He reached the top of the stairs and looked about him. He knew that many doors opened out here. But on the one opposite him the copper seal glowed like a distorted eye, which looked at him.
He stepped up to it. The door opened before him.
Many doors as Rotwang’s house possessed, this was the only one which opened itself to Joh Fredersen, although, and even, perhaps, because, the owner of this house knew full well that it always meant no mean effort for Joh Fredersen to cross this threshold.
He drew in the air of the room, lingeringly, but deeply, as though seeking in it the trace of another breath …
His nonchalant hand threw his hat on a chair. Slowly, in sudden and mournful weariness, he let his eyes wander through the room.
It was almost empty. A large, time-blackened chair, such as are to be found in old churches, stood before drawn curtains. These curtains covered a recess the width of the wall.
Joh Fredersen remained standing by the door for a long time, without moving. He had closed his eyes. With incomparable impotence he breathed in the odour of hyacinths, which teemed to fill the motionless air of this room.
Without opening his eyes, swaying a little, but aim-sure, he walked up to the heavy, black curtains and drew them apart.
Then he opened his eyes and stood quite still …
On a pedestal, the breadth of the wall, rested the head of a woman in stone …
It was not the work of an artist, it was the work of a man, who, in agonies for which the human tongue lacks words, had wrestled with the white stone throughout immeasurable days and nights until at last it seemed to realise and form the woman’s head by itself. It was as if no tool had been at work here—no, it was as if a man, lying before this stone, had called on the name of the woman, unceasingly, with all the strength, with all the longing, with all the despair, of his brain, blood and heart, until the shapeless stone took pity on him letting itself turn into the image of the woman, who had meant to two men all heaven and all hell.
Joh Fredersen’s eyes sank to the words which were hewn into the pedestal, roughly, as though chiselled with curses.
Hel
born
to be my happiness, a blessing to all men.Lost to Joh Fredersen
dying in giving life to his son, Freder
Yes, she died then. But Joh Fredersen knew only too well that she did not die from giving birth to her child. She died then because she had done what she had to do. She really died on the day upon which she went from Rotwang to Joh Fredersen, wondering that her feet left no bloody traces behind on the way. She had died because she was unable to withstand the great love of Joh Fredersen and because she had been forced by him to tear asunder the life of another.
Never was the expression of deliverance at last more strong upon a human face than upon Hel’s face when she knew that she would die.
But in the same hour the mightiest man in Metropolis had lain on the floor, screaming like a wild beast, the bones of which are being broken in its living body.
And, on his meeting Rotwang, four weeks later, he found that the dense, disordered hair over the wonderful brow of the inventor was snow-white, and in the eyes under this brow the smouldering of a hatred which was very closely related to madness.
In this great love, in this great hatred, the poor, dead Hel had remained alive to both men …
“You must wait a little while,” said the voice which sounded as though the house were talking in its sleep.
“Listen, Rotwang,” said Joh Fredersen. “You know that I treat your little juggling tricks with patience, and that I come to you when I want anything of you, and that you are the only man who can say that of himself. But you will never get me to join in with you when you play the fool. You know, too, that I have no time to waste. Don’t make us both ridiculous, but come!”
“I told you that you would have to wait a little while,” explained the voice, seeming to grow more distant.
“I shall not wait. I shall go.”
“Do so, Joh Fredersen!”
He wanted to do so. But the door through which he had entered had no key, no latch. The seal of Solomon, glowing copper-red, blinked at him.
A soft, far-off voice laughed.
Joh Fredersen had stopped still, his back to the room. A quiver ran down his back, running along the hanging arms to the clenched fists.
“You should have your skull smashed in,” said Joh Fredersen, very softly. “You should have your skull smashed in … that is, if it did not contain so valuable a brain …”
“You can do no more to me than you have done,” said the far-off voice.
Joh Fredersen was silent.
“Which do you think,” continued the voice, “to be more painful: to smash in the skull, or to tear the heart out of the body?”
Joh Fredersen was silent.
“Are your wits frozen, that you don’t answer, Joh Fredersen?”
“A brain like yours should be able to forget,” said the man standing at the door, staring at Solomon’s seal.
The soft, far-off voice laughed.
“Forget? I have twice in my life forgotten something … Once that Aetro-oil and quicksilver have an idiosyncracy as regards each other; that cost me my arm. Secondly that Hel was a woman and you a man; that cost me my heart. The third time, I am afraid, it will cost me my head. I shall never again forget anything, Joh Fredersen.”
Joh Fredersen was silent.
The far-off voice was silent, too.
Joh Fredersen turned round and walked to the table. He piled books and parchments on top of each other, sat down and took a piece of paper from his pocket. He laid it
