The Queen's Gambit

by Walter Tevis

  She wandered the boulevards for hours, not stopping to buy anything, just looking at people and buildings and shops and restaurants and trees and flowers. Once she accidentally bumped into an old lady while crossing the Rue de la Paix and found herself saying, “Excusez-moi, madame” as easily as if she had been speaking French all her life.

  There was to be a reception at the building the tournament was in at four-thirty; she had difficulty finding her way back and was ten minutes late and out of breath when she arrived. The playing tables had all been pushed to one side of the room, and the chairs placed around the walls. She was ushered to a seat near the door and handed a small cup of café filtre. A pastry cart was wheeled by with the most beautiful pastries she had ever seen. She felt a momentary sadness, wishing that Alma Wheatley could be there to see them. Just as she was taking a napoleon from the cart she heard loud laughter from across the room and looked up. There was Vasily Borgov, holding a coffee cup. The people on each side of him were bent toward him expectantly, taking in his amusement. His face was distorted with ponderous mirth. Beth felt her stomach turn to ice.

  She walked back to her hotel that evening and grimly played a dozen of Borgov’s games—games that she already knew thoroughly from studying them with Benny—and went to bed at eleven; she took no pills and slept beautifully. Borgov had been an International Grandmaster for eleven years and World Champion for five, but she would not go passive against him this time. Whatever happened she would not be humiliated by him. And she would have one distinct advantage: he would not be as prepared for her as she was for him.

  ***

  She went on winning, beating a Frenchman the next day and an Englishman on the day after. Borgov won his games also. On the next to the last day when she was playing another Dutchman—an older and more experienced one—she found herself at the table next to Borgov. Seeing him so close distracted her for a few moments, but she was able to shrug it off. The Dutchman was a strong player, and she concentrated on the game. When she finished, forcing a resignation after nearly four hours, she looked up and saw that the pieces were gone from the next table and Borgov had left.

  Leaving, she stopped at the desk and asked whom she would be playing in the morning. The director shuffled through his papers and smiled faintly. “Grandmaster Borgov, mademoiselle.”

  She had expected it, but her breath caught when he said it.

  That night she took three tranquilizers and went to bed early, uncertain if she could relax enough to sleep. But she slept beautifully and awoke refreshed at eight, feeling confident, smart and ready.

  ***

  When she came in and saw him sitting at the table, he did not seem so formidable. He was wearing his usual dark suit, and his coarse black hair was combed neatly back from his forehead. His face was, as always, impassive, but it did not look threatening. He stood up politely, and when she offered her hand he shook it, but he did not smile. She would be playing the white pieces; when they seated themselves he pressed the button on her clock.

  She had already decided what to do. Despite Benny’s advice, she would play pawn to king four and hope for the Sicilian. She had gone through all of Borgov’s published Sicilian games. She did it, picking up the pawn and setting it on the fourth rank, and when he played his queen bishop pawn she felt a pleasant thrill. She was ready for him. She played her knight to king bishop three; he brought his to queen bishop three, and by the sixth move they were in the Boleslavski. She knew, move by move, eight games in which Borgov had played this variation, had gone over each of them with Benny, analyzing each remorselessly. He started the variation with pawn to king four on the sixth move; she played knight to knight three with the certainty that came from knowing she was right, and then looked across the board at him. He was leaning a cheek against a fist, looking down at the board like any other chess player. Borgov was strong, imperturbable and wily, but there was no sorcery in his play. He put his bishop on king two without looking at her. She castled. He castled. She looked around herself at the bright, beautifully furnished room she was in with its two other games of chess quietly in progress.

  By the fifteenth move she began to see combinations opening up on both sides, and by the twentieth she was startled by her own clarity. Her mind moved with ease, picking its way delicately among the combination of moves. She began to pressure him along the queen bishop file, threatening a double attack. He side-stepped this, and she strengthened her center pawns. Her position opened more and more, and the possibilities for attack increased, although Borgov seemed to side-step them just in time. She knew this might happen and it did not dismay her; she felt in herself an inexhaustible ability to find strong, threatening moves. She had never played better. She would force him by a series of threats to compromise his position, and then she would mount threats that were double and triple and that he would not be able to avoid. Already his queen bishop was locked in by moves she had forced, and his queen was tied down protecting a rook. Her pieces were freeing themselves more with every move. There seemed to be no end to her ability to find threats.

  She looked around again. The other games were finished. That was a surprise. She looked at her watch. It was after one o’clock. They had been playing for over three hours. She turned her attention back to the board, studied it a few minutes and brought her queen to the center. It was time to apply more pressure. She looked across the table at Borgov.

  He was as unruffled as ever. He did not meet her eyes but kept his on the board, studying her queen move. Then he shrugged almost imperceptibly and attacked the queen with a rook. She had known he might do that, and she had her response ready. She interposed a knight, threatening a check that would take the rook. He would have to move the king now and she would bring the queen over to the rook file. She could see half a dozen ways of threatening him from there, with threats more urgent than the ones she had been making.

  Borgov moved immediately, and he did not move his king. He merely advanced a rook pawn. She had to study it for five minutes before seeing what he was up to. If she checked him, he would let her take the rook and then station his bishop ahead of the pawn he had just pushed, and she would have to move her queen. She held her breath, alarmed. Her rook on the back rank would fall, and with it two pawns. That would be disastrous. She had to back her queen off to a place where it could escape. She gritted her teeth and moved it.

  Borgov brought the bishop out, anyway, where the pawn protected it. She stared at it a moment before the meaning of it dawned on her; any of the several moves she could make to dislodge it would cost her in some way, and if she left it there, it strengthened everything about his position. She looked up at his face. He was regarding her now with a hint of a smile. She looked quickly back at the board.

  She tried countering with one of her own bishops, but he neutralized it with a pawn move that blocked the diagonal. She had played beautifully, was still playing beautifully, but he was outplaying her. She would have to bear down harder.

  She did bear down harder and found excellent moves, as good as any she had ever found, but they were not enough. By the thirty-fifth her throat was dry, and what she saw in front of her on the board was the disarray of her position and the growing strength of Borgov’s. It was incredible. She was playing her best chess, and he was beating her.

  On the thirty-eighth move he brought his rook crisply down to her second rank for the first threat of mate. She could see clearly enough how to parry that, but behind it were more and more threats that would either mate her or take her queen or give him a second queen. She felt sick. For a moment it dizzied her just to look at the board, at the visible manifestation of her own powerlessness.

  She did not topple her king. She stood up, and looking at his emotionless face, said, “I resign.” Borgov nodded. She turned and walked out of the room, feeling physically ill.

  ***

  The plane back to New York was like a trap; she sat in her window seat and could not escape the memory of the game, co
uld not stop playing through it in her mind. Several times the stewardess offered her a drink, but she forced herself to decline. She wanted one only too badly; it was frightening. She took tranquilizers, but the knot would not leave her stomach. She had made no mistakes. She had played extraordinarily well. And at the end of it her position was a shambles, and Borgov looked as though it had been nothing.

  She did not want to see Benny. She was supposed to call him to pick her up, but she did not want to go back to his apartment. It had been eight weeks since she left her house in Lexington; she would go back and lick her wounds for a while. Her third-prize money from Paris had been surprisingly good; she could afford a quick round trip to Lexington. And there were still papers to sign with her lawyer. She would stay a week and then come back and go on studying with Benny. But what else had she to learn from him? Remembering for a moment all the work she had done readying herself for Paris, she felt sick again. With an effort she shook it off. The main thing was to get ready for Moscow. There was still time.

  She called Benny from Kennedy Airport and told him she had lost the final game, that Borgov had outplayed her. Benny was sympathetic but a little distant, and when she told him she was going to Kentucky for a while he sounded irritated.

  “Don’t quit,” he said. “One lost game doesn’t prove anything.”

  “I’m not quitting,” she said.

  ***

  In the pile of mail waiting for her at home were several letters from Michael Chennault, the lawyer who had arranged for the deed to the house. It seemed there was some kind of problem; she did not yet have clear title or something. Allston Wheatley was creating difficulty. Without opening the rest of the mail she went to the phone and called Chennault’s office.

  The first thing he said when he came on the line was “I tried to get you three times yesterday. Where’ve you been?”

  “In Paris,” Beth said, “playing chess.”

  “How sweet it must be.” He paused. “It’s Wheatley. He doesn’t want to sign.”

  “Sign what?”

  “Title,” Chennault said. “Can you get over here? We’ve got to work it out.”

  “I don’t see why you need me,” Beth said. “You’re the lawyer. He told me he’d sign what was necessary.”

  “He’s changed his mind. Maybe you could talk to him.”

  “Is he there?”

  “Not in the office. But he’s in town. I think if you could look him in the eye and remind him you’re his legal daughter…”

  “Why won’t he sign?”

  “Money,” the lawyer said. “He wants to sell the house.”

  “Can the two of you come here tomorrow?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” the lawyer said.

  She looked around the living room after hanging up. The house still belonged to Wheatley. That was a shock. She had barely seen him in it, and yet it was in fact his. She did not want him to have it.

  Although it was a hot July afternoon, Allston Wheatley was wearing a suit, a dark-gray salt-and-pepper tweed, and when he seated himself on the sofa he pulled up the creases in the pants legs, showing the whiteness of his thin shanks above the tops of his maroon socks. He had lived in the house for sixteen years, but he showed no interest in anything in it. He entered it like a stranger, with a look that could have been anger or apology, sat down at one end of the sofa, pulled his pants legs up an inch and said nothing.

  Something about him made Beth feel sick. He looked exactly the way he had looked when she first saw him, when he came to Mrs. Deardorff’s office with Mrs. Wheatley to look her over.

  “Mr. Wheatley has a proposal, Beth,” the lawyer was saying. She looked at Wheatley’s face, which was turned slightly away from them. “You can live here,” the lawyer said, “while you are finding something permanent.” Why wasn’t Wheatley telling her this?

  Wheatley’s embarrassment made her somehow squirm for him, as though she were embarrassed herself. “I thought I could keep the house if I made the payments,” she said.

  “Mr. Wheatley says you misconstrued him.”

  Why was her lawyer speaking for him? Why couldn’t he get his own lawyer, for Christ’s sake? She looked over at him and saw he was lighting a cigarette, his face still inclined away from her, a pained look on his features. “He claims he was only permitting you to stay in the house until you got settled.”

  “That’s not true,” Beth said. “He said I could have it…” Suddenly something hit her with full force and she turned to Wheatley. “I’m your daughter,” she said. “You adopted me. Why don’t you talk to me?”

  He looked at her like a startled rabbit. “Alma,” he said, “Alma wanted a child…”

  “You signed the papers,” Beth said. “You took on a responsibility. Can’t you even look at me?”

  Allston Wheatley stood up and walked across the room to the window. When he turned around, he had somehow pulled himself together, and he looked furious. “Alma wanted to adopt you. Not me. You’re not entitled to everything I own just because I signed some damned papers to shut Alma up.” He turned back to the window. “Not that it worked.”

  “You adopted me,” Beth said. “I didn’t ask you to do it.” She felt a choking sensation in her throat. “You’re my legal father.”

  When he turned and looked at her, she was shocked to see how contorted his face was. “The money in this house is mine, and no smart-assed orphan is going to take it away from me.”

  “I’m not an orphan,” Beth said. “I’m your daughter.”

  “Not in my book you aren’t. I don’t give a shit what your god-damned lawyer says. I don’t give a shit what Alma said either. That woman could not keep her mouth shut.”

  No one spoke for a while. Finally Chennault asked quietly, “What do you want from Beth, Mr. Wheatley?”

  “I want her out of here. I’m selling the house.”

  Beth looked at him for a moment before speaking. “Then sell it to me,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Wheatley said.

  “I’ll buy it. I’ll pay you whatever your equity is.”

  “It’s worth more than that now.”

  “How much more?”

  “I’d need seven thousand.”

  She knew his equity was less than five. “All right,” she said.

  “You have that much?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I’m subtracting what I paid for burying my mother. I’ll show you the receipts.”

  Allston Wheatley sighed like a martyr. “All right,” he said. “You two can draw up the papers. I’m going back to the hotel.” He walked over to the door. “It’s too hot in here.”

  “You could have taken off your coat,” Beth said.

  ***

  It left her two thousand in the bank. She didn’t like having so little, but it was all right. In the mail there had been invitations to play in two strong tournaments, with good prize money. Fifteen hundred for one and two thousand for the other. And there was the heavy envelope from Russia, inviting her to Moscow in July.

  When she got back with her copy of the signed papers she walked around the living room several times, passing her hand lightly over pieces of furniture. Wheatley hadn’t said anything about the furniture, but it was hers. She had asked the lawyer. Wheatley hadn’t even shown up, and Chennault took the papers over to the Phoenix Hotel for him to sign while she waited in the office and read a National Geographic. The house felt different, now that it was hers. She would get some new pieces—a good, low sofa and two small modern armchairs. She could visualize them, with pale-blue linen upholstery and darker blue piping. Not Mrs. Wheatley blue, but her own. Beth blue. She wanted things brighter in the living room, more cheerful. She wanted to erase Mrs. Wheatley’s half-real presence from the place. She would get a bright rug for the floor and have the windows washed. She would get a stereo and some records, a new bedspread and pillowcases for the bed upstairs. From Purcell’s. Mrs. Wheatley had been a good mother; she had n
ot intended to die and leave her.

  ***

  Beth slept well and awoke feeling angry. She put on the chenille robe and padded downstairs in slippers—Mrs. Wheatley’s slippers—and found herself thinking furiously of the seven thousand dollars she had paid Allston Wheatley. She loved her money; she and Mrs. Wheatley had both taken great pleasure in accumulating it from tournament to tournament, watching it gather interest. They had always opened Beth’s bank statements together to see how much new interest had been credited to the account. And after Mrs. Wheatley’s death it had consoled her to know that she could go on living in the house, buying her groceries at the supermarket and going to movies when she wanted to without feeling pinched for money or having to think about getting work or going to college or finding tournaments to win.

  She had brought three of Benny’s chess pamphlets with her from New York; while her eggs were boiling she set up her board on the kitchen table and got out the booklet with games from the last Moscow Invitational. The Russian booklets were printed on expensive paper with good, clear type. She had not really mastered Russian from the night course at the university, but she could read the names and the notations easily enough. Yet the Cyrillic characters were irritating. It angered her that the Soviet government put so much money into chess, and that they even used a different alphabet from hers. When the eggs were done, she peeled them into a bowl with butter and began playing a game between Petrosian and Tal. Grünfeld Defense. Semi-Slav Variation. She got it to the black king knight on queen two for the eighth move and then became bored with it. She had been moving the pieces too fast for analysis, not stopping herself as Benny would have made her do to trace out everything that was going on. She finished the last spoonful of egg and went out the back door into the garden.

  It was a hot morning. The grass in the yard was overgrown, it nearly covered the little brick pathway that went to where some shabby tea roses stood. She went back into the house and played the white rook to queen one and then stared at it. She did not want to study chess. That was frightening; a vast amount of study lay ahead of her if she wanted to avoid humiliation in Moscow. She pushed down the fear and went upstairs for a shower. As she dried her hair, she saw with a kind of relief that she needed to have it cut. That would be something to do today. Afterward she could go to Purcell’s and look at sofas for the living room. But it wouldn’t be wise to buy—not until she had more money. And how could she get the lawn mowed? A boy had done it for Mrs. Wheatley, but she didn’t know his telephone number or address.