The Seventh Gate

by Richard Zimler

  Hans senses our mood and talks little. He’s exhausted from the trip, so I carry him for a time. In front of the makeshift cafés, scantily clad, blond prostitutes stand chatting with Russian soldiers, who call out well-meaning greetings to my son.

  Everyone—even the enemy—likes little children after a war, I discover. Proof that the cycle of human life will go on. But would the prostitutes and their Russians ask if he wants a piece of cake or sip of beer if they knew he was Jewish? And have I raised a reticent son without meaning to? When the men offer him candy, he looks back at me with supplicating eyes to see if he can accept their gifts. I suppose it’s for the best that he’s wary, but I can’t help wishing his spirit were freer. I’ve instructed him not to reply if anyone asks if he is Jewish. Despite what Vera thinks, I will indeed buy a gun. Anyone who tries to hurt him will carry a bullet with him to his grave.

  My heart feels like a ticking grenade when Prenzlauer Allee opens before us. And the smell of a beer factory—can one be up and running already?—makes me dizzy. Home is straight ahead, and an electric jolt of anguish halts my thoughts. My feet lead me onward but my head is now inside a glass jar made of disbelief.

  Passing the Immanuel Church, I picture Isaac’s face, and I see him open the door to my knocks, his pipe clamped in his mouth. Overjoyed, smiling with relief, he says, Welcome home! In his embrace, I release five years of grief and cede to him all the resilience I’ve kept coiled in my body. I can be the person I want to be because he is holding me. I’ll hand him Hans. “Our son,” I’ll say, and a glow of gratitude will burn in Isaac’s eyes, as in a Renaissance painting of grace and sainthood, and he will cry the tears that fathers since Adam have shed, then dance the boy, laughing, around the apartment.

  I have fantasized about making love with Isaac a thousand times, and now he will enter me again. And I will enter him. The sea and the mountain shall meet in a damned city.

  Seeing our building, I give Hans to Vera and start to run. My eyes, clouded by emotion, do not yet notice the ruined roof or the gouged windows. I rush through the courtyard and take the back steps two at a time. Please, please, please, I am thinking, let my life begin again …

  I knock on Isaac’s door, and I keep knocking, and I call out his name from a place so deep inside me that my voice is a stranger’s. A short man I’ve never seen before finally opens the door. Wiping away my tears, I say, “I’m looking for Isaac Zarco. He used to live here.”

  The man shakes his head. “I don’t know him.”

  “When did you move in?”

  “Who are you?” he asks suspiciously.

  “A good friend of his. I’ve just returned to Berlin. Please tell me how long you’ve been living here?”

  “Nearly two years.”

  My mind is caught on the thorns of simple subtraction. Two years … 1943, 1942 … ? Georg comes up the stairs carrying Hans, who reaches out to me with both arms.

  “Isaac isn’t here,” I tell Georg, taking the boy from him.

  “Do you have any idea where he might be?” Georg asks the man, who again shakes his head.

  “Are any of his things still here?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  “A portrait I did of him was hanging in the main bedroom. Maybe you found it?”

  “There was nothing here when we moved in.”

  The miserly wretch won’t even open his door more than a crack to let us look in. I’m convinced he’s lying, and I’m about to argue with him, but Georg takes my shoulder and says, “Let’s go to the Munchenbergs’ apartment.”

  A last question: “And the Riedesel family? They were living in the front building.”

  “I never met them.”

  Vera meets us in the courtyard. I can tell from the stony way she looks into the distance that she is trying to accept that Isaac is dead.

  A boy of fifteen or so answers our knocks at the Munchenbergs’ door. He calls for his mother when we explain why we’ve come. Georg talks for us. He’s got on a handsome linen suit and looks like a professor, which is probably why she invites us in. Georg and I stand in the sitting room, and Vera waits outside with Hans.

  None of the old furniture is here, and the photos of Raffi are gone from the walls.

  “When we moved in,” the woman tells us, “a neighbor mentioned that the previous tenants had been sent away on one of the transports. I don’t know anything else.”

  She claims never to have heard of Isaac or my father. These are my first experiences of a city in which no one will ever admit to knowing anything about the Jews except that they were sent away and never came back.

  I had hoped to avoid talking to Tonio’s parents, but the awkwardness I feel no longer matters. Mrs Hessel answers the door. Gasping, she raises both hands to her mouth. Her eyes open wide with panic. Maybe she thinks I’ve come for vengeance, so I kiss her tenderly on both cheeks.

  Her hair is gray now, and fraying, and her hands tremble in her lap when we sit together. She’s aged miserably. She tells Georg and me that she hasn’t seen Isaac in years. She doesn’t recall when he vanished. And she knows nothing about my father. She thinks she saw him for the last time in 1943. “But maybe early 1944,” she adds. Tonio is doing well, however. He was held in a Russian prison camp for six months but is now staying with her husband’s brother in Vienna. “His Russian improved while he was a prisoner and he is working as an interpreter.”

  “So the Russians have hired Nazis?” I ask her.

  It’s not my intention to wound her, but she gives me a startled, then affronted look. “Tonio was never a Nazi!” she declares.

  All my tender feelings for her are pushed aside by a surge of contempt, and in that doom-soaked way that understandings about injustice spread through us, I realize that all the National Socialists in Germany are rewriting their pasts at this very moment, burning all evidence against themselves. How many millions of copies of Mein Kampf have already been thrown in ovens? I’ve no doubt that Papa’s copy is already just smoke. Unless he has been imprisoned because of my betrayal …

  No one answers my knocks at our old apartment. I try my key but the lock has been changed. When I think that Hansi’s puzzles and clothing might still be there, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to turn away, but I do.

  * * *

  The restaurants have little food, and rationing is tight. We eat dumplings and turnips at what’s left of the Köln Beer Garden. A cheap rooming house on Straßburger Straße has two rooms available, so Vera and Georg take one, Hans and I the other. The electricity isn’t reliable, so we buy candles. At two in the morning, Hans starts crying and says his back and neck are sore. I hold up a candle to him; bedbugs have made red welts on his tender skin, so I wipe him down with a wet towel, dress him, and carry him to the garden in Wörther Platz. We sleep in our clothes on the grass, my arm under his head. It’s a warm night, and the stars above the city accompany us toward sleep. The lindens and oaks have all been cut down, which means we can also see the bombed-out apartment houses embracing the square. They seem to stand guard over us, and I recognize them all despite the damage. After all, we grew up together.

  And here in the only place on earth where I could never be lost, I will find Isaac.

  What does my son think of sleeping in a park in a strange city? He doesn’t say. He has elemental needs and right now he craves only slumber. He wakes me just after dawn to pee. In the slanting light, I take him behind an exuberant pink azalea bush. He leans his little belly out and sprays some yellow-flowered weeds. Like boys everywhere, he is pleased to use his pee-pee to hit a target. “Good work!” I tell him.

  We meet Vera and Georg for breakfast. Vera says she squashed ten bedbugs. “And then I ate them!” she announces, earning a horrified face from Hans, which gratifies her.

  When they go off to hunt for old friends, my son and I walk to Else König’s apartment. I talk to him about why the city was bombed. He doesn’t understand my explanations, but he hates for me to think he’s th
ick-headed and keeps nodding.

  Else comes to the door in her bathrobe, half-asleep. “Sophie?”

  Before I can speak, she’s already thrown her arms around me. We kiss and laugh. “And who’s this?” she asks, kneeling down.

  “Hans, my son.”

  Her eyes are so bright with joy that Hans shrinks back from her when she offers her hand.

  “She’s an old friend,” I tell him. “We used to teach at the same school.”

  “You taught in Berlin?” Hans asks her, his mind trying to embrace my past.

  “Yes,” she answers.

  “Are we in Berlin?”

  “You most certainly are!”

  Else hasn’t heard anything about Isaac. We tell her about Istanbul as we sip our linden tea. After five years of Turkish coffee, it tastes like hot water. Hans sits on a puffy old armchair by the window and watches the passersby in Potsdamer Platz.

  Else’s face has thinned and she has let her copper hair grow out. Only now do I realize she could have been a cover girl for Worm-Eaten German magazine. I tell her she was courageous to give all that up.

  “It wasn’t a conscious decision,” she replies. “Just looking at those perfect Young Maidens made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

  Hans asks me if we can go now to the Berlin Zoo. I’ve told him about it as a bribe.

  “What a good idea!” Else exults, plainly trying to please my son. “We’ll walk through the Tiergarten. I think the zoo might still be closed, but we can look at ducks in the ponds on the way. A few have come back.”

  “They left?” I ask.

  “We were starving. We ate ducks, rabbits … anything we could catch or raise.”

  Hans turns up his nose.

  “Yes, it wasn’t pretty,” she tells the boy. Whispering to me, she says, “The zoo animals were slaughtered too,” then adds in her regular voice, “We raised rabbits … my mom and me. But even half-starving, we couldn’t bear to eat them, so we exchanged them for chickens. My mom lived here with me during the bombings.” She leans toward me and whispers, “People ate squirrels, too. Hansi would be heartbroken.” She squeezes my hand when she says his name.

  “She means your uncle,” I tell Hans, because he’s got excellent hearing and thinks Else is talking about him.

  “Where is Uncle Hansi?” he asks. I’ve told him but he doesn’t understand death yet.

  “We’ll go lay flowers at his grave one day soon,” I reply.

  Else slips away to her bedroom to dress.

  “Any news from Volker?” I call out to her. She’s left her door open a crack.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid.”

  “And the school?”

  “Shut down. It became impossible to keep it going. No revenues.”

  Hans climbs down from his armchair and looks at the photographs on Else’s coffee table. One of them, framed in silver, is of our students and teachers, but I don’t dare take a good look at it.

  “And Dr Hassgall?”

  “Wait till we go out. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “There you are, Mama!” Hans says, pointing to me in the photograph.

  Is that youthful, smiling girl really me? “Yup, that was me—in another life, before you came along,” I tell him.

  Else has put on men’s trousers and a short-sleeved white blouse. She looks like a long-distance runner, which may be an accurate description, given that she’s survived. We sit on a bench in the Tiergarten, by Rousseau Lake. Such a despairing and empty place it is now; only a few scraggly trees have survived people’s need for firewood. I’ve encouraged Hans to look for goldfish in the pond because I don’t want him to hear what we’ll discuss. He turns around now and again to make sure I’m close by, and I give him a big wave. Mama the lighthouse …

  “Four Gestapo officers came to take away the Jewish kids,” Else tells me. “It was January 1943. We still had six with us. David and Ruthie, Saul, Werner, Volker, and … and Veronika. I think you’ll remember Veronika Vogt.”

  “How could I forget VV? ‘I like glue more than clean hands!’”

  Else laughs freely. It’s good to hear. “I didn’t know she was Jewish,” I say.

  “Her mother was. The Gestapo made her and the other Jewish kids line up at the front of the classroom. They did what they were told and the young ones started crying. Even the students still in their seats were terrified. I started to go stand by the Jewish children, where I could reassure them, but a Gestapo officer ordered me not to move. Everyone in the room was looking at me, and I felt as though this was the central moment in my life. I had been born only for this. And either I did what was right or I’d never be able to go on living. You know, Sophie, in years since, I’ve thought that maybe we’re all born for only one moment.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went to the door. One of the men shouted for me to stop, but I kept walking. When I got to the hallway, I ran to Dr Hassgall’s office. I figured I’d hear a shot and then I’d fall to the floor, dead. But all that mattered was doing what was required of me in that one moment.” She gives me a confused look. “Sophie, I don’t know why they didn’t kill me. And I don’t know why I’m alive when so many good people died.”

  Looking into the distance, as though unwilling to listen to my reassurance, she’s quiet for a time, then lifts my hand and presses it urgently into her cheek. “Thank you for trying to help,” she says. “So when I got to Dr Hassgall’s office, I knocked. Can you believe I knocked on his door at such a moment? But you remember how formal he was.” We smile together. “I rushed in and told him what was happening. He ran past me to the classroom. I’d never seen him move so fast. When he got there, he told the Gestapo officers that there had been a mistake. He named a high official he’d been bribing to keep the school open. The man in charge told him to shut up or he’d shoot all the Jewish kids on the spot, though he called them swine. Dr Hassgall and I knew that if these men took the students away, most would probably die, though one or two might survive. Sophie, we didn’t know about the mass killings yet, but we had no illusions about the labor camps. The kids who couldn’t work as expected would be shot or starved. Others would die of cold or dysentery. I thought there must be something I could say to the men to make them change their minds. But my courage had vanished by then.” She swirls her hand in the air. “I failed to speak from absolute terror.”

  “Was Dr Hassgall afraid?”

  “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times. He looked calm, but inside … I don’t know. He was hard to read. All I know is that in that wonderful clear voice of his he told the men, ‘I will never let my children leave without me.’ Calling across the room to me, he said, ‘Else, you’re in charge now.’ He must have seen the state I was in because he smiled gently and added, ‘I’m counting on you.’ Then he took Volker by the hand, because he was already in tears, and he instructed all the kids to link hands. He led them out of that classroom and out of the front door of the school and into the police van waiting on the street.”

  “Did you ever learn what happened to him and the kids?”

  “I tried, but I couldn’t find out anything. They must have been gassed. It’s odd, but I keep expecting to see Dr Hassgall at a café, in the metro, strolling down Unter den Linden …” She looks into the distance at Hans, who’s petting a big shaggy dog. “Or to see Volker sitting by a pond in the Tiergarten. But in here,” she says, tapping her chest, “I know that they’re long dead. The thing is, Sophie,” she adds, “Dr Hassgall refused to let the kids go off to die alone. I can’t stop thinking about his doing that. He didn’t have to go, but he did. It means everything to me now. It means he must have known this was the moment he was born for. And he didn’t fail.” She gives me a frightened look. “But maybe I did. I can’t help thinking that I should have gone with them and that everything I do now, for the rest of my life, will be wrong.”

  So Volker is gone. Else and I cry together, but I keep waving to Hans when he looks
back for me. Then he comes running over to us—panting and squirming—to describe the marvels of the sheepdog he’s befriended. But his breathless excitement turns to concern when he notices my red eyes. “What’s wrong, Mama?” he asks.

  “I’m all right, Hans. I just found out we won’t be able to see an old friend of mine.”

  “How come?”

  “He’s no longer living in Berlin.”

  As we walk to the zoo, Else and I reminisce about how the kids made us laugh—the conversation of women who’ve escaped the Angel of Death. Hans gives Else his hand, then walks between us, which he loves because it means he is at the center of the world. Else tells me that after the school closed she worked as a nanny for the two small daughters of a banker living in Grünewald. The man fled for Argentina at the beginning of 1945.

  “I stole as many valuables as I could from him before he left,” she grins. “I still have some of his silverware. Good for the black market.”

  “And since then?”

  “Odd jobs,” she replies. “But now that the Russians are here, life is looking up.”

  The zoo is still closed, so to cheer up Hans we buy an old loaf of bread and feed some ducks in the Tiergarten’s Neuer Lake.

  I’ve told Else of our encounter with bedbugs, and before we go our separate ways, she invites us to stay in her guest room. I’m hesitant to agree, but she puts a spare key in my hand and says, “Doing what’s right is the only thing that will keep me alive now.”

  Greta’s building has escaped bombing, which means that although the city may look like Pompeii, her windows overlooking Pfalzburger Straße are still framed by blue and green brocade curtains! But she isn’t home. I knock at her neighbors’ doors, and an old lady on the floor below confirms to me that Greta still lives upstairs. I leave a note under her door, asking her to get in touch with me through Else.

  Hans and I eat lunch in Savigny Platz, but he decides he doesn’t like German food. He pushes away a perfectly reasonable sausage like it’s a dead snake and eats only his boiled potatoes. Obviously, he did not get his taste buds from me.