The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  Over the next few mornings, before anyone else is up, I take them down and study them under the hot circle of light made by my reading lamp. Once, Hansi wakes up and joins me, leaning against my back and pressing his snoozy face over my shoulder. I flip them over right away, but then—figuring Hansi can’t do any harm—show them to him and tell him that they’re puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. I’m hoping that he’ll spot something that’s invisible to me, but after a half-hearted look, he just yawns and goes back to bed.

  I follow Julia twice more over the next week, but she never deviates from her usual routine. One woman’s simple, contented life is another’s dead end.

  At the end of January, on the appointed day and hour for Vera’s rendezvous with Cristophe, an envelope is slid under her door; she rips it open to find a two-word note: “I’m sorry.”

  “No further explanation,” she tells me when we meet at Karl’s Cellar later that week. “I guess that once he got a good look at me in the flesh, he decided …” Her voice breaks and she covers her head with her cloak. A leper whose last hopes have been dashed.

  As we sit together, I realize that the only answer is for the prospective father not to get a look at her face or body, which means she’ll have to wear a mask. Or he’ll have to be …

  “Roman Bensaude!” I whisper to her excitedly, but Vera won’t come out of her mohair hiding place to hear my new idea, so I tug it off her. “I bet Roman would have a baby with you,” I tell her. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of him before.”

  “He’s blind as the Bodenschicht of hell—the bottom layer of hell.”

  “Exactly. He won’t see you. It’ll be perfect.”

  “Sophie, my child could be born blind! And deformed! Why are you trying to make me feel worse? Does seeing me distraught give you some sort of perverse pleasure?”

  “Look, I thought you were willing to take risks. And you’re fond of Roman, right? Be an optimist for a change.”

  “Optimism is a word without meaning for me.”

  I quote her one of Isaac’s jokes: “What’s the difference between an optimist, a pessimist, and a kabbalist?”

  “I don’t want to know,” she groans.

  “An optimist sees a fly and thinks it might be an eagle, a pessimist sees an eagle and thinks it’s probably just a fly, and a kabbalist sees an eagle and a fly and thinks they’re both aspects of God!”

  She gives me a dirty look.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. “All I mean is that with Roman as the father, your child will be talented and handsome. And I’d bet he’ll be a very good father.”

  “Roman is a Jew!” she growls.

  “So much the better. You’d make one more enemy for the Nazis in your womb.” I risk taking her tulip bulb chin in my hand and say, “It’s a war, remember?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Roman has vowed never to spend another winter north of the Alps and is touring with the Circo Cardinali in Italy. “He’s useless to me!” Vera tells me angrily. “It has to be now. I can’t wait.”

  “Why?”

  She refuses to give me any explanation, which is odd and infuriating. Nevertheless, I convince her to compose a letter to Roman, and we have it translated into braille by a blind worker at a brush factory run by Otto Weidt, an old friend of Isaac’s. We send it care of Gianfranco Cardinali at his office in Rome. Vera’s heart is carried overseas in a patterned series of dots …

  Also at the end of January 1934, Papa telephones Isaac’s schoolmaster friend Philip Hassgall to talk about the possibility of enrolling Hansi in his special program for children who are … He’s at a loss for how to put Hansi’s difference but soon comes up with slow. Accurate, I suppose. Two nights later, I overhear my parents quarreling about whether we can afford to send my brother to a private school. Papa says we will make sacrifices; if we can’t get the bigger apartment we’d hoped for, so be it. Mama retorts that a private education for Hansi is beyond our means and that she’d prefer he remain with her.

  I don’t take my luminal that night so I can think out our family’s dilemma, and I realize in the early morning that Mama will do all she can to keep Hansi with her forever. This will be our last chance to set him free, I think, and I get into his bed behind him, where his warmth is all the assurance I need that fighting for him is what I was born to do.

  Dr Hassgall agrees to come to our apartment the next week to evaluate my brother. On the appointed afternoon, I bathe the boy and dress him in his best white shirt. I try to get one of Papa’s ties on him, but he bats my hands away. Sometimes I’d like to bite him hard.

  Dr Hassgall is about fifty and very dapper. He’s dressed in a dark gray, antique-looking woolen coat and red silk tie. He has thick, closely cropped gray hair, and he makes precise gestures with his hands, as though he’s an orchestra leader. His blue eyes light up with eagerness when he spots Hansi sitting on the sofa. In a melodious voice, he asks my parents about when they first noticed he was different, and what happened at his last school. After their explanations, which are incomplete and scattered, our guest asks them why they think the boy stopped talking, which is when Papa and Mama look at each other as though they’re two defendants needing to collaborate on a lie. “We really don’t know,” Mama tells our guest.

  “He just stopped,” Papa agrees, shrugging away further reflection on the matter.

  Dr Hassgall asks if they will permit him to talk with Hansi alone in our bedroom. “I’d like to make my evaluation without anyone else around who might distract him,” he says, and seeing he’s about to be refused, he holds up both hands and adds, “Please, be patient with me. With children like Hansi, patience is often what we need most.”

  “Very well,” Papa answers, but his voice is deep with warning. If you hurt a hair on my son’s head …

  Mama glances at Papa as if she’s been betrayed, but before she can ruin our hopes, I rush to Hansi and lay my hand on top of his head, which usually calms him. “Listen up,” I say cheerfully. “We’re going to go into our room and Dr Hassgall is going to come with us, and he only wants to talk with you. Everything will be fine, I promise.”

  He doesn’t answer of course, but I can tell from the way he’s tilted his head that he is scared enough to burst into tears at any moment.

  “I promise I’ll never abandon you,” I tell him, pressing down on him. Then, I say something surprising. “If you do this, I’ll ask Mama and Papa to get you a dog. As cute as Minnie!”

  Where does that little bit of inspiration come from?

  He folds his top lip over his bottom—interest piqued. Maybe he’s even dancing inside the Hansi Universe.

  I lead the boy into his room and summon Dr Hassgall. I close the door behind us, which my parents may find unforgivable, but I haven’t any choice.

  “Thank you, Sophie,” he tells me when I’ve got Hansi seated on his bed. You can go now. And Sophie,” he says, smiling, “I’m very impressed with you. Isaac was right.”

  The generous way he looks at me makes me shiver, but from that moment on, I feel a great solidarity with him because I know we are fighting for the same person.

  “My brother stopped talking when he got scared,” I whisper, and I grimace so that he knows this is top-secret.

  He leans toward me, a co-conspirator now. “Scared how?”

  “Friends of my father’s stayed with us one night—Communists in hiding. Mama panicked, and then Papa decided to change … to become a Nazi. He feared arrest and he renounced his past, which includes us, too … me and my brother. You see, Papa is scared of what we might say about him. I think Hansi stopped knowing who our father was. And …”

  Dr Hassgall pats my shoulder. “I understand, Sophie. You needn’t continue.”

  “Just one more thing,” I say. “Hansi likes jigsaw puzzles. If you can get him to let you help him with one, you’ll be part of the way inside his universe.”

  Dr Hassgall laughs sweetly. “I understand. We’ll work on that first.”
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  I leave the two of them alone.

  “Why did you close the door?” Mama demands as soon as I step into our sitting room. She’s standing with her hands crossed over her chest.

  “Dr Hassgall asked me to close it. I didn’t want to be rude and refuse him.”

  “The nerve of that man!” Mama whisper-screams to Papa, and I can tell she won’t be satisfied until she’s punished someone—meaning me. “And Sophie, what’s this about a dog?” she demands.

  “I got ahead of myself there,” I say, trying to wriggle free of her attack. “I guess it was a stupid idea, but I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “Very stupid. How could we have a dog in this tiny apartment?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I say.

  I turn to my father and ask for permission to go to the kitchen, which he gives me. I sit there munching on a raw carrot. Waiting and wondering as if caught in a fishing net. After I hear footsteps, I count to ten and then rejoin the others. My brother has given Dr Hassgall his hand. They stand before my parents, supplicants, forming a united front.

  Not bad, Dr Hassgall, I think.

  “Dr and Mrs Riedesel, I work with what I call distant children, and I believe that Hansi is one of them. He could benefit from classes at my school, and I promise you my teachers and I will do our best to help him.”

  “You’re sure he can be helped?” Papa asks.

  “I believe … I believe he is behind a kind of wall. I will try to open a window so he can see us clearly, and so we can see him. So he can tell us what he needs.”

  “But our physician said that he was …”

  Dr Hassgall waves off my father’s comments. “Dr Riedesel, would you please consider excusing Hansi from hearing medical matters?”

  My father agrees, so I take the boy to our bedroom. To my astonishment, Dr Hassgall waits for me to return before continuing. “Now that we’re all here,” he says, nodding at me,“German physicians know nothing about Hansi’s condition. And I assure you that he is neither feebleminded nor schizophrenic. Please, unless he becomes gravely ill, refrain from taking him to any more doctors. They will only put his health at risk.”

  That seemed a strange comment at the time.

  “Will he ever be … be normal?” my mother asks.

  “I don’t believe so, but he can be happy and productive. I have more than ten children similar to Hansi, and if you visit my school, you will see how they play and learn. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know what normal means anymore. When you work with children like Hansi, you come to understand that such determinations are not important and even dangerous. I have several former students who now live on their own and hold down good jobs. Some others have found partners for life who love them. That’s what’s important.”

  Finally, a speech from a German worth hearing!

  “Do you know why … why he is the way he is?” Mama asks anxiously. A question she’s been storing for eight or nine years, I’d guess.

  “No one knows, but I don’t believe you did anything to cause his condition.”

  Mama gasps and raises her hands to her mouth. Embarrassment that he has guessed her feelings of guilt? Or relief that she can now release them? I cannot tell.

  “This just happens sometimes, Mrs Riedesel,” our guest continues. “But Hansi will need schooling if he’s to have a good life. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it?”

  “But your school is so far across the city,” Mama points out.

  She wants to start one of her tennis matches, but the words far across the city are my cue to rush onto the court. “I’ll take Hansi to school and pick him up every day except when I have the Young Maidens on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” I say. I’ve been practicing my offer but it still comes out in a desperate rush.

  I expect Mama’s fury. Instead, she looks at me sadly and says, “If you’re willing to do that, Sophie, then … then…”

  She can’t finish her sentence and says nothing more while our guest is with us. Her silent gloom puzzles me until later when I realize it was only when I spoke that she understood she’d lost this battle and would have to give up her innocent little boy to the world. I felt only cruel resentment toward her then, but now I know how hard it is to let go of someone we want to protect. And how much life-affirming courage it took for her to do it.

  After Dr Hassgall leaves, Papa picks up Hansi in his arms and kisses him all over his face. God bless him for that. Then he tells Mama firmly that the boy will be enrolling at school as soon as possible.

  Mama, stunned, runs to her bedroom. She prepares no dinner that night. Papa and I do not mention what’s happened. I make onion soup for Hansi, Papa, and me, and we eat cheese on pumpernickel bread afterward.

  When Mama finally emerges near bedtime, her eyes are rimmed red. She avoids Papa, who reads his paper without glancing up. Their distance seems to sit on my shoulders, making all my movements labored. I heat up some soup for her, but she eats it with faraway eyes, as though she’s a condemned prisoner defeated again by the life she never wanted.

  When I pick up her empty bowl, she takes my hand and brings it to her cheek, then kisses my palm as if I’m her last hope. “You’ll see, Mama, Hansi will love you even more when he’s better,” I tell her.

  She looks up at me, and I see a fragile woman who’s unsure of her place in the world—not so different from me. She was only thirty-six. That seemed so old at the time. And over a distance of seventy years, I hear Isaac tell me, “People generally become bitter for lack of three things—love, attention, and justice.” He was talking about Vera then, but it goes for my mother too.

  I could almost trust Mama at that moment and confess to her what’s happened between Tonio and me. In another time and place, she’d put her arms around me and tell me something soothing and sweet. But not in the Germany I’ve inherited.

  The King David School is a large yellow house on Emdener Straße, a block from St Paul’s Church. My mother drops Hansi there for the first time at the end of January and I fetch him that afternoon—early, so I can make sure he’s all right.

  Dr Hassgall lets me peek into my brother’s classroom, which is painted deep blue—the color of the sky in Giotto’s frescoes. Something else seems odd, but I can’t identify what.

  “Children are very sensitive to color,” Dr Hassgall tells me, “and blue tends to keep them calmer and more comfortable with themselves than white.”

  Eccentricity or full-blown lunacy? As long as Dr Hassgall helps my brother, he can paint the whole street blue with pink stripes, I don’t care.

  Dozens of kids’ drawings—jagged landscapes and mop-haired stick figures—are taped on one of the walls. On the other side of the room is a gigantic map of the world. Framing the map are two windows that look out on a garden of bare-limbed trees rising up behind a slide and seesaw.

  My brother and eight other students sit at desks pushed together to form a wooden island in the middle of the room. Three girls, five boys, all of them wearing light blue smocks.

  The teacher is a young woman, maybe thirty, with copper-colored hair cut very short. She wears trousers and looks like an athletic young man. I bet she’d beat Maria in the hundred-meter dash. Enough reason to like her.

  We smile as strangers do who want the same thing—in this case, for my brother to thrive. I wonder if she’ll ever lose patience with Hansi, like I do. I hope so.

  No swastika flag flies above her head. And she’s not wearing an armband. That’s what’s odd.

  When she comes to us, she introduces herself as Else König. She explains that Hansi is working on subtraction problems in his notebook.

  Dr Hassgall tells me, “We teach subtraction before addition because it’s best if children learn that there exists a whole from which we may take things away before they get the erroneous idea that everything is separate.”

  Could that be true? In any case, his reply is so unexpected that I give a little laugh, which is when Hansi spots me. I
wave, but he puts his nose back in his notebook right away. And it’s then I understand more of what my mother feels.

  Roman’s reply to Vera’s letter arrives in early March. He writes that he has wanted a child for many years. “I’ll be back in Berlin around mid-May and then we can get started on baby-making!”

  “I hope I can hold out till then,” Vera says ominously.

  “You’ve waited this long, and it’s only another ten weeks,” I point out.

  Mr Cardinali has written the letter for Roman, and his handwriting is so neat and compact that it seems a sign that nothing will go wrong this time, but Vera refuses to accept her good luck. “When he’s inside me I’ll believe he’s kept his word, and not a minute sooner.”

  Unable to come up with any other rational course of action in my investigation of Georg’s murder, I decide to follow other members of The Ring. I start with Molly and Klaus Schneider, the trapeze flyers at Althof’s Circus who participated in our protest at Weissman’s. The bad news is that they live all the way across town in Wilmersdorf. With all my commitments, I manage to get there only twice at the beginning of the month, risking frostbite while waiting down the street from their apartment, and only once do they come home. They go in at just after five p.m. and don’t go out again. My feet are so numb by seven that I trip and have a bad tumble while walking to the underground. I can’t see how I’m going to reconcile being a schoolgirl and Young Maiden with my detective work. And with Berlin’s winter.

  The 9th of March, 1934—the day I join the war effort. And diminish any chance I had of furthering my investigations. My particular mission is Isaac’s idea.

  He says he’s been buying books by Jewish writers and banned Aryan authors to keep them from being tossed into bonfires. “But as soon as the secondhand bookshop owners see me coming they double their prices,” he tells me. “Goniffs, ladrões, thieves, gangsters are what they are! You’ve got to save me—I’m going broke.”

  So every Wednesday, when I am supposedly out with Tonio, Isaac gives me a list of what he’s hunting for and I bargain with the booksellers. After I’ve made my rounds, I sneak across the courtyard behind our building and eat supper in his apartment. Then we return to our lessons in Judaism.