The Other Nineteenth Century

by Avram Davidson

  The heat had become intolerable; he thought of that sudden illness which was compared to the tightening of a red-hot band about the head: nonsense: he was still upright; merely the place seemed very odd, suddenly. Seemed without meaning, suddenly. Its shapes seemed to shift. It had no purpose. No wonder he was no longer there, was outside, was moving silently from one silent alley to another, on his shoulder the carrying pole of the two laundry-baskets, one at each end. No one was about, and, if anyone were, no one would have noted his presence: merely a Chinaman, which is to say a laundryman, picking up and leaving off shirts. No one. Everything was very sudden, now. He had hidden pole and baskets behind a bush. He had slipped through a space where a board was missing from a fence. He was in a place where wood was stored and split. He had a glimpse of someone who he knew. He must avoid such a one—indeed all others. Silently his slippered feet flew up the stairs. A voice droned in a room, Droned on and on. And on. “ … come when I call you, hey, miss? Miss, Miss Elizabeth? Beneath you, is it? We’ll see if you’ll come when I call you pretty soon,” the voice droned on. “I say. ‘We’ll see if you’ll come when I call you pretty soon, miss.’ Wun’t call me, ‘Mother,’ hey, miss? Well, even if I be Mr. Borden’s second wife, I be his lawful-wedded wife, him and me has got some business at the bank and the lawyer’s pretty soon today, you may lay to that, yes, miss, you may lay to that; we’ll see if you ain’t a-going to come when I call you after that, and come at my very beck and call and do as I tell you must do, for if you don’t you may go somewheres else and you may git your vittles somewheres else, too, though darned if I know where that may be, I have got your father wrapped around my little finger, miss, miss, yes, I say yes, I shall lower your proud head, miss,” the hateful, nasal voice droned on.

  So! This was she: the childless concubine of the father of Large Pale Savage Female! She, the one who planned to assume the rule of family property and cast out the daughter of the first wife? In this heat-stricken, insane, and savage world only the practice of fidelity and the preservation of virtue could keep a man’s heart from being crushed by pain. He who had been known (and rightfully known) as The Deft-Footed Dragon, the once-renowned and most-renowned hatchet-man of the great Ten Tongs, hefted his weapon and slipped silently into the room …

  AFTERWORD TO “THE DEED OF THE DEFT-FOOTED DRAGON”

  Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her parents forty whacks … But was it really Lizzie, or some mysterious other? We’ll never know. We do know that Avram served in China with the US military at the end of World War II. His sojourn in China became an ongoing theme in many stories, in this collection and others, and in the fantasy novel Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (reissued by Wildside Press), which I co-authored with Avram before he passed on. Avram knew something about China.

  —Grania Davis

  THE MONTAVARDE CAMERA

  Mr. Azel’s shop was set between a glazier’s establishment and a woolen draper’s; three short steps led down to it. The shopfront was narrow; a stranger hurrying by would not even notice it, for the grimy brick walling of the glazier’s was part of a separate building, and extended farther out.

  Three short steps down, and there was a little areaway before the door, and it was always clean, somehow. The slattern wind blew bits of straw and paper scraps in circles up and down the street, leaving its discarded playthings scattered all about, but not in the areaway in front of the shop door. Just above the height of a man’s eye there was a rod fastened to the inside of the door, and from it descended, in neat folds, a red velveteen curtain. The shop’s window, to the door’s left, was veiled in the same way. In old-fashioned lettering the gold-leaf figures of the street number stood alone on the glass pane.

  There was no slot for letters, no name or sign, nothing displayed on door or window. The shop was a blank, it made no impression on the eye, conveyed no message to brain. If a few of the many people scurrying by noticed it at all, it was only to assume it was empty.

  No cats took advantage of this quiet backwater to doze in the sun, although at least two of them always reclined under the projecting window of the draper. On this particular day the pair were jolted out of their calm by the running feet of Mr. Lucius Collins, who was chasing his hat. It was a high-crowned bowler, a neat and altogether proper hat, and as he chased it indignantly Mr. Collins puffed and breathed through his mouth—a small, full, red-lipped mouth, grazed on either side by a pair of well-trimmed, sandy, mutton chop whiskers.

  Outrageous! Mr. Collins thought, his stout little legs pumping furiously. Humiliating! And no one to be blamed for it, either, not even the Government, or the Boers, or Mrs. Collins, she of the sniffles and rabbity face. Shameful! The gold seals on his watchchain jingled and clashed together and beat against the stomach it confined, and the wind carried the hat at a rapid clip along the street.

  Just as the wind had passed the draper’s, it abruptly abandoned the object of its game, and the forsaken bowler fell with a thud in front of the next shop. It rolled down the first, the second, and the third step, and leaned wearily against the door.

  Mr. Collins trotted awkwardly down the steps and knelt down to seize the hat. His head remained where it was, as did his hands and knees. About a foot of uncurtained glass extended from the lower border of the red velveteen to the wooden doorframe, and through this Mr. Lucius Collins looked. It almost seemed that he gaped.

  Inside the shop, looking down at Mr. Collins’s round and red face, was a small, slender gentleman, who leaned against a showcase as if he were (the thought flitted through Mr. Collins’s mind) posing for his photograph. The mild amusement evident on his thin features brought to Mr. Collins anew the realization that his position was, at best, undignified. He took up his hat, arose, brushed the errant bowler with his sleeve, dusted his knees, and entered the shop. Somewhere in the back a bell tinkled as he did so.

  A red rug covered the floor and muffled his footsteps. The place was small, but well furnished, in the solid style more fashionable in past days. Nothing was shabby or worn, yet nothing was new. A gas jet with mantle projected from a paneled wall whose dark wood had the gleam of much polishing, but the burner was not lit, although the shop was rather dark. Several chairs upholstered in leather were set at intervals around the shop. There were no counter, and no shelves, and only the one showcase. It was empty, and only a wellbrushed Ascot top hat rested on it.

  Mr. Collins did not wish the slender little gentleman to receive the impression that he, Lucius, made a practice of squatting down and peering beneath curtained shop windows.

  “Are you the proprietor?” he asked. The gentleman, still smiling, said that he was. It was a dry smile, and its owner was a dry-looking person. His was a long nose set in a long face. His chin was cleft.

  The gentleman’s slender legs were clad in rather baggy trousers, but it was obvious that they were the aftermath of the period when baggy trousers were the fashion, and were not the result of any carelessness in attire. The cloth was of a design halfway between plaid and checkered, and a pair of sharply pointed and very glossy shoes were on his small feet. A gray waistcoat, crossed by a light gold watchchain, a rather short frock coat, and a wing collar with a black cravat completed his dress. No particular period was stamped on his clothes, but one felt that in his prime—whenever that had been—this slender little gentleman had been a dandy, in a dry, smiling sort of way.

  From his nose to his chin two deep lines were etched, and there were laughter wrinkles about the corners of his eyes. His hair was brown and rather sparse, cut in the conventional fashion. Its only unusual feature was that the little gentleman had on his forehead, after the manner of the late Lord Beaconsfield, a ringlet of the type commonly known as a “spit curl.” And his nicely appointed little shop contained, as far as Mr. Collins could see, absolutely no merchandise at all.

  “The wind, you know it—ah, blew my hat off and carried it away. Dropped it at your door, so to speak.”

  Mr. Collins spoke awkwa
rdly, aware that the man seemed still to be somewhat amused, and believed that this was due to his own precipitate entry. In order to cover his embarrassment and justify his continued presence inside, he asked in a rush, “What is it exactly that you sell here?” and waved his arm at the unstocked room.

  “What is it you wish to buy?” the man asked.

  Mr. Collins flushed again, and gaped again, and fumbled about for an answer.

  “Why, what I meant was: in what line are you? You have nothing displayed whatsoever, you know. Not a thing. How is one to know what sort of stock you have, if you don’t put it about where it can be seen?” As he spoke, Mr. Collins felt his self-possession returning, and went on with increased confidence to say: “Now, just for example, my own particular avocation is photography. But if you have nothing displayed to show you sell anything in that line, I daresay I would pass by here every day and never think to stop in.”

  The proprietor’s smile increased slightly, and his eyebrows arched up to his curl.

  “But it so happens that I, too, am interested in photography, and although I have no display or sign to beguile you, in you came. I do not care for advertising. It is, I think, vulgar. My equipment is not for your tuppeny-tintype customer, nor will I pander to his tastes.

  “Your equipment?” Mr. Collins again surveyed the place. “Where is it?” A most unusual studio—if studio it was—or shop, he thought; but he was impressed by what he considered a commendable attitude on the part of the slender gentleman—a standard so elevated that he refused to lower it by the most universally accepted customs of commerce.

  The proprietor pointed to the most shadowy corner of the shop. There, in the semidarkness between the showcase and the wall, a large camera of archaic design stood upon a tripod. Mr. Collins approached it with interest, and began to examine it in the failing light.

  Made out of some unfamiliar type of hardwood, with its lens piece gleaming a richer gold than ordinary brass, the old camera was in every respect a museum piece; yet, despite its age, it seemed to be in good working order. Mr. Collins ran his hand over the smooth surface; as he did so, he felt a rough spot on the back. It was evidently someone’s name, he discovered, burned or carved into the wood, but now impossible to read in the thickening dusk. He turned to the proprietor.

  “It is rather dark back here.”

  “Of course. I beg your pardon; I was forgetting. It is something remarkable, isn’t it? There is no such workmanship nowadays. Years of effort that took, you know.” As he spoke, he lit the jet and turned up the gas. The soft, yellow light of the flame filled the shop, hissing quietly to itself. More and more shops now had electric lights; this one, certainly, never would.

  Mr. Collins reverently bowed his head and peered at the writing. In a flourishing old-fashioned script, someone long ago had engraved the name of Gaston Montavarde. Mr. Collins looked up in amazement.

  “Montavarde’s camera? Here?”

  “Here, before you. Montavarde worked five years on his experimental models before he made the one you see now. At that time he was stilt—so the books tell you—the pupil of Daguerre. But to those who knew him, the pupil far excelled the master; just as Daguerre himself had far excelled Niepce. If Montavarde had not died just as he was nearing mastery of the technique he sought, his work would be world famous. As it is, appreciation of Montavarde’s style and importance is largely confined to the few—of whom I count myself one. You, sir, I am pleased to note, are one of the others. One of the few others.” Here the slender gentleman gave a slight bow. Mr. Collins was extremely flattered, not so much by the bow—all shopkeepers bowed—but by the implied compliment to his knowledge.

  In point of fact, he knew very little of Montavarde, his life, or his work. Who does? He was familiar, as are all students of early photography, with Montavarde’s study of a street scene in Paris during the 1848 Revolution. Barricades in the Morning, which shows a ruined embattlement and the still bodies of its defenders, is perhaps the first war photograph ever taken; it is usually, and wrongly, called a Daguerreotype. Perhaps not more than six or eight, altogether, of Montavarde’s pictures are known to the general public, and all are famous for that peculiar luminous quality that seems to come from some unknown source within the scene. Collins was also aware that several more Montavardes in the possession of collectors of the esoteric and erotic could not be published or displayed. One of the most famous of these is the so-called La Messe Noire.

  The renegade priest of Lyons, Duval, who was in the habit of conducting the Black Mass of the Demonolaters, used for some years as his “altar” the naked body of the famous courtesan, La Manchette. It was this scene that Montavarde was reputed to have photographed. Like many popular women of her type, La Manchette might have eventually retired to grow roses and live to a great age, had she not been murdered by one of her numerous lovers. Montavarde’s photographs of the guillotine (The Widow) before and after the execution, had been banned by the French censor under Louis Napoleon as a matter of public policy.

  All this is a digression, of course. These asides are mentioned because they were known to Mr. Lucius Collins, and largely explained his awe and reverence on seeing the—presumably—same camera which had photographed these scenes.

  “How did you get this?” he asked, not troubling to suppress or conceal his eagerness.

  “For more than thirty years,” explained the proprietor, “it was the property of a North American. He came to London, met with financial reverses and pawned his equipment. He did not know, one assumes, that it was the Montavarde camera. Nor did he redeem. I had little or no competition at the auction. Later I heard he had gone back to America, or done away with himself, some said; but no matter: the camera was a bon marché. I never expected to see it again. I sold it soon after, but the payments were not kept up, and so here it is.”

  On hearing that the camera could be purchased, Mr. Collins began to treat for its sale (though he knew he could really not afford to buy) and would not take no for an answer. In short, an agreement was drawn up, whereby he was to pay a certain sum down, and something each month for eight months.

  “Shall I make out the check in pounds or in guineas?” he asked.

  “Guineas, of course. I do not consider myself a tradesman.” The slender gentleman smiled and fingered his watchchain as Mr. Collins drew out his check book.

  “What name am I to write, sir? I do not—”

  “My name, sir, is Azel. The initials, A. A. Ah, just so. Can you manage the camera by yourself? Then I bid you a good evening, Mr. Collins. You have made a rare acquisition, indeed. Allow me to open the door.”

  Mr. Collins brought his purchase home in a four-wheeler, and spent the rest of the evening dusting and polishing. Mrs. Collins, a wispy, weedy little figure, who wore her hair in what she imagined was the manner of the Princess of Wales—Mrs. Collins had a cold, as usual. She agreed that the camera was in excellent condition, but, with a snuffle, she pointed out that he had spent far too much money on it. In her younger days, as one of the Misses Wilkins, she had done quite a good bit of amateur photography herself, but she had given it up because it cost far too much money.

  She repeated her remarks some evenings later when her brother, the Reverend Wycliffe Wilkins, made his weekly call.

  “Mind you,” said Mr. Collins to his brother-in-law, “I don’t know just what process the inventor used in developing his plates, but I did the best I could, and I don’t think it’s half bad. See here. This is the only thing I’ve done so far. One of those old Tudor houses in Great Cumberland Street. They say it was one of the old plague houses. Pity it’s got to be torn down to make way for that new road. I thought I’d beat the wreckers to it.”

  “Very neatly done, I’m sure,” said his brother-in-law. “I don’t know much about photography myself. But evidently you haven’t heard about this particular house. No? Happened yesterday. My cook was out marketing, and just as she came up to the corner, the house collapsed in a pile of d
ust. Shoddy worksmanship somewhere; I mean, the house couldn’t have been more than three hundred years old. Of course, there was no one in it, but still it gave the cook quite a turn. I suppose there’s no harm in your having this camera, but, as for me, considering its associations, I wouldn’t have it in the house. Naked women, indeed!—saving your presence, Mary.”

  “Oh, come now,” said Mr. Collins. “Montavarde was an artist.”

  “Many artists have been pious, decent people, Lucius. There can be no compromise between good and evil.” Mrs. Collins snuffled her agreement. Mr. Collins pursed his little mouth and said no more until his good humor was restored by the maid’s coming in with the tea tray.

  “I suppose, then, Wycliffe, you wouldn’t think of letting me take your picture.”

  “Well, I don’t know why ever not,” Mrs. Collins protested. “After the amount of money Lucius spent on the camera, we ought to make some use out of it, I think. Lucius will take your likeness whenever it’s convenient. He has a great deal of free time. Raspberry jam or gooseberry, Wycliffe?”

  Mr. Collins photographed his brother-in-law in the vicarage, garden—alone, and then with his curate, the Reverend Osias Gomm. Both clerical gentlemen were very active in the temperance movement, and this added a note of irony to the tragic events of the following day. It was the carriage of Stout, the brewer; there was no doubt about that. The horses had shied at a scrap of paper. The witnesses (six of them) had described seeing the two clergymen start across the street, deep in conversation. They described how the carriage came flying around the corner.