“What else does an old-age pensioner have to do?” Arina said, smiling. “On the other hand, you can feel quite safe on the streets, the crime rate there is very low. And you can eat anything at all anywhere at all, no matter what the food’s made of. The Taiwanese are very strict when it comes to hygiene. A chef whose hygiene certificate is out of date, or who breaks certain rules, goes to jail for several years. Regardless of whether anyone was poisoned by his cooking or not.”

“I like that,” I said, recalling the Moscow kebab stalls where “chefs” in filthy overall coats sliced meat of unknown origin off a revolving grill. “How did they manage it?”

“Harsh dictatorship,” Arina laughed. “You’re a big boy, you ought to understand that punctual transport, public order and safe streets, polite people and good medical services are all the achievements of dictatorship.”

“Oh, sure. London’s a good example,” I said sarcastically.

“Of course. It’s just that in England the period of dictatorship is over already. They don’t enclose the land and drive peasants out of their homes any longer, and they don’t hang children for stealing pocket handkerchiefs. They don’t sell opium to China, using gunboat diplomacy, and get a quarter of the country’s population addicted to it. They don’t loot the colonies for treasures anymore. The Brits worked hard for their dictatorship and they earned the right to democracy, tolerance, and pluralism.”

“An interesting view of the world,” I said.

“An honest one,” Arina parried. “You know yourself that ‘a gentleman to the west of Suez is not answerable for what a gentleman does to the east of Suez . . .’ And the Brits aren’t so special. Tell me what you can feel proud of in the history of our own country. Military victories? The annexation of territory? Space flights? Factories and power stations? A mighty army and a world-famous culture? All of it was created under tyrants and dictators, Antoshka! St Petersburg and Baikonur. Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy, nuclear weapons and the Bolshoi Theatre, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant and the Baikal-Amur Railway.”

“Haven’t become a communist in your old age, have you?” I growled.

“What for?” Arina snorted. “I’m talking about firm-handed power, harsh power, if necessary. I’m not interested in political posturing.”

“Then what’s the point of all these achievements, if St Petersburg was built on bones and you couldn’t buy toilet paper in the Soviet Union?”

Arina smiled.