Parody: A Fictional Narrative

“Look for me, beloved. I am here. I am here.”
At last his knees collided against something in the dark. He stumbled and fell. He felt stones under his hands, cool, hard stones, cut in even squares. His whole body, beaten and racked, rested upon the cool hardness of these blocks. He rolled over on his back. He pushed himself up, collapsed again violently, and lay upon the floor. A suffocating blanket sank downwards. His consciousness yielded up, as though drowned.
Rotwang had seen him fall. He waited attentively and vigilantly to see if this young wildling, the son of Joh Fredersen and Hel, had had enough at last, or if he would pull himself together once more for the fight against nothing.
But it appeared that he had had enough. He lay remarkably

“Won't you cry just once? I need them both, your smile and your tears. Your image, Maria, just as you are now, is burnt into my retina, never to be lost. The bitter expression of contempt about your mouth is every bit as familiar to me as the haughtiness of your eyebrows and your temples. But I need your smile and your tears, Maria. Or you will make me bungle my work, and cause my Parody to be an imperfect copy?”
He seemed to have spoken to the deaf air. The girl sat dumb, looking over and beyond him.
Rotwang took a chair. He sat down astride it, crossed his arms over the back and looked at the girl. He laughed gloomily.
“You two poor children,” he said, “to have dared to pit yourselves against Joh Fredersen. Nobody can reproach you for it. You do not know him and do not know what you are doing. But the son should know the father. I do not believe that there is one man who can boast ever having got the better of Joh Fredersen. You could more easily bend the will of God than the will of Joh Fredersen.”
The girl sat like a statue, immovable.
“What will you do, Maria, if Joh Fredersen takes you and your love so seriously that he comes to you and commands you to give him back his

“Never!”
And the painless tears of a great, true love fell upon the beauty of her smile.
The man got up. He stood still before the girl. He looked at her. He turned away. As he was crossing the threshold of the next room, his shoulder fell against the doorpost.
He crossed the threshold and slammed the door behind. He stared straight ahead. He looked on the being, his creature of glass and metal, which bore the almost completed head of Maria.
His hands moved towards the head, and, the nearer they came to it, the more did it appear as if these hands, these lonely hands, wished not to create but to destroy.
“We are bunglers, Parody,” he said. “Bunglers! Can I give you the smile which would make angels fall gladly down to hell? Can I give you the tears which would redeem Satan, and make him beatify? Parody is your name. And Bungler is mine.”
Shining cool and lustrous, the being stood there and looked at its creator with its baffling eyes. As he laid his hands on its shoulders, its fine structure tinkled in mysterious laughter.

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