The Queen's Gambit

by Walter Tevis

  She drank a lot, but she did not get dizzy, and her speech did not slur when she ordered. There seemed to be a kind of insulation around her that kept everything at a distance. She sat at a table at one end of the cocktail lounge with her glass of beer, and she did not get drunk.

  At three o’clock two players from the tournament came into the bar, talking quietly. Beth got up and went straight to her room.

  Mrs. Wheatley was lying in bed. She had a hand on her head with the fingers dug into her hair as though she had a headache. Beth walked over to the bed. Mrs. Wheatley did not look right. Beth reached out and took her by the arm. Mrs. Wheatley was dead.

  It seemed as though she felt nothing, but five minutes passed before Beth was able to let go of Mrs. Wheatley’s cold arm and pick up the telephone.

  The manager knew exactly what to do. Beth sat in the armchair drinking café con leche from room service while two men with a stretcher came and the manager instructed them. She heard him, but she did not watch. She kept her eyes on the window. Sometime later she turned to see a middle-aged woman in a gray suit, using a stethoscope on Mrs. Wheatley. Mrs. Wheatley was on the bed and the stretcher was under her. The two men in green uniform were standing at the edge of the bed, looking embarrassed. The woman took off her stethoscope, nodded to the manager and came over to Beth. Her face was strained. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Beth looked away from her. “What was it?”

  “Hepatitis, possibly. We’ll know tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” Beth said. “Could you give me a tranquilizer?”

  “I have a sedative…”

  “I don’t want a sedative,” Beth said. “Can you give me a prescription for Librium?”

  The doctor stared at her for a moment and shrugged. “You don’t need a prescription to buy Librium in Mexico. I suggest meprobamate. There’s a farmacia in the hotel.”

  ***

  Using a map in the front of Mrs. Wheatley’s Mobil Travel Guide, Beth wrote down the names of the cities between Denver, Colorado, and Butte, Montana. The manager had told her his assistant would be of whatever help she needed in phoning, signing papers, dealing with the authorities. Ten minutes after they had taken Mrs. Wheatley away, Beth called the assistant and read him the list of towns and gave him the name. He said he would call her back. She ordered a Coca-Cola grande and more coffee from room service. Then she undressed quickly and took a shower. There was a phone in the bathroom, but the call did not come through. She still felt nothing.

  She dressed in fresh jeans and a white T-shirt. On the little table by the bed was Mrs. Wheatley’s pack of Chesterfields, empty, crumpled by Mrs. Wheatley’s hands. The ashtray beside it was full of butts. One cigarette, the last one Mrs. Wheatley had ever smoked, sat on the edge of the little tray, with a long cold ash. Beth stared at it a minute; then she went into the bathroom and dried her hair.

  The boy who brought the big bottle of Coke and the carafe of coffee was very respectful and waved away her attempt to sign the bill. The telephone rang. It was the manager. “I have your call,” he said. “From Denver.”

  There was a series of clicks in the receiver and then a male voice, surprisingly loud and clear. “This is Allston Wheatley.”

  “It’s Beth, Mr. Wheatley.”

  There was a pause. “Beth?”

  “Your daughter. Elizabeth Harmon.”

  “You’re in Mexico? You’re calling from Mexico?”

  “It’s about Mrs. Wheatley.” She was looking at the cigarette, never really smoked, on the ashtray.

  “How’s Alma?” the voice said. “Is she there with you? In Mexico?” The interest sounded forced. She could picture him as she had seen him at Methuen, wishing he were somewhere else, everything about him saying that he wanted to make no connections, wanted always to be somewhere else.

  “She’s dead, Mr. Wheatley. She died this morning.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Finally she said, “Mr. Wheatley…”

  “Can’t you handle this for me?” he said. “I can’t be going off to Mexico.”

  “They’re going to do an autopsy tomorrow, and I’ve got to get new plane tickets. I mean, get a new plane ticket for myself…” Her voice had suddenly gone weak and aimless. She picked up the coffee cup and took a drink from it. “I don’t know where to bury her.”

  Mr. Wheatley’s voice came back with surprising crispness. “Call Durgin Brothers, in Lexington. There’s a family plot in her maiden name. Benson.”

  “What about the house?”

  “Look”—the voice was louder now—“I don’t want any part of this. I’ve got problems enough here in Denver. Get her up to Kentucky and bury her and the house is yours. Just make the mortgage payments. Do you need money?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what it will cost.”

  “I heard you were doing all right. The child prodigy thing. Can’t you charge it or something?”

  “I can talk to the hotel manager.”

  “Good. You do that. I’m strapped for cash right now, but you can have the house and the equity. Call the Second National Bank and ask for Mr. Erlich. That’s E-r-l-i-c-h. Tell him I want you to have the house. He knows how to reach me.”

  There was silence again. Then she said, as strongly as she could, “Don’t you want to know what she died of?”

  “What was it?”

  “Hepatitis, I think. They’ll know tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Wheatley said. “She was sick a lot.”

  ***

  The manager and the doctor took care of everything—even the refund on Mrs. Wheatley’s plane ticket. Beth had to sign some official papers, had to absolve the hotel of responsibility and fill out government forms. One had the title “U.S. Customs—Transfer of Remains.” The manager got Durgin Brothers in Lexington. The assistant manager drove Beth to the airport the following day, with the hearse discreetly trailing them through the streets of Mexico City and along the highway. She saw the metal coffin only once, looking out the window from the TWA waiting room. The hearse had driven up to the 707 at the gate and some men were unloading it in brilliant sunlight. They set it on a forklift, and she could hear the dim whine of the engine through the glass as it was raised to the level of the cargo hold. For a moment it trembled in the sunshine and she had a sudden horrific vision of it falling off the lift and crashing to the tarmac, spilling out the embalmed middle-aged corpse of Mrs. Wheatley on the hot gray asphalt. But that did not happen. The casket was pulled handily into the cargo hold.

  On board Beth declined a drink from the stewardess. When she had gone back down the aisle, Beth opened her purse and took out one of her new bottles of green pills. She had spent three hours the day before, after signing the papers, going from farmacia to farmacia, buying the limit of one hundred pills in each.

  ***

  The funeral was simple and brief. A half-hour before it began, Beth took four green pills. She sat in the church alone, in a quiet daze, while the minister said the things ministers say. There were flowers at the altar, and she was mildly surprised to see a pair of men from the funeral home step up and carry them out as soon as the minister had finished. Six other people were there, but Beth knew none of them. One old lady hugged her afterward and said, “You poor dear.”

  She finished unpacking that afternoon and came down from the bedroom to fix coffee. While the water was coming to a boil she went into the little downstairs bathroom to wash her face and suddenly, standing there surrounded by blue, by Mrs. Wheatley’s blue bathroom rug and blue towels and blue soap and blue washcloths, something hot exploded in her belly and her face was drenched with tears. She took a towel from the rack and held it against her face and said, “Oh Jesus Christ” and leaned against the washbasin and cried for a long time.

  She was still drying her face when the phone rang.

  The voice was male. “Beth Harmon?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Harry Beltik. From the State Tournament.�
�

  “I remember.”

  “Yeah. I hear you dropped one to Borgov. Wanted to give condolences.”

  As she laid the towel on the back of the overstuffed sofa she noticed a half-finished pack of Mrs. Wheatley’s cigarettes on its arm. “Thanks,” she said, picking up the package and holding on to it tightly.

  “What were you playing? White?”

  “Black.”

  “Yeah.” There was a pause. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “It’s better that way.”

  “What’s better?”

  “It’s better to be Black if you’re going to lose it.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What’d you play? Sicilian?”

  She gently set the package of cigarettes back on the chair arm. “Ruy Lopez. I let him do it to me.”

  “Mistake,” Beltik said. “Look, I’m in Lexington for the summer. Would you like some training?”

  “Training?”

  “I know. You’re better than me. But if you’re going to play Russians, you’ll need help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Phoenix Hotel. I’m moving to an apartment Thursday.”

  She looked around the room for a moment, at the stack of Mrs. Wheatley’s women’s magazines on the cobbler’s bench, the pale-blue drapes on the windows, the oversized ceramic lamps with the cellophane still wrapped around their yellowing shades. She took in a long breath and let it out silently. “Come on over,” she said.

  He drove up twenty minutes later in a 1955 Chevrolet with red-and-black flames painted on the fenders and a broken headlamp, pulling up to the curb at the end of the patterned-brick walk. She had been watching for him from the window and was on the front porch when he got out of the car. He waved at her and went to the trunk. He was wearing a bright-red shirt and gray corduroy pants with a pair of sneakers that matched the shirt. There was something dark and quick about him, and Beth, remembering his bad teeth and his fierce way of playing chess, felt herself stiffen a little at the sight of him.

  He bent over the trunk and lifted out a cardboard box, clearly heavy, tossed the hair out of his eyes and came up the walk. The box said HEINZ TOMATO KETCHUP in red letters; it was open at the top and filled with books.

  He set it on the living-room rug and unceremoniously took Mrs. Wheatley’s magazines from the coffee table and slipped them into the magazine rack. He began taking books out of the box one at a time, reading off the titles and piling them on the table. “A. L. Deinkopf, Middle Game Strategy; J. R. Capablanca, My Chess Career; Fornaut, Alekhine’s Games 1938–1945; Meyer, Rook and Pawn Endings.”

  Some of them were books she had seen before; a few of them she owned. But most were new to her, heavy-looking and depressing to see. She knew there were a great many things she needed to know. But Capablanca had almost never studied, had played on intuition and his natural gifts, while inferior players like Bogolubov and Grünfeld memorized lines of play like German pedants. She had seen players at tournament after their games had ended, sitting motionless in uncomfortable chairs oblivious to the world, studying opening variations or middle-game strategy or endgame theory. It was endless. Seeing Beltik methodically removing one heavy book after another, she felt weary and disoriented. She glanced over at the TV: a part of her wanted to turn it on and forget chess forever.

  “My summer’s reading,” Beltik said.

  She shook her head irritably. “I study books. But I’ve always tried to play it by ear.”

  He stopped, holding three copies of Shakhmatni Byulleten in his hands, their covers worn with use, frowning at her. “Like Morphy,” he said, “or Capablanca?”

  She was embarrassed. “Yes.”

  He nodded grimly and set the stack of bulletins on the floor by the coffee table. “Capablanca would have beaten Borgov.”

  “Not every game.”

  “Every game that counted,” Beltik said.

  She studied his face. He was younger than she remembered him. But she was older now. He was an uncompromising young man; every part of him was uncompromising. “You think I’m a prima donna, don’t you?”

  He permitted himself a small smile. “We’re all prima donnas,” he said. “That’s chess for you.”

  When she put the TV dinners in the oven that night, they had two boards set up with endgame positions: his set with its green and cream squares, its heavy plastic pieces; her wooden board with its rosewood and maple men. Both sets were the Staunton pattern that all serious players used; both had four-inch kings. She hadn’t invited him to stay for lunch and dinner; it had been understood. He went to the grocery store a few blocks away for the food while she sat musing over a group of possible rook moves, trying to avoid a draw in a theoretical game. While she made lunch he lectured her about keeping in good physical shape and getting enough sleep. He had also bought the two frozen dinners for supper.

  “You’ve got to stay open,” Beltik said. “If you get locked into one idea—like this king knight pawn, say—it’s death. Look at this…” She turned to his board on the kitchen table. He was holding a cup of coffee and standing, frowning down at the board, holding his chin with the other hand.

  “Look at what?” she said, irritated.

  He reached down, picked up the white rook, moved it across the board to king rook one—the lower right-hand corner. “Now his rook pawn’s pinned.”

  “So what?”

  “He’s got to move the king now or he gets stuck later.”

  “I see that,” she said, her voice a little softer now. “But I don’t see—”

  “Look at the queenside pawns, way over here.” He pointed to the other side of the board, at the three white pawns interlinked. She walked over to the table to get a better look. “He can do this,” she said, and moved the black rook over two squares.

  Beltik looked up at her. “Try it.”

  “Okay.” She sat down behind the pieces.

  In half a dozen moves Beltik had gotten his queen bishop pawn to the seventh rank and queening it was inevitable. It would cost the rook and the game to stop it. He had been right; it was necessary to move the king when the rook had come across the board. “You were right,” she said. “Did you figure it out?”

  “It’s from Alekhine somewhere,” he said. “I got it from a book.”

  Beltik went back to his hotel after midnight, and Beth stayed up for several hours reading the middle-game book, not setting up the positions on a board but reviewing them in her imagination. One thing bothered her, but she did not let herself dwell on it. She could not picture the pieces as easily as she had when she was eight and nine years old. She could still do it, but it was more of an effort and sometimes she was uncertain about where a pawn or a bishop belonged and had to retrace the moves in her mind to make sure. She played on doggedly into the night, using her mind and the book only, sitting in Mrs. Wheatley’s old television-watching armchair in T-shirt and blue jeans. Every now and then she would blink and look around her, half expecting to see Mrs. Wheatley sitting nearby with her stockings rolled down and her black pumps on the floor beside her chair.

  Beltik was back at nine the next morning, with half a dozen more books. They had coffee and played a few five-minute games on the kitchen table. Beth won all of them, decisively, and when they had finished the fifth game Beltik looked at her and shook his head. “Harmon,” he said, “you have really got it. But it’s improvisation.”

  She stared at him. “What the hell,” she said. “I wiped you out five times.”

  He looked back across the table at her coolly and took a sip from his coffee cup. “I’m a master,” he said, “and I’ve never played better in my life. But I’m not what you’re going to be up against if you go to Paris.”

  “I can beat Borgov with a little more work.”

  “You can beat Borgov with a lot more work. Years more work. What in hell do you think he is? Another Kentucky ex-champion like me?”

  “He’s Worl
d Champion. But—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Beltik said. “Borgov could have beaten both of us when he was ten. Do you know his career?”

  Beth looked at him. “No, I don’t.”

  Beltik got up from the table and walked purposively into the living room. He pulled a green-jacketed book from the stack next to Beth’s chessboard and brought it to the kitchen, tossing it on the table in front of her. Vasily Borgov: My Life in Chess. “Read it tonight,” he said. “Read the games from Leningrad 1962 and look at the way he plays rook-pawn endings. Look at the games with Luchenko and with Spassky.” He picked up his near-empty coffee cup. “You might learn something.”

  ***

  It was the first week in June and japoncia blazed in bright coral outside the kitchen window. Mrs. Wheatley’s azaleas had begun to bloom and the grass needed mowing. There were birds. It was a beautiful week of the best kind of Kentucky spring. Sometimes late at night after Beltik had left, Beth would go out to the backyard to feel the warmth on her cheeks and to take a few deep breaths of warm clean air, but the rest of the time she ignored the world outside. She had become caught up in chess in a new way. Her bottles of Mexican tranquilizers remained unused in the nightstand; the cans of beer in the refrigerator stayed in the refrigerator. After standing in the backyard for five minutes, she would go back into the house and read Beltik’s chess books for hours and then go upstairs and fall into bed exhausted.

  On Thursday afternoon Beltik said, “I’m supposed to move into an apartment tomorrow. The hotel bill is killing me.”

  They were in the middle of the Benoni Defense. She had just played the P-K5 he had taught her, on move eight—a move Beltik said came from a player named Mikenas. She looked up from the position. “Where is it? The apartment.”

  “New Circle Road. I won’t be coming by so much.”

  “It’s not that far.”

  “Maybe not. But I’ll be taking classes. I ought to get a part-time job.”