Metropolis

by Thea von Harbou

  "You love a woman. The woman does not love you. Women who are not in love are very expensive. You want to buy this woman. Very well. The threefold cost of the flat… Life on the Adriatic coast—In Rome—on Teneriffe—on a splendid steamer around the world with a woman who wants to be bought anew every day—comprehensible, Josaphat, that the flat will be expensive… but to tell you the truth, I must have it, so I must pay for it."

  He plunged his hands into his pocket and drew out a wad of banknotes. He pushed it across to Josaphat over the black, polished mirror—Like table. Josaphat clutched at it, leaving his nail marks behind on the table-top and threw it into Shin's face. He caught it with a nimble, thought-swift movement, and gently laid it back on the table. He laid a second one beside it.

  "Is that enough?" he asked sleepily.

  "No—!" shouted Josaphat's laughter.

  "Sensible!" said Slim. "Very sensible. Why should you not make full use of your advantages. An opportunity like this, to raise your whole life by one hundred rungs, to become in-dependant, happy, free, the fulfilment of every wish, the satisfaction of every whim—to have your own, and a beautiful woman before you, will come only once in your life and never again. Seize it, Josaphat, if you are not a fool! In strict confidence: The beautiful woman of whom we spoke just now has already been informed and is awaiting you near the aeroplane which is standing ready for the journey… Three times the price, Josaphat, if you do not keep the beautiful woman waiting!"

  He laid the third bundle of banknotes on the table. He looked at Josaphat. Josaphat's reddened eyes devoured his. Josaphat's hands fumbled across blindly and seized the three brown wads. His teeth showed white under his lips; while his fingers tore the notes to shreds, they seemed to be biting them to death.

  Slim shook his head. "That's of no account," he said undisturbedly. "I have a cheque-book here, some of the blank leaves of which bear the signature, Joh Fredersen. Let us write a sum on the first leaf—a sum the double of the amount agreed upon up to now… Well, Josaphat?"

  "I will not—!" said the other, shaken from head to foot.

  Slim smiled.

  "No," he said. "Not yet… But very soon… "

  Josaphat did not answer. He was staring at the piece of paper, white, printed and written on, which lay before him on the blue-black table. He did not see the figure upon it. He only saw the name upon it:

  Joh Fredersen.

  The signature, as though written with the blade of an axe:

  Joh Fredersen.

  Josaphat turned his head this way and that as though he felt the blade of the axe at his neck.

  "No," he croaked. "No, no, no… !"

  "Not enough yet?" asked Slim.

  "Yes!" said he in a mutter. "Yes! It is enough."

  Slim got up. Something which he had drawn from his pocket with the bundles of banknotes, without his having noticed it, slid down from his knees.

  It was a black cap, such as the workmen in Joh Fredersen's works used to wear…

  A howl escaped Josaphat's lips. He threw himself down on both knees. He seized the black cap in both hands. He snatched it to his mouth. He stared at Slim. He jerked himself up. He sprang, like a stag before the pack, to gain the door.

  But Slim got there before him. With a mighty leap he sprang across table and divan, rebounded against the door and stood before Josaphat. For the fraction of a second they stared each other in the face. Then Josaphat's hands flew to Slim's throat. Slim lowered his head. He threw forward his arms, like the grabbing arms of the octopus. They held each other, tightly clasped, and wrestled together, burning and ice-cold, raving and reflecting, teeth-grinding and silent, breast to breast.

  They tore themselves apart and dashed at each other. They fell, and, wrestling, rolled along the floor. Josaphat forced his opponent beneath him. Fighting, they pushed each other up. They stumbled and rolled over armchairs and divans. The beautiful room, turned into a wilderness, seemed to be too small for the two twisted bodies, which jerked like fishes, stamped like steers, struck at each other like fighting bears.

  But against Slim's unshakeable, dreadful coldness the white-hot fury of his opponent could not stand its ground. Suddenly, as though his knee joints had been hacked through, Josaphat collapsed in Slim's hands, fell on his knees and remained there, his back resting against an over-turned armchair, staring up with glassy eyes.

  Slim loosened his hold. He looked down at him.

  "Had enough yet?" he asked, and smiled sleepily.

  Josaphat did not answer. He moved his right hand. In all the fury of the fight he had not lost hold of the black cap which Freder had worn when he came to him.

  He raised the cap painfully on to his knees, as though it weighed a hundredweight. He twisted it between his fingers. He fondled it…

  "Come, Josaphat, get up!" said Slim. He spoke very gravely and gently and a little sadly. "May I help you? Give me your hands! No, no. I shall not take the cap away from you… I am afraid I was obliged to hurt you very much. It was no pleasure. But you forced me into it."

  He left go of the man, who was now standing upright, and he looked around him with a gloomy smile.

  "A good thing we settled the price beforehand," he said. "Now the flat would be considerably cheaper."

  He sighed a little and looked at Josaphat.

  "When will you be ready to go?"

  "Now," said Josaphat.

  "You will not take anything with you?"

  "No."

  "You will go just as you are—with all the marks of the struggle, all tattered and torn?"

  "Yes."

  "Is that courteous to the lady who is waiting for you?"

  Sight returned to Josaphat's eyes. He turned a reddened gaze towards Slim.

  "If you do not want me to commit the murder on the woman which did not succeed on you—then send her away before I come… "

  Slim was silent. He turned to go. He took the cheque, folded it together and put it into Josaphat's pocket.

  Josaphat offered no resistance.

  He walked before Slim towards the door. Then he stopped again and looked around.

  He waved the cap which Freder had worn, in farewell to the room, and burst out into ceaseless laughter. He struck his shoulder against the door post…

  Then he went out. Slim followed him.

  Chapter 8

  FREDER WALKED UP the steps of the cathedral hesitatingly; he was walking up them for the first time. Hel, his mother, used often to go to the cathedral. But her son had never yet done so. Now he longed to see it with his mother's eyes and to hear with the ears of Hel, his mother, the stony prayer of the pillars, each of which had its own particular voice.

  He entered the cathedral as a child, not pious, yet not entirely free from shyness—prepared for reverence, but fearless. He heard, as Hel, his mother the Kyrie Eleison of the stones and the Te Deum Laudamus-the De Profundis and the Jubilate. And he heard, as his mother, how the powerfully ringing stone chair was crowned by the Amen of the cross vault…

  He looked for Maria, who was to have waited for him on the belfry steps; but he could not find her. He wandered through the cathedral, which seemed to be quite empty of people. Once he stopped. He was standing opposite Death.

  The ghostly minstrel stood in a side-niche, carved in wood, in hat and wide cloak, scythe on shoulder, the hour-glass dangling from his girdle; and the minstrel was playing on a bone as though on a flute. The Seven Deadly Sins were his following.

  Freder looked Death in the face. Then he said:

  "If you had come earlier you would not have frightened me… Now I pray you: Keep away from me and my beloved!"

  But the awful flute-player seemed to be listening to nothing but the song he was playing upon a bone.

  Freder walked on. He came to the central nave. Before the high altar, over which hovered God Incarnate, a dark form lay stretched out upon the stones, hands clutching out to each side, face pressed into the coldness of the stone, as though the blocks must
burst asunder under the pressure of the brow. The form wore the garment of a monk, the head was shaven. An incessant trembling shook the lean body from shoulder to heel, and it seemed to be stiffened as though in a cramp.

  But suddenly the body reared up. A white flame sprang up: a face; black flames within it: two blazing eyes. A hand rose up, clutching high in the air towards the crucifix which hovered above the altar.

  A voice spoke, like the voice of fire:

  "I will not let thee go, God, God, except thou bless me!"

  The echo of the pillars yelled the words after him. parThe son of Joh Fredersen had never seen the man before. He knew, however, as soon as the flame-white face unveiled the black flames of its eyes to him: it was Desertus the monk, his father's enemy…

  Perhaps his breath had become too loud. Suddenly the black flame struck across at him. The monk arose slowly. He did not say a word. He stretched out his hand. The hand indicated the door.

  "Why do you sent me away, Desertus?" asked Freder. "Is not the house of your God open to all?"

  "Hast thou come here to seek God?" asked the rough, hoarse voice of the monk.

  Freder hesitated. He dropped his head.

  "No." He answered. But his heart knew better.

  "If thou hast not come to seek God, then thou hast nothing to seek here," said the monk.

  Then Joh Fredersen's son went.

  He went out of the cathedral as one walking in his sleep. The daylight smote his eyes cruelly. Racked with weariness, worn out with grief, he walked down the steps, and aimlessly onwards.

  The roar of the streets wrapped itself, as a diver's helmet, about his ears. He walked on in his stupefaction, as though between thick glass walls. He had no thought apart from the name of his beloved, no consciousness apart from his longing for her. Shivering with weariness, he thought of the girl's eyes and lips, with a feeling very like homesickness.

  Ah!—brow to brow with her—then mouth to mouth-eyes closed—breathing… .

  Peace… Peace…

  "Come," said his heart. "Why do you leave me alone?"

  He walked along in a stream of people, fighting down the mad desire to stop amid this stream and to ask every single wave, which was a human being, if it knew of Maria's whereabouts, and why she had let him wait in vain.

  He came to the magician's house. There he stopped.

  He stared at a window.

  Was he mad?

  There was Maria, standing behind the dull panes. Those were her blessed hands, stretched out towards him… a dumb cry: "Help me—!"

  Then the entire vision was drawn away, swallowed up by the blackness of the room behind it, vanishing, not leaving a trace, as though it had never been. Dumb, dead and evil stood the house of the magician there.

  Freder stood motionless. He drew a deep, deep breath. Then he made a leap. He stood before the door of the house. Copper-red, in the black wood of the door, glowed the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.

  Freder knocked.

  Nothing in the house stirred.

  He knocked for the second time.

  The house remained dull and obstinate.

  He stepped back and looked up at the windows.

  They looked out in their evil gloom, over and beyond him.

  He went to the door again. He beat against it with his fists. He heard the echo of his drumming blows shake the house, as in dull laughter.

  But the copper Solomon's seal grinned at him from the unshaken door.

  He stood still for a moment. His temples throbbed. He felt absolutely helpless and was as near crying as swearing.

  Then he heard a voice—the voice of his beloved.

  "Freder—!" and once more: "Freder—!"

  He saw blood before his eyes. He made to throw himself with the full weight of his shoulders against the door…

  But in that same moment the door opened noiselessly. It swung back in ghostly silence, leaving the way into the house absolutely free.

  That was so unexpected and alarming that, in the midst of the swing which was to have thrown him against the door, Freder caught both his hands against the door-posts, and stood fixed there. He buried his teeth in his lips. The heart of the house was as black as midnight…

  But the voice of Maria called to him from the heart of the house: "Freder—! Freder—!"

  He ran into the house as though he had gone blind. The door fell to behind him. He stood in blackness. He called. He received no answer. He saw nothing. He groped. He felt walls-endless walls… Steps… He climbed up the steps…

  A pale redness swam about him like the reflection of a distant gloomy fire.

  Suddenly-he stopped still, clawing his hand into the stonework behind him—a sound was coming out of the nothingness: The weeping of a woman sorrowing, sorrowing unto death.

  It was not very loud, but yet it was as if the source of all lamentation were streaming out of it. It was as though the house were weeping—as though every stone in the wall were a sobbing mouth, set free from eternal dumbness, once and once only, to mourn an everlasting agony.

  Freder shouted—he was fully aware that he was only shouting in order not to hear the weeping any more.

  "Maria—Maria—Maria—!"

  His voice was clear and wild as an oath: "I am coming!"

  He ran up the stairs. He reached the top of the stairs. A passage, scarcely lighted. Twelve doors opened out here.

  In the wood of each of these doors glowed, copper-red, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.

  He sprang to the first one. Before he had touched it it swung noiselessly open before him. Emptiness lay behind it. The room was quite bare.

  The second door. The same.

  The third. The fourth. They swung open before him as though his breath had blown them off the latch.

  Freder stood still. He screwed his head down between his shoulders. He raised his arm and wiped it across his forehead. He looked around him. The open doors stood agape. The mournful weeping ceased. All was quite silent.

  But out of the silence there came a voice, soft and sweet, and more tender than a kiss…

  "Come… I Do come… ! I am here, dearest… !"

  Freder did not stir. He knew the voice quite well. It was Maria's voice, which he so loved. And yet it was a strange voice. Nothing in the world could be sweeter than the tone of this soft allurement—and nothing in the world has ever been so filled to overflowing with a dark, deadly wickedness.

  Freder felt the drops upon his forehead.

  "Who are you?" he asked expressionlessly.

  "Don't you know me?"

  "Who are you?"

  "… .Maria… ."

  "You are not Maria… "

  "Freder—I," mourned the voice—Maria's voice.

  "Do you want me to lose my reason?" said Freder, between his teeth. "Why don't you come to me?"

  "I can't come, beloved… "

  "Where are you?"

  "Look for me!" said the sweetly alluring, the deadly wicked voice, laughing softly.

  But through the laughter there sounded another voice-being also Maria's voice, sick with fear and horror.

  "Freder… help me, Freder… I do not know what is being done to me… But what is being done is worse than murder… My eyes are on… "

  Suddenly, as though cut off, her voice choked. But the other voice—which was also Maria's voice, laughed, sweetly, alluringly, on:

  "Look for me, beloved!"

  Freder began to run. Senselessly and unreasoningly, he began to run. Along walls, by open doors, upstairs, downstairs, from twilight into darkness, drawn on by the cones of light, which would suddenly flame up before him, then dazzled and plunged again into a hellish darkness.

  He ran like a blind animal, groaning aloud. He found that he was running in a circle, always upon his own tracks, but he could not get free of it, could not get out of the cursed circle. He ran in the purple mist of his own blood, which filled his eyes and ears, heard the breaker of his blood dash against his
brain, heard high above, like the singing of birds, the sweetly, deadly wicked laugh of Maria…

  "Look for me, beloved!… I am here!… I am here!… "

  At last he fell. His knees collided against something which was in the way of their blindness; he stumbled and fell. He felt stones under his hands, cool, hard stones, cut in even squares. His whole body, beaten and racked, rested upon the cool hardness of these blocks. He rolled over on his back. He pushed himself up, collapsed again violently, and lay upon the floor. A suffocating blanket sank downwards. His consciousness yielded up, as though drowned…

  Rotwang had seen him fall. He waited attentively and vigilantly to see if this young wildling, the son of Joh Fredersen and Hel, had had enough at last, or if he would pull himself together once more for the fight against nothing.

  But it appeared that he had had enough. He lay remarkably still. He was not even breathing now. He was like a corpse.

  The great inventor left his listening post. He passed through the dark house on soundless soles. He opened a door and entered a room. He closed the door and remained standing on the threshold. With an expectation that was fully aware of its pointlessness, he looked at the girl who was the occupant of the room.

  He found her as he always found her. In the farthest corner of the room, on a high, narrow chair, hands laid, right and left, upon the arms of the chair, sitting stiffly upright, with eyes which appeared to be lidless. Nothing about her was living apart from these eyes. The glorious mouth, still glorious in its pallor, seemed to enclose within it the unpronounceable. She did not look at the man—she looked over and beyond him.

  Rotwang stooped forward. He came nearer to her. Only his hands, his lonely hands groped through the air, as though they wanted to close around Maria's countenance. His eyes, his lonely eyes, enveloped Maria's countenance.

  "Won't you smile just once?" he asked. "Won't you cry just once? I need them both—your smile and your tears… Your image, Maria, just as you are now, is burnt into my retina, never to be lost… I could take a diploma in your horror and in your rigidity. The bitter expression of contempt about your mouth is every bit as familiar to me as the haughtiness of your eyebrows and your temples. But I need your smile and your tears, Maria. Or you will make me bungle my work… "