It was a twenties model Zenith safety projector, in astonishingly good shape. The lamp house was brown with rust but there was a relatively new bulb in it; the diffuser and lens were either restored or just remarkably well looked after. I snaked the cord up from the floor, covered in woven cloth as they were in those days, and sighed with relief to find the plug was suitable to a modern outlet.
“You’ve got some power,” I said to Marky. “To get those Christmas lights going. Is the whole place wired?”
“I guess I could run the extension cord over,” he said. “We juicing off the city, actually.”
I nodded and he ran over to start pulling up the cord. When he came back, I gently fit the plug into the cord’s outlet and held my breath as I switched the antique on. And glory hallelujah, the damn thing worked.
Marky said, “Don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
“You got that right.”
About everything, I thought, feeling sentimental for a past I never knew. Common pitfall in my profession.
Duff and the woman got to singing back in their corner of the warehouse, drunk as lords on that foul green stuff, and though Marky’s eyes shot that way he stayed with me. He kept the flash on my hands while I fed the first of the reels into the sprockets. Once it was ready, I turned the machine to face the dirty gray wall and started the show.
34
Hugging herself, Grace turned her gaze from the faux tombstones to Jack and forced herself to smile. The liberally flowing booze from the premiere was starting to wear off as she started to question why she agreed to come to the studio in the first place.
“What’s doing, Jack?” she asked with a small, artificial laugh.
He laughed back and went directly to the camera, which he heaved up by its wooden tripod. Grace narrowed her eyes, watching him carefully as he carried the equipment over to where she stood.
“Don’t tell me you’re this overworked,” she half-jested. “Surely the next scene can wait till morning.”
“No,” he said. “Not this one.”
His smile and laughter had faded. Now he set to arranging the camera, peering through the viewfinder at the cemetery, muttering quietly to himself.
“Jack?”
“Just a minute. Say — would you stand beside the tomb? Just to the left.”
“What was it you wanted to talk about, Jack?”
“Just to the left of it,” he repeated. “I’ll need to set the lights.”
“Come off that,” Grace said with as much force as she could muster. “We’re not really going to film anything — at this hour? Alone, and without Saul?”
“We worked a week without Saul.”
“He was ill. He’s back now.”
“We don’t need him,” Jack hissed. “Who’s making this picture, anyway? Jack Parson and Grace Baron, that’s who. All that tubby Jew does is interfere. And this—this—is something he could never wrap his dry little mind around, anyhow. No sirree.”
She stepped back, away from him, and rubbed her bare arms despite the muggy warmth of the studio.
“You’re frightening me, Jack.”
His grin returned and he paused for a moment, shaking his head. He then looked up at her, his face in shadow behind the rafter lights.
“That’s only because you don’t listen, dearheart. Dear, sweet Grace. You haven’t listened to me at all, not from the start.”
“I’m listening now. I’m here, Jack, and I’m listening. What was it you wanted to say?”
A small tremor worked its way up her back. She tried to shiver it out.
“Don’t you remember? The steps? The soldiers? Potemkin?”
Grace nodded vigorously, feigning comprehension she did not have.
“Yes, yes I remember.”
“What did I say? That day, Gracie. About art — the key. The secret.”
She recalled the troubling scene as clearly as though it were playing before her now; the screams, the blood, the terror. And she recalled her director’s words, too — words that puzzled her then and terrified her now.
“Darkness,” she whispered. “You said, ‘human darkness.’”
Jack Parson wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his topcoat and sighed loudly.
“That’s right, Grace. Gracie Baronsky. My star. You understand. Oh, thank God! You understand.”
He left the camera and walked stiffly toward her. She flinched, but he did not appear to notice as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tightly.
Into her ear, he softly whispered, “What we do here tonight is the end of cinema, my lovely girl. Talkies will never top what we’re about to give them.”
Her eyes spilled over, tears falling in dark spots on his shoulder.
35
Having watched Angel of the Abyss with three missing reels alongside Jake before my little accident, I was now finally putting the film together by way of memory added to the remaining footage glimmering on the wall before me.
Marky murmured, “Shit, man, this flick’s so old it’s silent.”
I shushed him as politely as I could and fell back in step with the nightmare beauty of Grace Baron’s Clara, a murdered woman returned from the grave to wreak vengeance on the men who wronged her. She slinked through densely fog-laden alleys in a sheer garment, her alabaster body barely concealed and her jet-black bob a stunning mess atop her scowling face. Even in rage — in death — she was astonishing. Not just her looks, but her range; even without intertitles her every thought was communicated through her eyes, through her flaring nostrils and small, dark mouth.
The world would have fallen in love with her, had it ever been given the chance.
I went through the three reels quickly. At about ten minutes apiece, they went by too quickly, and I sat in silence for several minutes absorbing them. Clara got them, of course, all the men who took her and made her their victim. And when that was done, the goat-headed beast with whom she’d made her carnal pact took her into its arms, enveloping her in its great, dark cloak, and she vanished with him in a wisp of smoke. The picture was harrowing and gorgeous, and much too sinister for its time. Even now it jarred me — me, who went through every stomach-churning 1970s Euro-horror film in my college days — even as it bewildered me with its breadth of design and the depth of Baron’s extraordinary performance. As sure as I was that Parson and his heirs had everything to do with the violence and secrecy taking hold of my life at that moment, I had no other choice but to admit the man had made a masterpiece.
So why must it be kept secret?
That question was answered by the fourth and final reel. The one that had only TEST on it.
I fed it into the projector, and in the horrible minutes that followed, I understood everything completely.
36
Squirming in his strong grasp, Grace sniffed and fought the cloud that seemed to envelop her senses.
“Jack,” she said, “listen to me. I have an idea.”
His fingers dug into her ribs and he shook slightly. As if weeping. She exhaled sharply and continued: “We’re going to make an astounding picture together. You and me. Like nothing anyone’s ever seen, or done. Because you’re an artist, not like these Hollywood types. You’re not one of them, Jack. You’re our Eisenstein, and you’re going to prove it to everybody.”
“I am,” he rasped. “I will.”
“But not tonight,” she said, her tone motherly. “It’s not the right time, Jack. We’ll need more crew, won’t we? To get the lights just right? To keep your mind on the direction? Why, you can’t run it all. You’re the mind, Jacky. Not some mean crewman. Let’s do it tomorrow.”