Thea Harbou - Metropolis

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. September 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 corners 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 from Tarnopolis 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 Sum, involuntarily dropping his own voice.

"He—!" 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? — I do!"

"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."

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 beginning one of those Greenland fairy tales, which, the quicker they sent one to sleep are the more highly appreciated.

"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, 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 itself 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…! 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 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… Maohee! And suddenly—!"

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