“On the stairs?”
“Yes!”
“Why don’t you come up?”
“I can’t raise the door!”
“Ten trains have run together … I can’t come to you! I must go and get help!”
“Oh, Freder, the water’s already close behind us!”
“The water—?”
“Yes!—And the walls are falling in!”
“Are you hurt—?”
“No, no … Oh, Freder, if you could only force open the door wide enough for me to push the little children’s bodies through …”
The man above her did not give her an answer.
When steeling his muscles and sinews in the “Club of the Sons,” playfully wrestling with his friends, he surely never guessed that he would need them one day to force a path through ruined cables, upright pistons and outspread wheels of fallen machines to the woman he loved. He thrust the pistons aside like human arms, clutched into steel as into soft, yielding flesh. He worked his way nearer the door and threw himself on the ground.
“Maria—?”
“Freder?”
“Where are you? Why does your voice sound so far away?”
“I want to be the last whom you save, Freder! I am carrying the tiniest ones on my shoulders and arms …”
“Is the water still rising?”
“Yes.”
“Is it rising fast or slowly?”
“Fast.”
“My God, my God … I can’t get the door loose! The machines are piled up on top of it like mountains! I must explode the ruins, Maria!”
“Very well.” Maria’s voice sounded as though she were smiling. “Meanwhile I can finish telling my story …”
Freder dashed away. He did not know where his feet should carry him. He thought vaguely of God … “Thy will be done … Deliver us from evil … For Thine is the … power …”
From the sooty black sky a frightful gleam, of the colour of spilt blood, fell upon the city, which appeared as a silhouette of tattered velvet in the painful scarcity of light. There was not a soul to be seen and yet the air throbbed under the unbearable knife-edge of shrieks of women from the vicinity of Yoshiwara, and, while the organ of the cathedral was shrilling and whistling, as though its mighty body were wounded unto death, the windows of the cathedral, lighted from within, began, phantomlike to glow.
Freder staggered along to the tower-house in which the heart of the great machine-city of Metropolis had lived, and which it had torn open from top to bottom, when racing itself to death, in the fever of the “12,” so that the house now looked like a ripped open, gaping gate.
A lump of humanity was crawling about the ruins, seeming, from the sounds it emitted, to be nothing but a single curse, on two legs. The horror which lay over Metropolis was Paradise compared with the last, cruel destruction which the lump of humanity was invoking from the lowest and hottest of hells upon the city and its inhabitants.
He found something among the ruins, raised it to his face, recognised it and broke out into howls, similar to the howls of a kicked dog. He rubbed his sobbing mouth upon the little piece of steel.
“May the stinking plague gnaw you, you lice—! May you sit in muck up to your eyes—! May you swill gas instead of water and burst every day—for ten thousand years—over and over again—!”
“Grot!”
“Filth—!”
“Grot!—Thank God … Grot, come here!”
“Who’s that—”
“I am Joh Fredersen’s son—”
“Aaah—Hell and the devil—I wanted you—! Come here, you toad—! I must have you between my fists. I’d much rather have had your father, but you’re a bit of him and better than nothing! Come along here, if you’ve got the guts. Ah—my lad, wouldn’t I like to get hold of you! I’d like to smear you from top toe in mustard and eat you! D’you know what your father’s done—?”
“Grot—!”
“Let me finish—I tell you! Do you know what he did—? He made me give up … he made me give up my machine …”
And once more the miserable howling of a kicked dog.
“My machine … my—my machine—! That devil up there! That Goddamned devil! …”
“Grot, listen to me—”
“I won’t listen to anything!—”
“Grot, in the underground city, the water has broken in …”
Seconds of silence. Then—roars of laughter, and, on the heap of ruins, the dance of a four-legged lump, which kicked its stumps amid wild yells, clapping its hands the while.
“That’s right—! Hallelujah Amen—!”
“Grot—!” Freder laid fast hold of the dancing lump and shook it so that its teeth rattled. “The water has flooded the city! The lights lie in ruins! The water has risen up the steps! And upon the door—upon the only door, there lie tons upon tons of trains which collided with each other there!”
“Let the rats drown—!”
“The children, Grot—!!”
Grot stood as if paralysed.
“A girl,” continued Freder, clutching his hand into the man’s shoulder, “a girl,” he said sobbingly, bending his head as if to bury it in the man’s breast, “a girl has tried to save the children and is now shut in with them and can’t get out—”
Grot began to run.
“We must explode the ruins, Grot!”
Grot stumbled, turned about and went on running, Freder behind him, closer than his shadow …
“… But Foxy Fox knew very well that Mr. Hedgehog would come to help him out of the trap, and he wasn’t a bit frightened and waited quite cheerfully, although it was a good long time before Mr. Hedgehog—gallant Mr. Hedgehog came back …”
“Maria—!”
“Oh Christ … Freder?”
“Don’t be startled, do you hear?”
“Freder, you’re not in danger?”
No answer. Silence. A crackling sound. Then a childish voice:
“And did Mr. Hedgehog come, sister?”
“Yes—”
But the “yes” was drowned by the tearing of thousands of steel cables, the roar of tens of thousands of rocks which were hurled up to the dome of heaven, to burst the dome and to sink, to hurtle downwards, causing the earth to sway under their fall.
Supplementary crackling. Grey, leisurely clouds. Distant rumbling. And steps. Childish crying. And, up above, the door which was hauled upwards:
“Maria—!”
A blackened face bent downwards; filthy hands stretched out, gropingly.
“Maria—!”
“Here I am, Freder!”
“I can hardly hear you …”
“Get the children out first, Freder … The wall’s sinking …”
Grot came lumbering along and threw himself on the ground by Freder’s side, clutching down into the
