Metropolis : The World of 2026 A. D.

THE WORLD OF 2026 A.D. 

METROPOLIS is a classic of science-fiction which 
created an impact on the literary world which reverber- 
ates to this day. Its dramatic presentation of the city- 
world of the next century stirred the minds of readers 
with an unforgettable vision of a metropolis grown to 
Gargantuan proportions, of humanity fighting to keep its 
soul against the monster world of machinery, robots, and 
complexity that had been spawned in our own century. 
The book inspired a movie which is possibly the best 
science-fiction film ever made. 

Now Ace Books brings this classic back to print, with 
a special introduction by Forrest J Ackerman, who as 
a Hugo Award-winning fan personality, made its revival 
one of the primary objectives of his science-fiction career. 


This book is not of today or of the future. 

It tells of no place. 

It serves no cause, party or class. 

It has a moral which grows on the pillar of understanding: 
“The mediator between brain and muscle must be the 
Heart” 





METROPOLIS 


Introduction copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc. 
This Ace edition follows the text of the first English 
edition, originally published in 1927. 


Title-page design by Jack Gaughan. 


Printed in U.S.A_ 


INTRODUCTION 
by Forrest J Ackerman 

“Mr. Science Fiction”; Hugo Award-winner; and Metropolis 
Fan #1. 


Welcome to Metropolis, My Home Town. 

Population — estimated by my slan-friend AE van Vogt — 
approximately 30 million. 

I’ve lived here since I was 10 years old. It’s the most excit- 
ing, fabulous city on the face of the earth — and under it. 
London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo ... all 
rolled and roiled into one. 

Just imaginel 

When I say the magic name — Metropolis — it is as tho I 
combine the skyscraping dominance of the Empire State 
Building with the elegance of the Taj Mahal, the fame of the 
Eiffel Tower and the eternal mystery of the Sphinx of Egypt. 
Metropolis — The New Babel, architectural masterpiece of 
monolitliic magnificence. The skyscrapers of the 20th century 
dwarfed by the towering stratoscrapers of the-21st 

And far beneath, in man-made caverns below, the monster- 
machines of Moloch: the incredible, inhuman Geyser Ma- 
chine, the Heart Machine, that must be forever tended by 
the Human Clocks, the subterranean sub-humans, the help- 
less workers of the mole-world who slave their hopeless lives 
away, serfs for the surface people, blind puppets to the will 
of the Master of Metropolis. 

The Master of Metropolis: Joh Fredersen, a man forged of 
ten-point steel, cold as the surface of Pluto — and as distant. 
A ruler as ruthless and imperious as ancient Caesar. 

5 


METROPOLIS 


Hidden somewhere amidst the futuristic superstructures of 
Metropolis is an anachronistic dwelling, a baroque and Gothic 
survival housing a laboratory wherein alchemical marvels are 
performed. With the Seal of Solomon on its door, the 
legendary Golem might have been born here hundreds of 
years before. Today a wild-eyed white-haired albino spider 
spins within, a sinister genuis who has sacrificed one hand to 
his supramundane science. It is the eerie abode of Rotwang, 
the evil Ralph 124C41+ of his day. 

And Rotwang has created Futura— sometimes also called 
Parody— a simulucrum in sentient metal of artificial female 
flesh. A robotrix of which Rossum might have dreamt. 

Metropolis— the book— has been compared to Karel Ca- 
pek’s play RUR, to Samuel Butler’s Utopian novel Erewhon, 
“of a future period when machinery would develop a soul 
and become man's master”, to The Time Machine, in which 
“the restless far-seeing mind of HGWells conceived an un- 
forgettable picture of the development of social and economic 
conditions under his Eloi, the epicurean and effete aristo- 
crats of the future world, and their underground and uncanny 
slaves, the Morlocks.” When the Sleeper Wakes (Wells), 
Land Under England (O’Neill), Looking Backward (Bel- 
lamy) and Summer in 3000 (Martin)— two of which came 
later— are reminiscent in some respects of the book. 

When I speak of Metropolis the film there is nothing with 
which to compare it: it remains the science-fantasy classic 
incomparable, the single greatest scientifilm I ever saw. 

The present work— firstime in print in America in a genera- 
tion— originally sold, in the late 20’s, in a chain of Ten Cent 
Stores! A wretched piece of book-making, the first edition 
nevertheless has become a cornerstone in the collections of 
collectors of collectors’ items and a work particularly coveted 
by aficionados of fantasy filmdom. The lastime I had a spare 
copy it was snapped up for $25. American-International 
Studios and Bert I. Gordon, independent motion picture 
producer, have evinced interest in the property and I am 
certainly going to give a copy of this edition to George Pal, 
who should seriously consider it for production. 

6 


METROPOLIS 

It is hightime, and over time, that a pocketbook edition of 
this unique book be made popularly, universally available. 

Thea von Harbou, its gifted authoress, now dead, in her 
lifetime exhibited a literary mind that leapt ahead of reality. 
When rocketry was in its infancy, long before it was in its 
launching cradle, she authored the world-famous Woman in 
the Moon, both book and screenplay. "The Indian Tomb”, 
“The Isle of the Immortals”, “Destiny”, “Spies”; “Siegfried” 
in film form and a cinemadaptation of “Dr. Mabuse”; were 
among Madame von Harbou’s literary and motion picture 
legacy. She was married to the celebrated director Fritz 
Lang, who so masterfully materialized her masterpiece Me- 
tropolis on the screen. 

“ Metropolis is unlike any other novel as yet written,” en- 
thused an observer at the time. “It is distinct, unique and 
original. It has a tremendous drama of conflicting forces and 
an idyllic love theme.” 

The language of the novel is sometimes as thesauric as 
Shiel, as kaleidoscopic as Merritt in “The Metal Emperor”, as 
bone-spare as Bradbury in “The Skeleton”, as poetic as Poe, 
as macabre as Machen. The title belongs on your Hugo 
Award shelf along with The World Below, The House on the 
Borderland, Last and First Men, The Demolished Man, 
Limbo, 1984. 

Science and Fantasy, Horror and Beauty; Mystery, Men- 
ace, Madness, Magnificence, Significance— Once in a Life- 
time all the Elements were Magically Combined to Create the 
Imaginative Classic, the Filmasterpiece Supreme: 
METROPOLIS! 

This is the book on which the film was based. 

The book has been called a work of genius. 

I agree. In the next few hours you will have an experience 
in reading that will last you all the rest of your life. 

—Forrest J Ackerman 
Apt. 4E, Rotwang Towers 
Lang Level and Harbou Skyway 
Metropolis 
24 Novembro 2026 


7 


CHAPTER I 


TNTow the rumbling of the great organ swelled to 
a roar, pressing, like a rising giant, against the vaulted 
ceiling, to burst through it. 

Freder bent his head backwards, his wide-open, burning 
eyes stared unseeingly upward. His hands formed music 
from the chaos of the notes; struggling with the vibration of 
the sound and stirring him to his innermost depths. 

He was never so near tears in his life and, blissfully 
helpless, he yielded himself up to the glowing moisture 
which dazzled him. 

Above him, the vault of heaven in lapis lazuli-, hovering 
therein, the twelve-fold mystery, the Signs of the Zodiac 
in gold. Set higher above them, the seven crowned ones: the 
planets. High above all a silver-shining bevy of stars: the 
universe. 

Before the bedewed eyes of the organ-player, to his 
music, the stars of heavens began the solemn mighty dance. 

The breakers of the notes dissolved the room into nothing. 
The organ, which Freder played, stood in the middle of the 
sea. 

It was a reef upon which the waves foamed. Carrying 
crests of froth, they dashed violently onward, and the seventh 
was always the mightiest. 

But high above the sea, which bellowed in the uproar 
of the waves, the stars of heaven danced the solemrt, mighty 
dance. 

Shaken to her core, the old earth started from her sleep. 
Her torrents dried up; her mountains fell to ruin. From the 

8 


METROPOLIS 

ripped open depths the fire welled up; The earth burnt with 
all she bore. The waves of the sea became waves of fire. The 
organ flared up, a roaring torch of music. The earth, the sea 
and the hymn-blazing organ crashed- in and became ashes. 

But high above the deserts and the spaces, to which 
creation was burnt, the stars of heaven danced the solemn 
mighty dance. 

Then, from the grey, scattered ashes, on trembling wings 
unspeakably beautiful and solitary, rose a bird with jewelled 
feathers. It uttered a mournful cry. No bird which ever 
lived could have mourned so agonisingly. 

It hovered above the ashes of the completely ruined earth. 
It hovered hither and thither, not knowing where to settle. It 
hovered above the grave of the sea and above the corpse of 
the earth. Never, since the sinning angel fell from heaven to 
hell, had the air heard such a cry of despair. 

Then, from the solemn mighty dance of the stars, one 
freed itself and neared the dead earth. Its light was gentler 
than moonlight and more imperious than the light of the sun. 
Among the music of the spheres it was the most heavenly 
note. It enveloped the mourning bird in its dear light; it 
was as strong as a deity, crying: “To me. ... to me!” 

Then the jewelled bird left the grave of the sea and earth 
and gave its sinking wings up to the powerful voice which 
bore it. Moving in a cradle of light, it swept upwards and 
sang, becoming a note of the spheres, vanishing into Eter- 
nity .... 

Freder let his fingers slip from the keys. He bent forward 
and buried his face in his hands. He pressed his eyes until 
he saw the fiery dance of the stars behind his eyelids. 
Nothing could help him— nothing. Everywhere, everywhere, 
in an agonising, blissful omnipresence, stood, in his vision, 
the one one countenance. 

The austere countenance of the virgin, the sweet coun- 
tenance of the mother— the agony and the desire with which 
he called and called for the one single vision for which his 
racked heart had not even a name, except the one, eternal, 
you .... you .... you . . . . ! 

He let his hands sink and raised his eyes to the heights of 

9 


METROPOLIS 

the beautifully vaulted room, in which his organ stood. From 
the sea-deep blue of the heavens, from the flawless gold of 
the heavenly bodies, from the mysterious twilight around him, 
the girl looked at him with the deadly severity of purity, 
quite maid and mistress, inviolability, graciousness itself, her 
beautiful brow in the diadem of goodness, her voice, pity, 
every word a song. Then to turn, and to go, and to vanish — 
no more to be found. Nowhere, nowhere. 

“You— 1” cried the man. The captive note struck against 
the walls, finding no way out. 

Now the loneliness was no longer bearable. Freder stood 
up and opened the windows. The works lay, in quivering 
brightness, before him. He pressed his eyes closed, standing 
still, hardly breathing. He felt the proximity of the servants, 
standing silently, waiting for the command which would 
permit them to come to life. 

There was one among them— Slim, with his courteous 
face, the expression of which never changed— Freder knew 
of him : one word to him, and, if the girl still walked on earth 
with her silent step, then Slim would find her. But one does 
not set a blood-hound on the track of a sacred, white hind, 
if one does not want to be cursed, and to be, all his life long, 
a miserable, miserable man. 

Freder saw, without looking at him, how Slim’s eyes were 
taking stock of him. He knew that the silent creature, or- 
dained, by his father, to be his all-powerful protector, was, 
at the same time, his keeper. During the fever of nights, 
bereft of sleep, during the fever of his work, in his work-shop, 
during the fever when playing his organ, calling upon God, 
there would be Slim measuring the pulse of the son of his 
great master. He gave no reports; they were not required of 
him. But, if the hour should come in which they were de- 
manded of him, he would certainly have a diary of faultless 
perfection to produce, from the number of steps with which 
one in torment treads out his loneliness with heavy foot, 
from minute to minute, to the dropping of a brow into 
propped up hands, tired with longing. 

Could it be possible that this man, who knew everything, 
knew nothing of her? 


10 


METROPOLIS 

Nothing about him betrayed that he was aware of the 
upheavel in the well-being and disposition of his young 
master, since that day in the “Club of the Sons.” But it was 
one of the slim, silent one’s greatest secrets never to^ give 
himself away, and, although he had no entrance to the “Club 
of the Sons” Freder was by no means sure that the money- 
backed agent of his father would be turned back by the 
rules of the club. 

He felt himself exposed, unclothed. A cruel brightness, 
which left nothing concealed, bathed him and everything 
in his workshop which was almost the most highly situated 
room in Metropolis. 

“I wish to be quite alone,” he said softly. 

Silently the servants vanished, Slim went. . . . But all 
these doors, which closed without the least sound, could 
also, without the least sound, be opened again to the narrow- 
est chink. 

His eyes aching, Freder fingered all the doors of his 
work-room. 

A smile, a rather bitter smile, drew down the comers of his 
mouth. He was a treasure which must be guarded as crown 
jewels are guarded. The son of a great father, and the 
only son. 

Really the only one—? 

Really the only one—? 

His thoughts stopped again at the exit of the circuit and 
the vision was there again and the scene and the event .... 

The “Club of the Sons” was, perhaps, one of the most 
beautiful buildings of Metropolis, and that was not so very 
remarkable. For fathers, for whom every revolution of a 
machine-wheel spelt gold, had presented this house to their 
sons. It was more a district than a house. It embraced theatres, 
picture-palaces, lecture-rooms and a library— in which, every 
book, printed in all the five continents, was to be found- 
race tracks and stadium and the famous “Eternal Gardens.” 

It contained very extensive dwellings for the young sons 
of indulgent fathers and it contained the dwellings of fault- 
less male servants and handsome, well-trained female ser- 
vants for whose training more time was requisite than for the 

11 


METROPOLIS 

development of new species of orchids. 

Their chief task consisted in nothing but, at all times, to 
appear delightful and to be incapriciously cheerful; and, 
with their bewildering costume, their painted faces, and 
their eye-masks, surmounted by snow-white wigs and fra- 
grant as flowers, they resembled delicate dolls of porcelain 
and brocade, devised by a master-hand, not purchaseable 
but rather delightful presents. 

Freder was but a rare visitant to the “Club of the Sons.” 
He preferred his work-shop and the starry chapel in which 
this organ stood. But when once the desire took him to fling 
himself into the radiant joyousness of the stadium competi- 
tions he was the most radiant and joyous of all, playing on 
from victory to victory with the laugh of a young god. 

On that day too. ... on that day too. 

Still tingling from the icy coolness of falling water, every 
muscle still quivering in the intoxication of victory he had 
lain, stretched out, slender, panting, smiling, drunken, beside 
himself, almost insane with joy. The milk-coloured glass 
ceiling above the Eternal Gardens was an opal in the light 
which bathed it. Loving little women attended him, waiting 
roguishly and jealously, from whose white hands, from whose 
fine finger-tips he would eat the fruits he desired. 

One was standing aside, mixing him a drink. From hip to 
knee billowed sparkling brocade. Slender, bare legs held 
proudly together, she stood, like ivory, in purple, peaked 
shoes. Her gleaming body rose, delicately, from her hips 
and— she was not aware of it— quivered in the same rhythm 
as did the man’s chest in exhaling his sweet-rising breath. 
Carefully did the little painted face under the eye-mask 
watch the work of her careful hands. 

Her mouth was not rouged, but yet was pomegranate red. 
And she smiled so unselfconsciously down at the beverage 
that it caused the other girls to laugh aloud. 

Infected, Freder also began to laugh. But the glee of the 
maidens swelled to a storm as she who was mixing the drink, 
not knowing why they were laughing, became suffused with 
a blush of confusion, from her pomegranate-hued mouth to 
her lustrous hips. The laughter induced the friends, for no 

12 


METROPOLIS 


reason, only because they were young and care-free, to join 
in the cheerful sound. Like a joyously ringing rainbow, peal 
upon peal of laughter arched itself gaily above the young 
people. 

Then suddenly— suddenly— Freder turned his head. His 
hands, which were resting on the hips of the drink-mixer, lost 
hold of her, dropping down by his sides as if dead. The 
laughter ceased, not one of the friends moved. Not one of 
the little, brocaded, bare-limbed women moved hand or foot. 
They stood and looked. 

The door of the Eternal Gardens had opened and through 
the door came a procession of children. They were all hold- 
ing hands. They had dwarves’ faces, grey and ancient. They 
were little ghost-like skeletons, covered with faded rags and 
smocks. They had colourless hair and colourless eyes. They 
walked on emaciated bare feet. Noiselessly they followed 
their leader. 

Their leader was a girl. The austere countenance of the 
Virgin. The sweet countenance of the mother. She held a 
skinny child by each hand. Now she stood still, regarding 
the young men and women one after another, with the 
deadly severity of purity. She was quite maid and mistress, 
inviolability— and was, too, graciousness itself, her beautiful 
brow in the diadem of goodness; her voice, pity; every word 
a song. 

She released the children and stretched forward her hand, 
motioning towards the friends and saying to the children: 

“Look, these are your brothers!” 

And, motioning towards the children, she said to the 
friends: 

“Look, these are your brothers!” 

She waited. She stood still and her gaze rested upon 
Freder. 

Then the servants came, the door-keepers came. Between 
these walls of marble and glass, under the opal dome of 
the Eternal Gardens, there reigned, for a short time, an 
unprecedented confusion of noise, indignation and embarrass- 
ment. The girl appeared still to be waiting. Nobody dared to 

13 


METROPOLIS 


touch her, though she stood so defenceless, among the grey 
infant-phantoms, Her eyes rested perpetually on Freder. 

Then she took her eyes from his and, stooping a little, took 
the children’s hands again, turned and led the procession out. 
The door swung to behind her; the servants disappeared 
with many apologies for not having been able to prevent the 
occurrence. All was emptiness and silence. Had not each of 
those before whom the girl had appeared, with her grey 
procession of children, so large a number of witnesses to the 
event they would have been inclined to put it down to 
hallucination. 

Near Freder, upon the illuminated mosaic floor, cowered 
the little drink-mixer, sobbing uncontrolledly. 

With a leisurely movement, Freder bent towards her and 
suddenly twitched the mask, the narrow black mask, from 
her eyes. 

The drink-mixer shrieked out as though overtaken in stark 
nudity. Her hands flew up, clutching, and remained hanging 
stiffly in the air. 

A little painted face stared, horror-stricken at the man. The 
eyes, thus exposed, were senseless, quite empty. The little 
face from which the charm of the mask had been taken 
away, was quite weird. 

Freder dropped the black piece of stuff. The drink-mixer 
pounced quickly upon it, hiding her face. Freder looked 
around him. t 

The Eternal Gardens scintillated. The beautiful beings in 
it, even if, temporarily, thrown out of balance, shone in their 
well-cared-forness, their cleanly abundance. The odour of 
freshness, which pervaded everywhere, was like the breath 
of a dewy garden. 

Freder looked down at himself. He wore, as all the youths 
in the “House of the Sons,” the white silk, which they wore 
but once— the soft, supple shoes, with the noiseless soles. 

He looked at his friends. He saw these beings who never 
wearied, unless from sport— who never sweated, unless from 
s P ort — who were never out of breath, unless from sport. 
Beings requiring their joyous games in order that their food 

14 


METROPOLIS 

and drink might agree with them, in order to be able to sleep 
well and digest easily. 

The tables, at which they had all eaten, were laid, as 
before-hand, with untouched dishes. Wine, golden and 
purple, embedded in ice or warmth, was there, proffering 
itself, like the loving little women. Now the music was 
playing again. It had been silenced when the girlish voice 
spoke the five soft words: 

“Look, these are your brothers!” 

And once more, with her eyes resting on Freder: 

“Look, these are your brothers!” 

As one suffocating, Freder sprang up. The masked women 
stared at him. He dashed to the door. He ran along passages 
and down steps. He came to the entrance. 

“Who was that girl?” 

Perplexed shrugs. Apologies. The occurrence was inex- 
cusable, the servants knew it. Dismissals, in plenty, would be 
distributed. 

The Major Domo was pale with anger. 

“I do not wish,” said Freder, gazing into space, “that any- 
one should suffer for what has happened. Nobody is to be 
dismissed .... I do not wish it . . . .” 

The Major Domo bowed in silence. He was accustomed to 
whims in the “Club of the Sons.” 

“Who is the girl. . . . can nobody tell me?” 

No. Nobody. But if an inquiry is to be made . . . . ? 

Freder remained silent. He thought of Slim. He shook 
his head. First slowly, then violently. “No- 

One does not set a bloodhound on the hack of a sacred, 
white hind. 

“Nobody is to inquire about her,” he said, tonelessly. 
He felt the soulless glance of the strange, hired person 
upon his face. He felt himself poor and besmirched. In an 
ill-temper which rendered him as wretched as though he 
had poison in his veins, he left the club. He walked home as 
though going into exile. He shut himself up in his work- 
room and worked. At nights he clung to his instrument and 
forced the monstrous solitude of Jupiter and Saturn down to 
him. 


15 


METROPOLIS 

Nothing could help him— nothing! In an agonising blissful 
omnipresence stood, before his vision the one, one counten- 
ance; the austere countenance of the virgin, the sweet 
countenance of the mother. 

A voice spoke: 

“Look, these are your brothers.” 

And the glory of the heavens was nothing, and the 
intoxication of work was nothing. And the conflagration 
which wiped out the sea could not wipe out the soft voice 
of the girl: 

“Look, these are your brothers!” 

My God, my God— 


With a painful, violent jerk, Freder turned around and 
walked up to his machine. Something like deliverance passed 
across his face as he considered this shining creation, waiting 
only for him, of which there was not a steel link, not a rivet, 
not a spring which he had not calculated and created. 

The creature was not large, appearing still more fragile 
by reason of the huge room and flood of sunlight in which 
it stood. But the soft lustre of its metal and the proud swing 
with which the foremost body seemed to raise itself to leap, 
even when not in motion, gave it something of the fair god- 
liness of a faultlessly beautiful anifnal, which is quite fearless, 
because it knows itself to be invincible. 

Freder caressed his creation. He pressed his head gently 
against the machine. With ineffable affection he felt its cool, 
flexible members. 

“To-night,” he said, “I shall be with you. I shall be entirely 
enwrapped by you s I shall pour out my life into you and shall 
fathom whether or not I can bring you to life. I shall, 
perhaps, feel your throb and the commencement of move- 
ment in your controlled body. I shall, perhaps, feel the 
giddiness with which you throw yourself out into your bound- 
less element, carrying me— me, the man who made-through 
the huge sea of midnight. The seven stars will be above us 
and the sad beauty of the moon. Mount Everest will remain, 

16 


METROPOLIS 

a hill, below us. You shall carry me and I shall know: 
You carry me as high as I wish. . . .” 

He stopped, closing his eyes. The shudder which ran 
through him was imparted, a thrill, to the silent machine. 

“But perhaps,” he continued, without raising his voice, 
“perhaps you notice, you, my beloved creation, that you are 
no longer my only love. Nothing on earth is more vengeful 
than the jealousy of a machine which believes itself to be 
neglected. Yes, I know that. . . . You are imperious mis- 
tresses. . . . ‘Thou shalt have none other Gods but me.” . . . 
Am I right? A thought apart from you— you feel it at once 
and become perverse. How could I keep it hidden from you 
that all my thoughts are not with you. I can’t help it, my 
creation. I was bewitched, machine. I press my forehead 
upon you and my forehead longs for the knees of the girl of 
whom I do not even know the name. . . .” 

He ceased and held his breath. He raised his head and 
listened. 

Hundreds and thousands of times had he heard that same 
sound in the city. But hundreds and thousands of time, it 
seemed to him, he had not comprehended it. 

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. 

Freder pushed open the glass doors. He felt- them tremble 
like strings under strokes of the bow. He stepped out on to 
the narrow gallery which ran around this, almost the highest 
house of Metropoh's. The roaring sound received him, en- 
veloped him, never coming to an end. 

17 


METROPOLIS 

Great as Metropolis was: at all four corners of the city, 
this roared command was equally perceptible. 

Freder looked across the city at the building known to the 
world as the “New Tower of Babel.” 

In the brain-pan of this New Tower of Babel lived the 
man who was himself the Brain of Metropolis. 

As long as the man over there, who was nothing but work, 
despising sleep, eating and drinking mechanically, pressed 
his fingers on the blue metal plate, which apart from himself, 
no man had ever touched, so long would the voice of the 
machine-city of Metropolis roar for food, for food, for 
food. . . . 

She wanted living men for food. 

Then the living food came pushing along in masses. Along 
the street it came, along its own street which never crossed 
with other people’s streets. It rolled on, a broad, an endless 
stream. The stream was twelve files deep. They walked in 
even step. Men, men, men— all in the same uniform, from 
throat to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same hard 
shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the same black caps. 

And they all had the same faces. And they all appeared to 
be of the same age. They held themselves straightened up, 
but not straight. They did not raise their heads, they pushed 
them 'forward. They planted their feet forward, but they did 
not walk. The open gates of the New Tower of Babel, the 
machine center of Metropolis, gulped the masses down. 

Towards them, but past them, another procession dragged 
itself along, the shift just used. It rolled on, a broad, an 
endless stream. The stream was twelve files deep. They 
walked in even step. Men, men, men— all in the same uniform, 
from throat to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same 
hard shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the same black caps. 

And they all had the same faces. And they all seemed 
one thousand years old. They walked with hanging fists, they 
walked with hanging heads. No, they planted their feet for- 
ward but they did not walk. The open gates of the New 
Tower of Babel, the machine centre of Metropolis, threw the 
masses up as it gulped them down. 

When the fresh living food had disappeared through the 

18 


METROPOLIS 


gates the roaring voice was silent at last. And the never 
ceasing, throbbing hum of the great Metropolis became per- 
ceptible again, producing the effect of silence, a deep relief. 
The man who was the great brain in the brain-pan of Me- 
tropolis had ceased to press his fingers on the blue metal plate. 

In ten hours he would let the machine brute roar anew. 
And in another ten hours, again. And always the same, and 
always the same, without ever loosening the ten-hour clamp. 

Metropolis did not know what Sunday was. Metropolis 
knew neither high days nor holidays. Metropolis had the 
most saintly cathedral in the world, richly adorned with 
Gothic decoration. In times of which only the chronicles 
could tell, the star-crowned Virgin on its tower used to smile, 
as a mother, from out her golden mantle, deep, deep down 
upon the pious red rooves and the only companions of her 
graciousness were the doves which used to nest in the gar- 
goyles of the water-spouts and the bells which were called 
after the four archangels and of which Saint Michael was 
the most magnificent. 

It was said that the Master who cast it turned villain for 
its sake, for he stole consecrated and unconsecrated silver, 
like a raven, casting it into the metal body of the bell. As a 
reward for his deed he suffered, on the place of execution, 
the dreadful death on the wheel. But, it was said, he died 
exceedingly happy, for the Archangel Michael rang him on 
his way to death so wonderfully, touchingly, that all agreed 
the saints must have forgiven the sinner already, to ring the 
heavenly bells, thus, to receive him. 

The bells still rang with their old, ore voices but when 
Metropolis roared, then Saint Michael itself was hoarse. The 
New Tower of Babel and its fellow houses stretched their 
sombre heights high above the cathedral spire, that the 
young girls in the work-rooms and wireless stations gazed 
down just as deep from the thirtieth story windows on the 
star-crowned virgin as she, in earlier days, had looked down 
on the pious red rooves. In place of doves, flying machines 
swarmed over the cathedral roof and over the city, resting 
on the rooves, from which, at night glaring pillars and circles 
indicated the course of flight and landing points. 

19 


METROPOLIS 


The Master of Metropolis had already considered, more 
than once, having the cathedral pulled down, as being point- 
less and an obstruction to the traffic in the town of fifty 
million inhabitants. 

But the small, eager sect of Gothics, whose leader was 
Desertus, half monk, half one enraptured, had sworn the 
solemn oath: If one hand from the wicked city of Metropolis 
were to dare to touch just one stone -of the cathedral, then 
they would neither repose nor rest until the wicked city of 
Metropolis should lie, a heap of ruins, at the foot of her 
cathedral. 

The Master of Metropolis used to avenge the threats which 
constituted one sixth of his daily mail. But he did not care 
to fight with opponents to whom he rendered a service by 
destroying them for their belief. The great brain of Me- 
tropolis, a stranger to the sacrifice of a desire, estimated the 
incalculable power which the sacrificed ones and martyrs 
showered upon their followers too high rather than too low. 
Too, the demolition of the cathedral was not yet so burning 
a question as to have been the object of an estimate of 
expenses. But when the moment should come, the cost of its 
pulling down would exceed that of the construction of Me- 
tropolis. The Gothics were ascetics; the Master of Metropolis 
knew by experience that a multi-milliardaire was more 
cheaply bought over than an ascetic. 

Freder wondered, not without a foreign feeling of bitter- 
ness, how many more times the great Master of Metropolis 
would permit him to look on at the scene which the cathedral 
would present to him on every rainless day: When the sun 
sank at the back of Metropolis, the houses turning to moun- 
tains and the streets to valleys; when the stream of light, 
which seemed to crackle with coldness, broke forth from all 
windows, from the walls of the houses, from the rooves 
and from the heart of the town; when the silent quiver of 
electric advertisments began; when the searchlights, in all 
colours of the rainbow, began to play around the New Tower 
of Babel; when the omnibuses turned to chains of light- 
spitting monsters, the little motor cars to scurrying, luminous 
fishes in a waterless deep-sea, while from tire invisible 
. 20 


METROPOLIS 

harbour of the underground railway, an ever equal, magical 
shimmer pressed on to be swallowed by the hurrying shad- 
ows— then the cathedral would stand there, in this boundless 
ocean of light, which dissolved all forms by. outshining them, 
the only dark object, black and persistant, seeming, in its 
lightlessness, to free itself from the earth, to rise higher and 
ever higher, and appearing in this maelstrom of tumultous 
light, the only reposeful and masterful object. 

But the Virgin on the top of the tower seemed to have her 
own gentle starlight, and hovered, set free from the blackness 
of the stone, on the sickle of the silver moon, above the 
cathedral. 

Freder had never seen the countenance of the Virgin and 
yet he knew it so well he could have drawn it: the austere 
countenance of the Virgin, the sweet countenance of the 
mother. 

He stooped, clasping the burning palms of his hands 
around the iron railing. 

“Look at me, Virgin,” he begged, “Mother, look at me!” 

The spear of a searchlight flew into his eyes causing him 
to close them angrily. A whistling rocket hissed through 
the air, dropping down into the pale twilight of the afternoon, 
the word : Yoshiwara. . . . 

Remarkably white, and with penetrating beams, there 
hovered, towering up, over a house which was not to be 
seen, the word: Cinema. 

All the seven colours of the rainbow flared, cold and ghost- 
like in silently swinging circles. The enormous face of the 
clock on the New Tower of Babel was bathed in the glaring 
cross-fire of the searchlights. And over and over again from 
the pale, unreal-looking sky, dripped the word: Yoshiwara. 

Freder’s eyes hung on the clock of the New Tower of 
Babel, where the seconds flashed off as sparks of breathing 
lightning, continuous in their coming as in their going. 
He calculated the time which had passed since the voice of 
Metropolis had roared for food, for food, for food. He 
knew that behind the throbbing second flashes on the New 
Tower of Babel there was a wide, bare room with narrow 
windows, the height of the walls, switch-boards bn all sides, 

21 


METROPOLIS 


right in the centre, the table, the most ingenious instrument 
which the Master of Metropolis had created, on which to 
play, alone, as solitary master. 

On the plain chair before it, the embodiment of the great 
brain: the Master of Metropolis. Near his right hand the 
sensitive blue metal plate, to which he would stretch out his 
right hand, with the infallible certainty of a healthy machine, 
when seconds enough had flicked off into eternity, to let 
Metropolis roar once more— for food, for food, for food—” 

In this moment Freder was seized with the persistent 
idea that he would lose his reason if he had, once more, 
to hear the voice of Metropolis thus roaring to be fed.' And, 
already convinced of the pointlessness of his quest, he 
turned from the spectacle of the light crazy city and went 
to seek the Master of Metropolis, whose name was Joh 
Fredersen and who was his father. 


CHAPTER II 


The brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel was peopled 
with numbers. 

From an invisible source the numbers dropped rhythmi- 
cally down through the cooled air of the room, being col- 
lected, as in a water-basin, at the table at which the great 
brain of Metropolis worked, becoming objective under the 
pencils of his secretaries. These eight young men resembled 
each other as brothers, which they were not. Although 
sitting as immovable as statues, of which only the writing 
fingers of the right hand stirred, yet each single one, with 
sweat-bedewed brow and parted lips, seemed the personifi- 
cation of Breathlessness. 

No head was raised on Freder’s entering, Not even his 
father’s. 

The lamp under the third loud-speaker glowed white-red 

New York spoke. 


22 


METROPOLIS 

Joh Fredersen was comparing the figures of the evening 
exchange report with the lists which lay before him. Once 
his voice sounded, vibrationless: 

“Mistake. Further inquiry.” 

The first secretary quivered, stooped lower, rose and re- 
tired on soundless soles. Joh Fredersen’s left eyebrow rose a 
trifle as he watched the retreating figure— only as long as 
was possible without turning his head. 

A thin, concise penal-line crossed out a name. 

The white-red light glowed. The voice spoke. The num- 
bers dropped down through the great room. In the brain-pan 
of Metropolis. 

Freder remained standing, motionless, by the door. He 
was not sure as to whether or not his father had noticed 
him. Whenever he entered this room he was once more a 
boy of ten years old, his chief characteristic uncertainty, 
before the great concentrated, almighty certainty, which was 
called Joh Fredersen, and was his father. 

The first secretary walked past him, greeting him silently, 
respectfully. lie resembled a competitor leaving the course, 
beaten. The chalky face of the young man hovered for one 
moment before Freder ’s eyes like a big, white, lacquer mask. 
Then it was blotted out. 

Numbers dropped down through the room. 

One chair was empty. On seven others sat seven men, 
pursuing the numbers which sprang unceasingly from the 
invisible. 

A lamp glowed white-red. 

New York spoke. 

A lamp sparkled up: white-green. 

London began to speak. 

Freder looked up at the clock opposite the door, com- 
manding the whole wall like a gigantic wheel. It was the 
same clock, which, from the heights of the New Tower of 
Babel, flooded by searchlights, flicked off its second-sparks 
over the great Metropolis. 

Joh Fredersen’s head stood out against it. It was a crushing 
yet accepted halo above the brain of Metropolis. 

The searchlights raved in a delirium of colour upon the 

23 


METROPOLIS 


narrow windows which ran from floor to ceiling. Cascades of 
light frothed against the panes. Outside, deep down, at the 
foot of the New Tower of Babel boiled the Metropolis. But 
in this room not a sound was to be heard but the incessantly 
dripping numbers. 

The Rotwang-process had rendered the walls and windows 
sound-proof. 

In this room, which was at the same time crowned and 
subjugated by the mighty time-piece, the clock, indicating 
numbers, nothing had any significance but numbers. The son 
of the great Master of Metropolis realised that, as long as 
numbers came dripping out of the invisible no word, which 
was not a number, and coming from a visible mouth, could 
lay claim to the least attention. 

Therefore he stood, gazing unceasingly at his father’s head, 
watching the monstrous hand of the clock sweep onward, 
inevitably, like a sickle, a reaping scythe, pass through the 
skull of his father, without harming him, climb upwards, 
up the number-beset ring, creep around the heights and 
sink again, to repeat the vain blow of the scythe. 

At last the white-red light went out. A voice ceased. 

Then the white-green fight went out, too. 

Silence. 

The hands of those writing stopped and, for the space of 
a moment, they sat as though paralysed, relaxed, exhausted. 
Then Joh Fredersen’s voice said with a dry gentleness: 

“Thank you, to-morrow.” 

And without looking round: 

“What do you want, my boy?” 

The seven strangers quitted the now silent room. Freder 
crossed to his father, whose glance was sweeping the fists 
of captured number-drops. Freder’s eyes clung to the blue 
metal plate near his father’s right hand. 

“How did you know it was I?” he asked, softly. 

Joh Fredersen did not look up at him. Although his face 
had gained an expression of patience and pride at the first 
question which his son put to him he had lost none of his 
alertness. He glanced at the clock. His fingers glided over 
24 


METROPOLIS 


the flexible keyboard. Soundlessly were orders flashed out to 
waiting men. 

“The door opened. Nobody was announced. Nobody comes 
to me unannounced. Only my son.” 

A light below glass— a question. Joh Fredersen extin- 
guished the light. The first secretary entered and crossed 
over to the great Master of Metropolis. 

“You were right. It was a mistake. It has been rectified,” 
he reported, expressionlessly. 

"Thank you.” Not a look. Not a gesture. “The G— bank 
has been notified to pay you your salary. Good evening.” 

The young man stood motionless. Three, four, five, six 
seconds flicked off the gigantic time-piece. Two empty eyes 
burnt in the chalky face of the young man, impressing their 
brand of fear upon Freder’s vision. 

One of Joh Fredersen’s shoulders made a leisurely move- 
ment. 

“Good evening,” said the young man, in a strangled tone. 

He went. 

“Why did you dismiss him, father?” the son asked. 

“I have no use for him,” said Joh Fredersen, still not 
having looked at his son. 

“Why not, father?” 

“I have no use for people who start when one speaks to 
them,” said the Master over Metropolis. 

“Perhaps he felt ill . . . perhaps he is worrying about 
somebody who is dear to him.” 

“Possibly. Perhaps too, he was still under .the effects of the 
too long night in Yoshiwara. Freder, avoid assuming people 
to be good, innocent and victimized just because they 
suffer. He who suffers has sinned, against himself and against 
others.” 

“You do not suffer, father?” 

“No.” 

“You are quite free from sin?” 

“The time of sin and suffering lies behind me, Freder.” 

“And if this man, now ... I have never seen such a 
thing . . . but I believe that men resolved to end their lives 
go out of a room as he did . . .” 

. 25 


METROPOLIS 


“Perhaps.” 

“And suppose you were to hear, to-morrow, that he were 
dead . . . that would leave you untouched . . . ?” 

“Yes.” 

Freder was silent. 

His father’s hand slipped over a lever, and pressed it 
down. The white lamps in all the rooms surrounding the 
brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel went out. The Master 
over Metropolis had informed the circular world around 
him that he did not wish to be disturbed without urgent 
cause. 

“I cannot tolerate it,” he continued, “when a man, work- 
ing upon Metropolis, at my right hand, in common with me, 
denies the only great advantage he possesses above the 
machine.” 

41 And what is that, father?" 

“To take delight in work,” said the Master over Metropolis. 

Freder 's hand glided over his hair, then rested on its 
glorious fairness. He opened his lips, as though he wanted to 
say something; but he remained silent. 

“Do you suppose,” Joh Fredersen went on, “that I need 
my secretaries’ pencils to check American stock-exchange 
reports? The index tables of Rotwang’s trans-ocean trumpets 
are a hundred times more reliable and swift than clerk’s 
brains and hands. But, by the accuracy of the machine I 
can measure the accuracy of the men, by the breath of the 
machine, the lungs of the men who compete with her.” 

“And the man you just dismissed, and who is doomed 
(for to be dismissed by you, father, means going downl . . . 
Down! . . . Downl . . .) he lost his breath, didn’t he?” 

“Yes.” 

“Because he was a man and not a machine. . . .” 

“Because he denied his humanity before the machine.” 

Freder raised his head and his deeply troubled eyes. 

“I cannot follow yop now, father,” he said, as if in pain. 

The expression of patience on Joh Fredersen ’s face deep- 
ened. 

“The man,” he said quietly, “was my first secretary! The 
salary he drew was eight times as large as that of the last. 

26 


METROPOLIS 

That was synonymous with the obligation to perform eight 
times as much. To me. Not to himself. To-morrow the fifth 
secretary will be in his place. In a week he will have rendered 
four of the others superfluous. I have use for that man.” 

“Because he saves four others.” 

“No, Freder. Because he takes delight in the work of four 
others. Because he throws himself entirely into his work- 
throws himself as desiringly as if it were a woman.” 

Freder was silent. Joh Fredersen looked at his son. He 
looked at him carefully. 

“You have had some experience?” he asked. 

The eyes of the boy, beautiful and sad, slipped past him, 
out into space. Wild, white light frothed against the windows, 
and, in going out, left the sky behind, as a black velvet cloth 
over Metropolis. 

“I have had no experience,” said Freder, tentatively, “ex- 
cept that I believe for the first time in my life to have com- 
prehended the being of a machine 

“That should mean a great deal,” replied the Master over 
Metropolis. “But you are probably wrong, Freder. If you 
had really comprehended the being of a machine you would 
not be so perturbed.” 

Slowly the son tinned his eyes and the helplessness of his 
incomprehension to his father. 

“How can one but be perturbed,” he said, “if one comes 
to you, as I did, through the machine-rooms. Through the 
glorious rooms of your glorious machines . . . and sees the 
creatures who are fettered to them by laws of eternal 
watchfulness . . . lidless eyes . . .” 

He paused. His lips were dry as dust. 

Joh Fredersen leant back. He had not taken his gaze from 
his son, and still held it fast. 

“Why did you come to me through the machine-rooms,” 
he asked quietly. “It is neither the best, nor the most con- 
venient way.” 

“I wished,” said the son, picking his words carefully, “Just 
once to look the men in the face— whose little children are 
my brothers— my sisters ...” 

“H’m,” said the other with very tight lips. The pencil which 

27 


METROPOLIS 


he held between his fingers tapped gently, dryly, once, 
twice, upon the table’s edge. Joh Fredersen’s eyes wandered 
from his son to the twitching flash of the seconds on the 
clock, then sinking back again to him. 

“And what did you find?” he asked. 

Seconds, seconds, seconds of silence. Then it was as though 
the son, up-rooting and tearing loose his whole ego, threw 
himself, with a gesture of utter self-exposure, upon his father, 
yet he stood still, head a little bent, speaking softly, as 
though every word were smothering between his lips. 

“Father! Help the men who live at your machines!” 

“I cannot help them,” said the brain of Metropolis. “No- 
body can help them. They are \vhere they must be. They are 
what they must be. They are not fitted for anything more or 
anything different.” 

“I do not know for what they are fitted,” said Freder, 
expressionlessly: his head fell upon his breast as though 
almost severed from his neck. “I only know what I saw— and 
that it was dreadful to look upon ... I went through the 
machine-rooms— they were like temples. All the great gods 
were living in white temples. I saw Baal and Moloch, Huitzi- 
lopochtli and Durgha; some frightfully companionable, some 
terribly solitary. I saw Juggernaut’s divine car and the Towers 
of Silence, Mahomet’s curved sword, and the crosses of 
Golgotha. And all machines, machines, machines, which, con- 
fined to their pedestals, like deities to their temple thrones, 
from the resting places which bore them, lived their god-like 
lives: Eyeless but seeing all, earless but hearing all, without 
speech, yet, in themselves, a proclaiming mouth— not man, 
not woman, and yet engendering, receptive, and productive- 
lifeless, yet shaking the air of their temples with the never- 
expiring breath of their vitality. And, near the god-machines, 
the slaves of the god-machines: the men who were as 
though crushed between machine companionability and ma- 
chine solitude. They have no loads to carry: the machine 
carries the loads. They have not to lift and push: the machine 
lifts and pushes. They have nothing else to do but eternally 
one and the same thing, each in this place, each at his 
machine. Divided into periods of brief seconds, always the 

28 


METROPOLIS 


same clutch at the same second, at the same second. They 
have eyes, but they are blind but for one thing, the scale of 
the manometer. They have ears, but they are deaf but for 
one thing, the hiss of their machine. They watch and watch, 
having no thought but for one thing: should their watchful- 
ness waver, then the machine awakens from its feigned sleep 
and begins to race, racing itself to pieces. And the machine, 
having neither head nor brain, with the tension of its watch- 
fulness, sucks and sucks out the brain from the paralysed skull 
of its watchman, and does not stay, and sucks, and does not 
stay until a being is hanging to the sucked-out skull, no 
longer a man and not yet a machine, pumped dry, hollowed 
out, used up. And the machine which has sucked out and 
gulped down the spinal marrow and brain of the man 
and has wiped out the hollows in his skull with the soft, long 
tongue of its soft, long hissing, the maching gleams in its 
silver-velvet radiance, anointed with oil, beautiful, infallible— 
Baal and Moloch, Huitzilopochtli and Durgha. And you, 
father, you press your fingers upon the little blue metal plate 
near your right hand, and your great glorious, dreadful city 
of Metropolis roars out, proclaiming that she is hungry for 
fresh human marrow and human brain and then the living 
food rolls on, like a stream, into the machine-rooms, which are 
like temples, and that, just used, is thrown up. . . .” 

His voice failed him. He struck his fists violently together, 
and looked at his father. 

“. . . and they are all human beings!” 

“Unfortunately. Yes.” 

The father’s voice sounded. to the son’s ear as though he 
were speaking from behind seven closed doors. 

“That men are used up so rapidly at the machines, Freder, 
is no proof of the greed of the machine, but of the deficiency 
of the human material. Man is the product of change, Freder. 
A once-and-for-all being. If he is miscast he cannot be sent 
back to the melting-furnace. One is obliged to use him as he 
is. Whereby it has been statistically proved that the powers 
of performance of the non-intellectual worker lessen from 
month to month.” 

Freder laughed. The laugh came so dry, so parched, 
‘ 29 


METROPOLIS 


from his lips that Joh Fredersen jerked up his head, looking 
at his son from out narrowed eyelids. Slowly his eyebrows 
rose. 

“Are you not afraid, father (supposing that the statistic 
are correct and the consumption of man is progressing in- 
creasingly, rapidly) that one fine day there will be no more 
food there for the man-eating god-machines, and that the 
Moloch of glass, rubber and steel, the Durgha of aluminium 
with platinum veins, will have to starve miserably?” 

“The case is conceivable,” said the brain of Metropolis. 

“And then?” 

“Then,” said the brain of Metropolis, “by then a substitute 
for man will have to have been found.” 

“The improved man, you mean—? The machine-man—?” 

“Perhaps,” said the brain of Metropolis. 

Freder brushed the damp hah from his brow. He bent 
forward, his breath touching his father. 

“Then just listen to one thing, father,” he breathed, the 
veins on his temples standing out, blue, “see to it that the 
machine-man has no head, or, at any rate, no face, or give 
him a face which always smiles. Or a Harlequin’s face, or a 
closed visor. That it does not horrify one to look at him! For, 
as I walked through the machine-rooms to-day, I saw the 
men who watch your machines. And they know me, and I 
greeted them, one after the other. But not one returned my 
greeting. The machines were all too eagerly tautening their 
nerve-strings. And when I looked at them, father, quite 
closely, as closely as I am now looking at you— I was looking 
myself in the face. . . . Every single man, father, who slaves 
at your machines, has my face— has the face of your son. . . .” 

“Then mine too, Freder, for we are very like each other,” 
said the Master over the great Metropolis. He looked at the 
clock and stretched out his hand. In all the rooms surround- 
ing the brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel the white 
lamps flared up. 

“And doesn’t it fill you with horror,” asked the son, “to 
know so many shadows, so many phantoms, .to be working 
at your work?” 

“The time of horror lies behind me, Freder.” 

30 


METROPOLIS 


Then Freder turned and went, like a blind man— first 
missing the door with groping hand, then finding it. It opened 
before him. It closed behind him, and he stood still, in a room 
that seemed to him to be strange and icy. 

Forms rose up from the chairs upon which they had 
sat, waiting, bowing low to the son of Joh Fredersen, the 
Master of Metropolis. 

Freder only recognized one; that was Slim. 

He thanked those who greeted him, still standing near the 
door, seeming not to know his way. Behind him slipped Slim, 
going to Joh Fredersen, who had sent for him. 

The master of Metropolis was standing by the window, his 
back to the door. 

“Wait!” said the dark square back. 

Slim did not stir. He breathed inaudibly. His eye-lids 
lowered, he seemed to sleep while standing. But his mouth, 
with the remarkable tension of its muscles, made him the 
personification of concentration. 

Joh Fredersen’s eyes wandered over Metropolis, a restless 
roaring sea with a surf of light. In the flashes and waves, 
the Niagara falls of light, in the colour-play of revolving 
towers of light and brilliance. Metropolis seemed to have 
become transparent. The houses, dissected into cones and 
cubes by the moving scythes of the search-lights gleamed, 
towering up, hoveringly, light flowing down their flanks like 
rain. The streets licked up the shining radiance, themselves 
shining, and the things gliding upon them, an incessant 
stream, threw cones of light before them. Only the cathedral, 
with the star-crowned Virgin on the top of its tower, lay 
stretched out, massively, down in the city, like a black giant 
lying in an enchanted sleep. 

Joh Fredersen turned around slowly. He saw Slim standing 
by the door. Slim greeted him. Joh Fredersen came towards 
him. He crossed the whole width of the room in silence; he 
walked slowly on until he came up to the man. Standing 
there before him, he looked at him, as though peeling every- 
thing corporal from him, even to his innermost self. 

Slim held his ground during this peeling scrutiny. 

Joh Fredersen said, speaking rather softly: 

31 


METROPOLIS 


“From now on I wish to be informed of my son’s every 
action.” 

Slim bowed, waited, saluted and went. 

But he did not find the son of his great master again where 
he had left him. Nor was he destined to find him. 


CHAPTER III 


The man who had been Joh Fredersen’s first secretary stood 
in a cell of the Pater-noster, the never-stop passenger lift 
which, like a series of never ceasing well-buckets, trans-sected 
the New Tower of Babel.— With his back against the 
wooden wall, he was making the journey through the white, 
humming house, from, the heights of the roof, to the depths 
of the cellars and up again to the heights of the roof, for the 
thirtieth time, never moving from the one spot. 

Persons, greedy to gain a few seconds, stumbled in with 
him, and stories higher, or lower, out again. Nobody paid 
the least attention to him. One or two certainly recognised 
him. But, as yet, nobody interpreted the drops on his temples 
as being anything but a similar greed for the gain of a few 
seconds. All right— he would wait until they knew better, 
until they took him and threw him out of the cell: What are 
you taking up space for, you fool, if you’ve got so much 
time? Crawl down the stairs, or the first escape. . . . 

With gasping mouth he leant there and waited. . . . 

Now emerging from the depths again, he looked with 
stupified eyes towards the room which guarded Joh Freder- 
sen’s door, and saw Joh Fredersen’s son standing before that 
door. For the fraction of a second they stared into each 
other’s over-shadowed faces, and the glances of both broke 
out as signals of distress, of very different but of equally deep 
distress. Then the totally indifferent pumpworks carried the 
man in the cell upwards into the darkness of the roof of the 
tower, and, when he dipped down again, becoming visible 

C 32 


METROPOLIS 


once more on his way downwards, the son of Joh Fredersen 
was standing before the opening of the cell and was, in a 
step, standing beside the man whose back seemed to be nailed 
to the wooden wall. 

“What is your name?” he asked gently. 

A hesitation in drawing breath, then the answer, which 
sounded as though he were listening for something: “Josa- 
phat. . . 

“What will you do now, JosaphatP” 

They sank. They sank. As they passed through the great 
hall the enormous windows of which overlooked the street of 
bridges, broadly and ostentatiously, Freder saw, on turning 
his head, outlined against the blackness of the sky, already 
half extinguished, the dripping word: “Yoshiwara. . . . 

He spoke as if stretching out both hands, as just if closing 
his eyes in speaking: 

“Will you come to me, JosaphatP” 

A hand fluttered up like a scared bird. 

“I—?” gasped the stranger. 

“Yes, Josaphat.” 

The young voice so full of kindness. . . . 

They sank. They sank. Light— darkness— light— darkness 
again. 

“Will you come to me, Josaphat?” 

“YesI” said the strange man with incomparable fervour. 
“Yes!” 

They dropped into light. Freder seized him by the arm 
and dragged him out with him, out of the great pump-works 
of the New Tower of Babel, holding him fast as he reeled. 

“Where do you live, Josaphat?” 

“Ninetieth Block. House seven. Seventh floor.” 

“Then go home> Josaphat. Perhaps I shall come to you 
myself; perhaps I shall send a messenger who will bring you 
to me. I do not know what the next few hours will bring 
forth. . . . But I do not want any man I know, if I can prevent 
it, to lie a whole night long, staring up at the ceiling until 
it seems to come crashing down on him. . . .” 

“What can I do for you?” asked the man. 

Freder felt the vice-like pressure of his hand. He smiled. 

33 


METROPOLIS 


He shook his head. “Nothing. Go home. Wait. Be calm. To- 
morrow will bring another day and I hope a fair one. . . .” 

The man loosened the grip of his hand and went. Freder 
watched him go. The man stopped and looked back at 
Freder, and dropped his head with an expression which was 
so earnest, so unconditional, that the smile died on Freder’s 
lips. 

*Yes, man, he said. “I take you at your word!” 

The Pater -noster hummed at Freder’s back. The cells, like 
scoop-buckets, gathered men up and poured them out again. 
But the son of Joh Fredersen did not see them. Among all 
those tearing along to gain a few seconds, he alone stood still 
listening how the New Tower of Babel roared in its revolu- 
tions. The roaring seemed to him like the ringing of one of the 
cathedral bells— like the ore voice of the archangel Michael. 
But a song hovered above it, high and sweet. His whole 
young heart exulted in this song. 

“Have I done your will for the first time, you great media- 
tress of pity?” he asked in the roar of the bell’s voice. 

But no answer came. 

Then he went the way he wanted to go, to find the answer. 

As Slim entered Freder’s home to question the servants 
concerning their master, Joh Fredersen’s son was walking 
down the steps which led to the lower structure of the New 
Tower of Babel. As the servants shook their heads at Slim 
saying that their master had not come home, Joh Fredersen’s 
son was walking towards the luminous pillars which indi- 
cated his way. As Slim, with a glance at his watch, decided 
to wait, to wait, at any rate for a while— already alarmed, 
already conjecturing possibilities and how to meet them— 
Joh Fredersen’s sop was entering the room from which the 
New Tower of Babel drew the energies for its own require- 
ments. 

He had hesitated a long time before opening the door. 
For a weird existence went on behind that door. There 
was howling. There was panting. There was whistling. The 
whole building groaned. An incessant trembling ran through 
the walls and the floor. And amidst it all there was not one 
human sound. Only the things and the empty air roared. Men 

34 


METROPOLIS 


in the room on the other side of this door had powerless 
sealed lips. But for these men’s sakes Freder had come. 

He pushed the door open and then fell back, suffocated. 
Boiling air smote him, groping' at his eyes that he saw 
nothing. Gradually he regained his sight. 

The room was dimly lighted and the ceiling, which looked 
as though it could carry the weight of the entire earth, 
seemed perpetually to be falling down. 

A faint howling made breathing almost unbearable. It 
was as though the breath drank in the howling too. 

Air, rammed down to the depths, coming already used 
from the lungs of the great Metropolis, gushed out of the 
mouths of pipes. Hurled across the room, it was greedily 
sucked back by the mouths of pipes on the other side. 
And its howling light spread a coldness about it which fell 
into fierce conflict with the sweat-heat of the room. 

In the middle of the room crouched the Pater-noster ma- 
chine. It was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant’s head. 
It- shone with oil. It had gleaming limbs. Under the crouch- 
ing body and the head which was sunken on the chest, 
crooked legs rested, gnome-like, upon the platform. The 
trunk and legs were motionless. But the short arms pushed 
and pushed alternately forwards, backwards, forwards. A 
little pointed light sparkled upon the play of the delicate 
joints. The floor, which was stone, and seamless, trembled 
under the pushing of the little machine, which was smaller 
than a five-year-old child. 

Heat spat from the walls in which the furnaces were 
roaring. The odour of oil, which whistled with heat, hung 
in thick layers in the room. Even the wild chase of the 
wandering masses of air did not tear out the suffocating 
fumes of oil. Even the water which was sprayed through 
the room fought a hopeless battle against the fury of the 
heat-spitting walls, evaporating, already saturated with oil- 
fumes, before it could protect the skins of the men in this 
hell from being roasted. 

Men glided by like swimming shadows. Their movements, 
the soundlessness of their inaudible slipping past, had some- 
35 


METROPOLIS 


thing of the black ghostliness of deep-sea divers. Their eyes 
stood open as though they never closed them. 

Near the little machine in the centre of the room stood a 
man, wearing the uniform of all the workmen of Metrop- 
olis: from throat to ankle, the dark blue linen, bare feet in 
the hard shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the black cap. 
The hunted stream of wandering air washed around his form, 
making the folds of the canvas flutter. The man held his 
hand on the lever and his gaze was fixed on the clock, the 
hands of which vibrated like magnetic needles. 

Freder groped his way across to the man. He stared at 
him. He could not see his face. How old was the man? A 
thousand years? Or not yet twenty? He was talking to him- 
self with babbling lips. What was the man muttering about? 
And had this man, too, the face of Joh Fredersen’s son?' 

“Look at me!” said Freder bending forward. 

But the man’s gaze did not leave the clock. His hand, 
also, was unceasingly, feverishly, clutching the lever. His 
lips babbled and babbled, excitedly. 

Freder listened. He caught the words. Shreds of words, 
tattered by the current of air. 

“Pater-noster. . . . that means, Our Father! . . . Our Father, 
which are in heaven! We are in hell. Our Father! . . . What is 
,thy name? Art thou called Pater-noster, Our Father? Or 
Joh Freder sen? Or machine? ... Be hallowed by us, machine. 
-Pater-noster! . . . Thy kingdom come. . . . Thy kingdom 
come, machine. . . . Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
-heaven. . . . What is thy will of us, machine, Pater-noster? 
Art thou the same in heaven as thou art on earth? . . . Our 
Father, which art in heaven, when thou callest us into 
heaven, shall we keep the machines in thy world— the great 
wheels which break the limbs of thy creatures— the great 
merry-go-round called the earth? . . . Thy will be done, 
Pater-noster! . . . Give us this day our daily bread. . . . 
Grind, machine, grind flour for our bread. The bread is 
baked from the flour of our bones . . . And forgive us our 
trespasses. . . . what trespasses, Pater-noster? The trespass 
of having a brain and a heart, that thou hast not, machine?. 
And lead us not into temptation. . . . Lead us not into 

36 


METROPOLIS 


temptation to rise against thee, machine, for thou art 
stronger than we, thou art a thousand times stronger than we, 
and thou art always in the right and we are always in the 
wrong, because we are weaker than thou , art, machine. . . . 
But deliver us from evil, machine. . . . Deliver us from thee, 
machine. . . . For thine is the kingdom, the power and the 
glory, for ever and ever, Amen. . . . Pater-noster, that means: 
“Our Father. . . . Our Father, which are in heaven. . . .” 

Freder touched the man’s arm. The man started, struck 
dumb. 

His hand lost its hold of the lever and leaped into the 
air like a shot bird. The man’s jaws stood gaping open as if 
locked. For one second the white of the eyes in the stiffened 
face was terribly visible. Then the man collapsed like a rag 
and Freder caught him as he fell. 

Freder held him fast. He looked around. Nobody was 
paying any attention, either to him or to the other man. 
Clouds of steam and fumes surrounded them like a fog. There 
was a door near by. Freder carried the man to the door and 
pushed it open. It led to the tool-house. A packing case 
offered a hard resting place. Freder let the man slip down 
into it. 

Dull eyes looked up at him. The face to which they 
belonged was little more than that of a boy. 

“What is your name?” said Freder. 

“11811 ” 

“I want to know what your mother called you. . . ? 

“Georgi.” 

“Georgi, do you know me?” 

Consciousness returned to the dull eyes together with 
recognition. 

“Yes, I know you. . . . You are the son of Joh Fredersen 
.... of Joh Fredersen, who is the father of us all. . . .” 

“Yes. Therefore I am your brother, Georgi, do you see? 
I heard your Pater-noster. . . .” 

The body flung itself up with a heave. 

“The machine—” He sprang to his feet. “My machine— I” 

“Leave it alone, Georgi, and listen to me. . . 

37 


METROPOLIS 


“Somebody must be at the machine!” 

“Somebody will be at the machine; but not you. . . 

“Who will, then?” 

“I.” 

Staring eyes were the answer. 

“I,” repeated Freder. “Are you fit to listen to me, and 
will you be able to take good note of what I say? It is very 
important, Georgil” 

“Yes,” said Georgi, paralysed. 

“We shall now exchange lives, Georgi. You take mine, I 
yours. I shall take your place at the machine. You go quietly 
out in my clothes. Nobody noticed me when I came here. 
Nobody will notice you when you go. You must only not 
lose your nerve and keep calm. Keep under cover of where 
the air is brewing like a mist. When you reach the street take 
a car. You will find more than enough money in my pockets. 
Three streets further on change the car. And again after 
another three streets. Then drive to the Ninetieth Block. At 
the corner pay off the taxi arid wait until the driver is out of 
sight. Then find your way to the seventh floor of the seventh 
house. A man called Josaphat lives there. You are to go to 
him. Tell him I sent you. Wait for me or for a message from 
me. Do you understand, Georgi?” 

“Yes.” 

But the “Yes” was empty and seemed to reply to some- 
thing other than Freder ’s question. 

A little while later the son of Joh Fredersen, the Master 
of the great Metropolis, was standing before the machine 
which was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant’s head. 

He wore the uniform of all the workmen of Metropolis: 
from throat to ankle the dark blue linen, bare feet in the 
hard shoes, hair firmly pressed down by the black cap. 

He held his hand on the lever and his gaze was set on 
the clock, the hands of which vibrated like magnetic needles. 

The hunted stream of air washed around him making the 
folds of the canvas flutter. 

Then he felt how, slowly, chokingly, from the incessant 
trembling of the floor, from the walls in which the furnaces 
whistled, from the ceiling which seemed eternally to be in 

38 


METROPOLIS 


the act of falling down, from the pushing of the short arms 
of the machine, from the steady resistance of the gleaming 
body, terror welled up in him— terror, even to the certainty 
of Death. 

He felt— and saw, too— how, from out the swathes of 
vapour, the long soft elephant’s trunk of the god Ganesha 
loosened itself from the head, sunken on the chest, and 
gently, with unerring finger, felt for his, Freder’s forehead. 
He felt the touch of this sucker, almost cool, not in the least 
painful, but horrible. Just in the centre, over the bridge of 
the nose, the ghostly bunk sucked itself fast; it was hardly a 
pain, yet it bored a fine, dead-sure gimlet, towards the centre 
of the brain. As though fastened to the clock of an infernal 
machine the heart began to thump. Pater-noster. . . . Pater> 
noster. . . . Pater-noster. . . . 

“I will not,” said Freder, throwing back his head to break 
the cursed contact: “I will not. ... I will. ... I will not. . . .” 

He groped for he felt the sweat dropping from his temples 
like drops of blood in all pockets of the strange uniform 
which he wore. He felt a rag in one of them and drew it out. 
He mopped his fore-head and, in doing so, felt the sharp 
edge of a stiff piece of paper, of which he had taken hold 
together with the cloth. 

He pocketed the cloth and examined the paper. 

It was no larger than a man’s hand, bearing neither 
print nor script, being covered over and over with the tracing 
of a strange symbol and an apparently half-destroyed plan. 

Freder tried hard to make something of it but he did not 
succeed. Of all the signs marked on the plan he did not know 
one. Ways seemed to be indicated, seeming to be false ways, 
but they all led to one destination; to a place which was 
filled with crosses. 

A symbol of life? Sense in nonsense? 

As Joh Fredersen’s son, Freder was accustomed swiftly 
and correctly to grasp anything called a plan. He pocketed 
the plan though it remained before his eyes. 

The sucker of the elephant’s trunk of the god Ganesha 
glided down to the occupied unsubdued brain which re- 
flected, analysed apd sought. The head, not tamed, sank 

39 


METROPOLIS 


back into the chest. Obediently, eagerly, worked the little 
machine which drove the Pater-noster of the New Tower of 
Babel. 

A little glimmering light played upon the more delicate 
joints almost on the top of the machine, like a small malicious 
eye. 

The machine had plenty of time. Many hours would pass 
before the Master of Metropolis, before Joh Fredersen would 
tear the food which his machines were chewing up from the 
teeth of his mighty machines. 

Quite softly, almost smilingly, the gleaming eye, the 
malicious eye, of the delicate machine looked down upon 
Joh Fredersen’s son, who was standing before it. . . . 

Georgi had left the New Tower of Babel unchallenged, 
through various doors and the city received him, the great 
Metropolis which swayed in the dance of light and which 
was a dancer. 

He stood in the street, drinking in the drunken air. He 
felt white silk on his body. On his feet he felt shoes which 
were soft and supple. He breathed deeply and the fullness 
of his own breath filled him with the most high intoxicating 
intoxication. 

He saw a city which he had never seen. He saw it as a 
man he had never been. He did not walk in a stream of 
others: a stream twelve files deep. ... He wore no blue linen, 
no hard -shoes, no cap. He was not going to work. Work 
was put away, another man was doing his work for him. 

A man had come to him and had said: “We shall now 
exchange lives, Georgi; you take mine and I yours . . 

“When you reach the street, take a car.” 

“You will find more than enough money in my pockets. . . 

“You will find more than enough money in my pockets. . . .” 

“You will find more than enough money in my pockets. . . 

Georgi looked at the city which he had never seen. . . . 

Ah! The intoxication of the lights. Ecstasy of Brightness! 
—Ah! Thousand-limbed city, built up of blocks of light. 
Towers of brilliance! Steep mountains of splendour! From 
the velvety sky above you showers golden rain, inexhaustibly, 
as into the open lap of the Danae. 

40 


METROPOLIS 


Ah— Metropolis! Metropolis! 

A drunken man, he took his first steps, saw a flame 
which hissed up into the heavens. A rocket wrote in drops 
of light on the velvety sky the word: “Yoshiwara .... 

George ran across the street, reached the steps, and, 
taking three steps at a time, reached the . roadway. Soft, 
flexible, a black willing beast, a car approached, stopped 
at his feet. 

Georgi sprang into the car, fell back upon x the cushions, 
the engine of the powerful automobile vibrating soundlessly. 
A recollection stiffened the man’s body. 

Was there not, somewhere in the \yorld— and not so very 
far away, under the sole of the New Tower of Babel, a 
room which was run through by incessant trembling? Did not 
a delicate little machine stand in the middle of this room, 
shining with oil and having strong, gleaming limbs? Under 
the crouching body and the head, which was sunken on the 
chest, crooked legs rested, gnome-like upon the platform. 
The trunk and legs were motionless. But the short arms 
pushed and pushed and pushed, alternately forwards, back- 
wards, and forwards. The floor which was of stone and seam- 
less, trembled under the pushing of the little machine which 
was smaller than a five-year-old child. 

The voice of the driver asked: Where to, sir?” 

Straight on, motioned Georgi with his hand. Anywhere. . . . 

The man had said to him: Change the car after the third 
street. 

But the rhythm of the motor-car embraced him too de- 
lightfully. Third street. . . . sixth street. ... it was still 
very far to the ninetieth block. 

He was filled with the wonder of being thus couched, the 
bewilderment of the lights, the shudder of entrancement at 
the motion. 

The further that, with the soundless gliding of the wheels, 
he drew away from the New Tower of Babel, the further 
did he seem to draw away from the consciousries of his own 
self. 

Who was he—? Had he not just stood in a greasy 
patched, blue linen uniform, in a seething hell, his brain 

41 


METROPOLIS 


mangled by eternal watchfulness, with bones, the marrow of 
which was being sucked out by eternally making the same 
turn of the lever to eternally the same rhythm, with face 
scorched by unbearable heat, and in the sldn of which the 
salty sweat tore its devouring furrows? 

Did he not live in a town which lay deeper under the 
.earth than the underground stations of Metropolis, with then- 
thousand shafts— in a town the houses of which storied 
just as high above squares and sheets as, above in the night, 
did the houses of Metropolis, which towered so high, one 
above the other? 

Had he ever known anything else than the horrible sobriety 
of these houses, in which there lived not men, but numbers, 
recognisable only by the enormous placards by the house- 
doors? 

Had his life ever had any purpose other than to go out 
from these doors, framed with numbers, out to work, when 
the sirens of Metropolis howled for him— and ten hours 
later, crushed and tired to death, to stumble into the house by 
the door of which his number stood? 

Was he, himself, anything but a number— number 11811— 
crammed into his linen, his clothes, his cap? Had not the 
number also become imprinted into his soul, into his brain, 
into his blood, that he must even stop and think of his own 
name? 

And now—? 

And now—? 

His body refreshed by pure cold water which had washed 
the sweat of labour from him, felt, with wonderful sweet- 
ness, the yielding relaxation of all his muscles. With a 
quiver which rendered all his muscles weak he felt the 
caressing touch of white silk on the bare skin of his body, 
and, while giving himself up to the gentle, even rhythm of 
the motion, the consciousness of the first and complete de- 
liverance from all that which had put so agonising a 
pressure on his existence overcame him with so overpowering 
a force that he burst out into the laughter of a madman, 
his tears falling uncontrollably. 

Violently, aye, with a glorious violence, the great city 
42 


METROPOLIS 

whirled towards him, like a sea which roars around moun- 
tains. 

The workman No. 11811, the man who lived in a prison- 
like house, under the underground railway of Metropolis, 
who knew no other way than that from the hole in which 
he slept to the machine and from the machine back to 
the hole— this man saw, for the first time in his life, the 
wonder of the world, which was Metropolis: the city, by 
night shining under millions and millions of lights. 

He saw the ocean of light which filled the endless trails 
of streets with a silver, flashing lustre. He saw the will-o’-the- 
wisp sparkle of the electric advertisements, lavishing them- 
selves inexhaustibly in an ecstasy of brightness. He saw 
towers projecting, built up*of blocks of light, feeling himself 
seized, over-powered to a state of complete impotenoe by 
this intoxication of light, feeling this sparkling ocean with 
its hundreds and thousands of spraying waves, to reach 
out for him, to take the breath from his mouth, to pierce 
him, suffocate him. . . . 

And then he grasped that this city of machines, this 
city of sobriety, this fanatic for work, sought, at night, the 
mighty counterpoise to the frenzy of the day’s work— that 
this city, at night, lost itself, as one insane, as one entirely 
witless, in the intoxication of a pleasure, which, flinging 
up to all heights, hurtling down to all depths, was bound- 
lessly blissful and boundlessly destructive. 

Georgi trembled from head to foot. And yet it was not 
really trembling which seized his resistless body. It was as 
though all his members were fastened to the soundless even- 
ness of the engine which bore them forwards. No, not to the 
single engine which was the heart of the motor-car in which 
he sat— to all these hundreds and thousands of engines 
which were driving an endlessly gliding, double stream of 
gleaming illuminated automobiles, on through the streets 
of the city in its nocturnal fever. And, at the same time, his 
body was set in vibration by the fire-works of spark-streaming 
wheels, ten-coloured lettering snow-white fountains of over- 
charged lamps, rockets, hissing upwards, towers of flame, 
blazing ice-cold. 


43 


METROPOLIS 


There was a word which always recurred. From an 
invisible source there shot up a sheaf of light, which bursting 
apart at the highest point, dropped down letters in all 
colours of the rainbow from the velvetblack sky of Me- 
tropolis. 

The letters formed themselves into the word: Yoshiwara. 

What did that mean: Yoshiwara—? 

From the iron-work of the elevated railway-track a yellow- 
skinned fellow hung, head downwards, suspended by the 
crocks of his knees, who let a snow-storm of white sheets of 
paper shower down upon the double row of motor-cars. 

The pages fluttered and fell. Georgi’s glance caught one 
of them. Upon it stood, in large, distorted letters: Yoshiwara. 

The car stopped at a crossing. Yellow-skinned fellows, in 
many-coloured embroidered silk jackets, wound themselves, 
supple as eels, through the twelve-fold strings of waiting 
cars. One of them swung himself onto the foot-board of the 
black motor-car in which Georgi sat. For one second the 
grinning hideousness stared into the young, white, helpless 
face. 

A sheaf of hand-bills were hurled through the window, 
falling upon Georgi’s knee and before his feet. He bent 
down mechanically and picked up that for which his fingers 
were groping. 

On these slips, which gave out a penetrating, bitter-sweet, 
seductive perfume, there stood, in large, bewitched-looking 
letters, the word: Yoshiwara. . . . 

Georgi’s throat was as dry as dust. He moistened his 
cracked lips with his tongue, which lay heavy and as though 
parched in his mouth. 

A voice had said to him: “You will find more than enough 
money in my pockets. . . .” 

Enough money. . . . what for? To clutch and drag near 
this city-this mighty, heavenly, hellish city; to embrace her 
with both arms, both legs, in the impotence of mastering her; 
to despair, to throw one-self into her-take mel-take mel 
—To feel the filled bowl at one’s lips— gulping, gulping— not 
drawing breath, the brim of the bowl set fast between the 
44 


METROPOLIS 


teeth— eternal, eternal insatiability, competing with the eter- 
nal, eternal overflow, overpouring of the bowl of intoxica- 
tion. . . . 

Ah— Metropolis! . . . Metropolis! . . . 

“More than enough money 

A strange sound came from Georgi’s throat, and there was 
something in it of the throat-rattle of a man who knows he 
is dreaming and wants to awake, and something of the 
gutteral sound of the beast of prey when it scents blood. 
His hand did not let go of the wad of bank-notes for the 
second time. It screwed it up in burning convulsive fingers. 

He turned his head this way and that, as though seeking a 
way out, which, nevertheless, he feared to find. . . . 

Another car slipped silently along beside his, a great, black- 
gleaming shadow, the couch of a woman, set on four wheels, 
decorated with flowers, lighted by dim lamps. Georgie saw 
the woman very clearly, and the woman looked at him. She 
cowered rather than sat, among the cushions of the car, 
having entirely wrapped herself in her gleaming cloak, from 
which one shoulder projected with the dull whiteness of a 
swan’s feather. 

She was bewilderingly made-up— as though she did not 
wish to be human, to be a woman, but rather a peculiar 
animal, disposed, perhaps to play, perhaps to murder. 

Calmly holding the man’s gaze, she gently slipped her 
right hand, sparkling with stones, and the slender arm, which 
was quite bare and dull white, even as the shoulder, from 
the wrappings of her cloak, and began to fan herself in a 
leisurely manner with one of the sheets of paper on which 
the word Yoshiwara stood. . . . 

“No!” said the man. He panted, wiping the perspiration 
from his forehead. Coolness welled out from the fine, strange 
stuff with which he dried the perspiration from his brow. 

Eyes stared at him. Eyes which were fading away. The 
all-knowing smile of a painted mouth. 

With a panting sound Georgi made to open the door of 
the taxi and to jump out into the road. However, the move- 
ment of the car threw him back on to the cushions. He 


45 


METROPOLIS 


clenched his fists, pressing them before both eyes. A vision 
shot through his head, quite misty and lacking in outline, 
a strong little machine, no larger than a five-year-old child. 
It’s short arms pushed and pushed and pushed, alternately 
forwards, backwards, forwards. . . . The head, sunken on the 
chest, rose, grinning. . . . 

“Nol” shrieked the man, clapping his hands and laughing. 
He had been set free from the machine. He had exchanged 
lives. 

Exchanged— with whom? 

With a man who had said: “You will find more than 
enough money in my pockets. . . .” 

The man bent back his head into the nape of his neck 
and stared at the roof suspended above him. 

On the roof there flamed the word: 

Yoshiwara. . . . 

The word Yoshiwara became rockets of light which show- 
ered around him, paralysing his limbs. He sat motionless, 
covered in a cold sweat. He clawed his fingers into the leather 
of the cushions. His back was stiff, as though his spine were 
made of cold iron. His jaws chattered. 

“No— 1” said Georgi, tearing his fists down. But before 
his eyes which stared into space, the word flamed up: 

“Yoshiwara. . . . 

Music was in the air, hurled into the nocturnal streets by 
enormous loud-speakers. Wanton was the music, most heated 
of rhythm, of a shrieking, lashing gaiety. . . . 

“No— I” panted the man. Blood trickled in drops from his 
bitten lips. 

But a hundred multi-coloured rockets wrote in the velvet- 
black sky of Metropolis, the word: 

“Yoshiwara. . . . 

Georgi pushed the window open. The glorious town of 
Metropolis, dancing in the drunkenness of light, threw itself 
impetuously towards him, as though he were the only- 
beloved, the only-awaited. He leant out of the window, 
crying: 

“Yoshiwara— I” 


46 


METROPOLIS 


He fell back upon the cushions. The car turned in a 
gentle curve, round in another direction. 

A rocket shot up and wrote in the sky above Metropolis: 
Yoshiwara. . . . 


CHAPTER IV 


There was a house in the great Metropolis which was older 
than the town. Many said that it was older, even, than the 
cathedral, and, before the Archangel Michael raised his voice 
as advocate in the conflict for God, the house stood there in 
its evil gloom, defying the cathedral from out its dull eyes. 

It had lived through the time of smoke and soot. Every 
year which passed over the city seemed to creep, when dying, 
into this house, so that, at last it was a cemetery— a coffin, 
filled with dead tens of years. 

Set into the black wood of the door stood, copper-red, 
mysterious, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram. 

It was said that a magician, who came from the East (and 
in the track of whom the plague wandered) had built the 
house in seven nights. But the masons and carpenters of the 
town did not know who had mortared the bricks, nor who had 
erected the roof. No foreman’s speech and no ribboned nose- 
gay had hallowed the Builder's Feast after the pious cus- 
tom. The chronicles pf the town held no record of when 
the magician died nor of how he died. One day it occurred to 
the citizens as odd that the red shoes of the magician had so 
long shunned the abominable plaster of the town. Entrance 
was forced into the house and not a living soul was found 
inside. But the rooms, which received, neither by day nor by 
night, a ray from the great lights of the sky, seemed to be 
waiting for their master, sunken in sleep. Parchments and 
folios lay about, open, under a covering of dust, like silver- 
grey velvet. 


47 


METROPOLIS 

Set in all the doors stood, copper-red, mysterious, the seal 
of Solomon, the pentagram. 

Then came a time which pulled down antiquities. Then 
the words were spoken: The house must die. But the house 
was stronger than the words, as it was stronger than the 
centuries. With suddenly falling stones it slew those who laid 
hands on its walls. It opened the floor under their feet, drag* 
ging them down into a shaft, of which no man had previously 
had any knowledge. It was as though the plague, which had 
formerly wandered in the wake of the red shoes of the 
magician, still crouched in the corners of the narrow house, 
springing out at men from behind, to seize them by the neck. 
They died, and no doctor knew the illness. The house re- 
sisted its destruction with so great a force that word of its 
malignity went out over the borders of the city, spreading far 
over the land, that, at last, there was no honest man to be 
found who would have ventured to make war against it. Yes, 
even the thieves and the rogues, who were promised remission 
of their sentence provided that they declared themselves 
ready to pull down the magician’s house, preferred to go to 
the pillory, or even to the scaffold, rather than to enter Within 
these spiteful walls, these latchless doors, which were sealed 
with Solomon’s seal. 

The little town around the cathedral became a large town 
and grew into Metropolis, and into the centre of the world. 

One day there came to the town a man from far away, 
who saw the house and said: “I want to have that.” 

He was initiated into the story of the house. He did not 
smile. He stood by his resolution. He bought the house at 
a very low price, moved in at once and kept it unaltered. 

This man was called Rotwang. Few knew him. Only JoU 
Fredersen knew him very well. It would have been easier 
for him to have decided to fight out the quarrel about the 
cathedral with the sect of Gothics than the quarrel with 
Rotwang about the magician’s house. 

There were in Metropolis, in this city of reasoned, method* 
ical hurry, very many who would rather have gone far out 
of their way than have passed by Rotwang’s house. It 
hardly reached knee-high to the house-giants which stood 

48 


METROPOLIS 

near it. It stood at an angle to the street. To the cleanly 
town, which knew neither smoke nor soot, it was a blot and 
an annoyance. But it remained. When Rotwang left the 
house and crossed the street, which occurred but seldom, 
there were many who covertly looked at his feet, to see if, 
perhaps, he walked in red shoes. 

Before the door of this house, on which the seal ef Solomon 
glowed, stood Joh Fredersen. 

He had sent the car away and had knocked. 

He waited, then knocked again. 

A voice asked, as if the house were speaking in its sleep: 

“Who is there?” 

“Joh Fredersen,” said the man. 

The door opened. 

He entered. The door closed. He stood in darkness. But 
Joh Fredersen knew the house welJL He walked straight on, 
and as he walked, the shimmering tracks of two stepping 
feet glistened before him, along the passage, and the edge of 
the stair began to glow. Like a dog 1- showing the track, the 
glow ran on before him, up the steps, to die out behind him. 

He reached the top of the stairs and looked about him. He 
knew that many doors opened out here. But on the one 
opposite him the copper seal glowed like a distorted eye, 
which looked at him. 

He stepped up to it. The door opened before him. 

Many doors as Rotwang’s house possessed, this was the 
only one which opened itself to Joh Fredersen, although, and 
even, perhaps, because, the owner of this house knew full 
well that it always meant no mean effort for Joh Fredersen 
to cross this threshold. 

He drew in the air of the room, lingeringly, but deeply, 
as though seeking in it the trace of another breath .... 

His nonchalant hand threw his hat on a chair. Slowly, 
in sudden and mournful weariness, he let his eyes wander 
through the room. 

It was almost empty. A large, time-blackened chair, such 
as are to be found in old churches, stood before drawn cur- 
tains. These curtains covered a recess the width of the wall. 

Joh Fredersen remained standing by the door for a long 

49 


METROPOLIS 


time, without moving. He had closed his eyes. With incom- 
parable impotence he breathed in the odour of hyacinths, 
which seemed to fill the motionless air of this room. 

Without opening his eyes, swaying a little, but aim-sure, 
he walked up to the heavy, black curtains and drew them 
apart. 

Then he opened his eyes and stood quite still .... 

On a pedestal, the breadth of the wall, rested the head of 
a woman in stone .... 

It was not the work of an artist, it was the work of a man, 
who, in agonies for which the human tongue lacks words, 
had wrestled with the white stone throughout immeasurable 
days and nights until at last it seemed to realise and form the 
woman's head by itself. It was as if no tool had been at work 
here— no, it was as if a man, lying before this stone, had 
called on the name of the woman, unceasingly, with all the 
strength, with all the longing, with all the despair, of his 
brain, blood and heart, until the shapeless stone took pity on 
him letting itself turn into the image of the woman, who had 
meant to two men all heaven and all hell. 

Joh Fredersen’s eyes sank to the words which were hewn 
into the pedestal, roughly, as though chiselled with curses. 

H EL 
born 

to be my happiness, a blessing to all men, 
lost 

to Joh Fredersen 
dying 

in giving life to his son, Freder 

Yes, she died then. But Joh Fredersen knew only too well 
that she did not die from giving birth to her child. She died 
then because she had done what she had to do. She really 
died on the day upon which she went from Rotwang to Joh 
Fredersen, wondering that her feet left no bloody traces be- 
hind on the way. She had died because she was unable to 
withstand the great love of Joh Fredersen and because she 
had been forced by him to tear asunder the life of another. 

50 


METROPOLIS 


Never was the expression of deliverance at last more strong 
upon a human face than upon Hel’s face when she knew that 
she would die. 

But in the same hour the mightiest man in Metropolis had 
lain on the floor, screaming like a wild beast, the bones of 
which are being broken in its living body. 

And, on his meeting Rotwang, four weeks later, he found 
that the dense, disordered hair over the wonderful brow of 
the inventor was snow-white, and in the eyes under this brow 
the smouldering of a hatred which was very closely related 
to madness. 

In this great love, in this great hatred, the poor, dead 
Hel had remained alive to both men .... 

“You must wait a little while,” said the voice which 
sounded as though the house were talking in its sleep. 

“Listen, Rotwang,” said Joh Fredersen. “You know that 
I treat your little juggling tricks with patience, and that I 
come to you when I want anything Of you, and that you 
are the only man who can say that of himself. But you will 
never get me to join in with you when you play the fool. You 
know, too, that I have no time to waste. Don’t make ns both 
ridiculous, but cornel” 

“I told you that you would have to wait a little while,” 
explained the voice, seeming to grow more distant. 

“I shall not wait. I shall go.” 

“Do so, Joh Fredersen!” 

He wanted to do so. But the door through which he had 
entered had no key, no latch. The seal of Solomon, glowing 
copper-red, blinked at him* 

A soft, far-off voice laughed. 

Joh Fredersen had stopped still, his back to the room. A 
quiver ran down his back, running along the hanging arms 
to the clenched fists. 

“You should have your skull smashed in,” said Joh Freder- 
sen, very softly . . . “You should have your skull smashed 
in . . . that is, if it did not contain so valuable a brain . . . .” 

“You can do no more to me than you have done,” said the 
far-off voice. 

Joh Fredersen was silent. 


51 


METROPOLIS 

"Which do you think,” contined the voice, “to be more 
painful: to smash in the skull, or to tear the heart out of the 
body?” 

Joh Fredersen was silent. 

“Are your wits frozen, that you don’t answer, Joh Freder- 
sen?” 

“A brain like yours should be able to forget,” said the 
man standing at the door, staring, at Solomon’s seal. 

The soft, far-off voice laughed. 

“Forget? I have twice in my life forgotten something. . . . 
Once that Aetro-oil and quick-silver have an idiosyncracy 
as regards each other; that cost me my arm. Secondly that 
Hel was a woman ind you a man; that cost me my heart. 
The third time, I am afraid, it will cost me my head. I shall 
never again forget anything, Joh Fredersen.” 

Joh Fredersen was silent. 

The far-off voice was silent, too. 

Joh Fredersen turned round and walked to the table. He 
piled books and parchments on top of each other, sat down 
and took a piece of paper from his pocket. He laid it before 
him and looked at it. 

It was no larger than a man’s hand, bearing neither print 
nor script, being covered over and over with the tracing of 
a strange symbol and an apparently half-destroyed plan. 
Ways seemed to be indicated, seeming to be false ways, but 
they all led one way; to a place that was filled with crosses. 

Suddenly he felt, from the back, a certain coldness ap- 
proaching him. Involuntarily he held his breath. 

A hand grasped along, by his head, a graceful, skeleton 
hand. Transparent skin was- stretched over the slender joints, 
which gleamed beneath it like dull silver. Fingers, snow-white 
and fleshless, closed over the plan which lay on the table, 
and, lifting it up, took it away with it. 

Joh Fredersen swung around. He stared at the being 
which stood before him with eyes which grew glassy. 

The being was, indubitably, a woman. In the soft garment 
which it wore stood a body, like the body of a young birch 
tree, swaying on feet set fast together. But, although it was 
a woman, it was not human. The body seemed as though 

52 


METROPOLIS 


made of crystal, through which the bones shone silver. Cold 
streamed from the glazen skin which did not contain a 
drop of blood. The being held its beautiful hands pressed 
against its breast, which was motionless, with a gesture of 
determination, almost of defiance. 

But the being had no face. The beautiful curve of the 
neck bore a lump of carelessly shaped mass. The skull was 
bald, nose, lips, temples merely traced. Eyes, as though 
painted on closed lids, stared unseeingly, with an expression 
of calm madness, at the man— who did not breathe. 

“Be courteous, my parody/’ said the far-off voice, which 
sounded as though the house were talking in its sleep. 
“Greet Joh Fredersen, the Master over the great Metropolis.” 

The being bowed slowly to the man. The mad eyes 
neared him like two darting flames. The mass began to 
speak; it said in a voice full of a horrible tenderness: 

“Good evening, Joh Fredersen . . . 

Ahd these words were more alluring than a half-open 
mouth. 

“Good, my Pearll Good, my Crown-jewel I” said the far-off 
voice, full of praise and pride. 

But at the same moment the being lost its balance. It fell, 
tipping forward, towards Joh Fredersen. He stretched out 
his hands to catch it, feeling them, in the moment of contact, 
to be burnt by an unbearable coldness, the brutality of 
which brought up in him a feeling of anger and disgust. 

He pushed the being away from him and towards Rotwang, 
who was standing near him as though fallen from the air. 
Rotwang took the being by the arm. 

He shook his head. “Too violent,” he said. “Too violent. 
My beautiful parody, I fear your temperament will get you 
into much more trouble.” 

“What is that?” asked Joh Fredersen, leaning his hands 
against the edge of the table-top, which he felt behind him. 

Rotwang turned his face towards him, his glorious eyes 
glowing as watch fires glow when the wind lashes them 
with its cold lash. 

“Who is it?” he replied. “Futura . . . Parody . . . whatever 
you like to call it. Also: delusion ... In short: it is a wo- 

53 


METROPOLIS 


man. . . . Every man-creator makes himself a woman. I do hot 
believe that humbug about the first human being a man. If 
a male-god created the world (which is to be hoped, Joh 
Fredersen) then he certainly created woman first, lovingly and 
revelling in creative sport. You can test it, Joh Fredersen: 
it is faultless. A little cool— I admit, that comes of the material, 
which is my secret. But she is not yet completely finished. She 
is not yet discharged from the workshop of her creator. I can- 
not. make up my mind to do it. You understand that? Comple- 
tion means setting free. I do not want to set her free from me. 
That is why I have not yet given her a face. You must give 
her that, Joh Fredersen. For you were the one to order the 
new beings.” 

“I Ordered machine men from you, Rotwang, which I can 
use at my machines. No woman ... no plaything.” 

“No plaything, Joh Fredersen, no . . . you and I, we no 
longer play. Not for any stakes. . . . We did it once. Once and 
never again. No plaything, Joh Fredersen but a tool. Do 
you know what it means to have a woman as a tool? A 
woman like this, faultless and cool? And obedient— implicitly 
obedient. . . . Why do you fight with the Gothics and the 
monk Desertus about the cathedral? Send the woman to them 
Joh Fredersen! Send the woman to them when they are kneel- 
ing, scourging themselves. Let this faultless, cool woman walk 
through the rows of them, on her silver feet, fragrance from 
the garden of life in the folds of her garment. . . . Who in the 
world knows how the blossoms of -the tree smell, pn which the 
apple of knowledge ripened. The woman is both: Fragrance 
of the blossom and the fruit. . . . 

“Shall I explain to you the newest creation of Rotwang, the 
genius, Joh Fredersen? It will be sacrilege. But I owe it to 
you. For you kindled the idea of creating within me, too. . . . 
Shall I show you how obedient my creatures is? Give me 
what you have in your hand, Parody!” 

“Stop . . .” said Joh Fredersen rather hoarsely. But the 
infallible obedience of the creature which stood before 
the two men brooked no delay in obeying. It opened its 
hands in which the delicate bones shimmered silver, and 

54 


METROPOLIS 


handed to its creator the piece of paper which it had taken 
from the table, before Joh Fredersen’s eyes. 

“That’s trickery, Rotwang,” said Joh Fredersen. 

The great inventor looked at him. He laughed. The noise- 
less laughter drew back his mouth to- his ears. 

“No trickery, Joh Fredersen— the work of a geniusl Shall 
Futura dance to you? Shall my beautiful Parody play the 
affectionate? Or the sulky? Cleopatra of Damayanti? Shall 
she have the gestures of the Gothic Madonnas? Or the gestures 
of love of an Asiatic dancer? What hair shall I plant upon the 
skull of your tool? Shall she be modest or impudent? Excuse 
me my many words, you man of fewl I am drunk, d’you see, 
drunk with being a creator. I intoxicate myself,' I inebriate 
myself, on your astonished face! I have surpassed your ex- 
pectations, Joh Fredersen, haven’t I? And you do not know 
everything yet: my beautiful Parody can sing, too! She can 
also read! The mechanism of her brain is as infallible as 
that of your own, Joh Fredersen!” 

“If that is so,” said the Master over the great Metropolis, 
with a certain dryness in his voice, which had become quite 
hoarse, “then command her to unriddle the plan which you 
have in your hand, Rotwang . . .” 

Rotwang burst out into laughter which was like the 
laughter of a drunken man. He threw a glance at the piece 
of paper which he held spread out in his fingers, and was 
about to pass it, anticipatingly triumphant, to the being which 
stood beside him. 

But he stopped in the middle of the movement. With open 
mouth, he stared at the piece of paper, raising it nearer and 
nearer to his eyes. 

Joh Fredersen, who was watching him, bent forward. He 
wanted to say something, to ask a question. But before he 
could open his lips Rotwang threw up his head and met Joh 
Fredersen’s glance with so green a fire in his eyes that the 
Master of the great Metropolis remained dumb. 

Twice, three times did this green glow flash between the 
piece of paper and Joh Fredersen’s face. And during the 
whole time not a sound was perceptible in the room but the 

55 


METROPOLIS 


breath that gushed in heaves from Rotwang's breast as 
though from a boiling, poisoned source. 

“Where did you get the plan?” the great inventor asked 
at last. Though it was less a question than an expression 
of astonished anger. 

“That is not the point,” answered Joh Fredersen. “It is 
about this that I have come to you. There does not seem 
to be a soul in Metropolis who can make anything of it.” 
Rotwang’s laughter interrupted him. 

“Your poor scholars!” cried the laughter. “What a task you 
have set them, Joh Fredersen. How many hundredweights 
of printed paper have' you forced them to heave over. I am 
sure there is no town on the globe, from the construction of 
the old Tower of Babel onward, which they have not 
snuffled through from North to South. Oh— if you could only 
Smile, Parody! If only you already had eyes to wink at me. 
But laugh, at least, Parody! Laugh, rippingly, at the great 
scholars to whom the ground under their feet is foreign!” 
The being obeyed. It laughed, ripplingly. 

“Then you know the plan, or what it represents?” asked 
Joh Fredersen, through the laughter. 

“Yes, by my poor soul, I know it,” answered Rotwang. 
"But, by my poor soul, I am not going to tell you what it 
is until you tell me where you got the plan.” 

Joh Fredersen reflected. Rotwang did not take his gaze 
from him. “Do not try to lie to me, Joh Fredersen,” he said 
softly, and with a whimsical melancholy. 

“Somebody found the paper,” began Joh Fredersen. 

“Who— somebody?” 

“One of my foremen.” 

“Grot?” 

“Yes, Grot.” 

“Where did he find the plan?” 

“In the pocket of a workman who was killed in the acci- 
dent to the Geyser machine.” 

“Grot brought you the paper?” 

? es.” 

“And the meaning of the plan seemed to be unknown 
to him?” 


56 


METROPOLIS 


Joh Fredersen hesitated a moment with the answer. 

“The meaning— yes; but not the plan. He told me he has 
often seen this paper in the workmen’s hands, and that they 
anxiously keep it a secret, and that the men will crowd 
closely around him who holds it.” 

“So the meaning of the plan has been kept secret from 
your foreman.” 

“So it seems, for he could not explain it to me.” 

“H’m.” 

Rotwang turned to the being which was standing near 
him, with the appearance of listening intently. 

“What do you say about it, my beautiful Parody?” 

The being stood motionless. 

“Well—?” said Joh Fredersen, with a sharp expression of 
impatience. 

Rotwang looked at him, jerkily turning his great skull 
towards him. The glorious eyes crept behind their lids as 
though wishing to have nothing in common with the strong 
white teeth and the jaws of the beast of prey. But from 
beneath the almost closed lids they gazed at Joh Fredersen, 
as though they sought in his face the door to the great brain. 

“How can one bind you, Joh Fredersen,” he murmured, 
“what is a word to you— or an oath. . . . Oh God . . . you 
with your own laws. What promise would you keep if the 
breaking of it seemed expedient to you?” 

“Don’t talk rubbish, Rotwang,” said Joh Fredersen. “I 
shall hold my tongue because I still need you. I know quite 
well that the people whom we need are our solitary tyrants. 
So, if you know, speak." 

Rotwang still hesitated; but gradually a smile took pos- . 
session of his features— a good natured and mysterious smile, 
which was amusing itself at itself. 

“You are standing on the entrance,” he said. 

“What does that mean?” 

“To be taken literally, Joh Fredersen! You are standing on 
the entrance.” 

“What entrance, Rotwang? You are wasting time that does 
not belong to you . . .” 

The smile on Rotwang’s face deepened to serenity. 

57 


METROPOLIS 


“Do you recollect, Joh Fredersen, how obstinately I re- 
fused, that time, to let the underground railway be run under 
my house?” 

“Indeed I dol I still know the sum the detour cost me, also!” 

“The secret was expensive, I admit, but it was worth it. 
Just take a look at the plan, Joh Fredersen, what is that?” 

“Perhaps a flight of stairs . . .” 

“Quite certainly a flight of stairs. It is a very slovenly 
execution in the drawing as fa reality . . .” 

“So you know them?” 

“I have the honour, Joh Fredersen— yes. Now come two 
paces sideways. What is that?” 

He had taken Joh Fredersen by the arm. He felt the 
fingers of the aritificial hand pressing into his muscles like 
the claws of a bird of prey. With the right one Rotwang in- 
dicated the spot upon which Joh Fredersen had stood. 

“What is that?” he asked, shaking the hand which he 
held in his grip. 

Joh Fredersen bent down. He straightened himself up 
again. 

“A door?’' 

“Right, Joh Fredersen! A door! A perfectly fitting and well 
shutting door. The man who built this house was an orderly 
and careful person. Only once did he omit to give heed, 
and then he had to pay for it. He went down the stairs 
which are under the door, followed the careless steps and 
passages which are connected with them, and never found his 
way back. It is not easy to find, for those who lodged there 
did not care to have strangers penetrate into their domain. 
... I found my inquisitive predecessor, Joh Fredersen, and 
recognised him at once— by his pointed red shoes, which 
have preserved themselves wonderfully. As a corpse he looked 
peaceful and Christian-like, both of which he certainly was 
not in his life. The companions of his last hours probably 
contributed considerably to the conversion of the erst-while 
devil’s disciple . . .” 

He tapped with his right forefinger upon a maze of 
crosses in the centre of the plan. 

“Here he lies. Just on this spot. His skull must have en- 

58 


METROPOLIS 


closed a brain which was worthy of your own, Joh Fredersen, 
and he had to perish because he once lost his way. . . . 
What a pity for him . . 

“Where did he lose his way?” asked Joh Fredersen. 
Rotwang looked long at him before speaking. 

“In the city of graves, over which Metropolis stands,” he 
answered at last. “Deep below the moles’ tunnels of your 
underground railway, Joh Fredersen, lies the thousand-year- 
old Metropolis of the thousand-year-old dead . . .” 

Joh Fredersen was silent. His left eyebrow rose, while his 
eyes narrowed. He fixed his gaze upon Rotwang, who had 
not taken his eyes from him. 

“What is the plan of this city of graves doing in the hands 
and pockets of my workmen?” 

“That is yet to be discovered,” answered Rotwang. 

“Will you help me?” 

“Yes.” - • 

“Tonight?” 

“Very well.” 

“I shall come back after the changing of the shift.” 

“Do so, Joh Fredersen. And if you take some good ad- 
vice 
‘‘Well?” 

“Come in the uniform of your workmen, when you come 
backl” 

Joh Fredersen raised his head but the great inventor 
did not let him speak. He raised his hand as one calling for 
and admonishing to silence. 

“The skull of the man in the red shoes also enclosed a 
powerful brain, Joh Fredersen, but nevertheless, he could 
not find his way homewards from those who dwell down 
there . . 

Joh Fredersen reflected. He nodded and turned to go. 

“Be courteous, my beautiful Parody,” said Rotwang. “Open 
the doors for the Master over the great Metropolis.” 

The being glided past Joh Fredersen. He felt the breath 
of coldness which came forth from it. He saw the silent 
laughter between the half-open lips of Rotwang, the great 
inventor. He turned pale with rage, but he remained silent. 

59 


METROPOLIS 

The being stretched out the transparent hand in which 
the bones shone silver, and, touching it with its finger-tips, 
moved the seal of Solomon, which glowed copperish. 

The door yielded back. Joh Fredersen went out after the 
being, which stepped downstairs before him. 

There was no light on the stairs, nor in the narrow passage. 
But a shimmer came from the being no stronger than that 
of a green-burning candle, yet strong enough to lighten up 
the stairs and the black walls. 

At the house-door the being stopped still and waited for 
Joh Fredersen, who was walking slowly along behind it. The 
house-door opened before him, but not far enough for him 
to pass out through the opening. 

The eyes stared at him from the mass-head of the being, 
eyes as though painted on closed lids, with the expression of 
calm madness. 

“Be courteous, my beautiful Parody,” said a soft, far-off 
voice, which sounded as though the house were talking in its 
sleep. 

The being bowed. It stretched out a hand— a graceful 
skeleton hand. Transparent skin was stretched over the 
slender joints, which gleamed beneath it like dull silver. Fin- 
gers, snow-white and fleshless, opened like the petals of a 
crystal lily. 

Joh Fredersen laid his hand in it, feeling it, in the moment 
of contact, to be burnt by an unbearable coldness. He 
wanted to push the being away from him but the silver- 
crystal fingers held him fast. 

“Good-bye,” Joh Fredersen,” said the mass head, in a 
voice full of a horrible tenderness. “Give me a face soon, Joh 
Fredersen!” 

A soft far-off voice laughed, as if the house were laughing 
in its sleep. 

The hand left go, the door opened, Joh Fredersen reeled 
into the street. 

The door closed behind him. In the gloomy wood of the 
door glowed, copper-red, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram. 

When Joh Fredersen was about to enter the brain-pan of 

60 


METROPOLIS 


the New Tower of Babel Slim stood before him, seeming to 
be slimmer than ever. 

“What is it?” asked Joh Fredersen. 

Slim made to speak but at the sight of his master the 
words died on his lips. 

“Well—?” said Joh Fredersen, between his teeth. 

Slim breathed deeply. 

“I must inform you, Mr. Fredersen,” he said, “that, since 
your son left this room, he has disappeared!” 

“What does that mean? . . . disappeared!” 

“He has not gone home, and none of our men has seen 
him . . .” 

Joh Fredersen screwed up his mouth. 

“Look for him!” he said hoarsely. “What are you all here 
for? Look for him!” 

He entered the brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel. His 
first glance fell upon the clock. He stepped to the table 
and stretched out his hand to the little blue metal plate. 


CHAPTER V 


The man before the machine which was like Ganesha, the 
god with the elephant’s head, was no longer a human being. 
Merely a dripping piece of exhaustion, from the pores of 
which the last powers of volition were oozing out in large 
drops of sweat. Running eyes no longer saw the manometer. 
The hand did not hold the lever— it clawed it fast in the last 
hold which saved the mangled man-creature before it 
from falling into the crushing arms of the machine. 

The Pater-noster works of the New Tower of Babel turned 
their buckets with an easy smoothness. The eye of the little 
machine smiled softly and maliciously at the man who stood 
before it and who was now no more than a babel. 

“Father!” babbled the son of Joh Fredersen, “to-day, for 
the first time, since Metropolis stood, you have forgotten to 

61 


METROPOLIS 

let your city and your great machines roar punctually fox- 
fresh food. . . . Has Metropolis gone dumb, father? Look at usl 
Look at your machines! Your god-machines turn sick at the 
chewed-up cuds in their mouths— at the mangled food that 
we are. . . . Why do you strangle its voice to death? Will 
ten hours never, never come to an end? Our Father, which 
art in heaven— I” 

But in this moment Joh Fredersen’s fingers were pressing 
the little blue metal plate and the voice of the great Metrop- 
olis. 

“Thank you, father!” said the mangled soul before the 
machine, which was like Ganesha. He smiled. He tasted a 
salty taste on his lips and did not know if it was from blood, 
sweat or tears. From out a red mist of long-flamed, drawn-out 
clouds, fresh men shuffled on towards him. His hand slipped 
from the lever and he collapsed. Aims pulled him up and led 
him away. He turned his head aside to hide his face. 

The eye of the little machine, the soft, malicious eye, 
twinkled at him from behind. 

“Good-bye, friend,” said the little machine. 

Freder’s head fell upon his breast. He felt himself dragged 
further, heard the dull evenness of feet tramping onwards, 
felt himself tramping, a member of twelve members. The 
ground under his feet began to roll; it was drawn upwards, 
pulling him up with it. 

Doors stood open, double doors. Towards him came a 
stream of men. 

The great Metropolis was still roaring. 

Suddenly she fell dumb and in the silence Freder became 
aware of the breath of a man at his ear, and of a voice— 
merely a breath— which asked: 

“She has called. . . . Are you coming?” 

He did not know what the question meant, but he nodded. 
He wanted to get to know the ways of those who walked, as 
he, in blue linen, in the black cap, in the hard shoes. 

With tightly closed eyelids he groped on, shoulder to 
shoulder with an unknown man. 

She has called, he thought, half asleep. Who is that . . . 
she . . . ? 


62 


METROPOLIS 


He walked and walked in smouldering weariness. The 
way would never, never come to an end. He did not know 
where he was walking. He heard the tramp of those who 
were walking with him like the sound of perpetually falling 
water. 

She has called! he thought. Who is that: she, whose voice 
is so powerful that these men, exhausted to death by utter 
weariness, voluntarily throw off sleep, which is the sweetest 
thing of all to the weary— to follow her when her voice calls? 

It can’t be very much further to the centre of the earth . . . 

Still deeper— still deeper down? 

No longer any light round about, only, here and there, 
twinkling pocket torches, in men’s hands. 

At last, in the far distance, a dull shimmer. 

Have we wandered so far to walk towards the sun, thought 
Freder, and does the sun dwell in the bowels of the earth? 

The procession came to a standstill. Freder stopped too. 
He staggered against the dry, cool stones. 

Where are we, he thought— in a cave? If the sun dwells 
here, then she can’t be at home now. ... I am afraid we have 
come in vain. . . . Let us turn back, brother . . . Let us 
sleep. . . . 

He slid along the wall, fell on his knees, leant his head 
against the stone. . . . how smooth. it was. 

The murmur of human voices was around him, like the 
rustling of trees, moved by the wind. . . . 

He smiled peacefully. It’s wonderful to be tired. . . . 

Then a voice— a voice began to speak. . . . 

Oh— sweet voice, thought Freder dreamily. Tender be- 
loved voice, your voice, Virgin-mother! I have fallen asleep. 

. . . Yes, I am dreaming! I am dreaming of your voice, 
beloved! 

But a slight pain at his temple made him think: I am 
leaning my head on stone. ... I am conscious of the ^oldness 
which comes out of the stone. ... I feel coldness under my 
knees. ... so I am not sleeping— I am only dreaming. . . . sup- 
pose it is not a dream . . . ? Suppose it is reality . . . ? 

With an exertion of will which brought a groan from 
him he forced open his eyes and looked about him. 

63 


METROPOLIS 


A vault, like the vault of a sepulchre, human heads so 
closely crowded together as to produce the effect of clods 
on a freshly ploughed field. All heads turned towards one 
point: to the source of a light, as mild as God. 

Candles bjrmt with sword-like flames. Slender, lustrous 
swords of light stood in a circle around the head of a girl, 
whose voice was as the Amen of God. 

The voice spoke, but Freder did not hear the words. He 
heard nothing but a sound, the blessed melody of which was 
saturated with sweetness as is the air of a garden of blossoms 
with fragrance. And suddenly there sprang up above this 
melody the wild throb of a heart-beat. The air stormed with 
bells. The walls shook under the surf of an invisible organ. 
Weariness— exhaustion— faded out! He felt his body from 
head to foot to be one single instrument of blissfulness— all 
strings stretched to bursting point, yet tuned together into 
the purest, hottest, most radiant accord, in which his whole 
being hung, quivering. 

He longed to stroke with his hands the stones on which 
he knelt. He longed to kiss with unbounded tenderness the 
stones on which he rested his head. God— God— God- 
beat- the heart in his breast, and every throb was a thank- 
offering. He looked at the girl, and yet he did not see her. 
He saw only a shimmer; he knelt before it. 

Gracious one, formed his mouth. Mine! Mine! My beloved! 
How could the world have existed before you were? How 
must God have smiled when he created you! You are speak- 
ing?— What are you saying?— My heart is shouting within 
me— I cannot catch your words. . . t Be patient with me, 
gracious one, beloved! 

Without his being aware of it, drawn by an invisible un- 
breakable cord, he pushed himself forward on his knees, 
nearer and nearer to the shimmer which the girl’s face 
was to him. At last he was so near that he could have touched 
the hem of her dr ess with his outstretched hand. 

“Look at me. Virgin!” implored his eyes. “Mother, look 
at me!” 

But her gentle eyes looked out over him. Her lips said: 

“My brothers. ...” _ 


64 


METROPOLIS 


And stopped dumb, as though alarmed. 

Freder raised his head. Nothing had happened— nothing 
to speak of, only that the air which passed through the 
room had suddenly become audible, like a raised breath, and 
that it was cool, as though coming in through open doors. 

With a faint crackling sound the swords of flame bowed 
themselves. Then they stood still again. 

“Speak, my beloved!” said Freder’s heart. 

Yes, now she spoke. This is what she said: 

“Do you want to know how the building of the Tower of 
Babel began, and do you want to know how it ended? I see 
a man who comes from the Dawn of the World. He is as 
beautiful as the world, and has a burning heart. He loves 
to walk upon the mountains and to offer his breast unto the 
wind and to speak with the stars. He is strong and rules all 
creatures. He dreams of God and feels himself closely tied 
to him. His nights are filled with faces. 

“One hallowed hour bursts his heart. The firmament is 
above him and his friends. ‘Oh friends! Friends!’ he cries, 
pointing to the stars. ‘Great is the world and its Creator! 
Great is man! Come, let us build a tower, the top of which 
reaches the sky! And when we stand on its top, and hear 
the stars ringing above us, then let us write our creed in 
golden symbols on the top of the tower! Great is the world 
and its creator! And great is man I’ 

“And they set to, a handful of men, full of confidence, 
and they made bricks and dug up to the earth. Never have 
men worked more rapidly, for they all had one thought, one 
aim and one dream. When they rested from work in the 
evening each knew of what the other was thinking. They 
did not need speech to make themselves understood. But 
after some time they knew: The work was greater than their 
working hands. Then they enlisted new friends to their work. 
Then their work grew. It grew overwhelming. Then the 
builders sent their messengers to all four winds of the 
world and enlisted Hands, working Hands for their mighty 
work. 

“The Hands came. The Hands worked for wages. The 
Hands did not even know what they were making. None 

65 


METROPOLIS 


of those building Southwards knew one of those digging 
toward the North. The Brain which conceived the construc- 
tion of the Tower of Babel was unknown to those who built 
it. Brain and Hands were far apart and strangers. Brain and 
Hands became enemies. The pleasure of one became the 
other’s burden. The hymn of praise of one became the other’s 
curse. 

“ ‘Babel!’ shouted one, meaning: Divinity, Coronation, 
Eternal, Triumph! 

“ ‘Babell’ shouted the other, meaning: Hell, Slavery, Eter- 
nal, Damnation! 

“The same word was prayer and blasphemy. Speaking 
the same words, the men did not understand each other. 

“That men no longer understood each other, that Brain 
and Hands no longer understood each other, was to blame 
that the Tower of Babel was given up to destruction, that 
never were the words of those who had conceived it written 
on its top in golden symbols: Great is the world and its 
Creator! And great is man! 

“That Brain and Hands no longer understand each other 
will one day destroy the New Tower of Babel. 

“Brain and Hands need a mediator. The Mediator be- 
tween Brain and Hands must be the Heart. . . .” 

She was silent. A breath like a sigh came up from the 
silent lips of the listeners. 

Then one stood up slowly, resting his fists upon the 
shoulders of the man who crouched before him, and asked, 
raising his thin face with its fanatical eyes to the girl: 

“And where is our mediator, Maria?” 

The girl looked at him, and over her sweet face passed 
the gleam of a boundless confidence. 

“Wait for him,” she said. “He is sure to come.” 

A murmur ran through the rows of men. Freder bowed his 
head to the girl’s feet, His whole soul said: 

“It shall be I.” 

But she did not see him and she did not hear him. 

“Be patient, my brothers!” she said. “The way which your 
mediator must take is long. . . . There are many among you 
who cry, “Fight! Destroy!— Do not fight, my brothers, for 

66 


METROPOLIS 


that makes you to sin. Believe me: One will come, who will 
speak for you— who will be the mediator between you, the 
Hands, and the man whose Brain and Will are over you all. 
He will give you something which is more precious than 
anything which anybody could give you: To be free, with- 
out sinning.” 

She stood up from the stone upon which she had been 
sitting. A movement ran through the heads turned towards 
her. A voice was raised. The speaker was not to be seen. It 
was as if they all spoke: 

“We shall wait, Maria. But not much longer— I” 

The girl was silent. With her sad eyes she seemed to be 
seeking the speaker among the crowd. 

A man who stood before her spoke up to her: 

“And if we fight— where will you be then?” 

“With you!” said the girl, opening her hands with the 
gesture of one sacrificing. “Have you ever found me faithless?” 

“Never!” said the men. “You are like gold to us. We shall 
do what you expect of us.” 

“Thank you,” said the girl, closing her eyes. With bowed 
head she stood there, listening to the sound of retiring feet— 
feet which walked in hard shoes. 

Only when all about her had become silent and when the 
last footfall had died away she sighed and opened her eyes. 

Then she saw a man, wearing the blue linen and the 
black cap and the hard shoes, kneeling at her feet. 

She bent down. He raised his head. She looked at him. 

And then she recognised him. 

(Behind them, in a vault that was shaped like a pointed, 
devil’s-ear, one man’s hand seized another man’s arm. 

“Hush! Keep quiet!” whispered the voice, which was 
soundless and yet which had the effect of laughter— like the 
laughter of spiteful mockery.) 

The girl’s face was as a crystal, filled with snow. She 
made a movement as if for flight. But her knees would not 
obey her. Reeds which stand in troubled water do not 
tremble more than her shoulders trembled. 


67 


METROPOLIS 


“If you have come to betray us, son of Joh Fredersen, 
then you will have but little blessing from it,” she said softly, 
but in a clear voice. 

He stood up and remained standing before her. 

“Is that all the faith you have in me?” he asked gravely. 

She said nothing, but looked at him. Her eyes filled with 
tears. 

"You . . .” said the man. "What shall I call you? I do not 
know your name. I have always called you just ‘y° u> ’ 
the bad days and worse nights, for I did not know if I should 
find you again, I always called you only, ‘you-’ . . . Will you 
tell me, at last, what your name is?” 

"Maria,” answered the girl. 

“Maria. . . . That should be your name . . . you did not 
make it easy for me to find my way to you, Maria.” 

“And why did you seek your way to me? And why do 
you wear the blue linen uniform? Those condemned to wear 
it all their life long, live in an underground city, which is 
accounted a wonder of the world in all the five continents. It 
is an architectural wonder— that is true. It is light and shining 
bright and a model of tidiness. It lacks nothing but the sun— 
and the rain— and the moon by night— nothing but the sky. 
That is why the children which are bom there have their 
gnome-like faces. . . . Do you want go down into this city 
under the earth in order the more to enjoy your dwelling 
which lies so high above the great Metropolis, in the light 
of the sky? Are you wearing the uniform, which you have on 
to-day, for fun?” 

“No, Maria. I shall always wear it now.” 

“As Joh Fredersen’s son?” 

“He no longer has a son . . . unless— you, yourself, give 
him back his son.” 

(Behind them, in a vault that was shaped like a pointed 
devil’s-ear, one man’s hand was laid upon another man’s 
mouth. 

“It is written,” whispered a laugh: “Therefore shall a 
man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his 
wife . . .") 

68 


METROPOLIS 


“Won’t you understand me?” asked Freder. “Why do you 
look at me with such stern eyes? You wish me to be a medi- 
ator between Joh Fredersen and those whom you call your 
brothers. . . . There can be no mediator between heaven and 
hell who never was in heaven and hell. ... I never knew hell 
until yesterday. That is why I failed so deplorably, yesterday, 
when I spoke to my father for your brothers. Until you stood 
before me for the first time, Maria, I lived the life of a 
dearly loved son. I did not know what an unrealisable 
wish was. I knew no longing, for everything was mine. . . . 
Young as I am, I have exhausted the pleasures of the 
earth, down to the very bottom. I had an aim— a gamble 
with Death: A flight to the stars. . . . And then you came and 
showed me my brothers .... From that day on I have 
sought you. I have so longed for you that I should gladly and 
unhesitatingly have died, had somebody told me that that 
was the way to you. But as it was, I had to live and seek 
another way . . 

“To me, or to your brothers . . . p” 

“To you, Maria ... I will not make myself out to you to 
be better than I am. I want to come to you, Maria— and I 
want you ... I love mankind, not for its own sake, but for 
your sake— because you love it. I do not want to help man- 
kind for its own sake, but for your sake— because you wish 
it. Yesterday I did good to two men; I helped one whom 
my father had dismissed. And I did the work of the man, 
whose uniform I have on. . . . That was my way to you. . . . 
God bless you . . .” 

His voice failed him. The girl stepped up to him. She took 
his hands in both her hands. She gently turned the palms 
upward, and considered them, looked at them with her 
Madonna-eyes, and folded her hands tenderly around his, 
which she carefully laid together. 

“Maria,” he said, without a sound. 

She let his hands fall and raised her’s to his head. She 
laid her finger-tips on his cheeks. With her fingertips she 
stroked his eyebrows, his temples, twice, three times. 

Then he snatched her to his heart and they kissed each 
other . . . 


METROPOLIS 

He no longer felt the stones under his feet. A wave carried 
him, him and the girl whom he held clasped to him as 
though he wished to die of it— and the wave came from the 
bottom of the ocean, roaring as though the whole sea were 
an organ; and the wave was of file and flung right up to the 
heavens. 

Then sinking . . . sinking . . . endlessly gliding down- 
right down to the womb of the world, the source of the 
beginning. . . . Thirst and quenching drink . . . hunger and 
satiation . . . pain and deliverance from it . . . death and 
rebirth . . . 

“You . . said the man to the girl's lips. “You are really 
the great mediatress. . . . You are all that is most sacred on 
earth. . . . You are all goodness. . . . You are all grace. ... To 
doubt you is to doubt God . . . Maria— Maria— you 
called me— here I ami” 

(Behind them, in a vault that was shaped like a pointed 
deviTs-ear, one man leant towards another man’s ear. 

“You wanted to have the Futura's face from me. . . . There 
you have your model . . .” 

"Is that a commission?” 

“Yes.”) 

“Now you must go, Freder,” said the girl. Her Madonna 
eyes looked at him. 

"Go— and leave you here?” 

She turned grave and shook her head. 

"Nothing will happen to me,” she said. “There is not one, 
among those who know this place, whom I cannot trust 
as though he were my blood brother. But what is between 
us is nobody's affair; it would vex me to have to explain—” 
(and now she was smiling again)— "what is inexplicable. . . . 
Do vou see that?” 

“Yes,” he said. “Forgive me. . . .” 

(Behind them, in a vault that was shaped like a pointed 
devil's-ear, a man took himself away from the wall. 

“You know what you have to do,” he said in a low voice. 


70 


METROPOLIS 

‘Tes ,” came the voice of the other, idly, sleepily, out of 
the darkness. “But wait a bit, friend. ... I must ask you 
something. . . .” 

“Well?” 

“Have you forgotten your own creed?” 

For one second a lamp twinkled through the room, that 
was shaped like a pointed devil’s ear, impaling the face of 
the man, who had already turned to go, on the pointed 
needle of its brilliance. 

“That sin and suffering are twin-sisters. . . . you will be 
sinning against two people, friend. . . .” 

“What has that to do with you?” 

“Nothing. . . Or— little. Freder is Hel’s son. . . .” 

“And mine. . . .” 

“Yes. . . ” 

“It is he whom I do not wish to lose” 

“Better to sin once more?” 

“Yes.” 

“And—” 

“To suffer. Yes.” 

“Very well, friend,” and in the voice was an inaudible 
laugh of mockery: “May it happen to you according to your 
creed. ... 1” 

The girl walked through the passages that were so familiar 
to her. The bright little lamp in her hand roved over the 
roof of stone and over the stone walls, where, in niches, the 
thousand-year-old dead slept. 

The girl had never known fear of the dead; only rever- 
ence and gravity in face of their gravity. To-day she saw 
neither wall nor dead. She walked on, smiling and not know- 
ing she did it. She felt like singing. With an expression of 
happiness, which was still incredulous and yet complete, she 
said the name of her beloved over to herself. 

Quite softly: “Freder. . . .” And once more: “Freder. . . .” 
Then she raised her head, listening attentively, standing 
quite still. . . . 

It came back as a whisper: An echo?— No. 

Almost inaudibly a word was breathed: 

71 


METROPOLIS 


“Maria. . . 

She turned around, blissfully startled. Was it possible that 
he had come back. 

“Freder— I” she called. She listened. 

No answer. 

“Freder— I” 

Nothing. 

But suddenly there came a cool draught of air which 
made the hair at her neck quiver, and a hand of snow 
ran down her back. 

There came an agonized sigh— a sigh which would not 
come to an end. . . . 

The girl stood still. The bright little lamp which she 
held in her hand let its gleam play tremblingly about her 
feet. 

“Freder. . . . P” 

Now her voice, too, was only a whisper. 

No answer. But, behind her, in the depths of the passage 
she would have to pass through, a gentle, gliding slink 
became perceptible: feet in soft shoes on rough stones. . . . 

That was. . . . yes, that was strange. Nobody, apart from 
her, ever came this way. Nobody could be here. And, if 
somebody were here, then it was no friend. . . . 

Certainly nobody whom she wanted to meet. 

Should she let him by?— yes. 

A second passage opened to her left. She did not know it 
well. But she would not follow it up. She would only wait in 
it until the man outside— the man behind her— had gone by. 

She pressed herself againt the wall of the strange passage, 
keeping still and waiting quite silently. She did not breath. 
She had extinguished the lamp. She stood in utter darkness, 
immovable. 

She listened: the gliding feet were approaching. They 
walked in darkness as she stood in darkness. Now they were 
here. Now they must. . . . they must go past. . . . But they 
did not go. They stood quite still. Before the opening to the 
passage in which she stood, the feet stopped still and 
seemed to wait. 

For what. . . ? For her. . . ? 


72 


METROPOLIS 


In the complete silence the girl suddenly heard her 
own heart. . . . She heard her own heart, like pump-works, 
beating more and more quickly, throbbing more and more 
loudly. These loud throbbing heartbeats must also be heard 
by the man who kept the opening to the passage. And sup- 
pose he did not stay there any longer. . . . suppose he came 
inside. . . . she could not hear his coming, her heart throbbed 
so. 

She groped, with fumbling hand, along the stone wall. 
Without breathing, she set her feet, one before the other. . . . 
Only to get away from the entrance. . . . Away from the 
place where the other was standing. . . . 

Was she wrong? Or were the feet really coming after her? 
Soft, slinking shoes on rough stones? Now the agonised, 
heavy breathing, heavier still, and nearer .... cold breath 
on her neck. . . . Then- 

Nothing more. Silence. And waiting. And watching- 
keeping on the look-out. . . . 

Was it not as if a creature, such as the world had never 
seen: trunkless, nothing but arms, legs and head. . . . but 
what a head! God— God in heaven! . . . was crouching on the 
floor before her, knees drawn up to chin, the damp arms 
supported right and left, against the walls, near her hips, 
so that she stood defenceless, caught? Did she not see the 
passage lighted by a pale shimmer— and did not the shimmer 
come from the being’s jelly-fish head? 

“Freder!” she thought. She bit the name tightly between 
her jaws, yet heard the scream with which her heart 
screamed it. 

She threw herself forwards and felt— she was free— she 
was still free— and ran and stumbled, and pulled herself up 
again and staggered from wall to wall, knocking herself 
bloody, suddenly clutched into space, stumbled, fell to the 
ground, felt. . . . Something lay there. . . . what? No— No- 
No-! 

The lamp had long since fallen from her hand. She raised 
herself to her knees and clapped her fists to her ears, in 
order not to hear the feet, the slinking feet coming nearer. She 
knew herself to be imprisoned in darkness and yet opened 

73 


METROPOLIS 


her eyes because she could no longer bear the circles of 
fire, the wheels of flame behind her closed lids — 

And saw her own shadow thrown, gigantic, on the wall 
before her, and behind her was light, and before her lay 
a man— 

A man?— That was not a man. . . . That was the remains 
of a man, with his back half leaning against the wall, half 
slipped down, and on his skeleton feet, which almost touched 
the girl's knees, were the slender shoes, pointed and purple- 
red. . . . 

With a shriek which tore her throat, the girl threw herself 
up, backwards— and then on and on, without looking round, 
pursued by the light which lashed her own shadow in springs 
before her feet— pursued by long, soft, feathery feet— by 
feet which walked in red shoes, by the icy breath which 
blew at her back. 

She ran, screamed and ran— 

“Freder. ... I Freder. . . I" 

Her throat rattled, she fell. 

There were some stairs. . . . Crumbling stairs She 

pressed her bleeding hands, right and left, against the stone 
wall, by the stone steps. She dragged herself up. She stag- 
gered up, step by step. . . . There was the top. 

The stairs ended in a stone trap-door. 

The girl groaned: “Freder ... I” 

She stretched both fists above her. She pushed head and 
shoulders against the trap-door. 

And one more groan: “Freder. . . .” 

The door rose and fell back with a crash. 

Below— deep down— laughter. . . . 

The girl swung herself over the edge of the trapdoor. She 
ran hither and thither, with out-stretched hands. She ran 
along walls, finding no door. She saw the lustre which welled 
up from the depths. By this light she saw a door, which was 
latchless. It had neither bolt nor lock. 

In the gloomy wood glowed, copper-red, the seal of 
Solomon, the pentagram. 

The girl turned around. 


74 


METROPOLIS 

She saw a man sitting on the edge of the trap-door and 
saw his smile. 

Then it was as though she were extinguished, and she 
plunged into nothing. . . . 


CHAPTER VI 


The proprietor of Yoshiwara used to earn money in a 
variety of ways. One of them, and quite positively the most 
harmless, was to make bets that no man— be he never so 
widely travelled— was capable of guessing to what weird 
mixture of races he owed his face. So far he had won all 
such bets, and used to sweep in the money which they 
brought him with hands, the cruel beauty of which would 
not have shamed an ancestor of the Spanish Borgias, the nails 
of which, however, showed an inobliterable shimmer of blue; 
on the other hand, the politeness of his smile on such profit- 
able occasions originated unmistakably in that graceful in- 
sular world, which, from the eastern border of Asia, smiles 
gently and watchfully across at mighty America. 

There were prominent properties combined within him 
which made him appear to be a general representative of 
Great Britain and Ireland, for he was as red-haired, chaff- 
loving and with as good a head for drink as if his name had 
been McFosh, avaricious and superstitious as a Scotsman 
and— in certain circumstances, which made it requisite, of 
that highly bred obliviousness, which is a matter of will and 
a foundation stone of the British Empire. He spoke practicallly 
all living languages as though his mother had taught him 
to pray in them and his father to curse. His greed appeared 
to hail from the Levant, his contentment from China. And, 
above all this, two quiet, observant eyes watched with 
German patience and perseverance. 

As to the rest, he was called, for reasons, unknown, Sep- 
tember. 


75 


METROPOLIS 


The visitants to Yoshiwara had met September in a variety 
of emotions— from the block-headed dozing away of the 
well-contented bushman to the dance-ecstatic of the Uk- 
rainer. 

But to come upon his features in an expression of absolute 
bewilderment was reserved fpr Slim, when, on the morning 
after his having lost sight of his young master, he set throb- 
bing the massive gong which demanded entrance to Yoshi- 
wara. 

It was most unusual that the generally very obliging door 
of Yoshiwara was not opened before the fourth gong-signal; 
and that this was performed by September himself and with 
this expression of countenance deepened the impression of 
an only tolerably overcome catastrophe. Slim bowed. Sep- 
tember looked at him. A mask of brass seemed to fall over 
his face. But a chance glance at the driver of the taxi, in 
which Slim had come tore it off again. 

“Would to God your tin-kettle had gone up in the air 
before you could have brought that lunatic here yesterday 
evening,” he said. "He drove away my guests before they 
even thought of paying. The girls are huddling down in the 
comers like lumps of wet floor-cloth— that is, those who are 
not in hysterics. Unless I call in the police I might just as 
well close the house; for it doesn’t look as though that chap 
will have recovered his five senses by this evening.” 

"Of whom are you speaking, September?” asked Slim. 

September looked at him. At this moment the tiniest 
hamlet in North Siberia would have flatly refused to have 
been proclaimed the birth-place of so idiotic looking an 
individual. 

"If it is the man for whom I have come here to look,” 
continued Slim, “then I shall rid you of him in a more 
agreeable and swifter manner than the police." 

“And for what man are you looking, sir?” 

Slim hesitated. He cleared his throat slightly. “You know 
the white silk which is woven for comparatively few in 
Metropolis. . . .” 

In the long line of ancestors, the mainfold sediment of 
whom had been crystalised into September, a fur-trader 

76 


METROPOLIS 

from Tamopolis must also have been represented and he 
now smiled out from the corners of his great-grandson’s wily 
eyes. 

“Come in, sir!” the proprietor of Yoshiwara invited Slim, 
with true Singalese gentleness. 

Slim entered. September closed the door behind him. 

In the moment when the matutinal roar of the great 
Metropolis no longer bellowed up from the streets, another 
roar from inside the building became perceptible— the 
roar of a human voice, hotter than the voice of a beast of 
prey, mad-drunk with triumph. 

“Who is that?” asked Slim, involuntarily dropping his own 
voice. 

“He— I” answered September, and how he could stow 
the smooth and pointed vengefulness of whole Corsica into 
the monosyllable remained his own secret. 

Slim’s glance became uncertain, but he said nothing. He 
followed September over soft and glossy straw mats, along 
walls of oiled paper, narrowly framed in bamboo. 

Behind one of these walls the weeping of a woman was 
to be heard— monotonous, hopeless, heartbreaking, like a long 
spell of rainy days which envelope the summit of Fuji Yama. 

“That’s Yuki,” murmured September, with a fierce glance 
at the paper prison of this pitiful weeping. “She’s been 
crying since midnight, as if she wanted to be the source of 
a new salt sea. . . . This evening she will have a swollen 
potato on her face instead of a nose. . . . Who pays for it?— 
1 d „° r 

“Why is the little snowflake crying?” asked Slim, half 
thoughtlessly, for the roaring of the human voice, coming 
from the depths of the house occupied all the ears and 
attention he possessed. 

“Oh, she isn't the only one,” answered September, with 
the tolerant mien of one who owns a prosperous harbour 
tavern in Shanghai. “But she is at least tame. Plum Blossom 
has been snapping about her like a young Puma, and Miss 
Rainbow has thrown the Saki bowl at the mirror and is trying 
to cut her artery with the chips— and all on account of this 
white silk youngster.” 


77 


METROPOLIS 

The agitated expression on Slim’s face deepened. He 
shook his head. 

“How did he manage to get such a hold over them. . . 
he said, and it was not meant to be a question. 

September shrugged his shoulders. 

“Maohee. . . .” he said in a sing-song tone, as though be- 
ginning one of those Greenland fairy tales, which, the 
quicker they sent one to sleep are the more highly appre- 
ciated. 

“What is that: Maohee?” asked Slim, irritably. 

September drew his head down between his shoulders. 
The Irish and the British blood-corpuscles in his veins seemed 
to be falling out, violently: but the impenetrable Japanese 
smile covered this up with its mantle before it could grow 
dangerous. 

“You don’t know what Maohee is. . . . Not a soul in the 
great Metropolis knows. . . . No. . . . Nobody. But here 
in Yoshiwara they all know.” 

“I wish to know, too, September,” said Slim. 

Generations of Roman lackeys bowed within September 
as he said, “Certainly, sir!” But they did not get the better 
of the wink of the heavy-drinking lying grandfathers in 
Copenhagen. “Maohee, that is. . . . Isn’t it odd, that, of all 
the ten thousand who have been guests here in Yoshiwara 
and who had experienced in detail what Maohee stands 
for, outside they know nothing more about it? Don’t walk 
so fast, sir. The yelling gentleman down there won’t run 
away from us— and if I am to explain to you what Maohee 
means. . . .” 

“Drugs, I expect, September—?” 

“My dear sir, the lion is also a cat. Maohee is a drug: 
but what is a cat beside a lion? Maohee is from the other 
side of ' the earth. It is the divine, the only thing-because 
it is the only thing which makes us feel the intoxication of 
the others.” 

“The intoxication— of the others. . . . ?” repeated Slim, 
stopping still. 

September smiled the smile of Hotei the god of Happiness, 
78 


METROPOLIS 

who likes little children. He laid the hand of the Borgia, 
with the suspiciously blue shimmering nails on Slim's arm. 

“The intoxication of the others— Sir, do you know what 
that means? Not of one other— no, of the multitude which 
rolls itself into a lump, the rolled up intoxication of the 
multitude gives Maohee its friends . . 

“Has Maohee many friends, September?” 

The proprietor of Yoshiwara grinned, apocalyptically. 

“Sir, in this house there is a round room. You shall see it. 
It has not its like. It is built like a winding seashell, like a 
mammoth shell, in the windings of which thunders the surf 
of seven oceans; in these windings people crouch, so densely 
crowded that their faces appear as one face. No one knows 
the other, yet they are all friends. They all fever. They are 
all pale with expectation. They have all clasped hands. The 
trembling of those who sit right down at the bottom of the 
shell runs right through the windings of the mammoth shell, 
right up to those, who, from the gleaming top of the spiral, 
send out their own trembling towards it . . .” 

September gulped for breath. Sweat stood like a fine chain 
of beads on his brow. An international smile of insanity parted 
his prating mouth. 

“Go on, September!” said Slim. 

"On?— On?— Suddenly the rim of the shell begins to 
turn . . . gently ... ah how gently, to music such as would 
bring a tenfold murderer-bandit to sobs and his judges to 
pardon him on the scaffold— to music on hearing which 
deadly enemies kiss, beggars believe themselves to be kings, 
the hungry forget their hunger— to such music the shell 
revolves around its stationary heart, until it seems to free it- 
self from the ground and, hovering, to revolve about itself. 
The people scream— not loudly, no, no!— they scream like 
the birds that bathe in the sea. The twisted hands are 
clenched to fists. The bodies rock in one rhythm. Then comes 
the first stammer of: Maohee. . . . The stammer swells, 
becomes waves of spray, becomes a spring tide. The 
revolving shell roars: Maohee . . . Maohee ... I It is as 
though a little flame must rest on everyone’s hair parting, 
like St. Elm’s fire . . . Maohee . . . Maohee! They call on their 

79 


METROPOLIS 


god. They call on him whom the finger of the god touches 
today. . . . No one knows from where he will come today. . . . 
He is there. . . . They know he is amongst them. ... He must 
break out from the rows of them. ... He must. ... He must, 
for they call him: Maohee . . . Maoheel And suddenly— I” 

The hand of the Borgia flew up and hung in the air like 
a brown claw. 

“And suddenly a man is standing in the middle of the 
shell, in the gleaming circle, on the milk-white disc. But it is 
no man. It is the embodied conception of the intoxication of 
them all. He is not conscious of himself. ... A slight froth 
stands on his mouth, His eyes are stark and bursting and 
are yet like rushing meteors which leave waving tracks of 
fire behind them on the route from heaven to earth. . . . He 
stands and lives his intoxication. He is what his intoxication 
is. From the thousands of eyes which have cast anchor into 
his soul the power of intoxication streams into him. There is 
no delight in God’s creation which does not reveal itself, 
surmounted by the medium of these intoxicated souls. What 
he says becomes visible, what he hears becomes audible to 
all. What he feels: Power, desire, madness, is felt by them 
all. On the shimmering area, around which the shell revolves, 
to music beyond all description, one in ecstasy lives the 
thousandfold ecstasy which embodies itself in him, for 
thousands of others . . 

September stopped and smiled at Slim. 

“That, sir, is Maohee . . 

“It must indeed be a powerful drug,” said Slim with a 
feeling of dryness in his throat, “which inspires the pro- 
prietor of Yoshiwara to such a hymn. Do you think that that 
yelling individual down there would join in this song of 
praise?” 

“Ask him yourself, sir,” said September. 

He opened the door and let Slim enter. Just over the 
threshold Slim stopped, because at first he saw nothing. A 
gloom, more melancholy that the deepest darkness, spread 
over a room, the dimensions of which he could not estimate. 
The floor under his feet inclined in a' barely perceptible slope. 
Where it stopped there appeared to be gloomy emptiness. 

80 


METROPOLIS 

Right and left, spiral walls, billowing outwards, swept away 
to each side. 

That was all Slim saw. But from the empty depths before 
him came a white shimmer, no stronger than if coming from 
a field of snow. On this shimmer there floated a voice, that 
of a murderer and of one being murdered. 

Light, September!” said Slim with a gulp. An un- 
bearable feeling of thirst gnawed at his throat. 

The room slowly grew brighter, as though the light were 
coming unwillingly. Slim saw, he was standing in one of the 
windings of the round room, which was shaped like a shell. 
He was standing between the heights and the depths, 
separated by a low banister from the emptiness from which 
came the snow-like light and the murderer’s voice and the 
voice of his victim. He stepped to the banister, and leaned far 
over it. A milk-white disc, lighted from beneath and lumin- 
ous. At the edge of the disc, like a dark, rambling pattern 
on a plate-rim, women, crouching, kneeling there, in their 
gorgeous attire, as though drunken. Some had dropped their 
foreheads to the ground, their hands clutched above their 
ebony hair. Some crouched, huddled together in clumps, 
head pressed to head, symbols of fear. Some were swaying 
rhythmically from side to side as if calling on gods. Some 
were weeping. Some were as if dead. 

But they all seemed to be the hand-maids of the man 
on the snow-light illuminated disk. 

The man wore the whilte silk woven for comparatively 
few in Metropolis. He wore the soft shoes in which the be- 
loved sons of mighty fathers seemed to caress the earth. But 
the silk hung in tatters about the body of the man and the 
shoes looked as though the feet within them bled. 

“Is that the man for whom you are looking, sir?” asked 
a Levantine cousin from out September, leaning confidently 
towards slim's ear. 

Slim did not answer. He was looking at the man. 

"At least,” continued September, “it is the youngster who 
came here yesterday by the same car as you to-day. And the 
devil take him for it! He has turned my revolving shell into 
the fore-court of hell! He has been roasting souls! I have 

81 


METROPOLIS 


known Maohee-drugged beings to have fancied themselves 
Kings, Gods, Fire, and Storm— and to have forced others to 
feel themselves Kings, Gods, Fire, and Storm. I have known 
those in the ecstasy of desire to have forced women down 
to them from the highest part of the shell’s wall, that 
they, diving, like seagulls, with out-spread hands, have 
swooped to his feet, without injuring a limb, while others 
have fallen to their death. That man there was no God, no 
Storm, no Fire, and his drunkenness most certainly inspired 
him with no desire. It seems to me that he had come up 
from hell and is roaring in the intoxication of damnation. He 
did not know that the ecstasy for men who are damned is 
also damnation. . . . The fool! The prayer he is praying will 
not redeem him. He believes himself to be a machine and is 
praying to himself. He has forced the others to pray to him. 
He has ground them down. He has pounded them to a 
powder. There are many dragging themselves around Me- 
tropolis to-day who cannot comprehend why their limbs are 
as if broken . . .” 

“Be quiet, September!” said Slim hoarsely. His hand 
flew to his throat which felt like a glowing cork, like smoul- 
dering charcoal. 

September fell silent, shrugging his shoulders. Words 
seethed up from the depths like lava. 

“I am the Three-in-one— Lucifer— Belial— Satan— 1 I am 
the everlasting Death! I am the everlasting Noway! Come 
unto me—! In my hell there are many mansions! I shall 
assign them to you! I am the great king of all the damned— 1 
I am a machine! I am the tower above you all! I am a ham- 
mer, a fly-wheel, a fiery oven! I am a murderer and of what 
I murder I make no use. I want victims and victims do not 
appease me! Pray to me and know: I do not hear you! Shout 
at me: Pater-noster! Know: I am deaf!” 

Slim turned around; he saw September’s face as a chalky 
mask at his shoulder. Maybe that, among September’s an- 
cestresses there was one who hailed from an isle in the South 
sea, where gods mean little— spirits everything. 

“That's no more a man,” he whispered with ashen lips. 
“A man would have died of it long ago. . . . Do you see his 

82 


METROPOLIS 


arms, sir? Do you think a man can imitate the pushing of a 
machine for hours and hours at a time without its killing 
him? He is as dead as stone. If you were to call to him he’d 
collapse and break to pieces like a plaster statue.” 

It did not seem as though September’s words had pene- 
trated into Slim’s consciousness. His face wore an expression 
of loathing and suffering and he spoke as one who speaks 
with pain. 

“I hope, September, that to-night you have had your last 
opportunity of watching the effects of Maohee on your 
guests. . . .” 

September smiled his Japanese smile. 

He did not answer. 

Slim stepped up to the banister at the edge of the curve 
of the shell in which he stood. He bent down towards the 
milky disc. He cried a high sharp tone which had the effect of 
a whistle: 

“Eleven thousand eight hundred and eleven— I” 

The man on the shimmering disc swung around as though 
he had received a blow in the side. The hellish rhythm of 
his arms ceased, running itself out in vibration. The man fell 
to earth like a log and did not move again. 

Slim ran down the passage, reached the end and pushed 
asunder the circle of women, who, stiffened with shock, 
seemed to be thrown into deeper horror more by the end 
of that which they had brought to pass than by the beginning. 
He knelt down beside the man, looked him in the face and 
pushed the tattered silk away from his heart. He did not 
give his hand time to test his pulse. He lifted the man up 
and carried him out in his arms. The sighing of the women 
soughed behind him like a dense, mist-coloured curtain. 

September stepped across his path. He swept aside as 
he caught Slim’s glance at him. He ran along by him, like 
an active dog, breathing rapidly; but he said nothing. 

Slim reached the door of Yoshiwara. September, himself, 
opened it for him. Slim stepped into the street. The driver 
pulled open the door of the taxi; he looked in amazement at 
the man who hung in Slim's arms, in tatters of white silk with 
which the wind was playing, and who was more awful to 

83 


METROPOLIS 


look on than a corpse. 

The proprietor of Yoshiwara bowed repeatedly while Slim 
was climbing into the car. But Slim did not give him another 
glance. September’s face, which was as grey as steel, was 
reminiscent of the blades of those ancient swords, forged of 
Indian steel, in Shiras or Ispahan and on which, hidden by 
ornamentation, stand mocking and deadly words. 

The car glided away: September looked after it. He smiled 
the peacable smile of Eastern Asia. 

For he knew perfectly well what Slim did not know, and 
what, apart from him, nobody in Metropolis knew, that with 
the first drop of water or wine which moistened the lips of 
a human being, there disappeared even the very faintest 
memory of all which appertained to the wonders of the 
drug, Maohee. 

The car stopped before the next medical depot. Male 
nurses came and carried away the bundle of humanity, 
shivering in tatters of white silk, to the doctor on duty. Slim 
looked about him. He beckoned to a policeman who was 
stationed near the door. 

‘Take down a report,” he said. His tongue would hardly 
obey him, so parched was it with thirst. 

The policeman entered the house after him. 

“Wait I” said Slim, more with the movement of his head 
than in words. He saw a glass jug of water standing on the 
table and the coolness of the water had studded the jug 
with a thousand pearls. 

Slim drank like an animal which finds drink on coming 
from the desert. He put down the jug and shivered. A short 
shudder passed through him. 

He turned around and saw the man he had brought with 
him lying on a bed over which a young doctor was bending. 

The bps of the sick man were moistened with wine. His 
eyes stood wide open, staring up at the ceiling, tears upon 
tears running gently and incessantly from the comers of 
his eyes, down over his temples. It was as though they 
had nothing to do with the man— as though they were 
trickling from a broken vessel and could not stop trickling 
until the vessel had run quite empty. 

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METROPOLIS 

Slim looked the doctor in the face; the latter shrugged 
his shoulders. Slim bent over the prostrate man. 

"Georgi,” he said in a low voice, “can you hear me?” 

The sick man nodded; it was the shadow of a nod. 

“Do you know who I am?” 

A second nod. 

“Are you in a condition to answer two or three questions?” 
Another nod. 

“How did you get the white silk clothes?” 

For a long time he received no answer apart from the 
gentle falling of the tear drops. Then came the voice, softer 
than a whisper. 

“. . . . He changed with me. . . .” 

“Who did?” 

“Freder. . . . Joh Fredersen’s son. . . ” 

“And then, Georgi?” 

“He told me I was to wait for him. . . 

“Wait where, Georgi?” 

A long silence. And then, barely audible: 

“Ninetieth Sheet. House seven. Seventh floor. . . .” 

Slim did not question him further. He knew who lived 
there. He looked at the doctor; the latter’s face wore a com- 
pletely impenetrable expression. 

Slim drew a breath as though he were sighing. He said, 
more deploringly than inquiringly: 

“Why did you not rather go there, Georgi. . . .” 

He turned to go but stopped still as Georgi’s voice came 
wavering after him; 

“. . . . The city. ... all the lights. . . . more than 
enough money. ... It is written. . . . Forgive us our 
trespasses. . . . lead us not into temptation. . . .” 

His voice died away. His head fell to one side. He breathed 
as though his soul wept, for his eyes could do so no longer. 
The doctor cleared his throat cautiously. 

Slim raised his head as though somebody had called him, 
then dropped >'t again. 

“I shall come back again,” he said softly. “He is to remain 
under your care. . . .” 


85 


METROPOLIS 


Georgi was asleep. 

Slim left the room, followed by the policeman. 

"What do you want?” Slim asked with an absent-minded 
look at him. 

“The report, sir.” 

“What report?” 

“I was to take down a report, sir.” 

Slim looked at the policeman very attentively, almost 
meditatively. He raised his hand and rubbed it across his 
forehead. 

“A mistake,” he said. “That was a mistake. . . .” 

The policeman saluted and retired, a little puzzled, for 
he knew Slim. 

He remained standing on the same spot. Again and again 
he rubbed his forehead with the same helpless gesture. 

Then he shook his head, stepped into the car and said: 

“Ninetieth block. . . .” 


CHAPTER Vn 

“Where is Georgi?” asked Freder, his eyes wandering through 
Josaphat’s three rooms, which stretched out before him— 
beautiful, with a rather bewildering super-abundance of arm- 
chairs, divans and silk cushions, with curtains which goldenly 
obscured the light. 

“Who?” asked Josaphat, listlessly. He had waited, had 
not slept and his eyes stood excessively large in his thin, 
almost white face. His gaze, which he did not take from 
Freder, was like hands which are raised adoringly. 

"Georgi,” repeated Freder. He smiled happily with his 
tired mouth. 

“Who is that?” asked Josaphat. 

“I sent him to you.” 

“Nobody has come.” 

Freder looked at him without answering. 

“I sat all night in this chair,” continued Josaphat, mis- 
interpreting Freder 's silence. “I did not sleep a wink. I ex- 

86 


METROPOLIS 


pected you to come at any second, or a messenger to come 
from you, or that you would ring me up. I also informed 
the watchman. Nobody has come, Mr. Freder.” 

Freder still remained silent. Slowly, almost stumblingly he 
stepped over the threshold, into the room raising his right 
hand to his head, as though to take off his hat, then noticing 
that he was wearing the cap, the black cap, which pressed 
the hair tightly down, he swept it from his head; it fell to the 
ground. His hand sank from his brow, over his eyes, resting 
there a little while. Then the other joined it, as though wish- 
ing to console its sister. His form was like that of a young 
birch tree pressed sideways by a strong wind. 

Josaphat’s eyes hung on the uniform which Freder wore. 

“Mr. Freder,” he began cautiously, “how comes it that you 
are wearing these clothes?" 

Freder remained turned away from him. He took his 
hands from his eyes and pressed them to his face as though 
he felt some pain there. 

“Georgi wore them. . . ." He answered. “I gave him 
mine. . . .” 

“Then Georgi is a workman?” 

“Yes. ... I found him before the Pater-noster machine. 
I took his place and sent him to you. . . .” 

“Perhaps he’ll come yet,” answered Josaphat. 

Freder shook his head. 

“He should have been here hours ago. If he had been 
caught when leaving the New Tower of Babel, then someone 
would have come to me when I was standing before the 
machine. It is strange, but there it is; he has not come.” 

“Was there much money in the suit which you exchanged 
with Georgi?” asked Josaphat tentatively, as one who bares a 
wounded spot. 

Freder nodded. 

“Then you must not be surprised that Georgi has not 
come,” said Josaphat. But the expression of shame and pain 
on Freder’s face prevented him from continuing. 

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Freder,” he begged. “Or lie 
down? You look so tired that it is painful to look at you.” 

“I have no time to sit down and not time to lie down, 


87 


METROPOLIS 

either,” answered Freder. He walked through the rooms, aim- 
lessly, senselessly, stopping wherever a chair, a table, offered 
him a hold. “The fact, is this, Josaphat: I told Georgi to come 
here and to wait here for me— or for a message from me. . . . 
It is a thousand to one that Slim, in searching for me, is 
already on Georgi’s track, and it's a thousand to one he gets 
out of him where I sent him. . . .” 

“And you do not want Slim to find you?” 

“He must not find me, Josaphat— not for anything on 
earth. . . .” 

The other stood silent, rather helpless. Freder looked at 
him with a trembling smile. 

“How shall we obtain money, now, Josaphat?” 

“That should offer no difficulty to Joh Fredersen’s son.” 
“More than you think, Josaphat, for I am no longer Joh 
Fredersen’s son. . . .” 

Josaphat raised his head. 

"I do not understand you,” he said, after a pause. 

“There is nothing to misunderstand, Josaphat. I have set 
myself free from my father, and am going my own way. . . .” 
The man who had been the first secretary to the Master 
over the great Metropolis held his breath back in his lungs, 
then released it in streams. 

“Will you let me tell you something, Mr. Freder?” 

“Well ” 

“One does not set oneself free from your father. It is he 
who decides whether one remains with him or must leave him. 

“There is nobody who is stronger than Joh Fredersen. Pie 
is like the earth. As regards the earth we have no will either. 
Her laws keep us eternally perpendicular to the centre of 
the earth, even if we stand on our head. . . . When Joh Freder- 
sen sets a man free it means just as much as if the earth were 
to shut off from a man her powers of attraction. It means fall- 
ing into nothing. ... Joh Fredersen can set free whom he 
may; he will never set free his son. . . .” 

“But what,” answered Freder, speaking feverishly, “if a 
man overcomes the laws of nature?” 

“Utopia, Mr. Freder.” 

“For the inventive spirit of man there is no Utopia: there 

88 


METROPOLIS 


is only a Not-yet. I have made up my mind to venture the 
path. I must take it— yes, I must take it! I do not know the 
way yet, but I shall find it because I must find it. . . .” 

“Wherever you wish, Mr. Freder— I shall go with you. . . 

“Thank youj’ said Freder, reaching out his hand. He felt 
it seized and clasped in a vice-like grip. 

“You know, Mr. Freder, don’t you—” said the strangled 
voice of Josaphat, “that everything belongs to you— every- 
thing that I am and have. ... It is not much, for I have lived 
like a madman. . . . But for to-day, and to-morrow and the 
day after to-morrow. . . .” 

Freder shook his head without losing hold of Josaphat’s 
hand. 

“No, nol” he said, a torrent of red flowing over his face. 
“One does not begin new ways like that. . . . We must try 
to find other ways. ... It will not be easy. Slim knows his 
business.” 

“Perhaps Slim could be won over to you. . . said Josaphat, 
hesitatingly. “For— strange though it may sound, he loves 
you. . . .” 

"Slim loves all his victims. Which does not prevent him, as 
the most considerate and kindly of executioners, from laying 
them before my father’s feet. He is the born tool, but the 
tool of the strongest. He would never make himself the tool 
of the weaker one, for he would thus humiliate himself. And 
you have just told me, Josaphat, how much stronger my 
father is than I. . . 

“If you were to confide yourself to one of your friends. . . .” 

“I have no friends, Josaphat.” 

Josaphat wanted to contradict, but he stopped himself. 
Freder turned his eyes towards him. He straightened himself 
up and smiled— the other’s hand still in his. 

“I have no friends, Josaphat, and, what weighs still 
more, I have no friend. I had play-fellows— sport-fellows— 
but friends? A friend? No, Josaphat! Can one confide oneself 
to somebody of whom one knows nothing but how his laugh- 
ter sounds?” 

He saw the eyes of the other fixed upon him, discerned the 
ardour in them and the pain and the truth. 

89 


METROPOLIS 


“Yes,” he said with a worried smile. “I should like to con- 
fide myself to you. ... I must confide myself to you, Josaphat. 
... I must call you ‘Friend’ and ‘Brother’. ... for I need a 
man who will go with me in trust and confidence to the world’s 
end. Will you be that man?” 

“Yes.” 

“Yes—?” He came to him and laid his hands upon his 
shoulders. He looked closely into his face. He shook him. 
“You say: ‘Yes— 1’ Do you know what that means— for you 
and for me? What a last plummet-drop that is— what a last 
anchorage? I hardly know you— I wanted to help you— I 
cannot even help you now, because I am poorer now than 
you are— but, perhaps, that is all to the good. . . . Joh Freder- 
sen’s son can, perhaps, be betrayed— but I, Josaphat? A 
man who has nothing but a will and an object? It cannot be 
worth while to betray him— eh, Josaphat?” 

“May God kill me as one kills a mangy dog. . . .” 

“That’s all right, that’s all right, . . .” Freder’s smile came 
back again and stood, clear and beautiful in his tired face. “I 
am going now, Josaphat. I want to go to my father’s mother, 
to take her -something which is very sacred to me. ... I 
shall be here again before evening. Shall I find you here 
then?” 

“Yes, Mr. Freder, most certainly!” 

They stretched out their hands towards each other. Hand 
held hand, gripped. They looked at each other. Glance held 
glance, gripped. Then they loosened their grip in silence and 
Freder went. 

A little while later (Josaphat was still standing on the same 
spot on which Freder had left him) there came a knock at 
the door. 

Though the knocking was as gentle, as modest, as the 
knocking of one who has come to beg, there was something 
in it which chased a shiver down Josaphat’s spine. He stood 
still, gazing at the door, incapable of calling out “Come in,” 
or of opening it himself. 

The knocking was repeated, becoming not in the least 
louder. It came for the third time and was still as gentle. But 

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METROPOLIS 


just that deepened the impression that it was inescapable, that 
it would be quite pointless to play deaf permanently. 

“Who is there?” asked Josaphat hoarsely. He knew very 
well who was standing outside. He only asked to gain time— 
to draw breath, which he badly needed. He expected no 
answer; neither did he receive one. 

The door opened. 

In the doorway stood Slim. 

They did not greet each other; neither greeted the other. 
Josaphat: because his gullet was too dry: Slim: because his 
all-observing eye had darted through the room in the second 
in which he put his foot on the threshold, and had found 
something: a black cap, lying on the floor. 

Josaphat followed Slim’s gaze with his eyes. He did not 
stir. With silent step Slim went up to the cap, stooped and 
picked it up. He twisted it gently this way and that, he 
twisted it inside out. 

In the sweat-sodden lining of the cap stood the number, 
11811 . 

Slim weighed the cap in almost affectionate hands, He 
fixed his eyes, which were as though veiled with weariness 
on Josaphat and asked, speaking in a low voice: 

“Where is Freder, Josaphat?” 

“I do not know. . . .” 

Slim smiled sleepily.. He fondled the black cap. Josaphat’s 
hoarse voice continued: 

"... But if I did know you would not get it out of me, 
anyway. . . .” 

Slim looked at Josaphat, still smiling, still fondling the 
black cap. 

"You are quite right,” said he courteously. “I beg your 
pardonl It was an idle question. Of course you will not tell me 
where Mr. Freder is. Neither, is it at all necessary. ... It is 
quite another matter. . . .” 

He pocketed the cap, having carefully rolled it up, and 
looked around the room. He went up to an armchair, stand- 
ing near a low, black, polished table. 

“You permit me?” he asked courteously, seating himself. 

Josaphat made a movement of the head, but the “Please 

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do so,” dried up in his throat. He did not stir from the on* 
spot. 

You live very well here,” said Slim, leaning back and sur- 
veying the room with a sweeping movement of his head- 
“Everything of a soft, half-dark tone. The atmosphere about 
these cushions is a tepid perfume. I can well understand how 
difficult it will be for you to leave this flat.” 

“I have no such intention, however,” said Josaphat. He 
swallowed. 

Slim pressed his eye-lids together, as though he wished to 
sleep. 

"No. . . . Not yet. . . . But very soon. . . .” 

"I should not think of it,” answered Josaphat. His eyes grew 
red, and he looked at Slim, hatred smouldering in bis gaze. 

“No. . . . Not yet. . . . But very soon. . . .” 

Josaphat stood quite still: but suddenly he smote the 
air with his fist, as though beating against an invisible door. 

“What do you want exactly?” he asked pantingly. What 
is that supposed to imply? What do you want from me—?” 

It appeared at first as though Slim had not heard th© 
question. Sleepily, with closed eye-lids, he sat there, breath, 
ing inaudibly. But, as the leather of the chairback squeaked 
under Josaphat’s grasp, Slim said, very slowly, but very 
clearly: 

"I want you to tell me for what sum you will give up this 
flat, Josaphat.” 

" When?” . . 

"Immediately.” 

“. . . . What is that supposed to mean. . , . Immedi- 
ately? . . ." 

Slim opened his eyes, and* they were as cold and bright 
as a pebble in a brook. 

“Immediately means within an hour. . . . Immediately 
means long before this evening. . . .” 

A shiver ran down Josaphat’s back. The hands on his 
hanging arms slowly clenched themselves into fists. 

"Get out, sir. . . .” he said quietly. “Get out of here— I 
Now— 1 At once— 1 Immediately!—” 

The flat is very pretty,” said Slim. “You are unwilling to 

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give it up. It is of value to one who knows how to appreciate 
such things. You will not have time to pack any large trunks, 
either. You can only take what you need for twenty-four 
hours. The journey— new outfit— a year’s expenses— all this 
is to be added to the sum: what is the price of your flat, 
Josaphat?” 

“I shall chuck you into the street,” stammered Josaphat 
with feverish mouth. “I shall chuck you seven stories down 
into the street— through the window, my good sir!— through 
the closed window— if you don’t get out this very secondl” 

“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 Slim'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— I” 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 con- 
fidence: 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!” 


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He laid the third bundle of banknotes on the table. He 
looked at Josaphat. Josaphat’s reddened eyes devoured Iris. 
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 un- 
disturbedly. “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— 1” 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. . . . I” 

“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 him- 
self 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 

94 


METROPOLIS 


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-turoed 
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. 


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METROPOLIS 

“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 VIII 


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 fear- 
less. 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. . . . 

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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 mel” 

The echo of the pillars yelled the words after him. 

The 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. 


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METROPOLIS 


"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. 

Ahl— 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 where- 
abouts, 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— 1” 

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.