Уолтер Тевис - The Queen's Gambit

“Then take me with you.”

“This one’s all men.”

She frowned. “I’ve heard that said about chess.”

“I bet you have. You can come along and watch if you want to. But you’ll have to keep quiet.”

“How long will it last?”

“All night, maybe.”

She started to ask him how long he had known about this game, but didn’t. Clearly he had known it before last night. She rode the Fifth Avenue bus with him down to Forty-fourth Street and walked with him over to the Algonquin Hotel. Benny seemed to have his mind on something he wasn’t interested in talking about, and they walked in silence. She was beginning to feel angry again; she hadn’t come to New York for this, and she was annoyed at Benny’s way of offering no explanations and no advance notice. His behavior was like his chess game: smooth and easy on the surface but tricky and infuriating beneath. She did not like tagging along, but she did not want to go back to the apartment and study alone.

The game was in a small suite on the sixth floor and it was, as he had said, all male. Four men were seated around a table with coffee cups and chips and cards. An air conditioner whirred noisily. There were two other men who seemed merely to be hanging around. The players looked up when Benny came in and greeted him jokingly. Benny was cool and pleasant. “Beth Harmon,” he said, and the men nodded without recognition. He had gotten out his billfold, and now he slipped a pile of bills from it, set them in front of an empty place at the table and sat down, ignoring Beth. Not knowing what her role in all this was, Beth went into the bedroom, where she had seen a coffee pitcher and cups. She got a cup of coffee and went back into the other room. Benny had a stack of chips in front of him and was holding cards in his hand. The man on his left said, “I’ll bump that,” flatly, and threw a blue chip into the center of the table. The others followed suit, with Benny last.

She stood at a distance from the table watching. She remembered standing in the basement watching Mr. Shaibel, and the intensity of her interest in what he was doing, but she felt nothing like that now. She did not care how poker was played, even though she knew she would be good at it. She was furious with Benny. He went on playing without looking at her. He handled the cards with dexterity and tossed chips into the center of the table with quiet aplomb, sometimes saying things like “I’ll stay” or “Back to you.” Finally, while one of the men was dealing, she tapped Benny on the shoulder and said softly, “I’m leaving.” He nodded and said, “Okay” and turned his attention back to his cards. Going down in the elevator, she felt she could have beaten him over the head with a two-by-four. The cool son of a bitch. It was quick sex with her, and then off to the boys. He had probably planned it that way for a week. Tactics and strategy. She could have killed him.

But the walk across town eased her anger, and by the time she got on the Third Avenue bus to go back up to the apartment on Seventy-eighth Street, she was calm. She was even pleased to be alone for a while. She spent the time with Benny’s Chess Informants , a new series of books from Yugoslavia, playing out games in her head.

He came in sometime during the middle of the night; she woke when he got into bed. She was glad he was back, but she didn’t want to make love with him. Fortunately he wasn’t interested either. She asked him how he had done. “Nearly six hundred,” he said, pleased with himself. She rolled over and went back to sleep.

They made love in the morning, and she did not enjoy it much. She knew she was still angry with him for the poker game—not for the game itself but for the way he had used it just when they had become lovers. When they were finished, he sat up in bed and looked at her for a minute. “You’re pissed at me, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The poker game?”

“The way you didn’t tell me about it.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry. I do keep my distance.”

She was relieved that he had said it. “I suppose I do too,” she said.

“I’ve noticed.”

After breakfast she suggested a game between the two of them, and he agreed reluctantly. They set the clock for a half-hour each, to keep it brief, and she proceeded to beat him handily with her Sicilian Levenfish, brushing aside his threats with ease and hounding his king mercilessly. When it was over he shook his head wryly and said, “I needed that six hundred.”

“Maybe so,” she said, “but your timing was bad.”

“It doesn’t pay to cross you, does it?”

“Do you want to play another?”

Benny shrugged and turned away. “Save it for Borgov.” But she could see he would have played her if he had thought he could win. She felt a whole lot better.

They continued as lovers and did not play any more games, except from the books. He went out a few days later for another poker game and came back with two hundred in winnings and they had one of their best times in bed together, with the money beside them on the night table. She was fond of him, but that was all. And by the last week before Paris, she was beginning to feel that he had little left to teach her.

Mrs. Wheatley had always carried Beth’s adoption papers and birth certificate with her when they traveled, and Beth had continued the practice, though up to now they had never been needed. During her first week in New York, Benny took her to Rockefeller Center, and she used them in applying for her passport. Mexico had required only a tourist card, and Mrs. Wheatley had taken care of that. The little booklet with the green cover and her tight-lipped picture inside came two weeks later. Even though she wasn’t sure of going, she had sent the Paris acceptance in a few days before leaving Kentucky for Ohio.

When the time came, Benny drove her to Kennedy Airport and dropped her off at the Air France terminal. “He’s not impossible,” Benny said. “You can beat him.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “Thanks for the help.” She had gotten her suitcase out of the car and was standing by the driver’s window. They were in a no-parking zone, and he could not leave the car to see her off.

“See you next week,” Benny said.

For a moment she wanted to lean in the open window and kiss him, but she restrained herself. “See you then.” She picked up her suitcase and went into the terminal.

This time she was expecting to feel the dark hostility that even seeing him across a room could make her feel, but being prepared for it did not stop her from a sharp intake of breath. He was standing with his back to her, talking to reporters. She looked away nervously, as she had looked away the first time at the zoo in Mexico City. He was just another man in a dark suit, another Russian who played chess, she told herself. One of the men was taking his picture while the other was talking to him. Beth watched the three of them for a while, and her tension eased. She could beat him. She turned and went to the desk to register. Play would start in twenty minutes.

It was the smallest tournament she had ever seen, in this elegant old building near the École Militaire. There were six players and five rounds—one round a day for five days. If she or Borgov lost an early round, they would not play each other, and the competition was strong. Yet, strong as it was, she did not feel either of them would be beaten by anyone else. She walked through the doorway into the tournament room proper, feeling no anxiety about the game she would be playing this morning or about the ones over the next few days. She would not play Borgov until one of the final rounds. She would meet a Dutch grandmaster in ten minutes and play Black against him, but she felt no apprehension.