THE MONTAVARDE CAMERA

AVRAM DAVIDSON

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AVRAM DAVIDSON (1923-1993), like many of the authors included here, wrote in several genres during his lifetime. Getting his start in speculative fiction in the 1950s, he wrote several classic stories such as “All the Seas with Oysters,” and “The Golem.” At the urging of the editor for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, he turned to writing mysteries, and won the Ellery Queen as well as the Edgar Allan Poe Award. When he began writing novels, he went back to the form that he started in, science fiction and fantasy. Notable works include The Phoenix and the Mirror and The Island Under the Earth. In “The Montavarde Camera,” he combines science and magic with dangerous results.

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Mr. Azel’s shop was set in 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 was no counter, and no shelves, and only the one showcase. It was empty, and only a well-brushed 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 awkwardly, 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 work-manship 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 still—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 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 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 Daguerrotype. 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 ban marche. 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 checkbook.

“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 dust. 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 coining 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.

“They never knew wot ‘it ’em,” the witnesses agreed. Mrs. Collins said that was the only thing that comforted her. She said nothing, of course, about the estate (three thousand pounds in six percent bonds), but she did mention the picture.

“How bright it is, Lucius,” she said. “Almost shining.”

After the funeral she felt free to talk about the financial affairs of her late brother, and until the estate was close to being settled, Mr. Collins had no time for photography. He did keep up the monthly payments on the camera, however, although he found them rather a drain. After all, it had not been his income which had just been increased 180 pounds per annum.

He had. of course, protested, and it had, of course, done him no good at all. Mrs. Collins, with a snuffle, spoke of increased prices, the unsteady condition of World Affairs, and the necessity of Setting Something Aside For the Future, because, she said, who knows?

So, at any rate, here it was November, and a nice sea-coal fire in the grate, with Mr. Collins sitting by it in his favorite chair, reading the newspaper (there had formerly been two, but Mrs. Collins had stopped one of them in the interests of domestic economy). There were a number of interesting bits in the paper that evening, and occasionally Mr. Collins would read one of them aloud. Mrs. Collins was unraveling some wool with an eye toward reknitting it.

“Dear me!” said Mr. Collins.

“What is that, Lucius?”

“‘Unusual Pronouncement By the Bishop of Lyons.”’ He looked over at his wife. “Shall I read it to you?”

“Do.”

His Grace the Bishop of Lyons had found it necessary to warn all the faithful against a most horrible series of crimes that had recently been perpetrated in the City and See of Lyons. It was a sign of the infamy and decadence of the age that not once but six times in the course of the past year, consecrated wafers had been stolen from churches and rectories in the City and See of Lyons. The purpose of these thefts could only indicate one thing, and it behooved all of the faithful, and so forth. There was little doubt (wrote the Paris correspondent of Mr. Collins’s newspaper) that the bishop referred to the curious ceremony generally called the Black Mass, which, it would appear, was still being performed in parts of France; and not merely, as might be assumed, among the more uneducated elements of the population.

“Dear me!” said Mr. Collins.

“Ah, those French!” said Mrs. Collins. “Wasn’t it Lyons—wasn’t that the place that this unpleasant person came from? The camera man?”

“Montavarde?” Mr. Collins looked up in surprise. “Perhaps. I don’t know. What makes you think so?”

“Didn’t poor Wycliffe say so on that last night he was here?”

“Did he? I don’t remember.”

“He must have. Else how could I know?”

This was a question which required no answer, but it aroused other questions in Mrs. Collins’s mind. That night he had the dream again, and he recalled it very clearly on awakening. There was a woman, a foreign woman… though how he knew she was foreign, he could not say. It was not her voice, for she never spoke, only gestured: horrid, wanton gestures, too! Nor was it in her clothes, for she wore none. And she had something in her hand, about the size of a florin, curiously marked, and she offered it to him. When he went to take it, she snatched it back, laughing, and thrust it into her red, red mouth. And all the while the voice— inflectionless, echoing—repeated over and again, “The light is in the life… the light is in the life.” It seemed, somehow, a familiar voice.

The next day found him at his bookdealer’s, the establishment of little Mr. Pettigew, the well-known antiquary, known among younger and envious members of the trade as “the well-known antiquity.” There, under pretense of browsing, Mr. Collins read as much as he could on demonolatry in general, and the Black Mass in particular. It was most interesting, but, as the books all dated from the previous century, there was no mention of either Duval or Montavarde. Mr. Collins tipped his hat to the bookdealer (it was the same bowler) and left the shop.

He bought an Illustrated London News at a tobacconist’s, got a seat on top of the omnibus, and prepared to enjoy the ride home. It was a bright day despite the time of year, one of the brightest Guy Fawkes’s Days that Mr. Collins could remember.

The Illustrated, he noted, was showing more and more photographs as time went on, and fewer drawings. Progress, progress, thought Mr. Collins, looking with approval and affection at a picture of the Duke of York and his sons, the little princes, all in Highland costume. Then he turned the page, and saw something which almost caused him to drop the paper. It was a picture of a dreadnought, but it was the style and not the subject that fixed his attention to the page.

“The above photograph,” read the caption, “of the ill-fated American battleship, the (7.5.5. Maine, was taken shortly before it left on its last voyage for Havana. Those familiar with photography will be at once attracted by the peculiar luminosity of the photograph, which is reminiscent of the work of the Frenchman, Montavarde. The Maine was built at—” Mr. Collins read no further. He began to think, began to follow a train of thought alien to his mind. Shying away from any wild and outrageous fantasies, Mr. Collins began to enumerate as best he could all the photographs known to him to have been taken by the Montavarde camera.

Barricades in the Morning proved nothing, and neither did The Widow; no living person appeared in either. On the other hand, consider the matter of La Manchette, the subject of Montavarde’s picture La Messe Noire; consider the old house in Great Cumberland Street, and the Reverends Wilkins and Gomm. Consider also the battleship Maine.

After considering all this, Mr. Collins found himself at his stop. He went directly home, took the camera in his arms, and descended with it to the basement.

Was there some quality in the camera which absorbed the life of its subjects? Some means whereby that life was transmuted into light, a light impressed upon the photograph, leaving the subjects to die?

Mr. Collins took an ax and began to destroy the camera. The wood was intensely hard, and he removed his coat before falling to work again. Try as he might, Mr. Collins could not dent the camera, box, brass or lens. He stopped at last, sweat pouring down his face, and heard his wife’s voice calling to him. Whatever was he doing?

“I’m breaking up a box for kindling wood,” he shouted back. And then, even as she warned him not to use too much wood, that the wood had to last them another fortnight, that wood had gone up—even as she chattered away, Mr. Collins had another idea. He carried the camera up to the fire and thrust it in. He heaped on the coals, he threw in kerosene at the cost of his eyebrows, and he plied the bellows.

Half an hour’s effort saw the camera not only unconsumed, but unscorched. He finally removed it from the fire in despair, and stood there, hot and disheveled, not knowing what to do. All doubts that he had felt earlier were now removed. Previously he had been uncertain as to the significance of Montavarde’s presence with his dreadful camera at the Rites of Lucifer, at the foul ritual conducted by the renegade priest Duval. It was not merely as a spectator that the cameraman had attended these blasphemous parodies. The spitting on the crucifix, the receiving of the witch mar, the signing of the compact with his own blood, the ceremonial stabbing of the stolen Host while awaiting the awful moment when the priest or priestess of the unholy sect declared manifest in his or her own body the presence of the Evil One—surely Montavarde had done all these things, and not just seen them.

Mr. Collins felt that he needed some air. He put on his hat and coat and went down to the street. The breeze cooled his hot face and calmed his thoughts. Several children came down the street toward him, lighting firecrackers and tossing them into the air.

“Remember, remember, the 5th of November

Was gunpowder, treason, and plot“

the children began to chant as they came up to him.

They were wheeling a tatterdemalion old bath chair, and in it was a scarecrow of a Guy Fawkes, clad in old clothes; just as Mr. Collins had done as a boy.

“I see no reason why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot”

ended the traditional phrases, and then the outstretched, expectant grimy paws, and a general cry of “Remember the Guy, sir! Remember the Guy!” Mr. Collins distributed some money to the eager group, even though he could see that his wife, who had come down and was now looking out of the first floor window, was shaking her head at him and pursing her lips, pantomiming that he wasn’t to give them a farthing. He looked away and glanced at the Guy.

Its torn trousers were of a plaid design, its scuffed shoes were sharply pointed. A greasy gray waistcoat, a ragged sort of frock coat, a drooping and dirty wing collar, and a battered Ascot top hat completed its dress. The costume seemed unpleasantly familiar to Mr. Collins, but he could not quite place it. Just then a gust of wind blew off the old topper and revealed the Guy’s head. It was made of one of those carven coconuts that visitors from southern countries sometimes bring back, and its carven features were a horrible parody of the face of the slender gentleman who had sold the camera.

The children went on their way while Mr. Collins remained standing, his mind a maze of strange thoughts, and Mrs. Collins frowned down at him from the window. She seemed to be busy with something; her hands moved. It seemed to him that an age passed as he stood there, hand in pocket, thinking of the long-dead Montavarde (How did he die? “Untimely” was the word invariably used) who had purchased, at a price unknown and scarcely to be guessed at, unsurpassable skill in building and using his camera. What should one do? One might place the camera in a large sack, or encase it in concrete, and throw it in the Thames.

Or one might keep it hidden in a safe place that one knew of.

He turned to his house and looked up at Mrs. Collins, there at the window. (What had she been busied with?) It seemed to him that she had never looked so much like a rabbit before, and it also occurred to him how much he disliked rabbits and always had, since he was a boy. That, after all, was not so very long ago. He was still a comparatively young man. Many attractive women might still find him attractive too.

Should he submit, like some vegetable, while his wife nibbled, nibbled away at him forever? No. The way had been shown him; he had fought, but that sort of victory was plainly not to be his. So be it; he would follow the way which had been open to him since the moment he took the camera. And he would use it again, this time with full knowledge.

He started up the steps, and had just reached the top one when a searing pain stabbed him in the chest, and the sun went out. His hat fell off as he dropped. It rolled down the first, the second, and the third step. Mrs. Collins began to scream. It occurred to him, even in that moment of dark agony, how singularly unconvincing those screams sounded.

For some reason the end did not come at once.

“I’m not completely satisfied with that likeness I took of you just before you were stricken,” Mrs. Collins said. “Of course, it was the first time I had used a camera since we were married. And the picture, even while you look at it, seems to be growing brighter.”

Logically, Mr. Collins thought; for at the same time he was growing weaker. Well, it did not matter.

“Your affairs are in order, aren’t they, Lucius?” Her eyes, as she gazed at him, were bright, birdlike. A bird, of course, is not human. He made no reply. “Yes, to be sure they are. I made certain. Except for this unpleasant Mr. Azel asking me for money he claims is still owing on the camera. Well, I shan’t pay it. I have all I can do to keep myself. But I mean to show him. He can have his old camera back, and much good may it do him. I took my mother’s ring and I scratched the nasty lens up completely with the diamond.”

Her voice was growing weaker now. “It’s a tradition in our family, you know. It’s an old diamond, an heirloom; it has been in our family ever so long, and they say that it was once set in a jeweled monstrance that stood upon the high altar at Canterbury before the days of good King Harry.

“That will teach that Mr. A. A. Azel a good lesson.”

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