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got a convex mirror.”
    Escher had started sketching, dribbling, turning pages, unaware that we were even there, threading his pencil in and out of his beard. It was the window now that had him. The ratio of height to breadth of the individual panes of glass, it seemed, was the same as that of the whole casement to the frame. The sun, shifting round the patio, hit the canaries and they burst into sudden song.
    â€œNested structures,” sighed Nieuwenkamp ambiguously. “Recursive something-or-others. He’s always on about it.” He shrugged and clattered off upstairs in the boots, reappearing, several minutes later, with a large, elegant book. “My Balinese pictures!” He glowed with authorial pride, lay the book down with a comforting thump, pushed it across at me. “You say you’ve sucked Italy dry. Bali, latest jewel of our eastern empire, a whole new world just waiting to be captured! Privately published of course.”
    As usual I noticed the style before the form, rather crude drawings, weak use of shadow and colour, clumsy figures – the work of a book illustrator, not an artist. Escher was now on his knees under the table looking up at the cover with wonder through the pierced tabletop. It occurred to me that both had lived lives softened by family money, no need to compromise, to earn a living. Neither would have cut his teeth on the ladies of the corsetry trade. I turned the pages, scarcely able to breathe. It was all there – ancient temples and palaces, dances, markets, towering volcanoes, trees so old and twisted they were rooted in time itself. Money for old rope. One picture showed rice terraces cascading down a hill, each sinuous mudbank in counterpoint to the next. Escher, now peering at it through his fingers, danced on the spot and whimpered, like a dog watching a squirrel up a tree. If you imagined the image in two dimensions, it was as if a giant had flung a rock into a lake and sent out rippling reverberations from a hidden centre.
    â€œI was there when the troops went in in 1906,” said Nieuwenkamp. “Cycled all over the island, drawing. Been back since, of course. Oh, yes, it’s changed. We have brought them the blessings of corrugated iron and syphilis but it’s still special. Friendliest people on earth. Best of all …” he turned another page and pointed, “… tits! Lots of ’em. Only the harlots and Dutch women wear blouses. No point in giving away what you can sell, eh?” He had painted a chubby woman doing her hair, with elbows up, in an awkward pose better calculated to exhibit her breasts. “Brazen!” His epiglottis was working away. “Blazing!” With an effort he calmed himself. “Actually, of course, it’s a form of innocence. Eve not knowing she’s naked and all that. I seem to remember from your last show you’re a tits man, Bonnet? Thought so.”
    All that came to mind was corsets. But I could see myself reworking that picture, making it better, shifting the torso more to one side, cocking the sinews of the thighs, catching the tone of the muscles moving under the skin, the play of shadow, the delicate planes and contours of the face that Nieuwenkamp had turned into a featureless blob. From somewhere came a whiff of coconut oil and patchouli, the authentic smell of the East. It was Escher’s hairoil, he standing close behind me, working away at a sketch. He held it out to us smiling, a savant child wanting his parents’ praise. By a series of slow transformations across the page, a volcano – belching flame and smoke – had become a bare-breasted maid with elaborate plumed headdress had become a smiling, muscular youth with a suitcase marked “Bonnet” on his head, the whole quite beautifully drawn.
    â€œWell would you look at that,” said Nieuwenkamp, wonderingly. “Not so daft, then.”

2
    You might reasonably expect, at this point,