Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/166

 METROPOLIS "Where are you?"

"Here-I" "But I can't see you-I'"

"YOll mllst look higherl" Freder's gaze flitted through the room. H'e saw his father standing on a platform, between the out-stretched arms of the crosses of Golgotha from the ends of which long, white, crackling sprigs of sparks blazed. In the hellish fires bis father's lace was as a mask of unmistakable coldness. His eyes were blue-gleaming steel. Amid6t the great, raving machine-gods, he was a greater god, and lord of all. Freder ran over to him. but he could not get up to him. He clung to the foot of the flaming croSS. Wild impacts crashed through the New Tower of Babel. "Father-I" shrieked Freder. "Your city is going to ruin-I'" Joh Fredersen did not answer. The sweeping sprigs of flame seemed to be breaking from his temples. "Father-I Don't you understand-? Your city is going to ruinl-Your machines have come to lifel-They are dashing the town to pieces.-They are tearing Metropolis to tatters I-Do you hear-? Explosion after explosion-I i have seen a street in which the houses were dancing upon their shattered foundations-just like little children dancing upon the stomach of a laughing giant..•. A lava-stream of glowing copper poured itself out from the split.open tower of your boiler-factory, and a naked man was running before it, a man whose hair was charred and who was roaring: 'The end of the world bas come--I' But then he stumbled and the copper stream overtook him. . . . Where the Jethro works stood, there is a hole in the earth which is filling up with water. 11:on bridges are hanging in shreds between towers which have lost their entrails, cranes are dangling on gallows like men hanged. And the people, incapable of flight "' of resistance, are wandering about among houses and streets, goth of which seemed doomed. ..." He clasped his hands about the stem of the cross and threw his head back into his neck, to see his father quite crearly, quite openly in the face. "I cannot believe, father, that there is anything mightier

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