A Dead Man In Trieste

Chapter Seven

‘Not so,’ said Seymour. ‘I am merely dallying with Vienna. My heart remains elsewhere,’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Maddalena, ‘Vienna invites dalliance. That is what the music says, Lehar’s music, anyway. But do not be deceived. The light foot can wear a heavy boot.’

She linked her arm through his.

‘I have come to take you away,’ she said. ‘I think you are in danger.’

He had expected her to lead him to the artists’ table but she did not. Instead, she took him to the top of the piazza and then out into the streets beyond it.

‘Where are you going?’ he said.

‘Home.’

‘Your home?’

‘Yes. I have one.’

Their way took him through the Piazza Giovanni, where Maddalena stopped in front of the marble figure of the composer, Verdi.

‘Shall I tell you something?’ she said. ‘This is where the Austrians wished to erect a statue of the Emperor. But the Italians here would not have it. They put this statue here instead. Not just because Verdi is Trieste’s greatest composer but because of what his music says. It speaks of protest and revolt. Nabucco is the opera of what we call the Risorgimento, the uprising, the revolt. Rebellion against Austrian rule. It puts into music everything we Italians feel. For Italians, opera is their voice, the only voice of theirs that until recently has been able to be heard. On the Emperor’s birthday we show our protest by singing Nabucco. Oh, the Austrians play other music. They have their bands, their military bands. But the sound of their military music cannot drown Verdi, because Verdi’s music is the music of our hearts.’

She gestured towards the statue.

‘I tell you this so that you will not waste your time dallying with the music of Lehar. Lehar is frivolity, escape, deception. It says that life is gaiety, all dancing beneath the trees. Forget, it says, forget the rest. There is just the moment floating like a bubble. But Verdi says: Remember. Remember, do not ever forget. Do not be tricked, do not be lured away. Remember, always. Remember.’

She laughed.

‘Do you know what the Italians say about Verdi? That even his name is patriotic. What do the letters spell? V for Vittorio, E for Emanuel, Re d’ltalia. Victor Emanuel, King of Italy. Italy. He is our true king, not the Emperor of the Austrians. It is on his birthday that we all wear flowers in our buttonholes. But on the birthday of the Emperor there is nothing, no flowers in buttonholes, no flags on the houses. The only flags are on public buildings. By order.’

She laughed again.

‘And do you know where in the end they had to put the Emperor’s statue? In the Post Office!’

In the morning Maddalena looked out of the window and then beckoned to Seymour.

‘Look!’ she said.

Seymour looked out of the window and saw the man in the trilby hat.

‘He has been there all night. I hope,’ said Maddalena, with satisfaction.

Seymour felt uneasy. It was uncomfortable having his behaviour observed so precisely. There was something distasteful in the thought that someone, Schneider, perhaps, knew so much about him.

Another thought struck him. How would it look if this were reported back to London? He could just hear that older man saying ‘A woman!’ in the disdainful way in which he had said ‘Drink’ of Lomax. He told himself robustly that, actually, they probably wouldn’t care a toss. All the same, he didn’t like feeling that he had given away a certain purchase over himself.

‘Go on standing there!’ instructed Maddalena.

She had taken up a sketch-pad and was sitting on the bed sketching him.

He felt embarrassed and shifted uneasily.

‘Don’t move!’ said Maddalena. ‘It won’t take a minute.’

Down below in the street Trilby, too, stirred uncomfortably under Seymour’s apparent gaze. After a moment he moved away.

‘Stay still!’ order Maddalena.

‘I feel captive,’ complained Seymour.

‘That’s right.’

‘What do you mean: “right”?’

‘That’s how I feel all the time in Trieste,’ said Maddalena.

Despite himself, Seymour, as he walked back to the Consulate, found himself thinking about Maddalena. Despite himself because it was out of character. Perhaps because of his immigrant background — no time off if you’re an immigrant! — Seymour was regrettably single-minded about his work, to an extent that his colleagues found off-putting. He focused on it to the extinction of all else, which was splendid, as his mother frequently pointed out, for his employers but less splendid when it came to other things.

Chief of these in her mind was the all-important issue of grandchildren. As the years went by she became increasingly concerned that she might have another one like her daughter on her hands. It wasn’t that Seymour didn’t like women; it was just that when he was busy they somehow slipped to the periphery of his attention.

Maddalena, however, stubbornly refused to slip. Now, as he walked back through the sun-soaked streets, he was conscious of her physically to an extent that surprised him. He was aware of how she had felt in his arms, the pressure of her body, the smell of her hair. And then there was the impact of her personality, which stayed with him, almost bruisingly, long after he had left her apartment.

Partly it was that she was so different from anyone he had previously met. She was somehow freer. In the East End, or at any rate in the immigrant part of it, girls were surprisingly strait-laced. You were always conscious of the pressure of the community. If you just stopped to talk to a girl in the street, Jesus, the next moment it was all round the neighbourhood and by the time you got home your mother had about ordered the wedding cake!

He had expected it to be much the same in Trieste. Before he had left, old Angelinetti had called him aside. ‘Now, son. .’ and warned him about meddling with wives, daughters, etc. ‘It’s different there, son, it’s the family honour, you see. .’ Nevertheless, he had admitted there were exceptions.

Maddalena, Seymour supposed, was one of the exceptions. That was probably because she was an artist, or moved in those circles. Seymour didn’t know much about artists, had never really met any before he came to Trieste. From what he had seen, they were all right, if slightly crazed, but, on the whole, people it was best to steer a little clear of.

And that probably went for Maddalena, too. He could see that she wasn’t exactly the sort of woman a British Consul should be pally with. Nor a Special Branch officer seconded on special duty, either.

Yet he couldn’t get her out of his mind. She challenged him. She wasn’t at all what he expected a woman to be. He could see, in his more detached moments, that this was as much to do with what he was as with what she was, and with his own background in a strongly traditional, rather rigid immigrant community in which the role of a woman was heavily circumscribed. But, hell, he was moving beyond that kind of community, that was the past, he wasn’t like his Mum and Dad; it couldn’t just be that.

Anyway, he ought not to be giving her too much attention. This was just a fling, something on the side, taking place, fortunately, where no one knew him and couldn’t report back. (Except that goddamned ‘shadow’ that was perpetually behind him, but, luckily, this was not the sort of thing he and his superiors would be interested in, and if report got back, it certainly wouldn’t be to his mother.)

No, the important thing, he told himself sternly, was that he should be concentrating on his work. This was a career opportunity for him, the first real one that he had had; and he must not let it slip. This, of all times, was not the one to allow himself to be distracted.

There was, besides, a strong particular reason for not allowing himself to get too close to Maddalena. It was abundantly clear that she identified herself strongly with the Italian cause in the maelstrom of national politics that was Trieste. And if Lomax, as was beginning to seem not at all unlikely, had come to grief because he had allowed his sympathies to carry him too far, then the most likely object of them that Seymour had seen up till now had been the Italians.

On his way back, he went past the Edison and that brought into his mind his visit there the other evening. The pickets were no longer in evidence. Of course they would only be there in the evening, when there was a showing. The thought came to him that because of that Kornbluth might have missed them. Anyway, it was worth a try.

The newspaper seller was there at his post.

‘Still here, then?’

‘I am always here.’

‘Always? Even when the cinema comes out?’

‘That’s bloody midnight! I’ve got a wife, you know. Or will have, if we get round to the church some time. It’s got to be a church, she says. No registry office for her! And she’s a good Socialist too! I tell you, it shocks me.’

‘So you’re not here, then, when the cinema comes out?’ said Seymour, disappointed.

‘I go home when the pickets come.’

‘You don’t picket, yourself?’

‘Well, I do, as a matter of fact. But only when people are going in. After that I go home, because Maria cooks a good meal for me and if I’m not there to enjoy it, she kicks hell out of me.’

‘Do you know someone I could speak to who is normally there at the end?’

‘You could try Pietro, I suppose,’ said the newspaper seller.

Pietro was in the local office of the Socialist Party; and the office was in a shabby street where women sat in the doorways and waif-like children stared at him with bucket eyes. It consisted of a single room. Newspapers such as the newspaper seller sold, that is, radical ones, and leaflets such as Seymour had seen being distributed at the Canal Grande, were piled everywhere. The Trieste Socialists were strong on paper if not on much else.

Pietro sat behind a small table, smoking.

‘You could try Paulo,’ he said.

Paulo was to be found down at the docks. Several other men, equally shabby, were to be found with him, sitting in the shade with their backs against a wall. Evidently the port’s prosperity had not extended universally.

‘Yes, I’m Paulo,’ he said defiantly. ‘And yes, I was on picket at the Edison.’

‘And so was I,’ said someone else. ‘And what has that got to do with you?’

‘It means you may be able to help me,’ said Seymour.

‘Why should we help you?’

‘What does it cost to help?’ asked Seymour.

It was a saying from the Triestino. They registered it but, coming from someone like him, it made them uneasy. ‘Who are you?’ one of them said.

Seymour thought for a second, then said:

‘I am English.’

There could be advantages, given the usual Trieste tensions, in not falling into the usual Triestian categories. They drew away from him however.

‘We cannot help you,’ one of them said.

They looked away with studied indifference.

Seymour, though, had grown up among docks people. He squatted down beside them with his back against the wall.

After a while, someone said:

‘Are you going to go away?’

‘No.’

The man shrugged.

‘Stay, then.’

It made them uncomfortable, however. He knew they wouldn’t be able to stay silent for long.

‘Aren’t you afraid you will dirty that posh suit?’ someone taunted him.

‘No.’

‘Look, why don’t you just push off?’

‘I need your help.’

‘Well, we’re not going to give it you.’

Seymour continued to sit there.

One of them got up and came and stood in front of him.

‘Bugger off!’ he said threateningly.

Seymour looked up at him.

‘When you have told me what I want,’ he said; watching the man’s boots, however.

‘Shall I kick his head in?’ the man asked the others.

‘What does it cost to help?’ Seymour said again.

‘This man’s getting on my nerves.’

‘He’s getting on all our nerves.’

‘Just who the hell are you?’

‘I’ve told you. I’m English. And I want some information about an Englishman who died.’

‘You’d better go to the police, then.’

‘Would you go to the police?’

There was a short silence and then, as Seymour had counted on, a general laugh.

‘Yes, but why come to us?’

‘I think you might be able to help me. You see, the Englishman went to the Edison the night he was killed. It was one of the nights you were picketing on.’

‘We don’t know anything about it.’

‘Well, I think you might. He went in with a friend. A tall Irishman. Now, what I want to know is what happened when they came out. I think you could have seen them.’

‘A lot of people came out.’

‘Two foreigners.’ He had a moment of inspiration. ‘Talking.’

There was a slight flicker of amusement.

‘Everyone talks,’ said Paulo, though.

‘Not like this. They were talking like professori. And they would have been talking in English.’

‘They shouldn’t have been there. What the hell do you think we go picketing for?’

‘They were foreigners. It wasn’t their business.’

‘Well, they’re not our business.’

‘A dead man is everyone’s business.’

It was another Triestino saying; and here, again, was the one he had used before.

‘What, after all, does it cost to help?’

‘What do you want to know?’ someone said.

‘What happened when they came out.’

‘Nothing happened. They talked, like you said.’

‘And then?’

‘The Irishman went away.’

‘We know the Irishman,’ someone said.

‘He teaches at the People’s University in the evenings.’

‘It’s the other one I want to know about. What did he do? Did he go off by himself? Did he meet someone? Was he going to meet someone?’

‘He didn’t need to.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘He didn’t need to go anywhere. The person he was meeting was inside.’

‘Inside the cinema?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Seymour. ‘Let’s get this clear. He came out of the cinema. With the Irishman. Are you saying he then went back inside?’

‘That’s right.’

‘After the Irishman had gone?’

‘After everyone had gone.’

‘Everyone?’

‘Everyone. Including the staff. We hang on for them especially. The bastards! They ought to be out with us.’

‘So who was he seeing, then?’

‘Oh, well. Who’s left when everyone else has gone home?’

It was, although he did not know it at the time, yet another Trieste saying. It had been offered offhandedly, as something that hardly needed saying, obvious to anybody. It wasn’t obvious to Seymour, however. Spotting that, they seized on it, glad of the opportunity to put the superior outsider at a disadvantage. They had been uneasy about him, unsure whether he was on the side of authority or not. Perhaps they had told him too much. Here, now, was a chance to put that right. They refused to say any more. He had asked for help and they had given it him. Now he had to make of it what he could That was fair, wasn’t it?

He walked up from the docks thinking about it. On his way he passed through the Piazza Grande. The man who had joined them the other day, the friendly one, Ettore, was sitting alone in the Cafe of Mirrors. He looked up at Seymour and smiled.

‘I know!’ he said. ‘I’m early. I ought not to be here till later. In fact, I am not here. It is an illusion created by the cafe’s mirrors. Really I am at work. However, the meeting finished early and on my way back to the office, smelling the coffee. .’

He was smoking, as, going by the other day, he seemed to do all the time. Seymour sat down to windward of him. Ettore noticed and waved a hand apologetically.

‘It is bad,’ he said, ‘I know. I am trying to stop. I have spoken to my analyst about it — did you know, I go to a psychoanalyst regularly? I said: “How can you claim to put the big things right when you cannot put the small things right?” “Who says they are the small things?” he replied.’

Seymour laughed.

‘For me, it is coffee,’ he said. ‘We all have our vices.’

‘For everyone it is coffee,’ said Ettore. ‘But in my case that is, too.’

Seymour asked him how he had come to know Lomax. Through James, Ettore said. One day after their English lesson he had brought Ettore to the table in the Cafe of Mirrors and Lomax had been there. They had not met through business. His father-in-law normally handled the foreign side. Seymour rather gathered the impression that in anything to do with work Ettore was dominated by his father-in-law. He suspected that part of the attraction for Ettore of opening a branch in England was the prospect of getting away from him.

They talked a little about life in England. It was the first time Seymour had had much of a talk with Ettore and he found him not just sympathetic but also vaguely comforting. It was a relief to find someone fairly normal at the artists’ table. Then he remembered that Ettore was himself an artist; at any rate, he wrote novels. He asked Ettore about that. Ettore said that his early novels had had such a hammering from critics, mostly on the grounds that, coming from Trieste, he couldn’t write proper Italian, that he had virtually given up.

Seymour had an idea.

‘Ettore, as a Triestian, could you give me some advice? It is about the meaning of what I gather is an old Trieste saying. Who is left behind when everyone else has gone home?’

‘Are you getting at me?’

‘No,’ said Seymour, surprised.

‘It is what my father-in-law is always saying to me. Pointedly. When I leave work at what I think is a reasonable time.’

‘Why? Who is left?’

‘The boss. It is a Trieste saying, I think a foolish one. However, it is very popular with small businessmen.’

If he remembered rightly, the boss at the Edison, from what James had said, was a man named Machnich. Who also happened to be the person James had had dealings with over the venture of starting up cinemas in Ireland, if that had actually happened. And also the person, if James’s rambling account could be trusted, to whom Lomax had given business advice. Seymour thought it was time he looked at those dealings a little more closely.

When Seymour got back to the Consulate, he asked Koskash if there was any record of the occasions on which Lomax had offered help to James Juice and also, possibly, to some Trieste businessmen, over setting up a cinema in Ireland.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Koskash, ‘there’s a big file.’

He brought it in and gave it to Seymour.

Seymour began to work through it. Lomax’s contributions appeared to be almost entirely technical and legal. He advised on Irish Customs regulations and on necessary licences and permits. On how to secure local banking facilities, on things to be borne in mind when renting premises, on employment law in Ireland. He seemed to know a lot about it; not just the theoretical requirements but how they were translated into practice on the ground. Reading it, Seymour was impressed. So far he had been inclined to dismiss Lomax as just an advanced nut. Going through what Lomax had written, however, he found a sharp, practical mind at work. It was a new side of Lomax that he was seeing. What was it that Koskash had said? That they had all said. That he was actually very good at his job.

And his role appeared to have been confined to giving advice. There was no hint that he had been involved in any other way, no hint of any personal financial involvement, for example, as Seymour had half suspected there might be. The actual financial side of it wasn’t, in fact, at all clear. But so far as James personally was concerned the financial arrangements were clear. They were contained in some separate pencilled notes. It looked as if as well as providing general advice to the group of Trieste businessmen behind the enterprise, Lomax had been giving James some private advice on the side. There was nothing underhand, just a few practical points, offered as a friend, that James should bear in mind. Advice probably much needed, thought Seymour.

It was beginning to fall into place now; a man with actually a good business idea — surprisingly — approaching a group of businessmen for backing. And then, gradually, the more astute backers taking over and the original visionary somehow getting lost to view. James, as he had said, had had the imagination; but not, Seymour suspected, any practical business or political sense at all.

Lomax had eventually had both of these and, reading between the lines, Seymour thought he could see him offering advice fairly to the Trieste businessmen but at the same time trying gently to see that James didn’t get taken for too much of a ride.

The principal backer appeared to be, as James had said, Machnich.

‘The owner of the Edison?’

‘That is right, yes,’ said Koskash. ‘And much else in Trieste besides. His principal business is a large carpet shop.’

‘What sort of man is he?’

‘What sort of man?’ Koskash grimaced. ‘A businessman of the Trieste variety. That is to say, at heart, small. His business is big now but he likes to run everything as if he was still running a small shop. He has to know everything, almost do everything, for himself. As soon as he can’t, he begins to get nervous. That, I think, may be why the Dublin venture never came to anything. He has a big idea and then the bigness of the idea frightens him.’

Even so, thought Seymour, the sort of man who would eat James alive. And Lomax too? Not if Schneider were to be believed and not on the evidence of the notes in this file. On this evidence, Lomax was a sharp customer.

When he had finished going through the file Seymour closed it and put it away in the out-tray and sat thinking. He thought for quite a while and then made up his mind. There was something he had to do and he might as well do it now.

He went into the front office where Koskash was at his desk working and then pulled up a chair and sat down exactly in front of him.

‘Koskash,’ he said, ‘it is time we had a talk.’

‘Certainly,’ said Koskash, putting down his pen.

‘Koskash,’ said Seymour, ‘you have not been entirely honest with me.’

‘Haven’t I?’ said Koskash, surprised. ‘I am sorry you should think that.’

That man the other night, the one I gave the papers to: he wasn’t a seaman, was he?’

‘Wasn’t he?’

‘He wasn’t British, was he? This is the British Consulate and you would only have power to issue papers to British nationals.’

‘Not necessarily. If they are crewing on British ships — ’

‘I looked at your copy, Koskash. It was made out as for a British national. Why was that, Koskash?’

‘I–I do not know.’

‘You lied to me, Koskash. You knew he wasn’t a seaman.’

Koskash looked uncomfortable.

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

‘Who was he, Koskash?’

Koskash shook his head.

‘I am afraid I cannot say,’ he said.

‘This won’t do, Koskash. I’m afraid you have to say. This is the British Consulate and the man wasn’t British. You were issuing British papers to a man who wasn’t British. And not even a seaman. Why was that, Koskash? Why did you do it? Was it for money?’

Koskash jumped as if he had been stung.

‘No!’ he said. ‘No. Not that, never! I would never do a thing like that for money!’

‘Then why, Koskash?’

Koskash just shook his head.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry.’

‘I am afraid, Koskash, that I need to know.’

He waited.

‘Shall I help you? What I think you were doing was helping someone to leave the country, someone who couldn’t leave the country in the ordinary way. I wonder why that was? I can only think, Koskash, that it was because the authorities were looking for him. Was that what it was, Koskash?’

He waited, but Koskash did not reply. He just shook his head faintly from side to side.

‘They could leave the country only under a false identity, and that you were willing to provide for them. You could give them false papers, papers which would enable them to get on a ship. Why, Koskash, why were you doing that?’

Koskash found his tongue.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am truly very sorry. But I cannot tell you that.’

‘But you must, Koskash. Otherwise I may have to go to the authorities. Mr Kornbluth, say, or, more probably, to Mr Schneider.’

Koskash closed his eyes as if in pain but shook his head again dumbly.

‘I do not want to do that, Koskash, but I am afraid I may have to. If you won’t tell me anything. You have been abusing the trust Mr Lomax placed in you.’

‘No!’ said Koskash.

‘But yes! This is the British Consulate. The British. And you have been issuing false papers under its name. You have been taking advantage of your position here for purposes of your own.’

‘No,’ said Koskash. ‘I would not do that. I would never do that. It would not be honourable,’ he said earnestly.

‘But, Koskash, that is exactly what you have been doing. You have been making out papers secretly — ’

‘No!’ said Koskash hoarsely.

Seymour stopped.

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Are you saying,’ said Seymour slowly, ‘that you were not doing this secretly?’

‘That is right, yes. I was not doing it secretly.’

‘What are you saying, Koskash? That Mr Lomax knew what you were doing?’

‘That is so, yes.’

For a moment Seymour couldn’t think what to say.

‘You surprise me, Koskash.’

‘I know. It is surprising,’ said Koskash simply. ‘But it is true.’

‘He knew what you were doing? And didn’t stop it?’

Koskash nodded.

‘How far was Mr Lomax involved in this? In what you were doing? This. . arrangement? He knew what you were doing. Was there more to it than that?’

Koskash shook his head.

‘He knew what I was doing,’ he said hoarsely. ‘That is all.’

‘He knew, but condoned it. Is that what you are saying?’

‘That is what I am saying,’ said Koskash quietly.