A Dead Man In Trieste

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Badly,’ said Kornbluth gloomily. ‘I have not found a single person who saw him after he came out of the Edison. I have asked everyone in the piazza, down to the dog in the taverna.’

  ‘I find - ’ began Seymour, and then shut up. He was not supposed to be a policeman.

  Kornbluth did not seem to notice.

  ‘Of course, we shall go round again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And the next day. And probably the next. Spreading out.’

  ‘Have you tried the docks?’ said Seymour. ‘He must have been killed near the sea.’

  ‘We tried there first,’ said Kornbluth.

  ‘It might not have been the docks. Anywhere along the sea front. It could have been the bottom of the Piazza Grande.’

  ‘Tried there,’ said Kornbluth. ‘And the Molo.’

  ‘It’s a big area.’

  ‘And the red-light houses,’ said Kornbluth. ‘We’ve tried them too. You never know with these quiet people.’

  He led Seymour to a table at which a plump, grey-haired lady was sitting. She smiled up at Seymour.

  ‘We always sit here,’ she said.

  ‘My wife likes the music. And the dance, too, yes, Hilde?’

  ‘And the dance, too,’ said Hilde. ‘Although preferably with someone lighter on his feet than my husband.’

  ‘She likes the bandmaster, too,’ said Kornbluth looking round roguishly. ‘Is Lehar here this evening?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said his wife. ‘Then at least we’ll get some decent waltzes.’

  ‘Hilde comes from Vienna,’ said Kornbluth ‘and thinks that only in Vienna do they know how to waltz.’

  They were sitting at a table close to the bandstand and eventually a heavily pomaded man in military uniform appeared and brought the band to order. It began to play light, jolly music. Beneath the trees couples began to dance.

  The band took a short break and then started to play again. This time it was a succession of waltzes. This was evidently what people had been waiting for because suddenly the space beneath the trees was full of couples dancing.

  The lift of the music, the swirl of the dresses beneath the coloured lamps along the branches, the clink of the glasses and the laughter at the tables, the sea smell coming in and mixing with the scent of the flowers, drew more and more people to that end of the piazza. Seymour was conscious of Hilde Kornbluth looking at him.

  ‘I am afraid that someone from London could not possibly match the standards of Vienna,’ he said.

  ‘But you could try,’ said Hilde, taking him firmly by the hand.

  Seymour was not a good dancer but Hilde and the music swept him round in a manner which he thought reasonably satisfactory.

  ‘You like it, yes?’ said Hilde.

  ‘Carried away,’ said Seymour.

  And, indeed, it would be very easy to be carried away. For Seymour, new to the dance and unused to the style of dancing, there was something infectious and heady about it. The closeness of Hilde’s body, the abandon and gaiety of the rhythm, the heavy scent of the flowers and what seemed to Seymour the general surrender, made it all more than mildly intoxicating.

  For Hilde, however, the experience was perhaps less satisfactory and after a few turns on the floor she led him back to the table, where Kornbluth was now surrounded by a group of acquaintances.

  Seymour was chatting on the edge of the circle when he felt himself tapped on the back. He turned round and saw Maddalena.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘you have abandoned us for Vienna.’

  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. H
e 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 gene
ral 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?’