Уолтер Тевис - The Queen's Gambit

She looked at him. He had taken out his comb again and was running it through his hair. His clock was ticking.

It took him fifteen minutes to make the move, and when he did it was a shock. He took the bishop with his rook. Didn’t he know he was a fool to move the rook off the back rank? Couldn’t he see that? She looked back at the board, double-checked the position and brought out her queen.

He didn’t see it until the move after next, and his game fell apart. He still had his comb in his hand six moves later when she got her queen’s pawn, passed, to the sixth rank. He brought his rook under the pawn. She attacked it with her bishop. Sizemore stood up, put his comb in his pocket, reached down to the board and set his king on its side. “You win,” he said grimly. The applause was thunderous.

After she had turned in the score sheet she waited while the young man checked it, made a mark on a list in front of him, stood up and walked to the bulletin board. He took the pushpins from the card saying SIZEMORE and threw the card into a green metal wastebasket. Then he pulled the pins out of the bottom card and raised it to where Sizemore’s had been. The UNDEFEATED list now read: BELTIK, HARMON.

When she was walking toward the girls’ room Beltik came out of “Top Boards” striding fast and looking very pleased with himself. He was carrying the little score sheet, on his way to the winners’ basket. He didn’t seem to see Beth.

She went over to the doorway of the “Top Boards” room, and Townes was standing there. There were lines of fatigue in his face; he looked like Rock Hudson, except for the weariness. “Good work, Harmon,” he said.

“I’m sorry you lost,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s back to the drawing board.” And then, nodding to where Beltik was standing at the front table with a small crowd gathered near him, he said, “He’s a killer, Harmon. A genuine killer.”

She looked at his face. “You need a rest.”

He smiled down at her. “What I need, Harmon, is some of your talent.”

As she passed the front table, Beltik took a step toward her and said, “Tomorrow.”

When Beth came into the living room just before supper, Mrs. Wheatley looked pale and strange. She was sitting in the chintz armchair and her face was puffy. She was holding a brightly colored postcard in her lap.

“I’ve started menstruating,” Beth said.

Mrs. Wheatley blinked. “That’s nice,” she said, as though from a great distance.

“I’ll need some pads or something,” Beth said.

Mrs. Wheatley seemed nonplused for a moment. Then she brightened. “That’s certainly a milepost for you. Why don’t you just go up to my room and look in the top drawer of my chiffonier? Take all you require.”

“Thank you,” Beth said, heading for the stairs.

“And, dear,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “bring down that little bottle of green pills by my bedside.”

When Beth came back she gave the pills to Mrs. Wheatley. Mrs. Wheatley had half a glass of beer sitting beside her; she took out two of the pills and swallowed them with the beer. “My tranquility needs to be refurbished,” she said.

“Is something wrong?” Beth asked.

“I’m not Aristotle,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “but it could be construed as wrong. I have received a message from Mr. Wheatley.”

“What did he say?”

“Mr. Wheatley has been indefinitely detained in the Southwest. The American Southwest.”

“Oh,” Beth said.

“Between Denver and Butte.”

Beth sat down on the sofa.

“Aristotle was a moral philosopher,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “while I am a housewife. Or was a housewife.”

“Can’t they send me back if you don’t have a husband?”

“You put it concretely.” Mrs. Wheatley sipped her beer. “They won’t if we lie about it.”

“That’s easy enough,” Beth said.

“You’re a good soul, Beth,” Mrs. Wheatley said, finishing her beer. “Why don’t you heat the two chicken dinners in the freezer? Set the oven at four hundred.”

Beth had been holding two sanitary napkins in her right hand. “I don’t know how to put these on.”

Mrs. Wheatley straightened herself up from her slumped position in the chair. “I am no longer a wife,” she said, “except by legal fiction. I believe I can learn to be a mother. I’ll show you how if you promise me never to go near Denver.”

During the night Beth woke to hear rain on the roof over her head and intermittent rattling against the panes of her dormer windows. She had been dreaming of water, of herself swimming easily in a quiet ocean of still water. She put a pillow over her head and curled up on her side, trying to get back to sleep. But she could not. The rain was loud, and as it continued to fall, the sad languor of her dream was replaced by the image of a chessboard filled with pieces demanding her attention, demanding the clarity of her intelligence.

It was two in the morning and she did not get back to sleep for the rest of the night. It was still raining when she went downstairs at seven; the backyard outside the kitchen window looked like a swamp with hillocks of near-dead grass sticking up like islands. She was not certain how to fry eggs but decided she could boil some. She got two from the refrigerator, filled a pan with water and put it on the burner. She would play pawn to king four against him, and hope for the Sicilian. She boiled the eggs five minutes and put them in cold water. She could see Beltik’s face, youthful, arrogant and smart. His eyes were small and black. When he stepped toward her yesterday as she was leaving, some part of her had thought he would hit her.

The eggs were perfect; she opened them with a knife, put them in a cup and ate them with salt and butter. Her eyes were grainy under the lids. The final game would begin at eleven; it was seven-twenty now. She wished she had a copy of Modern Chess Openings , to look over variations on the Sicilian. Some of the other players at the tournament had carried battered copies of the book under their arms.

It was only drizzling when she left the house at ten, and Mrs. Wheatley was still upstairs asleep. Before she left, Beth went into the bathroom and checked the sanitary belt Mrs. Wheatley had given her to wear, and the thick white pad. It was all right. She put on her galoshes and her blue coat, got Mrs. Wheatley’s umbrella from the closet and left.

She had noticed before that the pieces at Board One were different. They were solid wooden ones like Mr. Ganz’s and not the hollow plastic pieces that sat on the other boards at the tournament. When she walked by the table in the empty room at ten-thirty she reached out and picked up the white king. It was satisfyingly heavy, with a solid lead weight and green felt on the bottom. She placed the piece on its home square, stepped back over the velvet rope and walked to the girls’ room. She washed her face for the third time that day, tightened her sanitary belt, combed her bangs and went back to the gymnasium. More players had come in. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her skirt so that no one could see they were trembling.

When eleven o’clock came she was ready behind the white pieces at Board One. Boards Two and Three had already started their games. Sizemore was at Board Two. She didn’t recognize the others.

Ten minutes passed, and Beltik did not appear. The tournament director in the white shirt climbed over and stood near Beth for a minute. “Hasn’t shown yet?” he said softly.

Beth shook her head.

“Make your move and punch the clock” the director whispered. “You should have done it at eleven.”

That annoyed her. No one had told her about that. She moved pawn to king four and started Beltik’s clock.