Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

My uncle’s domestic routine changed. He arranged to be home more often. The weekend after the IQ revelation he took me to his country club to show me off. He provoked a chess game between me and the grandson of the owner of a chain of New York retail stores. (Bernie and this Retail King were soon to be competitors.) Bernie stood behind me throughout the game and watched, although he didn’t know anything about chess. His presence dried up my throat and knotted my stomach. Pieces blurred, diagonals wavered, and I felt doomed. But I couldn’t surrender to the pressure. I reminded myself how much was at stake, that I had to win to keep Bernie’s favor.

My opponent was tough, as tough as Joseph. He was familiar with the opening I tried; I couldn’t remember the right moves because of my nerves, and I got in trouble.

The Retail King gloated. He said something to indicate he was sure of his grandson’s victory. From behind I heard my uncle’s cello rasp: an angry and guttural scrape of his bow. “It ain’t over yet,” he said. His hand spread over my head, fingers massaging my skull so that the skin shifted like the loose fur of a dog. “Never give up,” he whispered. I remembered Joseph telling me while we lay in bed my last night in Washington Heights that he thought when I fell behind I was too quick to counterattack. He said I was so good at defense he might not be able to beat me if I simply dug in and forced him to prove his advantage was a winning one. I tried that this time, adopting passive tactics, working to relieve my positional congestion, and overdefending the obvious point of attack. My opponent hesitated to go for an all-out King’s side assault and gradually his advantage began to stall.

The Retail King became impatient with his grandson. “This is going on forever and nothing’s happening,” he complained in a mumble. “I thought you said you were winning.”

“He was,” I answered. Uncle and his friends laughed heartily. (There were two or three other club members who took an interest in our match.)

“I still am,” my opponent said. “I’m up a pawn.”

“So what?” I said, contemptuously. “You don’t know what to do with it.” I had seen a winning attack for him half a dozen moves ago, a line I would have been glad to try if our positions were reversed. I learned a lesson about defense that day, namely search with an enemy’s eyes for your defeat and then decide your strategy.

He attacked at last, only now it was rash. My overdefended position recoiled at him. In a few moves he was destroyed. There was something magical and tragic about the turnaround. Yet I felt unaccountably sad at the devastation, the rageful vengeance of my cramped pieces once they were liberated. I had never enjoyed a win so little.

Uncle, however, was gleeful. I was surprised at the childish way he goaded the Retail King. “Told you it wasn’t over. That’s always been your problem, Murray. You take things for granted.”

“Come on,” the Retail King said to his grandson. “We’re late.” He yanked his heir out of the chair. I was disturbed by so harsh a reaction to failure. After all, they were in a direct blood line, not the more distant relationship I had with Bernie.

Uncle rubbed my hair, put an arm around my shoulder as we walked to the valet parking, and said loud enough for the Retail King and my foe to hear, “You’re a born winner, boy.” Once in the car he asked if there was a special toy, some treat he could buy me on the way home. I said no. I didn’t feel deserving. There was something ugly to me in my victory. I couldn’t identify what and that also bothered me. Uncle said, “Virtue is its own reward, eh? I’ll say this for Ruthie. She didn’t spoil you. She didn’t make the mistake I made.”

He asked me to explain what had happened in the game. I told him about Joseph and his chess books and the principle of overdefense. The next day, when I got home from school two boxes were waiting for me. They contained almost every chess book in print as well as a handsome wooden set and a wallet-sized travel set that could be folded flat. The latter was made of black leather with my initials in gold. Inside the wallet were bright red and white plastic pieces fitted with magnets so they couldn’t slip.

As soon as Bernie showed his pride and interest in my intellectual abilities, my aunts, uncles and cousins (including grouchy Daniel) were more than friendly — they became attentive to and somewhat worried by my opinions. Wearing the robes of Uncle’s favor and approval I was treated with a miniaturized version of the deference and awe accorded him.

The exception was my cousin Julie, beautiful twelve-year-old Julie, Uncle Harry’s youngest. She had reached an early maturity, with breasts and hips, and a gleam of subtle mockery in her eyes for her older male cousins. She had treated me as an equal when I was the family alien. She continued to treat me as an equal in my new role as Uncle Bernie’s Special Project.

My first full experience of the new family attitude to me was a gathering on May 19th to celebrate my uncle’s fifty-fifth birthday. I used to move among them without being noticed much, except for the occasional remark that I had my father’s Latin looks, a comment made in a dubious tone and that, then and now, I associate with racism. In fact, my black hair, brown eyes, thick eyebrows, and tanned skin could have been inherited from Papa Sam and Uncle Bernie as easily as from Francisco and Grandpa Pepín.

That day, all during the afternoon athletics and the dinner, I seemed to be the focus of my aunts’ and uncles’ interest. The racist undertones remained, however, in spite of the newfound admiration. After the birthday dinner we gathered in the living room. The adults sat on couches and wing chairs, arranged in a semicircle facing the latticework of leaded glass windows. Teenagers and children stood or sat on dining room chairs that had been brought in by the maids and placed in a row behind the heavier permanent furniture. Uncle Harry reminisced about the doubles match in the afternoon. He made much of the moment when I threw my tennis racquet down in disgust at missing an easy put-away. He said it showed my Latin temper. Actually the other Rabinowitz players had raged louder at their mistakes. At one point Danny threw his racquet over the fence and out of the court. But his ill humor went unremarked while Harry noted mine.

Another indication of its racist content is that Bernie didn’t enjoy hearing my anger characterized as Hispanic. When Uncle Harry said in apparent good humor—“That’s his Latin temper”—Uncle Bernie frowned.

“That’s his will to win,” Uncle Bernie corrected his brother in a stern tone. “And a good thing too, because he can be a great man.” He proceeded to tell the room about his investigation into my academic record, including my IQ score. All the aunts and uncles, all the cousins — except for Julie, who looked unhappy — listened as if it were a matter of the gravest importance.

[I cannot emphasize enough the worshipful attitude of most of the Rabinowitzes toward material evidence of superiority, whether it was IQ tests, victories at games, degrees from Ivy League colleges, awards from professional organizations, or their favorite standard — money. Besides the fact that they were culturally inclined to this focus — the double whammy of living in America and their origins as poor immigrants — I believe Papa Sam’s traumatic business failures during the Depression and their lowly status as not only Jews, but Russian and Polish Jews, infused these symbols of security and recognition with a powerful narcotic of affirmation that they became hopelessly addicted to. In a sense, just as the Latins in my family worshipped an illusion of social redemption which was to recede as they approached it, the Jews pursued symbols of success instead of real achievement, and were ultimately to feel hollow. Their own judgments and likes or dislikes were irrelevant: if the world didn’t give them an award for it, then it wasn’t worth doing. In one way, the Rabinowitz children were spoiled; in another, their childhood had a Dickensian gloom of joylessness.]