A Dead Man In Trieste

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Oh, that would have been Ravanelli,’ he said.

  He even told Seymour where he could find him: working at one of the big hotels.

  Seymour went there.

  Oh, yes, said Ravanelli, he had been there on that occasion. It was a big occasion and they had needed a big major-domo. It was pretty clear that Ravanelli thought he fitted that description. But it was a big occasion. Practically the whole of the Chamber of Commerce had been there, the Corps Diplomatique, such as it was in Trieste, had been there. Signor Barton had been there, from the English Club -

  ‘Signor Machnich?’ asked Seymour.

  Well no, perhaps surprisingly since he usually reckoned to be at events like that if the Governor was going to be there. The Governor was there, with his wife. They came late but then, of course, you would expect that with important people -

  ‘And Signor Lomax?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? But I thought. . .? Was there not some fracas at the bottom of the steps?’

  Well, yes, there was, said Ravanelli, with an expression indicating distaste. A man had been trying to get in. Without an invitation. Well, there were always people like that. Fortunately Signor Lomax had spotted him and intercepted him. He seemed to know the man and had argued with him. Vehemently. The man had argued back and had tried to push past him but Signor Lomax had hung on. Someone had already gone for him, Ravanelli, though, and at that moment he had come down the steps. He had ordered the man to leave at once and the man had, of course, obeyed him; or, perhaps, it was the sight of the lamparetti coming out of the door.

  There are times, said Seymour, when one has to speak with authority.

  Well, there you are, said Ravanelli deprecatingly. He had to admit he had a certain presence. But what extraordinary behaviour! said Seymour. Surely the man must have seen this was an occasion of no ordinary significance. A reception at which the Governor himself was present was hardly the place for ordinary riff-raff.

  Well, he wasn’t exactly riff-raff -

  Really? Then that made it worse. He must certainly have been off his head.

  ‘Or Bosnian,’ said Ravanelli, whose name was Italian and accent Triestino. ‘An uncouth fellow, certainly.’

  Had Signor Ravanelli informed the police?

  Yes, but he had gone by the time they arrived; as was usually the case in Trieste.

  But had Signor Ravanelli been able to give them a description of him? He was sure he had. A man like Signor Ravanelli, experienced, noticing. A good description, he would bet.

  Well ... It had all happened so quickly. But, as the Signor had said, he was a noticing man and he thought he had been able to supply something helpful to the police. After all, they didn’t want this kind of thing happening too often . . .

  Description, though, was always difficult, said Seymour. Signor Ravanelli had perceptively seen that the man was not riff-raff. But then how did you distinguish him from all the other men who were not riff-raff? Clothes? Face? Bearing?

  He was well set up. Almost, well, military. In his bearing. And his voice, too.

  A Colonel?

  No, no, not a Colonel. A Captain, more like. Younger than a Colonel would be. And without quite the same authority. The Signor would know. Asserting authority but not quite possessing it.

  Seymour remarked again on how perceptive Signor Ravanelli was, and how fortunate it had been that he had been summoned in time to prevent the incident from developing into something worse.

  ‘And then, you say, Signor Lomax did not, in fact, go in?’

  Perhaps he had been too distressed by the incident. He was, perhaps, not as used to such things as he, Signor Ravanelli, was. But, no. He had waited, and seen the man go, and then had left himself.

  Strange people had begun to appear in the Piazza Grande. They were dressed differently from the other people, more casually, even messily, and stood out strikingly from the usual close-cropped, uniformed male citizenry. They sat at the cafes’ tables drinking and arguing.

  The focus of their argument appeared to be a sheet of paper which many of them were carrying. Seymour managed to get a glimpse of it as he went past one of the tables. Futurist Manifesto was the heading, and Citizens of the Future ... it began.

  By the evening the piazza seemed full of Citizens of the Future. Seymour had had doubts about whether Marinetti’s ‘Futurist Evening’, whatever that was, would get off the ground. He seemed to have been wrong.

  Later in the evening he went through the piazza again. The arguing was still continuing. Indeed, it had grown more animated.

  Marinetti himself was at one of the tables, not the artists’ table this time.

  ‘Art feels out the Future,’ Seymour heard him declaiming. ‘Art is the Future.’

  But then there came a dissenting voice.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ someone said.

  ‘Not?’ said Marinetti, caught, for the moment, off-balance.

  ‘Art,’ said the dissenting voice firmly, ‘is outside time.’

  Seymour recognized the voice now. It belonged to James.

  Marinetti regathered himself.

  ‘Futurist Art is the Future,’ he roared. ‘All other art belongs to the past.’

  James aimed a blow at him, missed, and fell across the table.

  ‘Other art,’ bellowed Marinetti, ‘the art of the museums, the galleries, the studios, is dead! It speaks in whispers. Polite, decorous whispers. “Oh, do please come and look at my beautiful, boring trees and my sweet, so sweet flowers! My beautiful blue waves Blue! Why should waves be blue, tell me that? Blue whispers, sends you to sleep. Why shouldn’t waves be red?

  ‘Close your eyes, and what colour do you see? Close them tighter, hold them shut. Red! Red, that is what you see. Red, that is what man brings to the world. Behind his polite, smiling eyes he sees the world as red.

  ‘Not blue. Pooh, blue! Decorous, tame blue, decorous tame green. The decorous blues and greens, which were browns, the brown of the studios and the museums. Tame colours, tamed man.

  ‘But Futurist Art is not tamed! It does not speak in whispers. It shouts!’

  Which certainly seemed to be true, thought Seymour, if Marinetti himself was anything to go by.

  ‘It cannot be ignored. You cannot walk by it. It explodes upon you!

  ‘And it will release. It will release the energy that lies trapped behind these cold Austrian facades.

  ‘It is the art of the cinema, not the art of the museum. It is the art of the Future and not of the past. It is the art of protest. And it will ignite. Futurist Art will ignite!’

  James picked himself up off the table and hurled himself upon Marinetti. But now it was a friendly, approving, supporting embrace. The two danced off together among the tables to the enthusiastic cheers of the Citizens of the Future.

  Chapter Twelve

  Seymour was getting a taste for Trieste. When he walked down to the Consulate from his hotel in the morning, he liked to take in the Canal Grande, with its little working boats and the men loading and unloading - all small stuff, but, as Kornbluth had said on the first occasion when he had come here, somehow satisfyingly real, the tavernas up the side streets and the little cafes on the quays, the seagulls pecking for droppings, and the women at the end of the canal, sitting on the steps of the church, sewing.

  This morning, as he walked along by the side of the canal, he was surprised to see the trim figure of Rakic. He was standing on the edge of the quay looking down into one of the boats and talking to its captain. Seymour had no particular urge to talk to Rakic and walked on past. His ear, registering language as always, picked up their speech, noticing it especially, perhaps, because it was in a language unfamiliar to him. Not quite unfamiliar, though, because he could work out what they were saying.

  ‘Two days,’ the captain said. ‘That’s all. We’ll make Sarajevo in two days.’

  The name of the place gave him a clue. Bosnian, that was it, that must be the language: close to Serbian.

/>   ‘All right, then,’ Rakic said. ‘Be ready.’

  He turned and saw Seymour.

  ‘Ah, Signor Seymour!’

  Seymour stopped unwillingly. Rakic hurried across.

  ‘You are taking an early morning walk? Good for the digestion.’

  ‘I’m staying at a hotel,’ said Seymour. This is on my way to the Consulate,’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  Rakic fell in alongside him.

  ‘You are thinking about the message you will be taking back to London, perhaps? To the King?’

  ‘Not much thought needed, I would say.’

  ‘You will be telling him about Signor Lomax?’

  ‘I think they already know.’

  ‘Of course. And what,’ he said, after a moment, ‘was their reaction? When they heard?’

  ‘I think they are waiting to hear more.’

  ‘Of course. That is natural. It is natural for diplomats to react with caution. But what about the British Government? When all there is to be known, is known, how will it respond, do you think? With anger, that its Consul should be killed?’

  ‘They regret Lomax’s death, of course - ’

  Rakic interrupted him.

  ‘But will they be angry? With the Austrians, for letting this happen?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that it will be quite a question of that - ’

  ‘He is too small? A consul is, after all, a small thing. To a country like Britain, which has many consuls. And a consul in Trieste! What is Trieste to London? What is the death of the Consul in Trieste? Nothing! It is insignificant, the death of a fly. Or, perhaps, of a mosquito.’

  Rakic seemed amused by the thought.

  ‘Yes, a mosquito,’ he repeated, with satisfaction. ‘Always buzzing around, irritating, being difficult.’

  ‘You found him difficult?’

  Rakic gave him a weighing look.

  ‘Yes, difficult,’ he said.

  ‘Others found him easy to get on with.’

  ‘I found him difficult. You would think he was agreeing with you, going along with you. And then he would dig his heels in!’

  Tm sorry you found that,’

  ‘Ah, well, it is not important. And a consul, you are right, is not important. His death does not make a big splash. I just wondered, that is all. Wondered if it would be enough to make England respond. But no, you are right. Too small,’

  He was silent for a moment.

  ‘But Austria, now, or Russia. How would they respond? If their man on the spot was killed? I think they might respond differently. The British Empire is so big, you see, and . . . complacent. It can afford to ignore such things. But the Austrian Empire is . . . touchy. It feels more threatened. It would not ignore something like that. No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it would not, could not, ignore a thing like that.’

  Seymour went to see Koskash. He was pleased to see him.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is not that they have - No, it is just that one sits here alone for hour after hour so that it is nice to have someone to talk to.’

  He looked at Seymour diffidently.

  ‘While I have been here, I have been thinking. I have been thinking especially about the questions you asked. About Machnich and Signor Lomax. And I know that why you asked them is because you want to know why it was and how it was that Signor Lomax died. You are asking if it was connected with . . . with what I was doing. And as I sit here I have been asking myself the same question. I ask myself, could I have contributed, in any way, to his death?

  ‘But I do not see how I could have done. I do not see how it could have been as you suppose. Machnich is not like that. He shouts and blusters but in the end he does not strike. In the end he is, actually, a coward. He does not like to confront people. He even had a secret door put in - ’

  ‘Yes,’ said Seymour, ‘I heard that,’

  ‘- so that he could avoid people if necessary. If they were waiting for him outside the cinema. As sometimes they were.’

  The picket line said Seymour.

  There were always picket lines with Machnich,’ said Koskash. ‘It was not that he was especially hard, it was that he would get into a position and then be unable to climb down. My wife used to say that he was a fool. He would get into a conflict when it wasn’t really necessary. And then he would stand on his dignity and it would be very hard to get him out of it.

  ‘So, stupid and obstinate, yes - a typical Trieste bourgeois businessman, in fact - but not . . . not someone who would kill. I do not see how he could have done what you are supposing.’

  ‘So,’ said Mrs Koskash, ‘you saw him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘He had been thinking.’

  Mrs Koskash got up and began to pace about the room.

  ‘That is bad,’ she said. ‘If he thinks, he will brood: and that will be bad for him.’

  She was silent for a moment. Then -

  ‘I do not think I can leave him there,’ she said.

  ‘I am not sure that even if you went to the police and gave yourself up, that would get him out,’ said Seymour, guessing what she was thinking of doing. ‘He has committed a crime and they will see it like that.’

  ‘It is hard,’ said Mrs Koskash, ‘and gets harder every day.’ She came back to the chair and sat down. ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘I had asked him some questions, and he had been thinking about them.’

  ‘What were the questions?’

  ‘About Machnich and Lomax. They were, essentially,’ he said, ‘the questions I asked you.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He knew why I was asking them; and said that Machnich was not that kind of man.’

  Mrs Koskash nodded.

  ‘Too weak,’ she said. ‘He liked everyone to think he was strong. The Big Man. He liked everyone to think that. Not just here but back where he came from. Perhaps that was even more important. He always had to justify himself in their eyes. Make them think that Machnich, the little boy from round the block, had made good. But, underneath, he was still just a little boy.

  ‘However, they believed him. When they came to Trieste, they would go to him, thinking that he would be able to fix things for them.’

  ‘Serbs?’

  ‘Not always. Mostly, yes. But sometimes others, who had been to Belgrade and heard that he was the man in Trieste to go to.’

  ‘Rakic?’

  ‘Perhaps. I do not know otherwise what he is doing here. Or why he should have attached himself to Machnich.’

  ‘You told me that there was a time when he was acting as go-between. Between Machnich and Lomax. You said that he seemed to be coming all the time.’

  ‘Yes, that is right.’

  ‘And then he stopped. And that was the moment when he started pressing Koskash over the two Herzegovinians.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you tell me when that was? Exactly.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Was it, for instance, before the reception at the Casa Revoltella - you remember the reception? - or after?’

  ‘He was definitely badgering Signor Lomax before. But the Herzegovinians - I think that was after.’

  ‘Herzegovina?’ said the newspaper seller. ‘Don’t get me started! Look, where do they stand? With us, or with the Bosnians? With the Bosnians. Well, that’s asking for it, isn’t it? All right, they’ve been with them for a long time. A few centuries. But what are a few centuries in the Balkans? Long enough to learn better. You would have thought.’

  ‘Where exactly is Herzegovina?’ said Seymour.

  ‘You don’t know? You really don’t know? Christ, what do they teach you in schools in England! Look, you know where Bosnia is? Don’t you?’

  ‘Roughly,’ said Seymour. ‘Very roughly.’

  ‘Go across the sea from the north of Italy and you’ll hit it. Roughly. Well, Herzegovina is sort of mixed in with Bosnia. Not clear? Well, it’s not really clear to th
e Herzegovinians themselves. And that’s part of the trouble. They never know where they stand. And nor do you.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘I think of them as being part of Bosnia. So if Bosnia doesn’t like being taken over by Austria, they don’t like it, either. Of course, there are not many of them, not as many as there are of the Bosnians, so in a way they don’t matter much. But in my experience they’re always causing difficulty out of proportion to their numbers. We’ve had a couple of them lately, throwing their weight around.

  ‘Or, rather, we thought they were going to throw their weight around. We thought that bastard Machnich had brought them over to break the strike.’

  ‘Break the strike? Blacklegs, you mean? You’d want more than two of them to do that.’

  ‘Yes, I know. No, we thought he’d brought in a bit of muscle for the occasion. But actually it wasn’t that. He didn’t bring them in until we threatened to duff up that sidekick of his.’

  ‘Rakic?’

  ‘Yes, Rakic. You know Rakic? Well, so do we. Machnich sent him to talk to us about going back to work. Talk to us?’ He laughed. ‘Order us, more likely. That’s what it turned out to be. I’ve met his sort before. In the army!

  “Here are your orders, my men. Now bloody get on with it.”

  ‘Well, of course, he got nowhere. “Go and stuff yourself up your Bosnian backside,” we said. And he got shirty. “You men need to watch out,” he said. Well, he took us seriously, or, at least, Machnich did, and brought in those two Herzegovinian apes to act as bodyguard.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I’ve been telling you! When we threatened to duff him up.’

  ‘Yes, but when was that?’

  ‘During the strike, of course.’

  ‘Yes, but at what point during the strike? Was it - look, you know that big reception they had at the Casa Revoltella? For the Governor and such? Was it before that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. After. I remember that because it was just about that time that Mrs Koskash - she’s our chairman, you know - said we should start thinking about negotiating a settlement. I remember it clearly because there was a lot of argument about it. “We don’t want a negotiated settlement,” some people said. “We want the bastard to give in.” But she said no, and tried to arrange a meeting with Machnich. But he said he wouldn’t, he had this big reception on, and he sent Rakic along instead. And that was when we threatened to duff him up.’