Chess Story

by Stefan Zweig

  “Another game?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Dr. B. replied with an enthusiasm that I found disagreeable and, before I could remind him of his resolution to content himself with a single game, he immediately sat down and began to set up the pieces again with feverish haste. His movements as he assembled them were so brusque that twice a pawn slipped through his trembling fingers to the floor; my nagging disquiet at the sight of his unnatural excitement had now grown into a kind of anxiety. For a visible exaltation had come over this man, previously so quiet and calm; the twitch at the corner of his mouth was more and more frequent, and his body shook as though in the grip of a sudden fever.

  “No!” I whispered to him gently. “Not now! That’s enough for one day! It’s too much of a strain for you.”

  “A strain! Ha!” He gave a loud and nasty laugh. “I could have played seventeen games by this time instead of all this lollygagging! At this pace the only strain is staying awake!—Now then! Start, why don’t you!”

  His tone as he said these last words to Czentovic was fierce, almost coarse. Czentovic looked at him calmly and evenly, but something in his stony, unwavering gaze suggested a clenched fist. Suddenly there was something new between the two of them: a dangerous tension, a passionate hatred. They were no longer opponents testing their abilities in a spirit of play, but enemies resolved to annihilate each other. Czentovic delayed for a long time before making the first move. It was clear to me that this was intentional. The experienced tactician had evidently discovered that he was wearing his opponent down and setting him on edge by his very slowness. Thus it was some four minutes before he executed the most ordinary, the simplest of all openings, advancing his king’s pawn two squares. Our friend immediately countered with his own king’s pawn. Again Czentovic paused for an endless, almost unendurable time. It was like the moment after a great bolt of lightning: your heart pounds, you wait and wait, but the thunder never comes. He deliberated silently and with a slowness that, I was more and more certain, was malicious; in the meantime I observed Dr. B. He had just gulped down his third glass of water. I couldn’t help recalling what he had told me about his feverish thirst in his cell. All the symptoms of abnormal excitation were clearly apparent; I saw the perspiration appear on his brow while the scar on his hand became redder and stood out more sharply than before. But he was still in control of himself. It was not until the fourth move, over which Czentovic was once again endlessly deliberating, that he lost his composure and suddenly barked:

  “Come on, make your move!”

  Czentovic looked up coolly. “As far as I know, we agreed on a move time of ten minutes. As a matter of principle I won’t play with anything less.”

  Dr. B. bit his lip; I noticed that his foot was tapping more and more anxiously under the table, while I myself, with an oppressive premonition of some approaching outrage, was increasingly nervous. And at the eighth move there was in fact a second incident. Dr. B., who had been waiting with less and less self-control, was unable to maintain his composure; he fidgeted and unconsciously began to drum on the table with his fingers. Once more Czentovic raised his heavy peasant’s head.

  “May I ask you not to drum? It disturbs me. I can’t play if you do that.”

  “Ha!” laughed Dr. B. “That’s clear enough.”

  Czentovic’s forehead flushed. “What do you mean by that?” he asked sharply and angrily.

  Dr. B. gave another short, nasty laugh. “Nothing. Just that you’re obviously very nervous.”

  Czentovic said nothing and lowered his head. It took him seven minutes to make his next move, and the game dragged on at this deadly pace. Czentovic seemed increasingly to be made of stone; eventually he was taking the maximum time before every move, while from one pause to the next our friend’s behavior became ever more bizarre. He no longer seemed to be taking part in the game: he was involved in something quite different. He had left off his excited pacing and sat motionless in his chair. Staring before him with a vacant, almost crazed expression, he murmured incomprehensible words to himself in a continuous stream; either he was engrossed in an endless calculation of moves, or else (this was my deepest suspicion) he was working out entirely different games, for whenever Czentovic at last made a move, he had to be brought back to an awareness of his surroundings. Then it always took him a few moments to reorient himself; I was beginning to suspect that he had actually long since forgotten Czentovic and the rest of us in this quiet madness, which seemed ready to explode into violence of some kind. And, at the nineteenth move, the crisis in fact erupted. Czentovic had no sooner made his move than Dr. B. abruptly pushed his bishop forward three squares with barely a glance at the board and shouted so loudly that we all jumped:

  “Check! Your king is in check!”

  We immediately looked at the board, expecting an out-of-the-way move. But none of us was prepared for what happened a moment later. Czentovic raised his head very, very slowly and looked at each of us in turn (he had never done this). He seemed to be relishing something immensely, for gradually a pleased and distinctly mocking smile came to his lips. Only after he had savored to the full this triumph, still incomprehensible to us, did he address himself to our group with feigned politeness.

  “Excuse me—but I see no check. Does one of the gentlemen perhaps see how my king is in check?”

  We looked at the board, then uneasily at Dr. B. Czentovic’s king was in fact completely protected from the bishop by a pawn (a child could have seen it), and could not possibly be in check. We were troubled. Had our friend in his excitement moved to the wrong square? Alerted by our silence, Dr. B. too now stared at the board and began to stammer violently:

  “But the king should be on f7 … That’s wrong, where it is, completely wrong. You made the wrong move! Everything’s in the wrong place on this board … The pawn should be on g5, not on g4 … This is a different game … This is …”

  Suddenly he broke off. I had taken him firmly by the arm, or rather clamped his arm so hard that, even in his feverish confusion, he had to feel my grip. He turned and stared at me like a sleepwalker.

  “What … what do you want?”

  I said simply, “Remember!,” and drew my finger over the scar on his hand. He followed my movement without meaning to, and his eyes stared glassily at the blood-red line. Then he began suddenly to shake, and a shudder passed over his entire body.

  “My God,” he whispered, his lips pale. “Have I said or done something wrong … Am I in trouble again?”

  “No,” I whispered gently. “But you must end the game immediately, it’s high time. Remember what the doctor told you!”

  Dr. B. stood up immediately. “Please forgive my foolish error,” he said in his former polite tone and bowed to Czentovic. “What I said was of course pure nonsense. Needless to say, it’s your game.” He then turned to us. “I must also beg pardon of the gentlemen. But I warned you at the outset not to expect too much. I am sorry to have made a fool of myself—this is the last time I will try my hand at chess.”

  He bowed and departed as unassumingly and mysteriously as he had first appeared. I alone knew why this man would never again touch a chessboard, while the others were left a little confused, with the vague feeling that they had barely escaped something awkward and dangerous. McConnor was disappointed. “Damned fool!” he growled. Czentovic, the last to rise from his chair, glanced again at the half-finished game.

  “Pity,” he said generously. “The attack was not at all poorly conceived. For an amateur, this gentleman is really extraordinarily talented.”

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1976 by Williams Verlag and Atrium Press

  Translation copyright © 2006 by Joel Rotenberg

  Introduction copyright © 2006 by Peter Gay

  All rights reserved.

  Published in th
e German language as Schachnovelle

  Cover painting: Maria-Elena Vieira da Silva, The Chess Game (detail), 1943 © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

  Zweig, Stefan, 1881–1942.

  [Schachnovelle. English]

  Chess story / by Stefan Zweig ; translation by Joel Rotenberg.

  p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)

  ISBN 1-59017-169-1 (alk. paper)

  I. Rotenberg, Joel. II. Title. III. Series.

  PT 2653.W42S3513 2005

  833'.912—dc22

  2005012029

  eISBN 978-1-59017-560-6

  v1.0

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