The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  “Have you joined the Nazi Party?” I ask.

  “Not yet, but I will, if all goes well.”

  “Good, I’m glad,” I reply. Maybe he’ll receive an autographed copy of Mein Kampf in the bargain. To my dearest Friedrich … All the best, Adolf … “Can you bring us home some armbands?” I continue with false eagerness, testing him further.

  He’s feeding his belt back through his pants loops. “You really want one?” he asks, surprised.

  I’d like to make a gushing, absurd reply: I could never live without one! That way, he’d be certain that I’m aware this is a farce. And maybe if I shouted that Hitler was nothing but an Austrian rat-catcher, and kept shouting it, I could convince him to tell me in a whisper what really happened to him, and we could plan an escape.

  But threatening me must mean he’s terrified by what I could do or say. The Opposite-Compass has now made parents across Germany afraid of their children.

  “Of course I want an armband,” I assure him. “I want to help you—you and Mama. And bring two—you don’t want to make Hansi jealous of me,” I add with a benevolent smile, as though I’m a good big sister, but I’m really thinking that my brother shouldn’t get off easy.

  * * *

  That night, I awake in a cold sweat, convinced that Mama will burn all my German movie magazines unless I make them Jew-free, so I sit on the floor and rip out the pictures of Al Jolson, Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, and the Marx Brothers. I eliminate Charlie Chaplin, too, because most Germans think he’s Jewish, though he’s not. Marlene Dietrich goes, as well, since she’s fled Germany for Hollywood, and I even rip away a romantic shot of Carole Lombard dancing with Clark Gable, since I recall something about her having changed her name, and a close-up of James Cagney, because Rini once told me that he grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York and can speak Yiddish fluently. An Irish-American who speaks like a Jew—now there’s someone to give the Führer shivers!

  Then, summoning a kind of frenzied courage, I tear up all my cigarette cards of stars except for Garbo and Dietrich. My K-H Collection proves more troublesome. I consider turning in the photographs to Papa in the morning to win more of his trust. After all, he won’t want anyone to know he’s had his picture taken—clowning and smiling—with degenerates and Jews. But giving them up would be admitting total defeat. So instead, I take down the framed photograph of Garbo hanging over my bed and slit open its brown paper backing with a knife. The envelope containing K-H’s photos fits neatly behind the portrait, and when I hang it back on the wall Greta is still smiling enigmatically, her hair slicked back like a man’s, the most gorgeous woman in the world.

  The wonderful thing is that no Nazi would dare to suspect Greta Garbo of hiding Jews. Not even my father.

  The next day I give Isaac back his book on Giotto, convinced that Italian artists might end up on my mother’s blacklist, too. “But I meant for you to keep it,” he says, puzzled. We’re standing in his doorway.

  “I’m finished looking at it,” I tell him, and I use the excuse of being late for school for refusing his invitation for coffee. As I dash away, he calls after me, “We’re having our Carnival party this Saturday and I hope you can come.”

  I was expecting this invitation, since most parties will be held in Berlin this Saturday, four days before Ash Wednesday, which is the 1st of March. But I still don’t know how to reply. “I’ll try,” is all I call back, but it’s not likely I’ll go, unless—like Papa—I can find an impostor to substitute me at home.

  The next evening, my father takes me aside to show me a copy of the letter Professor Furst has written in support of his admission to the Nazi Party. He lifts up on the balls of his feet as if the letter is the gymnastics medal he has been waiting for all his life. Party membership as the praise he never received.

  To please him, I pretend to read it carefully, then say, “Papa, if you want, I could come with you to a Nazi rally sometime. We could go watch the Chancellor speak.”

  Self-portrait: where is my real father?

  My real father would spare me this, of course.

  He hugs me for a long time, and everything about him is as it always was, except his scent, since he hasn’t smoked a cigarette for nearly twenty-four hours. What began as a lie has become truth. In only a few days, the Opposite- Compass has already accomplished that miracle for him. So maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow wearing pigtails, and when I run to the mirror I’ll see I’m Gurka Greulich.

  THE THIRD GATE

  Three are the parts of the soul; the blasts of the holy shofar on Rosh Hashana; the periods of Jacob’s life; and the pillars of the sephirot, the supernal lights of the Lord.

  Shehakin, the Third Heaven, is the orchard of holiness, where you shall receive sustenance for your continuing journey. The Third Gate corresponds to the desire of all beings, both great and small, for union with one another and the Lord.

  When you enter the land and plant any kind of tree for food, you shall treat it as bearing forbidden fruit. For three years its fruit shall neither be harvested nor eaten —Leviticus 19.

  Berekiah Zarco, The Book of Union

  Chapter Eight

  On the day of Isaac’s Carnival party, I jump out of bed early and dress quickly; I’ve awakened with a revelation about why the murderer might have chosen blue paint for the swastikas he painted on Georg’s cheeks.

  Hansi tags along with me as I fly out the door. I’ve told Mama we’re headed to the Tiergarten but we’re really going to Wertheim’s Book Department. By the time we reach Leipziger Platz the clouds have swollen and darkened with rain. When the heavens open, my brother hollers about being burned even though I’ve got him covered with our umbrella. So we duck into a café and nurse our hot chocolates for an hour, until it’s safe to go out again. Two tall men in sequined dresses, high heels, and blond wigs—already dressed for a Carnival ball and reeking of beer—hand my brother and me big blue balloons as we reach the street. They bend down and kiss our cheeks too. Hansi wipes the kiss off and signals that he wants my balloon, so I give it to him. Anything to distract him from the puffy gray clouds, which look like they might have more mischief in mind.

  Inside Wertheim’s, a clerk who looks like Harold Lloyd finds the book I need, which is entitled A Layman’s Guide to Forensic Medicine, by Siegfried Klein.

  I page through it at the counter, saying, “I’ll need ten minutes to make sure it’s the text I want,” which makes Harold Lloyd frown, so I work as fast as I can. Just as I suspected, a bluish tint to the skin can be caused by strangulation. Apparently, the body discolors from lack of oxygen. Which means that blue swastikas might have been painted on Georg’s face to try to prevent policemen from realizing the cause of death.

  Maybe the murderer used Georg’s makeup kit and then took it to prevent his fingerprints from being spotted. And yet that explanation doesn’t make all that much sense: any experienced cop—and certainly any coroner—would check for skin discolorations. Abrasions would also have been visible on Georg’s neck, but there were none.

  Using the index, I locate a reference to Raynaud’s phenomenon, which I learn is a discoloration of the fingers and soles of the feet caused by extreme cold. Could Georg have been killed outside, on a frigid day, then dragged into his apartment? But it was April when he was murdered.

  Later that afternoon, Tonio and I go to two movies. First we see my choice, a revival of Garbo in Anna Christie, but her melodramatic facial expressions only irritate me now. How could I have never noticed before that she’s just no good? Still, she’s beautiful and maybe that’s all that counts. Then we go see The Mummy.

  Since I can’t confide in Tonio about my father’s conversion or my confusion about Georg’s murder, we talk mostly about cars and Hollywood. Then, after the first film, I grow silent as we walk to the Ufa-Palast Theater, struggling against despair. A Dixieland jazz band dressed in furry animal costumes—with trombones, clarinets, and trumpets sticking out of their snouts—is playing outside the
Zoo Station, and my boyfriend does a goofy little jig to their snappy tune to try to cheer me up, but I just look at him glumly. When he asks me what’s wrong, I tell him I’m considering sleeping with him, since it’s the only answer he really wants to hear.

  Give the people what they want. My new motto.

  He throws his arms around me and kisses me right in front of a magazine kiosk, so that the gnarled, yellow-skinned owner takes the cigarette from his mouth and whistles, then gives me a happy wink. Thank God for Berliners—there’s hope for our country yet.

  Further down the street, I realize I intend to give myself to Tonio as a way of punishing myself. And my parents, too, since they would be ashamed of me.

  “Tonio, if I needed to die … if that was my only choice not to become someone I didn’t want to be, would you put a pillow over my head as I was sleeping and suffocate me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. It’s not important.”

  Seeing my mood isn’t improving, Tonio kisses me sweetly on the cheek, and after The Mummy comes on, he puts his arm over my shoulder. We sit together as friends, and I pretend the musty theater is our own Hansi Universe, with no other world outside. But this turns out to be the wrong film; Boris Karloff as an ancient Egyptian mummy who returns to life—and stalks a woman he mistakes for his long-lost love—is so calculatingly evil that he becomes all I am up against, even my own Jewish sense of humor. Wanting to crawl out of my skin, I go to the bathroom to wash my face, then rush out of the theater. Tonio catches up with me on the street a few minutes later. “What happened?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You can make me into someone new—a woman,” I whisper, and I think, All roads that lead to Hitler are the right ones, so why not the one that goes right through my heart?

  “You mean … ?” Tonio sticks his tongue in the corner of his mouth—his puppy face. When I nod, he takes a key from his pocket. “I’ve been preparing for a long time,” he grins. “I’ve got a place we can go—where my father takes his women friends.”

  I dislike him for his eager grin, but it’s even better that I do; I already feel wounded by him in a way that I’ll never forget.

  * * *

  Tonio rushes me to a dingy, top-floor apartment at 18 Tieckstraße; he stole his father’s key and had a copy made. Over the tile roof of the closed ceramics factory across the street is the tall, copper-green steeple of the Sophien Kirche, pointing toward a heaven it will never reach. Through a transformation of the heart, my heart, that steeple becomes the needle on which my future turns, and as I balance on its point, with Tonio undressing behind me and chattering on about cars, I see clearly that I don’t have to do this. I will often deny to myself that I knew what I was doing in the months to come, but I knew full well.

  Dr Hessel keeps only a metal cot and a cheap dresser in the bedroom. No radio, no night table, no rug. But a rectangular mirror has been plastered to the ceiling and seeing myself naked makes me shiver. It’s Tonio’s body that saves me from panicking. He has beautiful shoulders, and I love how his sleek arms hang down, and the way he scratches his pubic hair. He’s a boy verging on manhood—at a threshold we are both about to pass. His penis is already hanging heavily, its tip purplish and shiny and peeking out of his foreskin. Vulnerable and silly. And all mine.

  “Your cock is beautiful,” I say. He laughs, so I add, “I’m being serious. It’s one of your best qualities. Your somber eyes, your enthusiasm, and that beautiful penis … And that you can speak some Russian, which is unheimlich.” I’m feeling light-headed, and I hear myself laugh as if from far away. It must be because I’m standing on top of that high needle and trying not to fall off.

  “Remember when unheimlich, odd, was your favorite word?” I continue. “That wasn’t so long ago, though now we seem so much older. You need to shave almost every day now, and me …”

  I stop talking because he’s not interested in our changes.

  “Come here,” he tells me.

  He stands by the bed and lifts up his cock. I close the last crack in the curtains as if they’re a door that can never again be opened.

  His penis responds immediately to my affection. My refuge. After I’ve got him panting, I ask what’s been on my mind since we stepped on the tram to get here. “And your mother? Does she suspect that your father cheats on her?”

  “I don’t think so. Sophie, for God’s sake, don’t stop!”

  “Don’t you think she has the right to know?”

  “If she doesn’t know by now, then she doesn’t want to.”

  I guess what I said about Tonio not having much intuition was wrong. It’s probably just me he doesn’t understand.

  I lead Tonio onto the bed, and we kiss side by side, and he caresses my hair and shoulders, which is his way of saying that he will be gentle with me. When he takes my hand and squeezes it tight, I realize I do want him inside me, after all. And it’s then that a first tremor of desire for him shakes me. Whispering a prayer to the God that Isaac worships, the one who watches over us, I lie on my back.

  After I insert Tonio’s cock inside me, I raise my hands to squeeze his broad shoulders to reassure myself. But panic makes my breathing shallow and insufficient, warning me of present danger and future regrets. I no longer seem to know who I am, and I squirm under him and tell him to get off.

  “Now?” he asks in disbelief.

  “Tonio!”

  “Just give me a minute to finish. I’ll go as fast as I can.”

  He thrusts hard into me, his breath hot on my neck, and his mad burrowing makes me want to push him away as hard as I can. The sheer relentlessness of him, as if I’m a high wall he’s got to scale in order to reach manhood—makes me realize I wasn’t prepared for this.

  It’s my own damn fault, I tell myself, squeezing my eyes shut, and within the warm, moist darkness of myself, I repeat over and over that the man hurting me and grunting on top of me is only Tonio. We’ve been friends for years and I can trust him. This will make us closer. We’ll be married someday.

  And I tell myself, too, that the burning deep inside me doesn’t mean I’m being ripped to shreds. I grab onto him, my fingers digging into his back, as if he’s the only one who can help me now. Saved by the same man who is hurting me.

  Is this the painful irony that all girls lying under a man for the first time encounter?

  “Sophie, if I’m hurting you, I’ll stop.” The words I’ve been waiting for. But it’s too late now.

  “No, don’t. Just pull out before you’re ready. And go as fast as you can.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  True to his word, he does his business quickly and shoots all over my belly. I laugh freely, tears sliding down my cheeks, because of the ridiculousness of his spurts, and because I’m so relieved he’s out of me.

  Tonio lies close against me. He presses his lips to my cheek, and when I turn to him, his eyes are moist. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”

  Only then do I remember that I love him. And that I was supposed to feel excited.

  When I take a streak of his semen on my fingertip and put it in my mouth, I taste the salt of my blood, too. With a shiver, I look up at the bodies in the mirror on the ceiling. Two strangers exiled from the people they were.

  When I come home late that afternoon, I make believe I’m sick, so I don’t have to go to my Uncle Rainer’s annual party.

  “What’s wrong?” Mama asks skeptically.

  “My belly is sore.” Which is true enough. I limp past her toward the bathroom, overdoing my frailty.

  “The Mummy … what kind of movie is that for a girl to see?”

  “You’re right. It was awful. I made Tonio leave before it was over.”

  My agreement pleases her. In a sweeter tone, she asks, “If you stay home, what will you eat for supper?”

  “I’ll make myself some soup. That’s all I could get down,
anyway. Now, let me take a bath and get into bed. I need to wash that horrible Boris Karloff off me.”

  Papa tiptoes into my room just before they leave for Uncle Rainer’s house in Westend. Hoping to make me laugh, he’s got on his cowboy hat. But I’m under my covers and half-asleep, doing my best to become the girl I was only a few hours before. He kneels next to me and whispers, “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, Häschen.”

  I cling to his voice, to the adoration of my father, but soon Mama comes up behind him, an indignant twist to her lips. She’s wearing a long violet-colored skirt and a black shawl. Is she supposed to be a Gypsy? I won’t give her the pleasure of asking. In any case, I must be a real dummy about some things, because for the first time in my life I realize she’s jealous of my closeness to Papa. “Sophie, I don’t want you leaving this apartment!” she tells me in a tone of warning.

  “Hanna, please. Let the poor girl sleep.”

  Catching my glance, Papa rolls his eyes as if Mama is a silly creature. A mistake. In a vague way, I’m beginning to understand that he’s worked hard over the last few years for her to become the policeman in our family. That way, he’s been free to be sweet to me. And yet there’s always been another man inside him—one who holds a stretched belt between his hands. So who is the calculating villain in our movie, after all?

  I don’t sleep. I get in bed and think about murder—my own, as reflected in a ceiling mirror. Closing my eyes, I picture my limp body being photographed by K-H, but my face isn’t mine, it’s Georg’s. A broken windpipe and no abrasions … I must not be much of a detective, because I don’t understand how that could be. I begin to test possibilities in my mind—to look below the glass—but nothing makes sense.

  When I get hungry, I shuffle into the kitchen. I’m stirring my carrot soup when there’s a knock at the door.