Briar, Undine
Stories
1
Chapters
3
Words
6.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
32 m
The Vleeshuis opens at ten. I’m there at ten, which means I’m the first person through the door behind a school group that takes up the entire entrance hall and has to be navigated around with the patience of someone who has somewhere specific to be. The archive is on the upper floor, away from the permanent collection, in a room that smells correctly of old paper and inadequate heating. The archivist is a small, precise man named Wouters who has helped me before and greets me with the expression of…- 6.5 K • Completed
- The storage unit is in a light industrial block off the Noorderlaan, fifteen minutes from the port by bicycle and forty by tram if you take the wrong one, which I did once and have not done since. The block is unremarkable from the outside — corrugated cladding, a security gate that sticks in cold weather, a car park that always has one vehicle in it that never moves, a grey Opel that I have decided belongs to the building itself. My unit is on the second floor, end of the row, which means a single high…
- 6.5 K • Completed
- The auctioneer has a tell. Every time a lot is about to go above estimate, he touches the knot of his tie — a small, unconscious correction, as if the number requires him to be more formally dressed than he already is. I’ve been watching him for two hours and he’s done it eleven times. The room is too warm. The catalogue is printed on paper that feels cheap for what’s being sold, and I’ve been folding the corner of page fourteen back and forth until the crease goes white. Lot 47 is a Louis XVI…
- 6.5 K • Completed
