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though . . .’ The red face turned even redder and the doctor giggled. ‘What a stupid thing for me to have said. My wife will find that hilarious when I tell her. She loves it when I make a faux pas . Here am I telling you to visit the gardens, and you have just come from there with definite signs of a heart attack.’
    The doctor’s words sank into him like a heavy gas. ‘I’ve had a heart attack?’
    ‘No! A panic attack! God, I am so sorry. Another gaffe. I am so gauche!’ Bernardini gave Blume a knowing wink. ‘You seem to have reacted poorly to our extraordinary gardens. An allergic reaction. I see you have hives, too. Were they there before?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, nothing to worry about then. A bit of a panic.
     
    C’est un jardin extraordinaire,
    Il y a des canards qui parlent anglais
    Je leur donne du pain ils remuent leur derrière
    En m’disant ‘Thank you very much Monsieur Trenet . . .’
     
    ‘I did not panic.’
    ‘ Au contraire, Monsieur Boum! Yes, you did,’ sang Bernardini without breaking the rhythm of his song.
     
    ‘ Il fallait bien trouver dans cette grande ville perverse
    Une gentille amourette un petit flirt de vingt ans .’
     
    He stopped and looked thoughtful. ‘You have angina. We both know that. And now your body panicked. For me, that is the same thing. Do you consider your body separate from your mind? Cartesian extremism, if so. How do you explain tears? Or laughter? That feeling of fear in the stomach, the evacuation of the bowels in cases of extreme danger, the loss of appetite from sorrow?’
    ‘I’m sorry, was that a question?’
    ‘Just remember, panic can kill, too. But you are still here and talking to me. All in all, it could have been worse. You are too young. You have no business having a heart attack at your age.’
    ‘You said it wasn’t a heart attack.’
    ‘Not this time,’ said Bernardini shaking his head grimly. ‘What about your parents?’
    ‘Both dead.’
    ‘Ah-hah.’ The doctor looked pleased, then mortified. ‘I am terribly sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’
    ‘Not from heart attacks,’ said Blume, driving home his advantage.
    ‘Hmm, chose curieuse . Are you sure?’
    ‘Of how my parents died? Quite sure.’
    ‘An accident?’
    If being shot as innocent bystanders in a bank raid qualified as an accident, thought Blume. If a double homicide could be described using a word that would make the doctor think of a car crash, then, yes, it was an accident. Blume nodded.
    ‘Too bad. C’est-à-dire a tragedy. What about your wife, girlfriend?’
    ‘What about her?’
    ‘Don’t you want her here by your bedside? Who do you want me to call?’
    ‘I am not married.’
    ‘No one then?’
    Blume closed his eyes, and fell immediately into a world of swirling colours, prismic, intense, and dark, like the gleaming rainbow on an oil slick. A two-hour drive would take him back to Caterina, still on maternity leave. She was probably holding Alessia right now, breastfeeding her. They had induced the birth a month early, because the pregnancy had caused hepatosis in the mother. Caterina scratched herself till she bled as her liver failed and her blood filled with bile. At one point, she phoned Blume, who had not seen her in two months, and screamed down the phone at him, as if the poison coursing through her were all his fault, which it was. That meant that he somehow gained the right to accompany her the following morning to Fratebenefratelli hospital on the Tiber island, where they broke her waters. The Tiber was swollen and lapping against the hospital walls just below the window. Blume saw two rats swimming upstream, against the current. The cure for foetal hepatosis, a nurse explained, was childbirth. As soon as the baby was out, the disease vanished as if it had never been.
    Alessia came out weighing 3.8 kilos, and everyone joked that it was a good job they called her out early. Perhaps the dates had been slightly miscalculated. She