Michael Pearce - A Dead Man In Trieste

He was going too far in his speculation, he knew. But something had happened to Lomax when he had come to Trieste. Something had changed him. (Because he couldn’t have been like this before he was posted to Trieste, could he? Surely they would have kicked him out?) No, he had changed after he arrived. That was what Koskash had said, hadn’t he? His passion for art hadn’t been there when he arrived, it had developed afterwards, after he had met Maddalena. No, something had changed Lomax on his arrival in Trieste, and that something looked very much like Maddalena.

It was almost disappointingly simple. A single, middle- aged man, stuck in the groove for most of his life, had suddenly been jolted out of it by meeting a beautiful, disturbing woman and had stepped over the traces. It was an old story.

But was it a true one? Seymour tested it again and felt, yes, that he would go for it in every particular.

Except one. Where was Lomax? Set aside Kornbluth’s dark hints and the Foreign Office’s oblique ones, set aside speculation about currents nationalist or otherwise, and you were still left with the fact that a responsible man, a consul, had disappeared. Seymour would have to explain that, discover what had happened to him, before he could go home.

But meanwhile he could enjoy the sun and all the diverse life of a great sea port. He could listen to all the different voices, of especial interest to him as a man who in a sense lived in languages. He could even hear, faintly, echoes of the languages of his childhood and of the languages of the East End and, more faintly still, echoes of the experience behind the languages.

And he might even, he almost certainly would, meet Maddalena again. Seymour was no Lomax. He was, for a start, ten, fifteen, years younger. No mid-life crisis for him, not, at any rate, for some time yet. No urge to kick over the traces — he was very happy with the way things were, thank you. And there was no likelihood at all of his falling for what his mother would call a fancy woman.

All the same, at the prospect of meeting Maddalena again, he felt his pulses quicken.

That evening he went back to his hotel early to write his first report, an obligation the Foreign Office had laid upon him. Regular reports every three days. Empires, whether British or Austro-Hungarian, ran on paper. Lomax had been right about that.

He didn’t find it easy. Kornbluth had been long on hints and short on the particulars of Lomax’s disappearance and Seymour knew little more now than he had when he arrived. And how far should he set down the details of Lomax’s al fresco style as Consul? Even to remark it might seem to the lordly people of the Foreign Office like. . what was the phrase? Lèse-majesté . Taking the sovereign’s majesty lightly. And then that kind of detail didn’t fit too well in a formal report; not in the kind of report you wrote in Whitechapel, anyway.

In the end he kept it brief and factual, putting in the times and dates that Kornbluth had given him and confining his account of Lomax to a few vague phrases: ‘slightly irregular style of life’, that sort of thing. It took him a long time, however, and he didn’t get to bed till late.

In what seemed the middle of the night he was woken by Koskash and told that he should go down to the little harbour where the fishing boats docked.

It was still dark as they went through the streets. Nothing was stirring even in the tiny piazzas where the markets were held. Seymour had half expected to find the ox-carts already coming in with their produce and no doubt they would be doing so later. He caught the raw sea smell as they drew near to the docks and felt the chill of the water on his face.

Down by the harbour there was movement. Men were already standing at the edge of the quay ready to unload the fishing boats as they came in, and in a long shed set back from the water and lit only by a dim lamp women were waiting with their knives.

A man detached himself from the dark huddle on the quayside and came towards them. It was Kornbluth. They shook hands.

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

Out in the bay Seymour could see lights.

The boats are coming in,’ Kornbluth said.

The lights seemed steady at first but as they drew nearer they swayed and bobbed. He saw that they were attached to the tops of the masts and moved to the movement of the sea.

It was getting lighter now and he could see more clearly the people standing waiting. Ox-carts were assembling near the shed, ready to take the fish up to the markets. Already there was a strong smell of fish in the air.

The men on the quay began to stir. The first boat was coming in.

It turned and nosed its way along the quay. Ropes were thrown and it came to a stop. Men at once jumped down into its hold.

Kornbluth went to the edge of the quay and asked something. One of the fishermen jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

The other boats were coming in now. In the growing light Seymour could see their blunt prows more clearly and make out the cabbalistic symbols on their sides. As each boat tied up, Kornbluth went to it and said something. Eventually he came to one and stopped.

He came back to where Seymour and Koskash were standing and said:

‘Over here.’

They went up to the shed where the women were waiting with their knives. They had spread out along a grey, stone table.

The first fish were tipped on to it and they set to work immediately. There was a lamp overhead and in its light the scales of the fish glinted. Where the lamp did not reach, the fish glowed in the darkness with a strange luminescence. Already the colours of the fish were fading.

Outside, men were loading barrels on to the carts and the first cart had already set off.

Kornbluth led them through to an inner room where there was another grey slab and some women were opening shellfish. They inserted the tips of their knives, twisted and prised the lips apart. Then, without taking the shells off, they dropped them into buckets at their feet.

Kornbluth told them to stop and they shrugged their shoulders and moved away.

Fishermen brought in a plank on which something was lying. They tipped it on to the slab.

Kornbluth said something testily and one of the men brought in another lamp, which he put down at the head of the slab.

There was a reek of fish in the air and water dripped down on to the floor. Kornbluth removed some of the seaweed and threw it into a corner. Then he took the lamp and held it up above the face of the man who was lying there. He looked at it steadily for a moment and then nodded.

Then he pulled Koskash forward and held him while he lifted the lamp and Koskash looked down.

‘Yes?’ he said.

Seymour was sitting in Lomax’s apartment. On the table in front of him was a pile of ticket stubs, the ones he had noticed in the pockets of Lomax’s empty suits. He counted forty-seven of them. He knew now what they were: cinema tickets.

Cinema? Seymour knew, of course, what cinemas were. He had even been to one, once. But they didn’t figure big in the East End. They didn’t figure that largely, as far as he knew, in the more prosperous districts further west. The one in the East End was above a billiards room and its grey, disjointed, flickering delights were intended to add to the appeal of the room below; as well as, Seymour suspected, enticing patrons on to further rooms upstairs in which ladies were waiting to encourage them to other forms of activity. It all seemed very dubious to Seymour.

But here in Trieste cinema did not seem at all dubious! On the contrary, it seemed above board, thriving and very popular.

‘There’s the Excelsior, the Americano, the Edison, the Royal Biograph, the Teatro Fenice. .’ Kornbluth said with pride. ‘Trieste,’ he said, ‘is the cinema capital of the world.’