Whenever Josaphat tried, during the days which followed, to break
through the barrier which was drawn around Freder, there was always
a strange person there, and always a different one, who said, with
expressionless mien:
“Mr. Freder cannot receive anybody. Mr. Freder is ill.”
But Freder was not ill—at least not as illness generally manifests
itself among mankind. From morning until evening, from evening until
morning, Josaphat watched the house, the crown of the tower of which
was Freder’s flat. He never saw Freder leave the house. But for hours
at a time he saw, during the night, behind the white-veiled windows,
which ran the breadth of the wall, a shadow wandering up and down—and
saw at the hour of twilight, when the rooves of Metropolis still shone,
bathed in the sun, and the darkness of the ravines of its streets was
flooded out by streams of cold light, the same shadow, a motionless
form, standing on the narrow balcony which ran around this, almost the
highest house in Metropolis.
Yet what was expressed by the shadow’s wandering up and down, by
the motionless standing still of the shadow form, was not illness.
It was uttermost helplessness. Lying on the roof of the house which
was opposite Freder’s flat, Josaphat watched the man who had chosen
him as friend and brother, whom he had betrayed and to whom he had
returned. He could not discern his face but he read from the pale patch
which this face was in the setting sun, in the shower-bath of the
searchlight, that the man over there, whose eyes were staring across
Metropolis, did not see Metropolis.
Sometimes people would emerge beside him, would speak to him, expecting
an answer. But the answer never came. Then the people would go, crushed.
Once Joh Fredersen came—came to his son, who stood on the narrow
balcony, seeming not to know that his father was near. Joh Fredersen
spoke to him for a long time. He laid his hand on his son’s hand,
which was resting on the railing. The mouth received no answer. The
hand received no answer. Only once did Freder turn his head, then with
difficulty, as though the joints of his neck were rusted. He looked at
Joh Fredersen.
Joh Fredersen went.
And when his father had gone Freder turned his head back again on idle
joints and stared out once more across Metropolis, which was dancing in
a whirl of light, staring with blind eyes.
The railing of the narrow balcony on which he stood appeared as an
insuperable wall of loneliness, of deep, inward consciousness of
having been deserted. No calling, no signalling, not even the loudest
of sounds penetrated this wall which was washed about by the strong,
lustrous surf of the great Metropolis.
But Josaphat did not want to have ventured the leap from heaven to
earth, to have sent a man, who was but performing his duty, into
infinity, impotently to make a halt before this wall of loneliness.
There came a night which hung, glowing and vaporous over Metropolis. A
thunder storm, which was still distant, burnt its warning fires in deep
clouds. All the lights of the great Metropolis seemed more violently,
seemed more wildly to lavish themselves on the darkness.
Freder stood by the railing of the narrow balcony his hot hands laid on
the railing. A sultry, uneasy puff of wind tugged at him, making the
white silk which covered his now much emaciated body to flutter.
Around the ridge of the roof of the house right opposite him there ran,
in a shining border, a shining word, running in an everlasting circuit
around, behind itself....
Phantasus.... Phantasus.... Phantasus....
Freder did not see this row of words. The retina received it—not the
brain.
Eternal hammering similarity of the wandering word....
Phantasus.... Phantasus.... Phantasus....
Suddenly the word picture was extinguished and in its place numbers
sparkled out of the darkness, disappearing again, again emerging, and
this coming and disappearing, coming again and again disappearing, and
coming anew had the effect in its unmistakability, of a penetrating,
persistent call.
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
Freder’s eyes caught the numbers.
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
They turned around, they came back again.
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
Thoughts stumbled through his brain.
90— — —? and 7— — —? a second 7——?
What did that mean?... How obtrusive these numbers were.
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
90.................... 7.................... 7....................
Freder closed his eyes. But now the numbers were within him. He saw
them flame up, sparkle, go out ... flame up, sparkle, go out.
Was that—no ... or yes?
Did not these numbers, some time ago, what seemed to him an
immeasurably long period ago, also convey something to him?
99 — — — 90 — — —
Suddenly a voice in his head said:
Ninetieth Block.... Ninetieth Block.... House seven ... seventh
floor....
Freder opened his eyes. Over there, on the house just opposite, the
numbers jerked up, asked and called....
90................ 7................ 7................
Freder bent forward over the railing so that it seemed he must hurtle
into space. The numbers dazzled him. He made a movement with his arm as
though he wanted to cover them up or put them out.
They went out. The shining border went out. The house stood in gloom,
only half its height washed around by the shimmer from the white
street. The stormy sky, becoming suddenly visible, lay above its roof
and lightning seemed to be crackling.
In the faded light, over there, stood a man.
Freder stepped back from the railing. He raised both hands before his
mouth. He looked to the right, to the left; he raised both arms. Then
he turned away, as if removed by a natural power from the spot on which
he stood, ran into the house, ran through the room, stopped still
again....
Carefully ... carefully now....
He reflected. He pressed his head between his fists. Was there among
his servants, one single soul who could be trusted not to betray him to
Slim?
What a miserable state—what a miserable state—!
But what alternative had he to the leap in the dark, the blind
trust—the ultimate test of confidence?
He would have liked to extinguish the lights in his room, but he did
not dare to, for up to this day he had not been able to bear darkness
about him. He paced up and down. He felt the perspiration on his
forehead and the trembling of his joints. He could not calculate the
time which elapsed. The blood roared in his veins like a cataract. The
first flash of lightning flickered over Metropolis, and, in the tardy
responding rumble of thunder the rushing of the rain at last, mixed
itself soothingly. It swallowed up the sound of the opening of the
door. When Freder turned around Josaphat was standing in the middle of
the room. He was dressed in workman’s uniform.
They walked up to each other as though driven by an outward power. But,
halfway, they both stopped and looked at each other, and each had for
the other the same horrified question on his face. Where have you been
since I saw you last? To what hell have you descended?
Freder with his feverish haste, was the first to collect himself. He
seized his friend by the arm.
“Sit down!” he said in his toneless voice, which occasionally held the
morbid dryness of things burnt. He sat down beside him, not taking his
hand from the arm. “You waited for me—in vain and in vain.... I could
not send you a message, forgive me!”
“I have nothing to forgive you, Mr. Freder,” said Josaphat, quietly. “I
did not wait for you.... On the evening on which I was to have waited
for you, I was far, far away from Metropolis and from you....”
Freder’s waiting eyes looked at him.
“I betrayed you, Mr. Freder,” said Josaphat.
Freder smiled, but Josaphat’s eyes extinguished his smile.
“I betrayed you, Mr. Freder,” repeated the man. “Slim came to me....
He offered me much money.... But I only laughed.... I threw it at
his head. But then he laid on the table a slip with your father’s
signature.... You must believe me, Mr. Freder. He would never have
caught me with the money. There is no sum of money for which I would
have sold you.... But when I saw your father’s handwriting.... I still
put up a fight. I would gladly have throttled him. But I had no more
strength.... JOH FREDERSEN was written on the slip.... I had no more
strength then....”
“I can understand that,” said Joh Fredersen’s son.
“Thank you.... I was to go away from Metropolis—right far away.... I
flew.... The pilot was a strange man. We kept flying straight towards
the sun. The sun was setting. Then it occurred to my empty brain that
now the hour would come in which I was to wait for you. And I should
not be there when you came.... I wanted to turn back. I asked the
pilot. He wouldn’t. He wanted to carry me away by force, farther and
farther from Metropolis. He was as obstinate as only a man can be when
he knows Slim’s will to be behind him. I begged and I threatened. But
nothing was of any use. So then, with one of his own tools, I smashed
in his skull.”
Freder’s fingers, which were still resting on Josaphat’s arm, tightened
their hold a little; but they lay still again immediately.
“Then I jumped out, and I was so far away from Metropolis that a young
girl who picked me up in the field did not know the great Metropolis
even by name.... I came here and found no message from you, and all
that I found out was that you were ill....”
He hesitated and was silent, looking at Freder.
“I am not ill,” said Freder, looking straight ahead. He loosened his
fingers from Josaphat’s arm and bent forward, laying the palms of both
hands flat on his head. He spoke into space.... “But do you believe,
Josaphat, that I am mad?”
“No.”
“But I must be,” said Freder, and he shrank together, so narrow that it
seemed as if a little boy, filled with a mighty fear, were sitting in
his place. His voice sounded suddenly quite high and thin and something
in it brought the water to Josaphat’s eyes.
Josaphat stretched out his hand, fumbled, and found Freder’s shoulder.
His hand closed around his neck and drew him gently towards him,
holding him still and fast.
“Just tell me about it, Mr. Freder!” he said. “I do not think there are
many things which seem insuperable to me since I sprang, as though from
heaven to earth, from the aeroplane which was steered by a dead man.
Also,” he continued in a soft voice, “I learnt in one single night that
one can bear very much when one has some one near one who keeps watch,
asks nothing and is simply there.”
“I am mad, Josaphat,” said Freder. “But—I don’t know if it is any
consolation—I am not the only one....”
Josaphat was silent. His patient hand lay motionless on Freder’s
shoulder.
And suddenly, as though his soul were an over-filled vessel, which had
lost its balance, toppled over and poured out in streams, Freder began
to speak. He told his friend the story of Maria, from the moment of
their first meeting in the “Club of Sons,” to when they saw each other
again right down under the earth in the City of the Dead—his waiting
for her in the cathedral, his experiences in Rotwang’s house, his vain
search, the curt “no” at Maria’s home, up to the moment when, for her
sake, he wanted to be the murderer of his own father—no, not for her
sake: for that of a being who was not there, whom he only believed
himself to see....
“Was that not madness—?”
“Hallucination, Mr. Freder....”
“Hallucination—? I will tell you some more about hallucination,
Josaphat, and you mustn’t believe that I am speaking in delirium
or that I am not fully master of my thoughts. I wanted to kill my
father.... It was not my fault that the attempt at parricide was
unsuccessful.... But ever since that moment I have not been human....
I am a creature that has no feet, no hands and hardly a head. And this
head is only there eternally to think that I wanted to kill my own
father. Do you believe that I shall ever get free from this hell—?
Never, Josaphat. Never—never in all eternity. I lay during the night
hearing my father walking up and down in the next room. I lay in the
depths of a black pit; but my thoughts ran along behind my father’s
steps, as though chained to his soles. What horror has come upon the
world that this could happen? Is there a comet in the heavens which
drives mankind to madness? Is a fresh plague coming, or Anti-Christ?
Or the end of the world? A woman, who does not exist, forces herself
between father and son and incites the son to murder against the
father.... It may be that my thoughts were running themselves a little
hot at the time.... Then my father came in to me....”
He stopped and his wasted hands twisted themselves together upon his
damp hair.
“You know my father. There are many in the great Metropolis who do not
believe Joh Fredersen to be human, because he seems not to need to eat
and drink and he sleeps when he wishes to; and usually he does not wish
to.... They call him The Brain of Metropolis, and if it is true that
fear is the source of all religion then the brain of Metropolis is
not very far off from becoming a deity.... This man, who is my father
came up to my bed.... He walked on tip-toe, Josaphat. He bent over me
and held his breath.... My eyes were shut. I lay quite still and it
seemed to me as though my father must hear my soul crying within me.
Then I loved him more than anything on earth. But if my life had been
dependent on it, I should still not have been able to open my eyes. I
felt my father’s hand smoothing my pillow. Then he went again as he had
come, on tip-toe, closing the door quite soundlessly behind him. Do you
know what he had done?”
“No....”
“No.... I don’t see how you could. I only realised it myself some hours
later.... For the first time since the great Metropolis had stood, Joh
Fredersen had omitted to press on the little blue metal plate and to
let the Behemoth-voice of Metropolis roar out, because he did not wish
to disturb his son’s sleep....”
Josaphat lowered his head; he said nothing. Freder let his intertwined
hands sink.
“Then I realised,” he continued, “that my father had quite forgiven
me.... And when I realised that, I really fell asleep....”
He stood up and remained standing, seeming to be listening to the
rushing of the rain. The lightning was still flashing out over
Metropolis, the angry thunder bounding after. But the rushing of the
rain drowned it.
“I slept ...” Freder went on—so softly that the other could scarcely
follow his words—“then I began to dream.... I saw this city—this
great Metropolis—in the light of a ghostly unreality. A weird moon
stood in the sky; as though along a broad street this ghostly, unreal
light flowed down upon the city, which was deserted to the last soul.
All the houses were distorted and had faces. They squinted evilly and
spitefully down at me, for I was walking deep down between them, along
the glimmering street.
“Quite narrow was this street as though crushed between the houses;
it was as though made of a greenish glass—like a solidified, glazen
river. I glided along it and looked down through it into the cold
bubbling of a subterranean fire.
“I did not know my destination, but I knew I had one, and went very
fast in order to reach it the sooner. I quietened my step as well as
I could, but its sound was excessively loud and awakened a rustling
whisper over the crooked house-walls as though the houses were
murmuring against me. I quickened my pace and ran, and, at last, raced
along, and the more swiftly I raced the more hoarsely did the echo of
the steps sound after me, as though there were an army at my heels, I
was dripping with sweat....
“The town was alive. The houses were alive. Their open mouths snarled
after me. The window-caverns, open eyes, winked blindly, horribly,
maliciously.
“Graspingly, I reached the square before the cathedral....
“The cathedral was lighted up. The doors stood open—no, they did not
stand open. They reeled to and fro like swing-doors through which an
invisible stream of guests was passing. The organ rolled, but not with
music. Croaking, bawling, screeching and whimpering sounded from the
organ and intermingled were wanton dance tunes, wailing whore-songs.
“The swing-doors, the light, the organ’s witches sabbath, everything
appeared to be mysteriously excited, hurried, as though there were no
time to be lost, and full of a deep evil satisfaction.
“I walked over to the cathedral and up the steps. A door laid hold of
me, like an arm, and wafted me gustily in the cathedral.
“But that was as little the cathedral as the town was Metropolis. A
pack of lunatics seemed to have taken possession of it, and not even
human beings, at that. Dwarf-like creatures, resembling half monkey,
half devil. In place of the saints, goat-like figures, petrified in
the most ridiculous of leaps, reigned in the pillar niches. And around
every pillar danced a ring, raving to the bawling of the music.
“Empty, ungodded, splintered, hung the crucifix above the high altar,
from which the holy vessels had vanished.
“A fellow, dressed in black, the caricature of a monk, stood in the
pulpit, howling out in a pulpit-voice:
“‘Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand!’
“A loud neigh answered him.
“The organ-player—I saw him, he was like a demon—stood with his hands
and feet on the keys and his head beat time to the ring-dance of the
spirits.
“The fellow in the pulpit pulled out a book, an enormous, black book
with seven locks. Whenever his fingers touched a lock it sprang up in
flame and shot open.
“Murmuring incantations, he opened the cover. He bent over the book. A
ring of flames suddenly stood around his head.
“From the heights of the cathedral it struck midnight. But it was as
though it was not enough for the clock to proclaim the hour of demons
just once. Over and over again did it strike the ghastly twelve, in
dreadful, bated haste.
“The light in the cathedral changed colour. Were it possible to speak
of a blackish light this would be the expression best applied to the
light. Only in one place did it shine, white, gleaming, cutting, a
sharply whetted sword: there where death is figured as a minstrel.
“Suddenly the organ stopped, and suddenly the dance. The voice of the
preacher-fellow in the pulpit stopped. And through the silence which
did not dare to breathe, rang the sound of a flute. Death was playing.
The minstrel was playing the song which nobody plays after him, on his
flute which was a human bone.
“The ghostly minstrel stepped from out his side-niche, carved in wood,
in hat and wide cloak, scythe on shoulder, the hour-glass dangling from
his girdle. Playing his flute, he stepped out of his niche and made his
way through the cathedral. And behind him came the seven Deadly Sins as
the following of Death.
“Death performed a circle around every pillar. Louder and ever louder
rang the sound of his flute. The seven Deadly Sins seized hands. As a
widely swung chain they paced behind Death; and gradually their paces
became a light dance.
“The seven Deadly Sins danced along behind Death, who was playing the
flute.
“Then the cathedral was filled with a light which seemed to be made
from rose-leaves. An inexpressibly sweet, overpowering perfume hovered
up, like incense, between the pillars. The light grew stronger and it
seemed to ring. Pale red lightning flashed from the heights collecting
itself in the central nave, to the magnificent radiance of a crown.
“The crown rested on the head of a woman. And the woman was sitting
upon a scarlet-coloured beast, having seven heads and ten horns. And
the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold,
precious stones and pearls. She had in her hand a golden cup. On the
crowned brow of the woman there stood, mysteriously written: Babylon.
“Like a deity, she grew up and radiated. Death and the seven Deadly
Sins bowed low before her.
“And the woman who bore the name Babylon had the features of Maria,
whom I loved....
“The woman arose. She touched the cross-arched vault of the lofty
cathedral with her crown. She seized the hem of her cloak and opened
it. And spread out her cloak with both hands.... Then one saw that
the golden cloak was embroidered with the images of manifold demons.
Beings with women’s bodies and snakes’ heads—beings half bull, half
angel—devils adorned with crowns, human faced lions.
“The flute song of Death was silenced. But the fellow in the pulpit
raised his yelling voice:
“‘Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand!’
“The church-clock was still hammering the wild twelve-time of midnight.
“The woman looked Death in the face. She opened her mouth. She said to
Death: ‘Go!’
“Then Death hung the flute on his girdle, by the hour-glass, took the
scythe down from his shoulder and went. He went through the cathedral
and went out of the cathedral. And from the cloak of the great
Babylon, the demons freed themselves, come to life, and flew after
Death.
“Death went down the steps of the cathedral, into the town; black
birds with human faces rustling around him. He raised the scythe as if
indicating the way. Then they divided themselves and swooped apart. The
broad wings darkened the moon.
“Death flung back his wide cloak. He stretched himself up and grew. He
grew much taller even than the houses of Metropolis. The highest hardly
reached to his knee.
“Death swung his scythe and made a whistling cut. The earth and all the
stars quivered. But the scythe did not seem to be sharp enough for him.
He looked about him as though seeking a seat. The New Tower of Babel
seemed to suit Death. He sat down on the New Tower of Babel, propped up
the scythe, took the whet-stone from his girdle, spat on it and began
to whet the scythe. Blue sparks flew out of the steel. Then Death arose
and made a second blow. A rain of stars poured down from the sky.
“Death nodded with satisfaction, turned around and set off, on his way
through the great Metropolis.”