“Yes, man,” he said. “I take you at your word!”
The Pater-noster hummed at Freder’s back. The cells, like scoop-buckets, gathered men up and poured them out again. But the son of Joh Fredersen did not see them. Among all those tearing along to gain a few seconds, he alone stood still listening how the New Tower of Babel roared in its revolutions. The roaring seemed to him like the ringing of one of the cathedral bells—like the ore-voice of the archangel Michael. But a song hovered above it, high and sweet. His whole young heart exulted in this song.
“Have I done your will for the first time, you great mediatress of pity?” he asked in the roar of the bell’s voice.
But no answer came.
Then he went the way he wanted to go, to find the answer.
As Slim entered Freder’s home to question the servants concerning their master, Joh Fredersen’s son was walking down the steps which led to the lower structure of the New Tower of Babel. As the servants shook their heads at Slim saying that their master had not come home, Joh Fredersen’s son was walking towards the luminous pillars which indicated his way. As Slim, with a glance at his watch, decided to wait, to wait, at any rate for a while—already alarmed, already conjecturing possibilities and how to meet them—Joh Fredersen’s son was entering the room from which the New Tower of Babel drew the energies for its own requirements.
He had hesitated a long time before opening the door. For a weird existence went on behind that door. There was howling. There was panting. There was whistling. The whole building groaned. An incessant trembling ran through the walls and the floor. And amidst it all there was not one human sound. Only the things and the empty air roared. Men 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. Boiling 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.