Metropolis ~ Chapter 3
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:
The man who had been Joh Fredersen's First Secretary stood in a cabin of the Paternoster lift – that transected the New Tower of Babel like a never-static bucket wheel — leaning, with his back against the wooden wall, making the journey through this white, humming house, from the heights of the rooftops, to the depths of the cellars, and up again to the heights of the rooftops, for the thirtieth time - never moving from a single spot.
People, greedy to save a few seconds, toppled in with him and, a few stories higher or lower, out again. Nobody paid any attention to him. One or two certainly recognised him. But, as yet, nobody had interpreted the drops on his temples as being anything but a similar greed to save a few seconds. Alright — he would wait until they knew better, until they grabbed him and shoved him out of the cabin: What are you taking up space for, you lump, if you've got time? Crawl down the stairs, or the fire escape...
With a gaping mouth, he leant there and waited...
Then, emerging from the depths again, he looked, with his dumbfounded eyes, into the room which guarded Joh Fredersen's door, and saw Joh Fredersen's son standing in front of it. For a fraction of a second they stared into each other's overshadowed faces, from which both of their glances broke out as signals of distress; very different, but equally deep distress. Then the indifferent pumping station carried the man in the cabin upwards, into the total darkness of the tower roof, and when he dipped down afresh, becoming visible again on his way downwards, the son of Joh Fredersen was standing by the opening of the cabin and, in one step, was beside the man whose back seemed to be nailed to the wooden wall.
"What is your name?" he asked gently.
A hesitation in taking a breath, and the answer, which sounded as though he were listening out for something: "Josaphat…"
"What will you do now, Josaphat?"
They dropped, and dropped. As they passed through the great hall, from which great windows showed off the broad street of bridges beyond, in turning his head Freder saw, in the blackness of the sky, already half-extinguished, the dripping word: Yoshiwara...
He spoke as if he stretched out both hands, and as if closing his eyes in speaking:
"Will you come over to me, Josaphat?"
A hand fluttered up like a shooing bird.
"Me?" moaned the stranger.
"Yes, Josaphat!"
The young voice, which was so full of kindness...
They dropped, and dropped. Light — dark — light — dark again.
"Will you come over to me, Josaphat?"
"Yes!" said the strange man, with an incomparable fervour. "Yes!"
They emerged into light. Freder grabbed the man by the arm and wrenched him out of the great pumping station of the New Tower of Babel with him, holding him fast as he flinched from being yanked.
"Where do you live, Josaphat?"
"Ninetieth Block. House Seven. Floor Seven."
"Then go home, Josaphat. I might come to yours myself, or I might send a messenger to yours who will bring you to me. I do not know what the next few hours will bring… But I do not want any man I know - if I can prevent it - to lie a whole night long, staring at the ceiling until it appears to come crashing down on him..."
"What can I do for you?" asked the man.
Freder felt the twisting pressure of his hand. He smiled. He shook his head.
"Nothing. Go home. Wait. Be calm. Tomorrow brings another day. And I believe, a fair one…"
The man let go of his hand and went. Freder saw him out. The man stopped and looked back at Freder. Without him coming closer, he dropped his head with an expression of earnestness and with an unquestioning nature, so that the smile faded from Freder's lips.
"Yes, sir," he said. "I take you at your word!"
The Paternoster hummed at Freder's back. The cabins, like bailers, gathered men up and poured them out again. But the son of Joh Fredersen did not see them. Among all those chasers who sought to save a few seconds, he alone was silent, listening only to how the New Tower of Babel roared in its revolutions. To him, the roaring seemed like the ringing of a cathedral bell —like the ore voice of the Archangel Michael. But a song hovered above it, high and sweet. His whole young heart rejoiced in this song.
"Have I acted in your favour for the first time, you great mediatrix of pity?" he asked in the roar of the bell's voice.
But no answer came.
Then he went the way he wanted to go, in order to find an answer.
***
While The Thin Man entered Freder's home in order to question the servants about their master, Joh Fredersen's son walked down the steps which led to the substructure of the New Tower of Babel. As the servants shook their heads at The Thin Man, saying their master had not yet come home, Joh Fredersen's son walked towards the luminous pillars which indicated the way. As The Thin Man, with a glance at his watch, decided to wait - and wait for a while - already troubled, contemplating possibilities and how to handle them—Joh Fredersen's son entered the room from which the New Tower of Babel drew the energy that it required.
He hesitated a long time before opening the door, because behind this door was a strange existence. It howled. It wheezed. It whistled. The whole building groaned. An incessant trembling ran through the walls and the floor. And amidst it all there was not one human sound. Only the things and the hollow air roared. If people lived in the room on the other side of this door, then they had powerless and sealed lips. But for these men's sakes, Freder had come.
He pushed the door open - and then fell back, suffocating. Boiling air struck against him, groping at his eyes so that he saw nothing. Gradually, he became the master of his sight once more.
The room was dimly lit, and the ceiling, which looked as though it could carry the weight of the entire earth, seemed to be perpetually falling down through the turbulent air.
A faint howling made breathing difficult to bear. It was as though the breath soaked in the howling. From the mouths of pipes, pounding air, which came pre-expired from the lungs of the great Metropolis, bellowed into the depths. Hurled across the room, it was greedily sucked back up by the mouths of pipes on the other side. And its howling light spread with a coldness about it, coming into fierce conflict with the sweltering heat of the room.
In the middle of the room crouched the Paternoster Machine. She was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant's head. She gleamed in oil. She had glistening limbs. Under the crouching body and head, sunken on the chest, crooked legs rested like a gnome upon the platform. The torso and legs were motionless. But the short arms pushed, and pushed, and pushed, alternating forwards, then backwards, then forwards. A gentle, pointed light sparkled upon the play of the delicate joints. The floor, which was stone and seamless, trembled under the pushing of this little machine, smaller than a five-year-old child.
Embers spat from the walls in which the furnaces roared. The smell of oil, which whistled from the heat, hung in swathes of thick layers throughout the room. Even the wild chase of the wandering masses of air did not tear out the stifling haze of oil. Even the water, which was sprayed through the room, fought a hopeless battle against the fury of the heat-spitting walls, already saturated with oil-fumes and evaporating before it could prevent the skin of the men in this hell from being roasted.
Men glided by like swimming shadows. Their movements – their soundless pushing-through - had the black ghostliness of deep-sea divers. Their eyes stood open - as though they never closed them.
Near the little machine in the centre of the room stood a man, wearing the uniform of all the workmen of Metropolis: the dark blue linen from neck to ankle, hard shoes on bare feet, hair tightly enclosed by a black cap. The hunted stream of wandering air washed around his form, making the folds of the canvas flutter. The man held his hand on the lever and kept his gaze glued to the clock, whose hands vibrated like magnetic needles.
Freder fumbled his way up to the man. He stared at him. He could not see his face. How old was the man? A thousand years? Or not yet twenty? He was talking to himself with babbling lips. What was the man nattering about? And did this man, too, have the face of Joh Fredersen's son?
"Look at me, you!" said Freder bending forward.
But the man's gaze did not leave the clock. His hand was at the lever perpetually and feverishly. His lips babbled and babbled busily.
Freder listened in. He picked up the words - shreds of words, tattered by the current of air.
"Paternoster… that means: Our Father… Our Father, who art in Heaven! We are in hell, Our Father! … Hallowed be thy name! … What is thy name? Art thou called Paternoster, Our Father? Or Joh Fredersen? Or machine? … Be hallowed by us, machine. Paternoster! … Thy kingdom come… Thy kingdom come, machine… Thy will be done; on Earth as it is in Heaven...What is thy will of us, machine, Paternoster? Art thou in Heaven as thou art on Earth? … Our Father, who art in Heaven, when thou callest us into Heaven, shall we guard the machines here in thy world — the great wheels which break the limbs of thy creatures — the great flywheels on which your beautiful stars turn - the great carousel called the Earth? … Thy will be done, Paternoster! … Give us this day our daily bread… Grind, machine! Grind flour for our bread! The bread is baked from the flour of our bones… And forgive us our trespasses… what trespasses, Paternoster? The trespass of having a brain and a heart, that thou hast not, machine… ? And lead us not into temptation… Lead us not into temptation to rise up against thee, machine, for thou art stronger than we, thou art a thousand times stronger, and thou art always in the right; we are always in the wrong, because we are weaker than thou art, machine… But deliver us from evil, machine… Deliver us from thee, machine… For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen… Paternoster, that means: Our Father… Our Father, who art in heaven..."
Freder touched the man's arm. The man shrank back, dumbstruck.
His hand fell from the lever and flew through the air like a bird that had been shot. The man's mouth seemed to be in strain, gaping. For a second, the whites of the eyes in the stiffened face were frighteningly visible. Then the man collapsed like a rag and Freder’s arms caught him.
Freder held him firmly. He looked around. Nobody was paying any attention, either to him or to the other man. Clouds of steam and fumes surrounded them like a fog. There was a door nearby. Freder carried the man and pushed the door open. It led to the tool cellar. A crate offered a hard seat. Freder let the man slide down into it.
Dull eyes looked up at him. The face to which they belonged was almost that of a boy.
"What is your name?" asked Freder.
"11811..."
"I want to know what your mother named you."
"Georgi."
"Georgi, do you know me?"
In the dull eyes, awareness came back, along with a recognition.
"Yes, I know you. You are the son of Joh Fredersen… of Joh Fredersen, who is the father of us all..."
"Yes. Therefore I am your brother, Georgi, do you hear? I heard your Lord’s Prayer.”
With a heave, the body threw itself up.
"The machine!" He sprang to his feet. "My machine!"
"Leave it, Georgi, and listen to me..."
"There must be somebody at the machine!"
"Somebody will be at the machine; but not you..."
"Who then?"
"Me."
The response was staring eyes.
"Me," repeated Freder. "Are you capable of listening to me, and will you be able to make note of what I say? It is very important, Georgi!"
"Yes," said Georgi, paralysed.
"We shall now exchange lives, Georgi. You take mine, I take yours; I shall take your place at the machine, and you will go out quietly in my clothes. Nobody noticed me when I came here, nobody will notice you when you go out. You only need to keep your nerve and remain calm, and keep yourself where the air brews like a mist. When you reach the street, then take a car. You will find more than enough money in my pockets. Change cars three streets later, and again after another three streets. Then drive to the ninetieth block. At the corner pay off the taxi and wait until the driver has moved on, so that he can see you no more. Then find the seventh floor of the seventh house. In there lives a man called Josaphat. You are to go to him. Tell him I sent you. Wait for me or for a message from me. Do you fully understand me, Georgi?"
"Yes."
But the "yes" was empty and seemed to be giving a response to something other than Freder's question.
A while later, the son of Joh Fredersen, the Master of the great Metropolis, was standing before the machine which was like Ganesha - the god with the elephant's head.
He wore the uniform of all the workmen of Metropolis: the dark blue linen from neck to ankle, hard shoes on bare feet, hair tightly enclosed by a black cap. He held his hand on the lever and kept his gaze glued to the clock, whose hands vibrated like magnetic needles.
The hunted stream of wandering air washed around him, making the folds of the canvas flutter.
Nevertheless, slowly, chokingly, from the incessantly trembling floor, from the walls in which the furnaces whistled, from the ceiling which seemed to be perpetually falling down, from the pushing of the short arms of the machine, indeed from the constant heaving of the gleaming body, he felt how the terror welled up in him until death seemed certain.
He felt — and saw, too — how, from out of the dragging vapour, the long white elephant's trunk of Ganesha unfastened itself from the head, sunken into the chest, and gently, with a calm, unwavering finger, felt for Freder's forehead. He felt the touch of this sucker, almost cool, not the least bit painful, but horrible. Right in the centre, above the bridge of the nose, the ghostly trunk sucked tightly; it was hardly a pain, yet it bored like a fine, precise drill towards the centre of his brain...
As though connected to the clockwork of an infernal machine, his heart began to pound. Pater noster… Pater noster... Pater noster…
"I don’t want this," said Freder, and tore his head backwards in order to break the cursed contact: "I don’t want… I don’t… I don’t want this..."
Feeling the sweat dripping from his temples like drops of blood, he rummaged through all pockets of the strange uniform which he wore, finding a rag in one of them and drawing it out. Drying the forehead, felt the sharp edge of a stiff piece of paper, which he had taken hold of together with the cloth.
He pocketed the cloth and examined the paper.
It was no larger than a man's hand, bearing neither print nor script, and was covered over and over with the sketching of a strange symbol and a seemingly half-destroyed plan.
Freder tried to make something of it but he did not succeed. Of all the signs the plan denoted, he did not recognise one. Routes seemed to be indicated on it, which seemed like wrong routes, but they all led to one destination: a place which was filled with crosses.
A symbol of life? Sense in the nonsense?
As Joh Fredersen's son, Freder was accustomed to grasp anything called a plan swiftly and exactly. He pocketed the plan, though it remained within his vision.
From the occupied, emancipated brain that pondered, dissected and sought, the sucker of the Machine-Ganesha’s elephant's trunk slid down as if stunned. The subdued head sunk back into the chest. Obediently and eagerly, the little machine that drove the Paternoster lift of the New Tower of Babel worked away.
A little glimmering light played upon the delicate joints, almost atop the crown like a small malicious eye.
The little machine had time. Many hours would go by before the Master of great Metropolis - Joh Fredersen - would tear the fodder which his machines chewed up away from the mighty machine’s teeth.
Quite softly, almost smilingly, the gleaming eye - the malicious eye - of the delicate machine looked down upon the son of Joh Fredersen, who stood before it…
***
Georgi had left the New Tower of Babel through various doors unchallenged, and the city received him - the great Metropolis, which swung in the dance of light – and indeed was a dancer.
He stood in the street, drinking in the drunken air. He felt white silk on his body. He felt the shoes which were soft and tender. He breathed deeply, and the fullness of his own breath filled him with the highest-possible intoxication.
He saw a city which he had never seen. He saw it as a man he had never been. He did not walk in the stream of others: a stream that was twelve flies deep… He wore no blue linen, no hard shoes, no cap. He was not going to work; work was waved aside, as another man was doing his work for him.
A man had come to him and had said: "We shall now exchange lives, Georgi. You take mine, I take yours..."
“When you reach the street, then take a car.”
“You will find more than enough money in my pockets...”
Georgi looked at the city which he had never seen.
Oh, the intoxication of the lights! Ecstasy of brightness! Oh, thousand-limbed, great city of Metropolis, built of blocks of light! Towers of radiancy! Steep mountains of lustre! From the velvety sky above you shower golden rain, inexhaustibly, like it rained into the open womb of Danaë.
Oh, Metropolis! Metropolis!
A drunken man, he took his first steps, seeing a flame which hissed up into the heavens. A rocket wrote, as drops of light upon the velvety sky, the word: Yoshiwara...
Georgi ran across the street, reaching the steps, and, taking three steps at a time, reached the roadway. Smooth and sleek, a black, obliging beast, a car approached, stopping at his feet.
Georgi sprang into the car, falling upon the cushions, with the engine of the powerful automobile rumbling soundlessly. A recollection made the man's body stiff: Was there not, somewhere in the world — and not very far away at all - under the base of the New Tower of Babel, a room which was permeated by incessant trembling? Did not a delicate little machine stand in the middle of this room, gleaming with oil and with strong, glistening limbs? Under the crouching body and head, sunken on the chest, crooked legs rested like a gnome upon the platform. The torso and legs were motionless. But the short arms pushed, and pushed, and pushed, alternating forwards, then backwards, then forwards. The floor, which was stone and seamless, trembled under the pushing of the little machine, which was smaller than a five-year-old child.
The voice of the driver asked: "Where to, sir?"
Georgi motioned straight-on with his hand. Anywhere.
The man had said to him: “Change cars three streets later...”
But the rhythm of the motor-car embraced him too delightfully. Third street… sixth… twelfth street… it was still very far to reach the ninetieth block. The comfort of the weight of it all suffused him, with the intoxication of the lights and the awe-invoking delight of the drive.
The further removed he was - with the soundless gliding of the wheels - from the New Tower of Babel, the further removed he seemed from the consciousness of his own self.
Who was he? Had he not just stood in a greasy, patched, blue-linen uniform, in a seething hell, with a brain mangled from eternal watchfulness, with bones whose marrow was being sucked out by the same eternal beat from the same eternal grip, face scorched by unbearable heat, in skin which salty sweat tore at its devouring furrows?
Did he not live in a city which lay deeper under the earth than the underground stations of Metropolis and their thousand shafts — in a city in which the houses storied high above the squares and streets, just as the houses of Metropolis did in the light above, towering high above one another?
Had he ever known anything else than the atrocious sobriety of these houses, in which there lived not men, but numbers, recognisable by the enormous boards by the doors of each house?
Had his life ever had any purpose, other than to go out to work from the doors of these houses, framed with number-boards, when the sirens of Metropolis blared for him — and ten hours later, crushed and tired to death, to stagger back into the house, through the door by which his number stood?
Was he, himself, anything but a number — number 11811 — crammed into his linen, his clothes and his cap? Had not the number also become imprinted into his soul, into his brain and into his blood, that he must even stop to remember his own name?
And now?
His body, refreshed by pure cold water that had washed the sweat of labour from him, felt the yielding relaxation of all his muscles with an unprecedented sweetness. With a shiver which rendered all his joints weak, he felt the caressing touch of white silk on the bare skin of his body. In giving himself up fully, without resistance, to the soft, even rhythm of the drive, the consciousness of the first and complete deliverance from everything that was a martyring pressure on his life overcame him with such an overpowering force that, through unbridled falling tears, he burst into the laughter of a madman.
Violently, with a glorious violence in fact, the great city pressed towards him, like a sea which roars around mountains.
Worker No. 11811 - the man who lived in a prison—like house, under the underground railway of Metropolis, who knew no other journey than that from the sleepy hollow where he lived to the machine, and from the machine back to his sleepy hollow — he saw, for the first time in his life, the wonder of the world of Metropolis: the city shining under millions and millions of lights at night.
He saw the ocean of light which filled the endless runs of streets with a silver, flashing lustre. He saw the wildly-lit sparkle of neon signs which lavished themselves ever-inexhaustibly in an ecstasy of brightness. He saw towers rising up, seemingly built of blocks of light, and he felt seized, overwhelmed to the point of weakness by this frenzy of lights, feeling as though this sparkling ocean, with its hundreds and thousands of spraying waves, grasped after him, taking the breath from his mouth, permeating him, suffocating him…
There he understood that, at night, this city of machines, this city of sobriety, this fanatic for work, sought a mighty counterpoint to the obsession of the day's work — that, at night, this city lost itself, like a maniac, like someone deprived of their wits, in the drunkenness of a pleasure, which, raging up to every height and hurling down to every depth, was boundlessly blissful and boundlessly destructive.
Georgi trembled from head to toe. And yet it wasn’t really a trembling which gripped his resistance-less body. It was as though all his limbs were connected and synchronised to the soundless engine which carried them forwards. No, not to the single engine which was the heart of the automobile in which he sat — to all these hundreds and thousands of engines which chased an endlessly-gliding dual carriageway of gleaming and illuminated automobiles through the streets of the feverish, nocturnal city. And, at the same time, his body was shook through by the fireworks of spark-spraying wheels, ten-coloured lettering, snow-white fountains of overcharged lamps, upwards-hissing rockets and blazing towers of ice-cold flames.
There was a word which always came back. From an invisible source, a sheaf of light shot up high, spraying outwards at its highest point, leaving lettering that dripped down in all seven 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 latticework of an elevated railway-track, a yellow-skinned bloke hung, head pointed down, cradling himself by the hollows of his knees, who let a snowstorm of white sheets of paper descend upon the dual carriageway of motorcars.
The pages fluttered and fell. Georgi caught a glimpse of one of them. Stood upon it in large, distorted letters: Yoshiwara.
The car stopped at a crossing. Yellow-skinned blokes, in colourful embroidered silk jackets, wound themselves, sleek as eels, through the twelvefold rows of idle cars. One of them swung himself onto the footboard of the black motor-car in which Georgi sat. For a second the grinning yellow visage stared into the young, white, perplexed face.
A batch of papers were flung through the window, falling upon Georgi's knee and by his feet. Mechanically, he bent down and picked up what his fingers were reaching for.
On these slips, from which a penetrating, bittersweet and relaxing scent emanated, there stood, in large, bewitched-looking letters, the word: Yoshiwara...
Georgi's throat was as dry as dust. He moistened his chapped 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 – for what? To pull this city close — this mighty, heaven-and-hell city; to embrace her with both arms, both thighs; to despair in the impotence of mastering her; to throw oneself into her — take me! To feel a full bowl on one's lips — gulping, gulping without drawing breath, biting onto the rim of the bowl; eternal, eternal insatiability, competing with the eternal overpouring and overflowing of this bowl of intoxication...
Oh, Metropolis! Metropolis!
More than enough money...
A freakish sound came from Georgi's throat, and in it there was something of the rattle of a man who knows he is dreaming and would like to awaken – and also something of the guttural sound of a predator when it smells blood. His hand threw the slips away, then snatched them up again. His hand did not let go of the wad of notes for the second time. It crumpled them between fervent and convulsing fingers.
He turned his head to and fro, as though seeking a way out, yet which he was afraid of finding.
Another car slipped silently close beside his: a great shadow gleaming in black, set on four wheels, decorated with flowers, illuminated by faint lamps, and holding a resting spot for a woman. Georgi saw the woman very clearly, and the woman looked at him. Amongst the cushions of the car, more cowering rather than sitting, she had entirely swaddled herself in her gleaming coat, from which one bare shoulder projected with the dull whiteness of a swan's feather.
She was made-up in a bewildering manner, as though she wished to be neither human nor woman, but instead a peculiar animal, possibly in the mood to play, possibly in the mood to murder.
Calmly holding the man's gaze, she let her right hand, sparkling with stones, and the slender arm, which was quite bare and dull-white like the shoulder was, gently slip from the wrappings of her coat, and began, in a leisurely manner, to fan herself with one of the sheets of paper on which the word Yoshiwara stood.
"No!" said the man. He panted, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Coolness welled out from the fine, strange stuff with which he had dried the sweat from his brow.
Eyes stared at him. Disappearing eyes. Painted lips with an all-knowing smile.
With a panting sound, Georgi wanted to open the door and spring out into the road. However, the movement of the car threw him back on to the cushions. He clenched his fists, pressing them in front of both eyes. A vision shot through his head, quite misty and lacking outline: a strong little machine, no larger than a five-year-old child. It's short arms pushed and pushed and pushed, alternating forwards, backwards, forwards… Grinning, the head, sunken on the chest, rose...
"No!" shrieked the man, hitting his hands together and laughing. He had been set free from the machine. He had exchanged lives.
Exchanged—with whom?
With a man who had said to him: "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 which hung above him.
On the roof there flamed the word: Yoshiwara...
The word Yoshiwara turned in to rockets of light which sparkled around him, binding his limbs. He sat motionless, covered in a cold sweat. He clawed his fingertips 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, staring into space, the word flared up: Yoshiwara...
Music was in the air, hurled by enormous loudspeakers into the nocturnal streets. The music was bold, of the hottest rhythm and of a shrieking, lashing gleefulness...
"No!" panted the man. Blood bulged in great drops from his bitten lips.
A rocket rose up and wrote in the sky of Metropolis: Yoshiwara...
Georgi pushed the window open. The glorious city of Metropolis, dancing in the drunkenness of light, threw itself fiercely towards him, as though he alone were the only-beloved and the only-awaited. He leant out of the window and cried: "Yoshiwara!"
He fell back upon the cushions. The car turned in a gentle curve towards another direction.
A rocket rose up and wrote in the sky of Metropolis: Yoshiwara…
< Chapter 2 = = = = = = = = = = = Chapter 4 >