Michael Pearce - A Dead Man In Trieste

‘He was certainly not properly supervised,’ said the older man, sniffily.

‘Exactly! Working for a man like Lomax. I think Mr Seymour may be right, you know.’

‘You mean — not dismiss him?’ said the older man incredulously.

‘Oh, yes. Dismiss him. The Austrians will expect no less.’

‘Rightly!’

‘But, then, when enough water has flowed under the bridge. .’

‘Reappoint him?’

‘Well, he did manage the Consulate in Lomax’s absence.’

And so, after a time, Koskash was able to return to the Consulate.

‘I think Mr Seymour has done rather well,’ said the younger man, ‘all things considering.’

The older man sniffed.

‘Quite well, yes. For a policeman.’

Seymour returned from the Balkans thinking rather more than he had done about international politics. But not enough. Three and a half years later war broke out, and it had its origin in a similar Balkan event. He wondered then if, supposing he had been able to see into the future, there was anything he could have done which might, somehow, have averted it, if he could have said, loudly enough: look, this is the kind of thing that could happen, the sort of thing, in a powder keg like the Balkans, that might trigger it off. Lomax was the one who had known it, feared that it might be coming. He had, in his way, tried to stop what might have turned into it. And Seymour had tried, too. They had, in fact, in their different ways, both succeeded. They had put out a spark. But it had only been in a particular case and for a time. They could do nothing about the general conflagration. That had to be left to the diplomats and the governments, and they failed. The Balkans remained a powder keg waiting for a spark.

Could not anyone have foreseen? He asked himself that four years later as the parapets above his trench shuddered under the shelling of the Somme. And then he wondered if someone had. Could those crazy Futurists, with their apocalyptic visions of the future, have been right after all?