Уолтер Тевис - The Queen's Gambit

He didn’t. He developed his other bishop. She brought the rook up to the second rank. Then he swung the queen over, threatening mate in three. She had to respond by retreating her knight into the corner. He kept attacking, and with impotent dismay, she saw a lost game gradually become manifest. When he took her king bishop pawn with his bishop, sacrificing it, it was over, and she knew it was over. There was nothing to do. She wanted to scream, but instead set her king on its side and got up from the table. Her legs and back were stiff and painful. Her stomach was knotted. All she had really needed was a draw, and she hadn’t been able to get even that. Benny had drawn twice already in the tournament. She had gone into the game with a perfect score, and a draw would have given her the title. But she had gone for a win.

“Tough game,” Benny was saying. He was holding out his hand. She forced herself to take it. People were applauding. Not applauding her but Benny Watts.

By evening she could still feel it, but it had lessened. Mrs. Wheatley tried to console her. The prize money would be split. She and Benny would be co-champions, each with a small trophy. “It happens all the time,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “I have made inquiries, and the Open Championship is often shared.”

“I didn’t see what he was doing,” Beth said, picturing the move where his queen took her pawn. It was like putting your tongue against an aching tooth.

“You can’t finesse everything, dear,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “Nobody can.”

Beth looked at her. “You don’t know anything about chess,” she said.

“I know what it feels like to lose.”

“I bet you do,” Beth said, as viciously as she could. “I just bet you do.”

Mrs. Wheatley peered at her meditatively for a moment. “And now you do too,” she said softly.

Sometimes on the street that winter in Lexington people would look back over their shoulders at her. She was on the Morning Show on WLEX. The interviewer, a woman with heavily lacquered hair and harlequin glasses, asked Beth if she played bridge; Beth said no. Did she like being the U.S. Open Champion at chess? Beth said she was co-champion. Beth sat in a director’s chair with bright lights shining on her face. She was willing to talk about chess, but the woman’s manner, her false appearance of interest, made it difficult. Finally she was asked how she felt about the idea that chess was a waste of time, and she looked at the woman in the other chair and said, “No more than basketball.” But before she could go on about that, the show was over. She had been on for six minutes.

The one-page article Townes had written about her appeared in the Sunday supplement of the Herald-Leader with one of the pictures he had taken at the window of his room in Las Vegas. She liked herself in the picture, with her right hand on the white queen and her face looking clear, serious and intelligent. Mrs. Wheatley bought five copies of the paper for her scrapbook.

Beth was in high school now, and there was a chess club, but she did not belong. The boys in it were nonplused to have a Master walking the hallways, and they would stare at her in a kind of embarrassed awe when she passed. Once a boy from twelfth grade stopped her to ask nervously if she would give a simultaneous in Chess Club sometime. She would play about thirty students at once. She remembered that other high school, near Methuen, and the way she was stared at afterward. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t have time.” The boy was unattractive and creepy-looking; it made her feel unattractive and creepy just to be talking with him.

She spent about an hour a night on her homework and made As. But homework meant nothing to her. It was the five or six hours of studying chess that was at the center of her life. She was enrolled as a special student at the university for a class in Russian that met one night a week. It was the only schoolwork that she paid serious attention to.

Beth puffed, inhaled and held the smoke in. There was nothing to it. She handed the joint to the young man on her right, and he said, “Thank you.” He had been talking about Donald Duck with Eileen. They were in Eileen and Barbara’s apartment, a block off Main Street. It was Eileen who had invited Beth to the party, after the night class.

“It’s got to be Mel Blanc,” Eileen was saying now. “They’re all Mel Blanc.” Beth was still holding the smoke in, hoping that it would loosen her up. She had been sitting on the floor with these college students for half an hour and had said nothing.

“Blanc does Sylvester, but he doesn’t do Donald Duck,” the young man said with finality. He turned around to face Beth. “I’m Tim,” he said. “You’re the chess player.”

Beth let the smoke out. “That’s right.”

“You’re the U.S. Women’s Champion.”

“I’m the U.S. Open Co-Champion,” Beth said.

“Sorry. It must be a trip.” He was red-haired and thin. She had seen him sitting in the middle of the classroom and could remember his soft voice when they recited Russian phrases in unison.

“Do you play?” Beth did not like the strain in her voice. She felt out of place. She should either go home or call Mrs. Wheatley.

He shook his head. “Too cerebral. You want a beer?”

She hadn’t had a beer since Las Vegas, a year before. “Okay,” she said. She started to get up from the floor.

“I’ll get it.” He pushed himself up from where they were sitting on the carpet. He came back with two cans and handed her one. She took a long drink. During the first hour the music had been so loud that conversation was impossible, but when the last record ended no one replaced it. The disk on the hi-fi against the far wall was still turning, and she could see the little red lights on the amplifier. She hoped no one would notice and play another record.

Tim eased himself back down next to her with a sigh. “I used to play Monopoly a lot.”

“I’ve never played that.”

“It makes you a slave of capitalism. I still dream about big bucks.”

Beth laughed. The joint had come back her way, and she held it between her fingertips and got what she could from it before passing it to Tim. “Why are you taking Russian,” she said, “if you’re a slave of capitalism?” She took another swallow of beer.

“You’ve got nice boobs,” he said and took a drag. “We need another joint,” he announced to the group at large. He turned back to Beth. “I wanted to read Dostoevsky in the original.”

She finished her beer. Somebody produced another joint and began sending it around. There were a dozen people in the room. They’d had their first exam in the evening class, and Beth had been invited to the party afterward. With the beer and marijuana and talking to Tim, who seemed very easy to talk to, she felt better. When the joint came up again, she took a long drag on it, and then another. Someone put on a record. The music sounded much better, and the loudness didn’t bother her now.

Suddenly she stood up. “I ought to call home,” she said.

“In the bedroom, through the kitchen.”

In the kitchen she opened another beer. She took a long swallow, pushed open the bedroom door and felt for a light switch. She could not find it. A box of wooden matches sat on the stove by the frying pan, and she took it into the bedroom. She still could not find a switch, but on the dresser was a collection of candles in different shapes. She lit one and shook out the match. She stared for a moment at the candle. It was a lavender upright wax penis with a pair of glossy testicles at its base. The wick came from the glans, and most of the glans had already melted away. Something in her was shocked.