Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere Read Online Free Page A

wander down again, past the hillside villas, past the Roman arch, through the quiet little square, past the junk shops into the working streets below.
    I PREFER a civic blur to a sight-seeing tour, which is why we have meandered the town in this throw-away manner. Fortunately for me Trieste has few formal sights to see. “The average traveller,” Cook’s Handbook pronounced in 1925, “would not make a point of staying long in Trieste,” and in 1999 an American magazine writer advised that after five days “you’ve done the place.” Again no need to hurry, then. When we feel like a long light lunch we can potter down to the Piazza dell’Unita d’Italia, the Piazza Unità for short, the eye of the city and the lingering spot par excellence.
    It is more festive than most of Trieste. On its western side it opens directly on to the sea, and it is said to be the largest square in Italy. The big buildings surrounding it are splendidly self-satisfied (“rather showy, but imposing,” allowed Cook’s Handbook). Flags fly from the former Governor’s Palace. Bold masonry allegories look down from the immense old headquarters of the greatest of all Trieste institutions, the shipping line Lloyd Triestino (nata Lloyd Adriatico). Our hotel over the way there flies the Italian flag too, and flaunts the proud date MDCCCLXXIII—near the prime of the place. The long mock-Gothic structure with the clock tower is the Municipality (Michez and Jachez, the two bronze Moors on the top, strike all the twenty-four hours), and here we are ourselves sitting at a table outside the Caffe degli Specchi, the Cafe of the Mirrors, which has been comforting its customers with coffees, wines and toasted sandwiches since the days of the Emperors.
    In the autumn the square is not often crowded, but now that the day has warmed up it has a homely cheerfulness to it. Some emperor or other stands upon a column, pointing peremptorily towards the sea. What looks like a pile of rubble is really a Fountain of the Four Continents, celebrating Trieste’s profitable connections with the world at large, and equipped with sculpted bales of commerce, like the opium crates that used to appear upon the crest of that other merchant metropolis, Hong Kong. Two tall bronze flagstaffs await a more significant day of the calendar to fly their ensigns. Here and there around the piazza small boys are kicking a ball about, and little girls daintily promenade with toy prams, occasionally peering in a stagy way at the dolls inside, and proudly watched by gossiping mothers at the café tables.
    Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the cafe there! We stretch ourselves and have another coffee—“the coffee of Tri-este,” the waiter assures us approvingly, as though to compliment us on our taste, “is the supreme coffee in the world.” And when we pay our bill and wander off again, in half a minute we are at the water’s edge. The Greek car-ferry moored along the quay sounds its deep siren—it’s ten to four, and it sails upon the hour—and instantly time seems in abeyance. The shouts of the infant footballers are lost, and the wide bay extends before us like a sea of eternity. A tug churns its leisurely way from one pier to another. A solitary man sits over a float that never bobs. And look—remember?—across the water a small white castle stands, all alone, like a castle in a trance.

THREE

Remembering Empires
    Maximilian would know that castle. He built it, and called it Miramar. He was the younger brother of Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, King of Jerusalem, Prince of Transylvania, Grand Duke of Tuscany and of Cracow, Duke of Lorraine, Lord of Trieste, and he was a sailor by profession. Not long after our encounter with him at the Obelisk he became the commander of the Austrian fleet, with his headquarters in Trieste. The story goes that caught in a storm in the bay one day he took shelter in an inlet a few