The Queen's Gambit

by Walter Tevis

  The woman at the cafeteria was handing Beth a plate with salisbury steak on it when Jolene pushed her tray up next to Beth’s. “None of that,” Jolene said. She took the plate and handed it back. “No gravy,” she said, “and no potatoes.”

  “I’m not overweight,” Beth said. “It won’t hurt me to eat potatoes.

  Jolene said nothing. When they pushed their trays past the Jell-O and Bavarian cream pie, Jolene shook her head. “You ate chocolate mousse last night,” Beth said.

  “Last night was special,” Jolene said. “This is today.”

  They had lunch at eleven-thirty because Jolene had a twelve o’clock class. When Beth asked her what it was, Jolene said, “Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century.”

  “Is that part of Phys. Ed.?” Beth asked.

  “I didn’t tell all of it yesterday. I’m getting an M.S. in political science.” Beth stared at her. “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” Jolene said.

  When Beth got up the next morning, her back and calves were sore, and she decided not to go to the gym. But when she opened the refrigerator to find something for breakfast, she saw stacks of TV dinners and suddenly thought of the way Mrs. Wheatley’s pale legs had looked when she rolled down her stockings. She shook her head in revulsion and started prying the boxes loose. The thought of frozen fried chicken and roast beef and turkey made her ill; she dumped them all in a plastic shopping bag. When she opened the cabinet to look over the canned foods, there were three bottles of Almadén Mountain Rhine sitting in front of the cans. She hesitated and closed the door. She would think about that later. She had toast and black coffee for breakfast. On her way to the gym, she dropped the sack of frozen dinners into the garbage.

  At lunch Jolene told her about a bulletin board in the Student Union that listed students who would do unskilled work at two dollars an hour. Jolene walked her over on the way to class, and Beth took down two numbers. By three o’clock that afternoon she had a Business Administration major beating the carpets in the backyard and an Art History major scrubbing the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets; Beth did not supervise them; she spent the time working out variations on the Nimzo-Indian Defense.

  By the next Monday, she was using all seven of the Nautilus machines and doing sit-ups afterward. On Wednesday, Jolene added ten pounds to each of them for her and had her hold a five-pound weight on her chest when she did the sit-ups. The week after that, they started playing handball. Beth was awkward at it and got out of breath quickly. Jolene beat her badly. Beth kept at it doggedly, panting and sweating and sometimes bruising the palm of her hand on the little black ball. It took her ten days and a few lucky bounces before she won her first game.

  “I knew you’d start winning soon enough,” Jolene said. They stood in the center of the court, sweating.

  “I hate losing,” Beth said.

  That day there was a letter waiting for her from something called Christian Crusade. The stationery had about twenty names down the side, under an embossed cross. The letter read:

  Dear Miss Harmon:

  As we have been unable to reach you by telephone we are writing to determine your interest in the support of Christian Crusade in your forthcoming competition in the U.S.S.R.

  Christian Crusade is a non-profit organization dedicated to the opening of Closed Doors to the Message of Christ. We have found your career as a Trainee of a Christian Institution, the Methuen Home, noteworthy. We would like to help in your forthcoming struggle since we share your Christian ideals and aspirations. If you are interested in our support, please contact us at our offices in Houston.

  Yours in Christ,

  Crawford Walker

  Director

  Christian Crusade

  Foreign Division

  She almost threw the letter away until she remembered Benny’s saying that he had been given money for his Russian trip by a church group. She had Benny’s phone number on a folded piece of paper in her chess clock box; she got it out and dialed. Benny answered after the third ring.

  “Hi,” she said. “It’s Beth.”

  Benny was a bit cool, but when she told him about the letter, he said at once, “Take it. They’re loaded.”

  “Would they pay for my ticket to Russia?”

  “More than that. If you ask them, they’ll send me over with you. Separate rooms, considering their views.”

  “Why would they pay so much money?”

  “They want us to beat the Communists for Jesus. They’re the ones who paid part of my way two years ago.” He paused. “Are you coming back to New York?” His voice was carefully neutral.

  “I need to stay in Kentucky a while longer. I’m working out in a gym, and I’ve entered a tournament in California.”

  “Sure,” Benny said. “It sounds all right to me.”

  She wrote Christian Crusade that afternoon to say that she was very much interested in their offer and would like to take Benjamin Watts with her as a second. She used the pale-blue stationery, crossing out “Mrs. Allston Wheatley” at the top and writing in “Elizabeth Harmon.” When she walked to the corner to mail the letter, she decided to go on downtown and buy new sheets and pillowcases for the bed and a new tablecloth for the kitchen.

  ***

  The winter light in San Francisco was remarkable; she had never seen anything quite like it before. It gave the buildings a preternatural clarity of line, and when she climbed to the top of Telegraph Hill and looked back, she caught her breath at the sharp focus of the houses and hotels that lined the long steep street and below them the perfect blue of the bay. There was a flower stand at the corner, and she bought a bunch of marigolds. Looking back at the bay, she saw a young couple a block away climbing toward her. They were clearly out of breath and stopped to rest. Beth realized with surprise that the climb had been easy for her. She decided to take long walks during her week there. Maybe she could find a gym somewhere.

  When she walked up the hill to the tournament in the morning, the air was still splendid and the colors bright, but she was tense. The elevator in the big hotel was crowded. Several people in it stared at her, and she looked away nervously. The man at the desk stopped what he was doing the minute she walked up.

  “Do I register here?” she asked.

  “No need, Miss Harmon. Just go on in.”

  “Which board?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Board One.”

  Board One was in a room by itself. The table was on a three-foot-high platform, and a display board as big as a home-movie screen stood behind it. On each side of the table was a big swivel chair of brown leather and chrome. It was five minutes before starting time, and the room was jammed with people; she had to push her way through them to the playing space. As she did so, the buzz of talk died down. Everyone looked at her. When she climbed the steps to the platform, they began to applaud. She tried not to let her face show anything, but she was frightened. The last game of chess she had played was five months before, and she had lost it.

  She didn’t even know who her opponent was; she hadn’t thought to ask. She sat there for a moment with her mind nearly empty, and then an arrogant-looking young man came briskly through the crowd and up the steps. He had long black hair and a broad, drooping mustache. She recognized him from somewhere, and when he introduced himself as Andy Levitt, she remembered the name from Chess Review. He seated himself stiffly. A tournament director came up to the table and spoke quietly to Levitt. “You can start her clock now.” Levitt reached out, looking unconcerned, and pressed the button on Beth’s clock. She held herself steady and played her queen’s pawn, keeping her eyes on the board.

  By the time they had got into the middle game, there were people jammed in the doorway and someone was shushing the crowd and trying to maintain order. She had never seen so many spectators at a match. She turned her attention back to the board and carefully brought a rook to an open file. If Levitt didn’t find a way to prevent it, she could try attacking in three moves. If she wasn’t missing some
thing in the position. She started moving in on him cautiously, prying the pawns loose from his castled king. Then she took a deep breath and brought a rook to the seventh rank. She could hear at the back of her mind the voice of the chess bum in Cincinnati years before: “Bone in the throat, a rook on the seventh rank.” She looked across the board at Levitt. He looked as if it were indeed a chicken bone and deeply imbedded. Something in her exulted, seeing him try to hide his confusion. And when she followed the rook with her queen, looking brutal on the seventh rank, he resigned immediately. The applause in the room was loud and enthusiastic. When she came down from the platform she was smiling. There were people waiting with old copies of Chess Review, wanting her to autograph her picture on the cover. Others wanted her to sign their programs or just sheets of paper.

  While she was signing one of the magazines, she looked for a moment at the black-and-white photograph of herself holding the big trophy in Ohio, with Benny and Barnes and a few others out of focus in the background. Her face looked tired and plain, and she recalled with a sudden remembered shame that the magazine had sat with its tan mailing cover in a stack on the cobbler’s bench for a month before she had opened it and found her picture. Someone thrust another copy at her to sign, and she shook off the memory. She autographed her way out of the crowded room and through yet another crowd that was waiting outside the door, filling the space between her playing area and the ballroom where the rest of the tournament was still in progress. Two directors were trying to hush the crowd to avoid disturbing the other games as she came through. Some of the players looked up from their boards angrily and frowned in her direction. It was exhilarating and frightening, having all these people pressed near her, pushing up to her with admiration. One of the women who had got her autograph said, “I don’t know a thing about chess, dear, but I’m thrilled for you,” and a middle-aged man insisted on shaking her hand, saying, “You’re the best thing for the game since Capablanca.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I wish it were as easy for me.” Maybe it is, she thought. Her brain seemed to be all right. Maybe she hadn’t ruined it.

  She walked confidently down the street to her hotel in bright sunshine. She would be going to Russia in six months. Christian Crusade had agreed to buy tickets on Aeroflot for her and Benny and a woman from the USCF and would pay their hotel bills. The Moscow tournament would provide the meals. She had been studying chess for six hours a day, and she could keep it up. She stopped to buy more flowers—carnations this time. The woman at the desk had asked for her autograph last night when she came in from dinner; she would be glad to get her another vase. Before leaving for California, Beth had mailed off checks for subscriptions to all the magazines Benny took. She would be getting Deutsche Schachzeitung, the oldest chess magazine, and British Chess Magazine and, from Russia, Shakhmatni v USSR. There would be Échecs Europe and American Chess Bulletin. She planned to play through every grandmaster game in them, and when she found games that were important she would memorize them and analyze every move that had consequence or developed any idea that she was not familiar with. In early spring she might go to New York and play the U.S. Open and get in a few weeks with Benny. The flowers in her hand glowed crimson, her new jeans and cotton sweater felt fresh on her skin in the cool San Francisco air, at the bottom of the street the blue ocean lay like a dream of possibility. Her soul sang silently with it, reaching out toward the Pacific.

  ***

  When she came home with her trophy and the first-prize check, she found in the pile of mail two business envelopes: one was from the USCF and contained a check for four hundred dollars and a brief apology that they couldn’t send more. The second was from Christian Crusade. It had a three-page letter that spoke of the need to promote international understanding through Christian principles and to annihilate Communism for the advancement of those same principles. The word “His” was capitalized in a way that made Beth uneasy. The letter was signed “Yours in Christ” by four people. Folded up in it was a check for four thousand dollars. She held the check in her hand for a long time. Her prize money at San Francisco was two thousand, and she had to take her travel expenses out of it. Her bank account had been dwindling for the past six months. She had hoped to get at most two thousand dollars from the people in Texas. Whatever crazy ideas they might have, the money was a gift from heaven. She called Benny to tell him the good news.

  ***

  When she came in from her Wednesday morning squash game the phone was ringing. She got her raincoat off in a hurry, threw it on the sofa and picked up the phone. It was a woman’s voice. “Is this Elizabeth Harmon?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Helen Deardorff, at Methuen.” She was too astonished to speak. “I have something to tell you, Elizabeth. Mr. Shaibel died last night. I thought you might want to know.”

  She had a sudden image of the fat old janitor bent over his chess set in the basement, with the bare light bulb over his head, and herself standing by him, watching the deliberateness, the oddness of him there alone by the furnace.

  “Last night?” she said.

  “A heart attack. He was in his sixties.”

  What Beth said next surprised her. It came out almost without conscious thought. “I’d like to come to the funeral.”

  “The funeral?” Mrs. Deardorff said. “I’m not sure when—There’s an unmarried sister, Hilda Shaibel. You could call her.”

  ***

  When the Wheatleys drove her to Lexington six years before, they had gone on narrow asphalt roads through towns where she had stared out the car windows at stoplights while brightly dressed people crossed the streets and walked on crowded sidewalks in front of shops. Now, driving back with Jolene, it was four-lane concrete most of the way and the towns were visible only as names printed on green signs.

  “He looked like a mean son of a bitch,” Jolene said.

  “He wasn’t easy to play chess with, either. I think I was terrified of him.”

  “I was scared of all of ’em,” Jolene said. “Motherfuckers.”

  That surprised Beth. She had imagined Jolene as fearless. “What about Fergussen?”

  “Fergussen was an oasis in the desert,” Jolene said, “but he frightened me when he first came. He turned out to be okay.” She smiled. “Old Fergussen.”

  Beth hesitated a moment. “Was there ever anything between you two?” She remembered those extra green pills.

  Jolene laughed. “Wishful thinking.”

  “How old were you when you came?”

  “Six.”

  “Do you know anything about your parents?”

  “Just my grandmother, and she’s dead. Somewhere near Louisville. I don’t want to know anything about them. I don’t care whether I’m a bastard or why it was they wanted to put me with my grandmother or why she wanted to shove me off on Methuen. I’m just glad to be free of it all. I’ll have my master’s in August, and I’m leaving this state for good.”

  “I still remember my mother,” Beth said. “Daddy’s not so clear.”

  “Best to forget it,” Jolene said. “If you can.”

  She pulled into the left lane and passed a coal truck and two campers. Up ahead a green sign gave the mileage to Mount Sterling. It was spring, almost exactly a year since Beth’s last trip in a car, with Benny. She thought of the griminess of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. This white concrete road was fresh and new, with Kentucky fields and white fences and farmhouses on either side of it.

  After a while Jolene lit up a cigarette, and Beth said, “Where will you go when you graduate?”

  She was beginning to think that Jolene hadn’t heard her when Jolene spoke. “I’ve got an offer from a white law firm in Atlanta that looks promising.” She fell silent again. “What they want is an imported nigger to stay even with the times.”

  Beth looked at her. “I don’t think I’d go any farther south if I was black.”

  “Well, you sure ain’t,” Jolene said. “These people in Atlanta will p
ay me twice what I could get in New York. I’d be doing public relations, which is the kind of shuck I understand right to my fingertips, and they’ll start me out with two windows in my office and a white girl to type my letters.”

  “But you haven’t studied law.”

  Jolene laughed. “I expect they like it that way. Fine, Slocum and Livingston don’t want any black female reviewing torts. What they want is a clean black woman with a nice ass and a good vocabulary. When I did the interview I dropped a lot of words like ‘reprehensible’ and ‘dichotomy,’ and they picked right up.”

  “Jolene,” Beth said, “you’re too smart for that. You could teach at the University. And you’re a fine athlete…”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Jolene said. “I play good tennis and golf and I’m ambitious.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette. “You may have no idea just how ambitious I am. I worked hard at sports, and I had coaches promising I’d be a pro if I kept at it.”

  “That doesn’t sound bad.”

  Jolene let the smoke out slowly. “Beth,” she said, “what I want is what you’ve got. I don’t want to work on my backhand for two years so I can be a bush league pro. You’ve been the best at what you do for so long you don’t know what it’s like for the rest of us.”

  “I’d like to be half as good-looking as you are…”

  “Quit giving me that,” Jolene said. “Can’t spend your life in front of a mirror. You ain’t ugly anymore anyhow. What I’m talking about is your talent. I’d give my ass to play tennis the way you play chess.”

  The conviction in Jolene’s voice was overwhelming. Beth looked at her face in profile, with its Afro grazing at the top of the car interior, at her smooth brown arms out to where her steady hands held the wheel, at the anger clouding her face, and said nothing.

  A minute later Jolene said, “Well, now. There it is.”

  About a mile ahead to the right of the road stood three dark brick buildings with black roofs and black window shutters. The Methuen Home for Orphaned Children.