Avram Davidson - The Montavarde Camera

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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.

==========

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

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Avram Davidson - The Montavarde Camera

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