"On?—On?-Suddenly the rim of the shell begins to turn… gently… ah how gently, to music—such as would bring a tenfold murderer-bandit to sobs and his judges to pardon him on the scaffold—to music on hearing which deadly enemies kiss, beggars believe themselves to be kings, the hungry forget their hunger—to such music the shell revolves around its stationary heart, until it seems to free itself from the ground and, hovering, to revolve about itself. The people scream—not loudly, no, no!—they scream like the birds that bathe in the sea. The twisted hands are clenched to fists. The bodies rock in one rhythm. Then comes the first stammer of: Maohee… The stammer swells, becomes waves of spray, becomes a spring tide. The revolving shell roars: Maohee… Maohee… ! It is as though a little flame must rest on everyone's hair parting, like St. Elm's fire… Maohee… Maohee! They call on their god. They call on him whom the finger of the god touches today… No one knows from where he will come today… He is there… They know he is amongst them… He must break out from the rows of them… He must… He must, for they call him: Maohee… Maohee! And suddenly—!"
The hand of the Borgia flew up and hung in the air like a brown claw.
"And suddenly a man is standing in the middle of the shell, in the gleaming circle, on the milk-white disc. But it is no man. It is the embodied conception of the intoxication of them all. He is not conscious of himself… A slight froth stands on his mouth, His eyes are stark and bursting and are yet like rushing meteors which leave waving tracks of fire behind them on the route from heaven to earth… He stands and lives his intoxication. He is what his intoxication is. From the thousands of eyes which have cast anchor into his soul the power of intoxication streams into him. There is no delight in God's creation which does not reveal itself, surmounted by the medium of these intoxicated souls. What he says becomes visible, what he hears becomes audible to all. What he feels: Power, desire, madness, is felt by them all. On the shimmering area, around which the shell revolves, to music beyond all description, one in ecstasy lives the thousandfold ecstasy which embodies itself in him, for thousands of others… "
September stopped and smiled at Slim.
"That, sir, is Maohee… "
"It must indeed be a powerful drug," said Slim with a feeling of dryness in his throat, "which inspires the proprietor of Yoshiwara to such a hymn. Do you think that that yelling individual down there would join in this song of praise?"
"Ask him yourself, sir," said September.
He opened the door and let Slim enter. Just over the threshold Slim stopped, because at first he saw nothing. A gloom, more melancholy that the deepest darkness, spread over a room, the dimensions of which he could not estimate. The floor under his feet inclined in a barely perceptible slope. Where it stopped there appeared to be gloomy emptiness. Right and left, spiral walls, billowing outwards, swept away to each side.
That was all Slim saw. But from the empty depths before him came a white shimmer, no stronger than if coming from a field of snow. On this shimmer there floated a voice, that of a murderer and of one being murdered.
"Light, September!" said Slim with a gulp. An unbearable feeling of thirst gnawed at his throat.
The room slowly grew brighter, as though the light were coming unwillingly. Slim saw, he was standing in one of the windings of the round room, which was shaped like a shell. He was standing between the heights and the depths, separated by a low banister from the emptiness from which came the snow—Like light and the murderer's voice and the voice of his victim. He stepped to the banister, and leaned far over it. A milk-white disc, lighted from beneath and luminous. At the edge of the disc, like a dark, rambling pattern on a plate-rim, women, crouching, kneeling there, in their gorgeous attire, as though drunken. Some had dropped their foreheads to the ground, their hands clutched above their ebony hair. Some crouched, huddled together in clumps, head pressed to head, symbols of fear. Some were swaying rhythmically from side to side as if calling on gods. Some were weeping. Some were as if dead.
But they all seemed to be the hand-maids of the man on the snow-light illuminated disk.
The man wore the white silk woven for comparatively few in Metropolis. He wore the soft shoes in which the beloved sons of mighty fathers seemed to caress the earth. But the silk hung in tatters about the body of the man and the shoes looked as though the feet within them bled.
"Is that the man for whom you are looking, sir?" asked a Levantine cousin from out September, leaning confidently towards Slim's ear.
Slim did not answer. He was looking at the man.
"At least," continued September, "it is the youngster who came here yesterday by the same car as you to-day. And the devil take him for it! He has turned my revolving shell into the fore-court of hell! He has been roasting souls! I have known Maohee-drugged beings to have fancied themselves Kings, Gods, Fire, and Storm—and to have forced others to feel themselves Kings, Gods, Fire, and Storm. I have known those in the ecstasy of desire to have forced women down to them from the highest part of the shell's wall, that they, diving, like seagulls, with out-spread hands, have swooped to his feet, without injuring a limb, while others have fallen to their death. That man there was no God, no Storm, no Fire, and his drunkenness most certainly inspired him with no desire. It seems to me that he had come up from hell and is roaring in the intoxication of damnation. He did not know that the ecstasy for men who are damned is also damnation… The fool! The prayer he is praying will not redeem him. He believes himself to be a machine and is praying to himself. He has forced the others to pray to him. He has ground them down. He has pounded them to a powder. There are many dragging themselves around Metropolis to-day who cannot comprehend why their limbs are as if broken… "
"Be quiet, September!" said Slim hoarsely. His hand flew to his throat which felt like a glowing cork, like smouldering charcoal.
September fell silent, shrugging his shoulders. Words seethed up from the depths like lava.
"I am the Three-in-one—Lucifer—Belial—Satan—! I am the everlasting Death! I am the everlasting Noway! Come unto me—! In my hell there are many mansions! I shall assign them to you! I am the great king of all the damned—! I am a machine! I am the tower above you all! I am a hammer, a fly-wheel, a fiery oven! I am a murderer and of what I murder I make no use. I want victims and victims do not appease me! Pray to me and know: I do not hear you! Shout at me: Pater-noster! Know: I am deaf!"
Slim turned around; he saw September's face as a chalky mask at his shoulder. Maybe that, among September's ancestresses there was one who hailed from an isle in the South sea, where gods mean little—spirits everything.
"That's no more a man," he whispered with ashen lips. "A man would have died of it long ago… Do you see his arms, sir? Do you think a man can imitate the pushing of a machine for hours and hours at a time without its killing him? He is as dead as stone. If you were to call to him he'd collapse and break to pieces like a plaster statue."
It did not seem as though September's words had penetrated into Slim's consciousness. His face wore an expression of loathing and suffering and he spoke as one who speaks with pain.
"I hope, September, that to-night you have had your last opportunity of watching the effects of Maohee on your guests… "
September smiled his Japanese smile.
He did not answer.
Slim stepped up to the banister at the edge of the curve of the shell in which he stood. He bent down towards the milky disc. He cried a high sharp tone which had the effect of a whistle:
"Eleven thousand eight hundred and eleven—!"
The man on the shimmering disc swung around as though he had received a blow in the side. The hellish rhythm of his arms ceased, running itself out in vibration. The man fell to earth like a log and did not move again.
Slim ran down the passage, reached the end and pushed asunder the circle of women, who, stiffened with shock, seemed to be thrown into deeper horror more by the end of that which they had brought to pass than by the beginning. He knelt down beside the man, looked him in the face and pushed the tattered silk away from his heart. He did not give his hand time to test his pulse. He lifted the man up and carried him out in his arms. The sighing of the women soughed behind him like a dense, mist-coloured curtain.
September stepped across his path. He swept aside as he caught Slim's glance at him. He ran along by him, like an active dog, breathing rapidly; but he said nothing.
Slim reached the door of Yoshiwara. September, himself, opened it for him. Slim stepped into the street. The driver pulled open the door of the taxi; he looked in amazement at the man who hung in Slim's arms, in tatters of white silk with which the wind was playing, and who was more awful to look on than a corpse.
The proprietor of Yoshiwara bowed repeatedly while Slim was climbing into the car. But Shin did not give him another glance. September's face, which was as grey as steel, was reminiscent of the blades of those ancient swords, forged of Indian steel, in Shiras or Ispahan and on which, hidden by ornamentation, stand mocking and deadly words.
The car glided away: September looked after it. He smiled the peaceable smile of Eastern Asia.
For he knew perfectly well what Shin did not know, and what, apart from him, nobody in Metropolis knew, that with the first drop of water or wine which moistened the lips of a human being, there disappeared even the very faintest memory of all which appertained to the wonders of the drug, Maohee.
The car stopped before the next medical depot. Male nurses came and carried away the bundle of humanity, shivering in tatters of white silk, to the doctor on duty. Slim looked about him. He beckoned to a policeman who was stationed near the door.
"Take down a report," he said. His tongue would hardly obey him, so parched was it with thirst.
The policeman entered the house after him.
"Wait!" said Slim, more with the movement of his head than in words. He saw a glass jug of water standing on the table and the coolness of the water had studded the jug with a thousand pearls.
Sum drank like an animal which finds drink on coming from the desert. He put down the jug and shivered. A short shudder passed through him.
He turned around and saw the man he had brought with him lying on a bed over which a young doctor was bending.
The lips of the sick man were moistened with wine. His eyes stood wide open, staring up at the ceiling, tears upon tears running gently and incessantly from the corners of his eyes, down over his temples. It was as though they had nothing to do with the man—as though they were trickling from a broken vessel and could not stop trickling until the vessel had run quite empty.
Slim looked the doctor in the face; the latter shrugged his shoulders. Slim bent over the prostrate man.
"Georgi," he said in a low voice, "can you hear me?" The sick man nodded; it was the shadow of a nod. "Do you know who I am?" A second nod.
"Are you in a condition to answer two or three questions?" Another nod.
"How did you get the white silk clothes?" For a long time he received no answer apart from the gentle falling of the tear drops. Then came the voice, softer than a whisper.
"… He changed with me… " "Who did?"
"Freder… Joh Fredersen's son… " "And then, Georgi?" "He told me I was to wait for him… " "Wait where, Georgi?" A long silence. And then, barely audible: "Ninetieth Street. House seven. Seventh floor… " Slim did not question him further. He knew who lived there. He looked at the doctor; the latter's face wore a completely impenetrable expression.
Slim drew a breath as though he were sighing. He said, more deploringly than inquiringly:
"Why did you not rather go there, Georgi… " He turned to go but stopped still as Georgi's voice came wavering after him; "… The city… all the lights… more than enough money… It is written… Forgive us our trespasses… lead us not into temptation… "
His voice died away. His head fell to one side. He breathed as though his soul wept, for his eyes could do so no longer. The doctor cleared his throat cautiously. Slim raised his head as though somebody had called him, then dropped it again.
"I shall come back again," he said softly. "He is to remain under your care… "
Georgi was asleep.
Slim left the room, followed by the policeman.
"What do you want?" Slim asked with an absent-minded look at him.
"The report, sir."
"What report?"
"I was to take down a report, sir."
Slim looked at the policeman very attentively, almost meditatively. He raised his hand and rubbed it across his forehead.
"A mistake," he said. "That was a mistake… "
The policeman saluted and retired, a little puzzled, for he knew Slim.
He remained standing on the same spot. Again and again he rubbed his forehead with the same helpless gesture.
Then he shook his head, stepped into the car and said:
"Ninetieth block… ."
Chapter 7
"WHERE IS GEORGI?" asked Freder, his eyes wandering through Josaphat's three rooms, which stretched out before him—beautiful, with a rather bewildering super-abundance of armchairs, divans and silk cushions, with curtains which goldenly obscured the light.
"Who?" asked Josaphat, listlessly. He had waited, had not slept and his eyes stood excessively large in his thin, almost white face. His gaze, which he did not take from Freder, was like hands which are raised adoringly.
"Georgi," repeated Freder. He smiled happily with his tired mouth.
"Who is that?" asked Josaphat.
"I sent him to you."
"Nobody has come."
Freder looked at him without answering.
"I sat all night in this chair," continued Josaphat, misinterpreting Freder's silence. "I did not sleep a wink. I expected you to come at any second, or a messenger to come from you, or that you would ring me up. I also informed the watchman. Nobody has come, Mr. Freder."