Metropolis ~ Chapter 19
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 the other available chapters, check out the essay below:
They’d brought the children to the Club of the Sons, and Freder’s eyes sought Maria, who was kneeling in the street amongst the last remaining children, comforting them and bestowing her tender smile upon their distraught, weeping eyes. Freder ran over to them and carried Maria into the building.
“Don’t forget,” he said, setting her down before the blazing fireplace in the entrance hall and holding her half-lying, half-sitting form, somewhat reluctantly captive in his longing arms, “that death and madness and something like the destruction of the world have passed very close by us—and that you have not yet kissed me even once by your own free will.”
“Dearest,” said Maria, leaning towards him so that her pure eyes, bathed in painless tears, were very close to him, while, at the same time, a great, vigilant seriousness kept her lips away from his, “are you really sure that death and madness have already passed us by?”
“By us, beloved, yes.”
“And all the others?”
“Are you sending me away, Maria?” he asked lovingly. She did not answer, at least not with words. But she laid her arms around his neck, with a frank and simultaneously touching gesture, and kissed him on the mouth.
“Go,” she said, stroking his glowing, dazed face with her virginal, motherly hands. “Go to your father. That is the most holy way for you… I shall go to the children as soon as my clothes are a little dryer. For I fear,” she added, with a smile which made Freder blush to his eyes, “as many women as there are who live in the Club of the Sons, and good-willed and obliging as they may be, not one of them has a dress she could lend me.”
Freder stood bent over her with lowered eyes. The flames of the huge fireplace glowed upon his handsome, open face, on which lay an expression of shame and sadness. But when he raised his gaze and meet Maria’s eyes, silently fixed upon him, he took her hands without saying a word and pressed them against his eyelids, remaining thus for a long time.
And during this time they both forgot that, on the other side of the thick wall protecting them, a great city winced in grisly conflict, and that many thousands of men, themselves in ruins among the rest of the rubble, hurled themselves to and fro, losing their reason in the torture of the fear of death and perishing.
Only the voice of the Archangel Michael, coming from the Cathedral, called them back to an awareness of the hour, and they parted hastily, as if caught in the dereliction of duty.
Maria listened to the man’s steps leaving. Then she turned her head and looked restlessly about her.
How come the bell of St. Michael had such a strange sound? The bell was calling out so furiously, so rushed, as though it wished to tumble over with every peal.
Maria’s heart became an echo of the bell. It fluttered in its lamenting fear, which had no source other than the general vibration of the great horror running through the city. Even the warming flames of the fireplace frightened her, as if they had some knowledge of the secrets of this horror.
She sat upright and put her feet on the ground. She felt the hem of her dress. It was still rather wet, but she wanted to go now. She took a few steps through the half-lit room. How brown the air was outside the windows… She hesitatingly opened the nearest door and listened.
She was standing in the room in which she’d stood when she saw Freder for the first time, when she’d led the procession of little, grey child-spectres to the happy and playful, and when she had called to Freder’s heart with her gentle: “Look, these are your brothers!”
But of all the dearly beloved sons of boundlessly wealthy fathers, to whom this club belonged, not one was to be seen. Sparse candles were burning, giving the mighty room an intimate cosiness and warm closeness. The room was filled with the tender chirping of sleepy children’s voices, chattering like swallows before flying to their nests.
Answering them with slightly darker tones came the voices of the beautiful, brocaded, painted women, who had once been the toys of the sons. Equally frightened by the thought of fleeing as of sitting tight, they ultimately remained in their indecision in the Club of the Sons. Maria had brought the children to them because they could have found no better refuge. For, by the beautiful and dreadful chance of all that had happened, the troupe of tender little harlots became a troupe of tender little mothers, burning with a new fire in the fulfilment of their new duties.
Not far from Maria, the little drink-mixer was kneeling next to a bowl of warm water, and was probably about to begin washing the skinny, slender-limbed body of Grot’s daughter, who stood before of her. But the child had taken the sponge from her hand, and, without a word, proceeded with great seriousness to undertake washing the beautiful, painted face of the drink-mixer thoughtfully and untiringly.
The girl knelt completely silently, with eyes closed, not moving as the child’s hands began to dry her face with a rough towel. But Grot’s daughter was not completely successful in this endeavour. No matter how often she dried the girl’s cheeks, rapid, light-coloured teardrops ran down them, over and over again, until Grot’s daughter lowered the towel to look at the girl who was kneeling before her, inquisitively and not without reproach. At which point, the girl threw the child into her arms, pressing her forehead to the heart of the silent creature, uttering words of tenderness she had never found before to this heart.
Maria went past with soundless footsteps. As she closed the door to the hall, into which no noise from the loud Metropolis could penetrate, the ore voice of the angel of the Cathedral struck at her breast like a steel fist, such that she stood still in a daze, raising her hands to her head.
Why was St. Michael shouting so angrily and wildly? Why was the roar of Azrael, the angel of death, intertwined so harrowingly?
She stepped into the street. Darkness, like a thick layer of soot, lay over the city, and only the Cathedral shimmered, ghost-like, like a wonder of light, but not of grace. The air was filled with the spectral battle of conflicting voices. There was howling, laughing and whistling. It was as though a procession of murderers and thieves were passing by through the unrecognisable depths of the street. Mingled with them, shrieks of women, tickled by lust…
Maria’s eyes sought the New Tower of Babel. She had only one way on her mind: the way to Joh Fredersen. She wanted to go there—but she never went.
Suddenly, the air was a blood-red stream, which gushed forth, flickering, formed of a thousand torches. The torches danced in the hands of men who were pouring out of Yoshiwara. The faces of the men glared with insanity; every mouth stood open, gaping, and yet the eyes which blazed above those mouths were the bursting eyes of the suffocating. Each was dancing the dance of Death with his own torch, whirling about madly, and the whirl of the dancers simultaneously formed an endless procession, revolving around itself.
“Maohee!” flew the shrill cries above it. “Dance—dance—dance—Maohee!”
But leading the flaming procession was a girl. The girl was Maria. And the girl was screaming with Maria’s voice: “Dance—dance—dance—Maohee!”
She crossed the torches like swords above her head. She swung them right and left, shaking them so that showers of sparks dripped about the way. Sometimes it seemed as if she were riding the torches. She raised her knees to her breast with a laughter that made the dancers of the procession groan.
But one of the dancers ran at the girl’s feet, like a dog, crying incessantly: “I am Jan! I am the faithful Jan! Hear me at last, Maria!”
But the girl struck him in the face with her sparkling torch. His clothes caught fire. He ran for some time as a living torch alongside the girl. His voice sounded shrill from the blaze: “Maria! Maria!” Then he swung himself up on to the railing of the street and toppled, a streak of fire, into the depths.
“Maohee!” called out the girl, shaking her torch.
There was no end to the procession. The street was already covered, as far as the eye could see, with circling torches. The screeching of the dancers intertwined sharply and shrilly with the angry voices of the archangel-bells of the Cathedral. And behind the procession staggered, as though tugged along by an invisible, unbreakable cord, a girl, whose damp dress-hem lashed about her ankles, whose hair fell loose under the clawing fingers which she pressed to her head, whose lips slurred a name as an ineffective incantation: “Freder… Freder...”
The swathes of smoke from the torches hovered like grey wings of phantom birds above the dancing procession. Then the door of the Cathedral was opened wide. From the depths of the Cathedral came the rolls of the organ. Then the fourfold tone of the archangel-bells, the rolls of the organ and the screeches of the dancers became mixed with a mighty choir of iron strides.
The hour of Desertus, the monk, had come.
Desertus, the monk, led his own followers. Two by two, those who were his disciples walked along. They stepped with bare feet, in black frocks. They had slid the frocks from their shoulders. They carried heavy whips in both hands. They swung the heavy whips in both hands upon their bare shoulders—right—then left—then right—then left. Blood trickled down from their lashed backs. The Gothics sang. They sang in time with their feet. They sang in time with their lashings.
Desertus, the monk, led the Gothics on.
The Gothics bore a black cross before them. It was so heavy that twelve men, wheezing, hauled it. It swayed, held up by dark cords. And on the cross hung Desertus, the monk.
In the flame-white face, the black flames of the eyes were fixed upon the procession of dancers. The head rose. The pale mouth opened.
“Look!” shouted Desertus the monk, in an almighty voice which outrang the fourfold tone of the archangel-bells, the rolls of the organ, the choir of whip-wielders and the screeches of dancers: “Look upon the great Babylon! The Mother of Abomination! Judgement Day has broken! The end of the world is nigh!”
“Judgement Day has broken! The end of the world is nigh!” roared the choir of his followers after him, powerfully.
“Dance—dance—dance—Maohee!” cried the voice of the girl who led the dancers. She swung her torch like a whip over her shoulder, and hurled it far from her. She tore her garment from her shoulders and breasts, standing like a white torch, stretching her arms and laughing, her hair shaking; “Dance with me, Desertus—dance with me!”
Then Maria, dragging herself along at the end of the procession, felt the cord—the invisible cord upon which she hung—tear. She turned around with her eyes closed and, not knowing where to, began to run—just to get away, to get far away—no matter where to!
The streets flew by in a whirl. She ran and ran, going further and ever further, and saw, at last, running at the bottom of the street, far ahead of her, a crazed mob of people heading towards her. Then she saw that the men wore blue linen uniforms, and she sobbed in relief: “Brothers—brothers!”
She reached out her hands… But a furious roar answered her. Like a collapsing wall, the mob rolled onwards, releasing itself and beginning to run, roaring loudly.
“There she is, there she is! The bitch who is to blame for everything! Grab her! Grab her!”
And women’s voices shrieked: “The witch! Strike the witch dead! Burn her before we all drown!”
The trampling of running feet filled the dead street, through which the girl fled, with the din of Hell broken loose.
The houses flew by in a whirl. She didn’t know the way in the dark. She hurried onwards, running aimlessly in a blind horror, which was so deep that she did not know of its origin. Stones, clubs and fragments of steel flew at her from behind. The masses roared in a voice which was no longer human: “After her! After her! She’s escaping! Faster! Faster!”
Maria no longer felt her feet. She did not know whether she was running on stones or water. In short, rasping sounds, her breath wheezed through her lips, which stood apart like one drowning. Up streets, down streets… A twirling blaze of lights staggered far ahead of her across the way. Far ahead, at the end of the enormous square, in which Rotwang’s house also lay, the weight of the Cathedral lay heavy and dark upon the earth, and yet showed a tender, comforting shimmer, which fell through the colourful stained-glass windows and through the open portal out into the darkness.
Breaking out in sudden sobs, Maria threw herself forwards with her last desperate strength. She stumbled up the Cathedral steps, stumbled through the portal, sensed the smell of incense, saw little, pious candles before the effigy of a gentle saint who suffered in his smile, and collapsed on the tiles.
She no longer saw how, at the double opening of the street which led to the Cathedral, the procession of dancers from Yoshiwara suddenly collided with the roaring procession of workmen and women. She did not hear the beastly outcries of the women at the sight of the girl who rode on the shoulders of her dancers, who was thus torn down, overrun, caught and trampled to the ground. She did not see the short, gruesome and hopeless struggle of the men in tailcoats with the men in blue linen, nor the ridiculous flight of the half-naked women from the claws and fists of the workmen’s wives.
She lay in deep obliviousness in the great, mild solemnity of the Cathedral, and from the depths of her unconsciousness, not once was she awoken by the roaring voice of the masses, which was erecting a stake for the witch before the Cathedral.
< Chapter 18 = = = = = = = = = = = Chapter 20 >