Michael Pearce - A Dead Man In Trieste

Maybe that was why Lomax had turned to them — as a relief after having to do with everyone else! The Serbs, for instance. Clearly, he had felt a lot of sympathy for them, too much, probably, and that might have led him to go too far. But maybe he had felt that, as the Koskashes seemed to have done, and had tried to draw back, back to the sunshine of the piazza and the great ships in the bay, back to the inconsequential chatter and the pictures on the wall?

Maddalena had news for him.

‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ she said. ‘You’ve been thinking that Lomax did not go to that reception at the Casa Revoltella. But it seemed that he did,’

She said that she had been talking to some students and that two of them made some money in their spare time by working as waiters at wedding party receptions and the like. They had done some waiting at the reception at the Casa Revoltella, going round with trays of drinks and titbits. At one point, when things had slackened off, they had gone outside for a breath of fresh air. They had stood just outside the door, at the top of the steps, and looked down and had seen some men arguing. One of the men was trying to get in and another was trying to stop him. They were pretty sure that the second man had been Lomax.

In the end someone had summoned the major-domo and he had come down and ordered the first man away. And then, they thought, Lomax had mounted the stairs and gone in.

‘What about the second man?’ said Seymour. ‘Did they know him?’

Maddalena said that they didn’t, but that they didn’t think he was a student. More like a soldier, one of them said, all stiff and upright. Not like an ordinary soldier, the other had corrected him: like an officer. Bossy, commanding.

‘Commanding Lomax?’ said Seymour.

‘He tried to push past him,’ said Maddalena, ‘but Lomax wouldn’t let him. He wouldn’t be bossed.’

Seymour asked Augstein to find out from the Casa Revoltella who had been the major-domo on that occasion. Augstein, who seemed to know everybody in Trieste, didn’t need to find out.

‘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.