Metropolis ~ Chapter 21
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, check out the essay below:
Rotwang awoke, but he knew for sure that he was dead, and this awareness filled him with the deepest satisfaction. His aching body was no longer a concern to him; it was perhaps a final remnant of life. But something troubled him deeply, as he painfully raised himself up and looked around in all directions: Hel was not there.
But he had to find Hel… He’d already overcome one existence without Hel. A second one? No! Better to just stay dead.
He set himself on his feet. That was very difficult. He must have been lying as a corpse for a pretty long time. It was night, too. But outside a fire was raging, and it was noisy with the shrieks of people…
He’d hoped to have been rid of them. But, apparently, the Almighty Creator was not going anywhere without them. Well—it didn’t matter. He only wanted his Hel. When he had found Hel, he would—as he promised himself—never again quarrel with the Father of all things about anything in the world any more.
The door leading to the street was open and hung quite crookedly on its hinges. Strange. He stepped in front of the house and looked cautiously around. What he saw seemed to be a version of Metropolis, yet a somewhat insane version of it. The houses stood as if ossified in St. Vitus’ dance. And an unusually rough and unamiable ilk of people were raging around a flaming woodpile, upon which a creature of rare beauty stood, seeming, to Rotwang, to be strangely familiar.
Ah—that was it, yes—that, in the existence which (thank God) lay far behind him, he had tried to create a replacement for his lost Hel; to meddle in the handiwork of the Creator of the world… Not bad, not bad to begin with… But, good God, measured against Hel, what an patchwork! What a botch-job…
The shrieking people below were quite right to burn the thing, although it seemed to him to be a rather large effort of fury in order to finish off his test-work. But perhaps that was the custom of the people in this existence, and he certainly did not want to argue with them. He wanted to find Hel—his Hel—and nothing else.
He knew exactly where he needed to look for her. She loved the Cathedral very much, his pious Hel. And if the flickering light of the fire did not deceive him—for the greenish sky gave no glimmer—his Hel was standing, like a child, frightened, in the blackness of the Cathedral door, her slender hands clasped firmly upon her breast, looking more like a saint than ever.
Past those who were chasing around the woodpile, always carefully courteous to not get in their way, Rotwang quietly fumbled his way to the Cathedral.
Yes, it was his Hel. She receded into the Cathedral. He fumbled his way up the steps. How high the portal looked… How the coolness and hovering incense received him… All the saints in the pillar niches had pious and loving faces, smiling softly, as though they rejoiced with him because he was now, at last, going to find Hel—his Hel—again.
She was standing at the foot of the steps to the bell-tower. She seemed very pale to him, and indescribably touching. Through a narrow window, the first gentle light of the morning fell upon her hair and brow.
“Hel,” said Rotwang, pouring out his heart. He reached out his hands. “Come to me, my Hel… How long, how long I had to live without you!”
But she did not come. She darted back from him. Her face full of horror, she darted back further from him.
“Hel,” begged the man, “why are you afraid of me? I am no ghost, although I have died. I had to die in order to come to you. I have, for ever and always, longed for you. You have no right to leave me alone now! I want your hands! Give them to me!”
But his groping fingers snatched into space. Up the steps of the stone staircase leading to the bell-tower were hurried footsteps.
Something like anger came over Rotwang’s heart. Deep in his soul, which was dulled and tormented, lay the memory of a day when Hel had also fled him towards another man… No, don’t think... Don’t think of it… That belonged to his first existence, and it would be quite senseless to once again go through the same in this other and, as humanity in general hoped, better world.
Why was Hel fleeing from him?
He groped along after her. He climbed stairs upon stairs. The hurrying, fearful footsteps remained constantly in front of him, and the higher the woman before him fled, and the more wildly his heart beat in this mighty climb, the redder Rotwang’s eyes became, filled with blood, and the more furiously the anger boiled within him. She should not run away from him—she should not! If only he could catch her by the hand, he would never, never let her go again! With his metal hand, he would forge a ring around her wrist. Then she should never try to escape to another man again!
They had both reached the belfry. They chased under the bells. He stood in the way to the stairs. He laughed, sad and evil.
“Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!”
She made a sudden, desperate leap, and hung on the rope of the bell which was called Saint Michael. Saint Michael raised his ore voice, but it sounded as though broken, complaining wildly. Rotwang’s laughter came through the sound of the bell. His metal arm, the wonder-work of a master, like the phantom arm of a skeleton, stretched out far from the sleeve of his coat and snatched at the bell-rope.
“Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!”
The girl staggered on to the railing behind her. She looked around. She was trembling like a bird. She could not go down the stairs. She also couldn’t go any higher. She was trapped. She saw Rotwang’s eyes and saw his hands. Without hesitation, without deliberation, with a wildness which flew as a blaze of scarlet across the pallor of her face, she swung herself out of the belfry window and hung upon the steel cord of the lightning rod.
“Freder!” she cried out with a shrill voice. “Help me!”
Below—far below, near the flaming woodpile—lay a trampled man with his head in the dust. But the scream from above met him so suddenly that he shot up, as if whipped, and he looked and saw…
And all those who had been dancing around the stake of the witch in raging rings saw, as stiffened and petrified as him, the girl who hung, swallow-like, clinging to the tower of the Cathedral, while Rotwang’s hands reached out towards her.
And they all heard, as if answering the cry: “I’m coming, Maria, I’m coming!” which cried out with all the salvation and all the despair which can fill the heart of a man when Heaven and Hell are equally close.
< Chapter 20 = = = = = = = = = = = Chapter 22 >