V.V. (12) "But finally she released Weissmann ... "

[jbor]

      Soon, padding down a narrow, sloping corridor, he was brought to
    attention by a mirror hung some twenty feet ahead, angled to reflect
    the interior of a room around the next corner. Framed for him there
    were Vera Meroving  and her lieutenant in profile, she striking at his
    chest with what appeared to be a small riding crop, he twisting a
    gloved hand into her hair and talking to her all the while, so precisely
    that the voyeur Mindaugen could lip-read each obscenity. The geometry of
    the corridors somehow baffled all sound: Mondaugen, with the queer
    excitement he'd felt watching her at the window that morning, expected
    captions explaining it all to flash on to the mirror. But she finally
    released Weissmann; he reached out with the curiously gloved hand and
    closed the door, and it was as if Mondaugen had dreamed them. (238)

Q. Who's zooming who here?

It seems like a posed s-m image in the mirror put on just for Kurt's
benefit: Weissmann the attacker, Vera fighting him off with the whip. But
Pynchon very deliberately places her in the position of control: she
"released" him, rather than vice versa, even though he was holding her hair.
Maybe it's part of an act which Weissmann has set up, because he is then the
one who closes the door on Kurt's view.

Q. What is the significance, if any, of the reversals of active and passive
participant in that final sentence?

best