Metropolis by Thea von Harbou Page A

at once and kept it unaltered.
    This man was called Rotwang. Few knew him. Only Joh Fredersen knew him very well. It would have been easier for him to have decided to fight out the quarrel about the cathedral with the sect of Gothics than the quarrel with Rotwang about the magician's house.
    There were in Metropolis, in this city of reasoned, methodical hurry, very many who would rather have gone far out of their way than have passed by Rotwang's house. It hardly reached knee-high to the house-giants which stood near it. It stood at an angle to the street. To the cleanly town, which knew neither smoke nor soot, it was a blot and an annoyance. But it remained. When Rotwang left the house and crossed the street, which occurred but seldom, there were many who covertly looked at his feet, to see if, perhaps, he walked in red shoes.
    Before the door of this house, on which the seal of Solomon glowed, stood Joh Fredersen.
    He had sent the car away and had knocked.
    He waited, then knocked again.
    A voice asked, as if the house were speaking in its sleep:
    "Who is there?"
    "Joh Fredersen," said the man.
    The door opened.
    He entered. The door closed. He stood in darkness. But Joh Fredersen knew the house well. He walked straight on, and as he walked, the shimmering tracks of two stepping feet glistened before him, along the passage, and the edge of the stair began to glow. Like a dog showing the track, the glow ran on before him, up the steps, to die out behind him.
    He reached the top of the stairs and looked about him. He knew that many doors opened out here. But on the one opposite him the copper seal glowed like a distorted eye, which looked at him.
    He stepped up to it. The door opened before him.
    Many doors as Rotwang's house possessed, this was the only one which opened itself to Joh Fredersen, although, and even, perhaps, because, the owner of this house knew full well that it always meant no mean effort for Joh Fredersen to cross this threshold.
    He drew in the air of the room, lingeringly, but deeply, as though seeking in it the trace of another breath…
    His nonchalant hand threw his hat on a chair. Slowly, in sudden and mournful weariness, he let his eyes wander through the room.
    It was almost empty. A large, time-blackened chair, such as are to be found in old churches, stood before drawn curtains. These curtains covered a recess the width of the wall.
    Joh Fredersen remained standing by the door for a long time, without moving. He had closed his eyes. With incomparable impotence he breathed in the odour of hyacinths, which teemed to fill the motionless air of this room.
    Without opening his eyes, swaying a little, but aim-sure, he walked up to the heavy, black curtains and drew them apart.
    Then he opened his eyes and stood quite still…
    On a pedestal, the breadth of the wall, rested the head of a woman in stone…
    It was not the work of an artist, it was the work of a man, who, in agonies for which the human tongue lacks words, had wrestled with the white stone throughout immeasurable days and nights until at last it seemed to realise and form the woman's head by itself. It was as if no tool had been at work here—no, it was as if a man, lying before this stone, had called on the name of the woman, unceasingly, with-all the strength, with all the longing, with all the despair, of his brain, blood and heart, until the shapeless stone took pity on him letting itself turn into the image of the woman, who had meant to two men all heaven and all hell.
    Joh Fredersen's eyes sank to the words which were hewn into the pedestal, roughly, as though chiselled with curses.
    HEL
    Born
    To be my happiness, a blessing to all men.
    Lost to Joh Fredersen
    Dying in giving life to his son, Freder
    Yes, she died then. But Joh Fredersen knew only too well that she did not die from giving birth to her child. She died then because she had done what she had to do. She really died on the day upon which she went from Rotwang to Joh