Little sleep; endless, crushing headaches. Granite pieces breaking behind my eyes. Cold sweat, palpitations, exhaustion. A full day without working at all. Grau in a frenzy of rage and despair over this preview, in a Marxist rag: “This occultism, which has victimized thousands of shaken minds since the war, is a strategy mounted by the industrial world to deflect the worker from his own political interests. Today the occult takes the place of religions that no longer attract clients. Workers! On your guard! Don’t give your pennies to a spectacle designed to stupefy! Let the phantom ‘Nosferatu’ be devoured by his own rats!”

Grau’s response? Ever more publicity. Prana has now spent more on publicity than on the film itself. It seems clearer and clearer to me that the whole enterprise is an enormous bluff. Where is the publicity money to come from? The Otto Riede Bank, according to Grau, but Wagner tells me this bank doesn’t exist, and that Otto Riede is a simple employee. Yet the madness goes on. Grau plans a party on the release date: Saturday, March 4, “Prana’s Day.” He’s secured the marble entry hall of the zoo, and commissioned a prologue by Kurt Alexander inspired by the introduction from Goethe’s Faust. He’s hired Elisabeth Grube of the national opera to perform with the ballet troupe. For musical accompaniment there will be the great harmonium “Dominator,” transported to the site at massive cost. And all of this, he announces, will be filmed!

Hobbled back to the set this morning accompanied by a nurse. Disoriented by the medication and exhaustion and worried all day by an oppressive sense that I’m out of touch with the world. Stagehands stood around in groups as if at union meetings, eyeing me. The whole film seemed moribund. Woke that night from dreams which moved like dirty water forming monstrous waves. Neck hurt.

And then a late-afternoon wait in a pub across the street from the studio. Another problem with the arc lights. Wagner and I share wine, bread and butter, minced pork. I confess my fears, my inability to understand what I’m doing, to go on. Wagner tells me that I alone can do this. Seeing my face, he puts his hand to my cheek, in full view of the entire pub. That easily, his palm brings me a temporary peace. He’s been viewing the footage, he tells me, and it’s everything I’ve hoped for. He is such a mysterious figure, finally: cheerless and sober and intent on something outside my view.

A few hours’ sleep. A breathing spell. The final sequence to be done, the Nosferatu’s approach to Ellen.