The Queen's Gambit

by Walter Tevis

  It was three-thirty when they finished. Kaplan had played with maddening slowness, and Beth had gotten up from the table for several moves, to walk off her energy. By the time she brought the score sheet to the desk with her name circled on it, most of the other games were over and the tournament was breaking up for supper. There would be a round at eight o’clock that evening, then three more on Saturday. The final round would be on Sunday morning at eleven.

  Beth went to the girls’ room and washed her face and hands; it was surprising how grubby her skin felt after three games of chess. She looked at herself in the mirror, under the harsh lights, and saw what she had always seen: the round uninteresting face and the colorless hair. But there was something different. The cheeks were flushed with color now, and her eyes looked more alive than she had ever seen them. For once in her life she liked what she saw in the mirror.

  Back outside by the front table the two young men who had registered her were putting up a notice on the bulletin board. Some players had gathered around it, the handsome one among them. She walked over. The lettering on top, done with a Magic Marker, read UNDEFEATED. There were four names on the list. At the bottom was HARMON: she held her breath for a moment when she saw it. And at the top of the list was the name BELTIK.

  “You’re Harmon, aren’t you?” It was the handsome one.

  “Yes.”

  “Keep it up, kid,” he said, smiling.

  Just then the young man who had tried to put her in the Beginners Section shouted from the table, “Harmon!”

  She turned.

  “Looks like you were right, Harmon,” he said.

  ***

  Mrs. Wheatley was eating a potroast TV dinner with whipped potatoes when Beth came in. Bat Masterson was on, very loudly. “Yours is in the oven,” Mrs. Wheatley said. She was in the chintz chair with the aluminum plate on a tray in her lap. Her stockings were rolled down to the tops of her black pumps.

  During the commercial, while Beth was eating the carrots from her TV dinner, Mrs. Wheatley asked, “How did you do, honey?” and Beth said, “I won three games.”

  “That’s nice,” Mrs. Wheatley said, not taking her eyes from the elderly gentleman who was telling about the relief he had gotten from Haley’s M.O.

  ***

  That evening Beth was on Board Six opposite a homely young man named Klein. His rating was 1794. Some of the games printed in Chess Review were from players with lower ratings than that.

  Beth was White, and she played pawn to king four, hoping for the Sicilian. She knew the Sicilian better than anything else. But Klein played pawn to king four and then fianchettoed his king’s bishop, setting it over in the corner above his castled king. She wasn’t quite sure but thought this was the kind of opening called “Irregular.”

  In the middle game, things got complex. Beth was unsure what to do and decided to retreat a bishop. She set her index finger on the piece and immediately saw she had better move pawn to queen four. She reached over to the queen pawn.

  “Sorry,” Klein said. “Touch move.”

  She looked at him.

  “You have to move the bishop,” he said.

  She could see in his face he was glad to say it. He had probably seen what she could do if she moved the pawn.

  She shrugged and tried to act unconcerned, but inside she was feeling something she hadn’t felt before in a chess game. She was frightened. She moved the bishop to bishop four, sat back and folded her hands in her lap. Her stomach was in a knot. She should have moved the pawn.

  She looked at Klein’s face as he studied the board. After a moment she saw a little malicious grin. He pushed his queen’s pawn to the fifth square, punched his clock smartly and folded his arms across his chest.

  He was going to get one of her bishops. And abruptly her fear was replaced by anger. She leaned over the board and placed her cheeks against her palms, studying intently.

  It took her almost ten minutes, but she found it. She moved and sat back.

  Klein hardly seemed to notice. He took the bishop as she hoped he would. Beth advanced her queen rook pawn, way over on the other side of the board, and Klein grunted slightly but moved quickly, pushing the queen pawn forward again. Beth brought her knight over, covering the pawn’s next step, and more important, attacking Klein’s rook. He moved the rook. Inside Beth’s stomach something was beginning to uncoil. Her vision seemed extremely sharp, as though she could read the finest print from across the room. She moved the knight, attacking the rook again.

  Klein looked at her, annoyed. He studied the board and moved the rook, to the very square Beth had known, two moves ago, that he would move to. She brought her queen out to bishop five, right above Klein’s castled king.

  Still looking annoyed and sure of himself, Klein brought a knight over to defend. Beth picked up her queen, her face flushing, and took the pawn in front of the king, sacrificing her queen.

  He stared and took the queen. There was nothing else he could do to get out of check.

  Beth brought her bishop out for another check. Klein interposed the pawn, as she knew he would. “That’s mate in two,” Beth said quietly.

  Klein stared at her, his face furious. “What do you mean?” he said.

  Beth’s voice was still quiet. “The rook comes over for the next check and then the knight mates.”

  He scowled. “My queen—”

  “Your queen’ll be pinned,” she said, “after the king moves.”

  He looked back to the board and stared at the position. Then he said, “Shit!” He did not turn over his king or offer to shake Beth’s hand. He got up from the table and walked away, jamming his hands into his pockets.

  Beth took her pencil and circled HARMON on her score sheet.

  When she left at ten o’clock there were three names on the UNDEFEATED list. HARMON was still at the bottom. BELTIK was still at the top.

  In her room that night she could not get to sleep because of the way the games kept playing themselves over and over in her head long after she had stopped enjoying them.

  After several hours of this she got out of bed and in her blue pajamas walked over to the dormer windows. She raised a shade and looked out at the newly bare trees by the light of the street lamp, and at the dark houses beyond the trees. The street was silent and empty. There was a sliver of a moon, partly obscured by clouds. The air was chilly.

  Beth had learned not to believe in God during her time in Methuen’s chapel, and she never prayed. But now she said, under her breath, Please God let me play Beltik and checkmate him.

  In her desk drawer, in the toothbrush holder, were seventeen green pills, and there were more in a little box on her closet shelf. She had thought earlier about taking two of them to help her doze off. But she did not. She went back to bed, exhausted now and her mind blank, and slept soundly.

  ***

  On Saturday morning she had hoped to be playing someone with a rating over 1800. The man at registration had said there were three who were that high. But on the pairings she was shown playing Black against someone named Townes with a rating of 1724. That was lower than her last game, the evening before. She went to the desk and asked about it.

  “That’s the breaks, Harmon,” the man in the white shirt said. “Consider yourself lucky.”

  “I want to play the best,” Beth said.

  “You have to get a rating before that happens,” the young man said.

  “How do I get a rating?”

  “You play thirty games in USCF tournaments and then wait four months. That’s how you get a rating.”

  “That’s too long.”

  The man leaned toward her. “How old are you, Harmon?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “You’re the youngest person in the room. You can wait for a rating.”

  Beth was furious. “I want to play Beltik.”

  The other man at the table spoke up. “If you win your next three games, honey. And if Beltik does the same.”

 
“I’ll win them,” Beth said.

  “No, you won’t, Harmon,” the first young man said. “You’ll have to play Sizemore and Goldmann first, and you can’t beat both of them.”

  “Sizemore and Goldmann shit,” the other man said. “The guy you’re playing now is underrated. He plays first board for the university team and last month he came in fifth in Las Vegas. Don’t let the rating fool you.”

  “What’s in Las Vegas?” Beth asked.

  “The U.S. Open.”

  ***

  Beth went to Board Four. The man seated behind the white pieces was smiling as she came up. It was the tall, handsome one. Beth felt a bit rattled to see him. He looked like some kind of movie star.

  “Hi, Harmon,” he said, holding out his hand. “It looks like we’ve been stalking each other.”

  She shook his big hand awkwardly and seated herself. There was a pause for a long minute before he said, “Do you want to start my clock?”

  “Sorry,” she said. She reached out to start it, almost knocked it over but caught it in time. “Sorry,” she said again, almost inaudibly. She pressed the button and his clock started ticking. She looked down at the board, her cheeks burning.

  He played pawn to king four, and she replied with the Sicilian. He continued with book moves and she followed with the Dragon variation. They traded pawns in the center. Gradually she got her composure back, playing these mechanical moves, and she looked across the board at him. He was attentive to the pieces, scowling. But even with a scowl on his face and his hair slightly mussed he was handsome. Something in Beth’s stomach felt strange as she looked at him, with his broad shoulders and clear complexion and his brow wrinkled in concentration.

  He surprised her by bringing his queen out. It was a bold move, and she studied it for a while and saw that there wasn’t any weakness to it. She brought out her own queen. He moved a knight to the fifth rank, and Beth moved a knight to the fifth rank. He checked with a bishop, and she defended with a pawn. He retreated the bishop. She was feeling light now, and her fingers with the pieces were nimble. Both players began moving fast but easily. She gave a non-threatening check to his king, and he pulled away delicately and began advancing pawns. She stopped that handily with a pin and then feinted on the queenside with a rook. He was undeceived by the feint and, smiling, removed her pin, and on his next move continued the pawn advances. She retreated, hiding her king in a queenside castle. She felt somehow spacious and amused, yet her face remained serious. They continued their dance.

  It made her sad in a way when she eventually saw how to beat him. It was after the nineteenth move, and she felt herself resisting it as it opened up in her mind, hating to let go of the pleasant ballet they had danced together. But there it was: four moves and he would have to lose a rook or worse. She hesitated and made the first move of the sequence.

  He didn’t see what was happening until two moves later, when he frowned suddenly and said, “Jesus Christ, Harmon, I’m going to drop a rook!” She loved his voice; she loved the way he said it. He shook his head in mock bafflement; she loved that.

  Some players who had finished their game early had gathered around the board, and a couple were whispering about the maneuver Beth had brought off.

  Townes went on playing for five more moves, and Beth felt genuinely sorry for him when he resigned, tipping his king over and saying “Damn!” But he stood up, stretched and smiled down at her. “You’re one hell of a chess player, Harmon,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  He whistled. “Where do you go to school?”

  “Fairfield Junior.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know where that is.”

  He was even better-looking than a movie star.

  An hour later she drew Goldmann and Board Three. She walked into the tournament room at exactly eleven, and the people standing stopped talking when she came in. Everyone looked at her. She heard someone whisper, “Thirteen fucking years old,” and immediately the thought came into her mind, along with the exultant feeling the whispered voice had given her: I could have done this at eight.

  Goldmann was tough and silent and slow. He was a short, heavy man, and he played the black pieces like a gruff general trained in defense. For the first hour everything that Beth tried he got out of. Every piece he had was protected; it seemed as though there were double the usual complement of pawns to protect them.

  Beth got fidgety during the long waits for him to move; once after she had advanced a bishop she got up, and went to the bathroom. Something was hurting in her abdomen, and she felt a bit faint. She washed her face with cold water and dried it on a paper towel. As she was leaving, the girl she’d played her first game with came in. Packer. Packer looked glad to see her. “You’re moving right on up, aren’t you?” she said.

  “So far,” Beth said, feeling another twinge in her belly.

  “I heard you’re playing Goldmann.”

  “Yes,” Beth said. “I have to get back.”

  “Sure,” Packer said, “sure. Beat his ass, will you? Just beat his ass.”

  Suddenly Beth grinned. “Okay,” she said.

  When she got back she saw that Goldmann had moved, and her clock was ticking. He sat there in his dark suit looking bored. She felt refreshed and ready. She seated herself and put everything out of her mind except the sixty-four squares in front of her. After a minute she saw that if she attacked on both flanks simultaneously, as Morphy did sometimes, Goldmann would have difficulty playing it safe. She played pawn to queen rook four.

  It worked. After five moves she had opened his king up a little, and after three more she was at his throat. She paid no attention to Goldmann himself or to the crowd or to the feeling in her lower abdomen or the sweat that had broken out on her brow. She played against the board only, with lines of force etched for her into its surface: the small stubborn fields for the pawns, the enormous one for the queen, the gradations in between. Just before his clock was about to run out she checkmated him.

  When she circled her name on the score sheet she looked again at the number of Goldmann’s rating. It was 1997. People were applauding.

  She went directly to the girls’ room and discovered that she had begun to menstruate. For a moment she felt, looking at the redness in the water below her, as though something catastrophic had happened. Had she bled on the chair at Board Three? Were the people there staring at the stains of her blood? But she saw with relief that her cotton panties were barely spotted. She thought abruptly of Jolene. If it hadn’t been for Jolene, she would have had no idea what was happening. No one else had said a word about this—certainly not Mrs. Wheatley. She felt a sudden warmth for Jolene, remembering that Jolene had also told her what to do “in an emergency.” Beth began pulling a long sheet from the roll of toilet paper and folding it into a tightly packed rectangle. The pain in her abdomen had eased. She was menstruating, and she had just beaten Goldmann: 1997. She put the folded paper into her panties, pulled them up tight, straightened her skirt and walked confidently back into the playing area.

  ***

  Beth had seen Sizemore before; he was a small, ugly, thin-faced man who smoked cigarettes continuously. Someone had told her he was State Champion before Beltik. Beth would play him on Board Two in the room with the sign reading “Top Boards.”

  Sizemore wasn’t there yet, but next to her, at Board One, Beltik was facing in her direction. Beth looked at him and then looked away. It was a few minutes before three. The lights in this smaller room—bare bulbs under a metal protection basket—seemed brighter than those in the big room, brighter than they had been in the morning, and for a moment the shine on the varnished floor with its painted red lines was blinding.

  Sizemore came in, combing his hair in a nervous, quick way. A cigarette hung from his thin lips. As he pulled his chair back, Beth felt herself becoming very tight.

  “Ready?” Sizemore asked gruffly, slipping the comb into his shirt pocket.

 
; “Yes,” she said and punched his clock.

  He played pawn to king four and then pulled out his comb and started biting on it the way a person bites on the eraser end of a pencil. Beth played pawn to queen bishop four.

  By the middle game Sizemore had begun combing his hair after each move. He hardly ever looked at Beth but concentrated on the board, wriggling in his seat sometimes as he combed and parted and reparted his hair. The game was even, and there were no weaknesses on either side. There was nothing to do but find the best squares for her knights and bishops and wait. She would move, write the move down on her score sheet and sit back in her chair. After a while a crowd began to gather at the ropes. She glanced at them from time to time. There were more people watching her play than watching Beltik. She kept looking at the board, waiting for something to open up. Once when she looked up she saw Annette Packer standing at the back. Packer smiled and Beth nodded to her.

  Back at the board, Sizemore brought a knight to queen five, posting it in the best place for a knight. Beth frowned; she couldn’t dislodge it. The pieces were thick in the middle of the board and for a moment she lost the sense of them. There were occasional twinges in her abdomen. She could feel the thick batch of paper between her thighs. She adjusted herself in her chair and squinted at the board. This wasn’t good. Sizemore was creeping up on her. She looked at his face. He had put away his comb and was looking at the pieces in front of him with satisfaction. Beth leaned over the table, digging her fists into her cheeks, and tried to penetrate the position. Some people in the crowd were whispering. With an effort she drove distractions from her mind. It was time to fight back. If she moved the knight on the left… No. If she opened the long diagonal for her white bishop… That was it. She pushed the pawn up, and the bishop’s power was tripled. The picture started to become clearer. She leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath.