Jesse Ball: The Lesson

— Can I ask you another question?

— When we are through eating.

— But if I ask now, will that be all right? You can answer later.

— Go ahead.

— What things end up in dreams? I remember some things that have happened that happen again. But other dreams are things that never happened, or terrible things — nightmares. But even the nightmares — why are they of one sort and not another? Why one night am I falling and another night being chased?

They ate their sandwiches and Stan’s became a bit of a mess.

— Is it true about the sandwiches? Are these good?

— There was a cafe that used to be here. Their sandwiches were quite wonderful, but they came cut into many pieces and served on china. One would get tea with them, and sometimes little pastries.

— Where is it?

— It’s gone.

— Dreams, she said, are easily explained by stupid people. They are easily dismissed. They are meaningless. Nothing can be based on them — no predictions, no hopes. No one has any dreams that have anything to do particularly with him or her. A dream is simply images, as though one were traveling aimlessly by car not on a street but through a series of rooms, and one sees things, looking there out the window. But they are useless and one shouldn’t pay attention.

When Stan looked like he wanted to object, she continued.

— At least, this is one view. Another view is that dreams may be explained easily (again, easily) with the use of certain books. This group of people would say that a dictionary of some sort (made by some truly brilliant person) will give you exact definitions for anything you might encounter in the dream world. Through the use of a book of this sort, you can tell what your dream means, and what its significance is in your life. There are other books that will tell you that dreams are the way that higher beings communicate with lower beings, and in so doing, give instructions about how life is to be led.

She paused.

— Of course, I don’t agree with any of that. Do you?

Stan explained a dream to her that he had had. It took a while. When he had done, she told it back to him.

— So, she said, you were drawing for your father. He gave you paper and a pencil and told you to draw a wire. You drew a line and he said, that is a line. I want you to draw me a wire. So, you drew a line between two buildings, and drew the buildings, and then you drew someone with an umbrella about to step onto it. He took the paper and crushed it, and you felt terrified that this would make the person fall. Then, in the dream, the person fell, and you were falling, and your father was speaking to your mother, you could hear his voice. He was saying, before he was born… , but you couldn’t make out anything after that.

— That’s right, said Stan.

— Was it frightening?

— Only that the person with the umbrella, a young woman. That she would fall. And, my father. He was accusing me of something.

— One thing about dreams, said Loring. Is that we know many things, and some of them we learn from life. But others, it seems that we could not have learned them from life. Some of them we see in dreams. Do you know anything that you never learned or saw?

A bus came then and there were many red flags along the top. They were flying in the wind. People were hanging out the windows of the bus. The driver was waving. They were tourists of some kind, and seemed very happy. Stan waved to them.

Loring took his hand and led him up the hill. This time they had to pause several times, for he had grown tired. It was a long way for a boy to walk without stopping, and, of course, she was far too old to carry him.

— He played that opening with black, she said. The opening you played that first day. My husband played it. It is a very sharp opening. That means, sharp, means that it is easy for either side to lose. I will show you a game now that he played once, against another man, a great player himself. He used this opening against that man, Hulder, because it was that man’s favorite opening, and Hulder has used it repeatedly to crush his opponents. The match was to be until ten victories. No one had found a really good way to stop Hulder with this opening. And so, my husband played this opening against Hulder, and played the very same moves that Hulder had played. Thus, Hulder had to play against his own opening, in a way, had to play black against his own moves as white, and in doing so, he showed Ezra how to neutralize the opening. Of course, Hulder didn’t really want to do it, to show him — so he actually made a bad move on purpose, thereby losing the first game. In the second game, Hulder played white and got into complications where he beat my husband. Then in the third game, my husband played white again, and played the opening. Hulder faltered this time in his resolve and played the best defense he could, which was sufficient for a draw. In the third game, then, Hulder had to play something else, because his own preparation in those lines had all been given to my husband! The game would have just ended up a draw. He actually lost that game. And of course, Ezra had used all his time to come up with other variations in other openings, which he sprang in the following games. He won the series 10–4, with 6 draws. Hulder was shattered and never played at that level again.

— Did your husband like playing chess?

— He did.

She showed him the moves of the game, advising him not to play that opening for some years yet, as the ways in which the opponent could go wrong, although ever present, were very difficult to punish unless one knew how.

— But I must know how! You have to teach me.

— I will, she said, I will. But it takes time.

When they had played through all the games of that match on the board by the window, Stan was very tired indeed. He had been tired from the walk, as I told you, and now he was tired from concentrating. He went and lay on the mat.

Loring moved her hands as if to say, you mustn’t do that, we aren’t done here, but this gesture had no effect on him, and so she went and sat in the chair again.

She made quite a picture, I must say, sitting in that chair. She was a rather severe old woman, with the intelligent desirous eyes of a horse, always flickering, signaling. Yet few could say what they signaled. She sat in the chair with her hands folded and looked like the name of a region on an antiquated map. By this I mean, correct in a way that fits with something one doesn’t understand.

At four the mother came and took the child, and carried him out over her shoulder, still sleeping.

— Quite a day, said Mrs. Wiling. His first day of lessons.

— That’s so, said Loring.

— Did he do well? Did he learn much?

— It is generally the first talent that really gifted people have.

— What do you mean?

— Learning much from little — that’s the talent we must hope your son has. Goodbye.

But she had certain exceptions, or I should say, she had made certain exceptions over the years. The trouble is, as you get older, the people you like die and are not replaced with others, so that it is easily possible to end up with no one at all to talk to, or at least, no one you would want to hear responding to whatever it is you might have ended up saying.

This was the trouble that Loring was in. Aside from the times when a visitor came to town — some old acquaintance from their tournament days — aside from that, it was simply a matter of reading books and sitting in chairs. Of course, walking as well, visiting the cemetery, and looking at things, plants and such, animals here and there — but she tired easily, and so mostly it was about sitting and reading.