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In a compartment of an express train a grandmaster was playing chess with a fellow passenger.

That man had immediately recognized the grandmaster when the latter entered the compartment, and immediately developed an inconceivable burning desire for an inconceivable victory over the grandmaster. “So what,” he thought, casting sly, inquiring glances at the grandmaster, “so what. Big deal—he’s just some wimp.”

The grandmaster realized right away that he had been recognized and gloomily accepted the fact that at least two games would be unavoidable. He also recognized immediately what kind of man this was. At times he would see the pink, high foreheads of people like this through the windows of the Chess Club on Gogolevsky Boulevard.

Once the train started moving, the grandmaster’s fellow passenger stretched with a look of unsophisticated slyness and asked indifferently, “How about playing a small game of chess, friend?”

“I suppose we could,” mumbled the grandmaster.

The fellow passenger stuck his head out of the compartment, called the train car attendant, and a chess set appeared; given his indifference, he grabbed it much too quickly, spilled the chess pieces out on the table, took two pawns, clenched them in his fists, and held his fists out in front of the grandmaster. A tattoo in the fleshy part between his thumb and index finger read “G.O.”

“The left one,” the grandmaster said and frowned slightly, imagining the punches those fists could deliver, both the left and the right one.

He drew white.

“We have to kill some time, right? Chess is just the thing when you’re traveling,” G.O. said in a good-natured way as he arranged the chess pieces.

They quickly played the Northern gambit and then everything got confused. The grandmaster kept an attentive eye on the board, making small, insignificant moves. Several times possible ways to a checkmate with the queen appeared in lightning flashes before his eyes, but he extinguished those flashes by lowering his eyelids and submitting to the wearisome note of compassion, resembling the buzzing of a mosquito, that droned within him.

“Khas Bulat the Brave, your saklya is poor . . ,” G.O. sang in a monotone.

The grandmaster was the embodiment of meticulousness, the embodiment of fastidious dress and manners that is so typical of people who lack confidence and are easily wounded. He was young, wore a grey suit, a light-colored shirt, and a simple tie. No one except the grandmaster himself knew that his simple ties had the “House of Dior” label. This little secret somehow always warmed and comforted the young and quiet grandmaster. His glasses saved him quite frequently as well by concealing his timid gaze and lack of confidence from others. He regretted his lips, which had a tendency to break out in a pathetic smile or tremble. He would have readily shielded his lips from the eyes of others but, unfortunately, it was not yet socially acceptable.

G.O.’s playing amazed and distressed the grandmaster. On the left flank the pieces crowded together to form a tangle of fraudulent, cabalistic signs. The whole left flank became permeated with the smell of bathroom and chlorine, the sour smell of barracks and wet kitchen rags, and there was also the lingering smell of castor oil and diarrhea from the grandmaster’s early childhood.

“You are grandmaster so-and-so, aren’t you?” G.O asked.

“Yes,” the grandmaster acknowledged.

“Ha-ha-ha, what a coincidence!” G. O. exclaimed.

“What a coincidence? What coincidence is he talking about? This is something inconceivable! Could something like this happen? I refuse, please accept my refusal,” the grandmaster quickly thought in his panic and then guessed what was going on and smiled. “Yes, of course, of course.”

“So you’re a grandmaster, but I’m pinning your queen and rook,” G.O. said. He raised his hand. The knight-provocateur hung poised over the board.

“A pin in the rear,” the grandmaster thought to himself. “That’s some vilochka! Grandfather had his own fork and he never let anyone use it. His property. His personal fork, spoon and knife, his personal plates and his small spittoon. The ‘lyre’ fur coat also comes to mind. A heavy coat of “lyre” fur used to hang in the entrance; grandfather almost never went outside. A pin on my grandfather and grandmother. It’s sad to lose the elderly.”

While the knight hung poised over the board, glowing lines and points of possible pre-checkmate attacks and victims flashed again before the grandmaster’s eyes. Alas, the horse’s rump with the dirty purple, thick flannelette that was coming off was so persuasive that the grandmaster shrugged his shoulders.

“Are you giving away your rook?” G.O. asked

“What can I do?”

“Sacrificing your rook for an attack? Did I guess right?” G.O. asked, still not able to bring himself to place his knight on the desired square.

“I’m simply saving the queen,” the grandmaster mumbled.

“You’re not trying to trick me?” G.O. asked.

“No, what do you mean? You’re a strong player.”

G.O executed his cherished pin. The grandmaster hid his queen in a secluded corner behind a terrace, behind the half-collapsed stone terrace with carved, slightly rotting posts, where there was the pungent smell of rotting maple leaves in the fall. Here you sit it out comfortably—squatting. It’s nice here; in any case, your self-esteem does not suffer. Rising in his seat for a second and looking out from behind the terrace, he saw that G.O. had removed his rook.

The intrusion of the black knight into the pointless crowd on the left flank, his occupation of square B4, at any rate, now made the grandmaster think.

The grandmaster realized that in this case, on this green spring evening, youthful myths alone would not suffice. It’s all true, there are nice fools wandering around in the world—sea cadets named Billy, cowboys named Harry, beauties named Mary and Nelly—and a brigantine is raising its sails, but there comes a moment when you feel the dangerous and real proximity of the black knight on square B4. A struggle was coming—difficult, subtle, captivating, tactical. Ahead was life.

The grandmaster won a pawn, took out a handkerchief, and blew his nose. The few moments of complete solitude, when his lips and nose were covered by the handkerchief, brought on a banally philosophical mood in him. “That’s the way you try to attain something,” he thought to himself, “but then what? All your life you’re trying to attain something, then victory is yours, but there’s no joy in it. Take for example the city of Hong Kong—distant and very mysterious—but I’ve already been there, I’ve already been everywhere.”

The loss of a pawn did not distress G.O too much, since he had just taken a rook. He responded to the grandmaster’s move by moving his queen, which brought on heartburn and a fleeting headache.

The grandmaster knew that there were still a few joys left in store for him. For example, the joy of prolonged moves of his bishop along the entire length of the diagonal. If you drag the bishop along the board a little bit, then it can substitute to some extent for rapidly gliding in a skiff on the sunny and lightly stagnant water of a pond near Moscow—out of the light, into the shade, out of the shade, into the light. The grandmaster felt an irresistible, fervent desire to take square H8, since this was the square of love, a small knoll of love, over which transparent dragonflies hovered.

“Very clever how you took my rook, but I just blew it,” G.O. said in a deep voice, with only his last words betraying his annoyance.

“Sorry,” the grandmaster said softly. “Maybe you’d like to take back a few moves?”

“No, no,” G.O. said “no favors, I beg you.”

“I’ll give my sword, give my steed, give that rifle of mine . . . ,” he started to sing, absorbed in contemplating his strategy.

The tempestuous summer holiday of love on the field did not bring the grandmaster joy and, moreover, disturbed him. He sensed that soon in the center there would be a build-up of externally logical but internally absurd forces. The cacophony would be heard again and there would be the smell of chlorine, like in those distant corridors of his damned memory on the left flank.

“So, I wonder, why are all the chess players Jewish?” G.O. asked.

“Why all of them?” the grandmaster said. “Take me, for example. I’m not Jewish.”

“Is that so?” G.O. said in surprise and added, “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean it like that. I’m not at all prejudiced in that respect. Just curious.”

“Well, take yourself, for example,” the grandmaster said, “you’re not Jewish.”

“How could I be!” G.O. mumbled and again became absorbed in his secret plans.

“If I do this, then he’ll do that,” G.O. thought to himself. “If I take his piece here, he’ll take one there, then I move here, he responds by . . . I’ll still finish him off, I’ll still break him. Big deal—grandmaster, cheatmaster. You still don’t have the strength to beat me. I know your championship games; you all strike a deal ahead of time. I’ll still crush you, or at least bloody your nose!”

“Ye-es, the quality of my playing has gone down,” he said to the grandmaster, “but never mind, there’s still time.”

G. O. launched an attack in the center, but of course, just as expected, the center was immediately transformed into a field of pointless and terrible actions. It was non-love, non-reunion, non-hope, non-hello, non-life. A flu-like chill and yellow snow again, post-war discomfort, the whole body itching. The black queen in the center cawed like a love-struck crow, crow love; moreover, at the neighbors’ they were scraping a tin bowl with a knife. Nothing proved as definitively the pointless and illusory nature of life as that position in the center. It was time to end the game.

“No,” the grandmaster thought, “you know, there’s something else besides this.” He put on a long tape of Bach’s piano pieces, calmed his heart with sounds that were clear and measured, like the lapping of waves, then walked out of the dacha and headed down to the sea. The pine trees rustled above him and slippery and springy pine needles were under his feet.

Remembering and imitating the sea, he began to examine his position and harmonize it. His soul suddenly felt pure and light. Logically, like the Bach coda, checkmate to the black was at hand. The checkmate situation began to glow dimly and beautifully, complete like an egg. The grandmaster looked at G.O. He was silent, scowling at the furthest positions of the grandmaster. He did not notice that he was in danger of putting his own king in checkmate. The grandmaster was silent, afraid of breaking the spell of the moment.

“Check,” G.O. said softly and carefully, moving his knight. He could barely contain the roar within him.

. . . The grandmaster screamed and broke into a run. The owner of the dacha, Evripid the stableman, and Nina Kuzminichna ran after him, stamping and whistling. The dog Nochka, which had been let off its chain, was running ahead of them and catching up to the grandmaster.

“Check,” G.O. said one more time, moving his knight and taking a breath of air with painful pleasure.

. . . The grandmaster was being led through a hushed crowd that made way for him. The person walking behind him was touching his back lightly with a hard object. A man in a black coat with SS insignia on his lapels was waiting for him up ahead. One step—half a second, another step—one second, another—one and a half, another step—two . . . Stairs going up. Why up? Such things should be done in a ditch. Must be brave. Is that obligatory? How much time does it take to put a foul-smelling burlap sack over a person’s head? Then it became completely dark and difficult to breathe, and only somewhere very far off an orchestra was playing with bravura “Khas Bulat the Mighty.”

“Checkmate!” G.O. shouted like a copper trumpet.

“There you are,” the grandmaster mumbled, “congratulations!”

“Gosh,” said G.O . “Gosh, I’ve really worn myself out. I’ll be damned! Just think of it, it’s unbelievable! Unbelievable, but I’ve slapped a checkmate on the grandmaster. Unbelievable, but a fact!” he burst out laughing. “Good for me!” He jokingly patted himself on the head. “Oh grandmaster of mine, grandmaster,” he began to drone, putting his hands on the grandmaster’s shoulders and squeezing them in a friendly way, “you’re a good fellow, young man . . . Your poor nerves gave out, is that it? Admit it!”

“Yes, yes, I broke down,” the grandmaster acknowledged hastily.

G.O. cleared the pieces off the board with a broad, sweeping movement. The board was old, chipped, the polished top layer had come off in places, exposing worn-out, yellow wood; here and there partial round stains were left from glasses of railroad tea placed there in times past.

The grandmaster looked at the empty board, at the sixty-four absolutely dispassionate squares which were able to contain not only his own life, but an endless number of lives, and that endless alternation of light and dark squares filled him with awe and quiet joy. “It seems,” he thought, “I haven’t committed any major base deeds in my life.”

“And you can tell someone, but no one will believe you,” G.O. sighed
bitterly.

“Why wouldn’t they believe you? What is so unbelievable about it? You’re a strong player with will power,” the grandmaster said.

“No one will believe me,” G.O. repeated, “they’ll say I’m lying. What proof have I got?”

“Allow me,” the grandmaster said, slightly offended, looking at G.O.’s pink, high forehead. “I’ll give you convincing proof. I knew I’d meet you.”

He opened his briefcase and took out a large gold medal, the size of his hand, on which was beautifully engraved: “The bearer of this medal won a chess match against me. Grandmaster so-and-so.”

“All that’s left is to fill in the date,” he said, took out an engraving kit from his briefcase, and beautifully engraved the date in a corner of the medal. “This is pure gold,” he said, handing him the medal.

“For real?” G.O. asked.

“Absolutely pure gold,” the grandmaster said. “I’ve already ordered a lot of these medals and I’ll be constantly replenishing my supplies.”