by Walter Tevis
“Intuition doesn’t come from books. I think it’s because you don’t like Manuel.”
“Manuel’s all right,” Beth said, “but he doesn’t come by to see me.”
“That’s irrelevant,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “You need to relax. There’s not another player in the world as gifted as you are. I haven’t the remotest idea what faculties a person uses in order to play chess well, but I am convinced that relaxation can only improve them.”
Beth said nothing. She had been furious for several days. She did not like Mexico City or this enormous concrete hotel with its cracked tiles and leaky faucets. She did not like the food in the hotel, but she did not want to eat alone in restaurants. Mrs. Wheatley had gone out for lunch and dinner every day with Manuel, who owned a green Dodge and seemed to be always at her disposal.
“Why don’t you have lunch with us?” Mrs. Wheatley said. “We can drop you off afterward and you can study then.”
Beth started to answer, when there was a knock at the door. It was room service with Mrs. Wheatley’s margarita. Beth signed for it while Mrs. Wheatley took a few thoughtful sips and stared out the window at the sunlight. “I really haven’t been well lately,” Mrs. Wheatley said, squinting.
Beth looked at her coolly. Mrs. Wheatley was pale and clearly overweight. She held the glass by the stem in one hand while her other hand fluttered at her thick waist. There was something deeply pathetic about her, and Beth’s heart softened. “I don’t want lunch,” Beth said, “but you can drop me off at the zoo. I’ll take a cab back.”
Mrs. Wheatley hardly seemed to hear, but after a moment she turned to Beth, still holding the glass in the same way, and smiled vaguely. “That’ll be nice, dear,” she said.
***
Beth spent a long time looking at the Galapagos turtles—big, lumbering creatures in permanent slow motion. One of the keepers had dumped a bushel of wet-looking lettuce and overripe tomatoes into their pen and the five of them pushed through the pile as a group, munching and trampling, their feet like the dusty feet of elephants and their stupid innocent faces intent on something beyond vision or food.
While she was standing by the fence a vendor came by with a cart of iced beer and, hardly thinking, she said, “Cerveza Corona, por favor,” and held out a five-peso note. The man flipped off the bottle top and poured the drink into a paper cup with an Aztec Eagle logo. “Muchisimas gracias,” she said. It was her first beer since high school; in the hot Mexican sun, it tasted wonderful. She drank it quickly. A few minutes later she saw another vendor standing by a circle of red flowers; she bought another beer. She knew she should not be doing this; the tournament started tomorrow. She did not need liquor. Nor tranquilizers. She had not had a green pill for several months now. But she drank the beer. It was three in the afternoon, and the sun was ferocious. The zoo was full of women, most of them in dark rebozos, with small dark-eyed children. What few men there were gave Beth significant looks, but she ignored them, and none of them tried to speak to her. Despite the Mexican reputation for gaiety and abandon, it was a quiet place, and the crowd seemed more like the crowd at a museum. There were flowers everywhere.
She finished her beer, bought another and continued walking. She was beginning to feel high. She passed more trees, more flowers, cages with sleeping chimpanzees. Around a corner she came face to face with a family of gorillas. Inside the cage the huge male and the baby were asleep head to head with their black bodies pressed against the bars in front. In the middle of the cage the female leaned philosophically against an enormous truck tire, scowling and biting a fingertip. Standing on the asphalt outside the cage was a human family, also a mother, father and child, watching the gorillas attentively. They were not Mexicans. It was the man who caught Beth’s attention. She recognized his face.
He was a short, heavy man, not unlike a gorilla himself, with jutting brow ridges, bushy eyebrows, coarse black hair and an impassive look. Beth stiffened, holding her paper cup of beer. She felt her cheeks flushing. The man was Vasily Borgov, Chess Champion of the World. There was no mistaking the grim Russian face, the authoritarian scowl. She had seen it on the cover of Chess Review several times, once with the same black suit and splashy green-and-gold tie.
Beth stared for a full minute. She had not known Borgov would be at this tournament. She had already received her board assignment by mail: it was Board Nine. Borgov would be Board One. She felt a sudden chill at the back of her neck and looked down at the beer in her hand. She raised it to her mouth and finished it, resolving it would be her last until after the tournament. Looking at the Russian again, she panicked; would he recognize her? He must not see her drinking. He was looking into the cage as though waiting for the gorilla to move a pawn. The gorilla was clearly lost in her own thoughts, ignoring everyone. Beth envied her.
Beth had no more beer that day and went to bed early, but she was awakened by Mrs. Wheatley’s arrival, sometime in the middle of the night. Mrs. Wheatley coughed a good deal while she was undressing in the darkened room. “Go ahead and turn the light on,” Beth said. “I’m awake.”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Wheatley gasped between coughs. “I seem to have a virus.” She turned the bathroom light on and partially closed the door. Beth looked at the little Japanese clock on the nightstand. It was ten after four. The sounds she made undressing—the rustling and partly suppressed coughing—were infuriating. Beth’s first chess game would begin in six hours. She lay in bed furious and tense, waiting for Mrs. Wheatley to be quiet.
***
Marenco was a somber little dark-skinned man in a dazzling canary-colored shirt. He spoke almost no English and Beth no Portuguese; they began playing without preliminary conversation. Beth did not feel like talking, anyway. Her eyes were scratchy, and her body was uncomfortable all over. She had felt generally unpleasant from the time their plane landed in Mexico, as though she were on the verge of developing an illness that she never quite got, and she had not gone back to sleep the night before. Mrs. Wheatley had coughed in her sleep and muttered and rasped, while Beth tried to force herself to relax, to ignore the distractions. She did not have any green pills with her. There were three left, but they were in Kentucky. She lay on her back with her arms straight at her sides as she had as an eight-year-old trying to sleep by the hallway door at Methuen. Now, sitting on a straight wooden chair in front of a long tableful of chessboards in the ballroom of a Mexican hotel, she felt irritated and a bit dizzy. Marenco had just opened with pawn to king four. Her clock was ticking. She shrugged and played pawn to queen’s bishop four, trusting the formal maneuvers of the Sicilian to keep her steady until she got into the game. Marenco brought the king’s knight out with civil orthodoxy. She pushed the queen pawn to the fourth rank; he exchanged pawns. She began to relax as her mind moved away from her body and onto the tableau of forces in front of her.
By eleven-thirty she had him down by two pawns, and just after noon he resigned. They had got nowhere close to an endgame; when Marenco stood up and offered her his hand, the board was still massed with uncaptured pieces.
The top three boards were in a separate room across the hallway from the main ballroom. Beth had glanced at it that morning while rushing, five minutes late, to the place where she was to play, but she had not stopped to look in. She walked toward it now, across the carpeted room with its rows of players bent over boards—players from the Philippines and West Germany and Iceland and Norway and Chile, most of them young, almost all of them male. There were two other women: a Mexican official’s niece, at Board Twenty-two, and an intense young housewife from Buenos Aires; she was at Board Seventeen. Beth did not stop to look at any of the positions.
Several people were standing in the hallway outside the smaller game room. She pushed past them into the doorway, and there across the room from her at Board One, wearing the same dark suit, the same grim scowl, was Vasily Borgov, his expressionless eyes on the game in front of him. A respectfully silent crowd stood between her and him, but the
players sat on a kind of wooden stage a few feet above floor level, and she could see him clearly. Behind him on the wall was a display chessboard with cardboard pieces; a Mexican was just moving one of the white knights into its new position as Beth came in. She studied the board for a moment. Everything was very tight, but Borgov seemed to have an edge.
She looked at Borgov and quickly looked away. His face was alarming in its concentration. She turned and left, walking slowly along the hall.
Mrs. Wheatley was in bed but awake. She blinked at Beth from the bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. “Hi, sweetie.”
“I thought we could have lunch,” Beth said. “I don’t play again until tomorrow.”
“Lunch,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “Oh my.” And then; “How did you do?”
“He resigned after thirty moves.”
“You’re a wonder,” Mrs. Wheatley said. She pushed herself carefully up in bed until she was sitting. “I’m feeling wonky, but I probably need something in my stomach. Manuel and I had cabrito for dinner. It may yet be the end of me.” She looked very pale. She got out of bed slowly and walked to the bathroom. “I suppose I could have a sandwich, or one of those less inflamed tacos.”
***
The competition at the tournament was more consistent, vigorous and professional than anything Beth had seen before, yet its effect on her, once she had got through the first game after a near-sleepless night, was not disturbing. It was a smoothly run affair, with all announcements made in both Spanish and English. Everything was hushed. In her game the next day she played the Queen’s Gambit Declined against an Austrian named Diedrich, a pale, esthetic young man in a sleeveless sweater, and she forced him to resign in midgame with a relentless pressure in the center of the board. She did it mostly with pawns and was herself quietly amazed at the intricacies that seemed to flow from her fingertips as she took the center of the board and began to crush his position as one might crush an egg. He had played well, made no blunders or anything that could properly be called a mistake, but Beth moved with such deadly accuracy, such measured control, that his position was hopeless by the twenty-third move.
***
Mrs. Wheatley had invited her to have dinner with her and Manuel; Beth had refused. Although you didn’t eat dinner in Mexico until ten o’clock, she did not expect to find Mrs. Wheatley in the room when she came back from shopping at seven.
She was dressed but in bed with her head propped up against a pillow. A half-finished drink sat on the nightstand beside her. Mrs. Wheatley was in her mid-forties, but the paleness of her face and the lines of worry in her forehead made her look much older. “Hello, dear,” she said in a faint voice.
“Are you sick?”
“A bit under the weather.”
“I could get a doctor.”
The word “doctor” seemed to hang in the air between them until Mrs. Wheatley said, “It’s not that bad. I just need rest.”
Beth nodded and went into the bathroom to wash up. Mrs. Wheatley’s appearance and behavior were disturbing. But when Beth came back into the room, she was out of bed and looking lively enough, smoothing the covers. She smiled wryly. “Manuel won’t be coming.”
Beth looked inquiringly at her.
“He had business in Oaxaca.”
Beth hesitated for a moment. “How long will he be away?”
Mrs. Wheatley sighed. “At least until we leave.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “I’ve never been to Oaxaca, but I suspect it resembles Denver.”
Beth stared at her a moment and then laughed. “We can have dinner together,” she said. “You can take me to one of the places you know about.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Wheatley said. She smiled ruefully. “It was fun while it lasted. He really had a pleasant sense of humor.”
“That’s good,” Beth said. “Mr. Wheatley didn’t seem very amusing.”
“My God,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “Allston never thought anything was funny, except maybe Eleanor Roosevelt.”
***
In this tournament each player played one game a day. It would go on for six days. Beth’s first two games were simple enough for her, but the third came as a shock.
She arrived five minutes early and was at the board when her opponent came walking up, a bit awkwardly. He looked about twelve years old. Beth had seen him around the ballroom, had passed boards where he was playing, but she had been distracted, and his youth hadn’t really registered. He had curly black hair and wore an old-fashioned white sport shirt, so neatly ironed that its creases stood out from his thin arms. It was very strange, and she felt uncomfortable. She was supposed to be the prodigy. He looked so damned serious.
She held out her hand. “I’m Beth Harmon.”
He stood, bowed slightly, took her hand firmly and shook it once. “I am Georgi Petrovitch Girev,” he said. Then he smiled shyly, a small furtive smile. “I am honored.”
She felt flustered. “Thanks.” They both sat, and he pressed the button down on her clock. She played pawn to queen four, glad to have the first move against this unnerving child.
It started out as a routine Queen’s Gambit Accepted; he took the offered bishop pawn, and they both developed toward the center. But as they got into the midgame it became more complex than usual, and she realized that he was playing a very sophisticated defense. He moved fast—maddeningly fast—and he seemed to know exactly what he was going to do. She tried a few threats, but he was unperturbed by them. An hour passed, then another. The move numbers were now in the thirties, and the board was dense with men. She looked at him as he was moving a piece—at the skinny little arm stuck out from the absurd shirt—and she hated him. He could have been a machine. You little creep, she thought, suddenly realizing that the adults she had played as a child must have thought the same thing about her.
It was afternoon now, and most of the games were finished. They were on move thirty-four. She wanted to get this over with and get back to Mrs. Wheatley. She was worried about Mrs. Wheatley. She felt old and weary playing this tireless child with his bright dark eyes and quick little movements; she knew that if she made even a small blunder, he would be at her throat. She looked at her clock. Twenty-five minutes left. She would have to speed up and get forty moves in before her flag dropped. If she didn’t watch it, he would have her in serious time pressure. That was something she was in the habit of putting other people in; it made her uneasy. She had never been behind on the clock before.
For the last several moves she had been considering a series of trades in the center—knight and bishop for knight and bishop, and a rook exchange a few moves later. It would simplify a good deal, but the problem was that it made for an endgame and she tried to avoid endgames. Now, seeing that she was forty-five minutes behind him on the clock, she felt uncomfortable. She would have to get rid of this logjam. She picked up her knight and took his king’s bishop with it. He responded immediately, not even looking up at her. He took her queen’s bishop. They continued with the moves as though they had been predetermined, and when it was over, the board was full of empty spaces. Each player had a rook, a knight, four pawns and the king. She brought her king out from the back rank, and so did he. At this stage the king’s power as an attacker became abruptly manifest; it was no longer necessary to hide it. The question now was one of getting a pawn to the eighth rank and promoting it. They were in the endgame.
She drew in her breath, shook her head to clear it and began to concentrate on the position. The important thing was to have a plan.
“We should perhaps adjourn now.” It was Girev’s voice, almost a whisper. She looked at his face, pale and serious, and then looked back at the clock. Both flags had fallen. That had never happened to her before. She was startled and sat stupidly in her chair for a moment. “You must seal the move,” Girev said. Suddenly he looked uncomfortable and held up his hand for the tournament director.
One of the directors came over, wal
king softly. It was a middle-aged man with thick glasses. “Miss Harmon must seal her move,” Girev said.
The director looked at the clock. “I’ll get an envelope.”
She looked at the board again. It seemed clear enough. She should advance the rook pawn that she had decided on already, putting it on the fourth rank. The director handed her an envelope and stepped discreetly back a few steps. Girev rose and turned away politely. Beth wrote “P-QR4” on her score sheet, folded it, put it in the envelope and handed it to the tournament director.
She stood up stiffly and looked around her. There were no more games in progress, although a few players were still there, some seated and some standing, looking over positions on the boards. A few were huddled over boards, analyzing games that had ended.
Girev had come back to the table. His face was very serious. “May I ask something?” he said.
“Yes.”
“In America,” he said, “I am told that one sees films in cars. Is this true?”
“Drive-ins?” she said. “You mean drive-in movies?”
“Yes. Elvis Presley movies that you watch from inside a car. Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor. That happens?”
“It sure does.”
He looked at her, and suddenly his earnest face broke into a broad smile. “I would dig that,” he said. “I would certainly dig that.”
***
Mrs. Wheatley slept soundly through the night and was still sleeping when Beth got up. Beth felt refreshed and alert; she had gone to sleep worried about the adjourned game with Girev, but she felt all right about it in the morning. The pawn move had been strong enough. She walked barefoot from the sofa where she had been sleeping to the bed where Mrs. Wheatley lay and felt her forehead. It was cool. Beth kissed her lightly on the cheek and went into the bathroom and showered. When she left for breakfast, Mrs. Wheatley was still asleep.
Her morning game was with a Mexican in his early twenties. Beth had the black pieces, played the Sicilian and caught him off-guard on the nineteenth move. Then she began wearing him down. Her head was very clear, and she was able to keep him so busy trying to answer her threats that she was able eventually to pick off a bishop in exchange for two pawns and drive his king into an exposed position with a knight check. When she brought her queen out, the Mexican stood up, smiled at her coldly and said, “Enough. Enough.” He shook his head angrily. “I resign the game.”
