Thea Harbou - Metropolis

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

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

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

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

Freder looked Death in the face. Then he said:

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

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

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

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

A voice spoke, like the voice of fire:

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

The echo of the pillars yelled the words after him. \

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.

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

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

Freder hesitated. He dropped his head.

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

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

Then Joh Fredersen's son went.

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

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

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

Peace… Peace…

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

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

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

He stared at a window.

Was he mad?

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

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

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

Freder knocked.

Nothing in the house stirred.

He knocked for the second time.

The house remained dull and obstinate.

He stepped back and looked up at the windows.

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

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

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

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

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

"Freder—!" and once more: "Freder—!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Maria — Maria — Maria—!"

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

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

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

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

The second door. The same.

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

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

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

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