[XI]
'Now we shall see,' said Pluizer, 'whether I cannot show you just as pretty things as Windekind did.'
And when they had taken leave of the doctor, promising to return soon, he led Johannes into every nook and corner of the great town; he showed him how the Monster lived, how he breathed and took in food, how he digested within and expanded without. But what he liked best were the gloomy back slums, where men sat closely packed, where everything was grey and grizzly, and the air black and heavy. He took him into one of the great buildings from which the smoke rose which Johannes had seen the first day. The place was filled with deafening noise—thumping, rattling, hammering and droning—great wheels were turning and long belts sliding endlessly onward; the walls and floors were black, the windows broken and murky. The towering chimneys rose high above the dingy structure, and poured forth thick wreaths of smoke. Amid the turmoil of wheels and axles, Johannes saw numbers of men with pale faces and blackened hands and clothes, working busily without a word.
'Who are they?' he asked.
'Wheels, wheels too,' said Pluizer with a laugh, 'or men, if you choose to call them so. And what you see them doing, they do from morning to night. Even so, they can be men—after their own fashion, of course.'
Then they passed along filthy streets, where the strip of heavenly blue seemed no more than a finger's breadth wide, and was still more shut out by clothes hung out to air. These alleys were swarming with people, who jostled each other, shouted, laughed and sometimes even sang. In the houses here, the rooms were so small, so dark and foul, that Johannes could scarcely breathe. He saw squalid children crawling about on the bare floor, and young girls with tangled hair crooning songs to pale, hungry babies. He heard quarrelling and scolding, and every face he looked upon was weary, or stupid and indifferent.
It filled Johannes with a strange sudden pang. It had nothing in common with any former pain, and he felt ashamed of it.
'Pluizer,' said he, 'have men always lived here in such grief and misery? And when I—' he dared not finish the question.
'To be sure, and a happy thing too. They are not in such grief and misery; they are used to it and know no better. They are mere animals, ignorant and indifferent. Look at those two women sitting in front of their door; they look out on the dirty street as contentedly as you used to gaze at the sand-hills. You need not worry yourself about the lot of man. You might as well cry over the lot of the moles who never see daylight.'
And Johannes did not know what to answer, nor what, then, he ought to weep over. And ever through the noisy throng and bustle, he still saw the pale, hollow-eyed figure marching on with noiseless steps.