Montgomery Lee

Antiquarium Part 2

ANTIQUARIUM, the VampireLondon, December 2019cobblestone streets, gray, brown, whitish smoke: these are the places and atmospheres that Anthony Mills preferred, the antique dealer of Cavendish Square, in fact, he had opened his shop precisely because that area reminded him of something familiar, dark, depressive , but at the same time joyfulemotions that made it similar to the misty English countryside, and to an area of ​​the Anatolian forest, in ancient times ...

You may have guessed who I'm talking about, maybe ...Mills is none other than the vampire Antiquarium, transformed several centuries earlier by the witch Antilla and transplanted to London towards the end of the eighteenth century ...

lost its traces shortly after the transformation, which took place, we remember, in ancient Anatolia, on a windy Saturday morning ..Perhaps because he had changed shape, maybe because he feared the enormous power of his partner, he decided to exploit a capacity that only the ancient vampires had, the multi-dimensional leap, which allowed him to fit into a provisional dimension and so small that no one, in this universe, he could have tracked him down.And so he remained, in this infinitesimally small world, for centuries ... in an illuminated darkness, an obscured light, in the company of tiny beings, who did not bother him, but from whom he could not have any kind of emotional exchange, obviouslyAfter getting tired of this surreal dimension, he assumed a semi-human form and chose London as the city to live and do what he had always loved, that is to collect antiques.The style he preferred was Rococo ': all those friezes, those curved, fluttering, asymmetrical lines, were a delight for his ancient mind, spent too long in the heterotopic rigidity of the infinitely small ...In appearance, he looked a lot like the late 19th century vampire "gentleman", with a nice black jacket and top hat.Tall, not very tall, slender, rather skinny, but athletic, eternally in a pose, standing but leaning lightly against one of his Empire style armchairs, which he literally adoredThe Antiques Shop was arranged as follows: in the main room, mainly the Art Deco, with Macassar wood furniture and ivory inlays, Ruhlmann originals, clocks, model cars, lamps ... while in the back room, there was throughout the 17th, 18th and nineteenth centuries, with various commodes more or less inlaid, with cabriole legs, or neoclassical ...Some candelabra, paintings, of course ... traditional wardrobes, chests of drawers ...The objects were very well kept, and almost glittered, struck by the soft rays of the London sun, which changed their shapes slightly, in the silent half-light of that place.He loved playing the cello. He also often played it, and especially in the presence of his (few) customers who came to offer him antiques or to buy. Fast and sparkling notes, if he was satisfied with the economic proposal, low and slow, dark notes, if he was not ... and whoever listened to them felt shivering as if suddenly thrown into an endless darkness, not of this world .. .But most of the time he was magnanimous with humans, he had lost almost all of his aggressive nature, by virtue of an acquired life of ease and wealth, lost in the oblivion of his vices, his passions and culture in general.he read a lot, too: his favorites were Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Mark Twain.He found himself rummaging through old seventy-year-old storybooks from the clearing of a cellar ...A book. A dedication. A feelingSomeone had cared about that book, maybe he had given it a gift and enjoyed it, many years ago ...

Mills felt the emotions of humans, the passing of the years, aging ... even if he wasn't, maybe he was becoming, a human.Perhaps fate had arranged for his return to humanity, after centuries of a strange, powerful and immensely solitary life ...Meanwhile the evening lights were falling over London, and it was mid-December ...Occasionally the maid Mallory came to see him, who loved to dress in the "Thirties" style,and fantasized a ballet, as if it were no longer in London, but at "Le Folies Bergeres" ...But in general there was a sense of boredom that pervaded the whole environment ...He had even started writing a book, he was so bored ... a story that spoke of historical events that took place in the Italian Renaissance ... in the circle of madrigal composers ...the story was set in Ferrara, where the performances of the famous "Ladies" were famous, superfine singers, dedicated to the cultivation of an increasingly precise vocal technique ...