block out further enquiry. Mama is also of no use. And in the Berlin phone book, there are seventeen von Schirachs and nine Cnyrims. Am I supposed to call them one by one to ask if they know each other? And would they tell me the truth?

  I’ve been drawing Hansi since he was in kindergarten, which has shown me that you do not need to understand people to love them—good practice for Tonio, as I’ve just discovered. A few days after Rini decides to ask her father for help, I’m doing a sketch of my brother chopping carrots when Papa comes home from work and informs me that he’s just told Mr Zarco that I will not be able to accept the coat that Vera was going to make for me.

  “Was he very disappointed?” I ask, cringing at my betrayal.

  “He’ll recover,” my father replies matter-of-factly.

  “And what exactly did you tell him?”

  “The truth.” He sits down
in his armchair and lifts up his paper. Sometimes I think I spent half my childhood questioning a man hidden behind typeset wings. My father, the newsprint butterfly.

  “Couldn’t you have made something up?” I press him.

  “Sophie, you think too much—just like your mother. I’m sure Vera is used to rejection.”

  “That only makes it worse!” I groan.

  Rini calls me on Friday evening. “Listen to this,” she says excitedly, “Papa’s found out some interesting things about two von Schirachs!” To heighten the suspense, she pauses.

  “Rini, tell me!” I demand, jumping up from my chair.

  “Carl von Schirach was a theater manager in Weimar and an early supporter of Hitler, and he married an American woman and they named their son—wait till you hear this!—Baldur, and little Baldur grew up to become a world-class anti-Semite. He’s head of the Nazis’ youth program.”

  “And Cnyrim?”

  “Nothing yet. But listen, I noticed an H. Günther on your list. When I mentioned it yesterday to Papa, he remembered a Hans Günther who is chair of the Department of Racial Anthropology in Freiburg. He believes in Nordic superiority. He thinks Roman Navarro, Rudolph Valentino, and Louis Armstrong are chimpanzees. Though Günther is a common name, of course, so I don’t know how we can be sure it’s him.”

  “Could they all be National Socialists—the people on the list?” I ask.

  “I’ve no idea. But if they are, the question is, why would Raffi be in touch with them?”

  “Keep this to yourself, but I think that maybe he’s getting support for his research in Egypt from these people.”

  During the next week, a young officer in the Sturmabteilung—a brownshirt—flirts with me while I’m trying to coax Hansi out of some undergrowth in the Tiergarten where a rabbit has vanished. He tells me I can find back issues of Der Stürmer at a pub on Landsberger Straße frequented by the party faithful. Der Stürmer is the Nazi newspaper that caricatures Jews as big-nosed, thick-lipped traitors on every front page. So I go there one day after school to try to find names from my list in its articles. After an hour, I’ve found a National Socialist named Stuckart who’s a bigwig in the Health Department and a Viktor Brack who is good friends with Hitler.