Уолтер Тевис - The Queen's Gambit

Back at the lobby of the hotel a man jumped up from one of the chairs along the wall and came smiling toward her. It was Mr. Booth. “Congratulations!” he said.

“What became of you?” she asked.

He shook his head apologetically. “Washington.”

She started to say something but let it pass. She was glad he hadn’t been bothering her.

He had a folded newspaper under his arm. He pulled it out and handed it to her. It was Pravda . She couldn’t penetrate the boldface Cyrillic of the headlines, but when she flipped it over, the bottom of page one had her picture on it, playing Flento. It filled three columns. She studied the caption for a moment and managed to translate it: “Surprising strength from the U.S.”

“Nice, isn’t it?” Booth said.

“Wait till this time tomorrow,” she said.

Luchenko was fifty-seven, but Borgov was thirty-eight. Borgov was also known as an amateur soccer player and once held a collegiate record for the javelin throw. He was said to exercise with weights during a tournament, using a gym that the government kept open late especially for him. He did not smoke or drink. He had been a master since the age of eleven. The alarming thing about playing over his games from Chess Informant and Shakmatni v USSR was that he lost so few of them.

But she had the white pieces. She must hang on to that advantage for dear life. She would play the Queen’s Gambit. Benny and she had discussed that for hours, months before, and finally agreed that that was the way to go if she should get White against him. She did not want to play against Borgov’s Sicilian, much as she knew about the Sicilian, and the Queen’s Gambit was the best way to avoid it. She could hold him off if she kept her head. The problem was that he didn’t make mistakes.

When she came across the stage to an auditorium more crowded than she believed possible, with every inch of the aisles filled and standees packed behind the back row of seats, and a hush fell over the enormous crowd of people and she looked over to see Borgov, already seated, waiting for her, she realized that it wasn’t only his remorseless chess that she had to contend with. She was terrified of the man. She had been terrified of him ever since she saw him at the gorilla cage in Mexico City. He was merely looking down at the untouched black pieces now, but her heart and breath stopped at the sight of him. There was no sign of weakness in that figure, motionless at the board, oblivious of her or of the thousands of other people who must be staring at him. He was like some menacing icon. He could have been painted on the wall of a cave. She walked slowly over and sat at the whites. A soft, hushed applause broke out in the audience.

The referee pressed the button, and Beth heard her clock begin ticking. She moved pawn to queen four, looking down at the pieces. She was not ready to look at his face. Along the stage the other three games had started. She heard the movements of players behind her settling in for the morning’s work, the click of clock buttons being pushed. Then everything was silent. Watching the board, she saw only the back of his hand, its stubby fingers with their coarse, black hair above the knuckles, as he moved his pawn to queen four. She played pawn to queen bishop four, offering the gambit pawn. The hand declined it, moving pawn to king four. The Albin Counter Gambit. He was resurrecting an old response, but she knew the Albin. She took the pawn, glanced briefly at his face and glanced away. He played pawn to queen five. His face had been impassive and not quite as frightening as she had feared. She played her king’s knight and he played his queen’s. The dance was in progress. She felt small and lightweight. She felt like a little girl. But her mind was clear, and she knew the moves.

His seventh move came as a surprise, and it was clear immediately that it was something he had saved to spring on her. She gave it twenty minutes, penetrated it as well as she could, and responded with a complete deviation from the Albin. She was glad to get out of it and into the open. They would fight it out from here with their wits.

Borgov’s wits, it turned out, were formidable. By the fourteenth move he had equality and possibly an edge. She steeled herself, kept her eyes from his face, and played the best chess she knew, developing her pieces, defending everywhere, watching every opportunity for an opened file, a clear diagonal, a doubled pawn, a potential fork or pin or hurdle or skewer. This time she saw the whole board in her mind and caught every change of balance in the power that shifted over its surface. Each particle of it was neutralized by its counter-particle, but each was ready to discharge itself if allowed and break the structure open. If she let his rook out, it would tear her apart. If he allowed her queen to move to the bishop file, his king’s protection would topple. She must not permit his bishop to check. He could not allow her to raise the rook pawn. For hours she did not look at him or the audience or even the referee. In the whole of her mind, in the whole of her attention she saw only those embodiments of danger—knight, bishop, rook, pawn, king and queen.

It was Borgov who spoke the word “Adjourn.” He said it in English. She looked at her clock uncomprehendingly before she realized that neither flag had fallen and that Borgov’s was closer to it than hers. He had seven minutes left. She had fifteen. She looked at her score sheet. The last move was number forty. Borgov wanted to adjourn the game. She looked behind her; the rest of the stage was empty, the other games were over.

Then she looked at Borgov. He had not loosened his tie or taken off his coat or rumpled his hair. He did not look tired. She turned away. The moment she saw that blank, quietly hostile face, she was terrified.

Booth was in the lobby. This time he was with half a dozen reporters. There was the man from the New York Times and the woman from the Daily Observer and the Reuters man and the UPI. There were two new faces among them as they came up to her in the lobby.

“I’m tired as hell,” she told Booth.

“I bet you are,” he said. “But I promised these people…” He introduced the new ones. The first was from Paris-Match and the second from Time . She looked at the latter and said, “Will I be on the cover?” and he replied, “Are you going to beat him?” and she did not know how to answer. She was frightened. Yet she was even on the board and somewhat ahead on time. She had not made any errors. But neither had Borgov.

There were two photographers and she posed for pictures with them, and when one of them asked if he could shoot her in front of a chess set she took them up to her room, where her board was still set up with the position from the Luchenko game. That already seemed a long time ago. She sat at the board for them, not really minding it—welcoming it, in fact—while they shot rolls of film from all over the room. It was like a party. While the photographers studied her and adjusted their cameras and switched lenses around, the reporters asked her questions. She knew she should be setting up the position of her adjourned game and concentrating on it to find a strategy for tomorrow, but she welcomed this noisy distraction.

Borgov would be in that suite of his now, probably with Petrosian and Tal—and maybe with Luchenko and Laev and the rest of the Russian establishment. Their expensive coats would be off and their sleeves rolled up and they would be exploring her position, looking for weaknesses already there or ten moves down the line, probing at the arrangement of white pieces as though it were her body and they were surgeons ready to dissect. There was something obscene in the image of them doing it. They would go on with it far into the night, eating supper over the board on that huge table in Borgov’s parlor, preparing him for the next morning. But she liked what she was doing right now. She did not want to think about the position. And she knew, too, that the position wasn’t the problem. She could exhaust its possibilities in a few good hours after dinner. The problem was the way she felt about Borgov. It was good to forget that for a while.