Metropolis ~ Chapter 18
This piece is part of my ongoing translation of the novel of Thea von Harbou’s “Metropolis”. If you’d like to find out more about the project and see other available chapters, check out the essay below:
"I am hungry, sister!”
“Don’t you want to hear the end of my story?”
“Yes. But sister, once it’s finished, can’t we go out and get food?”
“Of course, as soon as my story has finished… Think of this: The Little Fox went for a walk. He walked through the beautiful flowery meadows. He had his Sunday coat on and held his bushy red tail bolt upright, and he smoked his little pipe, sometimes singing in-between—and he would hop with delight! And Mr. Hedgehog sat on his little hill and he was pleased that his radishes were thriving, and his wife stood by the fence, gossiping with Mrs. Mole, who had just gotten a new fur for the Autumn.”
“Sister...”
“Yes?”
“Could it be that the water from below is coming up after us?”
“Why, little brother?”
“I can hear it gurgling...”
“Don’t listen to the water, little brother. Listen instead to what Mrs. Hedgehog had to gossip about!”
“Yes... But sister, but the water is gossiping so loud. I think it gossips much louder than Mrs. Mole.”
“Come away from the silly water, little brother… Come over to me! You can’t hear the water here.”
“I can’t come to you, sister! I can’t move at all, sister. Can’t you come and fetch me?”
“Me too, sister! Yes, me too! Me too!”
“That can’t happen, little brothers and little sisters! I have your youngest brothers and sisters on my lap. They’ve gone to sleep and I mustn’t wake them.”
“Oh sister, are we really sure to get out?”
“Why do you ask so fearfully, little brother?”
“The floor is shaking so much and stones are falling from the ceiling!”
“Have those silly stones hurt you?”
“No, but my little sister’s lying down and she’s not moving any more.”
“Don’t disturb her, little brother. Your sister’s sleeping!”
“Yes, but she was crying so much just now, wasn’t she?”
“Rest assured, little brother, that she had gone where she need not cry any more.”
“Where has she gone to then, sister?”
“To Heaven, I believe.”
“Is Heaven that close then?”
“Oh yes, very close! I can already see the door from here! And if I’m not mistaken, Saint Peter is standing in front of it with a large golden key, waiting until he can open it for us.”
“Oh, sister—sister! Now the water’s coming up! Now it’s got me by the feet! Now it’s lifting me up!”
“Sister! Help me, sister! The water is here!”
“God can help you—the Almighty God!”
“Sister, I’m frightened!”
“Are you frightened of going to the beautiful Heaven?”
“Is it beautiful in Heaven?”
“Oh—wonderful!”
“Is The Little Fox also in Heaven—and Mr. Hedgehog?”
“I don’t know. Shall I ask Saint Peter about it?”
“Yes, sister… Are you crying?”
“No. Why should I be crying? Saint Peter! Saint Peter!”
“Did he hear?”
“Dear God, how cold the water is...”
“Saint Peter! Saint Peter!”
“Sister, has he heard?”
“Just wait... He doesn’t know where the shouting is coming from.”
“Call again, sister, will you?”
“Saint Peter! Saint Peter!”
“Sister… I think he answered just now.”
“Really, little brother?”
“Yes. Somebody was calling out.”
“Yes, I heard it, too!”
“Me too...”
“Me too!”
“Be quiet, children, be quiet!”
“Oh, sister, sister!”
“Be quiet, I beg you!”
“… Maria!”
“Freder!”
“Maria—are you there?”
“Freder—Freder—I am here! I am here, Freder!”
“On the stairs?”
“Yes!”
“Why don’t you come up?”
“I can’t raise the door!”
“Ten trains have run into each other—I can’t come to you! I need to get help first!”
“Oh, Freder, the water’s already close behind us!”
“The water?”
“Yes! And the walls are caving in!”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, no… Oh Freder, if you could force the door open just wide enough that I can push the little children’s bodies through...”
The man above her did not answer any further. When playfully steeling his muscles and tendons in wrestling-matches with friends at the Club of the Sons, he surely never anticipated that he would need to use them one day to force a path through twisted frames, extended pistons and splayed wheels of burnt-out engines to the woman he loved. He pushed the pistons aside like human arms, clutching into steel as if it were soft, tender flesh. He came nearer the door and threw himself to the ground.
“Maria? Where are you? Why does your voice sound so far away?”
“I want to be the last that you save, Freder! I am carrying the tiniest ones on my shoulders and arms…”
“Is the water still rising?”
“Yes.”
“Fast or slow?”
“Fast.”
“My God, my God… I can’t get the door free! The dead engines are piled up on top of it like a mountain! I must blow up the debris, Maria!”
“Do it!” Maria’s voice sounded as though she were smiling. “I can finish telling my story in the meantime...”
Freder lunged away. He did not yet 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 soot-black sky, a frightful gleam, the colour of trickling blood, fell upon the city, which, in its agonising absence of light, appeared like a silhouette of tattered velvet. There was nobody to be seen, and yet the air winced under the unbearable knife-edge of women’s shrieks coming from the vicinity of Yoshiwara. And while the organ of the Cathedral was shrilling and whistling, as though its gigantic body were being wounded to death, the windows of the Cathedral, lit from within, began to glow in a phantom-like manner.
Freder stumbled along to the tower-house in which the heart of the great machine-city of Metropolis had lived, and which, running itself to death in the fever of the ‘12’, had torn open from top to bottom, so that the house now appeared like a jerked-open, gaping gate.
A lump of humanity was crawling about the ruins and, judging by the sounds it gave out, seemed to be nothing but a singular curse on two legs. Whatever horror lay over Metropolis was a 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 up to his face, recognised it, and broke out in a howl, similar to the howls of a trodden-on dog. He buried his sobbing mouth upon the little piece of steel.
“May the stinking plague devour you, you chicken-lice! May you sit in muck up to your eyes! May you swill gas instead of water and explode 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—heaven and hell! I’ve been missing you! Come here, you snotty toad! I must have you between my fists! I’d have preferred your father, but you’re a bit of him and better than nothing at all! Come here, come right here, if you’ve got the guts! Ah—boy, I want to devour you! I’d like to smear you from top toe in mustard and devour you! Do you know what your father has done?”
“Grot!”
“Let me finish, you hear? Do you know what he has done? He made me... He made me give up my machine!”
And again the miserable howling of a trodden-on dog.
“Grot, listen to me!”
“I won’t listen to anything!”
“Grot, in the underground city of the workers, the water has broken in!”
Seconds of silence. Then a roar of laughter, and on the pile of ruins, the dance of a burly lump, who jeeringly kicked his legs and clapped his hands.
“The world is put to rights! Hallelujah! Amen!”
“Grot!” Freder seized the dancing lump firmly and shook him so that his teeth rattled. “The water is drowning the city! The mining cars stand still! The water has risen up the steps! And on top of the door—the only door—there lay thousands of tons of underground trains, all collided with one another!
“Let the rats drown!”
“But the children, Grot!”
Grot stood as if paralysed.
“A girl,” continued Freder, digging his hand into the man’s shoulder, “a girl,” he said sobbingly, bending his head as if to bury it in the man’s chest, “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 blast away the debris, Grot!”
Grot stumbled, turned around and continued running. Freder followed behind him, closer than his shadow…
“… But The Little Fox knew very well that Mr. Hedgehog would come to help him out of the trap, and he wasn’t even a bit frightened, waiting quite confidently, even though it was a really long time before Mr. Hedgehog—the good Mr. Hedgehog—came back...”
“Maria!”
“Oh Christ… Freder?”
“Don’t be startled, do you hear?”
“Freder, are you in danger?”
No answer. Silence. A crackling. Then a child’s voice:
“And did Mr. Hedgehog come, sister?”
“Yes—”
But the “yes” was lost amid the tearing of thousands of steel cables, the roar of tens of thousands of rocks which were hurled at the dome of the heavens, bursting the dome and falling, hurtling downwards, causing the earth to shake from their plummeting.
Grinding aftershocks. Grey, sluggish clouds. Rumbling in the distance. Footsteps. Children’s cries. And above the door which had been hauled upwards: “Maria!”
A blackened face bent downwards; chafed hands reached out, snatchingly.
“Maria!”
“I am here, Freder! Get the children out first, Freder… The walls are caving in...”
Grot came stumbling over and threw himself to the ground, close to Freder’s side, reaching down into the shaft from which the children were gushing out screaming. He clutched the children by the hair, by the neck, by the head, and hauled them up like one pulls up radishes. His eyes were popping out of his head with fear. He hurled the children over himself in such a way that they tumbled over, shrieking miserably. He cursed like a hundred devils. “Will it never stop?”
“Father, Father!” sobbed two little voices in the depths below.
“To hell with you, you ravens!” roared the man. He pushed the children aside with his fists, as if he were shovelling rubbish on to the dustheap. Then he snivelled gaspingly and reached out, two children hanging around his neck, wet and shivering pitifully, but alive—and their limbs were more in danger from his fumbling fists than from the water and the tumbling stones previously.
Children in both arms, Grot rolled over on to his side. He sat upright and stood the two of them before him.
“You goddamn vermin!” he said, sobbing. He wiped the tears from his eyes and turned around. He sprang, the children hurled aside like two little straw dolls, and with the furious roar of a lion, to his feet and towards the door, from the depths of which Maria was emerging with closed eyes, held in Freder’s arms.
“Bloody bitch!” he howled out, dragging Freder aside, shoving the girl back into the depths and slamming the trapdoor closed with his entire body upon it, drumming the beat of his laughter upon it with clenched fists.
A grim effort had kept Freder on his feet. He pounced frantically upon the rampaging man in order to pull him away from the trapdoor, bowling him over and rolling with him in a frenzied embrace, amongst the wrecks of the machines.
“Let me go, you mangy dog!” howled Grot, trying to bite at the angry fist which held him. “That woman destroyed my machine! That damn woman led the hordes! That woman alone turned the lever to ‘12’! I saw it when they were trampling me! The woman should drown down there! I’m going to finish that woman!”
With unprecedented tension in all his muscles, Grot prised himself up and dragged Freder, who clung to him, with him. But Freder saw an opportunity and, with a jerk, pushed himself away from the raving man—and with such fierce strength that Grot flew in an arc to end up amongst the children.
Cursing vehemently, he pulled himself together again. But, although he was uninjured, he was unable to move a limb. He was stuck, like an impotent spoon in a gruel of children, which stuck to his arms, legs and fists. No steel manacles could have condemned him to such helplessness as these small, cold, wet hands did, which were defending their rescuer. Even his own children were standing before him, beating angrily against his clenched fists, undaunted by the bloodshot eyes with which the giant glared at the dwarves suppressing him.
“That woman destroyed my machine!” he finally howled, far more lamentingly than furiously, and looked at the girl that lay in Freder’s arms, as though expecting her to vindicate him.
“What does he mean?” asked Maria. “What’s happened?”
And she looked with eyes, whose horror was only softened by the deepest exhaustion, at the destruction around them and at the huffing Grot.
Freder did not answer.
“Come!” he said. He raised her up in his arms and carried her out. The children followed them like a flock of lambs, and the furious Grot had no option left than to walk the tracks of the tiny feet to where the little, tugging hands drew him.
< Chapter 17 = = = = = = = = = = = Chapter 19 >