Metropolis Read Online Free PDF Page A

question. He was both, by turns. So far, New York had not exactly offered him the fresh start he sought, but then again, it kept helping him back up every time it battered him down. Maybe that’s the way it would go: He had to go under before he could rise. If that was the case, if each setback would be followed by some odd bit of good fortune, he felt sure he could make it. Maybe, with a little perseverance, he could thrive.
    And so he resolved to make the best of whatever came his way for as long as it lasted. He knew from his childhood what the high life could be like and how quickly it could disappear; he also knew destitution. He’d grown up in a monarchy and come to a democracy. He’d seen firsthand that both of them required an aristocracy as well as an underclass. He had been a member of both and hadn’t much liked either. Above all, perhaps, he’d learned that class distinctions were more fluid than they seemed and tragedy befell the privileged just as often as the poor. On the ship over, for instance, the rich had died the same as the likes of him in steerage. But he had survived.
    “Well, buddy,” said his jailer-cum-manservant later, as he carried in a pile of clean laundry, “either you’re somebody—but I don’t think so—or you got lucky last night.” Apparently, the man had taken a closer look at the condition of his clothes.
    The stableman shrugged and scooped up the last of the yolk with his toast. He was grateful for the fluke that had gotten him this bath and bed and breakfast, and he doubted it would last; still, he saw no reason to accelerate its end by saying anything at all. When the man left, he slept again, this time without dreaming—a relief.
    Several hours later, an angry officer woke him abruptly by yanking the sheet from his grasp. His fingers stung and he braced himself, he knew not what for.
    “Wake up, you Goddamned Irish arsonist! What do you think you’re doing here?”
    “What, sir? I’m not Irish. I’m German. I work at Barnum’s. I was trapped in the fire. You were maybe thinking from someone else? Is the arsonist here as well, maybe not this room?”
    “All right, you kraut scum bucket, how the Hell did you manage to get yourself into this particular cell?”
    “I didn’t manage anything, I was brought here.”
    But by this time he was scrambling into his clothes—he noticed buttons where there had been none, long-split seams that were joined, places where holes had been patched with a similar fabric.
    “There was a bloody Astor in the drunk tank all last night and most of today,” the officer spat, “all because you somehow snuck your dirty German hide in here. Who’s going to pay for those toast points now, boy, tell me that? Goddamnit, you don’t look the least bit like an Astor!”
    “An aster?” But instead of explaining, the warden responded with a right hook to the jaw, just one solid, dizzying punch, then turned on his heel. It turned out to have been a cell reserved for criminals of the upper echelon, where all the amenities were billed home; so he was told by the comparatively benevolent warden of the squalid cell in the great hive of barred cells to which he was transferred a quarter hour later. The society wing was occupied mostly by bachelors who’d shot their rivals at supper clubs and businessmen caught consorting with the wrong kind of women at the wrong houses on the wrong nights and unlucky enough to have been rounded up in raids. The second warden smiled a little as he spoke, perhaps imagining the scenario that led to this mix-up: a comatose, vomit-encrusted millionaire wastrel scooped up half naked in an opium bust and issued prison stripes; a working stiff brought in unconscious in an overcoat that, though wet and burned, looked well enough cut to suit a gentleman. In fact, the situation was the handiwork of a skinny little anarchist desk clerk, name of Biedermann. As much as he hated all Astors, Biedermann liked the name he saw on the