No, that way of thinking wasn’t right, either. Absolutely no truths are absolute.

I smiled at my sophistical turn of thought, but then decided that it wasn’t sophistry after all, more of an aporia or, perhaps, a case of Eubulides’ “paradox of the liar.”

I carried on for a while pondering the binary, ternary, and quaternary logic that had been encouraged so vigorously by the cognac. Then I turned the film on again. The hero was killing a vampire. The vampire was screeching malignly, mouthing vague curses and stubbornly refusing to accept the inevitable.

What am I thinking of? Who needs all this—the paradox of the liar and the ancient Greek philosopher Eubulides, whose intellectual games once reduced Greek sages to suicide? Who needs logic, anyway—apart from a handful of armchair scholars, who will reduce it to a well-chewed pap of logical schemas, which more practical scholars will take as the basis for programming languages and mathematical models, which will eventually allow even more practical programrs to write programs making it possible for entirely business-minded directors to film in convincing detail all this stupid shit that is shown in cinemas and broadcast on TV all around the world?

“Having fun?”

I turned my head. Looked at Arina. Nodded.

“Yes, kind of. It’s really such incredible nonsense, all this fantasy.”

The witch was looking enchanting again.

“I laughed for a long time at The Blair Witch Project,” Arina admitted. “But you know . . . for two days afterwards I slept with the light on.”

“You did?” I asked, astounded.

“What are you so surprised at? When you live alone in the forest, in a little hut, and you watch horrors like that at night . . .”

I just shook my head. I hadn’t seen that film, but maybe there really was something horrific about it.

“I liked The Lord of the Rings, though,” said Arina, continuing to share her impressions. “Nonsense, of course, but what a wonderful fairy tale!”