The Queen's Gambit

by Walter Tevis

  It took him fourteen moves to trap her queen. She tried to play on, queenless, to ignore the mortal loss, but he reached out and stopped her hand from touching the pawn she was about to move. “You resign now,” he said. His voice was rough.

  “Resign?”

  “That’s right, child. When you lose the queen that way, you resign.”

  She stared at him, not comprehending. He let go of her hand, picked up her black king, and set it on its side on the board. It rolled back and forth for a moment and then lay still.

  “No,” she said.

  “Yes. You have resigned the game.”

  She wanted to hit him with something. “You didn’t tell me that in the rules.”

  “It’s not a rule. It’s sportsmanship.”

  She knew now what he meant, but she did not like it. “I want to finish,” she said. She picked up the king and set it back on its square.

  “No.”

  “You’ve got to finish,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows and got up. She had never seen him stand in the basement—only out in the halls when he was sweeping or in the classrooms when he washed the blackboards. He had to stoop a bit now to keep his head from hitting the rafters on the low ceiling. “No,” he said. “You lost.”

  It wasn’t fair. She had no interest in sportsmanship. She wanted to play and to win. She wanted to win more than she had ever wanted anything. She said a word she had not said since her mother died: “Please.”

  “Game’s over,” he said.

  She stared at him in fury. “You greedy…”

  He let his arms drop straight at his sides and said slowly, “No more chess. Get out.”

  If only she were bigger. But she wasn’t. She got up from the board and walked to the stairs while the janitor watched her in silence.

  ***

  On Tuesday when she went down the hall to the basement door carrying the erasers, she found that the door was locked. She pushed against it twice with her hip, but it wouldn’t budge. She knocked, softly at first and then loudly, but there was no sound from the other side. It was horrible. She knew he was in there sitting at the board, that he was just being angry at her from the last time, but there was nothing she could do about it. When she brought back the erasers, Miss Graham didn’t even notice they hadn’t been cleaned or that Beth was back sooner than usual.

  On Thursday she was certain it would be the same, but it wasn’t. The door was open, and when she went down the stairs, Mr. Shaibel acted as though nothing had happened. The pieces were set up. She cleaned the erasers hurriedly and seated herself at the board. Mr. Shaibel had moved his king’s pawn by the time she got there. She played her king’s pawn, moving it two squares forward. She would not make any mistakes this time.

  He responded to her move quickly, and she immediately replied. They said nothing to each other, but kept moving. Beth could feel the tension, and she liked it.

  On the twentieth move Mr. Shaibel advanced a knight when he shouldn’t have and Beth was able to get a pawn to the sixth rank. He brought the knight back. It was a wasted move and she felt a thrill when she saw him do it. She traded her bishop for the knight. Then, on the next move, she pushed the pawn again. It would become a queen on the next move.

  He looked at it sitting there and then reached out angrily and toppled his king. Neither of them said anything. It was her first win. All of the tension was gone, and what Beth felt inside herself was as wonderful as anything she had ever felt in her life.

  ***

  She found she could miss lunch on Sundays, and no one paid any attention. That gave her three hours with Mr. Shaibel, until he left for home at two-thirty. They did not talk, either of them. He always played the white pieces, moving first, and she the black. She had thought about questioning this but decided not to.

  One Sunday, after a game he had barely managed to win, he said to her, “You should learn the Sicilian Defense.”

  “What’s that?” she asked irritably.

  She was still smarting from the loss. She had beaten him two games last week.

  “When White moves pawn to queen four, Black does this.” He reached down and moved the white pawn two squares up the board, his almost invariable first move. Then he picked up the pawn in front of the black queen’s bishop and set it down two squares up toward the middle. It was the first time he had ever shown her anything like this.

  “Then what?” she said.

  He picked up the king’s knight and set it below and to the right of the pawn. “Knight to KB 3.”

  “What’s KB 3?”

  “King’s bishop 3. Where I just put the knight.”

  “The squares have names?”

  He nodded impassively. She sensed that he was unwilling to give up even this much information. “If you play well, they have names.”

  She leaned forward. “Show me.”

  He looked down at her. “No. Not now.”

  This infuriated her. She understood well enough that a person likes to keep his secrets. She kept hers. Nevertheless, she wanted to lean across the board and slap his face and make him tell her. She sucked in her breath. “Is that the Sicilian Defense?”

  He seemed relieved that she had dropped the subject of the names of the squares. “There’s more,” he said. He went on with it, showing her the basic moves and some variations. But he did not use the names of the squares. He showed her the Levenfish Variation and the Najdorf Variation and told her to go over them. She did, without a single mistake.

  But when they played a real game afterward, he pushed his queen’s pawn forward, and she could see immediately that what he had just taught her was useless in this situation. She glared at him across the board, feeling that if she had had a knife, she could have stabbed him with it. Then she looked back to the board and moved her own queen’s pawn forward, determined to beat him.

  He moved the pawn next to his queen’s pawn, the one in front of the bishop. He often did this. “Is that one of those things? Like the Sicilian Defense?” she asked.

  “Openings.” He did not look at her; he was watching the board.

  “Is it?”

  He shrugged. “The Queen’s Gambit.”

  She felt better. She had learned something more from him. She decided not to take the offered pawn, to leave the tension on the board. She liked it like that. She liked the power of the pieces, exerted along files and diagonals. In the middle of the game, when pieces were everywhere, the forces crisscrossing the board thrilled her. She brought out her king’s knight, feeling its power spread.

  In twenty moves she had won both his rooks, and he resigned.

  She rolled over in bed, put a pillow over her head to block out the light from under the corridor door and began to think how you could use a bishop and a rook together to make a sudden check on the king. If you moved the bishop, the king would be in check, and the bishop would be free to do whatever it wanted to on the next move—even take the queen. She lay there for quite a while, thinking excitedly of this powerful attack. Then she took the pillow off and rolled over on her back and made the chessboard on the ceiling and played over all her games with Mr. Shaibel, one at a time. She saw two places where she might have created the rook-bishop situation she had just invented. In one of them she could have forced it by a double threat, and in the other she could probably have sneaked it in. She replayed those two games in her mind with the new moves, and won them both. She smiled happily to herself and fell asleep.

  ***

  The Arithmetic teacher gave the eraser cleaning to another student, saying that Beth needed a rest. It wasn’t fair, because Beth still had perfect grades in Arithmetic, but there was nothing she could do about it. She sat in class when the little red-haired boy went out of the room each day with the erasers, doing her meaningless additions and subtractions with a trembling hand. She wanted to play chess more desperately every day.

  On Tuesday and Wednesday she took only one pill and saved the other. On Thursday she w
as able to go to sleep after playing chess in her mind for an hour or so, and she saved the day’s two pills. She did the same thing on Friday. All day Saturday, doing her work in the cafeteria kitchen and in the afternoon during the Christian movie in the library and the Personal Improvement Talk before dinner, she could feel a little glow whenever she wanted to, knowing that she had six pills in her toothbrush holder.

  That night, after lights out, she took them all, one by one, and waited. The feeling, when it came, was delicious—a kind of easy sweetness in her belly and a loosening in the tight parts of her body. She kept herself awake as long as she could to enjoy the warmth inside her, the deep chemical happiness.

  On Sunday when Mr. Shaibel asked where she had been, she was surprised that he cared. “They wouldn’t let me out of class,” she said.

  He nodded. The chessboard was set up, and she saw to her surprise that the white pieces were facing her side and that the milk crate was already in place. “Do I move first?” she said, incredulous.

  “Yes. From now on we take turns. It’s the way the game should be played.”

  She seated herself and moved the king’s pawn. Mr. Shaibel wordlessly moved his queen bishop’s pawn. She hadn’t forgotten the moves. She never forgot chess moves. He played the Levenfish Variation; she kept her eyes on his bishop’s command of the long diagonal, the way it was waiting to pounce. And she found a way to neutralize it on the seventeenth move. She was able to trade her own, weaker bishop for it. Then she moved in with her knight, brought a rook out, and had him mated in ten more moves.

  It had been simple—merely a matter of keeping her eyes open and visualizing the ways the game could go.

  The checkmate took him by surprise; she caught the king on the back rank, reaching her arm all the way across the board and setting the rook crisply on the mating square. “Mate,” she said levelly.

  Mr. Shaibel seemed different today. He did not scowl as he always did when she beat him. He leaned forward and said, “I’ll teach you chess notation.”

  She looked up at him.

  “The names of the squares. I’ll teach you now.”

  She blinked. “Am I good enough now?”

  He started to say something and stopped. “How old are you, child?”

  “Eight.”

  “Eight years old.” He leaned forward—as far as his huge paunch would permit. “To tell you the truth of it, child, you are astounding.”

  She did not understand what he was saying.

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Shaibel reached down on the floor for a nearly empty pint bottle. He tilted his head back and drank from it.

  “Is that whiskey?” Beth asked.

  “Yes, child. And don’t tell.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Teach me chess notation.”

  He set the bottle back on the floor. Beth followed it for a moment with her eyes, wondering what whiskey would taste like and what it would feel like when you drank it. Then she turned her gaze and her attention back to the board with its thirty-two pieces, each exerting its own silent force.

  ***

  Sometime in the middle of the night she was awakened. Someone was sitting on the edge of her bed. She stiffened.

  “Take it easy,” Jolene whispered. “It’s only me.”

  Beth said nothing, just lay there and waited.

  “Thought you might like trying something fun,” Jolene said. She reached a hand under the sheet and laid it gently on Beth’s belly. Beth was on her back. The hand stayed there, and Beth’s body remained stiff.

  “Don’t be uptight,” Jolene whispered. “I ain’t gonna hurt nothing.” She giggled softly. “I’m just horny. You know what it’s like to be horny?”

  Beth did not know.

  “Just relax. I’m just going to rub a little. It’ll feel good, if you let it.”

  Beth turned her head toward the corridor door. It was shut. The light, as usual, came under it. She could hear distant voices, down at the desk.

  Jolene’s hand was moving downward. Beth shook her head. “Don’t…” she whispered.

  “Hush now,” Jolene said. Her hand moved down farther, and one finger began to rub up and down. It did not hurt, but something in Beth resisted it. She felt herself perspiring. “Ah shit,” Jolene said. “I bet that feels good.” She squirmed a little closer to Beth and took Beth’s hand with her free one, pulling it toward her. “You touch me, too,” she said.

  Beth let her hand go limp. Jolene guided it up under her nightgown until the fingers grazed a place that felt warm and damp.

  “Come on now, press a little,” Jolene whispered. The intensity in the whispering voice was frightening. Beth did as she was told and pressed harder.

  “Come on, baby,” Jolene whispered, “move it up and down. Like this.” She started moving her finger on Beth. It was terrifying. Beth rubbed Jolene a few times, trying hard, concentrating on just doing it. Her face was wet with sweat and her free hand was clutching at the sheet, squeezing it with all her might.

  Then Jolene’s face was against hers and her arm around Beth’s chest. “Faster,” Jolene whispered. “Faster.”

  “No,” Beth said aloud, terrified. “No, I don’t want to.” She pulled her hand away.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jolene said aloud.

  Footsteps came running up the hallway, and the door opened. Light streamed in. It was one of the night people whom Beth didn’t know. The lady stood there for a long minute. Everything was quiet. Jolene was gone. Beth didn’t dare move to see if she was back in her own bed. Finally the woman left. Beth looked over and saw the outline of Jolene’s body back in bed. Beth had three pills in the drawer; she took all three. Then she lay on her back and waited for the bad taste to go away.

  The next day in the cafeteria, Beth felt wretched from not sleeping.

  “You are the ugliest white girl ever,” Jolene said, in a stage whisper. She had come up to Beth in the line for the little boxes of cereal. “Your nose is ugly and your face is ugly and your skin is like sandpaper. You white trash cracker bitch.”

  Jolene went on, head high, to the scrambled eggs.

  Beth said nothing, knowing that it was true.

  ***

  King, knight, pawn. The tensions on the board were enough to warp it. Then whack! Down came the queen. Rooks at the bottom of the board, hemmed in at first, but ready, building pressure and then removing the pressure in a single move. In General Science, Miss Hadley had spoken of magnets, of “lines of force.” Beth, nearly asleep with boredom, had waked up suddenly. Lines of force: bishops on diagonals; rooks on files.

  The seats in a classroom could be like the squares. If the redhaired boy named Ralph were a knight, she could pick him up and move him two seats up and one over, setting him on the empty seat next to Denise. This would check Bertrand, who sat in the front row and was, she decided, the king. She smiled, thinking of it. Jolene and she had not spoken for over a week, and Beth had not let herself cry. She was almost nine years old, and she didn’t need Jolene. It didn’t matter how she felt about it. She didn’t need Jolene.

  ***

  “Here,” Mr. Shaibel said. He handed her something in a brown paper bag. It was noon on Sunday. She slipped the bag open. In it was a heavy paperback book—Modern Chess Openings.

  Incredulously, she began to turn the pages. It was filled with long vertical columns of chess notations. There were little chessboard diagrams and chapter heads like “Queen’s Pawn Openings” and “Indian Defense Systems.” She looked up.

  He was scowling at her. “It’s the best book for you,” he said. “It will tell you what you want to know.”

  She said nothing but sat down on her milk crate behind the board, holding the book tightly in her lap, and waited to play.

  ***

  English was the dullest class, with Mr. Espero’s slow voice and the poets with names like John Greenleaf Whittier and William Cullen Bryant. “Whither, midst falling dew,/While glow the heavens with the last steps of day…” It wa
s stupid. And he read every word aloud, with care.

  She held Modern Chess Openings under her desk while Mr. Espero read. She went through variations one at a time, playing them out in her head. By the third day the notations—P-K4, N-KB3—leapt into her quick mind as solid pieces on real squares. She saw them easily; there was no need for a board. She could sit there with Modern Chess Openings in her lap, on the blue serge pleated skirt of the Methuen Home, and while Mr. Espero droned on about the enlargement of the spirit that great poetry gives us or read aloud lines like “To him who in the love of nature holds/communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language,” the moves of chess games clicked into place before her half-shut eyes. In the back of the book were continuations down to the very end of some of the classic games, to twenty-seventh-move resignations or to draws on the fortieth, and she had learned to put the pieces through their entire ballet, sometimes catching her breath at the elegance of a combination attack or of a sacrifice or the restrained balance of forces in a position. And always her mind was on the win, or on the potential for the win.

  “‘For his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness/and a smile and eloquence of beauty…’” read Mr. Espero, while Beth’s mind danced in awe to the geometrical rococo of chess, rapt, enraptured, drowning in the grand permutations as they opened to her soul, and her soul opened to them.

  ***

  “Cracker!” Jolene hissed as they left History.

  “Nigger,” Beth hissed back.

  Jolene stopped and turned to stare at her.

  ***

  The following Saturday, Beth took six pills and gave herself up to their sweet chemistry, holding one hand on her belly and the other on her cunt. That word she knew about. It was one of the few things Mother had taught her before crashing the Chevy. “Wipe yourself,” Mother would say in the bathroom. “Be sure to wipe your cunt.” Beth moved her fingers up and down, the way Jolene had. It didn’t feel good. Not to her. She took her hand away and fell back into the mental ease of the pills. Maybe she was too young. Jolene was four years older and had fuzzy hair growing there. Beth had felt it.