The Luzhin Defense

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Luzhin was indeed tired. Lately he had been playing too frequently and too unsystematically; he was particularly fatigued by playing blind, a rather well-paid performance that he willingly gave. He found therein deep enjoyment: one did not have to deal with visible, audible, palpable pieces whose quaint shape and wooden materiality always disturbed him and always seemed to him but the crude, mortal shell of exquisite, invisible chess forces. When playing blind he was able to sense these diverse forces in their original purity. He saw then neither the Knight's carved mane nor the glossy heads of the Pawns--but he felt quite clearly that this or that imaginary square was occupied by a definite, concentrated force, so that he envisioned the movement of a piece as a discharge, a shock, a stroke of lightning--and the whole chess field quivered with tension, and over this tension he was sovereign, here gathering in and there releasing electric power. Thus he played against fifteen, twenty, thirty opponents and of course the sheer number of boards told--since it affected the actual playing time--but this physical weariness was nothing compared to the mental fatigue--retribution for the stress and rapture involved in the game itself, which he conducted in a celestial dimension, where his tools were incorporeal quantities. He also found a certain solace in these blind games and the victories they afforded him, for in recent years he had been having no luck at international tournaments; a ghostly barrier had arisen that kept preventing him from coming first. Valentinov had happened to foretell this in the past, shortly before they parted. "Shine while you can," he had said after that unforgettable tournament in London, the first after the war, when the twenty-year-old Russian player came out the victor. "While you can," repeated Valentinov slyly, "because you won't be a boy prodigy much longer." And this was very important for Valentinov. He was interested in Luzhin only inasmuch as he remained a freak, an odd phenomenon, somewhat deformed but enchanting, like a dachshund's crooked legs. During the whole time that he lived with Luzhin he unremittingly encouraged and developed his gift, not bothering for a second about Luzhin as a person, whom, it seemed, not only Valentinov but life itself had overlooked. He showed him to wealthy people as an amusing monster, acquired useful contacts through him, and organized innumerable tournaments, and only when he began to suspect that the prodigy was turning simply into a young chess player did he bring him back to his father in Russia, and afterwards, like a kind of valuable, he took him away again when he thought that perhaps he had made a mistake, that the freak still had a year or two of life left in him. When even this span had run out he made a gift to Luzhin of some money, the way one does to a mistress one has tired of, and disappeared, finding fresh amusement in the movie business, that mysterious astrological business where they read scripts and look for stars. And having departed to the sphere of jaunty, quick-talking, self-important con-men with their patter about the philosophy of the screen, the tastes of the masses and the intimacy of the movie camera, and with pretty good incomes at the same time, he dropped out of Luzhin's world, which for Luzhin was a relief, that odd kind of relief you get in resolving an unhappy love affair. He had become attached to Valentinov immediately--as early as the days of his chess tours in Russia--and later he regarded him the way a son might a frivolous, coldish, elusive father to whom one could never say how much one loved him. Valentinov was interested in him only as a chess player. At times he had about him something of the trainer who hovers about an athlete establishing a definite regime with merciless severity. Thus Valentinov asserted that it was all right for a chess player to smoke (since there was in both chess and smoking a touch of the East) but not in any circumstances to drink, and during their life together in the dining rooms of large hotels, enormous hotels deserted in wartime, in chance restaurants, in Swiss inns and in Italian trattorie, he invariably ordered mineral water for young Luzhin. The food he chose for him was light so that his brain could function freely, but for some reason (perhaps also because of a hazy connection with "the East") he encouraged Luzhin a great deal in his passion for sweets. Finally he had a peculiar theory that the development of Luzhin's gift for chess was connected with the development of the sexual urge, that with him chess represented a special deflection of this urge, and fearing lest Luzhin should squander his precious power in releasing by natural means the beneficial inner tension, he kept him at a distance from women and rejoiced over his chaste moroseness. There was something degrading in all this; Luzhin, recalling that time, was surprised to note that not a single, kind, humane word had passed between him and Valentinov. Nevertheless when, three years after their final departure from Russia, that land which had grown so unpleasant, Valentinov had vanished, he experienced a feeling of emptiness, a lack of support, and then he acknowledged the inevitability of what had happened, sighed, turned around and again was lost in thought over the chessboard. After the war, tournaments began to increase. He played in Manchester, where the decrepit champion of England forced a draw after a two-day struggle; in Amsterdam, where he lost the deciding game because he exceeded the time limit and his opponent, with an excited grunt, banged down the stop of Luzhin's clock; in Rome, where Turati triumphantly unleashed his celebrated debut; and in many other cities which for him were all identical--hotel, taxi, a hall in a cafe or club. These cities, these regular rows of blurry lamps marching past and suddenly advancing and encircling a stone horse in a square, were as much a habitual and unnecessary integument as the wooden pieces and the black and white board, and he accepted this external life as something inevitable but completely uninteresting. Similarly, in his way of dressing and in the manner of his everyday life, he was prompted by extremely dim motives, stopping to think about nothing, rarely changing his linen, automatically winding his watch at night, shaving with the same safety blade until it ceased to cut altogether, and feeding haphazardly and plainly. From some kind of melancholy inertia he continued to order at dinner the same mineral water, which effervesced slightly in his sinuses and evoked a tickling sensation in the corners of his eyes, like tears for the vanished Valentinov. Only rarely did he notice his own existence, when for example lack of breath--the revenge of a heavy body--forced him to halt with open mouth on a staircase, or when he had toothache, or when at a late hour during his chess cogitations an outstretched hand shaking a matchbox failed to evoke in it the rattle of matches, and the cigarette that seemed to have been thrust unnoticed into his mouth by someone else suddenly grew and asserted itself, solid, soulless, and static, and his whole life became concentrated in the single desire to smoke, although goodness knows how many cigarettes had already been unconsciously consumed. In general, life around him was so opaque and demanded so little effort of him that it sometimes seemed someone--a mysterious, invisible manager--continued to take him from tournament to tournament; but occasionally there were odd moments, such quietness all around, and when you looked out into the corridor--shoes, shoes, shoes, standing at all the doors, and in your ears the roar of loneliness. When his father was still alive Luzhin used to think with a sinking feeling about his arrival in Berlin, about the necessity of seeing his father, helping him, talking to him--and this cheerful-looking old man in his knitted waistcoat, clapping him clumsily on the shoulder, was intolerable to him, like a shameful recollection that you try to throw off, screwing up your eyes and moaning through your teeth. He did not come from Paris for his father's funeral, fearing, above all, corpses, coffins, wreaths and the responsibility connected with all this--but he came later, set off for the cemetery, tramped around in the rain among the graves in mud-caked rubbers, failed to find his father's grave and behind some trees caught sight of a man who was probably the caretaker, but a strange feeling of inertia and shyness prevented him from inquiring; he raised his collar and plodded back over a patch of waste ground toward the waiting taxi. His father's death did not interrupt his work. He was getting ready for the Berlin tournament with the definite idea of finding the best defense against the complex opening of the Italian Turati who was the most awesome of the future participants in the tournamen
t. This player, a representative of the latest fashions in chess, opened the game by moving up on the flanks, leaving the middle of the board unoccupied by Pawns but exercising a most dangerous influence on the center from the sides. Scorning the cozy safety of castling he strove to create the most unexpected and whimsical interrelations between his men. Luzhin had already met him once and lost, and this defeat particularly rankled because Turati, by temperament, by his style of play and by his proclivity for fantastic arrayals, was a player with a kindred mentality to his own, only Turati had gone farther. Luzhin's game, which in his early youth had so astounded the experts with its unprecedented boldness and disregard for the basic, as it seemed, rules of chess, now appeared just a little old-fashioned compared with the glittering extremism of Turati. Luzhin's present plight was that of a writer or composer who, having assimilated the latest things in art at the beginning of his active career and caused a temporary sensation with the originality of his devices, all at once notices that a change has imperceptibly taken place around him, that others, sprung from goodness knows where, have left him behind in the very devices where he recently led the way, and then he feels himself robbed, sees only ungrateful imitators in the bold artists who have overtaken him, and seldom understands that he himself is to blame, he who has petrified in his art which was once new but has not advanced since then.

  Looking back over eighteen and more years of chess Luzhin saw an accumulation of victories at the beginning and then a strange lull, bursts of victories here and there but in general--irritating and hopeless draws, thanks to which he imperceptibly earned the reputation of a cautious, impenetrable, prosaic player. And this was strange. The bolder his imagination, the livelier his invention during his secret work between matches, the more oppressive became his feeling of helplessness when the contest began and the more timidly and circumspectly he played. Having long ago entered the ranks of international grandmasters, extremely well known, cited in all chess textbooks, a candidate among five or six others for the title of world champion, he owed this flattering reputation to his early performances, which had left around him a kind of indistinct light, the halo of the chosen, a haze of glory. His father's death presented itself to him as a landmark by which to measure the road he had traveled. And looking back he saw with something of a shudder how slowly he had been going of late, and having seen it he plunged with gloomy passion into new calculations, inventing and already vaguely sensing the harmony of the moves he needed: a dazzling defense. He had been unwell that night in a Berlin hotel after his trip to the cemetery: palpitations of the heart and queer thoughts, and a feeling that his brain had gone numb and been varnished over. The doctor he saw in the morning advised him to take a rest, to go to some quiet place "... where there is greenery all around," said the doctor. And Luzhin, canceling a promised display of blind chess, went away to the obvious place, which had immediately loomed before him when the doctor referred to greenery; in fact, he felt dimly grateful to an obliging memory that indicated the necessary resort so aptly, took all the trouble on itself and put him into a ready-made, ready-waiting hotel.

  He did feel better amid this green scenery that was moderately beautiful and transmitted a feeling of security and tranquillity. And suddenly, as in a fairground booth when a painted paper screen is burst starwise, admitting a smiling human face, there appeared from no one knew where a person who was so unexpected and so familiar, and who spoke with a voice that seemed to have been sounding mutely all his life and now had suddenly burst through the usual murk. Trying to unravel in his mind this impression of something very familiar he recalled quite irrelevantly but with stunning clarity the face of a bare-shouldered, black-stockinged young prostitute, standing in a lighted doorway in a dark side street in a nameless town. And in some ridiculous way it seemed to him that this was she, that she had come now, primly dressed and somewhat less pretty, as if she had washed off some bewitching makeup but because of this had become more accessible. This was his first impression when he saw her, when he noticed with surprise that he was actually talking to her. It irked him a little that she was not quite as good-looking as she might have been, judging by odd dreamy signs strewn about in his past. He reconciled himself to this and gradually began to forget her vague prototypes, and then he felt reassured and proud that here talking to him, spending her time with him and smiling at him, was a real live person. And that day on the garden terrace, where bright yellow wasps kept settling on the iron tables and moving their lowered antennae--that day when he started to speak of how he had once lived in this hotel as a small boy--Luzhin began with a series of quiet moves, the meaning of which he himself only vaguely sensed, his own peculiar declaration of love. "Go on, tell me more," she repeated, despite having noticed how morosely and dully he had fallen silent.

  He sat leaning on his cane and thinking that with a Knight's move of this lime tree standing on a sunlit slope one could take that telegraph pole over there, and simultaneously he tried to remember what exactly he had just been talking about. A waiter with a dozen empty beer mugs hanging from his crook'd fingers ran along the wing of the building, and Luzhin remembered with relief that he had been speaking about the tournament that once took place in that very wing. He grew agitated and hot, and the band of his hat constricted his temples, and this agitation was not quite comprehensible yet. "Let's go," he said. "I'll show you. It must be empty there now. And cool." Stepping heavily and trailing his cane which grated along the gravel and bounced against the doorstep, he entered the door first. How ill-bred he is, she reflected and caught herself shaking her head, and then accused herself of introducing a slightly false note--his manners had nothing at all to do with ill-breeding. "Here, I think it's this way," said Luzhin and pushed a side door. A fire was burning, a fat man in white was shouting something and a tower of plates ran past on human legs. "No, farther," said Luzhin and walked along the corridor. He opened another door and almost fell: steps going down, and some shrubs at the bottom, and a pile of rubbish, and an apprehensive hen, jerkily walking away. "I made a mistake," said Luzhin, "it's probably here to the right." He removed his hat, feeling burning beads of sweat gather on his brow. Oh, how clear was the image of that cool, empty, spacious hall and how difficult it was to find it! "Let's try this door here," he said. The door proved to be locked. He pressed the handle down several times. "Who's there?" a hoarse voice said abruptly, and a bed creaked. "Mistake, mistake," muttered Luzhin and went farther; then he looked back and stopped: he was alone. "Where is she?" he said aloud, shuffling his feet as he turned this way and that. Corridor. Window giving on garden. Gadget on wall, with numbered pigeonholes. A bell whirred. In one of the pigeonholes a number popped up awry. He was bemused and troubled, as if he had lost his way in a bad dream--and he quickly walked back, repeating under his breath: "Queer jokes, queer jokes." He came out unexpectedly into the garden, and there two characters were sitting on a bench and looking at him curiously. Suddenly he heard laughter overhead and raised his face. She was standing on the little balcony of her room and laughing, her elbows propped on the railings, her palms pressed against her cheeks, and shaking her head with sly reproachfulness. She looked at his ample face, the hat on the back of his head, and waited to see what he would do now. "I couldn't keep up with you," she cried, straightening up and opening her arms in some kind of explanatory gesture. Luzhin lowered his head and entered the building. She supposed that in a moment he would knock on her door and she decided not to let him in and say the room was untidy. But he did not knock. When she went down to supper he was not in the dining room. He's taken offense, she decided and went to bed earlier than usual. In the morning she went out for a walk and looked to see if he was waiting in the garden, reading his newspaper on a bench as usual. He was not in the garden, he was not in the gallery, and she went for a walk without him. When he did not appear for dinner and his table was taken by an ancient couple who had long had their eye on it, she asked in the office if Mr. Luzhin was sick. "Mr. Luzhin left
this morning for Berlin," replied the girl.

  An hour later his baggage returned to the hotel. The janitor and a bellboy, with matter-of-fact indifference, carried in the bags which that morning they had carried out. Luzhin was returning from the station on foot--a stout, doleful gentleman, crushed by the heat and in shoes white with dust. He rested on all the benches and once or twice plucked a blackberry, grimacing from the sourness. While walking along the highway he noticed a fair-haired small boy following him with tiny steps, holding an empty beer bottle in his hands, and lagging behind on purpose and staring at him with unbearable childish concentration. Luzhin halted. The boy also halted. Luzhin moved, the boy moved. Then Luzhin lost his temper and threatened him with his cane. The other froze, grinning with surprise and joy. "I'll ..." said Luzhin in a deep voice and went toward him, his cane raised. The small boy jumped and ran off. Grumbling to himself and breathing hard through the nose, Luzhin continued on his way. All at once an extremely well-aimed pebble hit him on the left shoulder blade. He let out a cry and turned around. Nobody--an empty road, woods, heather. "I'll kill him," he said loudly in German and walked on faster, trying to weave from side to side the way, he had read somewhere, men do when they fear a shot in the back, and repeating his helpless threat. He was quite exhausted, panting and almost crying by the time he reached the hotel. "Changed my mind," he said, addressing the office grille as he went by. "I'm staying, changed my mind...."