I didn’t try to argue with that. In our duty office The Lord of the Rings was shown nonstop: it had become a kind of ritual, like the Russian cosmonauts watching The White Sun of the Desert, and the entire population of Russia tuning in to A Twist of Fate on New Year’s Eve. They didn’t really watch the film, it just played along in the background, but from time to time heated arguments would break out about what kind of spell you could use to set your adversary spinning like that and whirl him up to the top of a high tower . . . or whether it was really possible to create an amulet that would imitate the One Ring of Power—so that it would influence its wearer, and be almost impossible to destroy, and make it possible to enter the Twilight effortlessly. Strangely enough, the film had actually contributed something new to practical magic—after all, there’s always someone who’s simply too stubborn to believe that “it can’t be done” and will come up with a way to do it.

“I suppose everything seemed very strange when you woke up?” I asked.

“Of course,” Arina snorted. “Well . . . television and computers—they’re just human toys. But the medicines really did surprise me, yes . . . They almost put witches completely out of business.”

“They almost did?” I asked.

“Well, yes. Although it was even worse in the 1930s—there was so much the doctors didn’t know how to do, but hardly anyone believed in folk healers. The young people would just laugh in your face. Nowadays it’s not too bad, in fact it’s all right. The first person anyone goes running to is a psychic or a healer,” Arina declared derisively. “The X-ray or the blood analysis comes after that. It all helps the young witches, they have someone to practice on and the money’s good. The charlatans have multiplied too, of course: put the crystal ball on the table, pull the curtains, and away they go, intoning in an otherworldly voice: ‘I, Eleonora, hereditary White Witch, healer and diviner, mistress of the Tarot, ancient Tibetan magic, and sacred incantations, do hereby remove the diadem of singlehood, casting the spell of good fortune . . .’ And the doleful music plays, and the little lamps glow in different colors. But if you look closely, it’s just that old slut, Tanya Petrova, forty-two years old but looks fifty-five, who suffers from angina pectoris, thrush, and an ingrown toenail—she used to be a Young Communist activist at the railway-carriage repair shop, and now she’s gone in for being a witch . . .”

Arina gave a very lifelike imitation of the charlatan, and I smiled and said: “We leave people like that alone. They distract attention from the Others.”