“That’s right,” Arina agreed, with obvious disappointment, giving me a sideways glance. “That’s what there is. You’re a good charm-weaver, Anton . . .”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t say thank you when a Witch praises you,” Arina said unexpectedly. “It’s a bad sign.”

I looked at her.

“Feeling nervous?”

Arina nodded.

Just at that moment an elderly Taiwanese man appeared out of the trees and came towards us. Short, stout, and smiling, he looked like one of the incarnations of the Buddha. A Light One, of the fourth level of Power, seemingly without a specialization in any particular aspect of magic—he practiced all of them a little bit . . .

“Mr. Fan,” I said, getting up and bowing. To my surprise, Arina also stood up and lowered her head quite sincerely.

“Stop it, stop it!” exclaimed Fan, waving his arms. “Let’s have none of this oriental ceremonial! It’s quite unnecessary, believe me, we’re civilized Others, we live in the twenty-first century . . .”

He walked up into the pavilion, shook me firmly by the hand, touched his lips to Arina’s palm, and then looked around with undisguised pleasure.

“Ah, how I love this place! And how rarely I am granted the opportunity simply to sit in peace and quiet in pleasant company . . . Will you have tea? We Taiwanese are crazy about green tea. But in Russia you mostly drink black tea, right? With milk? Or is it the English who drink it with milk?”

“We drink green tea and black tea, with milk and with lemon,” I said.

“With milk and with lemon?” asked Fan, wincing. “At the same time?”

“Oh, no,” I said, feeling myself involuntarily starting to relax. “Either one or the other. We have lots of different ways.”

“Excellent!” exclaimed Fan, beaming. “This mutual enrichment of cultures and fusion of customs is a wonderful thing. I like Russia a lot in general, I like reading Dostoyevsky and watching Russian films.”

I took the final remark to be an oriental politeness and didn’t enquire which Russian films he had seen. We sat down and Mr. Fan poured our tea himself.

“What has brought you to Formosa in these delightful days of our autumn?” Fan continued. “Apart from simple interest in these exotic climes? No, no, don’t answer—allow me to guess for myself!”

We allowed him. Fan pondered for a few moments, drinking his tea in tiny sips, then suddenly exclaimed: “I know! The Tiger! I heard about the skirmish that the Moscow Watch was involved in!”

“The Tiger,” I admitted. In all honesty, the gleeful comedy that Fan had played out was not much better than the comically managed visit to the hotel. But at least it was more upbeat and cheerful to watch.