Thea Harbou - Metropolis

"The time of horror lies behind me, Freder."

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 eyelids 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 everything corporal from him, even to his innermost self.

Slim held his ground during this peeling scrutiny.

Joh Fredersen said, speaking rather softly:

"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.

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 Fredersen'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 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: "Josaphat… "

"What will you do now, Josaphat?"

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, Josaphat?"

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?"

"Yes!" 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. He shook his head. "Nothing. Go home. Wait. Be calm. Tomorrow 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 revolutions. 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 indicated 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 son was entering the room from which the New Tower of Babel drew the energies for its own requirements.

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