Metropolis

by Thea von Harbou

"Josaphat—!!"

  "Run! It's nothing!—II swear to God it's nothing," a distorted smile upon the white face. "Think of Maria—and run!"

  And Freder raced off.

  Josaphat turned his head. He saw the blackness of the street flashing bright red. He heard the screams of the thousands. He thought dully, with a thrust of his fist in the air: "Shouldn't I like to be Grot now, to be able to swear properly… "

  Then his head fell back into the filth of the street, and every consciousness faded but that of pain…

  But Freder ran as he had never run. It was not his feet which carried him. It was his wild heart—It was his thoughts.

  Streets and stairs and streets and at last the cathedral square. Black in the background, the cathedral, ungodded, unlighted, the place before the broad steps swarming with human beings—and amid them, surrounded by gasps of madly despairing laughter, the howling of songs of fury, the smouldering of torches and brands, high up on the pyre…

  "Maria—!"

  Freder fell on his knees as though his sinews were sawn through.

  "Maria—!"

  The girl whom he took to be Maria raised her head. She sought him. Her glance found him. She smiled—laughed.

  "Dance with me, my dearest—!" flew her voice, sharp as a flashing knife, through uproar.

  Freder got up. The mob recognised him. The mob lurched towards him, shrieking and yelling.

  "Jooooo—oh! Joh Fredersen's son—! Joh Fredersen's son—"

  They made to seize him. He dodged them wildly. He threw himself with his back against the parapet of the street.

  "Why do you want to kill her, you devils—? She has saved your children!"

  Roars of laughter answered him. Women sobbed with laughter, biting into their own hands.

  "Yes—yes—she has saved our children—! She saved our children with the song of the dead machines! She saved our children with the ice cold water—! High let her live-high and three time high!"

  "Go to the 'House of the Sons'—! Your children are there!"

  "Our children are not in the 'House of the Sons!' There lives the brood, hatched out by money. Sons of your kind, you dog in white-silken skin!"

  "Listen, for God's sake—do listen to me—!!!"

  "We don't want to hear anything—!"

  "Maria—beloved!!!—Beloved! I!"

  "Don't bawl so, son of Joh Fredersen! Or we'll stop your mouth!"

  "Kill me, if you must kill—but let her live—!"

  "Each in his turn, son of Joh Fredersen! First you shall see how your beloved dies a beautiful, hot magnificent death!"

  A woman—Grot's woman—tore a strip off her skirt and bound Freder's hands. He was bound fast to the parapet with cords. He struggled like a wild beast, shouting that the veins of this throat were in danger of bursting. Bound, impotent, he threw back his head and saw the sky over Metropolis, pure, tender, greenish-blue, for morning would soon follow after this night.

  "God—!" he shouted, trying to throw himself on his knees, in his bonds. "God—! Where art thou—?"

  A wild, red gleam caught his eyes. The pyre flamed up in long flames. The men, the women, seized hands and tore around the bonfire, faster, faster and faster, in rings growing ever wider and wider, laughing, screaming with stamping feet, "Witch—! Witch!"

  Freder's bonds broke. He fell over on his face among the feet of the dancers.

  And the last he saw of the girl, while her gown and hair stood blazing around her as a mantle of fire, was the loving smile and the wonder of her eyes—and her mouth of deadly sin, which lured among the flames: "Dance with me, my dearest! Dance with me—!"

  Chapter 21

  ROTWANG AWOKE; BUT he knew quite well he was dead. And this consciousness filled him with the deepest satisfaction. His aching body no longer had anything to do with him. That was perhaps the last remains of life. But something worried him deeply, as he raised himself up and looked around in all directions: Hel was not there.

  Hel must be found…

  Ah existence without Hel was over at last. A second one?—No! Better than to stay dead.

  He got up on his feet. That was very difficult. He must have been lying as a corpse for a good long time. It was night, too. A fire was raging out there, and it was all very noise… Shrieking of human beings…

  Hm…

  He had hoped to have been rid of them. But, apparently the Almighty Creator could not get along without them. Now—but one purpose. He just wanted his Hel. When he had found Hel, he would—he promised himself this!—never again quarrel with the father of all things, about anything at all…

  So now he went… The door leading to the street was open and hanging crookedly on its hinges. Strange. He stepped in front of the house and looked deliberatingly around. What he saw seemed to be a kind of Metropolis; but a rather insane kind of Metropolis. The houses seemed as though struck still in St. Vitus' dance. And an uncommonly rough and impolite sort of people was ramping around a flaming bonfire, upon which a creature of rare beauty was standing, seeming, to Rotwang, to be wondrously at ease.

  Ah—It was that, ah yes—that, in the existence which, thank the Lord, lay far behind him, he had tried to create, to replace his lost Hel—just to make the handiwork of the Creator of the world look rather silly… Not bad for a beginning… hm… but, good God, compared with Hel; what an object; what a bungle…

  The shrieking individuals down there were quite right to burn the thing. Though it appeared to him to be rather a show of idiocy to destroy his test-work. But perhaps that was the custom of the people in this existence, and he certainly did not want to argue with them. He wanted to find Hel—his Hel—and nothing else…

  He knew exactly where to look for her. She loved the cathedral so dearly, did his pious Hel. And, if the flickering light of the bonfire did not deceive him,—for the greenish sky gave no glimmer—Hel was standing, like a frightened child in the blackness of the cathedral door, her slender hands clasped firmly upon her breast, looking more saint—Like than ever.

  Past those who were raving around the bonfire—always politely avoiding getting in their way—Rotwang quietly groped his way to the cathedral.

  Yes, it was his Hel… She receded into the cathedral. He groped his way up the steps. How high the door looked… Coolness and hovering incense received him… All the saints in the pillar niches had pious and lovely faces, smiling gently, as though they rejoiced with him that he was now, at last, to find Hel, his Hel, again.

  She was standing at the foot of the belfry steps. She seemed to him to be very pale and indescribably pathetic. Through a narrow window the first pale light of the morning fell upon her hair and brow.

  "Hel," said Rotwang, his heart streaming over; he stretched out his hands. "Come to me, my Hel… How long, how long I had to live without you!"

  But she did not come. She started back from him. Her face full of horror, she started back from him.

  "Hel," begged the man, "why are you afraid of me? I am no ghost, although I am dead. I had to die, to come to you. I have always, always longed for you. You have no right to leave me alone now! I want your hands! Give them to me!"

  But his groping fingers snatched into space. Footsteps were hurrying up the steps of the stone-staircase which led to the belfry.

  Something like anger came over Rotwang's heart. Deep in his dulled and tortured soul reposed the memory of a day upon which Hel had likewise fled from him—to another… No, don't think, don't think of it… That was a part of his first existence, and it would be quite senseless to go through the same again—In the other, and, as humanity in general hoped, better world.

  Why was Hel fleeing from him? He groped along after her. Climbed up stairs upon stairs. The hastening, frightened footsteps remained constantly before him. And the higher the woman before him fled, the more wildly did his heart beat in this mighty ascent, the redder did Rotwang's eyes become filled with blood, the more furiously did his anger boil up within him. She should not run away
from him—she should not! If only he could catch her by the hand he would never, never let her go again! He would forge a ring about her wrist with his metal hand—and then she should never try to escape him again… to another!

  They had both reached the belfry. They raced along under the bells. He blocked the way to the stairs. He laughed, sadly and evilly.

  "Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!" She made a swift, despairing leap, and hung on the rope of the bell which was called Saint Michael. Saint Michael raised his ore voice, but it sounded as though broken, complaining wildly. Rotwang's laughter mingled with the sound of the bell. His metal arm, the marvellous achievement of a genius, stretched, like the phantom arm of a skeleton, far out on the sleeve of his coat, and snatched at the bell-rope. "Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!" The girl staggered back against the breastwork. She looked around. She was trembling like a bird. She could not go down the stairs. Neither could she go any higher. She was trapped. She saw Rotwang's eyes and saw his hands. And, without hesitation, without reflection, with a ferocity which swept a blaze of scarlet across the pallor of her face, she swung herself out of the belfry window, to hang upon the steel cord of the lightning conductor.

  "Freder—!!" she screamed. "Help me—!!"

  Below—far below, near the flaming pyre, lay a trampled creature, his forehead in the dust. But the scream from above smote him so unexpectedly that he shot up, as if under the lash, he sought and he saw—

  And all those who had been dancing in wild rings around the bonfire of the witch saw, as he—stiffened—petrified: The girl who hung, swallowlike, clinging to the tower of the cathedral, with Rotwang's hands stretching out towards her.

  And they all heard how, in the shouted answer: "I am coming, Maria, I am coming—!" there cried out all the relief and all the despair which can fill the heart of a man to whom Heaven and Hell are equally near.

  Chapter 22

  JOH FREDERSEN STOOD in the dome-room of the New Tower of Babel, waiting for Slim. He was to bring him news of his son.

  A ghostly darkness lay upon the New Tower of Babel. The light had gone completely out, gone out as though it had been killed—at the moment when the gigantic wheel of the Heart-machine of Metropolis came free from its structure with a roar as from the throats of a thousand wounded beasts, and, still whirling around, was hurled straight up at the ceiling, to strike it with a shattering crash, to bound back, booming the while like a gong as large as the heavens and to crash down upon the splintered ruins of the erstwhile masterpiece of steel, to remain lying there.

  Joh Fredersen stood long on the same spot, not daring to move. It seemed to him that an eternity had passed since he sent Slim out for news of his son. And Slim wouldn't and wouldn't come back.

  Joh Fredersen felt that his whole body was frozen to an icy coldness. His hands, hanging helplessly downwards, were clasped around the pocket-torch.

  He waited… waited…

  Joh Fredersen threw a glance at the clock. But the hands of the giantess stood at an impossible time. The New Tower of Babel had indeed lost itself. Whereas, every day, the throbbing of the streets which tunnelled their course below it, the roar of the traffic of fifty million, the magic madness of speed, had raged its way up to him, there now crouched a calm of penetrating terror.

  Stumbling steps were hastening towards the door of the outer room.

  Joh Fredersen turned the beam of his pocket-torch, upon this door. It flew wide open. Slim stood upon the threshold. He staggered. He closed his eyes dazzled. In the excessively glaring light of the powerful torch his face, right down to his neck, shone a greenish white.

  Joh Fredersen wanted to ask a question. But not the least sound passed his lips. A terrible dryness burnt his throat. The lamp in his hand began to tremble and to dance. Up to the ceiling, down to the floor, along the walls, reeled the beam of light…

  Slim ran up to Joh Fredersen. Slim's wide, staring eyes bore an inextinguishable horror.

  "Your son," he stammered, almost babbling, "your son, Mr. Fredersen—"

  Joh Fredersen remained silent. He made no movement, but that he stooped a little—just a very little, forward.

  "I have not found your son… " said Slim. He did not wait for Joh Fredersen to answer him. His tall body, with the impression it gave of asceticism and cruelty, the movements of which had, in Joh Fredersen's service, gradually gained the disinterested accuracy of a machine, seemed quite out of joint, shaken out of control. His voice inquired shrilly, in the grip of a deep innermost frenzy: "Do you know, Mr. Fredersen, what is going on around you, in Metropolis—?"

  "What I will," answered Joh Fredersen. The words sounded mechanical, and as though they had been read before they were spoken: "What does that mean: You have not found my son—?"

  "It means what it means," answered Slim in his shrill voice. His eyes bore an awful hatred. He stood, leaning far forward, as if ready to pounce upon Joh Fredersen, and his hands became claws. "It means that Freder, your son is not to be found—it means that he, perhaps, wanted to look on with his own eyes at what becomes of Metropolis by his father's will and the hands of a few lunatics—it means, as the now half-witted servants told me, that your son left the safety of his home, setting out in company with a man who was wearing the uniform of a workman of Metropolis, and that it might well be difficult to seek your son in this city, in which, by your will, madness has broken out—the madness to' destroy, Mr. Fredersen, the madness to ruin!—and which has not even light to lighten its madness—!" Slim wanted to continue, but he did not do so. Joh Fredersen's right hand made a senseless, fumbling gesture through the air. The torch fell from his hand, continuing to burn on the floor. The mightiest man of Metropolis swung half around, as though he had been shot, and collapsed empty-eyed, back into the chair by the writing-table.

  Slim stooped forward, to look Joh Fredersen in the face. Before these eyes he was struck silent.

  Ten—twenty—thirty seconds long he did not dare to draw a breath. His horrified gaze followed the aimless movements of Joh Fredersen's fingers, which were fumbling about as though seeking for some lever of rescue, which they could not find. Then, suddenly, the hand rose a little from the table-top. The forefinger straightened as though admonishing to attention. Joh Fredersen murmured something. Then he laughed. It was a tired, sad little laugh, at the sound of which Slim thought he felt the hair of his head begin to bristle.

  Joh Fredersen was talking to himself. What was he saying? Slim bent over him. He saw the forefinger of Joh Fredersen's right hand gliding slowly across the shiny table-top, as though he were following and spelling out the lines of a book.

  Joh Fredersen's soft voice said:

  "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap… "

  Then Joh Fredersen's forehead fell on to the smooth wood, and, unceasingly, in a tone which, except for a dead woman, no one had ever heard from Joh Fredersen, his soft voice cried the name of his son…

  But the cries remained unanswered…

  Up the steps of the New Tower of Babel there crept a man. It seldom happened in the great Metropolis, Joh Fredersen's time-saving city, that anyone used the stairs. They were reserved in case of all the lifts and the Pater-noster being overcrowded, of the cessation of all means of transit, of the outbreak of fire and similar accidents—Improbable occurrences in this perfect settlement of human beings. But the improbable had happened. Piled up, one above the other, the lifts, which came hurtling down, blocked up their shafts, and the cells of the Pater-noster seemed to have been bent and charred by a hellish heat, smouldering up from the depths.

  Up the stairs of the New Tower of Babel did Josaphat drag himself. He had learnt to swear in that quarter of an hour, even as Grot used to swear, and he made full use of his newly acquired art. He roared at the pain which racked his limbs. He spat out an excess of hatred and contempt at the agony in his knees. Wild and ingenious were the execrations which he hurled at every landing, every new bend in the staircase. But he conquer
ed them all—one hundred and six flights of stairs, each consisting of thirty steps. He reached the semicircle where the lifts had their opening. In the corners before the door to Joh Fredersen's rooms there crouched knots of human beings, pressed together by the common pressure of a terrible fear.

  They turned their heads to stare at the man who was crawling up the stairs, dragging himself up by aid of the walls.

  His wild eyes swept over them.

  "What is it?" he asked breathlessly. "What are you all doing here?"

  Agitated voices whispered. Nobody knew who was speaking. Words tumbled over each other.

  "He drove us out into the town, where death is running as though amok… He sent us out to look for his son, Freder. We couldn't find him… None of us… We daren't go in to Joh Fredersen… Nobody dares take him the news that we haven't been able to find his son… "

  A voice swung out, high and sharp from out the knot: "Who can find one single damned soul in this hell—?" "Hush… hush… !" "Listen—!"

  "He is talking to Slim."

  And in the tension of listening, which smothered every sound, the heads bent towards the door.

  Behind the door a voice spoke, as were the wood rattling: "Where is my son… ?"

  Josaphat made for the door, staggering. The panting cry of many men tried to stop him. Hands were stretched out towards him.

  "Don't-don't—!!"

  But he had already pushed open the door. He looked about him. Through the enormous windows the first glow of the youthful day was flowing, lying on the shining floor like pools of blood. By the wall, near the door, stood Slim. And just before him stood Joh Fredersen. His fists were pressed against the wall, right and left of the man, holding him fast, as though they had been drilled through him, crucifying him.

  "Where is my son—?" said Joh Fredersen. He asked—and his voice cracked as if in suffocation: "Where is my child?"

  Slim's head flung back against the wall. From his ashen lips came the toneless words: