Michael Pearce - A Dead Man In Trieste

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.