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.
‘Not blue. Pooh, blue! Decorous, tame blue, decorous tame green. The decorous blues and greens, which were browns, the brown of the studios and the museums. Tame colours, tamed man.
‘But Futurist Art is not tamed! It does not speak in whispers. It shouts!’
Which certainly seemed to be true, thought Seymour, if Marinetti himself was anything to go by.
‘It cannot be ignored. You cannot walk by it. It explodes upon you!
‘And it will release. It will release the energy that lies trapped behind these cold Austrian facades.
‘It is the art of the cinema, not the art of the museum. It is the art of the Future and not of the past. It is the art of protest. And it will ignite. Futurist Art will ignite!’
James picked himself up off the table and hurled himself upon Marinetti. But now it was a friendly, approving, supporting embrace. The two danced off together among the tables to the enthusiastic cheers of the Citizens of the Future.
Chapter Twelve
Seymour was getting a taste for Trieste. When he walked down to the Consulate from his hotel in the morning, he liked to take in the Canal Grande, with its little working boats and the men loading and unloading — all small stuff, but, as Kornbluth had said on the first occasion when he had come here, somehow satisfyingly real, the tavernas up the side streets and the little cafes on the quays, the seagulls pecking for droppings, and the women at the end of the canal, sitting on the steps of the church, sewing.
This morning, as he walked along by the side of the canal, he was surprised to see the trim figure of Rakic. He was standing on the edge of the quay looking down into one of the boats and talking to its captain. Seymour had no particular urge to talk to Rakic and walked on past. His ear, registering language as always, picked up their speech, noticing it especially, perhaps, because it was in a language unfamiliar to him. Not quite unfamiliar, though, because he could work out what they were saying.
‘Two days,’ the captain said. ‘That’s all. We’ll make Sarajevo in two days.’
The name of the place gave him a clue. Bosnian, that was it, that must be the language: close to Serbian.
‘All right, then,’ Rakic said. ‘Be ready.’
He turned and saw Seymour.
‘Ah, Signor Seymour!’
Seymour stopped unwillingly. Rakic hurried across.
‘You are taking an early morning walk? Good for the digestion.’
‘I’m staying at a hotel,’ said Seymour. This is on my way to the Consulate,’
‘Ah, yes.’
Rakic fell in alongside him.
‘You are thinking about the message you will be taking back to London, perhaps? To the King?’
‘Not much thought needed, I would say.’
‘You will be telling him about Signor Lomax?’
‘I think they already know.’
‘Of course. And what,’ he said, after a moment, ‘was their reaction? When they heard?’
‘I think they are waiting to hear more.’
‘Of course. That is natural. It is natural for diplomats to react with caution. But what about the British Government? When all there is to be known, is known, how will it respond, do you think? With anger, that its Consul should be killed?’
‘They regret Lomax’s death, of course — ’
Rakic interrupted him.
‘But will they be angry? With the Austrians, for letting this happen?’
‘Well, I don’t know that it will be quite a question of that — ’
‘He is too small? A consul is, after all, a small thing. To a country like Britain, which has many consuls. And a consul in Trieste! What is Trieste to London? What is the death of the Consul in Trieste? Nothing! It is insignificant, the death of a fly. Or, perhaps, of a mosquito.’
Rakic seemed amused by the thought.
‘Yes, a mosquito,’ he repeated, with satisfaction. ‘Always buzzing around, irritating, being difficult.’
‘You found him difficult?’
Rakic gave him a weighing look.
‘Yes, difficult,’ he said.
‘Others found him easy to get on with.’
‘I found him difficult. You would think he was agreeing with you, going along with you. And then he would dig his heels in!’
Tm sorry you found that,’
‘Ah, well, it is not important. And a consul, you are right, is not important. His death does not make a big splash. I just wondered, that is all. Wondered if it would be enough to make England respond. But no, you are right. Too small,’
He was silent for a moment.
‘But Austria, now, or Russia. How would they respond? If their man on the spot was killed? I think they might respond differently. The British Empire is so big, you see, and. . complacent. It can afford to ignore such things. But the Austrian Empire is. . touchy. It feels more threatened. It would not ignore something like that. No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it would not, could not, ignore a thing like that.’
Seymour went to see Koskash. He was pleased to see him.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it is not that they have — No, it is just that one sits here alone for hour after hour so that it is nice to have someone to talk to.’
He looked at Seymour diffidently.
‘While I have been here, I have been thinking. I have been thinking especially about the questions you asked. About Machnich and Signor Lomax. And I know that why you asked them is because you want to know why it was and how it was that Signor Lomax died. You are asking if it was connected with. . with what I was doing. And as I sit here I have been asking myself the same question. I ask myself, could I have contributed, in any way, to his death?
‘But I do not see how I could have done. I do not see how it could have been as you suppose. Machnich is not like that. He shouts and blusters but in the end he does not strike. In the end he is, actually, a coward. He does not like to confront people. He even had a secret door put in — ’
‘Yes,’ said Seymour, ‘I heard that,’
‘- so that he could avoid people if necessary. If they were waiting for him outside the cinema. As sometimes they were.’