“Then she went up the steps, stepping backwards, with tentative feet, without lowering her hands, and she disappeared into a velvet-deep darkness. The servants opened the door to the street. They lined up with backs bent.
“The people still sat motionless.
“ ‘Good night, ladies and gentlemen!’ said the old man …”
Jan was silent. He took his hat from his head. He wiped his forehead.
“A dancer,” said Freder, with cold lips, “but a spirit … ?”
“Not a spirit! I will tell you another story … A man and a woman, of fifty and forty, rich and very happy, have a son. You know him, but I will not mention any names …
“The son sees the girl. He is as though mad. He storms the house. He storms the girl’s father: ‘Let me have her! I am dying for her!’ The old man smiles, shrugs his shoulders, is silent, is exceedingly sorry, the girl is not to be attained.
“The young man wants to lay hands on the old man, but he is whirled out of the house and thrown into the street, by he does not know whom. He is taken home. He falls ill and is at Death’s door. The doctors shrug their shoulders.
“The father, who is a proud but kindly man, and who loves his son above anything on earth, makes up his mind to visit the old man, himself. He gains entrance to the house without difficulty. He finds the old man, and with him, the girl. He says to the girl: ‘Save my son!’ ”
“The girl looks at him and says, with the most graciously inhuman of smiles: ‘You have no son …’
“He does not understand the meaning of these words. He wants to know more. He urges the girl. She always gives the same answer. He urges the old man—he lifts his shoulders. There is a perfidious smile about his mouth …
“Suddenly the man comprehends … He goes home. He repeats the girl’s words to his wife. She breaks down and confesses her sin—a sin which, after twenty years, has not yet died down. But she is not concerned with her own fate. She has no thought apart from her son. Shame, desertion, loneliness—all are nothing; but the son is everything.
“She goes to the girl and falls on her knees before her: ‘I beg you, in the name of God’s mercy, save my son … !’ The girl looks at her, smiles and says: ‘You have no son …’ The woman believes that she has a lunatic before her. But the girl was right. The son, who had been a secret witness to the conversation between the husband and the mother, had ended his life …”
“Marinus?”
“Yes.”
“… A terrible coincidence, Jan, but still, not a spirit.”
“Coincidence?—Not a spirit?—And what do you call it, Freder,” continued Jan, speaking quite close to Freder’s ear, “when this girl can appear in two places at once?”
“That’s absolute rubbish …”
“Rubbish—? It’s the truth, Freder! The girl was seen standing at the window in Rotwang’s house—and, at the same time, she was dancing her sinful dance in Yoshiwara …”
“That is not true—!” said Freder.
“It is true!”
“You have seen the girl … In Yoshiwara—?”
“You can see her yourself, if you like …”
“What’s the girl’s name?”
“Maria …”
Freder laid his forehead in his hands. He bent double, as in the throes of an agony, which otherwise God does not permit to visit mankind.
“You know the girl?” asked Jan, bending forward.
“No!”
“But you love her,” said Jan, and behind these words lurked hatred, crouched to spring.
Freder took his hand and said: “Come!”
“But,” continued Freder, fixing his eyes upon Josaphat, who was sitting there quite sunken together, while the rain was growing gentler, like hushed weeping, “Slim was suddenly standing there, beside me, and he said: ‘Will you not return home, Mr. Freder?’ ”
Josaphat was silent for a long time: Freder, too, was silent. In the frame of the open door, which led out to the balcony, stood, hovering, the picture of the monster clock, on the New Tower of Babel, bathed in a white light. The large hand jerked to twelve.
Then a sound arose throughout Metropolis.
It was an immeasurably glorious and transporting sound, as deep and rumbling as, and more powerful than any sound on earth. The voice of the ocean when it is angry, the voice of falling torrents, the voice of very close thunder storms, would be miserably drowned in this Behemoth din. Without being shrill, it penetrated all walls, and, as long as it lasted, all things seemed to swing in it. It was omnipresent, coming from the heights and from the depths, being beautiful and horrible, being an irresistible command.
It was high above the town. It was the voice of the town.
Metropolis raised her voice. The machines of Metropolis roared: They wanted to be fed.
The eyes of Josaphat and Freder met.
“Now,” said Josaphat, “many are going down into a city of the dead, and are waiting for one who is called Maria, and whom they have found as true as gold …”
“Yes!” said Freder, “you are a friend, and you are quite right … I shall go with them …”
And, for the first time this night, there was something like hope in the ring of his voice.
XII
It was one hour after midnight.
Joh Fredersen came to his mother’s house.
It was a farmhouse, one-storied, thatch-roofed, overshadowed by a walnut tree and it stood upon the flat back of one of the stone giants, not far from the cathedral. A garden full of lilies and hollyhocks, full of sweet peas and poppies and nasturtiums, wound itself about the house.
Joh Fredersen’s mother had only one son and him she had very dearly loved. But the Master over the great Metropolis, the Master of the machine-city, the Brain of the New Tower of Babel had become a stranger to her and she hostile to him. She had had to look on once and see how one of Joh Fredersen’s machine-Titans crushed men as though they were dried up wood. She had screamed to God. He had not heard her. She fell to
