"Before the cathedral they are erecting a bonfire on which to burn the witch... "
Freder said nothing. He bent down lower. The car groaned and leapt.
Josaphat buried his hand in Freder"s arm.
"Stop-for G.o.d"s sake!!!"
The car stopped.
"We must go to the left-don"t you see? The bridge has gone!"
"The next bridged"
"Is impa.s.sable!"
"Listen... "
"What is there to hear-"
"Don"t you hear anything?"
"No... "
"You must hear it-!"
"But what, Freder-?"
"Shrieks... distant shrieks... ."
"I can"t hear anything... "
"But you must be able to hear it-!!" "Won"t you drive on, Freder?"
"And don"t you see that the air over there is getting bright red?"
"From the torches, Freder... "
"They don"t burn so brightly... "
"Freder, we"re losing time here-!"
Freder did not answer. He was staring at the tatters of the iron bridge which were dangling down into the ravine of the street. He must cross over, yes, he must cross over, to get to the cathedral by a short cut...
The frame-support of a ripped-open tower had fallen over from this side of the street to the other, gleaming metallically in the uncertain light of the fading night "Get out," said Freder. "Why?"
"Get out, I tell you!
"I want to know why?"
"Because I"m going across there... "
"Across where?"
"Across the frame-support."
"Going to drive across-?"
"Yes."
"It"s suicide, Freder!"
"I didn"t ask you to accompany me. Get out!"
"I won"t permit it-It"s blazing lunacy!" "The fire over there is blazing, man-!" The words seemed not to come from Freder"s mouth. Every wound of the dying city seemed to be roaring out of him.
"Drive on!" said Josaphat through clenched teeth. The car gave a jump. It climbed. The narrow irons received the sucking, skidding wheels, with an evil, maliciously hypocritical sound.
Blood was trickling from Freder"s lips.
"Don"t-don"t put the brake on-for G.o.d"s sake don"t put the brake on!" shouted the man beside him making a clutch of madness at Freder"s hand. The car, already half-slipping, shot forward again. A split in the frame-work-over, onwards. Behind them the dead frame-work crashed into s.p.a.ce amid shrieks!
They reached the other side with an impetus which was no longer to be checked. The wheels rushed into blackness and nothing. The car overturned, Freder fell and got up again. The other remained lying.
"Josaphat-!!"
"Run! It"s nothing!-II swear to G.o.d it"s nothing," a distorted smile upon the white face. "Think of Maria-and run!"
And Freder raced off.
Josaphat turned his head. He saw the blackness of the street flashing bright red. He heard the screams of the thousands. He thought dully, with a thrust of his fist in the air: "Shouldn"t I like to be Grot now, to be able to swear properly... "
Then his head fell back into the filth of the street, and every consciousness faded but that of pain...
But Freder ran as he had never run. It was not his feet which carried him. It was his wild heart-It was his thoughts.
Streets and stairs and streets and at last the cathedral square. Black in the background, the cathedral, unG.o.dded, unlighted, the place before the broad steps swarming with human beings-and amid them, surrounded by gasps of madly despairing laughter, the howling of songs of fury, the smouldering of torches and brands, high up on the pyre...
"Maria-!"
Freder fell on his knees as though his sinews were sawn through.
"Maria-!"
The girl whom he took to be Maria raised her head. She sought him. Her glance found him. She smiled-laughed.
"Dance with me, my dearest-!" flew her voice, sharp as a flashing knife, through uproar.
Freder got up. The mob recognised him. The mob lurched towards him, shrieking and yelling.
"Jooooo-oh! Joh Fredersen"s son-! Joh Fredersen"s son-"
They made to seize him. He dodged them wildly. He threw himself with his back against the parapet of the street.
"Why do you want to kill her, you devils-? She has saved your children!"
Roars of laughter answered him. Women sobbed with laughter, biting into their own hands.
"Yes-yes-she has saved our children-! She saved our children with the song of the dead machines! She saved our children with the ice cold water-! High let her live-high and three time high!"
"Go to the "House of the Sons"-! Your children are there!"
"Our children are not in the "House of the Sons!" There lives the brood, hatched out by money. Sons of your kind, you dog in white-silken skin!"
"Listen, for G.o.d"s sake-do listen to me-!!!"
"We don"t want to hear anything-!"
"Maria-beloved!!!-Beloved! I!"
"Don"t bawl so, son of Joh Fredersen! Or we"ll stop your mouth!"
"Kill me, if you must kill-but let her live-!"
"Each in his turn, son of Joh Fredersen! First you shall see how your beloved dies a beautiful, hot magnificent death!"
A woman-Grot"s woman-tore a strip off her skirt and bound Freder"s hands. He was bound fast to the parapet with cords. He struggled like a wild beast, shouting that the veins of this throat were in danger of bursting. Bound, impotent, he threw back his head and saw the sky over Metropolis, pure, tender, greenish-blue, for morning would soon follow after this night.
"G.o.d-!" he shouted, trying to throw himself on his knees, in his bonds. "G.o.d-! Where art thou-?"
A wild, red gleam caught his eyes. The pyre flamed up in long flames. The men, the women, seized hands and tore around the bonfire, faster, faster and faster, in rings growing ever wider and wider, laughing, screaming with stamping feet, "Witch-! Witch!"
Freder"s bonds broke. He fell over on his face among the feet of the dancers.
And the last he saw of the girl, while her gown and hair stood blazing around her as a mantle of fire, was the loving smile and the wonder of her eyes-and her mouth of deadly sin, which lured among the flames: "Dance with me, my dearest! Dance with me-!"
Chapter 21.
ROTw.a.n.g AWOKE; BUT he knew quite well he was dead. And this consciousness filled him with the deepest satisfaction. His aching body no longer had anything to do with him. That was perhaps the last remains of life. But something worried him deeply, as he raised himself up and looked around in all directions: Hel was not there.
Hel must be found...
Ah existence without Hel was over at last. A second one?-No! Better than to stay dead.
He got up on his feet. That was very difficult. He must have been lying as a corpse for a good long time. It was night, too. A fire was raging out there, and it was all very noise... Shrieking of human beings...
Hm...
He had hoped to have been rid of them. But, apparently the Almighty Creator could not get along without them. Now-but one purpose. He just wanted his Hel. When he had found Hel, he would-he promised himself this!-never again quarrel with the father of all things, about anything at all...
So now he went... The door leading to the street was open and hanging crookedly on its hinges. Strange. He stepped in front of the house and looked deliberatingly around. What he saw seemed to be a kind of Metropolis; but a rather insane kind of Metropolis. The houses seemed as though struck still in St. Vitus" dance. And an uncommonly rough and impolite sort of people was ramping around a flaming bonfire, upon which a creature of rare beauty was standing, seeming, to Rotw.a.n.g, to be wondrously at ease.
Ah-It was that, ah yes-that, in the existence which, thank the Lord, lay far behind him, he had tried to create, to replace his lost Hel-just to make the handiwork of the Creator of the world look rather silly... Not bad for a beginning... hm... but, good G.o.d, compared with Hel; what an object; what a bungle...
The shrieking individuals down there were quite right to burn the thing. Though it appeared to him to be rather a show of idiocy to destroy 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 to look for her. She loved the cathedral so dearly, did his pious Hel. And, if the flickering light of the bonfire did not deceive him,-for the greenish sky gave no glimmer-Hel was standing, like a frightened child in the blackness of the cathedral door, her slender hands clasped firmly upon her breast, looking more saint-Like than ever.
Past those who were raving around the bonfire-always politely avoiding getting in their way-Rotw.a.n.g quietly groped his way to the cathedral.
Yes, it was his Hel... She receded into the cathedral. He groped his way up the steps. How high the door looked... Coolness and hovering incense received him... All the saints in the pillar niches had pious and lovely faces, smiling gently, as though they rejoiced with him that he was now, at last, to find Hel, his Hel, again.
She was standing at the foot of the belfry steps. She seemed to him to be very pale and indescribably pathetic. Through a narrow window the first pale light of the morning fell upon her hair and brow.
"Hel," said Rotw.a.n.g, his heart streaming over; he stretched out his hands. "Come to me, my Hel... How long, how long I had to live without you!"
But she did not come. She started back from him. Her face full of horror, she started back from him.
"Hel," begged the man, "why are you afraid of me? I am no ghost, although I am dead. I had to die, to come to you. I have always, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed into s.p.a.ce. Footsteps were hurrying up the steps of the stone-staircase which led to the belfry.
Something like anger came over Rotw.a.n.g"s heart. Deep in his dulled and tortured soul reposed the memory of a day upon which Hel had likewise fled from him-to another... No, don"t think, don"t think of it... That was a part of his first existence, and it would be quite senseless to go through the same again-In the other, and, as humanity in general hoped, better world.
Why was Hel fleeing from him? He groped along after her. Climbed up stairs upon stairs. The hastening, frightened footsteps remained constantly before him. And the higher the woman before him fled, the more wildly did his heart beat in this mighty ascent, the redder did Rotw.a.n.g"s eyes become filled with blood, the more furiously did his anger boil up 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! He would forge a ring about her wrist with his metal hand-and then she should never try to escape him again... to another!
They had both reached the belfry. They raced along under the bells. He blocked the way to the stairs. He laughed, sadly and evilly.
"Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!" She made a swift, despairing 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. Rotw.a.n.g"s laughter mingled with the sound of the bell. His metal arm, the marvellous achievement of a genius, stretched, like the phantom arm of a skeleton, far out on the sleeve of his coat, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the bell-rope. "Hel, my Hel, you can no longer escape me!" The girl staggered back against the breastwork. She looked around. She was trembling like a bird. She could not go down the stairs. Neither could she go any higher. She was trapped. She saw Rotw.a.n.g"s eyes and saw his hands. And, without hesitation, without reflection, with a ferocity which swept a blaze of scarlet across the pallor of her face, she swung herself out of the belfry window, to hang upon the steel cord of the lightning conductor.
"Freder-!!" she screamed. "Help me-!!"
Below-far below, near the flaming pyre, lay a trampled creature, his forehead in the dust. But the scream from above smote him so unexpectedly that he shot up, as if under the lash, he sought and he saw- And all those who had been dancing in wild rings around the bonfire of the witch saw, as he-stiffened-petrified: The girl who hung, swallowlike, clinging to the tower of the cathedral, with Rotw.a.n.g"s hands stretching out towards her.
And they all heard how, in the shouted answer: "I am coming, Maria, I am coming-!" there cried out all the relief and all the despair which can fill the heart of a man to whom Heaven and h.e.l.l are equally near.
Chapter 22.