The Game Player

by Rafael Yglesias

  He looked happy during the silence that followed my speech. His face had smoothed out while listening, he seemed less harassed. His eyes brightened with the wavering light of a flame’s reflection on an opaque surface. He put a hand on my shoulder and I felt the long fingers tense and hold me. “Howard, I’m a demon. A ferocious engine. I’m barely hanging on to the controls and I might start going at any moment and circle wildly. You watch me.” He let me go. “I need you to watch me. Because I don’t care what effect I have. I just enjoy functioning.”

  “But that’s what I’m doing. I’m telling you to push the road.”

  He made his left hand rigid to use it as a comb. It looked like an actor’s idea of someone having a stroke. “Look, I’ve got the football team to handle now. And, besides, our schoolwork’s gonna start getting heavier. I’ll tell you what. Next year I’ll do it.”

  There wasn’t much of a follow-up in Hills People about the proposed school colors change. Just a line that the committee assigned to investigate it had, by a vote of four to two, recommended against making a change. And the Council concurred.

  5

  I like to see ’em squirm.

  Bobby Fischer, age fourteen

  HIGH SCHOOL BEGINS with a mad rush to power, but the middle years are stable. It is up to the ten top students to maintain their positions, which they invariably do, though perhaps I can flatter my generation with more fluctuation in this regard, because our sophomore year began in 1967 and our junior year ended in 1969. Drugs, sex, and the Vietnam War were great explosions whose shocks interrupted and distorted our reception of signals from the adult world. My freshman class was all that America could hope for: we wanted the best colleges, the most beautiful of lovers, and a complete collection of American technology. But just as a light bulb will glow intensely before blowing, we were racing our engines, trying to outrun the changes in the world we had been told was waiting for us.

  I remember waking up and going to school sometime towards the end of my sophomore year and everyone seemed to have grown their hair long. I heard about marijuana once and then everyone was smoking it. Only the jocks ever liked the Vietnam War. Most of the arguments were with people who couldn’t be made to care about ending it; with maddening casualness they admitted the War was bad. And college became a necessity not for a career, but to stay out of the Army.

  It was frightening: one day I woke up and I was in a fight to the death with my parents.

  And perhaps a week later, all of us were in a vicious civil war. My friend Joseph, the little Kissinger, who had never listened to rock music, suddenly decided to tape, on New Year’s Eve 1967, WABC’s countdown of the top one hundred hits for the year. By February 1968 his hair was almost to his shoulders and his quick, clever eyes were often chaotically colored from smoking hash. The girls were in jeans and makeup had become an embarrassing formality rarely encountered.

  And I knew the Sexual Revolution was for real when in the fall of 1968 I wandered into the music department and suddenly came upon timid, pudgy Frankie breathlessly kissing an equally timid, pudgy girl whose blouse was open to his rough massaging of a single pink nipple.

  My point is that the tensions between the second-best academic students and the best, were lost in the shocks of these cultural quakes. It wasn’t clear that you should be a straight-A student. And the measure of the upheaval’s force was that Brian, by far our best performing athlete (he somehow managed to outproduce the stronger boys) gave up his place on the starting squads of our two major teams: football and baseball.

  He never mentioned any reaction to that decision of his, but one day, when I was consulting my advisor, Mrs. Rosenbloom (I came to like her), he was with me and she said to him at the end, “I was speaking to Mr. Crowder in an advisors’ meeting and he told me what Mr. White was saying about you.”

  “He’s upset because I quit the teams,” Brian said.

  “Yes.” She lifted my file off the desk and reached for one of her desk drawers. “But that’s no excuse for saying you are selfish.” While she looked down to find the place for my records, I glanced at Brian and was amazed by the intensity of his face.

  “It is selfish,” he said. “I have to concentrate on my academic work and I’m overloaded with clubs and meetings—”

  “I know, my dear, you’ve practically carried your rather, I’m sorry to say, disheveled class. I just wanted you to know, since I think Mr. Crowder is too diffident to tell you, that he, I, and practically all of your teachers went into the principal’s office and told him to get Mr. White off your back.”

  Brian’s face loosened in a funny way. “Really?”

  Mrs. Rosenbloom, hearing something unusual in his tone, looked intently at him. “Yes, Brian, we all value you very much. And the principal had heard about it and had no faith in Mr. White’s attitude. He said that White wasn’t in time with today’s students.”

  Brian spoke quickly, “Thank you very, very much.” He turned to leave, but then reversed himself. “I have to go. I’m sorry. But thank you.” He banged into the door on his way out and we heard him rush down the stairs.

  “Poor boy, he must have been very upset. I didn’t know.” Mrs. Rosenbloom looked sternly at me. “Did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said in the hasty tone of someone denying guilt.

  “He holds things inside too much.” She looked for my reaction, but I had no intention of giving anything away. “Very goyish,” she added.

  I think I would have agreed with her a year before, but it seemed to me that his dark side was drawing out like a long ignored infection: no explosions, just ooze. Though he was Student Councilman, he left most of his work to another boy; and, apart from schoolwork, he was disciplined about only one of his extracurricular activities: chess. He refused to try out for any of the roles in the plays whose sets he helped build. And he declined to play bridge for the school team. His flirtation with music was over by the time I’m speaking of—our junior year.

  In the fall, there was a huge chess tournament held in New York City to determine the best high school team in the state. It was an annual event but this year Brian was playing top board for us and, he told me, our freshman class had a shrimp of a kid who was sure to sweep all of his opponents. “The freshmen and sophomores play each other while the juniors and seniors play amongst themselves. So, though our senior player, Jeff, is only average, he’ll still come out with four wins and the sophomore will probably do the same. So if the shrimp and I sweep, we’ll win it.”

  “How many games do you play?”

  “Six, in three days. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.”

  The chess tournament was held in a midtown hotel, in two huge rooms painted an institutional gray and lighted by fluorescence. I went there on Sunday because, as Brian had predicted, he and the shrimp had won all four of their games, while the sophomore had lost one and Jeff had won three and drew one. They were in first place, but there were two teams close on their heels, and they would still need a good result today. My going was not loyalty to my friend. I was given the assignment to cover it for Hills People, where I had become assistant editor—the highest position a junior could achieve.

  I didn’t go until noon, even though the games had begun at nine, because I was there largely to report on the result and to pick a dramatic game to describe, which would surely be Brian’s final one. There was a break between noon and two o’clock for lunch and I met the team in a nearby luncheonette.

  I had stopped them from telling me what had happened until we finished ordering and I insisted that only one of them talk because, though Brian was perfectly calm, the other three were excited and tended to chatter at cross-purposes, describing their games in endless one-upmanship. I began with the shrimp.

  “I won my game,” he said in a high voice, very rushed. But he paused and blinked his eyes at me.

  “Congratulations,” I said, figuring out what he was waiting for.

  “Thank you. I smashed him in twen
ty-two moves.” He looked at Brian. “He tried the Caro-Kann but I figured he couldn’t handle any irregularities so I started shoving Queen-side Pawns at him—”

  “That’s a big gamble,” Jeff said.

  “It worked,” was Brian’s answer, smiling at the small fry.

  “I don’t know,” said the little voice. “I think it’s a pretty intriguing line. I’ll have to see what MCO says would be the answer to it.”

  Jeff said to Brian, “Reaction in the center, right?”

  “Yeah.” Brian smiled at me. “Sorry about the talk, Howard. We’ll all be quiet now.”

  “Thank you. Were your other opponents tougher than today’s?” I asked while watching the shrimp handle a hamburger half his size.

  “No, he was the best.”

  “You mean you won your other games in less moves?”

  “No.” He looked almost outraged. “No, the others dragged on because they played, well, a few didn’t resign even when down a Rook plus. Today’s guy had the best rating.”

  “Let me explain, Howard,” Brian said. “Sometimes you’ll beat a better opponent more thoroughly because they’ll expose themselves trying to beat you. If a player plays just to avoid mate from the beginning, he’s sure to lose but it may take a while. But the length doesn’t make the game harder. In fact, they’re easier to play.”

  The sophomore had drawn his game and he complained at great length about his opponent’s manners: he tapped the table with his fingers, mumbled while considering moves, and did countless other things that, according to them were either legal or too difficult to stop legally. The shrimp became self-righteous and said that such things shouldn’t distract a player who was on his game. This enraged the sophomore and he began to yell. Brian interrupted the tiff: “Look, fellows, we’re supposed to help each other. We all know that some of us play better chess, but it’s stupid to keep pointing it out.” Brian was talking, of course, to the small fry, who looked very young and ashamed under Brian’s eyes. “On the other hand, it’s very frustrating when you’re winning to have people explain it as being freakish or due to some special advantage.”

  “Who did that?” asked the sophomore.

  “There’s a young fellow at this table who, after each of his five wins, you two have managed to criticize in some way. He was gambling, the opponent was a neophyte. The fact is he’s got five wins and I haven’t heard a congratulations.”

  Jeff and the sophomore congratulated the little one and, to his credit, he showed no pleasure at his humiliation of his elders. Brian said, after the apologies, about the sophomore’s game, “He was playing a very tough opponent and did very well to draw.”

  “Okay, Jeff, how about you?” I asked.

  “Well, Howard, I lost.” He said this pleasantly and we laughed. “I just made a mistake in a pretty complicated line of the Sicilian. I forgot what I was supposed to do and I made what looked like a harmless Bishop move and I had forgotten this pinned my Knight and I quickly went down a Pawn, plus losing dominance in the center.” He waved a hand in disgust. “I got murdered.”

  The shrimp asked what line of the Sicilian and Jeff told him warily. But the kid just said that he could never get that line right either and that they should both take a look at it.

  “So, in short, Howard,” Brian said, “we’ve lost some ground and Jefferson High is now tied with us.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Oh, I won, but Jefferson swept their four games. So they picked up a game and a half.”

  We got back to the hotel an hour before game time and I was thrilled by the sight of the two huge charts of individual accomplishments. The first was for juniors and seniors, the second for sophomores and freshmen. Brian’s name was second on the first list behind another boy with a 5-0 score and there was a bracket linking them. Indeed, the brackets traced an enormous pattern to the right of the names, linking players. Brian explained that this showed the pairings for the last round. The shrimp was first on the other list, tied with four other players, one of whom he was to play.

  Brian showed me where he and the other tournament leader would have their showdown. It was a table standing by itself, the only one so privileged (the others were in rows of ten), to the left of the tournament director’s desk. All the chessboards were in fact thin plastic surfaces, with green and white squares, that could be rolled up when not in use. The pieces’ colors were traditional, black and white, but they were much larger than most sets I had seen. On the side facing out, a strip of paper hung over the edge of the table, anchored by the plastic board. In black Magic Marker an ornate number one had been written on the paper, in the same style that the other tables were numbered. The most dramatic difference between Table One and the other hundred or so was the large contraption set behind it. Called a demonstration board, it was a four-foot-square replica of a chessboard placed on an easel. Flat plastic squares with triangular flaps carry the symbols of chess pieces and their tails are fitted into invisible pouches below each square. A chair stood next to the apparatus for the boy whose job it was to observe the players’ moves and make the corresponding ones on the demonstration board. That allowed the current position of the game to be seen from as far away as the rear of the huge hall. However, from the perspective of the row of chairs for spectators it was oppressively large, bearing down on the players’ game like a threatening cloud.

  “It’s scary,” I said to Brian.

  “Not really,” he shouted over the din in the cavernous room. The players were busy with their idea of relaxation: five-minute chess games. They seemed much harder and more tense to me than the slow, graceful four-hour tournament matches. “One plays chess to reach this sort of moment,” Brian continued. “It’s gratifying.” He pointed behind me and I turned to see another chart of accomplishment, this one broken down into teams.

  “What do you think we’ll need to win?” I asked.

  “Well, I assume the shrimp will win.”

  “You were very nice to him.”

  “Certainly, he’s our bread and butter. He’ll win, I’m sure of it. So if I win, I think we’ll only need one point from the other two games. That should guarantee a tie. If we get a point and a half, we’ll win.”

  “What happens if there’s a tie between us and Jefferson?”

  “Oh, we’d win it on tie-breakers.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, you calculate the ratings of the opponents of each of the teams and the team that has played the higher-rated opponents wins. And I’ve calculated that it’s impossible for them to have played higher-rated people. I suppose it’s possible they could equal it. Then we’d share the trophy.”

  I laughed. “Where’s the trophy?” He took me outside to the hall, where there was a long table jammed with trophies of varying sizes. He pointed out the largest. “Very impressive,” I said laconically.

  “It should be worth money to win this thing,” Brian said seriously.

  There could have been thousands riding on the outcome of each of the games judging from the silence that fell immediately on the tournament director’s signal to start the clocks. They are small wooden boxes that frame two clocks. A black button is set on either side of the box and to depress one is to start the other: so the time taken by each player (they are allowed two hours apiece to make forty moves) is measured. Failure to do so results in forfeiture.

  I sat uneasily in the quiet made spectacular by my knowledge that only moments before, two hundred-odd players had been the source of hellish noise. At first, Brian and his opponent, Horowitz, moved so quickly that the demonstration boy lost track of their moves and needed a minute to catch up. They rushed through what must have been ten moves each and then Horowitz stopped the mad rush of grabbing pieces and banging them down quickly to punch the clock, and sat with his hands forming an awning over his eyes. I looked about the room and noticed that the games were progressing rapidly and I heard a groan from somewhere that distracted me for a moment.
When I glanced back at the demonstration board, I saw that I had missed both Horowitz’s decision and Brian’s answer, which must have been immediate, so Brian was ahead in time—the clocks faced away from the audience, making this a constant anxiety.

  The first hour was hot and restlessly boring. Brian and Horowitz seemed to be making no progress. The only exchange of pieces had been two Pawns early on, and now a network of Pawns, with pieces hiding fearfully behind, edged up towards each other laboriously. But then other games began to end, always with a sudden noise, both players pushing their chairs back, usually shaking hands, and a short conversation in sober voices, so that it was difficult to know the winner. Not always was defeat polite, however. There would be a harsh word; “Shit!” was the most common, and then shushing from the other players.

  Winner and loser would walk up the aisle in front of us to the tournament director’s desk to file their report, handing him index cards with the necessary information. Their eyes would be drawn to the demonstration board, their walk slowing, their necks craned while they put the cards on the desk. And then they would walk slowly to one of the observing chairs, backing up all the way, the image of Stoppard versus Horowitz hypnotizing them.

  I think it was the third such pair who joined me on the chairs that first produced one of those small magnetic chess sets and copied the position of Brian’s game. One of them leaned over to me and asked if the game had begun as some opening, something with a Slavic name. “I don’t know. I don’t really know chess but I’m a good friend of Stoppard’s and I’m covering it for our school paper.”

  He laughed. “We’re gonna finish something like fifteenth, so I don’t think you’ll run into anybody from our school paper.”