He knew immediately that they were the eyes of the woman he had seen outside the theatre. Eloise. They held the same magnetic power. But something had changed about them, and not just their scale. In the flesh, her eyes had been warm and engaging. They had possessed a human empathy that reached out to whomever they settled upon. Their gaze was inclusive and generous.
Enlarged and isolated from the rest of her features, the eyes became self-possessed and steely. Yes, they desired the unseen object they gazed upon. But this desire was something fierce, dangerous, frightening. It was a desire in which there would be no room for compromise. The gaze of those gigantic eyes demanded everything. And promised nothing in return. It was a gaze that threatened to possess its object, like a demonic force. A gaze that would take you over and make you forget yourself. It would transform you into something you had never imagined you could be. It would never let you go.
The small, sympathetic, very human personality that had charmed the crowd outside the theatre was nowhere to be seen.
The eyes blinked. The viewpoint receded slightly, to show the whole of the face. And now some of that humanity came back into the eyes. The fierceness of the gaze was given a context, and seemed more comprehensible. What defined the gaze, he understood now, was despair. There was a frailty in her expression that the eyes alone had not communicated, a potent combination of vulnerability and defiance.
A hand came sharply into shot, slapping her across the left cheek. The percussionist threw out a perfectly timed snare-shot.
The audience gasped.
The camera closed in again on her eyes. They flared with indignation and then softened into something more recriminatory, regretful even. The music corresponded to these modulations.
At no time was there fear in those eyes.
Then, at last, the camera angle shifted to show the man who was both the recipient of her gaze and her assailant.
Quinn recognized the mournful-faced actor who had been with Eloise outside. But he too had been transformed by the alchemical processes of kinematography. In front of the theatre, he had appeared to be simply a more intense example of humanity, but the same in type as those around him. Somewhat livelier in the fluidity of his expressions, but possessing a self-deprecating jokiness that was comparable to Eloise’s blatant generosity of spirit. His face was fascinating, compelling even. But he did not appear to be a different category of being all together.
Paradoxically, devoid of colour and reduced in its dimensions, his image became something far more than the man it represented. Dressed in a white dress uniform, he became the embodiment of every dark and difficult male emotion. (The music from the band rather overstated this, striking up a heavy, melodramatic motif.)
One sensed every aspect of his potential – for love, for violence, for rage, for self-annihilation and forgiveness. And one understood immediately the meaning of that slap, which was not the same as to condone it.
No, Quinn could never forgive that slap. Whatever befell the character in the unfolding drama – and Quinn was certain there would be many and terrible consequences – he had brought it all upon himself with that single act of violence.
But Quinn knew the blow was borne out of impotence. He knew that the cavalry officer was in thrall to her. That the only way to free himself from her was to destroy her.
He himself had felt everything that was expressed in that brooding presence.
And so the film began with a rift between the lovers. In the scenes that followed, set in a city Quinn took to be Vienna, the soldier threw himself into what was clearly meant to be a life of debauchery, indicated by the presence of dancing girls, seedy gambling parties and drunken brawls. It didn’t surprise Quinn to see the brunette he had noticed outside among the troupe of semi-naked dancers. The man he had associated with her cropped up too, as a card sharp. He was given a scene in which he upturned a table and threw a punch, only to be horse-whipped by the officer.
Meanwhile, Eloise – or rather, the character she was playing – took to the stage and pursued a career in the dramatic arts. And it seemed she was a great success. Garlands were hurled at her feet. She was shown in her dressing room after a performance as Cleopatra, surrounded by the gifts and cards of admirers.
Quinn’s expectation was that her former lover would come to see her in this part, and a resolution effected. But this possibility was not fulfilled. She was visited and wooed by an aristocratic-looking man, who turned out to be the Count of Somewhere or Other. Quinn wondered if it was significant that the man wore a monocle, which he removed to gaze upon Eloise? He did not remember seeing this actor outside. Presumably the cast was mostly foreign, and not all of them had been able to travel for the London premiere.
The storyline reverted to Eloise’s former lover, whose descent into ruin and disgrace had evidently progressed. A title screen informed the audience that he had lost his fortune and been forced to resign his commission from the army. When the camera caught up with him, he was living the life of a penniless drunkard in a cheap boarding house. There was a scene in which his rapacious landlord – a crudely depicted Jew – came after him for the rent. An argument at the top of a steep flight of stairs resulted in the impoverished drunk pushing the Jew downstairs. The percussionist had fun matching his drum beats to the actor’s tumble. The strings came in piercing and high, a wash of melodrama. The Jew was dead.
The disgraced cavalry officer fled the boarding house in panic, having first helped himself to the coins in the dead man’s pockets, and the bank notes from his safe.
As he trudged the banks of a river, which Quinn presumed to be the Danube, a gigantic pair of eyes appeared in the night sky, looking down on him. They were the accusing eyes of his erstwhile lover. Quinn could not help thinking of the way he had been similarly haunted by Miss Dillard’s eyes, after the unfortunate incident outside Miss Ibbott’s room.
To escape this relentless recrimination, he took refuge in a beer cellar and bawdy house. But the eyes pursued him, and were cleverly superimposed over the eyes of every woman he encountered. Even the prostitute who led him up to a squalid bedroom. She lay back on the bed and looked up at him with Eloise’s eyes – in fact, she had become Eloise. There was only one thing he could do. Quinn understood instinctively. In fact, he felt his own hands tightening as the murderer’s caress turned into a stranglehold. The woman writhed and died in his hands, and in another clever camera effect, Eloise melted back into the coarse-faced, dull-eyed prostitute.
The band whipped themselves into a frenzy as the killer made his escape.
And then the shocking revelation: the camera returned to a close up of the prostitute’s face; both her eyes had been removed.
There were screams from the audience. Even Quinn felt his heart quicken in shock. The cello and double bass hacked a jagged, tuneless seam of notes out of the black abyss.
The music then became abruptly celebratory. Something about it suggested the tolling of church bells.
It seemed to be snowing. And then the snow was revealed as confetti.
Eloise was coming out of a church, newly married to the Count of Somewhere or Other. Her eyes were hidden behind a bridal veil.
A shadowy figure attached itself to the edge of the crowd of well-wishers. Quinn immediately recognized the former cavalry officer, though his appearance had undergone another transformation. He was heavily bearded and wearing dark-lensed spectacles, as well as a homburg and cape. But Quinn’s training enabled him to look beyond the surface details. He could tell by the physique and gait that it was the same man. Besides, the band gave the game away by playing the killer’s theme.
The couple climbed into an open carriage. The camera picked out the sinister onlooker among those celebrating their departure. The bride’s former lover had moved into broad daylight now, so it was possible to see that he was dressed in well-tailored clothes that gave the impression of affluence; certainly he no longer cut the disreputable figure of a drunkard. The money he had stolen from the Jew had evidently enabled him to set himself up. Ironically, the full beard gave him a distinctly Jewish appearance and he looked strikingly similar to the man he had murdered. For the first time Quinn wondered if the landlord and the cavalry officer had both somehow been played by the same actor. He supposed it must have been possible.