A Dead Man In Trieste

Chapter Fourteen

Kornbluth took Seymour for a farewell drink in the little cafe on the Canal Grande. Schneider was not invited.

Relations between Kornbluth and Schneider had, however, improved.

‘He thinks the sun shines out of my backside,’ confided Kornbluth, ‘since I managed to get both the Herzegovinians and Rakic,’

Kornbluth had got to the Canal Grande just in time. The boat, with Rakic in it, had already pushed out from the quay. Kornbluth, with surprising speed for so bulky a man (‘But, then, I was always the fastest boy in the village, especially when the farmer was after me’), dashed along the quay, commandeered a boat which was itself on the point of departure, leaped aboard and directed it out into the canal where it blocked off the escaping boat until his men could get there.

The valiant lamparetti, displaying a zest for combat and a disregard for their uniforms hitherto unsuspected in them, hurled themselves into the water and into the fray and succeeded, by sheer weight of numbers, in seizing the vessel.

Rakic, chagrined but defiant, was not the man to deny his role in the affair, especially since he suspected that others were trying to belittle it. He attributed his failure solely to the weakness and treachery of Machnich.

‘Never trust a Serb!’ he said gloomily.

‘Never trust a Bosnian!’ retorted Machnich indignantly, when this was relayed to him; and both spilled all.

‘Never trust a Serb or a Bosnian!’ said the Italians, when they heard about the affair. ‘Or a Herzegovinian for that matter.’

The artists were, on the whole, delighted by the outcome of the Futurist Evening, although they were judging its success purely in aesthetic terms. ‘A landmark in Western art!’ said Marinetti, very satisfied with the Evening and especially with himself.

James remained somewhat confused about the whole business, thinking to the last that Seymour’s eruption on to the stage was merely part of the planned proceedings, and taking the explosion outside as one of Marinetti’s accompanying fireworks.

Seymour, before leaving for London, had written to Auntie Vi asking if he might keep one of the pictures on Lomax’s wall as a memento of the experience. Many years later he was astonished to find that the value of the painting was greater than the whole of his lifetime earnings as a policeman, even with the value of his house thrown in, but, then, Seymour had never really understood about art.

Maddalena had a number of sketches by the Futurists in her possession and the sale of these, later on, financed her further studies.

Seymour, dithering to the end about Maddalena, received some fatherly advice from Kornbluth.

‘It’s not that I’m not broad-minded,’ he said, ‘but it’s not the sort of thing you ought to allow. Suppose I let my Hilde cavort around like that. How would it look?’

Not bad, Seymour forbore from saying.

‘You’ve got to think of these things when it comes to a wife. Kinder, Küche, Kirche, remember. Children, kitchen, church. Now you can go easy on the church bit. Religion’s all very well but some women go crazy about it. Children are important, they keep a woman out of mischief. But, in the end, the kitchen is the thing. What’s she like at cooking?’

Seymour did not know. He thought it was probably not something at which Maddalena excelled. However, he did not attach to it quite the importance that Kornbluth did. There were other qualities in Maddalena that attracted him.

But, then, how would his family take it? His mother? He chided himself. He was a grown man and what did it matter how his mother took it? Or the whole of the East End, for that matter?

He remained divided to the last and compromised by inviting Maddalena to come over to London and see the libraries.

He had some really tricky business to settle, though, before he left.

‘I don’t see how I can,’ said Schneider. ‘He has committed a crime, a very serious crime, and must face the consequences.’

‘But he did refuse to help the Herzegovinians escape: and the information he provided was of very great value in leading to their and Rakic’s detection!’

‘We could exercise some degree of leniency, I suppose,’ said Schneider.

Unfortunately, that did not extend to Koskash’s immediate release and he had to stay in prison for some months yet. However, there was no longer any risk of him being physically ill-treated and, accepting that he had not behaved correctly, he was content with the outcome. Especially as his wife remained free.

Seymour’s real battle over him came when he got back to London.

‘Loyalty to one’s staff is all very well,’ said the older man doubtfully, ‘but — ’

‘Not even his staff, strictly speaking,’ the younger man pointed out.

‘Well, then — ’

‘However,’ said the younger man, ‘the man seems to have felt a considerable degree of loyalty to the Consulate, or so Mr Seymour says.’

‘Yes, but he Breached Trust.’

‘How far was that his fault, and how far — ‘

‘He was certainly not properly supervised,’ said the older man, sniffily.

‘Exactly! Working for a man like Lomax. I think Mr Seymour may be right, you know.’

‘You mean — not dismiss him?’ said the older man incredulously.

‘Oh, yes. Dismiss him. The Austrians will expect no less.’

‘Rightly!’

‘But, then, when enough water has flowed under the bridge. .’

‘Reappoint him?’

‘Well, he did manage the Consulate in Lomax’s absence.’

And so, after a time, Koskash was able to return to the Consulate.

‘I think Mr Seymour has done rather well,’ said the younger man, ‘all things considering.’

The older man sniffed.

‘Quite well, yes. For a policeman.’

Seymour returned from the Balkans thinking rather more than he had done about international politics. But not enough. Three and a half years later war broke out, and it had its origin in a similar Balkan event. He wondered then if, supposing he had been able to see into the future, there was anything he could have done which might, somehow, have averted it, if he could have said, loudly enough: look, this is the kind of thing that could happen, the sort of thing, in a powder keg like the Balkans, that might trigger it off. Lomax was the one who had known it, feared that it might be coming. He had, in his way, tried to stop what might have turned into it. And Seymour had tried, too. They had, in fact, in their different ways, both succeeded. They had put out a spark. But it had only been in a particular case and for a time. They could do nothing about the general conflagration. That had to be left to the diplomats and the governments, and they failed. The Balkans remained a powder keg waiting for a spark.

Could not anyone have foreseen? He asked himself that four years later as the parapets above his trench shuddered under the shelling of the Somme. And then he wondered if someone had. Could those crazy Futurists, with their apocalyptic visions of the future, have been right after all?