Joh Fredersen came to his mother’s house.
Death had passed over Metropolis. Destruction of the world and the Day
of Judgment had shouted from out the roars of explosion, the clanging
of the bells of the cathedral. But Joh Fredersen found his mother as
he always found her: in the wide, soft chair, by the open window, the
dark rug over the paralysed knees, the great Bible on the sloping table
before her, in the beautiful old hands, the figured lace at which she
was sewing.
She turned her eyes towards the door and perceived her son.
The expression of stern severity on her face became sterner and more
severe.
She said nothing. But about her closed mouth was something which said:
“You are in a bad way, Joh Fredersen....”
And as a judge did she regard him.
Joh Fredersen took his hat from his head. Then she saw the white hair
above his brow....
“Child—!” she said quietly, stretching her hands out towards him.
Joh Fredersen fell on his knees by his mother’s side. He threw his arms
about her, pressing his head into the lap, which had borne him. He
felt her hands on his hair—felt how she touched it, as though fearful
of hurting him, as though this white hair was the mark of an unhealed
wound, very near the heart, and heard her dear voice saying:
“Child.... My child.... My poor child....”
The rustling of the walnut tree before the window filled a long silence
with longing and affection. Then Joh Fredersen began to speak. He
spoke with the eagerness of one bathing himself in Holy water, with
the fervour of a conquered one, confessing, with the redemption of one
ready to do any penance, and who was pardoned. His voice was soft and
sounded as though coming from far away, from the farther bank of a wide
river.
He spoke of Freder; then his voice failed him entirely. He raised
himself from his knees and walked through the room. When he turned
around there stood in his eyes a smiling loneliness and the realisation
of a necessary giving-up—of the tree’s giving up of the ripe fruit.
“It seemed to me,” he said, gazing into space, “as though I saw his
face for the first time ... when he spoke to me this morning.... It is
a strange face, mother. It is quite my face—and yet quite his own. It
is the face of his beautiful, dead mother and yet it is, at the same
time, fashioned after Maria’s features, as though he were born for the
second time of that young, virginal creature. But it is, at the same
time, the face of the masses—confident in her, related to her, as near
to her as brothers....”
“How do you come to know the face of the masses, Joh?” asked his mother
gently.
For a long time Joh Fredersen gave no answer.
“You are quite right to ask, mother,” he said then. “From the heights
of the New Tower of Babel I could not distinguish it. And in the
night of lunacy, in which I perceived it for the first time it was so
distorted in its own horror that it no more resembled itself....
“When I came out of the cathedral door in the morning the masses were
standing as one man, looking towards me. Then the face of the masses
was turned towards me. Then I saw, it was not old, was not young, was
sorrowless and joyless.
“What do you want?” I asked. And one answered:
“We are waiting, Mr. Fredersen....”
“For what?” I asked him.
“We are waiting,” continued the spokesman, “for someone to come, who
will tell us what way we should go....”
“And you want to be this one, Joh?”
“Yes, mother.”
“And will they trust in you?”
“I do not know, mother. If we had been living a thousand years earlier,
I should, perhaps, set out on the high road, with pilgrim’s staff
and cockle hat, and seek the way to the Holy Land of my belief, not
returning home until I had cooled my feet, hot from wandering, in the
Jordan, and, in the places of redemption, had prayed to the Redeemer.
And, if I were not the man I am, it might come to pass that I should
set out on a journey along the roads of those who walk in the shadow.
I should, perhaps, sit with them in the corners of misery and learn to
comprehend their groans and their curses into which a life of hell has
transformed their prayers.... For, from comprehension comes love, and
I am longing to love mankind, mother.... But I believe that acting is
better than making pilgrimages, and that a good deed is worth more than
the best of words. I believe, too, that I shall find the way to do so,
for there are two standing by me, who wish to help me....”
“Three, Joh....”
The eyes of the son sought the gaze of the mother.
“Who is the third?”
“Hel....”
“... Hel—?...”
“Yes, child.”
Joh Fredersen remained silent.
She turned over the pages of her Bible, until she found what she
sought. It was a letter. She took it and said, still holding it
lovingly:
“I received this letter from Hel before she died. She asked me to give
it you, when, as she said, you had found your way home to me and to
yourself....”
Soundlessly moving his lips, Joh Fredersen stretched out his hand for
the letter.
The yellowish envelope contained but a thin sheet of paper. Upon it
stood, in the handwriting of a girlish woman:
“I am going to God, and do not know when you will read these lines,
Joh. But I know you will read them one day, and, until you come, I
shall exhaust the eternal blissfulness in praying God to forgive me
for making use of two Sayings from His Holy Book, in order to give
you my heart, Joh.
“One is: ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love.’ The other:
‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!’
“Hel.”
It took Joh Fredersen a long time before he succeeded in replacing
the thin sheet of note-paper in the envelope. His eyes gazed through
the open window by which his mother sat. He saw, drawing across the
soft, blue sky, great, white clouds, which were like ships, laden with
treasures from a far-off world.
“Of what are you thinking, child?” asked his mother’s voice, with care.
But Joh Fredersen gave her no answer. His heart, utterly redeemed,
spoke stilly within him:
“Unto the end of the world.... Unto the end of the world.”
METROPOLIS
This remarkable novel, the basis for the world’s greatest Science
Fiction movie, has long been a rare but ardently sought-after
collector’s item.
It is an unforgettable vision of the 21st Century and the awe-inspiring
megopolis of the future. _METROPOLIS_ has been compared to such
classics as H. G. Wells’ _THE TIME MACHINE_, Samuel Butler’s _EREWHON_,
and Karel Capek’s _R.U.R._