Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/41

 METROPOLIS clenched his fists, pressing them before both eyes. A vision shot through his head. quite misty and lacking in outline, a strong little machine, no larger than a Bve-year-old child.. It's short arms pushed and pushed and pushed, alternately forwards, backwards, forwards .... The head, sunken on the chest, rose. grinning.... "Nol" shrieked the man, clapping his hands and laughing. He had been set free from the machine. He had exchanged lives.

Exchanged-with whom? With a man who had said: "You will find more than enough money in my pockets...." The man bent back his head into the nape of his neck nnd stared at the roof suspended above him. On the roof there flamed the word: Yoshiwara....

The word Yoshiwara became rockets of light which showered around him, paralysing his limbs. He sat motionless, covered in a cold sweat. He clawed his fingers into the leather of the cushions. His back was stiff, as though his spine were made of cold iron. His jaws chattered. HNo-l" said Georgi, tearing his fists down. But before his eyes which stared into space, the word Hamed up: "Yoshiwara.... Music was in the air, hurled into the nocturnal streets by enormous loud.speakers. Wanton was the music, most heated of rhythm, of a shrieking, lashing gaiety.... "No-I" panted tbe man. Blood trickled in drops from bis bitten lips. But a hundred multi-coloured rockets wrote in the velvetblack sky of Metropolis, the word: "Yoshiwara.... Georgi pushed the window open. The glorious town of Metropolis, dancing in the drunkenness of light, threw itself impetuously .towards him, as though he were the only. beloved, the only-awaited. He lennt out of the window, crying: "Yoshiwara-I"

46