Free A Dead Man in Trieste by Michael Pearce Page B

difficult if you come up against the officials. They ride rough-shod over you, especially if you are just an ordinary person. But the officials could never fob Lomax off or browbeat him or override him. That is what I meant when I said that he was so strong.
    ‘And he always used it for others. I have been thinking about him a lot since he died and that is what I have come to see, and what is so wonderful.’
    She had begun to cry a little.
    ‘And that is why I feel so angry. It is so – so unjust. That he should die like this. God is unjust and must not be allowed to get away with it. I will not let that happen. I, Maddalena, will not let that happen,’ she said, fiercely, through her tears.
    ‘I am sorry. You obviously knew him much better than I did and cared for him deeply –’
    ‘No!’
    ‘No?’
    ‘No. I cared for him shallowly, too shallowly. It has been over for some time. It is nice to be worshipped but to be up on a pedestal for too long is boring. And wrong, anyway. It is not what I want from a man. It was time to move away. Time, too, for him to move away. I think he had begun to realize that for himself. I was part, you see, of his first days in Trieste, and they were over.
    ‘When he first came to Trieste, something happened to him. There was a great opening up – art, sunshine, the Mediterranean way of life, it all hit him together. All his life up till then he had been contained, controlled. Now, suddenly, he felt free. Things became possible that had not seemed possible before. Love, perhaps. Me.
    ‘He found it all in me, you see. Or thought he did. Love, art, release, freedom – everything. Of course, it was not there. I am much less than that. But perhaps for him, for a while, it was there.
    ‘For a while. But then, you see, I think he began to grow. This opening up did not stop there. He looked at things he had not noticed before, things he had never previously questioned. Things about society. About people. Perhaps he thought: I am free, why cannot they be free?
    ‘He began to look outwards, to involve himself more with other people. He began to help them. But, you know, in Trieste people are not just people, they are always part of something else. I don’t think he realized that. I don’t think he realized that though you may begin with helping people as individuals, you are soon, in Trieste, drawn on to helping other things. And that, I think, is what may have happened to him. He was drawn on and then it went wrong.
    ‘You asked me if I had any particular reason for thinking that. Yes, I do. Once – I remember when it was. There was a big reception at the Casa Revoltella and he asked me if I would come with him. Well, I did not want to go very much, it is not my kind of thing, pompous people, stiff uniforms – no, no. But he said: “Oh, do come, Maddalena! If I don’t have someone real to talk to, I shall go crazy! And there will be lots of colour and beautiful things and you can point them out to me.”
    ‘Well, I agreed. But then, on the day before it was going to happen, he came to me and said: “No, no, I can’t go. It would not be right. Someone else has asked me to take them, and I don’t want to. It would not be right.” “If you’re bothered about me, you needn’t be,” I said. “I’m quite happy not to go. Why don’t you take this other person?” “No,” he said. “It would be better for me not to go at all. That would make it clear.” Well, I tried to persuade him, but he would not have it, and I didn’t try too hard. It was not important to me. But afterwards I thought about it and I couldn’t understand it. Who was this other person? Why didn’t he want to go with them? And why was it so important? I did not find answers, but now the questions come back to me.’
    She shrugged.
    ‘It may be nothing,’ she said. ‘Now when I tell it, it seems trivial. But it was a moment when I felt there was a side to Lomax, a part of his life, that I did not