Gillem smiled. “From my grandmother—indirectly. My grandmother was an extraordinary needlewoman. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the sofa cushions in the sitting room? When I was a boy, of course I had no interest whatsoever. It was only after she died, and my aunt asked if I would like to have some of her embroidery—my mother couldn’t bear the sight of it—that I thought, This is so beautiful and graceful and understated, it really is a kind of testament to an immensely civilized culture. And then much later, when I started in on the Hell and War series, I wondered if I couldn’t do something along those lines myself. If instead of using a craft to depict beautiful things that are part of that civilization one loves—birds and flowers and butterflies—one might depict everything one hates.”

Rat went back to examining the drawings Gillem had laid out for her—the naked prisoners with the guard dogs, the mosque and the preacher, the bearded man being dragged from his underground burrow like a fox from its hole.

“It’s strange,” she said. “What you are picturing is so horrible, but you’re treating it in a kind of funny, cartoonish way.”

“Does that bother you?”

“A bit.”

“I suppose it’s the same way you sometimes have a song that has a merry tune but sad or sinister words, and the tune somehow makes it even more disturbing.”

The phone rang, and Gillem answered. The person he was talking to seemed to be someone who handled his work. They were talking about how a picture was going to get shipped home from abroad, and about insurance. The person at the other end of the line was evidently quite a joker—all this practical business was interspersed with much laughter and kidding around. Rat had never heard Gillem so animated. He had a good warm laugh he didn’t use much in his home life, where he often seemed preoccupied or withdrawn. He had evidently forgotten that Rat was there.

Rat poked around the studio some more, examining the postcards on his wall—reproductions, mostly, of French nineteenth-century paintings of horse races and music halls.

Then she picked up her book, curled up in a corner on the floor, and started reading. When Gillem got off the phone, she said, “You have nice light in here. I can’t read very well in our room; it’s too dark. The garden’s nice, though, when it isn’t raining.”

“Yes, that spare room is a bit gloomy, isn’t it? You’re welcome to come here and read, whenever you like.”