Freder walked up the steps of the cathedral hesitatingly; he was
walking up them for the first time. Hel, his mother, used often to go
to the cathedral. But her son had never yet done so. Now he longed to
see it with his mother’s eyes and to hear with the ears of Hel, his
mother, the stony prayer of the pillars, each of which had its own
particular voice.
He entered the cathedral as a child, not pious, yet not entirely
free from shyness—prepared for reverence, but fearless. He heard,
as Hel, his mother, the Kyrie Eleison of the stones and the Te Deum
Laudamus—the De Profundis and the Jubilate. And he heard, as his
mother, how the powerfully ringing stone chair was crowned by the Amen
of the cross vault....
He looked for Maria, who was to have waited for him on the belfry
steps; but he could not find her. He wandered through the cathedral,
which seemed to be quite empty of people. Once he stopped. He was
standing opposite Death.
The ghostly minstrel stood in a side-niche, carved in wood, in hat
and wide cloak, scythe on shoulder, the hour-glass dangling from his
girdle; and the minstrel was playing on a bone as though on a flute.
The Seven Deadly Sins were his following.
Freder looked Death in the face. Then he said:
“If you had come earlier you would not have frightened me.... Now I
pray you: Keep away from me and my beloved!”
But the awful flute-player seemed to be listening to nothing but the
song he was playing upon a bone.
Freder walked on. He came to the central nave. Before the high altar,
over which hovered God Incarnate, a dark form lay stretched out upon
the stones, hands clutching out to each side, face pressed into the
coldness of the stone, as though the blocks must burst asunder under
the pressure of the brow. The form wore the garment of a monk, the head
was shaven. An incessant trembling shook the lean body from shoulder to
heel, and it seemed to be stiffened as though in a cramp.
But suddenly the body reared up. A white flame sprang up: a face; black
flames within it: two blazing eyes. A hand rose up, clutching high in
the air towards the crucifix which hovered above the altar.
A voice spoke, like the voice of fire:
“I will not let thee go, God, God, except thou bless me!”
The echo of the pillars yelled the words after him.
The son of Joh Fredersen had never seen the man before. He knew,
however, as soon as the flame-white face unveiled the black flames of
its eyes to him: it was Desertus the monk, his father’s enemy....
Perhaps his breath had become too loud. Suddenly the black flame
struck across at him. The monk arose slowly. He did not say a word. He
stretched out his hand. The hand indicated the door.
“Why do you send me away, Desertus?” asked Freder. “Is not the house of
your God open to all?”
“Hast thou come here to seek God?” asked the rough, hoarse voice of the
monk.
Freder hesitated. He dropped his head.
“No.” He answered. But his heart knew better.
“If thou hast not come to seek God, then thou hast nothing to seek
here,” said the monk.
Then Joh Fredersen’s son went.
He went out of the cathedral as one walking in his sleep. The daylight
smote his eyes cruelly. Racked with weariness, worn out with grief, he
walked down the steps, and aimlessly onwards.
The roar of the streets wrapped itself, as a diver’s helmet, about
his ears. He walked on in his stupefaction, as though between thick
glass walls. He had no thought apart from the name of his beloved, no
consciousness apart from his longing for her. Shivering with weariness,
he thought of the girl’s eyes and lips, with a feeling very like
homesickness.
Ah!—brow to brow with her—then mouth to mouth—eyes closed—breathing....
Peace.... Peace....
“Come,” said his heart. “Why do you leave me alone?”
He walked along in a stream of people, fighting down the mad desire to
stop amid this stream and to ask every single wave, which was a human
being, if it knew of Maria’s whereabouts, and why she had let him wait
in vain.
He came to the magician’s house. There he stopped.
He stared at a window.
Was he mad?
There was Maria, standing behind the dull panes. Those were her blessed
hands, stretched out towards him ... a dumb cry: “Help me—!”
Then the entire vision was drawn away, swallowed up by the blackness of
the room behind it, vanishing, not leaving a trace, as though it had
never been. Dumb, dead and evil stood the house of the magician there.
Freder stood motionless. He drew a deep, deep breath. Then he made a
leap. He stood before the door of the house.
Copper-red, in the black wood of the door, glowed the seal of Solomon,
the pentagram.
Freder knocked.
Nothing in the house stirred.
He knocked for the second time.
The house remained dull and obstinate.
He stepped back and looked up at the windows.
They looked out in their evil gloom, over and beyond him.
He went to the door again. He beat against it with his fists. He heard
the echo of his drumming blows shake the house, as in dull laughter.
But the copper Solomon’s seal grinned at him from the unshaken door.
He stood still for a moment. His temples throbbed. He felt absolutely
helpless and was as near crying as swearing.
Then he heard a voice—the voice of his beloved.
“Freder—!” and once more: “Freder—!”
He saw blood before his eyes. He made to throw himself with the full
weight of his shoulders against the door....
But in that same moment the door opened noiselessly. It swung back in
ghostly silence, leaving the way into the house absolutely free.
That was so unexpected and alarming that, in the midst of the swing
which was to have thrown him against the door, Freder caught both his
hands against the door-posts, and stood fixed there. He buried his
teeth in his lips. The heart of the house was as black as midnight....
But the voice of Maria called to him from the heart of the house:
“Freder—! Freder—!”
He ran into the house as though he had gone blind. The door fell to
behind him. He stood in blackness. He called. He received no answer. He
saw nothing. He groped. He felt walls—endless walls.... Steps.... He
climbed up the steps....
A pale redness swam about him like the reflection of a distant gloomy
fire.
Suddenly—he stopped still, clawing his hand into the stonework behind
him—a sound was coming out of the nothingness: The weeping of a woman
sorrowing, sorrowing unto death.
It was not very loud, but yet it was as if the source of all
lamentation were streaming out of it. It was as though the house were
weeping—as though every stone in the wall were a sobbing mouth, set
free from eternal dumbness, once and once only, to mourn an everlasting
agony.
Freder shouted—he was fully aware that he was only shouting in order
not to hear the weeping any more.
“Maria—Maria—Maria—!”
His voice was clear and wild as an oath: “I am coming!”
He ran up the stairs. He reached the top of the stairs. A passage,
scarcely lighted. Twelve doors opened out here.
In the wood of each of these doors glowed, copper-red, the seal of
Solomon, the pentagram.
He sprang to the first one. Before he had touched it it swung
noiselessly open before him. Emptiness lay behind it. The room was
quite bare.
The second door. The same.
The third. The fourth. They swung open before him as though his breath
had blown them off the latch.
Freder stood still. He screwed his head down between his shoulders. He
raised his arm and wiped it across his forehead. He looked around him.
The open doors stood agape. The mournful weeping ceased. All was quite
silent.
But out of the silence there came a voice, soft and sweet, and more
tender than a kiss....
“Come...! Do come...! I am here, dearest...!”
Freder did not stir. He knew the voice quite well. It was Maria’s
voice, which he so loved. And yet it was a strange voice. Nothing in
the world could be sweeter than the tone of this soft allurement—and
nothing in the world has ever been so filled to overflowing with a
dark, deadly wickedness.
Freder felt the drops upon his forehead.
“Who are you?” he asked expressionlessly.
“Don’t you know me?”
“Who are you?”
“... Maria....”
“You are not Maria....”
“Freder—!” mourned the voice—Maria’s voice.
“Do you want me to lose my reason?” said Freder, between his teeth.
“Why don’t you come to me?”
“I can’t come, beloved....”
“Where are you?”
“Look for me!” said the sweetly alluring, the deadly wicked voice,
laughing softly.
But through the laughter there sounded another voice—being _also_
Maria’s voice, sick with fear and horror.
“Freder ... help me, Freder.... I do not know what is being done to
me.... But what is being done is worse than murder.... My eyes are
on....”
Suddenly, as though cut off, her voice choked. But the other
voice—which was _also_ Maria’s voice, laughed, sweetly, alluringly, on:
“Look for me, beloved!”
Freder began to run. Senselessly and unreasoningly, he began to run.
Along walls, by open doors, upstairs, downstairs, from twilight into
darkness, drawn on by the cones of light, which would suddenly flame up
before him, then dazzled and plunged again into a hellish darkness.
He ran like a blind animal, groaning aloud. He found that he was
running in a circle, always upon his own tracks, but he could not get
free of it, could not get out of the cursed circle. He ran in the
purple mist of his own blood, which filled his eyes and ears, heard the
breaker of his blood dash against his brain, heard high above, like the
singing of birds, the sweetly, deadly wicked laugh of Maria....
“Look for me, beloved!... I am here!... I am here!...”
At last he fell. His knees collided against something which was in the
way of their blindness; 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 still. He was
not even breathing now. He was like a corpse.
The great inventor left his listening post. He passed through the
dark house on soundless soles. He opened a door and entered a room.
He closed the door and remained standing on the threshold. With an
expectation that was fully aware of its pointlessness, he looked at the
girl who was the occupant of the room.
He found her as he always found her. In the farthest corner of the
room, on a high, narrow chair, hands laid, right and left, upon the
arms of the chair, sitting stiffly upright, with eyes which appeared
to be lidless. Nothing about her was living apart from these eyes. The
glorious mouth, still glorious in its pallor, seemed to enclose within
it the unpronounceable. She did not look at the man—she looked over
and beyond him.
Rotwang stooped forward. He came nearer to her. Only his hands, his
lonely hands groped through the air, as though they wanted to close
around Maria’s countenance. His eyes, his lonely eyes, enveloped
Maria’s countenance.
“Won’t you smile just once?” he asked. “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.... I could take
a diploma in your horror and in your rigidity. 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....”
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 to
your will the inscrutable God, who is said to rule the world, than 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 says: ‘Give me back my son!’”
The girl sat like a statue, immovable.
“He will ask you: ‘Of what value is my son to you?’ and if you are wise
you will answer him: ‘Of no more and of no less value than he is to
you!...’ He will pay the price, and it will be a high price, for Joh
Fredersen has only one son....”
The girl sat like a statue, immovable.
“What do you know of Freder’s heart?” continued the man. “He is as
young as the morning at sunrise. This heart of the young morning is
yours. Where will it be at midday? And where at evening? Far away from
you, Maria—far, far, away. The world is very large and the earth is
very fair.... His father will send him around the world. Out over the
beautiful earth he will forget you, Maria, before the clock of his
heart is at midday.”
The girl sat like a statue, immovable. But around her pale mouth, which
was like the bud of a snowrose, a smile began to bloom—a smile of such
sweetness, of such depths, that it seemed as though the air about the
girl must begin to beam.
The man looked at the girl. His lonely eyes were starved and parched as
the desert which does not know the dew. In a hoarse voice he went on:
“Where do you get your sainted confidence from? Do you believe that you
are Freder’s first love? Have you forgotten the ‘Club of the Sons,’
Maria? There are a hundred women there—and all are his! These loving
little women could all tell you about Freder’s love, for they know more
about it than you do, and you have only one advantage over them: You
can weep when he leaves you; for they are not allowed to weep.... When
Joh Fredersen’s son celebrates his marriage it will be as though all
Metropolis celebrated its marriage. When?—Joh Fredersen will decide
that.... With whom?—Joh Fredersen will decide that.... But you will
not be the bride, Maria! The son of Joh Fredersen will have forgotten
you by the day of his wedding.”
“Never!” said the girl. “Never—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 door-post.
He slammed the door to. 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, Futura!” he said. “Bunglers!—Bunglers! Can I give
you the smile which you make angels fall gladly down to hell? Can I
give you the tears which would redeem the chiefest 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. And, as he laid his hands on its
shoulders, its fine structure tinkled in mysterious laughter....
* * * * *
Freder, on recovering, found himself surrounded by a dull brightness.
It came from a window, in the frame of which stood a pale, grey sky.
The window was small and gave the impression that it had not been
opened for centuries.
Freder’s eyes wandered through the room. Nothing that he saw penetrated
into his consciousness. He remembered nothing. He lay, his back resting
on stones which were cold and smooth. All his limbs and joints were
racked by a dull pain.
He turned his head to one side. He looked at his hands which lay
beside him as though not belonging to him, thrown away, bled white.
Knuckles knocked raw ... shreds of skin ... brownish crusts ... were
these his hands?
He stared at the ceiling. It was black, as if charred. He stared at the
walls; grey, cold walls....
Where was he—? He was tortured by thirst and a ravenous hunger. But
worse than the hunger and thirst was the weariness which longed for
sleep and which could not find it.
Maria occurred to him....
Maria?... Maria—?
He jerked himself up and stood on sawn-through ankles. His eyes sought
for doors: There was one door. He stumbled up to it. The door was
closed, was latchless, would not open.
His brain commanded him: Don’t be surprised at anything.... Don’t let
anything startle you.... Think....
Over there, there was a window. It had no frame. It was a pane of glass
set into stone. The street lay before it—one of the great streets of
the great Metropolis, seething with human beings.
The glass window-pane must be very thick. Not the least sound entered
the room in which Freder was captive, though the street was so near.
Freder’s hands fumbled across the pane. A penetrating coldness streamed
out of the glass, the smoothness of which was reminiscent of the
sucking sharpness of a steel blade. Freder’s finger tips glided towards
the setting of the pane ... and remained, crooked, hanging in the air,
as though bewitched. He saw: Down there, below, Maria was crossing the
street....
Leaving the house which held him captive, she turned her back on him
and walked with light, hurried step towards the Maelstrom, which the
street was....
Freder’s fists smote against the pane. He cried the girl’s name. He
yelled: “Maria...!” She must hear him. It was impossible that she did
not hear him. Regardless of his raw knuckles he banged with his fists
against the pane.
But Maria did not hear him. She did not turn her head around. With her
gentle but hurried step she submerged herself in the surf of people as
though into her very familiar element.
Freder leaped for the door. He heaved with his whole body, with his
shoulders, his knees, against the door. He no longer shouted. His mouth
was gaping open. His breath burnt his lips grey. He sprang back to
the window. There, outside, hardly ten paces from the window, stood
a policeman, his face turned towards Rotwang’s house. The man’s face
registered absolute nonchalance. Nothing seemed to be farther from his
mind than to watch the magician’s house. But the man who was striving,
with bleeding fists, to shatter a window pane in his house could not
have escaped even his most casual glance.
Freder paused. He stared at the policeman’s face with an unreasoning
hatred, born of fear of losing time where there was no time to be lost.
He turned around and snatched up the rude foot-stool, which stood near
the table. He dashed the foot-stool with full force at the window pane.
The rebound jerked him backwards. The pane was undamaged.
Sobbing fury welled up in Freder’s throat. He swung the foot-stool and
hurled it at the door. The foot-stool crashed to earth. Freder dashed
to it, snatched it up and struck and struck, again and again, at the
booming door, in a ruddy, blind desire to destroy.
Wood splintered, white. The door shrieked like a living thing. Freder
did not pause. To the rhythm of his own boiling blood, he beat against
the door until it broke, quivering.
Freder dragged himself through the hole. He ran through the house. His
wild eyes sought an enemy and fresh obstacles in each corner. But he
found neither one nor the other. Unchallenged, he reached the door,
found it open and reeled out into the street.
He ran in the direction which Maria had taken. But the surf of the
people had washed her away. She had vanished.
For some minutes Freder stood among the hurrying mob, as though
paralysed. One senseless hope befogged his brain: Perhaps—perhaps she
would come back again ... if he were patient and waited long enough....
But he remembered the cathedral—waiting in vain—her voice in the
magician’s house—words of fear—her sweet, wicked laugh....
No—no waiting—! He wanted to know.
With clenched teeth he ran....
There was a house in the city where Maria lived. An interminably
long way. What should he ask about? With bare head, with raw hands,
with eyes which seemed insane with weariness, he ran towards his
destination: Maria’s abode.
He did not know by how many precious hours Slim had come before him....
He stood before the people with whom Maria was supposed to live: a
man—a woman—the faces of whipped curs. The woman undertook the reply.
Her eyes twitched. She held her hands clutched under her apron.
No—no girl called Maria lived here—never had lived here....
Freder stared at the woman. He did not believe her. She must know the
girl. She must live here.
Half stunned with fear that this last hope of finding Maria could prove
fallacious too, he described the girl, as memory came to the aid of
this poor madman.
She had such fair hair.... She had such gentle eyes.... She had the
voice of a loving mother.... She wore a severe but lovely gown....
The man left his position, near the woman, and stooped down sideways,
hunching his head down between his shoulders as though he could not
bear to hear how that strange young man there, at the door, spoke of
the girl, for whom he was seeking. Shaking her head in angry impatience
for him to be finished, the woman repeated the same unvarnished words:
The girl did not live here, once and for all.... Hadn’t he nearly
finished with his catechism?
Freder went. He went without a word. He heard how the door was slammed
to, with a bang. Voices were retiring, bickering. Interminable steps
brought him to the street again.
Yes ... what next?
He stood helpless. He did not know which way to turn.
Exhausted to death, drunken with weariness, he heard, with a sudden
wince, that the air around him was becoming filled with an overpowering
sound.
It was an immeasurably glorious and transporting sound, as deep and
rumbling as and more powerful than any sound on earth. The voice of the
sea when it is angry, the voice of falling torrents, the voice of very
close thunder-storms would be miserably drowned in this Behemoth-din.
Without being shrill it penetrated all walls and, as long as it lasted,
all things seemed to swing in it. It was omnipresent, coming from the
heights and from the depths, being beautiful and horrible, being an
irresistible command.
It was high above the town. It was the voice of the town.
Metropolis raised her voice. The machines of Metropolis roared; they
wanted to be fed.
“My father,” thought Freder, half unconsciously, “has pressed his
fingers upon the blue metal plate. The brain of Metropolis controls the
town. Nothing happens in Metropolis which does not come to my father’s
ears. I shall go to my father and ask him if the inventor, Rotwang, has
played with Maria and with me in the name of Joh Fredersen.”
He turned around to wend his way to the New Tower of Babel. He set off
with the obstinacy of one possessed, with screwed up lips, sharp lines
between the eyebrows, clenched fists on his weak, dangling arms. He
set off as though he wanted to pound the stone beneath his feet. It
seemed as though every drop of blood in his face had collected in his
eyes alone. He ran, and, on the interminable way, at every step, he had
the feeling: I am not he who is running.... I am running, a spirit, by
the side of my own self.... I, the spirit, am forcing my body to run
onwards, although it is tired to death....
Those who stared at him when he arrived at the New Tower of Babel
seemed to be seeing, not him, but a spirit....
He was about to enter the Pater-noster, which was pumping its way, a
scoop-wheel for human beings, through the New Tower of Babel. But a
sudden shudder pushed him away from it. Did there not crouch below,
deep, deep, down, under the sole of the New Tower of Babel, a little,
gleaming machine, which was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant’s
head? Under the crouching body, and the head, which was sunken on the
chest, crooked legs rested, gnome-like, upon the platform. The trunk
and legs were motionless. But the short arms pushed and pushed and
pushed, alternately, forwards, backwards, forwards.
Who was standing before the machine now, cursing the Lord’s Prayer—the
Lord’s Prayer of the Pater-noster machine?
Shivering with horror, he ran up the stairs.
Stairs and stairs and stairs.... They would never come to an end....
The brow of the New Tower of Babel lifted itself very near to the sky.
The tower roared like the sea. It howled as deep as the storm. The
hurtling of a water-fall boomed in its veins.
“Where is my father?” Freder asked the servants.
They indicated a door. They wanted to announce him. He shook his head.
He wondered: Why were these people looking so strangely at him?
He opened a door. The room was empty. On the other side, a second door,
ajar. Voices behind it. The voice of his father and that of another....
Freder suddenly stood still. His feet seemed to be nailed to the floor.
The upper part of his body was bent stiffly forwards. His fists dangled
on helpless arms, seeming no longer capable of freeing themselves from
their own clench. He listened; the eyes in his white face were filled
with blood, the lips were open as though forming a cry.
Then he tore his deadened feet from the floor, stumbled to the door and
pushed it open....
In the middle of the room, which was filled with a cutting brightness,
stood Joh Fredersen, holding a woman in his arms. And the woman was
Maria. She was not struggling. Leaning far back in the man’s arms, she
was offering him her mouth, her alluring mouth, that deadly laugh....
“You...!” shouted Freder.
He dashed to the girl. He did not see his father. He saw only the
girl—no, neither did he see the girl, only her mouth and her sweet,
wicked laugh.
Joh Fredersen turned around, broad and menacing. He let the girl go.
He covered her with the might of his shoulders, with the great cranium,
flamed with blood, and in which the strong teeth and the invincible
eyes were very visible.
But Freder did not see his father. He only saw an obstacle between him
and the girl.
He rushed at the obstacle. It pushed him back. Scarlet hatred for the
obstacle choked him. His eyes flew around. They sought an implement—an
implement which could be used as a battering ram. He found none. Then
he threw himself forward as a battering ram. His fingers clutched into
stuff. He bit into the stuff. He heard his own breath like a whistle,
very high and shrill. Yet within him there was only one sound, only one
cry: “Maria—!” Groaningly, beseechingly: “Maria—!!”
A man dreaming of hell shrieks out no more, in his torment, than did he.
And still, between him and the girl, the man, the lump of rock, the
living wall....
He threw his hands forward. Ah ... look! ... there was a throat! He
seized the throat. His fingers snapped fast like iron fangs.
“Why don’t you defend yourself?” he yelled, staring at the man.
“I’ll kill you—! I’ll take your life—! I’ll murder you—!”
But the man before him held his ground while he throttled him. Thrown
this way and that by Freder’s fury, the body bent, now to the right,
now to the left. And as often as this happened Freder saw, as through
a transparent mist, the smiling countenance of Maria, who, leaning
against the table, was looking on with her sea water eyes at the fight
between father and son.
His father’s voice said: “Freder....”
He looked the man in the face. He saw his father. He saw the hands
which were clawing around his father’s throat. They were his, were the
hands of his son.
His hands fell loose, as though cut off ... he stared at his hands,
stammering something which sounded half like an oath, half like the
weeping of a child that believes itself to be alone in the world.
The voice of his father said: “Freder....”
He fell on his knees. He stretched out his arms. His head fell forward
into his father’s hands. He burst into tears, into despairing sobs....
A door slid to.
He flung his head around. He sprang to his feet. His eyes swept the
room.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Who?”
“She....”
“Who—?”
“She ... who was here....”
“Nobody was here, Freder....”
The boy’s eyes glazed.
“What did you say—?” he stammered.
“There has not been a soul here, Freder, but you and I.”
Freder twisted his head around stiffly. He tugged the shirt from
his throat. He looked into his father’s eyes as though looking into
well-shafts.
“You say there was not a soul here.... I did not see you ... when you
were holding Maria in your arms.... I have been dreaming.... I am mad,
aren’t I?...”
“I give you my word,” said Joh Fredersen, “when you came to me there
was neither a woman nor any other living soul here....”
Freder remained silent. His bewildered eyes were still searching along
the walls.
“You are ill, Freder,” said his father’s voice.
Freder smiled. Then he began to laugh. He threw himself into a chair
and laughed and laughed. He bent down, resting both elbows upon his
knees, burrowing his head between his hands and arms. He rocked himself
to and fro, shrieking with laughter.
Joh Fredersen’s eyes were upon him.