Chess Story

by Stefan Zweig

  “I myself am unable to tell you how this appalling, indescribable state came to a head. All I know is that I woke up one morning and my awakening was not the same as usual. My body was as if detached from me, I was resting easily and comfortably. A dense, agreeable tiredness such as I had not known for months lay upon my eyelids, lay upon them with such warmth and beneficence that at first I could not bring myself to open my eyes. I was awake, but for minutes I enjoyed this heavy muzziness, the torpor of lying there with senses voluptuously dulled. Suddenly I seemed to hear voices behind me, living human voices speaking words, and you cannot imagine my joy, for it had been months, almost a year since I had heard words other than the harsh, cutting, malignant ones of my questioners. ‘You’re dreaming,’ I said to myself. ‘You’re dreaming! Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes! Let it go on, this dream, or you’ll see that accursed room around you again, the chair and the washstand and the table and the wall-paper with the pattern always the same. You’re dreaming—go on dreaming!’

  “But curiosity got the better of me. Slowly and cautiously I opened my eyes. And, incredibly, it was a different room in which I found myself, a room wider and more spacious than my hotel room. An unbarred window let light in freely and looked out onto trees, green trees swaying in the breeze, instead of my unyielding firewall, the walls shone white and smooth, the ceiling above me was white and high—I really was in a new, different bed, and in fact it wasn’t a dream, human voices were whispering softly behind me. I heard footsteps approaching, and I must have given an involuntary start of surprise. A woman glided up, a woman with a white cap over her hair, an attendant, a nurse. A shudder of joy passed over me: I hadn’t seen a woman for a year. I stared at the sweet apparition, and it must have been a wild, ecstatic gaze, for the woman urgently soothed me: ‘Be calm! Keep still!’ But I only listened to her voice—wasn’t that someone speaking? Was there really still someone on earth who wasn’t an interrogator, a tormentor? And on top of that—what an incomprehensible miracle!—the soft, warm, almost tender voice of a woman. I stared greedily at her mouth, for in that year of hell it had come to seem unlikely to me that one person could speak kindly to another. She smiled at me—yes, she was smiling, there were still people who could smile kindly—then raised a finger of admonition to her lips and quietly moved away. But I could not do as she wished. I had not yet had enough of this miracle. I struggled to sit up in my bed in order to gaze after her, this miraculous human being who was kind. But when I tried to prop myself up on the edge of the bed, I couldn’t. Where my right hand, my fingers and wrist, should have been, I felt something foreign, a big, fat, white ball, evidently a massive bandage. At first I gazed uncomprehendingly at this white, fat, foreign object on my hand; then I slowly began to understand where I was and to think about what might have happened to me. I must have been wounded, or I had injured my own hand. I was in a hospital.

  “At midday the doctor came, a friendly older man. He knew my family name and spoke of my uncle, the Kaiser’s personal physician, with such respect that I immediately felt he meant me well. As we went on he asked me all sorts of questions, particularly one that astonished me—whether I was a mathematician or a chemist. I said no.

  “‘Strange,’ he murmured. ‘While you were feverish you kept shouting out such strange formulas—c3, c4. None of us could make head or tail of it.’

  “I asked what had happened to me. He smiled oddly.

  “‘Nothing serious. Acute nervous irritation,’ he said, and added in low tones, after first looking around cautiously, ‘Perfectly understandable when you get down to it. Since March 13, isn’t that right?’

  “I nodded.

  “‘No wonder, with these methods,’ he murmured. ‘You’re not the first. But don’t worry.’

  “I knew from the comforting way he whispered this to me and from the reassuring look on his face that I was in good hands.

  “Two days later the kind doctor explained to me with some frankness what had happened. The guard had heard me cry out loudly in my cell and had at first thought I was quarreling with someone who had gotten in. But I had flung myself upon him the moment he appeared at the door and shouted wildly at him—things on the order of ‘Will you make your move, you scoundrel, you coward!’—had tried to grab him by the throat, and finally assaulted him so fiercely that he had to call for help. When I was taken to be examined by a physician, in my derangement I had suddenly broken free, thrown myself at the window in the corridor and shattered the glass, cutting my hand—you can still see the deep scar here. I had spent my first few nights in the hospital with a kind of brain fever, but now the doctor said he found my sensorium entirely clear. ‘Frankly,’ he added quietly, ‘I’d rather not tell the authorities, or eventually they’ll take you back there again. Leave it to me, I’ll do my best.’

  “I have no idea what this helpful doctor told my tormentors about me. In any case he achieved what he had intended: my release. Possibly he declared me of unsound mind, or perhaps I had in the interval become unimportant to the Gestapo, for Hitler had now occupied Bohemia and the fall of Austria was thus over and done with as far as he was concerned. So I needed only to sign a commitment to leave the country within fourteen days. Those fourteen days were taken up with the hundred and one formalities that those who were once citizens of the world must now go through in order to travel abroad: military papers, police, tax, passport, visa, certificate of health. There was no time to think very much about what had happened. Whenever I did try to think back on my time in the cell, it was as though a light went out in my mind: apparently there are hidden regulatory forces at work within us which automatically shut off anything that might become psychologically troublesome or dangerous. Only after weeks and weeks, really not until I was here aboard this ship, did I regain the courage to reflect on what had happened to me.

  “And now you will understand my very impertinent and probably baffling behavior toward your friends. Quite by chance, I was strolling through the smoking lounge when I saw your friends sitting in front of the chessboard; I was rooted to the spot in stunned amazement. For I had completely forgotten that you can play chess at a real chessboard, with real pieces, forgotten that in this game two entirely different people can sit across from each other in the flesh.

  It actually took me a few minutes to realize that what these players were engaged in was basically the same game that in desperation I had attempted to play against myself for months. The coded designations with which I had to make do during my grim exercitia were only stand-ins, symbolizing these ivory pieces; my surprise that this movement of pieces on the board was what I had visualized in subjective space could be compared to that of an astronomer who uses the most complex methods to work out on paper the existence of a new heavenly body and then actually sees it in the sky as a distinct, white, physical star. I stared at the board as though held by a magnet, seeing my figments, knight, rook, king, queen, and pawns, as real pieces carved out of wood; I had to transform my abstract computational world back into that of the pieces on the board before I could understand the state of play. Gradually I was overcome by curiosity to see a real game between two players. And then came the embarrassing moment when, forgetting all courtesy, I intruded on your game. But that bad move of your friend’s hit a nerve. When I stopped him I was acting purely instinctively, I stepped in on impulse just as, without thinking, you seize a child who is leaning over a railing. My gross impertinence became clear to me only later.”

  I hastened to assure Dr. B. that we were all glad to have had this unforeseen opportunity to make his acquaintance and that for me, after everything he had told me, it would be doubly interesting to be able to watch the improvised tournament the next day. Dr. B. shifted uneasily.

  “No, really, don’t expect too much. It will be nothing but a test for me … a test to see whether I … whether I am at all capable of playing an ordinary chess game, a game on a real chessboard with actual pieces and a live opponent … for now I dou
bt more and more whether those hundreds and perhaps thousands of games I played were actually proper chess games and not just a kind of dream chess, a fever chess, a delirium of play, skipping from one thing to another the way dreams do. I hope you will not seriously expect me to offer a genuine challenge to a chess master, indeed the greatest in the world. My only interest, the only attraction for me, is a postmortem curiosity to know whether that was chess or madness in the cell, whether at that time I was just on the brink or already over the edge—that’s all, nothing else.”

  Just then the sound of a gong came from one end of the ship, summoning us to dinner. We must have been talking for two hours—Dr. B. reported everything in much more detail than I have set down here. I thanked him warmly and took my leave. But before I could move along the deck, he came after me and, visibly nervous and even stammering a little, added:

  “One more thing! Will you tell the gentlemen beforehand, so that I won’t appear impolite afterwards: I’ll play just one game … it’s just to put paid to an old account—the finale rather than a new beginning … I don’t want to fall again into that passionate chess fever, which I recall with nothing but horror … and anyway … anyway the doctor warned me … warned me specifically. Anyone who has suffered from a mania remains at risk forever, and with chess sickness (even if cured) it would be better not to go near a chessboard … So you understand—only this one experimental game for myself, and no more.”

  The next day, we assembled in the smoking lounge punctually at the agreed-upon hour of three o’clock. Our group had grown to include two more lovers of the royal game, two ship’s officers who had requested leave from duty so that they could watch the tournament. Even Czentovic did not keep us waiting as he had the previous day, and after the obligatory choice of colors the memorable game between this homo obscurissimus and the renowned world champion began. I regret that it was played for such thoroughly incompetent spectators and that its course is as lost to the annals of chess as Beethoven’s piano improvisations are to music. On the succeeding afternoons we put our heads together to try to reconstruct the game from memory, but without success; we had probably been too intent on the two players to follow the progress of play. For the contrast in the two players’ intellectual constitutions became more and more physically evident as the game proceeded. Czentovic, the old hand, remained stock-still the whole time, looking fixedly and severely down at the board: for him thought seemed to be close to physical exertion, demanding the utmost concentration in every part of his body. Dr. B. on the other hand moved completely freely and naturally. As a true dilettante in the best sense of the word, one who plays for the pure delight—that is, the diletto—of playing, he was utterly relaxed physically, chatting with us during the early breaks to explain the course of the game and casually lighting a cigarette. When it was his move he only glanced at the board. Each time he seemed to have been expecting his opponent’s play.

  The requisite opening moves went fairly quickly. Something like distinct strategies did not seem to develop until the seventh or eighth. Czentovic’s pauses for thought were becoming longer; we sensed that the true battle for the upper hand had begun. But, to be perfectly honest, the gradual development of the game was something of a disappointment to us laymen, as that of any real game in a tournament would have been. For as the pieces wove themselves together into a strange decorative pattern, the actual state of play became increasingly impenetrable to us. We could not discern the intentions of either player or make out who had the advantage. We saw individual pieces moving like levers to pry open enemy lines, but, since everything these superior players did was always calculated several moves ahead, we were unable to grasp the strategic purpose of this give and take. Our lack of comprehension was gradually joined by a paralyzing fatigue, chiefly attributable to Czentovic’s endless delays, by which our friend too began to be visibly irritated. I watched uneasily as the game went on and he fidgeted more and more in his chair, now nervously lighting one cigarette after another, now seizing a pencil to make a note of something. Then he ordered more mineral water, hurriedly downing glass after glass. It was obvious that he was calculating his moves a hundred times faster than Czentovic. Each time that Czentovic decided, after endless deliberation, to move a piece forward with his heavy hand, our friend only smiled, like someone seeing the arrival of something long expected, and was already responding. His racing mind must have calculated all his opponent’s possible moves ahead of time; for the longer Czentovic drew out his decision, the more our friend’s impatience grew, and as he waited his lips were pressed together in an expression of annoyance, almost hostility. But Czentovic was not to be rushed. He deliberated silently, doggedly, pausing at greater and greater length as the board emptied of pieces. At the forty-second move, after a solid two hours and forty-five minutes, we all sat around the table exhausted and almost indifferent. One of the ship’s officers had already left; the other had taken out a book and did not glance up unless something changed. But then, as Czentovic was preparing to move, the unexpected suddenly happened. When Dr. B. saw Czentovic reaching out to advance his knight, he tensed like a cat about to pounce. His entire body began to tremble, and as soon as Czentovic had moved the knight he abruptly pushed his queen forward and in a loud and triumphant voice said, “So! Finished!” Dr. B. leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, and looked challengingly at Czentovic. His eyes were smoldering.

  We couldn’t help bending over the board to study this move, announced with such triumph. At first glance no direct threat could be seen; so our friend must have been referring to a development that we short-sighted amateurs could not yet calculate. Czentovic was the only one who had remained motionless in the face of this defiant pronouncement; he sat there as imperturbably as if he had completely missed the insulting “Finished!” Nothing happened. Involuntarily we all held our breaths, and suddenly you could hear the ticking of the clock on the table, put there to time the players. Three minutes passed, seven minutes, eight minutes—Czentovic did not move, but it seemed to me that his large nostrils were flaring still further from internal tension. This silent waiting seemed as unbearable to our friend as it did to us. He suddenly leapt to his feet and began to pace back and forth in the smoking lounge, first slowly, then ever faster. We all watched him with some amazement, but none with as much unease as I, for it struck me that his steps always measured out the same distance despite the intensity of his pacing; it was as though each time he ran up against an invisible barrier in the middle of the empty room, forcing him to reverse course. And I knew with a shiver that in his pacing he was unconsciously tracing the dimensions of his cell; during his months of incarceration he must have paced in just this way, like a caged animal, his hands clenched and his shoulders hunched precisely as they were now; this, just this, must have been the way he had walked up and down, thousands of times, the red light of madness in his blank, yet feverish gaze. But his mental powers still seemed to be entirely intact, for from time to time he turned to the table impatiently to see if Czentovic had reached a decision. Nine minutes, ten minutes went by. Then at last something happened that none of us had expected. Czentovic slowly raised his heavy hand, which had been resting motionless on the table. We were all eager to see what he would do. But instead of making a move, he slowly and resolutely swept the pieces off the board with the back of his hand. It took us a moment to understand: Czentovic had resigned. He had capitulated, so that we wouldn’t see him being checkmated. Improbably, the world champion, the winner of countless tournaments, had surrendered to an unknown, a man who had not touched a chessboard for twenty or twenty-five years. Our friend the nobody, the cipher, had defeated the strongest chess player on earth in open battle!

  In our excitement we had risen to our feet without realizing it, one after another. All of us felt we had to say or do something to express our joy and awe. The only one who remained calm and still was Czentovic. After a measured pause he lifted his head. He gazed stonily at our friend. />