And then he grasped that this city of machines, this city of sobriety, this fanatic for work, sought, at night, the mighty counterpoise to the frenzy of the day’s work—that this city, at night, lost itself, as one insane, as one entirely witless, in the intoxication of a pleasure, which, flinging up to all heights, hurtling down to all depths, was boundlessly blissful and boundlessly destructive.
Georgi trembled from head to foot. And yet it was not really trembling which seized his resistless body. It was as though all his members were fastened to the soundless evenness of the engine which bore them forwards. No, not to the single engine which was the heart of the motorcar in which he sat—to all these hundreds and thousands of engines which were driving an endlessly gliding, double stream of gleaming illuminated automobiles, on through the streets of the city in its nocturnal fever. And, at the same time, his body was set in vibration by the fireworks of spark-streaming wheels, ten-coloured lettering snow-white fountains of overcharged lamps, rockets, hissing upwards, towers of flame, blazing ice-cold.
There was a word which always recurred. From an invisible source there shot up a sheaf of light, which bursting apart at the highest point, dropped down letters in all colours of the rainbow from the velvet-black sky of Metropolis.
The letters formed themselves into the word: Yoshiwara.
What did that mean: Yoshiwara—?
From the ironwork of the elevated railway-track a yellow-skinned fellow hung, head downwards, suspended by the crocks of his knees, who let a snowstorm of white sheets of paper shower down upon the double row of motorcars.
The pages fluttered and fell. Georgi’s glance caught one of them. Upon it stood, in large, distorted letters: Yoshiwara.
The car stopped at a crossing. Yellow-skinned fellows, in many-coloured embroidered silk jackets, wound themselves, supple as eels, through the twelvefold strings of waiting cars. One of them swung himself onto the footboard of the black motorcar in which Georgi sat. For one second the grinning hideousness stared into the young, white, helpless face.
A sheaf of handbills were hurled through the window, falling upon Georgi’s knee and before his feet. He bent down mechanically and picked up that for which his fingers were groping.
On these slips, which gave out a penetrating, bittersweet, seductive perfume, there stood, in large, bewitched-looking letters, the word: Yoshiwara …
Georgi’s throat was as dry as dust. He moistened his cracked lips with his tongue, which lay heavy and as though parched in his mouth.
A voice had said to him: “You will find more than enough money in my pockets …”
Enough money … what for? To clutch and drag near this city—this mighty, heavenly, hellish city; to embrace her with both arms, both legs, in the impotence of mastering her; to despair, to throw oneself into her—take me!—take me!—To feel the filled bowl at one’s lips—gulping, gulping—not drawing breath, the brim of the bowl set fast between the teeth—eternal, eternal insatiability, competing with the eternal, eternal overflow, overpouring of the bowl of intoxication …
Ah—Metropolis! … Metropolis! …
“More than enough money …”
A strange sound came from Georgi’s throat, and there was something in it of the throat-rattle of a man who knows he is dreaming and wants to awake, and something of the gutteral sound of the beast of prey when it scents blood. His hand did not let go of the wad of banknotes for the second time. It screwed it up in burning convulsive fingers.
He turned his head this way and that, as though seeking a way out, which, nevertheless, he feared to find …
Another car slipped silently along beside his, a great, black-gleaming shadow, the couch of a woman, set on four wheels, decorated with flowers, lighted by dim lamps. Georgi saw the woman very clearly, and the woman looked at him. She cowered rather than sat, among the cushions of the car, having entirely wrapped herself in her gleaming cloak, from which one shoulder projected with the dull whiteness of a swan’s feather.
She was bewilderingly made-up—as though she did not wish to be human, to be a woman, but rather a peculiar animal, disposed, perhaps to play, perhaps to murder.
Calmly holding the man’s gaze, she gently slipped her right hand, sparkling with stones, and the slender arm, which was quite bare and dull white, even as the shoulder, from the wrappings of her cloak, and began to fan herself in a leisurely manner with one of the sheets of paper on which the word Yoshiwara stood …
“No!” said the man. He panted, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Coolness welled out from the fine, strange stuff with which he dried the perspiration from his brow.
Eyes stared at him. Eyes which were fading away. The all-knowing smile of a painted mouth.
With a panting sound Georgi made to open the door of the taxi and to jump out into the road. However, the movement of the car threw him back on to the cushions. He clenched his fists, pressing them before both eyes. A vision shot through his head, quite misty and lacking in outline, a strong little machine, no larger than a five-year-old child. It’s short arms pushed and pushed and pushed, alternately forwards, backwards, forwards … The head, sunken on the chest, rose, grinning …
“No!” shrieked the man, clapping his hands and laughing. He had been set free from the machine. He had exchanged lives.
Exchanged—with whom?
With a man who had said: “You will find more than enough money in my pockets …”
The man bent back his head into the nape of his neck and stared at the roof suspended above him.
On the roof there flamed the word:
Yoshiwara …
The
