Without so much as a preliminary smoldering, the bookshelf and all the books behind flashed yellow and joined in the blaze, filling the room in seconds with heavy sooty smoke. The back of the chair on which Blume had been sitting was burning in sympathy. Angela seemed to be moving not away from the Colonel, but toward him. Small conflagrations started dropping from the ceiling, even though it did not seem to be on fire.
With pain and difficulty, Blume grabbed Angela with his left arm and pulled her away, his intention being to help, but he found it was he who was leaning on her. The Colonel continued to roar. They made it through the door into the kitchen, but somehow it too had filled with smoke. They stumbled onwards, sweeping away the bead curtain, and found themselves in the glass-covered greenhouse. Both of them suddenly stopped in amazement as they felt the coolness and heard the rain drumming away on the glass above. Blume breathed in deeply.
The doorway through which they came was blowing out masses of black smoke, and the bead curtain rattled and clicked wildly as the billow of smoke flapped it from behind. The lower beads were on fire now, crackling and then exploding like popcorn. It seemed impossible that they had been in there. Without warning, the curtain became a series of fiery pillars, and then suddenly was gone, and they could see a great ball of rage was coming toward them. Blume watched the object with a sense of detachment, dimly aware that it was the Colonel hurtling toward them, trying to escape.
What Angela did next was to fix itself in Blume’s mind for many years to come. She reached over to the stove, and with extraordinary strength, grabbed the large copper pot on top. She glanced into it, where she may have seen her own face reflected back at her. It was full of liquid, and as the Colonel staggered to the doorway, she hurled it on him.
Perhaps she saw water in the pot, and if so, her intentions were merciful. But the pot contained not water but stand-oil. Linseed oil that had been boiled for several hours under pressure, as Treacy himself explained in his never-to-be-published book.
Even before it hit the Colonel, the oil ignited. With a strangely dry-sounding thud that shook the floor, the smoky orange flames enveloping him flashed yellow and then white. The Colonel vanished behind a hot sheet of flame, leaving a scream behind.
Angela ran directly through the greenhouse to the door communicating with the outside, and yanked it open, then vanished into safety. The freshly opened door sent a blast of delicious wet and cool air into the room, which reversed the direction of the swirls of smoke coming out of the burning room, and now seemed to be sucking back in all that it had belched out a moment before. Blume’s vision suddenly cleared. It looked as if the fire had decided to spare Treacy’s greenhouse.
Calmly, feeling sorrowful at all that was happening, Blume went over to the granite sink and slowly filled a terra-cotta pitcher with fresh water. He picked it up, stepped through the smoking gap where the beads had been, traversed the blasted kitchen, noting with regret that it, too, was burning on high, and reached the white blaze that marked the doorway into the living room. A massive dark shape was rolling on the ground, and Blume, full of pity, cast the contents of his pitcher at it. But the water droplets turned to steam and the steam exploded with almost as much force as the oil had, sending the Colonel crawling madly away from his new tormentor, back towards the living room where the fine shoes of a smaller, silent body were also beginning to burn.
Blume gagged as an overwhelmingly sweet and burnt fast-food smell rushed out of the room. He ran back through the kitchen and into the cool greenhouse. From above his head came a cracking and squeaking sound like thousands of ice cubes being thrown into hot water. He looked up and then down again quickly, as a shower of glass exploded overhead and came crashing down, with the rain following. The fire was sparing nothing.
The flames had insinuated themselves across the lattice of wooden frames holding the sloping glass roof, and were crisscrossing the timber beam holding up the glazing. The glass was blackening and shimmering and breaking everywhere, some shattering as it dropped in full panes to the floor. The Colonel made a final bellow like a distant bull, and from the other side Blume heard Angela calling. He ran toward her and the coolness of the night air, glass, sparks, and burning wood falling about him.
Chapter 46
The fire crew parked their engines on a bed of cream narcissus flowers in the garden and attacked the fire from there, leaving the street outside free. It soon filled with Carabinieri from the neighboring barracks, some of them under umbrellas, and a crowd of American students from John Cabot. The crowd was becoming quite festive as the fire raged on and the rumors of what had happened started circulating. In the middle, unnoticed and unexamined, sat the Colonel’s car.
One of the first to arrive on the scene was Rosario Panebianco, solicitous, gentle, and persuasive. He had Angela in an ambulance and under escort within minutes. When Blume told him to fuck off, he nodded with understanding and was soon back with a blue waterproof jacket with “Polizia” written on the back in reflective letters, and a colorful golf umbrella. He ordered an Agente to stand close to Blume and hold it.
“Commissioner,” she said, “you are shivering and there is blood on your collar and back. Put on the jacket.”
Blume decided to comply.
Caterina arrived as the medics were on the point of asking his colleagues to force him into the ambulance. Blume called her over, told the Agente with the umbrella to get lost, and nodded in the direction of the Colonel’s car.
“Treacy’s manuscript is on the backseat. Get it. Then hold it or destroy it. It’s just a copy.”
“I know,” said Caterina. “I was there when he made the copy, remember?”
Blume looked at her in confusion. “We need to get rid of them all, originals, copies, the lot.”
“I’ll see to it.” She pointed at the flames and smoke shooting up from behind the wall. “Is it true what they’re saying about the Colonel being in there?”
“Yes. Nightingale, too.”
“Oh no,” said Caterina. “Any chance he made it out?”
“None,” said Blume.
She stepped over a puddle on the cobbles, and turned around. “When I left the house this morning, Rospo was asleep in a car opposite. He wasn’t in a great mood, says you were supposed to relieve him. I began to worry about you then. Then you called and immediately after I heard about Paoloni, and then you disappeared again. I should have guessed it would be here. Sorry.”
Blume tried to wave a forgiving hand, but he couldn’t feel his arm or quite remember which muscles to tense.
“Alec, will you please stop sitting out here shivering and bleeding in the rain. You look so bad people are frightened to come over and tell you to get into the ambulance.”
Blume allowed himself to be taken to San Camillo Hospital. He was left languishing for an indeterminate amount of time in a small white-and-green room, which smelled of tuna, then a doctor came in, examined him, shone a light in his pupils, and went jogging out, returning five minutes later in the company of three male nurses and a trolley. Half an hour later, Blume was undergoing emergency surgery to relieve a build-up of pressure in his skull.
Then he slept.
When he awoke, the nausea and headaches has decreased to a manageable level, and Blume announced himself fit and ready to leave. He made the announcement several times without drawing any response. They had shaved the back of his head and placed an oversized white bandage on it, but it did not hurt in the slightest. Not even to the touch. He thought he might make it home, clear up his apartment, and have some supper. He left the room and outlined his plans to a nurse in the corridor, who led him back to bed.