Metropolis

by Thea von Harbou

  "Of whom is he speaking?" he asked, with strangely cold lips. "Is he speaking of a person?… of a woman?… " He saw that the brow of his friend was covered with sweat. "He is speaking of her," said Jan, as though he were speaking with paralysed tongue. "Of whom?"

  "Of her… don't you know her?" "I don't know," said Freder, "whom you mean… " And his tongue, too, was heavy, and as though made of clay.

  Jan gave no answer. He had hunched up his shoulders as though he were bitterly cold. Bewildered and undecided, he listened to the intermediate rolling of the organ.

  "Let us go!" he said tonelessly, turning around. Freder followed him. They left the cathedral. They walked along together in silence for a long time. Jan seemed to have a destination of which Freder did not know. He did not ask. He waited. He was thinking of his dream and of the monk's words.

  At last Jan opened his mouth; but he did not look at Freder, he spoke into space:

  "You do not know who she is… But nobody knows… She was suddenly there… As a fire breaks out… No one can say who fanned the flame… But there it is, and now everything is ablaze… " "A woman… ?"

  "Yes. A woman. Perhaps a maid, too. I don't know. It is inconceivable that this being would give herself to a man… (Can you imagine the marriage of ice?)… Or if she were to do so, then she would raise herself up from the man's arms, bright and cool, in the awful, eternal virginity of the soulless… "

  He raised his hand and seized his throat. He tugged something away from him which was not there. He was looking at a house which lay opposite him, on the other side of the street, with a gaze of superstitious hostility, which made his hands run cold.

  "What is the matter with you?" asked Freder. There was nothing remarkable about this house, except that it lay next to Rotwang's house.

  "Hush!" answered Jan, clasping his fingers around Freder's wrist.

  "Are you mad?" Freder stared at his friend. "Do you think that the house can hear us across this infernal street?"

  "It hears us!" said Jan, with an obstinate expression. "It hears us! You think it is a house just like any other? You're wrong… It began in this house… "

  "What began?"

  "The spirit… "

  Freder felt that his throat was very dry. He cleared it vigorously. He wanted to draw his friend along with him. But he resisted him. He stood at the parapet of the street, which sheered down, steep as a gorge, and he was staring at the house opposite.

  "One day," he said, "this house sent out invitations to all its neighbours. It was the craziest invitation on earth. There was nothing on the card but: 'Come this evening at ten o'clock! House 12, 113th Street!' One took the whole thing to be a joke. But one went. One did not wish to miss the fun. Strangely enough no one knew the house. Nobody could remember ever having entered it, or having known anything of its occupants. One turned up at ten. One was well dressed. One entered the house and found a big party. One was received by an old man, who was exceedingly polite, but who shook hands with nobody. It was an odd thing that all the people collected here seemed to be waiting for something, of which they did not know. One was well waited upon by servants, who seemed to be born mutes, and who never raised their eyes. Although the room in which we were all gathered was as large as the nave of a church, an unbearable heat prevailed, as though the floor were glowing hot, as though the walls, were glowing hot, and all this in spite of the fact that, as one could see, the wide door leading to the street stood open.

  "Suddenly one of the servants came up from the door to our host, with soundless step, and seemed wordlessly, with his silent presence, to give him some information. Our host inquired: 'Are we all met?' The servant inclined his head. "Then close the door." It was done. The servants swept aside and lined themselves up. Our host stepped into the middle of the great room. At the same moment so perfect a silence prevailed that one heard the noise of the street roaring like breakers against the walls of the house.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," said the old man courteously, "may I have the honour of presenting my daughter to you!"

  He bowed to all sides, and then he turned his back. Everyone waited. No one moved.

  "Well, my daughter," said the old man, with a gentle, but somehow horrible voice, softly clapping his hands.

  "Then she appeared on the stairs and came slowly down the room… "

  Jan gulped. His fingers, which still held Freder's wrist in their clutch, gripped tighter, as though they wished to crush the bones.

  "Why am I telling you this?" he stammered. "Can one describe lightning? Or music? Or the fragrance of a flower? All the women in the hall suddenly blushed violently and feverishly and all the men turned pale. Nobody seemed capable of making the least movement or of saying a single word… You know Rainer? You know his young wife? You know how they loved each other? He was standing behind her. She was sitting, and he had laid his hands on her shoulders with a gesture of passionate and protective affection. As the girl walked by them—she walked, led by the hand of the old man, with gentle ringing step, slowly through the hall—Rainer's hands slipped from his wife's shoulders. She looked up at him, he down at her; and in the faces of those two were burnt, like a torch, a sudden, deadly hatred…

  "It was as though the air was burning. We breathed fire. At the same time there radiated from the girl a coldness-an unbearable, cutting coldness. The smile which hovered between her half-open lips seemed to be the unspoken closing verse of a shameless song.

  "Is there some substance through the power of which emotions are destroyed, as colours are by acids? The presence of this girl was enough to annul everything which spells fidelity in the human heart, even to a point of absurdity. I had accepted the invitation of this house because Tora had told me she would go too. Now I no longer saw Tora, and I have not seen her since. And the strange thing was that, among all these motionless beings who were standing there as though benumbed, there was not one who could have hidden his feelings. Each knew how it was with the other. Each felt that he was naked and saw the nakedness of the others. Hatred, born of shame, smouldered among us. Tora was crying. I could have struck her… Then the girl danced. No, it was no dance… She stood, freed from the hand of the old man, on the lowest step, facing us, and she raised her arms about the width of her garment with a gentle, a seemingly never-ending movement. The slender hands touched above her hair-parting. Over her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, her knees, there ran an incessant, a barely perceptible trembling. It was no frightened trembling. It was like the trembling of the final spinal fins of a luminous, deep sea fish. It was as though the girl were carried higher and higher by this trembling, though she did not move her feet. No dance, no scream, no cry of an animal in heat, could have so lashing an effect as the trembling of this shimmering body, which seemed, in its calm, in its solitude, to impart the waves of its incitement to every single soul in the room.

  "Then she went up the steps, stepping backwards, with tentative feet, without lowering her hands, and she disappeared into a velvet-deep darkness. The servants opened the door to the street. They lined up with backs bent.

  "The people still sat motionless.

  "'Good night, ladies and gentlemen!' said the old man… "

  Jan was silent. He took his hat from his head. He wiped his forehead.

  "A dancer," said Freder, with cold lips, "but a spirit… ?"

  "Not a spirit! I will tell you another story… A man and a woman, of fifty and forty, rich and very happy, have a son. You know him, but I will not mention any names…

  "The son sees the girl. He is as though mad. He storms the house. He storms the girl's father: 'Let me have her! I am dying for her!' The old man smiles, shrugs his shoulders, is silent, is exceedingly sorry, the girl is not to be attained.

  "The young man wants to lay hands on the old man, but he is whirled out of the house and thrown into the street, by he does not know whom. He is taken home. He falls ill and is at Death's door. The doctors shrug their shoulders.

  "The
father, who is a proud but kindly man, and who loves his son above anything on earth, makes up his mind to visit the old man, himself. He gains entrance to the house without difficulty. He finds the old man, and with him, the girl. He says to the girl: 'Save my son!'"

  "The girl looks at him and says, with the most graciously inhuman of smiles: 'You have no son… '

  "He does not understand the meaning of these words. He wants to know more. He urges the girl. She always gives the same answer. He urges the old man—he lifts his shoulders. There is a perfidious smile about his mouth… "

  "Suddenly the man comprehends… He goes home. He repeats the girl's words to his wife. She breaks down and confesses her sin—a sin which, after twenty years, has not yet died down. But she is not concerned with her own fate. She has no thought apart from her son. Shame, desertion, loneliness—all are nothing; but the son is everything."

  "She goes to the girl and falls on her knees before her: 'I beg you, in the name of God's mercy, save my son… !' The girl looks at her, smiles and says: 'You have no son… ' The woman believes that she has a lunatic before her. But the girl was right. The son, who had been a secret witness to the conversation between the husband and the mother, had ended his life… "

  "Marinus?"

  "Yes."

  "… A terrible coincidence, Jan, but still, not a spirit."

  "Coincidence?—Not a spirit?—And what do you call it, Freder," continued Jan, speaking quite close to Freder's ear, "when this girl can appear in two places at once?"

  "That's absolute rubbish… "

  "Rubbish—? It's the truth, Freder! The girl was seen standing at the window in Rotwang's house—and, at the same time, she was dancing her sinful dance in Yoshiwara… ."

  "That is not true—!" said Freder.

  "It is true!"

  "You have seen the girl… In Yoshiwara—?"

  "You can see her yourself, if you like… ."

  "What's the girl's name?"

  "Maria… "

  Freder laid his forehead in his hands. He bent double, as in the throes of an agony, which otherwise God does not permit to visit mankind.

  "You know the girl?" asked Jan, bending forward.

  "No!"

  "But you love her," said Jan, and behind these words lurked hatred, crouched to spring.

  Freder took his hand and said: "Come!"

  "But," continued Freder, fixing his eyes upon Josaphat, who was sitting there quite sunken together, while the rain was growing gentler, like hushed weeping, "Slim was suddenly standing there, beside me, and he said: 'Will you not return home, Mr. Freder?' "

  Josaphat was silent for a long time: Freder, too, was silent. In the frame of the open door, which led out to the balcony, stood, hovering, the picture of the monster clock, on the New Tower of Babel, bathed in a white light. The large hand jerked to twelve.

  Then a sound arose throughout Metropolis.

  It was an immeasurably glorious and transporting sound, as deep and rumbling as, and more powerful than any sound on earth. The voice of the ocean when it is angry, the voice of falling torrents, the voice of very close thunder storms, would be miserably drowned in this Behemoth din. Without being shrill, it penetrated all walls, and, as long as it lasted, all things seemed to swing in it. It was omnipresent, coming from the heights and from the depths, being beautiful and horrible, being an irresistible command.

  It was high above the town. It was the voice of the town.

  Metropolis raised her voice. The machines of Metropolis roared: They wanted to be fed.

  The eyes of Josaphat and Freder met.

  "Now," said Josaphat, "many are going down into a city of the dead, and are waiting for one who is called Maria, and whom they have found as true as gold… "

  "Yes!" said Freder, "you are a friend, and you are quite right… I shall go with them… "

  And, for the first time this night, there was something like hope in the ring of his voice.

  Chapter 12

  IT WAS ONE HOUR after midnight.

  Joh Fredersen came to his mother's house.

  It was a farmhouse, one-storied, thatch-roofed, overshadowed by a walnut tree and it stood upon the flat back of one of the stone giants, not far from the cathedral. A garden full of lilies and hollyhocks, full of sweet peas and poppies and nasturtiums, wound itself about the house.

  Joh Fredersen's mother had only one son and him she had very dearly loved. But the Master over the great Metropolis, the Master of the machine-city, the Brain of the New Tower of Babel had become a stranger to her and she hostile to him. She had had to look on once and see how one of Joh Fredersen's machine-Titans crushed men as though they were dried up wood. She had screamed to God. He had not heard her. She fell to the ground and never got up again. Only head and hands retained their vitality in the paralysed body. But the strength of a legion blazed in her eyes.

  She opposed her son and the work of her son. But he did not let her alone; he forced her to him. When she angrily vowed she wished to live in her house—under the thatched roof, with its vault, the walnut tree—until her dying day, he transplanted house and tree and gaily blossoming garden to the flat roof of the stone house-giant which lay between the cathedral and the New Tower of Babel. The walnut tree ailed one year long; and then it became green again. The garden blossomed, a wonder of beauty, about the house.

  When Joh Fredersen entered this house he came from sleepless nights and evil days.

  He found his mother as he always found her: sitting in the wide, soft chair by the open window, the dark rug over the now paralysed knees, the great Bible on the sloping table before her, in the beautiful old hands the delicate figured lace at which she was sewing; and, as ever, when he came to her, she silently laid aside the fine work and folded her hands firmly in her lap as though she must collect all her will and every thought for the few minutes which the great son spent with his mother.

  They did not shake hands; they did not do that, any more.

  "How are you, mother?" asked Joh Fredersen.

  She looked at him with eyes in which gleamed the strength of a heavenly legion. She asked:

  "What is it you want, Joh?"

  He sat down opposite her and laid his forehead in his hands.

  There was nobody in the great Metropolis, not anywhere else on earth who could have boasted ever having seen Joh Fredersen with sunken brow.

  "I need your advice, mother," he said, looking at the floor.

  The mother's eyes rested on his hair.

  "How shall I advise you, Joh? You have taken a path along which I cannot follow you—not with my head, and certainly not with my heart. Now you are so far away from me that my voice can no longer reach you. And if it were able to reach you, Joh, would you listen to me were I to say to you: Turn back—? You did not do it then and would not do it to-day. Besides, all too much has been done which cannot be undone, you have done all too much wrong, Joh, and do not repent, but believe yourself to be in the right. How can I advise you then…

  "It is about Freder, mother… ?"

  "… about Freder?"

  "Yes."

  "What about Freder… "

  Joh Fredersen did not answer immediately.

  His mother's hands trembled greatly, and, if Joh Fredersen had looked up, the fact could not have remained hidden from him. But Joh Fredersen's forehead remained sunken upon his hands.

  "I had to come to you, mother, because Hel is no longer alive… ."

  "And of what did she die?"

  "I know: of me… You have made it clear to me, mother, often and cruelly, and you have said I had poured boiling wine into a crystal. Then the most beautiful of glass must crack. But I do not repent it, mother. No, I do not repent it… For Hel was mine… "

  "And died for it… "

  "Yes. Had she never been mine perhaps she would still be alive. Better that she should be dead."

  "She is, Joh. And Freder is her son."

  "What do you mean by that, mother?" />
  "If you did not know just as well as I, Joh, you would not have come to me to-day."

  Joh Fredersen was silent. Through the open window, the rustling of the walnut tree was to be heard, a dreamy, touching sound.

  "Freder often comes to you, mother, doesn't he?" asked Joh Fredersen.

  "Yes."

  "He comes to you for aid against me… "

  "He is in great need of it, Joh… "

  Silence. Then Joh Fredersen raised his head. His eyes looked as though sprinkled with purple.

  "I have lost, Hel, mother," he said. "I can't lose Freder too… "

  "Have you reason to fear that you will lose him?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I am surprised," said the old lady, "that Freda: has not yet come to me… "

  "He is very ill, mother… "

  The old lady made a movement as though wishing to rise, and into her archangel eyes there came an angry glitter.

  "When he came here recently," she said, "he was as healthy as a tree in bloom. What ails him?"

  Joh Fredersen got up and began to walk up and down the room. He smelt the perfume of flowers streaming up from the garden through the open window as something inflicting pain which ripped his forehead into lines.

  "I do not know," he said suddenly, quite disjointedly, "how this girl could have stepped into his life. I do not know how she won this monstrous hold over him. But I heard from his own lips how he said to her: My father no longer has a son, Maria… "

  "Freder does not lie, Joh. So you have lost him already."

  Joh Fredersen did not answer. He thought of Rotwang. He had said the same words to him.

  "Is it about this that you have come to me, Joh?" asked his mother. "Then you could have spared yourself the trouble. Freder is Hel's son. Yes… That means he has a soft heart But he is yours too, Joh. That means he has a skull of steel. You know best, Joh, how much obstinacy a man can summon up to attain to the woman he wants."