The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  “Home,” he snarls.

  The door opens and closes; just like that, he has walked out on me. And I’m dumb enough not to guess how it’s possible for him to hurt me so easily. I sit on the floor, like Mrs Munchenberg, unsure of how to escape the sense of pre-ordained disaster around me. And I stay there a long time, aware of myself in that way we are when we have reached a crossroads. Each of my breaths becomes the admonishment, You thought you were safe here, but you were wrong.

  After I’m dressed, I lock the apartment with the key Tonio has given me, sensing I’ve lost my power not just over my boyfriend but also over my own life.

  Tonio doesn’t leave any roses or notes for me over the next week, and I don’t dare knock at his apartment or wait for him in the courtyard. Too much humiliation waits for me down that road. I’m shipwrecked on Sophie Island. A clean break is what the hundreds of miles of ocean around me are usually called, but the sands of my grief spill over into everything I see and touch. What is it that went wrong? I ache with bewilderment and grief all the time.

  One afternoon during this terrible period, I have the frenzied urge to visit Georg’s apartment house. Staring up at his windows, I wonder who’s living there, and the feeling that he and I share something important makes me run away. Could it be a life that didn’t turn out anything like we wanted?

  Mama asks me about my gloomy face one day while I’m cleaning the oven, but I tell her that it’s that time of the month. She sits me down and brushes my hair. We talk about Hansi. She’s sure he’ll start talking again one day soon, and then we’ll enroll him in school.

  Not if we don’t get him some help, I think.

  Papa suspects there’s more to my sadness than my period and tells me in a concerned voice that he’ll call Dr Nohel for an appointment the next day. He turns to leave my room, but then stops. “And where’s our Tonio been lately?”

  Our Tonio … ? So my father, too, had dreams of seeing us married.

  “He goes hiking every weekend with his Nazi Youth colleagues,” I reply.

  “I’m sorry. That must be hard. Maybe you can start seeing him on weekday evenings. You’re old enough now. I’ll ask your mother.”

  It’s not fair of Papa to show such kindness to me, because now I can’t stop the tears.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, sitting with me again.

  “I’m just grateful to you.”

  He wipes my eyes with his thumbs and gazes at me lovingly. “Just leave it to me. I’m sure I can get your mother’s permission.”

  * * *

  Sure enough, Papa wins agreement from my mother for me to see Tonio on Wednesday evenings. I let them think I’m delighted and grateful. For my first date I tell my parents that he and I will be going to the movies on the KuDamm, but instead I walk to Grenadierstraße. I hide from my life in a smoky café, under a signed photograph of Benjamin Disraeli hanging on the grimy wall. Six young men and two young women—about my age—are seated next to me, which gives me a chance to eavesdrop. They’re planning a visit to Palestine. While I sip my hot chocolate, they argue about how best to realize their dreams of a Jewish state. We watch the wooden horse carts passing by and listen to the clop-clop-clop of hooves. A pickle-seller pokes his head in, but no one’s interested. I wish I were a Jew, I think. Not a rational desire these days, but a Mediterranean sun, olive trees, donkey rides, and a warm sea would be waiting to welcome me if I were. Just the antidote to the winds of the Berlin winter. And Tonio.

  And if I were a Jew, then I could see Isaac and Vera any time I wanted.

  After the youthful Zionists go their separate ways, I head to the Tiergarten. The crazy jiggling of the tram sends me back to my childhood, and the shimmering, fawn-colored wood paneling feels like the surface of my grief. The landscape of Berlin rushing by—all those sooty buildings, train tracks into the provinces, and garish advertising signs for Holstina dyes, Schmeltzer’s pumpernickel, and Sonne briquettes—makes my pain more acute by that uncommonly unfair law of the human heart that twins joy with sadness.

  From time to time, I used to see someone crying in public, and I’d stare at the person’s reddened, fluttering eyes without much understanding. Now, while passing the dome of St Hedwig’s Church, a fearsome-looking black-haired worker sitting near me brushes away tears, and I realize that despair has taught me I’m no different from him or anyone else. All of us hanging on by a thread.

  Crying is as infectious as yawning, so I get off by the Finance Ministry on Dorotheenstraße and walk the rest of the way to the park. And I scratch myself under my panties when no one’s looking; I’ve had an itch there for the last few days and it’s getting worse. A rash? I can’t find anything but a little redness. Maybe it’s the pernicious effect of sorrow.

  The last thing I want is Dr Nohel putting his hairy muzzle between my legs, so at my check-up on Friday afternoon I refrain from mentioning my itching. He prescribes luminal for my sleeplessness. When I take a first pill that evening, I learn why so many Berliners are trudging around with dull, moonlike faces. Over the next week, I feel as if I’m living inside warm molasses. I wake, trudge through the day, and pass out on my bed, still in my clothes. What people say to me eases through my head like a trail of smoke not worth following. God bless luminal; it allows me to sleep even in class.

  “Sophie!” Dr Richter, our math teacher, yells in my ear one morning.

  Startled awake, I have no idea where I am until he says, “Are your dreams more interesting than my lesson?”

  The other students laugh. I apologize, though even Dr Richter must suspect that yes would be the right answer. Or why ask the question in the first place?

  The percentage of Berliners under sedation: a statistic that never appears in the papers.

  I see Tonio from afar one afternoon just before the end of the year, while Hansi and I are making our way home from a trip to Weissee Lake, where we can go skating and watch the little black ducks. There’s half a foot of snow on the ground, which means we’re both exhausted from our walk.

  Tonio is standing at the entrance to our building with two boys I’ve never met, rubbing their hands together and stepping around to stay warm. New friends laughing—about girls, most likely. I stare at him from down the street. And give a small gasp when he spots me. Hansi tugs on me, wanting to run ahead to Tonio, but I jerk back on his arm.

  “Don’t you move or I’ll bury you in the snow!” I tell him.

  He looks up at me as if I’ve lost my mind. That’s what comes of threatening him but never really throttling him.

  Tonio asks one of the boys for a cigarette and turns his back to me. I drag Hansi to Frau Koslowski’s grocery and we sit with her behind her counter. Her hunched shoulders and heart-wrenching stories about growing up poor suit me, and Hansi is happy to eat candy.

  Through Frau Koslowski, I learn that I’ve just entered the club of spurned young women. Her first boyfriend was Piotr. “Tall and clever and beautiful, but ein Schwein,” she says. A pig. Sixty years have passed and she still can’t forgive him. A good role model.

  When I next peer out, Tonio and his friends have gone, and Hansi and I clomp home.

  Our Young Maiden troop starts a chorus in the new year, and I’ve been chosen for the soprano section. Our teacher is Fräulein Schumann. “Sadly, I’m not related to the composer,” she tells us that first afternoon. She’s slender and graceful, and no more than twenty-five. She plays a pitch pipe to start us on the right key. “Sing it!” she exclaims, and we match the sound as best we can. She says my vibrato needs training, but that I’ve got potential. She uses a lot of Italian terms: rubato, sostenuto, scherzo … She says legato is the most important thing for me to learn—to keep the notes strung together and leave no spaces between them. “No room for even the point of a needle!”

  Fraülein Schumann and her lessons are my first indication there is life after Tonio.

  On the first Tuesday in early January, I hear a familiar voice calling after me as I’m rush
ing through the chilly morning to school—Isaac. And before I’ve realized what I’m doing I’m talking once again to our local Elder of Zion.

  “Sophele,” he says urgently, out of breath, since he’s run a little ways after me. “Please come to my apartment after school today.”

  “I don’t think I can,” I tell him. “My father would kill me. And I’ve got choral practice.” And you owe me an apology, I’d like to add.

  If he hadn’t reached out for me with his warm hand in the midst of a frigid morning, I’d have turned away. That scares me even today—how life can take an important turn at any moment.

  “It’s about Vera,” he says.

  Fear bursts in my chest. “Is she ill?”

  “No, but she needs your help.”

  Isaac greets me at his apartment late that afternoon. He gives me a bone-crunching hug, then holds my face in his hands and gives me such an adoring smile that I could almost believe that my life is only about being doted on.

  “I’ve missed you, Sophele,” he says. “Please forgive me. I was very rude to you. But I was being watched by the police. I noticed the same little twit following me twice to work. An incompetent schlemiel. Though maybe he wanted me to spot him—to scare me.”

  “Why do you think he was following you in the first place?”

  “Who knows? Maybe it has to do with Georg’s murder. Or maybe Raffi told the Nazis something about me in Dachau.”

  “He wouldn’t do that!”

  “I know. . . but if he’s being beaten … Anyway,” he adds, seeing that he’s upset me, “all the excitement is over now. I haven’t seen the schlemiel in weeks.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t try coming to see you again, but my parents…” He puts his finger to my lips, then to his own. “Sssshhh … I know.”

  His delight in me makes me tingle. When we’re together, it’s as if seeing myself in those radiant eyes of his is magic—as if I’ve whispered the word that makes the world sing without even knowing it.

  “Have you discovered anything about who might be the traitor in The Ring?” I ask.

  “Nothing. But we’ve stopped meeting … it’s just too risky. So each of us is working on his own. I’m doing what I can and so are the others.” Isaac points to his shelves, which have been emptied of at least half of their books, but before we can talk about what that has to do with his new tactics, Vera comes out of the kitchen in bare feet, her hair sopping wet, dripping all over the fraying rug.

  “You are sick!” I say.

  “No, I needed to wet my head or I’d have caught on fire. I’m like an overheated engine.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m in a panic.”

  “Vera, for God’s sake,” Isaac interrupts, “dry your hair.” He points to the moat forming around her feet and then the continuing drip, drip, drip. “You’ll turn the rug moldy.”

  “Isaac, it’s just an old shmata.” She spreads her legs apart and bends down like a giraffe so we can kiss cheeks.

  “Mein Gott, Vera, can you ever simply do what I say?” He puts his palms together and whispers a Hebrew prayer.

  “No need to call on supernatural help!” With a bow, she strides away to the bathroom.

  “What’s a shmata?” I ask Isaac, who tells me it means rag.

  We hear a cabinet door banging, and the sink turned on and off. Isaac rolls his eyes and begins packing tobacco into the bulb of his pipe.

  “When Vera’s around you really know it,” I observe.

  “She does have a certain irrepressible presence.” He’s got his lighter poised in one hand, the bowl of the pipe in the other, and he’s staring at me with happy eyes. Yet there is a certain curiosity in them that makes me uncomfortable, as if he wants my secrets.

  “Do you have the jacket Vera made me?” I ask.

  “Yes, it’s in my wardrobe. You want it?” He raises his eyebrows as if we’ve just hatched a plot.

  After he gets his pipe going, we sneak together to his bedroom. His blankets are in a nest on the floor and dozens of old books are jumbled on the mattress.

  “Do you sleep with your books?” I ask.

  “Nu, doesn’t everyone?”

  While I’m silently condemning the mess, he slips my jacket over my shoulders. The black silk shimmers as if it’s alive, and I’d almost forgotten the blue pockets—the color of Giotto’s frescoes. When I look in Isaac’s mirror, I reach up to the pink necklace of pearls around the collar, needing to touch their beauty.

  “You look like a troubadour,” he tells me.

  Vera comes in wearing a towel as a turban. She looks like an Arabian giant.

  “Stunning piece of work, even if I do say so myself,” she tells me, hands on hips, tapping her foot and waiting for a compliment.

  “You’re a genius,” I say, and I embrace her, and the fierce way she hugs me back makes me understand she’s been waiting for me. A woman who always needs to be reassured, though no one would ever guess.

  The three of us sit in the kitchen over glasses of wine. Vera tells us that people with her overheated metabolism sometimes spontaneously combust. She read recently about a woman in Rouen flaring up and setting her couch on fire. Her husband, seeing her turn into a torch, smothered her in a blanket and saved her life, but the house burned down.

  Isaac scoffs.

  “I’m serious!” Vera says, lighting a cigarette.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t smoke,” I suggest.

  “I said spontaneous! It happens without a fire source.” She squints at me vengefully.

  “Vera, your story sounds fishy,” Isaac says.

  “The article was in Marie-Claire!” she declares, as if that settles the matter.

  “Oy, talk about a shmata!”

  “I wouldn’t expect an alter kacker who can’t even understand French to understand.” She draws in so deeply on her cigarette that it’s a wonder she doesn’t fall over dead. It’s her sign of triumph. I stare in admiration.

  “So stop sitting there like a pimple on pickle,” she tells me, “and tell us how you are. And don’t leave out any hideous details. Your misfortunes will make us feel better.”

  I talk about the Young Maidens, and she and Isaac adore my stories about Our Lady of the Soufflés and Das Deutsche Mädel magazine, which Isaac refers to as Der Deutsche Madig, the Worm-Eaten German. I end up with the giggles. And as I tell more stories, I feel as if I’m made of fireworks. I’m alert for the first time in weeks. Then I drink some tea to dilute the wine that Isaac says is setting off too many sparks in my head.

  “So when are you going to be on the cover of the Worm-Eaten German?” he asks me.

  “I’d have to do something special to merit that.”

  “Maybe you could drown an old rabbi,” Vera suggests.

  “Vera, Sophele has no choice,” Isaac notes.

  “Is that true?” she asks me, unraveling her towel and shaking her clumped hair down to her shoulders.

  “My mother would boil me with her potatoes if I quit. Anyway,” I chirp, trying to make the best of it, “what we do isn’t always idiotic.”

  Vera gazes down at me skeptically, her eyebrows lifting under the awning of her forehead. Not a good look for her. I want to find something positive to say about the Young Maidens, so I talk about Fräulein Schumann and our chorus.

  “Learning how to sing is like being able to do something I never thought I could,” I tell them.

  “Like a blessing,” Isaac says.

  “Exactly.”

  “Has Hansi resumed talking?” he asks.

  “No, not a word.”

  “And have your parents found a school for him?”

  “No, he’s home all the time. They’re … they’re embarrassed by him now.”

  Vera snorts. “Soon they’ll lock him in a wardrobe!”

  “You’re not getting along very well with your Mama and Papa, are you?” Isaac asks.

  “No, but things have been better since I joined the Young Maidens and …
and started to pretend I’m a good daughter.” To defend them, I add, “I just think they’re caught up in things beyond their control and don’t know what to do.”

  “Good try, Sophele,” Vera says, “but Hansi is not beyond their control. Helping him lead his life is, in fact, their responsibility.”

  She lets me get away with nothing. I love her for that, though she doesn’t also have to give me such a look of outrage.

  “I need my notebook,” Isaac says, and he goes off to his bedroom.

  I ask Vera for a cigarette and try to copy her style of smoking. Isaac returns and writes a name and phone number on a sheet of paper, then tears it off for me. “Tell your father to call this man, Philip Hassgall. He studied with Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and educator. Philip sometimes brings kids like Hansi back to us. Not all the way, but they are able to lead independent lives.” Anticipating my question, he adds, “He’s an Aryan, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Where will I say I got his name?”

  “In an article in the newspaper. There was one a few months back. I can get a copy of it if you need it.” He pours more tea into my cup. “Are you sketching your brother?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Good. That’s important for both of you. Wherever he’s gone, he must always know you are there for him.” He sips his wine and gives me an inviting smile meant to get me talking again, but I don’t make a peep. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “I’ve mostly stopped drawing. I only draw Hansi … and only infrequently.”

  “Why?”

  “Frau Mittelmann left for France and …”

  That’s when the news of my break-up with Tonio tumbles out of me. Complete with sniffles, tears, and even a nosebleed because I blow too hard into Isaac’s handkerchief.

  Vera leans forward and catches my blood on her fingertips to prevent my troubadour jacket from getting stained. “Men!” she snarls, as if that’s all one needs to say on the subject. She’s holding Isaac’s handkerchief to my nose. A cigarette dangles from her lips, and the curling smoke forces her to shut one eye. “Tilt further back or it’ll never stop.”