Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/30

 METROPOLIS in the room on the other side of this door had powerless sealed lips. But for these men's sakes Freder had come. He pushed the door open and then fell back, suffocated. BoiJing air smote him, groping" at his eyes that he saw nothing. Gradually he regained his sight. . The room was dimly lighted and the ceiling, which looked as though it could carry the weight of the entire earth, seemed perpetually to be falling down. A faint howling made breathing almost unbearable. It was as though the breath drank in the howling too. Air, rammed dowTl; to the depths, coming already used from the lungs of the great Metropolis, gushed out of the mouths of pipes. Hurled across the room, it was greedily sucked back by the mouths of pipes on the other side. And its howling light spread a coldness about it which fell into flerce conflict with the sweat-heat of the room. In the middle of the room crouched the Pater-noster ma~ chine. It was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant's head. It shone with oil. It had gleaming limbs. Under the crouching body and the head which was sunken on the chest, crooked legs rested, gnome-like, upon the platform. The trunk and legs were motionless. But the short arms pushed and pushed alternately forwards, backwards, forwards. A little pointed light sparkled upon the play of the delicate joints. The floor, which was stone, and seamless, trembled under the pushing of the little machine. which was smaller than a 6ve-year-old child. Heat spat from the walls in which the furnaces were roaring. The odour of oil, which whistled with heat, hung in thick layers in the room. Even the wild chase of the wandering"masses of air did not tear out the suffocating fumes of oil. Even the water wllich was sprayed through the room fought a hopeless battle against the fury of the heat-spitting walls, evaporating, already saturated with oilfumes. before it could protect the skins of the men in this hell from being roasted. . Men glided by like swimming shadows. Their movements, the soundlessness of their inaudible slipping past, had some35