A Dead Man In Trieste

by Michael Pearce

  As well as sacks, there were barrels, either of wine or of olive oil. There were also barrels, not sacks, of coffee beans. Seymour had seen the barrels standing outside shops. Sometimes they were open and then the pungent smell spread out across the street.

  The harbour was framed by tall neo-classical buildings which rose up on each side. Kornbluth took him to a little cafe at the foot of one of these where the tables spread out across the quay right to the edge of the water. From where they sat they could look down into a boat piled high with watermelons. The men had stopped half-way through unloading and on the quay above was a similar stack. The ripe, almost over-ripe, smell of the melons hung over the tables.

  Kornbluth looked around him with satisfaction.

  ‘Do you know what I see here?’ he said.

  ‘Boats?’ hazarded Seymour.

  ‘Work!’ said Kornbluth. ‘The work that has made Trieste what it is. I like to see people working. I don’t mean shoving bits of paper around. I mean really putting your back into it. Now you don’t always see that down in the new docks where the large ships are. It’s all cranes and things. But you do see it here. And what I like about it is that it’s real. Real people handling real things, olives and nuts and so forth. Watermelons,’ he said, looking down into the boat. ‘Not fancy people pushing bits of paper around. Ah, I know that’s progress, that’s what it’s got to be when you’re a big port, as Trieste is these days, the seventh busiest in the world, so they say. But it all started here, right here, in what was the old port, with people working their asses off.’

  He sipped his slivowicz.

  ‘And that’s what I don’t like about layabouts. Sitting there drinking what other people’s sweat has earned.

  ‘Sweat was what built Trieste. That, and one other thing: order. Oh, I know what you think: he’s a bloody policeman and so he goes on about order. But just think what Trieste is. It’s Austrians and Albanians and Italians and Croats and Slovenians - Slovenia is only five miles away, you know - and Greeks and Turks and Montenegrins and Christ knows what. Now, how are all these buggers going to live together and work together if you don’t have order? They’d be at each other’s throats in half a minute.

  ‘So, order and sweat. That’s made Trieste what is it. Now I love Trieste and I like it as it is. And I don’t want to see it go. But go it would if some of these bastards with their half-baked ideas had their way.’

  ‘Go?’ said Seymour.

  ‘That’s what they want. Some of them.’

  ‘Go? How can it go?’

  ‘Like Venice. Venice was part of the Austrian Empire fifty years ago. And now it’s part of Italy.’

  ‘Well, Venice is part of Italy. Look at the geography.’

  ‘So is Trieste, in some people’s view of geography. The geography of those layabouts, for instance.’

  ‘The ones Lomax was with?’

  ‘That’s right. What I’ve got against them is not just that they’re layabouts but that they want to take my city from me.’

  He looked at Seymour.

  ‘And that’s the sort of people your Consul spent his time with,’ he said. The sort of people he had for his friends!’

  After they had parted, Seymour walked slowly back to the Consulate. It was getting towards noon and the heat lay heavily on the streets. Shops were closing for lunch and siesta and even when they were open there didn’t seem many signs of activity. A few latecomers were still pushing through the bead curtains of the doors of the bread shops but the windows were empty. Most of the day’s baking had gone. In some of the dark side streets there were sounds from the tavernas but for the most part the city had gone quiet.

  When he got to the Consulate he half expected to find it closed but the clerk, Koskash, was still inside, a bread roll and an orange on the desk beside him. No, he said, he didn’t go home for lunch; and he wouldn’t have done that anyway, in the circumstances and knowing that Seymour was here.

  He was a thin, grey-haired, anxious-looking man. When Seymour had gone in that morning he had got to his feet and bowed in the Continental fashion. There was an air of formal, old-fashioned politeness about him. Like almost everyone Seymour had met, he seemed to speak several languages, switching easily from Italian to English to German. Going by his name, his home language was none of these.

  It had been a distressing, sad time, he said. He and Signor Lomax had worked closely together. He had developed a great esteem for the Signor, had always found him very simpatico. It had been a great shock when -

  Signor Seymour would find everything in order, though. There was, truthfully, not a lot of business coming into the office at the moment and what there was was all routine. He, Koskash, could handle it. Indeed, he normally did handle it. Signor Lomax left most things to him, concentrating on the occasional necessary negotiations that were the usual feature of a port consul’s job. He would drop in at the Consulate every morning to see how things were going and to check on what had to be done, but after that would go on down to the piazza.

  Down to the piazza? Well, that was where he liked to spend the day. He was, the clerk explained, very much an ‘al fresco’ consul.

  Fresh air consul? What was that?

  The clerk hesitated.

  Well, it was just that he liked to spend the day there. Usually in the Caffe degli Specchi, the Cafe of Mirrors. Always in the same place, at the same table.

  With the same people?

  Was it imagination or did Koskash shift uneasily?

  Usually with the same people, yes. The artists.

  Artists?

  Signor Lomax was interested in art. Surely Signor Seymour had noticed the paintings in his room?

  Signor Seymour had not, but he went to take a look now. How had he missed them when Koskash had shown him into the room that morning? The walls were a blaze of colour. On second thoughts he could see how he had missed them. He had looked away. They were such a blaze of colour that they quite hurt the eye. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be much else. They weren’t of anything and there didn’t seem to be any pattern or shape to them.

  ‘In Trieste,’ said Koskash diffidently, ‘there are many artists. There is something new here, they say. In the world of art. But I’m afraid I don’t really know . . .’

  And nor, certainly, did Seymour. There wasn’t much call for art in the East End. Artists, there were occasionally, taking advantage of the cheap housing, but somehow he had never seen their pictures. He wouldn’t have known what to make of them if he had. He felt uncomfortable with art, as he did with anything that required you to show your feelings. In Seymour’s hard, tight little world of the police and the docks feeling was something you kept quiet about.

  On a small table set back against one of the walls was a pile of scrap metal. There were cogs, bearings, a kind of collar and a small shaft. It could have been a boat engine stripped down. But, no, Seymour was no engineer but even he could see that the bits didn’t fit together. It was just a pile of scrap. Strange place to put it. Or - wait a minute - was it . . .? Could it, too, he wondered uneasily, be Art?

  He closed the door and returned to the main office. One thing was already becoming clear: Lomax was a bit of an odd bloke.

  Koskash had suggested several places where Seymour might go for lunch.

  ‘A sandwich and a drink is all I need,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Then why not go down to the piazza? It is nice there. You can see the sea and there is always a little breeze.’

  And it would give him a chance, thought Seymour, to meet some of Lomax’s friends: those friends whom Kornbluth had thought so unsuitable and whom he had thought it important to let Seymour know about.

  And so he had gone down to the Piazza Grande, and found the Caffe degli Specchi, the Cafe of Mirrors, and now he was sitting at the table at which, Koskash had told him, Lomax used to sit: the table he had sat at and left on the evening that he had disappeared.

  A man came up, saw him at the table, hesitated and
then sat down at the next table. After a while he caught Seymour’s eye and raised his glass.

  ‘You are English?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘This is your first visit to Trieste?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is much here to see.’

  ‘Yes. Although actually you could say that I am here on business. There is someone whom I was hoping to meet.’

  ‘Ah!’ The man sipped from his glass. ‘You are waiting, perhaps, for Lomax?’

  ‘Perhaps,’

  He took another sip and then put the glass down. ‘Lomax won’t be coming,’ he said.

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Only a little. Really, only that he has disappeared.’

  ‘It was last Tuesday. He had been here. Here, at this very table! Earlier in the evening. We only found out the next day. When he didn’t come, we wondered. You know, he was so regular. He always used to be here. It was his place. The best place on earth, he said. He said that at last he had found his niche. So when he didn’t come we thought that perhaps he was ill. A touch of malaria or something. So Lorenzo called in at the Consulate on his way home. And then he found . . .’

  ‘He found?’

  ‘Well, that Signor Lomax had disappeared.’

  ‘But surely - ’

  ‘I know, I know. But he was always so regular. Say what you will, he never missed an appointment. So when he did, Koskash was worried. He went to his apartment. Lomax hadn’t been there at all that night, he hadn’t come home. Well, Koskash was surprised. And not just surprised, concerned. It might be nothing, but ... So he dropped in at the police station and had a word with Kornbluth,’

  ‘Kornbluth?’

  ‘The Inspector. Everyone knows Kornbluth. He’s a pain in the ass but he’s all right, really. He said not to bother. Lomax was probably just having a lie-in with some woman. Come back if he didn’t show up. Well, he didn’t show up and Koskash did go back. And then . . .’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘You know Trieste? No? Well, in Trieste, my friend, there are two sorts of police. There are the lamparetti, Kornbluth’s sort, the municipal guard I suppose you would call them. And then there’s another sort. You understand?

  Well, you will if you stay in Trieste any length of time. They are everywhere. Anyway, somehow they got to hear about it, and then - Jesus!

  The next moment they’re all over the place. An official! An official has disappeared! Not only that, a foreign official! This is serious. If you or I disappear, my friend, that is nothing. But an official! Officials are important in Trieste. Where will it end if officials start disappearing? What will become of the Empire? And so the next moment the secret police are all over the place.’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘And so this lunchtime everyone is late. They are probably all at the police station.’

  A man came hurrying up, coat tails flying, shirt collar undone.

  ‘Alfredo, Alfredo!’

  ‘Lorenzo!’

  They embraced warmly.

  ‘Alfredo, I have been in prison!’

  ‘You have been there before, Lorenzo.’

  ‘But this time they shouted at me, Alfredo!’

  ‘You need a drink.’

  The waiter put a bottle on the table and then, without asking, half a dozen glasses.

  ‘Where are the rest of you?’

  ‘They are in prison, Giuseppi.’

  ‘There must be something right that they have done, then,’ said the waiter.

  He poured out some wine for Alfredo and Lorenzo and was about to pour some for Seymour but then hesitated.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ cried Alfredo. ‘Some for my friend!’

  ‘Your pardon!’ cried Lorenzo, noticing Seymour for the first time. He jumped up and threw his arms around him.

  ‘A friend of Lomax’s,’ Alfredo explained.

  ‘Any friend of Lomax is a friend of mine!’ declared Lorenzo dramatically.

  They drank each other’s health.

  Lorenzo sobered as quickly as he had fired up.

  ‘Poor Lomax!’ he said.

  ‘Is it poor Lomax?’ asked Seymour. ‘Surely, it is only that he has disappeared? Might there not be some happy explanation? Couldn’t he have just... well, gone away for a day or two?’

  ‘Lomax never goes away.’

  ‘But, perhaps, a sudden call of business?’

  ‘Lomax has no sudden calls of business,’ said Alfredo.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Lorenzo, ‘this is where he does his business. Here!’

  Two people came towards them through the tables.

  ‘Ah! Here is Luigi! And Marinetti.’

  ‘The bastards! They made me take my trousers down!’

  ‘Are you sure it was the police station you went to, Luigi? There is a place down by the docks . . .’

  ‘There is nothing to choose between the two,’ said Marinetti. ‘The police are all whores.’

  ‘Yes, but they shouldn’t have treated me like that. Who do they think they are? Who do they think we are?’

  ‘They think we’re just a bunch of Italian layabouts,’ said Alfredo.

  ‘Well, we are just a bunch of Italian layabouts,’ said Lorenzo.

  ‘I am not a layabout,’ said Marinetti, taking umbrage.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! I am an artist. And that is important. Artists are the voice of the future. But that’s just the trouble. Those bastards are the voice of the past.’

  ‘That must be why they’ve got it in for me,’ said Luigi, sighing.

  ‘Are you all artists?’ asked Seymour. The paintings in Lomax’s room were beginning to make some sense now.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Alfredo.

  ‘No,’ said Lorenzo.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Luigi.

  ‘Every man is an artist,’ said Marinetti. ‘Every man has the capacity to create. Except for the members of the Hapsburg police,’

  Alfredo looked at his watch.

  ‘Where is Maddalena?’ he fretted. ‘And James?’

  ‘Still at the police station, I expect,’ said Lorenzo.

  ‘I do not like that,’ said Luigi. ‘I worry when they have got her on her own.’

  ‘If Lomax had been here, we could have asked him to see what was happening.’

  There was a little silence.

  ‘This is a friend of Lomax,’ said Alfredo, remembering suddenly that he had not introduced him.

  ‘Ah, a friend?’ They shook hands. ‘You have come to collect his belongings?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Seymour hurriedly. ‘I didn’t know until I had got here. It was a great shock.’

  Lorenzo touched him sympathetically on the shoulder.

  ‘I am here on business,’ said Seymour. ‘I was going to deliver something to him.’

  ‘There is a clerk. Koskash.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve met him. Most helpful. However, I think I’d better wait until I get instructions from London.’

  ‘While you are here,’ said Alfredo, ‘make this your home.’

  Seymour was drawn to them. He couldn’t help wondering, however, if these were the kind of friends a British Consul usually had.

  An hour or so later he got up, shook hands all round, and left. The artists showed every sign of staying where they were.

  Seymour went back to the Consulate.

  The worried-looking clerk, Koskash, was still there, bent over his desk. Evidently, siestas were not for him. Seymour wondered how far he could take him into his confidence. So far he had not told him he was a policeman, merely said that he was here to enquire into the circumstances in which Lomax had gone missing. Koskash had, of course, guessed.

  But perhaps they ought to agree on the question of Seymour’s formal status here. That seemed a suitable Foreign Office thing to do.

  When he had discussed this at the Foreign Office he had found that there was considerable reluctance about him going out
openly as a police officer. Might it not send the wrong signals? Imply scepticism about the ability of the local authorities to carry out a proper investigation? Suggest, too, to Vienna that London attached the wrong level of significance to the affair, more importance than Lomax, dead or living, merited? From Seymour’s point of view, too, they suggested, there could be advantages in going incognito.

  But then what was he to go as? There was a long discussion about this, longer, in fact, than there had been about Lomax himself and his disappearance. The older man ruled out Seymour’s trying to pass as a diplomat, however junior. It was quite unthinkable. A manservant, perhaps? The younger man doubted whether Lomax had gone in for menservants. He was, after all, only a consul. A Consulate guard, then? Wasn’t it a little late for that, asked the younger man. And mightn’t that be to attach too little significance to the role? How would it look to the Minister?

  In the end it was agreed that Seymour should go out to Trieste as a King’s Messenger, which sounded appropriately superior but was appropriately inferior.

  Koskash listened carefully but looked doubtful.

  ‘We haven’t had a King’s Messenger here before,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Usually they just go to the embassies.’

  ‘Perhaps, then, no one here will know quite what to expect,’ said Seymour, ‘and that might be all to the good.’

  Koskash continued to look doubtful but since it had already been determined, he had no alternative but to acquiesce.

  ‘What did you tell Kornbluth?’

  ‘Merely that I was from the Foreign Office and that London wanted to know about the circumstances surrounding Lomax’s disappearance.’