It was a farmhouse, one-storied, thatch-roofed, over-shadowed by a walnut tree and it stood upon the flat back of one of the stone giants, not far from the cathedral. A garden full of lilies and hollyhocks, full of sweet peas and poppies and nasturtiums, wound itself about the house.
Joh Fredersen’s mother had only one son and him she had very dearly loved. But the Master over the great Metropolis, the Master of the machine-city, the Brain of the New Tower of Babel had become a stranger to her and she hostile to him. She had had to look on once and see how one of Joh Fredersen’s machine-Titans crushed men as though they were dried up wood. She had screamed to God. He had not heard her. She fell to the ground and never got up again. Only head and hands retained their vitality in the paralysed body. But the strength of a legion blazed in her eyes.
She opposed her son and the work of her son. But he did not let her alone; he forced her to him. When she angrily vowed she wished to live in her house—under the thatched roof, with its vault, the walnut tree—until her dying day, he transplanted house and tree and gaily blossoming garden to the flat roof of the stone house-giant which lay between the cathedral and the New Tower of Babel. The walnut tree ailed one year long; and then it became green again. The garden blossomed, a wonder of beauty, about the house.
When Joh Fredersen entered this house he came from sleepless nights and evil days.
He found his mother as he always found her: sitting in the wide, soft chair by the open window, the dark rug over the now paralysed knees, the great Bible on the sloping table before her, in the beautiful old hands the delicate figured lace at which she was sewing; and, as ever, when he came to her, she silently laid aside the fine work and folded her hands firmly in her lap as though she must collect all her will and every thought for the few minutes which the great son spent with his mother.
They did not shake hands; they did not do that any more.
“How are you, mother?” asked Joh Fredersen.
She looked at him with eyes in which gleamed the strength of a heavenly legion. She asked:
“What is it you want, Joh?”
He sat down opposite her and laid his forehead in his hands.