‘Yes, yes. I suppose you could say that.’
‘Trieste is certainly struggling to be free,’ said Lorenzo. ‘But is it a nation?’
‘Part of a nation,’ said James.
‘But which nation?’
‘Italy, of course.’
‘And Ireland?’
‘Struggling to be free from England,’ said James. ‘And the Church.’
‘Well, that’s a problem here, too, of course.’
‘Exactly! What I shall say is — ’
Seymour began to move away.
‘You will come, won’t you?’ said Alfredo coaxingly.
‘I’ll certainly try to.’
‘The People’s University. At eight.’
When Seymour got to the Consulate, he found Mrs Koskash there as well as Koskash. They seemed to have been having an argument. Mrs Koskash was flushed and tight- lipped, Koskash grim. They both greeted him, however, politely.
‘I mustn’t stay, though,’ said Mrs Koskash. ‘There are dozens of things I have to do.’
She bustled out.
Koskash stood for a moment looking at her retreating back, then turned away.
‘She is always busy,’ he said quickly to Seymour. ‘She does so many things in the community For so many causes.’
‘Bazaars,’ said Seymour, remembering his sister. ‘Cake sales. Street collections.’
‘Why, yes,’ said Koskash, surprised. ‘That’s right.’
The thought of his sister brought to Seymour’s mind the occasions on which he had last seen Mrs Koskash.
‘Your wife’s a Socialist, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Koskash. ‘Does that matter?’
‘Not at all,’ said Seymour. ‘My own sister is one.’
‘She is? I am one myself, of course, although not as committed as she is. She is the chairman of our branch.’
‘Ah! Then she, perhaps, is the person who has been negotiating on behalf of the strikers at Machnich’s carpet shop?’
‘Yes, that’s right. They had a long session last night. It is being put to the vote this morning.’
‘It’s been put to the vote. They’ve accepted.’
‘Well, that is probably good,’ said Koskash. ‘They’ve been out for a long time.’
‘Your wife is evidently a formidable lady.’
‘Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.’
He settled himself at his desk.
‘I have quite a bit of work to do,’ he said. ‘I shall probably stay on late this evening, if that is all right.’
Seymour was surprised the work was there. But then, with Lomax missing, Koskash was probably doing his work as well. He wondered uneasily if he ought to be doing something about the general work of the Consulate: but that, he decided, was something for Lomax’s superiors in London to see to. They would have heard of his death by now.
Koskash was hesitating.
‘Will you, yourself, be here this evening?’
‘No, probably not. I may go to a lecture at the People’s University.’
‘Ah, really?’
‘Given by Mr Juice.’
‘I have been to some of his lectures before. He is usually very good. Odd, but good. Different from the other lecturers, anyway. Yes, you should go. You will find it entertaining,’
Seymour was less sure about that but felt a certain degree of curiosity. He might well go.
He went back into the inner room. The heavy and mostly empty appointments book was on top of the desk. He began to go systematically through the pages. What he was looking for was any reference to the Casa Revoltella. There was one, for the day of the reception, and it was underlined. It was one of the few entries that Lomax had made for himself. The entries at the beginning of the book had been made, dutifully, by Koskash, but after a while he had given up, switching instead to the bits-of-paper prompting that Koskash had told Seymour about. The reception had evidently become important to Lomax for some reason: perhaps the reason that Maddalena had suggested, that something in connection with it had disrupted what appeared to be the even flow of his existence.
Some person. In his investigation so far Seymour was very short of individual names. He had been looking for them all the time. This seemed to be a chance of getting one. At least there was an individual here, if Maddalena was to be believed, and he saw no reason why she shouldn’t be.
But the name. That was what Maddalena had come looking for and what he, Seymour, was looking for now. He went through the pages without success and then asked Koskash, who couldn’t help him. If Lomax had made any appointment with whoever it was, that hadn’t been registered in Koskash’s system.
Had Lomax mentioned a name? Koskash couldn’t recall any of particular significance at that time. He showed Seymour his notes, which were, as Seymour had come to expect, detailed and meticulous. The only names were those of officials. Seymour asked about them. It was possible, wasn’t it, that an official might wish to go to the reception, either through vanity or in the hope of an informal way of doing business? But no, the officials Koskash mentioned would all have had more promising means of getting invited to the reception than going through Lomax.
Seymour realized he would have to go back to his starting point: Maddalena.
It suddenly struck him that he didn’t know where to look for her. He could go to the artists’ table, of course, but he wanted to talk to her away from all the others. He was still leaving open the possibility of an Italian dimension to Lomax’s sympathies. Where else could she be? How did she spend her days? She modelled, of course, and might be with some artist or other, but if she was, he wouldn’t have a hope of finding her. Almost on the off-chance, he went back to her apartment, where, slightly to his surprise, he found her.
She seemed pleased to see him; more than pleased, delighted. He felt a twinge of contrition. He really ought to have gone back to her before this, carried things on somehow from where they had been left off. But then, he reminded himself, he had resolved to keep his distance from her. What was all that, he said to himself sternly, about focusing on his work? Why was he here? But this was work, a voice within him said. ‘Oh, yes?’ said another voice, which Seymour firmly suppressed.
He said that he had wondered if she would be out modelling.
‘If only,’ said Maddalena, with a sigh.
‘Not much demand?’
‘Not much money.’
He asked her how she spent her days and had a sudden pang at the thought that she might spend them like this. Here. Perhaps that was why she went down to the artists’ table. What was it that she had said when she was talking about Lomax? That a woman on her own could feel very alone in Trieste.
‘In the library,’ said Maddalena.
‘In the —?’
Maddalena looked embarrassed.
‘Well, I do,’ she said defensively. ‘I go there most days. It’s a very good library,’
‘What do you read?’
She looked self-conscious again.
‘Everything,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to catch up.’
‘Catch up?’
‘I come from Puglia,’ she said. ‘If you knew Puglia, you’d know what I’m talking about. It’s one of the poorest parts of Italy. With everything that goes with that. There’s nothing there for anyone and least of all for a woman who — who doesn’t want to get caught in the trap. You know, five children before you’re twenty, old before your time, your husband loses interest in you. I had to get away. I wanted to get away. I wanted all the things I had missed, education, ideas, art, all the things that I thought other people had. Well, of course, they don’t, but I thought they had. So I came up north. But you can’t go to a college or a university if you’ve had an education like I had. As I found out. I bummed around for a while and drifted into modelling.
‘What I do mostly is read. And listen. Not just to the artists, although they have helped a lot. They are always talking, about ideas and art, things that matter. I talk to students, too. There are a lot of them in Trieste. Usually they go out of town, to places like Bologna, but the cafes are always full of them. And sometimes in the evening I go to lectures myself, at the People’s University. It’s not really a university, not like theirs, it’s for people who can’t go to university, workers, women. People like me. But mostly I read.