The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  “Each text you buy for me is another angel who will live to fight another day,” Isaac assures me, explaining that Berekiah Zarco used to refer to books as angels given earthly form.

  Vera, Heidi, Rolf, K-H, Marianne, and other friends sometimes join us in the evening, though we never talk about mysticism in their presence. “They already think I’m daft,” Isaac confides in me, “and I wouldn’t want them to know my condition is even worse than they imagine.”

  I love the secrecy of our time together—and that Isaac is all mine. His youthful happiness of late has lulled me into believing that he is perfectly safe. Maybe we both want to believe that, in fact. No one, after all, wants to spend one’s days cramped by fear, even when that would be the logical way to live.

  Whenever I ask about his work with Turkish journalists, he says it’s going well. He doesn’t know how the other members of The Ring are faring in their efforts because they’ve agreed never to talk about such matters. “The less we can tell the Nazis if we’re arrested the better. And this makes it much harder for the traitor in our group to do any damage.”

  Between dropping off and fetching Hansi, my own studies, Young Maiden meetings, choral practice, and hunting for Isaac’s books, I’m generally too exhausted to think about The Ring or Georg’s murder, or the Opposite-Compass’ rantings, or anything else the world might consider noteworthy. In consequence—and with help from my nightly lullaby from luminal—I sleep like a brick. Though Tonio occasionally steals into my mind as if he’s intent on hurting me further …

  On my first list of books are two works by Adolph Jellinek that, according to Isaac, are indispensable for the study of Jewish mysticism: Philosophie und Kabbala and Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kabbala; and two books by the Jewish story-collector and philosopher, Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman and The Legend of the Baal-Shem.

  I save the list inside my diary because those books seem to mark the beginning of my real life—the one I wanted and chose. I keep my diary in Isaac’s wardrobe.

  The Jewish booksellers I visit are mostly grouped around the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße and on Neue Friedrichstraße. The smell of leather and dust comes to gratify me and put me at ease with myself, since it’s the scent of my covert contribution to our cause. I become friends with Mr Poppelauer at Number 59 Neue Friedrichstraße and Mr Henrikkson at Number 61.

  I tell all the bookshop owners and clerks that I’m making purchases for my own studies. I’m sure they don’t believe me, but nobody asks questions of strangers anymore. I keep my sweater unbuttoned to let my Young Maiden uniform show through when I visit a Christian-owned bookshop, and I button my collar for the Jews.

  Isaac calls me his kyra, which is what the residents of Istanbul used to call the Greek women who brought merchandise to orthodox Moslem homes so that the wives and daughters cloistered there could purchase what they needed. Every time I put a rare book in his hands, he whispers a Hebrew blessing over my head and tells me, “Another angel saved, my kyra.”

  One Wednesday in early March, Isaac presents me with a book printed in New York called Four Weeks in the Hands of Hitler’s Hell-Hounds: The Nazi Murder Camp of Dachau. He tells me that the book documents how SS guards are treating political prisoners like slaves. Dozens have been hanged for refusing to follow orders and many others shot for trying to escape. The Jews and Communists amongst the prisoners are being slowly starved to death. The book has been written by a former member of the Reichstag, Hans Beimlar, who managed to escape from Dachau in May 1933.

  “Have you told the Munchenbergs about the book?” I ask Isaac.

  “Professor and Mrs Munchenberg read it two nights ago, and they left yesterday afternoon for Dachau. Right after going to the bank.”

  “The bank?”

  “They’re going to offer the SS a ransom. Apparently that works sometimes. They’ve taken every Reichsmark they’ve got.”

  “You better hide the book somewhere really safe,” I tell him.

  “No, this angel needs to speak. I’m giving it to K-H and Marianne next.”

  Two days later, Isaac calls to me from his window as I head out with Hansi for his school, and he drops an envelope into my hands, then slips back inside and shuts his window before anyone can spot him talking to me. He writes, “The bribes worked, but not as the Munchenbergs hoped. They paid a small fortune only to be told that Raffi has been killed. Shot for insubordination. After six hours of standing at attention in the rain, he apparently sat down. They managed to bribe enough Nazis to get his body. The funeral is today. I will make apologies for you for not attending. They are killing our best young people first, so be careful. Maybe you should stop buying books. Come talk to me. I’m worried. Sorry, sorry, sorry to give you this terrible news. Be strong. Love, Isaac.”

  When I was tiny, Raffi would sling me over his shoulder and carry me laughing to my room and sit with me as I fell asleep, reading to me softly, and I loved his voice, and the feel of the mattress sagging in his direction and the heat on my cheeks made by the candles that he would light and put on my bedside table. Raffi was the gravity of affection. Maybe he was the first person outside my family whom I loved.

  So when I read that he is dead, I squat on the pavement, hollowed by disbelief. And then I run to Frau Koslowski’s grocery and go to the back where no one can see me and sob over all that will never be. Because now I know that Raffi will never see the Nile again, or bring us home dried dates, or go with me to visit Hansi at his new school. And he will never babysit my children, which is a fantasy I didn’t even know I had until now. Strange how we only know our deepest hopes too late to do any good.

  And I realize, too, that one day in the not-so-distant future I’ll be older than Raffi; when I reach thirty and then forty and fifty, he will still be twenty-five and buried in our neighborhood cemetery, a bullet hole in his skull.

  I take a luminal to get through the day, but even so tears come to my eyes when Dr Richter greets us with a Heil Hitler that morning. Hate burns in my chest like a sulfurous flame, and I can’t get my breath when he asks me what’s wrong. I finally stammer, “A friend … friend of mine died and I need to go to the funeral. I want to be excused.”

  “Do you have a note from your parents?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to stay.”

  It was a mistake to reveal my grief, because Gurka—with the intuition that comes to the truly wicked—has guessed that it’s a Jewish friend of mine who has died and draws her hand across her neck like a throat being slit whenever she sees me.

  What books would Raffi have written on Egyptian sculpture that will now never be read?

  And the point is, he would want me at his funeral, and disappointing the dead makes me feel as if I’ll be haunted forever by his contempt and my own cowardice. My only comfort is knowing that Raffi would approve of my way to fight this war, so when Isaac returns from the cemetery, I tell him that I’ll never stop saving books while Hitler rules Germany. Brave words, but maybe they’re just my excuse for not doing more.

  The next Saturday, I wake to hear my name being called from the street below my window. Tonio is waving at me to come down. It’s too late to make believe I don’t see him. And turning away would only sentence me to a life of what-might-have-been, so I hold up my hand, meaning wait. I feel as though I’m mesmerized by my own confusion.

  Tonio greets me cheerfully. He takes a step forward, so I take one back.

  “Do you want to go to a movie with me this afternoon?” he asks. He pokes his tongue out at the corner of his mouth to give me his puppy face, eager for us to embark on mischief, as if we were our younger selves.

  “You gave me crabs,” I say, dead-voiced. I feel like a shadow stalking my own mind.

  “Sophie …” He gazes down, thinking of what to say. He needs help, but I’m not going to give him any. I feel dry and impoverished. And gray—the color of my thoughts.

  An elderly couple passes us, th
e man in a black suit that’s way to big for him and his wife wearing bright red silk flowers in her hat. Down the street, a group of kids are playing tag.

  At length, he looks up and says, “Can we go somewhere where we can be alone?”

  “If you don’t have the courage to talk with me here, then what good are you?”

  He looks down again, ashamed. “I was upset,” he tells me. “I was feeling pressured. We’d been friends for so long that I … that I thought I wanted something else. And …”

  “And you got something else. Filzläuse. From someone else. Or more likely, from many someone elses.”

  He grimaces. “I’m sorry. That was rotten of me. And it was only one other girl.”

  I don’t believe that, but I’m not going to humiliate myself by asking for names, ages, and addresses.

  “I only realized I had them when it was … was too late to warn you,” he adds.

  Across the street, the wrinkled old grandmother who lives on the top floor of Mr Mannheim’s building starts shaking a white rug out her window, making clouds of dust. We’ve never talked, but I give her a big wave, and she waves back. That’s my way of making sure that Tonio knows that my life goes beyond him.

  He turns around momentarily to see who it is, not to be left out.

  “So will you come with me to the movies?” he asks in a supplicating tone. The sound of real regret or the role he needs to play to win me back?

  “You said something terrible to me,” I point out.

  He kicks the pavement once, then a second time, which means our conversation is not going as he expected. “I’m sorry about that, too,” he says. “I lied about you not being pretty. I was angry at you. I felt you were making me decide whether I wanted to be with you forever, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.” He looks at me firmly. “You may not like what I’m saying, Sophie, but I’m being honest with you. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  I keep my lips sealed because I don’t know how to answer. As we stare at each other, I feel our intimacy growing around us, blocking out the buildings and the sky, and the rumbling of the tram, and I sense a latch opening inside me. Freeing me to desire a future together. Even though he has betrayed me.

  “Please don’t hate me,” he says, his voice breaking.

  “I don’t hate you, but you hurt me badly,” I reply, my voice about to vanish as well.

  “Sophie, I’d never known any girl but you before I … I … If only I could take back my betrayal, I would.”

  His big black eyes—which I’ve known for so long—are asking for my forgiveness. He plays his trump card: “Sophie, I’ve got to go into the army in two months. I don’t know how often I’ll be back in Berlin, and I don’t want to go without making up with you.”

  His eyes are moistening. He wipes them roughly, but I let my tears fall, wanting to taste the salt of my own vulnerability—to make it as real as possible before I let it go.

  At length, he says, “How’s Hansi?”

  “He’s started school again.”

  “Oh, Sophie, that’s wonderful!”

  “Yes, I’m happy about it.”

  “I bet it was hard getting your mother to agree.”

  “Nearly impossible,” I admit, and I feel a second click deep in my chest, because I hadn’t expected Tonio to understand my family so well. “I had to promise to drop my brother at the school and pick him up three days a week.”

  “Where’s the school located?” he asks, eager to steer our conversation along a safe route.

  “Near St Paul’s.”

  “I’ll come with you sometimes,” he announces.

  Showing his solidarity is a good strategy, I’ll give him that. “You don’t have to,” I reply. “I’m sure you’re very busy.”

  “I want to! I’ve missed Hansi.”

  “A friend of Mr Zarco’s is the headmaster,” I say, and as I speak I see what I need to tell Tonio before we can go any further on the road to our union. “Mr Zarco even arranged for my parents to meet with him,” I begin.

  “That was kind of him,” Tonio replies.

  A good answer, but not enough. “Yes, very kind,” I say. “Mr Zarco is a wonderful man and I do not want to see him ever hurt ever again by Nazis. And Rini was my best friend ever. I don’t want to see her hurt either.”

  I speak as if Tonio could protect them against all the men with guns, which I know he can’t, but I have to make my point.

  “I know you loved Rini,” Tonio says, “but times have changed. Maybe later, when things calm down, you two can be friends again.”

  I don’t give that an answer because I’ve been such a coward. “And another thing,” I say instead, “Raffi was shot for insubordination. I will never forgive the Nazis for his death. I want you to know that … and remember it. And I’m worried about Hansi, too.”

  “Why?”

  “He deserves the best life he can have, even if the Nazi Youth would never accept him because he isn’t racially hygienic. I’ll never leave him behind, wherever I go.”

  I say these things one after the other in order to draw a magic circle around the people I most love—one that Tonio should not cross. And I close the circle tight around Raffi and Hansi with a trembling voice of warning.

  “I love your brother,” he assures me. “You know that. But the world is the way it is. And I have my place in it.”

  That’s Tonio drawing his circle—and it’s around only himself. If someone with more experience were watching us he might notice that our circles don’t overlap.

  “I don’t want you to change,” I tell him. “I just want you to understand me.”

  He looks convinced, but the truth is that I’d prefer us to be real companions, not just lovers, and save all the Yiddish books in Berlin.

  “Tonio …” I’m considering how to put a last request, but when I look up, he comes to me and embraces me, and I can feel our bodies easing into each other, as though into the same waking dream. He kisses my eyes because he knows that makes me feel protected, and I press into him, feeling our potential for a life of kindness and passion, and then he says, “I’ve thought you’re beautiful ever since we met. That’s what makes things difficult for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Everyone says I should want to be with lots of girls at my age, but I don’t want to be. I discovered that the hard way.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “My Nazi Youth friends. And … and even my father.”

  The last thing I wanted to tell him was that we had to be perfectly honest with each other. But now, in his arms, I don’t think either of us really wants that. In fact, we have drawn our magic circles to make it clear that our separate lives will continue as before.

  Later, after I’ve asked permission from my parents, we go to the movies—Dawn, a heroic film about submarine combat in the Great War—and we take Hansi along. As we ease down in our seats, I realize I’ve forgotten something essential. “If ever my parents ask,” I whisper to Tonio, “we’ve been going out every Wednesday for the last few months.”

  “I know.” Seeing my shock, he grins. “I’ve been going out every Wednesday evening so no one would find out about your lie.” He puts his arm over my shoulder. “Mostly I play billiards at the Köln Beer Garden. I’ve gotten pretty good.”

  “But how did you know that was the deal I had with my parents?”

  “Your father came to talk with my father before our first Wednesday together. He wanted to make sure that it was all right with my parents for us to go out on a weekday. So when Papa talked with me, I was confused at first, but I kept dancing till I figured out the steps.”

  After the movie, we go for a walk, and we end up on Museum Island because a band is performing hymns in front of the Cathedral. We’re just five minutes from Oranienburger Straße, so I steer us to Julia’s shop, maybe because I miss watching her. Or maybe an idea is already forming inside me …

  We stand across the street, in front
of Goldman’s Bakery, and the glorious scent of bread is so strong that Tonio makes believe he’s dizzy and wobbles around on the sidewalk, making Hansi giggle.

  Julia is standing behind her cash register, her hair up, a white scarf around her neck. And just like that, I realize that the time has come for me to start poking answers out of their hiding places.

  I’ve thought a great deal about why I chose Julia in years since, and I think it comes down to this: I suspected that she knew much more about poisons than she’d told me and believed she possessed the fierceness of will to kill anyone who might have threatened her good life. For better or worse, that was enough for me to take a stupid risk.

  “Wait here,” I tell Tonio, “I’ll be back in a minute.” I don’t want him to overhear what I have to say, of course; he is soon to be a soldier in Hitler’s army, after all.

  “But what are …”

  I wave away his question. Julia is standing behind her counter reading a thin book when I enter. “Sophie, hi!” she exults, her obsidian eyes opening wide with surprise.

  “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d say hello. How’s Martin doing?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. He’s even found a job! He does pick-ups and deliveries for a cleaning company. He goes around with a man in a truck. He loves the truck.” Her eyes glow with fondness and humor.

  “I … I want to ask a favor.” I lean across her counter and whisper. “A friend of my father’s has just arrived secretly in Berlin—back from exile.” There’s no point in being subtle when setting a trap, so I add, “He’s a Communist and a labor leader.”

  Julia gazes down, considering what to do, then whispers, “Wait, don’t say any more.”

  She gets up to lock the door and turn around the closed sign in the window, then leads me into her storage room. We’re surrounded by wooden shelves holding hundreds of white porcelain jars with blue Latin lettering. It smells musty, and a bit like ginger.