I laughed.
‘Well, Arina, that’s all fine and dandy, but how could I have done it?’
‘A tape recorder?’ Arina suggested.
‘A tape recorder is an ancient device for recording and reproducing music …’ I said pensively. ‘Yes, yes, I remember … when I was a kid I had one: you put these cassettes into it, they had this tape coated in iron oxide …’
‘Anton, don’t play with words. Tape recorder, cassette deck, dictaphone – it doesn’t matter what it was! The older generation may underestimate technology, but at least I have enough wits to understand that. You’re young, you used to work with technology. You could have thought of something. Any telephone can record sounds nowadays. Tell me honestly: has the information been preserved?’
‘I think you should be the first to show a bit of frankness,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I hold all the trump cards.’
Arina nodded. She looked at a young waitress running past, carrying food to some table. The girl nodded, offloaded her plates and went dashing to the bar counter.
‘Agreed,’ said Arina. ‘All right, listen.’
‘Are you sure this is the right place for a private conversation?’ I asked. ‘There are plenty of Russian tourists in here.’
‘The waitress is from Riga, and she has excellent Russian too,’ Arina answered. ‘Don’t worry, no one will hear us.’
I hadn’t noticed anything like a Sphere of Negation or any other privacy spell, but I believed Arina. Witches, even ex-witches, have their own magic.
‘Then tell me,’ I said.
‘Anton, the main prophecies must be fulfilled. They absolutely must. The Twilight demands it … life itself demands it.’
‘Is that so?’ I asked in surprise. ‘And I thought the Twilight tried to obstruct the Prophets.’
‘That’s a mistake,’ said Arina, shaking her head. ‘Does it not surprise you that, for all his omnipotence, the Tiger moves so slowly?’
‘Well …’
‘The Tiger is the spur, the lash urging the Prophet on. The Tiger hurries him along, trying to make him pronounce his main prophecy as quickly as possible.’
‘A bold conclusion,’ I said.
The waitress brought us two more beers. She looked slightly bewildered – first, in pubs you’re supposed to buy beer at the bar yourself, and second, Arina hadn’t bothered to pay. I handed the girl a tenner without saying anything.
‘I think we’d better start from the basics. Who is a Prophet?’ Arina asked me. Then she answered her own question: ‘He’s not just an Other who is capable of forecasting the lines of probability, so that he can “look into the future”. At that level all of us can “foresee the future”, to a greater or lesser degree. In the right set of circumstances, even ordinary human beings are capable of similar prescience.’
‘A Prophet is qualitatively different,’ I said. ‘Another kind of Other, pardon the pun.’
‘Ah, but he isn’t,’ Arina laughed. ‘The difference is quantitative. A Prophet reads the lines of probability for the whole world, not only his own or the lines of people close to him. A Prophet informs us which direction humankind will move in, only not in the form of a learned treatise but with just one single fact that at first glance seems insignificant. Take the year 1956, for instance. At the age of sixty-two, the French Prophet André Lafleur utters his first prophecy, his main one – it happened that way because he was initiated late in life … The prophecy is absolutely crazy: “Soon shall the girl Mary shorten skirts and the world shall be adorned with naked legs.” ’
I snorted.
‘There, exactly,’ said Arina. ‘Those who heard the prophecy quite reasonably suspected that André had gone senile and lapsed into lascivious fantasies in his old age. And note – only a year later the first Sputnik was launched into space! But here was a Frenchman muttering something about Mary, who would clip skirts shorter … But then in 1963 Mary Quant – a Londoner, by the way – showed her collection of miniskirts. They shook the world. And the result? The sexual revolution, emancipation, a significant increase in the birth rate in the Old World. So what was more important, the Sputnik or the miniskirt?’
‘The Sputnik,’ I said resentfully, although I myself had defended the importance of miniskirts to Gesar.
Arina laughed.
‘It was all important. The Sputnik was prophesied too, but space flight was a generally anticipated important development. No one foresaw those twenty centimetres of cloth being snipped off, and they could only appreciate how important they were many years later. That’s the way a Prophet works – he foresees great upheavals and forewarns us of them through small events.’
‘Then perhaps you know what was so remarkable about an Australian who died as an infant …’
‘Alistair Maxwell? Yes, I know. The boy’s death broke up his parents’ marriage. In the late 1970s his mother had another child, by another man. That boy lives a perfectly ordinary life … but at the age of fifteen he pulled a little girl who was drowning out of the water. The situation didn’t seem like an emergency, he didn’t even realise that he had actually saved someone’s life. But now that little girl is one of the most powerful enchantresses in the Australian Day Watch. They forecast a great career for her. But if that infant hadn’t died …’
‘I get it,’ I said. ‘It’s just like in the joke.’
‘What joke?’ asked Arina.
‘Well, this guy has died and he asks God: “What was the meaning of my life?” And God answers: “Remember, in 1972 you were travelling in a train and you passed the salt to someone in the restaurant car? Well then …” ’
Arina laughed.
‘Yes, right. Sometimes it can be just like that. But if you really go into them thoroughly, all those strange prophecies can be explained.’
‘And you’ve gone into them.’
‘Yes. It’s important.’
‘All right, prophecies are important,’ I said, nodding. ‘No one’s arguing with that. But does a Prophet really create the future? Does whether he is heard or not really determine the way the world will be? I’ve heard various different theories.’
‘To be honest, I don’t know,’ Arina admitted reluctantly. ‘Maybe the prophecy shouted into the hollow of an old elm tree was fulfilled anyway. And maybe not.’
‘Oak,’ I said. ‘Erasmus entrusted his prophecy to an oak tree. He doesn’t really like elms.’
‘Ah, what a finicky druid …’ Arina laughed. ‘So oak trees are dearer to his heart, are they? I don’t know if a prophecy works without listeners or not, Anton. That’s like the question about whether a tree falling in a remote forest makes any sound or not. Probably not – that’s what most researchers agree. But one thing that’s quite definite is that a prophecy can be changed.’
‘Well now, that’s a real turn-up,’ I said wryly. ‘Everyone’s convinced that prophecies are the ultimate instance of truth, that they’re unchangeable, unlike mere predictions. And only you know the truth.’
‘Yes, only I know it,’ Arina replied perfectly calmly. ‘Because I have already changed prophecies.’
‘Right, from this point on, let me have more detail,’ I told her. I thought for a second and got up. ‘And, you know what … let’s go somewhere else.’
‘Are you going to invite me to a hotel?’ Arina laughed.
‘I don’t think I ought to do that. Let’s sit in the park.’
‘They’re just about to close it for the night,’ replied Arina. ‘But then, what difference does that make to us?’