“Who is that?” asked Josaphat.
“I sent him to you.”
“Nobody has come.”
Freder looked at him without answering.
“I sat all night in this chair,” continued Josaphat, misinterpreting Freder’s silence. “I did not sleep a wink. I expected you to come at any second, or a messenger to come from you, or that you would ring me up. I also informed the watchman. Nobody has come, Mr. Freder.”
Freder still remained silent. Slowly, almost stumblingly he stepped over the threshold, into the room raising his right hand to his head, as though to take off his hat, then noticing that he was wearing the cap, the black cap, which pressed the hair tightly down, he swept it from his head; it fell to the ground. His hand sank from his brow, over his eyes, resting there a little while. Then the other joined it, as though wishing to console its sister. His form was like that of a young birch tree pressed sideways by a strong wind.
Josaphat’s eyes hung on the uniform which Freder wore.
“Mr. Freder,” he began cautiously, “how comes it that you are wearing these clothes?”
Freder remained turned away from him. He took his hands from his eyes and pressed them to his face as though he felt some pain there.
“Georgi wore them …” He answered. “I gave him mine …”
“Then Georgi is a workman?”
“Yes … I found him before the Paternoster machine. I took his place and sent him to you …”
“Perhaps he’ll come yet,” answered Josaphat.
Freder shook his head.
“He should have been here hours ago. If he had been caught when leaving the New Tower of Babel, then someone would have come to me when I was standing before the machine. It is strange, but there it is; he has not come.”
“Was there much money in the suit which you exchanged with Georgi?” asked Josaphat tentatively, as one who bares a wounded spot.
Freder nodded.
“Then you must not be surprised that Georgi has not come,” said Josaphat. But the expression of shame and pain on Freder’s face prevented him from continuing.
“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Freder,” he begged. “Or lie down? You look so tired that it is painful to look at you.”
“I have no time to sit down and not time to lie down, either,” answered Freder. He walked through the rooms, aimlessly, senselessly, stopping wherever a chair, a table, offered him a hold. “The fact, is this, Josaphat: I told Georgi to come here and to wait here for me—or for a message from me … It is a thousand to one that Slim, in searching for me, is already on Georgi’s track, and it’s a thousand to one he gets out of him where I sent him …”
“And you do not want Slim to find you?”
“He must not find me, Josaphat—not for anything on earth …”
The other stood silent, rather helpless. Freder looked at him with a trembling smile.
“How shall we obtain money, now, Josaphat?”
“That should offer no difficulty to Joh Fredersen’s son.”
“More than you think, Josaphat, for I am no longer Joh Fredersen’s son …”
Josaphat raised his head.
“I do not understand you,” he said, after a pause.
“There is nothing to misunderstand, Josaphat. I have set myself free from my father, and am going my own way …”
The man who had been the first secretary to the Master over the great Metropolis held his breath back in his lungs, then released it in streams.
“Will you let me tell you something, Mr. Freder?”
“Well …”
“One does not set oneself free from your father. It is he who decides whether one remains with him or must leave him.
“There is nobody who is stronger than Joh Fredersen. He is like the earth. As regards the earth we have no will either. Her laws keep us eternally perpendicular to the centre of the earth, even if we stand on our head … When Joh Fredersen sets a man free it means just as much as if the earth were to shut off from a man her powers of attraction. It means falling into nothing … Joh Fredersen can set free whom he may; he will never set free his son …”
“But what,” answered Freder, speaking feverishly, “if a man overcomes the laws of nature?”
“Utopia, Mr. Freder.”
“For the inventive spirit of man there is no Utopia: there is only a Not-yet. I have made up my mind to venture the path. I must take it—yes, I must take it! I do not know the way yet, but I shall find it because I must find it …”
“Wherever you wish, Mr. Freder—I shall go with you …”
“Thank you,” said Freder, reaching out his hand. He felt it seized and clasped in a vice-like grip.
“You know, Mr. Freder, don’t you—” said the strangled voice of Josaphat, “that everything belongs to you—everything that I am and have … It is not much, for I have lived like a madman … But for today, and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow …”
Freder shook his head without losing hold of Josaphat’s hand.
“No, no!” he said, a torrent of red flowing over his face. “One does not begin new ways like that … We must try to find other ways … It will not be easy. Slim knows his business.”
“Perhaps Slim could be won over to you …” said Josaphat, hesitatingly. “For—strange though it may sound, he loves you …”
“Slim loves all his victims. Which does not prevent him, as the most considerate and kindly of executioners, from laying them before my father’s feet. He is the born tool, but the tool of the strongest. He would never make himself the tool of the weaker one, for he would thus humiliate himself. And you have just told me, Josaphat, how much stronger my father is than I …”
“If you were to confide yourself to one of your friends …”
“I have no friends, Josaphat.”
Josaphat wanted to contradict, but he stopped himself. Freder turned his eyes towards him. He straightened himself up and smiled—the other’s hand still in his.
“I have no friends, Josaphat, and, what weighs still more, I have no friend. I had playfellows—sport-fellows—but friends? A friend?
