‘I thought,’ said Seymour cautiously, ‘that you were a professore?’
‘That, too,’ said James grandly. ‘What are these things anyway? Stops on the way to identity. Bus stops,’ he said, with satisfaction. ‘Businessmen are bus stops. That seems right. I, too, was a bus stop.’
‘Ye-e-s?’
‘For a while. Briefly. The imagination can enter into anything. Even a bus stop.’
‘Ye-e-s? Yes, I’m sure. And this was to do with. . the cinema, was it?’
‘Beacons. I think of them as beacons. Beacons of light in a dark, backward world. Marinetti says that they are outposts of the future. All art, he says, is an outpost. Well, that is true, I think. But is it an outpost of the future? Is not art outside time? Not if it is a cinema. The cinema is definitely in time. Marinetti is right there.’
James stopped in the middle of the road and spread his arms.
‘What I wished to do,’ he said, ‘was to light beacons in my benighted land. I lit one, I almost lit two. And then the money ran out.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Cinemas. “Here in Trieste,” I said, “there are twenty-one cinemas. How many are there in Dublin? One. If O’Riley’s is still going.” That is what I said to Machnich. “There is an opportunity,” I said. That is the thing about the imagination. It sees possibilities. That is why artists should be businessmen. And businessmen, artists. Only I did not say that last bit to Machnich. He might not have understood.’
‘You were going to open cinemas in Dublin?’
‘Going to? I did open them. One, anyway. It was very successful. I was going to open another when the bastard pulled the rug out from under me. “Too big a risk,” he said. “Think of the return!” I said. “What return?” he said. “The one that will come in the future,” I said. “It’s not your money,” he said. “How much have you put in?” “I’ve put in my talent,” I said. It was an unequal bargain, but he didn’t see it like that.’
‘And Lomax helped in this enterprise?’
‘Smoothed the way. The technicalities. Customs, Board of Trade, that sort of thing. It gave Machnich confidence, I think, to have Lomax advising. These things were important to him.’
‘Did Lomax put in any money of his own?’
‘Oh, dear, no! Machnich was the one with the money. He runs a big carpet shop. And the Edison, too. And one or two others. He wanted to run more. But Trieste is already full of them. “Raise your eyes,” I said. “Look outwards. Look to Ireland.” I thought I had persuaded him. But in the end he hadn’t the imagination. The money, but not the imagination,’
From the fact that Kornbluth had released James so readily, Seymour guessed that he didn’t really suspect him of involvement in Lomax’s death. He had probably worked out the kind of man James was. Seymour put him down as a batty professor who was too fond of his drink. He was involved only to the extent that he happened to be the person who had gone to the cinema with Lomax. There was nothing more sinister in it than that.
However, Kornbluth was right. They had learned something. They knew now that Lomax had gone to the Edison that night and that what had happened to him had happened after he came out. Seymour felt again the frustration of having to operate covertly. What he would have liked to do was question everyone in the vicinity and establish if anyone had seen Lomax at that point. But that was exactly what he couldn’t do. He would have to leave that to Kornbluth.
When they got back to the piazza the artists were all sitting there at the table. They jumped up when they saw James and embraced him.
‘There! You see?’ said Maddalena, placing her hand intimately over Seymour’s. ‘It was easy.’
‘What was it for this time, James?’ asked Lorenzo.
James looked bewildered.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Going to the cinema, I think.’
‘But, James — ’
‘Arresting people for going to the cinema?’ cried Alfredo, firing up. ‘Where will it end?’
‘I don’t think — ’ began Seymour.
His voice was drowned in the general protestation.
‘They are standing out against the Future,’ shouted Marinetti.
There was a new face at the table. It belonged to a middle-aged man with tobacco-stained fingers, whom they referred to as Ettore. During a lull in the conversation Seymour asked if he was an artist too. Alas, no, he said: his talents lay in other directions. He worked in the family varnishing business. He would soon, he said, be going to England to set up a factory there. In preparation for this he was taking, God help him, thought Seymour, lessons in English from James. A little later he shook hands all round and left.
After he had gone Alfredo said that although he was not an artist he understood about artists. He was a writer and had written several novels. None of them had got anywhere and he had given up writing; but recently he seemed to have started again.
Perhaps it was the effect of Lomax’s death that they drank heavily. Seymour reckoned himself to have a good head for alcohol but he found it hard to keep level. He wondered uneasily who was going to pay and if he should. Could he put it down to expenses? Almost certainly not, he thought.
When it came to it, they all insisted that he was their guest and that there could be no question of his paying; but as they turned out their pockets it looked rather as if they were going to be his. In fact, however, Ettore had already paid.
As he was going away across the piazza he saw a newspaper seller standing there with his newspapers spread out on the ground before him. He was holding up a newspaper and shouting: ‘Bosnia crisis! The latest.’
Crisis? What crisis? Almost: Bosnia? What Bosnia?
Seymour could never resist a headline. He went across to the man and bought one of his papers.
As far as he could see, there was no mention of Bosnia in it.
‘Hey, what was all that about a crisis?’ he complained to the newspaper seller.
‘It’s still there,’
‘It doesn’t say anything about a crisis here!’
‘It doesn’t need to. I’m saying it. It’s still on. That’s the point. I don’t want people to forget about it.’
‘Yes, but the newspaper isn’t saying anything about it!’
‘It bloody well ought to be. That’s why I’m saying it.’
‘Yes, well, thanks. Don’t you think you should leave editorial comment to the editors?’
‘No. They’re all bloody Austrian. You won’t find a word about this now that it’s happened. They want to keep it quiet.’
‘Look, what’s happened? What crisis is this, anyway?’
‘The annexation.’
‘What annexation?’
‘Christ, where have you come from?’
‘London.’
‘Isn’t it in all the papers there?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it bloody ought to be. It’s a disgrace. More than a disgrace, it’s a conspiracy. All the Great Powers hanging together. And letting Austria hang Bosnia.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘You don’t know? Really? Christ, you’re an ignorant bugger.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Well, you know that a couple of years ago Austria annexed Bosnia. No? You really don’t?’
‘It had escaped me.’
‘What hope is there for the working class when the privileged classes are so bloody ignorant! Well, it did. Just like that. They thought no one would notice. And if you’re anything to go by, they were dead right. All right, you’re an ignorant Britisher. But you’d have thought someone would have noticed and said: “Hey, you can’t do that!” But they’re all in it together, the Great Powers.’
‘Yes, well, no doubt. But it’s all over, isn’t it? You said it was two years ago?’
‘It’s not all over. It’s never going to be all over. It’s going to blow up.’
‘Yes, well, maybe,’
‘It’ll blow up. And blow your world apart.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘How do you think the Bosnians feel about it? How do you think we feel about it?’
‘We? What’s it got to do with Trieste?’
‘I’m speaking as a Serb.’