And so I sat at the desk in my office for a few minutes, looking through the papers and smoking a cigarette. About a year earlier Igor, in a burst of fanatical enthusiasm for the healthy lifestyle, had launched a campaign to prohibit smoking in the Watch’s office premises. In general terms everybody, including the smokers, agreed with his arguments. But when it came down to the specifics, opinions differed widely. Naturally, in areas where nonsmokers worked, no one smoked anyway. In communal areas it was permitted, but only if no one objected. Everyone took their dose of poison either in the smoking rooms or in their own offices—and when all was said and done, it didn’t take that much magic to rid rooms of the smell of tobacco. But Igor insisted on having everything his way, railing about the stench of tobacco, holding up the example of civilized Europe, pressing home the point that it was embarrassing when colleagues visited us from there. (Although I hadn’t noticed the European Others suffering much when they drank vodka at receptions, smoked in their rooms, or, for instance, bought hundreds of suspiciously cheap “licensed” movie DVDs and music CDs in the shops.)

The campaign came to a sudden end when Gesar, after listening benevolently to Igor speaking on his proposal, remarked: “That’s right, everyone should smoke pipes or hookahs, not stinking cigarettes . . .” Igor should have stopped short there and then, but in the heat of the moment he blurted out that hookahs, pipes, and cigars were even worse than cigarettes: “The stench is really horrible!” Gesar’s face darkened and he asked whether from now on, when he wanted to focus on thinking through important problems, he would have to run out into the street with his hookah. And then he asked if there was no difference between the climate in Europe, where you could go outside in your shirtsleeves in December, and the climate in Russia, where even in Moscow minus twenty Celsius was a common occurrence.

After that the subject somehow just folded of its own accord. For a while Igor walked around looking offended and ostentatiously withdrew from any areas where anyone was smoking. But then his enthusiastic endorsement of the healthy lifestyle was replaced by the struggle against the discrimination suffered by Others with low levels of magical Power.

Since I wasn’t expecting a visit from Igor, I smoked unashamedly as I looked through the accumulation of papers.

A schedule of classes for novice Others. That could wait.