Thea Harbou - Metropolis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The people still sat motionless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Marinus?"

"Yes."

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

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

"That's absolute rubbish… "

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

"That is not true—!" said Freder.

"It is true!"

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

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

"What's the girl's name?"

"Maria… "

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

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

"No!"

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

Freder took his hand and said: "Come!"

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

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

Then a sound arose throughout Metropolis.

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

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

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

The eyes of Josaphat and Freder met.