Metropolis (6 page)

The voice of the driver asked: "Where to, sir?"

Straight on, motioned Georgi with his hand. Anywhere…

The man had said to him: Change the car after the third street.

But the rhythm of the motor-car embraced him too delightfully. Third street… sixth street… It was still very far to the ninetieth block.

He was filled with the wonder of being thus couched, the bewilderment of the lights, the shudder of entrancement at the motion.

The further that, with the soundless gliding of the wheels, he drew away from the New Tower of Babel, the further did he seem to draw away from the consciousnes of his own self.

Who was he—? Had he not just stood in a greasy patched, blue linen uniform, in a seething hell, his brain mangled by eternal watchfulness, with bones, the marrow of which was being sucked out by eternally making the same turn of the lever to eternally the same rhythm, with face scorched by unbearable heat, and in the skin of which the salty sweat tore its devouring furrows?

Did he not live in a town which lay deeper under the earth than the underground stations of Metropolis, with their thousand shafts—In a town the houses of which storied just as high above squares and streets as, above in the night, did the houses of Metropolis, which towered so high, one above the other?

Had he ever known anything else than the horrible sobriety of these houses, in which there lived not men, but numbers, recognisable only by the enormous placards by the house-doors?

Had his life ever had any purpose other than to go out from these doors, framed with numbers, out to work, when the sirens of Metropolis howled for him—and ten hours later, crushed and tired to death, to stumble into the house by the door of which his number stood?

Was he, himself, anything but a number—number 11811—crammed into his linen, his clothes, his cap? Had not the number also become imprinted into his soul, into his brain, into his blood, that he must even stop and think of his own name?

And now—?

And now—?

His body refreshed by pure cold water which had washed the sweat of labour from him, felt, with wonderful sweetness, the yielding relaxation of all his muscles. With a quiver which rendered all his muscles weak he felt the caressing touch of white silk on the bare skin of his body, and, while giving himself up to the gentle, even rhythm of the motion, the consciousness of the first and complete deliverance from all that which had put so agonising a pressure on his existence overcame him with so overpowering a force that he burst out into the laughter of a madman, his tears falling uncontrollably.

Violently, aye, with a glorious violence, the great city whirled towards him, like a sea which roars around mountains.

The workman No. 11811, the man who lived in a prison—Like house, under the underground railway of Metropolis, who knew no other way than that from the hole in which he slept to the machine and from the machine back to the hole—this man saw, for the first time in his life, the wonder of the world, which was Metropolis: the city, by night shining under millions and millions of lights.

He saw the ocean of light which filled the endless trails of streets with a silver, flashing lustre. He saw the will-o'-the-wisp sparkle of the electric advertisements, lavishing themselves inexhaustibly in an ecstasy of brightness. He saw towers projecting, built up of blocks of light, feeling himself seized, over-powered to a state of complete impotence by this intoxication of light, feeling this sparkling ocean with its hundreds and thousands of spraying waves, to reach out for him, to take the breath from his mouth, to pierce him, suffocate him…

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 motor-car 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 fire-works 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 iron-work of the elevated railway-track a yellow-skinned fellow hung, head downwards, suspended by the crocks of his knees, who let a snow-storm of white sheets of paper shower down upon the double row of motor-cars.

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 twelve-fold strings of waiting cars. One of them swung himself onto the foot-board of the black motor-car in which Georgi sat. For one second the grinning hideousness stared into the young, white, helpless face.

A sheaf of hand-bills 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, bitter-sweet, 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 irnpotence of mastering her; to despair, to throw one-self 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 bank-notes 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 word Yoshiwara became rockets of light which showered around him, paralysing his limbs. He sat motionless, covered in a cold sweat. He clawed his fingers into the leather of the cushions. His back was stiff, as though his spine were made of cold iron. His jaws chattered.

"No—!" said Georgi, tearing his fists down. But before his eyes which stared into space, the word flamed up:

"Yoshiwara… "

Music was in the air, hurled into the nocturnal streets by enormous loud-speakers. Wanton was the music, most heated of rhythm, of a shrieking, lashing gaiety…

"No—!" panted the man. Blood trickled in drops from his bitten lips.

But a hundred multi-coloured rockets wrote in the velvet-black sky of Metropolis, the word:

"Yoshiwara…

Georgi pushed the window open. The glorious town of Metropolis, dancing in the drunkenness of light, threw itself impetuously towards him, as though he were the only-beloved, the only-awaited. He leant out of the window, crying:

"Yoshiwara—"

He fell back upon the cushions. The car turned in a gentle curve, round in another direction.

A rocket shot up and wrote in the sky above Metropolis: Yoshiwara.

Chapter 4

THERE WAS A HOUSE in the great Metropolis which was older than the town. Many said that it was older, even, than the cathedral, and, before the Archangel Michael raised his voice as advocate in the conflict for God, the house stood there in its evil gloom, defying the cathedral from out its dull eyes.

It had lived through the time of smoke and soot. Every year which passed over the city seemed to creep, when dying, into this house, so that, at last it was a cemetery—a coffin, filled with dead tens of years.

Set into the black wood of the door stood, copper-red, mysterious, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.

It was said that a magician, who came from the East (and in the track of whom the plague wandered) had built the house in seven nights. But the masons and carpenters of the town did not know who had mortared the bricks, nor who had erected the roof. No foreman's speech and no ribboned nosegay had hallowed the Builder's Feast after the pious custom. The chronicles of the town held no record of when the magician died nor of how he died. One day it occurred to the citizens as odd that the red shoes of the magician had so long shunned the abominable plaster of the town. Entrance was forced into the house and not a living soul was found inside. But the rooms, which received, neither by day nor by night, a ray from the great lights of the sky, seemed to be waiting for their master, sunken in sleep. Parchments and folios lay about, open, under a covering of dust, like silver-grey velvet.

Set in all the doors stood, copper-red, mysterious, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.

Then came a time which pulled down antiquities. Then the words were spoken: The house must die. But the house was stronger than the words, as it was stronger than the centuries. With suddenly falling stones it slew those who laid hands on its walls. It opened the floor under their feet, dragging them down into a shaft, of which no man had previously had any knowledge. It was as though the plague, which had formerly wandered in the wake of the red shoes of the magician, still crouched in the corners of the narrow house, springing out at men from behind, to seize them by the neck. They died, and no doctor knew the illness. The house resisted its destruction with so great a force that word of its malignity went out over the borders of the city, spreading far over the land, that, at last, there was no honest man to be found who would have ventured to make war against it. Yes, even the thieves and the rogues, who were promised remission of their sentence provided that they declared themselves ready to pull down the magician's house, preferred to go to the pillory, or even to the scaffold, rather than to enter within these spiteful walls, these latchless doors, which were sealed with Solomon's seal.

The little town around the cathedral became a large town and grew into Metropolis, and into the centre of the world.

One day there came to the town a man from far away, who saw the house and said: "I want to have that."

He was initiated into the story of the house. He did not smile. He stood by his resolution. He bought the house at a very low price, moved in at once and kept it unaltered.

This man was called Rotwang. Few knew him. Only Joh Fredersen knew him very well. It would have been easier for him to have decided to fight out the quarrel about the cathedral with the sect of Gothics than the quarrel with Rotwang about the magician's house.

There were in Metropolis, in this city of reasoned, methodical hurry, very many who would rather have gone far out of their way than have passed by Rotwang's house. It hardly reached knee-high to the house-giants which stood near it. It stood at an angle to the street. To the cleanly town, which knew neither smoke nor soot, it was a blot and an annoyance. But it remained. When Rotwang left the house and crossed the street, which occurred but seldom, there were many who covertly looked at his feet, to see if, perhaps, he walked in red shoes.