Michael Pearce - A Dead Man In Trieste

‘There’s somebody to see you,’ Kornbluth had announced cheerfully when they entered the cell.

‘Why should I see him?’

‘He’s from the Consulate.’

‘What’s that to do with me?’

‘You’re English, aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘He’s Irish,’ said Seymour, picking up the accent.

The man looked at him as if he was seeing him for the first time.

Kornbluth shrugged.

‘Anyway, you can go,’ he said. ‘For the time being.’

He shambled out. Kornbluth and Seymour exchanged glances, and shrugs.

Seymour followed him out and found him standing unsteadily on the pavement.

‘Can you manage? Do you want me to see you home?’

‘Home?’ said James doubtfully. ‘No, I need a drink. The piazza.’

They went there together.

‘Who are you?’ he said, after a moment.

Seymour decided he wouldn’t say ‘a friend of Lomax’s’ this time because this man actually was a friend of Lomax’s.

‘I’m from the Consulate,’ he said.

‘A replacement? Already?’

‘No. I’m a King’s Messenger. Just passing through.’

The Irishman nodded.

‘Lomax,’ he said: ‘Kornbluth said they’d found him.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

They walked on in silence.

After a while, Seymour said: ‘You knew him well?’

‘I used to see him nearly every day in the piazza. He helped me a lot over the cinema, too.’

‘Cinema?’

‘Business.’

‘You were in business together?’

‘No, no. He just helped me. When I needed advice.’

‘And it was to do with a cinema?’

‘Yes.’ His attention seemed to waver. Then he pulled himself together. ‘Yes, business,’ he said. ‘I’m a businessman.’ He considered for a moment, then frowned. ‘No, that’s not right,’ he said. ‘I would have been a businessman.’ He thought some more. ‘But that’s not right, either. I was a businessman.’

He looked at Seymour.

‘What is a businessman?’ he demanded.

‘Well — ’

‘A man who does business. And did not I do business? Ergo. ’

‘I thought,’ said Seymour cautiously, ‘that you were a professore ?’

‘That, too,’ said James grandly. ‘What are these things anyway? Stops on the way to identity. Bus stops,’ he said, with satisfaction. ‘Businessmen are bus stops. That seems right. I, too, was a bus stop.’

‘Ye-e-s?’

‘For a while. Briefly. The imagination can enter into anything. Even a bus stop.’

‘Ye-e-s? Yes, I’m sure. And this was to do with. . the cinema, was it?’

‘Beacons. I think of them as beacons. Beacons of light in a dark, backward world. Marinetti says that they are outposts of the future. All art, he says, is an outpost. Well, that is true, I think. But is it an outpost of the future? Is not art outside time? Not if it is a cinema. The cinema is definitely in time. Marinetti is right there.’

James stopped in the middle of the road and spread his arms.

‘What I wished to do,’ he said, ‘was to light beacons in my benighted land. I lit one, I almost lit two. And then the money ran out.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Cinemas. “Here in Trieste,” I said, “there are twenty-one cinemas. How many are there in Dublin? One. If O’Riley’s is still going.” That is what I said to Machnich. “There is an opportunity,” I said. That is the thing about the imagination. It sees possibilities. That is why artists should be businessmen. And businessmen, artists. Only I did not say that last bit to Machnich. He might not have understood.’

‘You were going to open cinemas in Dublin?’

‘Going to? I did open them. One, anyway. It was very successful. I was going to open another when the bastard pulled the rug out from under me. “Too big a risk,” he said. “Think of the return!” I said. “What return?” he said. “The one that will come in the future,” I said. “It’s not your money,” he said. “How much have you put in?” “I’ve put in my talent,” I said. It was an unequal bargain, but he didn’t see it like that.’

‘And Lomax helped in this enterprise?’

‘Smoothed the way. The technicalities. Customs, Board of Trade, that sort of thing. It gave Machnich confidence, I think, to have Lomax advising. These things were important to him.’

‘Did Lomax put in any money of his own?’

‘Oh, dear, no! Machnich was the one with the money. He runs a big carpet shop. And the Edison, too. And one or two others. He wanted to run more. But Trieste is already full of them. “Raise your eyes,” I said. “Look outwards. Look to Ireland.” I thought I had persuaded him. But in the end he hadn’t the imagination. The money, but not the imagination,’

From the fact that Kornbluth had released James so readily, Seymour guessed that he didn’t really suspect him of involvement in Lomax’s death. He had probably worked out the kind of man James was. Seymour put him down as a batty professor who was too fond of his drink. He was involved only to the extent that he happened to be the person who had gone to the cinema with Lomax. There was nothing more sinister in it than that.

However, Kornbluth was right. They had learned something. They knew now that Lomax had gone to the Edison that night and that what had happened to him had happened after he came out. Seymour felt again the frustration of having to operate covertly. What he would have liked to do was question everyone in the vicinity and establish if anyone had seen Lomax at that point. But that was exactly what he couldn’t do. He would have to leave that to Kornbluth.

When they got back to the piazza the artists were all sitting there at the table. They jumped up when they saw James and embraced him.

‘There! You see?’ said Maddalena, placing her hand intimately over Seymour’s. ‘It was easy.’

‘What was it for this time, James?’ asked Lorenzo.

James looked bewildered.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Going to the cinema, I think.’

‘But, James — ’

‘Arresting people for going to the cinema?’ cried Alfredo, firing up. ‘Where will it end?’

‘I don’t think — ’ began Seymour.

His voice was drowned in the general protestation.

‘They are standing out against the Future,’ shouted Marinetti.

There was a new face at the table. It belonged to a middle-aged man with tobacco-stained fingers, whom they referred to as Ettore. During a lull in the conversation Seymour asked if he was an artist too. Alas, no, he said: his talents lay in other directions. He worked in the family varnishing business. He would soon, he said, be going to England to set up a factory there. In preparation for this he was taking, God help him, thought Seymour, lessons in English from James. A little later he shook hands all round and left.

After he had gone Alfredo said that although he was not an artist he understood about artists. He was a writer and had written several novels. None of them had got anywhere and he had given up writing; but recently he seemed to have started again.

Perhaps it was the effect of Lomax’s death that they drank heavily. Seymour reckoned himself to have a good head for alcohol but he found it hard to keep level. He wondered uneasily who was going to pay and if he should. Could he put it down to expenses? Almost certainly not, he thought.

When it came to it, they all insisted that he was their guest and that there could be no question of his paying; but as they turned out their pockets it looked rather as if they were going to be his. In fact, however, Ettore had already paid.

As he was going away across the piazza he saw a newspaper seller standing there with his newspapers spread out on the ground before him. He was holding up a newspaper and shouting: ‘Bosnia crisis! The latest.’