Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/23

 METROPOLIS he held between his fingers tapped gently, dryly, once, twice, upon the table's edge. Joh Fredersen's eyes wandered from his son to the twitching Bash· of the seconds on the clock, then sinking back again to him. "And what did you find?" he asked. Seconds, seconds, seconds of silence. Then it was as though the son, up-rooting and tearing loose his whole ego, threw himself. with a gesture of utter self-exposure. upon his father, yet he stood still, head a little bent, speaking softly, as though every word were smothering between his lips. "Fatherl Help the men who live at your machines'" "I cannot help them," said the brain of Metropolis. "Nobody can help them. They are 'where they must be. They are what they must be. They are not fitted for anything more or anything different." , "I do not know for what they are fitted;' said Freder, expressionlessly: his head fell npon his breast as though almost severed from his neck. "I only know what I saw-and tbat it was ,headlul to look upon. . . I went through the machine~rooms-they were like temples. All the great gods were living in white temples. I saw Baal and Moloch, Huitzilopochtli and Durgha; some frightfully companionable, some terribly solitary. I saw Juggernaut's divine car and the Towers of Silence, Mahomet's curved sword, and the crosses of Golgotha. And all machines, machines, machines, which, con· nned to their pedestals, like deities to their temple thrones, from the resting places which bore them, lived their god-like lives: Eyeless but seeing all, earless but hearing aU, without speech, yet, in themselves, a proclaiming mouth-not man, not woman, and yet engendering, receptive, and productivelifeless, yet shaking the air of their temples with the neverexpiring breath of their vitality. And, near the god-machines, the slaves of the god-machines: the men who were as though crushed between machine companionability and machine solitude. They have no loads to carry: the machine carries the loads. They. have not to lift and push: the machine lifts and pusbes. They have nothing else to do but ete,nally one and the same thing, each in this place, each at his machine. Divided into periods of brief seconds, always the

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