“Really?” I asked in surprise.
“Of course. Although that was a long time ago. Then he moved to Russia. St. Petersburg, Moscow . . . Settled in Central Asia. And now he’s back in Moscow again. I wonder where he’ll end up next?”
“I think at this stage Gesar’s lost interest in shifting about.”
Arina laughed.
“Oh, come on Anton. As long as the work’s still interesting, Gesar stays put. But after that—he leaves.”
“He has no time to get bored in Moscow,” I muttered. The very idea that Gesar could leave Moscow and go to France or China, call himself Antoine Guésare or Ge Sa-ro seemed like total and absolute balderdash.
“Maybe so,” Arina agreed easily. “Maybe so . . .”
Our taxi, driven by a taciturn Taiwanese who kept turning round constantly to give us a friendly smile, went through some kind of tunnel and turned right. We drove up to the museum or, rather, a parking lot, beyond which a park began, and further off, against a background of hills, we could see buildings—modern buildings, but in the traditional Chinese style, yellow and turquoise, with pagoda roofs.
Arina settled up with the driver and spoke to him briefly, provoking approving laughter. We bought two tickets and set off along the broad avenue through the park. There were plenty of visitors: European and Asian tourists, Taiwanese as well—represented primarily by school excursions.
“I hope Mr. Fan is working today,” I said. “And that we won’t have to walk round the whole museum looking for him . . . although I really wouldn’t mind taking a look at the precious exhibits. Do you know if there are many magical artifacts among them?”
“Not many,” said Arina, shaking her head. “The Chinese have traditionally kept the applied arts and magic separate. Their most interesting magical artifacts look entirely banal: a pair of chopsticks, for example, a plain-looking fan or a scroll made of strips of bamboo . . .”
I suddenly noticed a young Chinese moving purposefully towards us. The main stream of people was flowing into the museum, but there were some people coming out, and this guy was definitely heading towards us.
“Is that Fan?” I asked.
Arina didn’t get a chance to reply. The young guy stopped in front of us and bowed his head slightly.
“Mr. Anton, Miss Arina. Mr. Fan Wen-yan asks you to wait for him in the Zhishan Garden, in the Orchid Pavilion. Mr. Fan Wen-yan believes that the beauty of that spot is salutary and inspiring for a meeting that flatters him so greatly. Mr. Fan Wen-yan asks you to follow me.”
The young man was speaking Chinese, and he was not an Other. Bowing once again, he set off along the avenue, without even looking to see if we were following him.
Arina and I exchanged glances.
“And Mr. Fan Wen-yan also believes that if any unforeseen situations should arise, it is better for this to happen in the park, and not in the building among the precious exhibits,” Arina laughed. “Well, anyway, it would be impolite to reject his invitation . . .”
Turning off the avenue to the right, we walked into the park, which, in fact, was every bit as interesting as the buildings—it was laid out around a number of pools according to all the rules of art (I don’t know if that hackneyed term “feng shui” is appropriate here, but there was clearly a definite structure to the layout). The ponds were covered with flowers, which I recognized (although I was doubtful at first) as lotuses. The pastoral setting was so idyllic that it seemed unnatural, like some picture that had come to life or the virtual reality of fantasy novels.
About twenty meters from a beautiful pavilion, which really was smothered in orchids and built, naturally, in the traditional Chinese style, the young man stopped. He looked at us and said seriously: “I cannot go any farther. I am sorry.”
I realized why he could not continue to accompany us. Hanging over the pavilion was a Sphere of Inattention—one of the simplest of spells, but absolutely effective as far as humans are concerned. In principle, the small building was still visible to people strolling in the park, but no one kept his eyes fixed on it or tried to go any closer. An unpretentious but efficient means of keeping away prying eyes and ears.
“Thank you,” I said, and Arina and I walked to the pavilion.
Everything had been prepared for our conversation. Waiting for us on an elegant little table were a teapot, cups, candied fruits, and some other kinds of local sweetmeats. Soft red cushions had been thoughtfully arranged on the benches. In addition to the Sphere of Inattention, I detected another five spells to prevent eavesdropping and spying by Others, one more directed against humans—not to distract their attention, but to prevent anyone taking photos or videos—and one with a strange design. At first I suspected that it affected the minds and the vision of people sitting in the pavilion, but having studied it a little I realized it was relatively innocuous. Its entire effect consisted in making the already wonderful view on all sides even more amazing, in addition to awaking in the soul a gentle sadness and sense of peace in the face of nature. I thought for a moment and allowed the spell to affect me. A very elegant and agreeable magic.
“Why, the jokers,” Arina said good-naturedly, looking round the pavilion. She was obviously doing the same as I was—untangling the net of spells. “How many did you spot?”
“Two against people, five against Others, one for our own enjoyment. A very amusing little spell, so Chinese—woven out of air, water and earth . . .”
“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 Tig
er,” 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.
“A terrible . . . er . . . creature,” said Fan. “I’m not sure that the word ‘creature’ suits the case, it’s unlikely that the Tiger has any essential substance as we understand it. But we have to call him something, do we not?”
“You have already encountered him,” said Arina. It wasn’t a question, but Fan nodded.
“Yes, yes, yes. An old, painful story. Eightysomething years ago . . .” He fell silent for a moment and something genuinely heartfelt showed through the affected jollity. “I had a friend. A very good friend, we were inseparable. These days we would be considered lovers, but then the idea never even occurred to anyone—including us. But on the spiritual level we were very close, closer than married couples or brothers.”
Fan put down his cup and looked at Arina.
“He was a Prophet and I was the only one to hear his first prophecy. Prophets often forget what they prophesy and only remember some time later. But Li remembered his prophecy. So we were able to discuss it . . . and decide what to do. Li was greatly concerned that I too had heard the prophecy and was therefore doomed to become the Tiger’s victim.”
“You didn’t think of telling the prophecy to humans?”
“No,” said Fan. “We didn’t. Not a single human has heard it . . . and neither has any Other apart from me. When my time comes, I shall take it with me into the Twilight and bury it there.”
“I see,” Arina said, nodding. After a brief pause, she added: “Those were hard times.”
“There are no easy times,” Fan remarked.
“The very existence of the Celestial Empire as a unitary state was in doubt.”
“The Celestial Empire is now divided,” said Fan.
“But perhaps the outcome could have been worse?” Arina asked insinuatingly.
Fan poured himself some more tea. Then he said: “We knew that if the prophecy remained with us, the Tiger would come. The legends are preserved in the chronicles—and we could surmise why some prophets had preferred to die without telling anyone what they had foreseen in the future. We did not want to die. And we started searching for a way out . . .”
“The simplest way out is to change the prophecy,” said Arina. “I had a similar case. It threatened . . . a very bad future for Russia. We told the prophecy to humans, and then I did something to prevent it from being realized.”
“Then it was not a prophecy, but a prediction,” Fan said, with a shrug. “A prophecy that has been proclaimed to humans cannot be annulled. It will be realized.”
“It was a prophecy and I changed it!” Arina said firmly.
Fan pondered for a moment. Then he looked at Arina in a different way.
“I am very sorry, esteemed Miss Arina. But a prophecy that has reached humans always comes true. The only thing that can be done is to postpone it by destroying the shortest and most obvious route to its realization. But a prophecy that has not been realized in its own time will only accumulate power and strike again, with even graver consequences. I am very sorry.”
Arina’s eyelid twitched. Then red patches appeared on her cheeks.
“That’s nonsense!”
“I am afraid not, Miss Arina. As you can understand, I studied this matter very closely at one time. And what’s more, I continued studying it later. For eighty years I have been collecting all the information I can find about prophecies, the Tiger, the possibility of changing the outcomes of prophecies . . .”
“You can’t know everything!” Arina cried: it was almost the only time I had seen her lose her self-control. “You don’t know my case! The prophecy didn’t happen and it won’t happen.”
“I do not know what it was that you heard in your time and what you did,” said Fan, bowing his head. “And I do not dare to ask, although if you share it with me, I shall be grateful. But ask yourself—is what you tried to avert possible today?”
The only sounds in the silence that followed were the chirping of birds and the chattering of insects in the park. I remembered what Arina had told me.
To be honest, the only thing that raised any doubts was the “tsar.”
But then, prophecies are always allegorical, they are transmitted through the consciousness of the prophet. Arina’s friend who liked rhyming her prophecies couldn’t have said “president,” could she? Or “general secretary”?
“But could the prophecy already have come true?” I asked. “Arina, some things could quite easily be regarded—”
“Shut up!” Arina growled. “Fan, how can the Tiger be killed?”
“He cannot be killed,” Fan said, shrugging again. “The Tiger is the embodiment of the Twilight in the real world. Can you kill the Twilight, Witch?”
“I’m an Enchantress!”
“You have changed your color, but you were, are, and always will be a Witch,” Fan replied calmly. “There is no insult in my words. Let me ask again: can you kill the Twilight?”
“Why does he come, Fan?” I asked quickly, to get in before Arina.
I didn’t think he would answer. But Fan did begin to answer, and with obvious enjoyment—he had probably not had such interested listeners very often.
“The Twilight needs Power. This Power is provided by people, ordinary human beings, and the greater their joy or sorrow, the more Power there is. The Twilight is not cruel, but it demands what it needs. Human joy suits it perfectly well, but it rarely happens that there is more joy than sorrow. Far more often people become indifferent and jaded—and, in that case, the Twilight starts to starve. The blue moss is the Twilight’s simplest and weakest instrument: it absorbs Power and can bolster human emotions. But if there are more and more indifferent people in the world, if good and evil give way to quietude and apathy . . . then the Twilight brings forth the Tiger. Prophets are born constantly, but if the Twilight has sufficient nourishment, they can act as they wish—utter good prophecies or bad ones, conceal them, forget them . . . But if humankind calms down, tells itself that it has achieved a state of equilibrium and calm—then the Tiger comes to the Prophets. He makes no distinction between good and bad prophecies. All he wants is for them to be proclaimed. Sooner or later a Prophet opens the door for great upheavals, grief and joy. And the Twilight sates its appetite once again. It is not malicious. It is simply alive . . . and, like everything living, it wants to eat.”
Fan picked up a small piece of something candied and tossed it into his mouth.
“But the Twilight is simply . . . simply . . .” I faltered to a stop.
“Simply what?” Fan laughed. “Simply another world? Simply another dimension of reality? And we, the Others, who can enter into it, who can simply say ‘burn’ and spout forth flame, or transform our bodies into those of demons, or see the future? Esteemed Anton, you make use of magic and you take all this absolutely for granted. But exactly how do you make use of magic?”
“I enter the Twilight . . . or simply—” I broke off and vowed to myself not to use that word again. “Or I reach out to it . . .”
“And then what? Do you grow cannon instead of arms and enema tubes instead of fingers? How do you fight and heal? How can you talk Chinese, when you have never studied it? Where do you think all of this comes from? From the Twilight? In response to your wishes? What is the Twilight to you, then? A computer with a screen that you can just prod with your finger to get what you want? But a computer was invented by someone, someone made it, and someone wrote the programs for it. A computer has no rational mind and you cannot make it brew you coffee or weed the vegetable patch. But the Twilight docilely shares with you the Power that it needs itself and allows you to perform one trick after another . . .”
“But what for, if it is rational?” I exclaimed.
“The blue moss also eats Power as well as gathering it,” Fan laughed. “The Twilight needs the blue moss for one
purpose. The Tiger for another. And the Others for yet another. But all of us together do the same thing—we stir up humankind, we jolt people, make them do something, invent something, strive for something . . . sometimes they achieve success, sometimes they take a beating. We are all part of the Twilight, its symbiotes if you like. Its hands and feet, eyes and ears. The rakes and spades it uses to cultivate its vegetable patch—humankind. Do you wish to rebel against the Tiger? You will be rebelling against the Twilight. And therefore against yourself, against your own nature, your abilities, your life. The Tiger cannot be killed.”
“Then what did you do?” Arina asked. I looked at her and shuddered—she had aged. No, her camouflage hadn’t disappeared, but now it was only the mask of a beautiful and confident woman on the face of an unhappy, devastated old one.
“We sacrificed to him. A Tiger has no need to kill a Prophet if the Prophet has already proclaimed his prophecy to human beings and thereby set the mechanism working. And if the Prophet is willing to die in order not to reveal the prophecy . . . if the Tiger realizes that really is the case . . . then he leaves. He is not cruel. He does not punish for resistance. All he does is try to achieve a result. If no result is possible—the Tiger loses interest in the Prophet.”
“And you killed your friend to show the Tiger that the prophecy would not reach human ears . . .” Arina whispered.
“No. I was the one who should have died. We had thought it all through . . .” Fan hesitated. “But Li had thought a little further. He deceived me. He arranged things so that I killed him, I killed him in front of the Tiger, while certain that I would die myself. That convinced the Tiger. He realized that Li was sacrificing himself and that I would never insult his heroic deed by repeating what he had said. The Tiger turned and walked away. New Prophets are born in the world all the time, and each of them on one occasion utters something that can turn the human world upside down. The Tiger walked away.” Fan stopped, but then went on after all: “After saying that he felt for me. It was moving. I wanted to die too, but Li had asked me to live. So I had to live.”