Metropolis ~ Chapter 12
This piece is part of my ongoing translation of the novel of Thea von Harbou’s “Metropolis”, which is now available for everyone to read for free. If you’d like to find out more about the project and see other available chapters, check out this essay:
It was one hour after midnight. Joh Fredersen had come to his mother’s house.
It was a farmhouse, one-storied, with a thatched roof, overshadowed by an old walnut tree, and it stood upon the flat back of one of the stone giants of apartments not far from the cathedral. A garden full of lilies and hollyhocks, full of vetches, poppies and nasturtiums, which all nestled themselves around the house.
Joh Fredersen’s mother only had one son and she had very dearly loved him. But the master over the great Metropolis, the master of the machine-city, the Head of the New Tower of Babel, had become alien to her, and she hostile to him. She had been obliged, once, to witness how one of Joh Fredersen’s machine-titans crushed men as though they were dried-out wood. She had screamed to God. He heard her not. She fell to the floor and never got up again. Only head and hands remained vital in the paralysed body, but the strength of an army blazed in her eyes.
She opposed her son and the work of her son. But he did not leave her alone; he forced her to him. When she angrily vowed that she wanted to live in her house—under the thatched roof, vaulted by the walnut tree—until her final days, he transplanted the house, tree and summer-coloured blossoming garden to the flat roof of the stone apartment-giant which stood between the cathedral and the New Tower of Babel. The walnut tree ailed for a year, and then became green again. A wonder of beauty, the garden blossomed around the house.
When Joh Fredersen entered this house, he came from sleepless nights and evil days.
He found his mother as he always found her: in the wide, soft chair by the open window, the dark rug over her paralysed knees, the mighty Bible on the sloping table before her, and in her beautiful old-lady hands, the delicate figured lace with which she was sewing. And, as ever, when he came to her, she silently laid the fine work aside and folded her hands firmly in her lap, as though she had to collect all her will and every thought for the few minutes in which the great son was with his mother.
They did not shake hands; they did not do that any more.
“How are you, Mother?” asked Joh Fredersen.
She looked at him with eyes in which the strength of a heavenly army shone. She asked: “What do you want, Joh?”
He sat down opposite her and laid his forehead in his hands. There was nobody in the great Metropolis, nor anywhere else in the world, who could have boasted of ever having seen Joh Fredersen with sunken brow.
“I need your advice, Mother,” he said, looking at the floorboards.
The mother’s eyes rested on his hair.
“How should I advise you, Joh? You have gone down a path along which I cannot follow you—not with my head, and certainly not with my heart. Now you are so far away from me that my voice can no longer reach you. And if it were able to reach you, Joh, would you listen to me if I said to you: ‘Turn back’? You did not do it then and would not do it today. All too much has happened which can no longer be made to unhappen. You’ve sinned all too much, Joh, and you do not repent it, but instead believe yourself to be in the right. How then can I advise you?”
“It is about Freder, Mother.”
“About Freder?”
“Yes.”
“What about Freder?”
Joh Fredersen did not answer immediately. His mother’s hands trembled greatly, and, if Joh Fredersen had looked up, it could not have remained hidden from him. But Joh Fredersen’s brow remained sunken upon her hands.
“I had to come to you, Mother, because Hel is no longer alive.”
“And of what did she die?”
“I know: of me. You have often made it clear to me the hard way, Mother, and you said I’d poured boiling wine into a crystal glass. As such, the most beautiful glass had to shatter. But I do not regret it, Mother. No, I do not regret it, for Hel was mine...”
“And died for it.”
“Yes. Had she never been mine, perhaps she would still be alive. Better that she should be dead.”
“That she is, Joh. And Freder is her son.”
“What are you trying to say by that, Mother?”
“If you did not know just as well as I, Joh, you probably would not have come to me today.”
Joh Fredersen was silent. Through the open window, the rustling of the walnut tree sounded out as a dreamy and moving sound.
“Freder often comes to you, Mother, doesn’t he?” asked Joh Fredersen.
“Yes.”
“He sought help from you against me.”
“He probably needs it, Joh.”
Silence. Then Joh Fredersen raised his head. His eyes looked as though sprinkled with purple.
“I have lost, Hel, Mother,” he said. “Freder must not be lost to me.”
“Must you fear that you will lose him?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am surprised,” said the old lady, “that Freder has not yet found his way to me.”
“He is very ill, Mother.”
The old lady made a movement as though wishing to rise, and an angry lustre came into her archangel eyes.
“When he came by me recently,” she said, “he was as healthy as a tree in bloom. What has made him ill?”
Joh Fredersen stood up and began to walk up and down the room. He smelt the scent of flowers, which were streaming up from the garden through the window, as something inflicting pain which tore his forehead into lines.
“I do not know,” he said suddenly, and quite disjointedly, “how this girl could have stepped into his life. I do not know how she won this enormous power over him. But I heard from his own lips how he said to her: ‘My father no longer has a son, Maria’ ...”
“Freder doesn’t lie, Joh. So you have lost him already.”
Joh Fredersen did not answer. He thought of Rotwang. He had said the same words to him.
“Is it about this that you wanted to come to me, Joh?” asked his mother. “Then you could have saved yourself the journey. Freder is Hel’s son, yes. That means he has a soft heart. But he is yours too, Joh. That means he has a skull of steel. You know best, Joh, how much tenacity a man can muster up to attain to the woman he wants.”
“You cannot make that comparison, Mother. Freder is almost still a boy. When I took Hel to me, I was a man, and I knew what I was doing. Hel was more necessary to me than air to breathe. I could not do without Hel, Mother. I would have stolen her from the arms of God himself.”
“You can steal nothing from God, Joh, but you can from man. You have done that. You have sinned, Joh. You’ve sinned by your friend, for Hel loved Rotwang, and you compelled her.”
“As she was dying, Mother, she loved me.”
“Yes. When she recognised that you, too, were a man; when your head was beating against the floor and you were crying out after her. But do you believe, Joh, that this one smile in her dying hour outweighs everything that she died of by your side?”
“Leave me my belief, Mother.”
“It’s superstition.”
Joh Fredersen looked at his mother.
“I would very much like to know,” he said with a darkened voice, “what you feed your hatred towards me with, Mother!”
“With my fears for you, Joh, with my fears!”
“You need have no fears about me, Mother.”
“Oh but I do, Joh, I do! Your guilt walks behind you like a dog on the scent. It does not lose your trail, Joh; it remains ever at your back! A friend is unarmed against his friend; he has no shield in front of his chest, nor armour in front of his heart. A friend who believes in his friend is a defenceless man. A defenceless man was whom you betrayed, Joh.”
“I have paid for my sin, Mother. Hel is dead. Now I only have Freder left. He is her legacy. I will not give up Hel’s legacy. I have come to you to beg of you, Mother: help me to win Freder back.”
The eyes of the old lady were fixed on him, radiant.
“What did you answer me, Joh, when I wanted to stop you on your way to Hel?”
“I don’t know any more.”
“But I still know, Joh! I still know every syllable. You said: ‘I don’t hear a word you say, I only hear Hel! If I were to be blinded, I would still see Hel! If I were to be paralysed, with paralysed feet, I would still find my way to Hel!’ Freder is your son. How do you believe he would answer me, Joh, if I said to him: ‘Give up the girl you love’?”
Joh Fredersen was silent.
“You better take care, Joh!” said the old mother. “I know what it means when your eyes grow cold, like now, and when you turn as pale as one of the stones of the wall. You have forgotten that lovers are sacred. Even if they are mistaken, Joh, their mistake itself is sacred. Even if they are fools, Joh, their folly itself is sacred. For where lovers are, there is God’s garden, and no one has the right to drive them out—not even God. Only their own sin.”
“I must have my son back,” said Joh Fredersen. “I hoped you would help me, and you would certainly have been the gentlest means I could have chosen. But you do not want to, and now I must seek another means...”
“Freder is ill, you say...”
“He will get well again.”
“So you will continue to go your way?”
“Yes.”
“I believe, Joh, that Hel would weep if she were to hear you speak!”
“Maybe. But Hel is dead.”
“Well then, come here to me, Joh! I will give you a word to take with you on your way which you cannot forget. It is easy to retain.”
Joh Fredersen hesitated. Then he stepped up next to his mother. She laid her hand on the Bible which lay before her. Her fingers indicated a passage. Joh Fredersen read: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Joh Fredersen turned around. He walked through the room. His mother’s eyes followed him. As he unexpectedly turned toward her, violently, and with a violent word on his lips, he found the gaze of her eyes set upon him. They could disguise themselves no longer (and neither did they wish to), showing, in their tear-washed depths, such an almighty love that Joh Fredersen believed he was seeing his mother for the first time.
They looked at each other and remained silent for a long time. Then the man stepped up to his mother.
“I am going now, Mother,” he said, “and I believe I will come to you no more.”
She gave no answer. It was as though he wanted to stretch out his hand to her, but halfway there he let it drop again.
“For whom are you crying, Mother?” he asked, “For Freder or for me?”
“For you both,” said the mother. “For you both, Joh.”
He stood, silent, and the struggle of his heart was in his face. Then, without looking at his mother once more, he turned around and went out of the house, over which the walnut tree rustled.
< Chapter 11 = = = = = = = = = = = Chapter 13 >
