by Jesse Kraai
Lisa should have seen it coming. Ted never shouted at the racecars anymore. He just watched them go around and around on his big TV. And it was too good to be true that Jan had let her play so much chess over the summer. Lisa had wanted to believe that Jan finally saw how amazing chess was, but was still too proud to admit it.
Jan said she would have to start public school in a month, and that next week they would move to a place called Emeryville. All of this was to be expected of people on the other side of the wall. The chessless would always mumble and fumble. You couldn’t really blame them for who they were.
The person Lisa did blame was Igor. The National Girls Championship in Lubbock was approaching. And he wouldn’t play with her at the big warm-up tournament in Fresno.
Without him, chess often felt lonely. At her weekend tournaments and at Turk and Market, her games were against boys or men who played chess as if it were a video game, panting toward a momentary oblivion. Like one of Jan’s friends on a treadmill, everything could became pointless there. And Lisa’s pieces sometimes refused to speak. If he would only come with her, just once. With its struggles and hardships, the tournament in Fresno would be like a pilgrimage.
She asked him, “Hey, so did the tournament organizers give you a hotel room in Fresno?”
Igor told Lisa, again, that he wasn’t going to play in Fresno.
“What?! Everyone is gonna be there. You have to play. It’s the Central California Championship. Easy money, eighteen hundred for first.”
Igor declined. But he couldn’t give Lisa a good enough excuse. He could only offer a mumbling kind of no, the kind that old people give kids when they don’t want to be pinned down by their own arguments. Igor said he knew what Fresno would be like: He would neither eat nor sleep well, he would have to play two games a day for each of the three days of the tournament. That meant he could play up to twelve hours a day. And he would have to play against several players much weaker than himself. This was American chess culture, he said: nasty, brutish and long.
But while Igor excused himself from the Central California Championship, he told Lisa that she had to play in it. The traditional American chess tournament, smaller versions of which she had played in all summer, was a kind of purgatory that she had to go through. Bobby, and every other American player, had been processed through the violence of the weekend tournament.
Igor told Lisa of the malnourished exhaustion that clings to the players like mold on a towel in a damp bathroom. Lisa would have to somehow enter into these minds and not become infected with their premature attacks and superficial tactics. Like chickens, desperate to survive, they would run from her. She would have to chase them and cut them down, thousands of them. “Butcher have special coat. Easy for him clean blood, intestine and screams from self. You not have this coat—not yet.”
Igor said that only after Lisa had mastered the American tournament and improved her rating would she be able to play in nobler events where chess was properly worshipped. Being a girl would enable that opportunity. It was to these events, one round a day, with closely matched opposition, that Lisa’s chess aspired.
“Aww, maaan!” Lisa shouted. “I don’t get it. Yer gonna let some chump take our money? Or one of those travelling Russian clowns? That’s our money. Have some pride.”
Lisa would not accept that Igor didn’t want to play. She would not accept his explanation that what was necessary for her chess was very much not so for his. Nor would she accept that the extraordinary prize was not that much money. It was the biggest prize of all the tournaments Lisa had played in that summer.
Two days later, Lisa told Igor that Jan wouldn’t let her play unless Igor came with her. It was a lie. But it was what should have been. And it would help Igor do what was right. Lisa had already forgotten the time before the chaos of the bankruptcy, when Jan would have never let her go—especially with Igor. Now she could do pretty much anything.
But Igor refused.
At their next lesson, Lisa arranged to get a call from Robert Rasmussen, the president of the Fresno chess club. He really wanted her to play in his tournament, and had posted an invitation on her Facebook wall. Now, Lisa knew that Igor would kill her if her phone rang during their study of Tal and Botvinnik. So Robert’s call came precisely two minutes before the lesson officially began. She handed her phone to Igor and said, “It’s for you!” Then she stood next to her coach and eavesdropped:
“Grandmaster!” Mr. Rasmussen said. “We would really like to have you play in our tournament. What can we do to make it happen?”
Igor was silent.
“One of our members has a great big house you can stay in. He even has a lake, with a landscaped island, it’s like Robinson Crusoe out there!
“He has a room for Lisa too, and a daughter just a little older than her.
“Sir, will you play with us?”
Igor made a bleating noise; maybe it was Russian.
“Wonderful, that’s truly wonderful. Sir, I will pick you and Lisa up from the train at eleven thirty-four. The first round starts at twelve. You can’t miss me—I’m five-four, three hundred pounds and I walk with a cane.”
Igor said nothing. The time of the lesson had arrived, and Igor’s soul naturally turned toward Tal and Botvinnik, like a bird who is roused from its nest by the first red fingers of early dawn.
Lisa’s heart also flew. She had steered him to what was right. She had made him a better person. Lisa felt her chess as she did her new bicycling tummy: Her hardship promised powerful muscles, and her quick progress hinted at a beautiful steel just beneath her layer of flab. And she decided it was time.
After the lesson, Lisa announced: “I’m gonna play in the Open section.” Anyone could play in the Open Section. But just about everyone in the Open was at least 2000. And Lisa’s progress over the summer had only lifted her to 1815. She wanted to play with noble minds, closer to Tal and Botvinnik.
“Ho, Ho!” Igor laughed. “You favorite for win under 2000 section. Twelve hundred dollars! Twelve hundred dollars, Lisa. You rich. Easy money.” With a gaping mouth, Igor awkwardly spelled out, “O-M-G.” Lisa laughed, and he continued: “Lisa, that only six hundred less than first place in Open. Organizer know that weakies no pay big entry fee for play people like me. They like sheep in own corral where wolf cannot come for kill. That where they fight each other, over some dollars.” Then he imitated Lisa’s voice: “Aww, maaan! I don’t get it. You gonna let some local chump take our money?”
Lisa gave Igor a devious smile and they laughed together. Money really hadn’t been the point. Lisa felt they were laughing at all the false pretexts the chessless use to hide the real reasons for the stuff they do. They laughed at themselves for pretending to be part of that lower world.
*
Lisa and Igor got off the train in Fresno to one hundred degrees of sticky wet. Lisa shouted, “How can it be so hot here? It was so cold when we left this morning! We didn’t come that far.”
“Cold wind of Pacific,” Igor said. “He like unsatisfied lover. He know about heat in valley. All summer he blow, he punish us, trying to find his woman.”
Robert was there with an SUV to drive them the short distance to the tournament. He opened the sliding back door for Igor and said, “I’m so happy you could join us, Grandmaster Ivanov!” Then he opened the passenger door for Lisa. “Have you beat him yet?” he asked with a wink.
The playing hall was a great windowless cave with many torches. It could have been a Marriot, or a Hilton. Once again, Lisa found herself to be the only woman amongst the 230 players. There was an older woman in the under-1000 section. But she was not a real chessplayer to Lisa. She hadn’t done the Polgar problems. She didn’t know anything about the Russian tradition. And she probably never had to lie to her mother so that she could play chess.
After her first round loss, Lisa slouched up to Igor, the man who had broken the will of generations of American chess talent. Without words, she spoke to him. He
was a 2300, a master. I’m only a 1815. It’s not so bad that I lost. Look at all the people in this room I would crush. The beating helped put Lisa in her place; it gave her a class to belong to. The violence from above stung Lisa, and she now needed someone beneath her to stick it into.
The pairings for round two’s evening game were soon posted. And Lisa was again expected to lose. “Aww, maaan,” she whined. “I gotta play Davidson with white. He plays the Najdorf. He’s got the whole thing mapped out. He knows everything. He showed me some lines at the Mechanics. It would be better to be black.” This question about openings had been a fight between them from the very start, and Igor said nothing.
When Lisa told the men she met at tournaments that she was studying with Igor, they would nod knowingly, wisely. They said that Igor would teach her the finer points of the Queen’s Indian and the sharpness of the Sicilian. But when she said that Igor wouldn’t teach her openings, they condemned him. So Lisa began to tell a little lie. She told the men that they were studying the most ambitious king’s pawn variations for white and the King’s Indian Defense for black. This met with great approval, and these were in fact the openings that Lisa was playing. They were also the ones Tal used in his match against Botvinnik.
The men talked about their repertoires as if they were a fancy piece of sports equipment that would not only give them a competitive edge, but would somehow allow them to experience the full power of the game. On an expensive surfboard, they would ride the thoughts of past masters. With their professional tennis racket, they would use spin and torque.
Now, feeling small and humiliated after her first-round loss, Lisa wanted this power. She wanted to sense the power of Igor’s big hands in her moves; the way she had used them to pursue Tal’s injustice in game one. Like a horrible child who whines for candy or death, she kept after Igor. “Why can’t I ever learn any openings? Everyone says I need to learn theory.”
Igor took Lisa for a short walk to the travelling bookstore. Opening books dominated the selection like women’s clothing at a department store. All the latest fashions were showcased. Lisa saw a prostrate black king; he was weary of life, and dripped shiny red blood. Crushing the Caro-Kann, the book’s title read. Another promised to destroy her pet opening, the King’s Indian Defense. “Kill K.I.D.,” it said in big Russian Army letters. They were a little like the Dungeons and Dragons modules she had seen boys play with: The Dark Dungeon of Death, and The Lair of the Pale Bard.
“Lisa, look under table.”
Lisa obeyed Igor and crawled into a landscape of worn boxes. From the secrets of an ancient time, Lisa pulled out Trends in the Bogo-Indian, from 1986, fifty cents. She showed the pamphlet to Igor, as if asking him if she had discovered a treasure.
Igor answered with “Pa, pa, paaa,” which he found very funny. “Keep looking!” he commanded, and continued with his inane “Pa, pa, paaa.”
“Is that from a horror movie or something?” Lisa asked.
“Nyet! Keep looking. Pa, pa, paaa.”
Lisa found a 507-page tome on the King’s Gambit, in German, from 1887. “Oh! Very nice, we smell,” Igor said, and he jumped down to the floor like a five-year-old. Together, they took in the ancient vanilla lignin of the vintage work. “Pa, pa, paaa,” he sang.
“OK, Igor, that’s really annoying!”
Igor closed his eyes for a brief moment, as he often did before he played a move. He then stood tall and sang out to the low ceiling of the bookstore. Three vulgar notes—Pa, pa, and paaa—began running over creeks and fields, along narrow cobblestone roads. Each was a traveler with its own mask and path, but bound to the common caravan. The chessplayers in the bookstore gathered around Igor’s baritone. Like Lisa, they did not know the song, but they recognized the struggle. And they yearned for consonance.
Igor blushed, so happy to see that his unprofessional voice could bring such pleasure to others. “Lisa,” Igor said, “I wish for say that first notes not important. Art seen in development of first moves. Please understand Russian view: endgame foundation of house. Opening like paint, can be changed.”
They walked away from the bookstore, and Igor said: “You know, music is a pleasure. Everyone understand music. I sing personal variations of Beethoven Third Symphony. No one recognize, but not important, they still enjoy. Chess take big study for appreciate. Also, in music, is possible for follow master to resolution of theme. You can play his music. In chess opening, only possible to follow a little way, then you on your own.”
“That’s what I want,” Lisa said. “I want to try to play the theme to the resolution, just once. Like . . . like the time I played “Chopsticks” on the piano. I didn’t know what I was doing. Everything just flowed out of me.”
Igor laughed and said, “This man. Davidson. He always play same thing?”
“Yes, it’s horrible!” Lisa said.
“Big weakness,” Igor laughed. “Remember how Ruth crawl inside mind with draw offer?”
“That was so mean!” Lisa recalled.
“For truth. Now maybe climb around Davidson mind. We do some opening, yes?”
Lisa was shocked that Igor was giving her what she wanted. But it seemed way too late, the round was about to start.
“We gonna call the Panda. Panda on boat in New Hampshire, but always have computer. I turn up volume, you hear his tricks.” And soon he was on the phone, “Hey Panda, need favor. Student have white pieces against some guy who always play same move. Name Renard Davidson.”
The Panda laughed. “You’ve got a student!? Are you teaching him bougie chess?”
“Nyet! We study Tal. Student play king pawn.”
“Oh damn, a’ight. I’ll call you back in ten.”
Lisa didn’t understand a thing. The round was in fifteen minutes, how could she learn to face one of black’s main weapons in just five minutes? And what was bougie chess?
The voice of the mysterious man on the other side of the continent again spoke through Igor’s phone. “Your student’s right, the guy always plays the same thing.” The Panda spoke a sequence rapidly through the phone, in Russian. Lisa understood only some slons and kons to which Igor said tak.
Lisa and Igor found a private spot on the side of a sweaty Fresno street and Igor transliterated the moves onto the chessboard. It was a little involved on the surface—the variation went all the way into the twentieth move—but Igor said it was actually quite simple: the guy would repeat his moves because he thought them objectively best. And this belief in the truth of his moves would be so strong that he wouldn’t deviate from his customary path, even if he smelled something foul.
Lisa played her moves tentatively against Davidson, as if she didn’t know what she was doing. She pretended to study the board. But her eyes fixed themselves just beyond the pieces, on the upper curve of Renard’s bowling-ball belly. It was like Ted’s. And as her opponent followed the habitual path that the Panda had prophesied, Lisa imagined the racecars going around and around.
On move twenty, Lisa played the Panda’s idea: one of her pieces gave herself to alter the flows of time and quality of position. Davidson’s king was now very awkwardly placed. But he wasn’t going to get mated any time soon. His main problem felt at first very intangible to Lisa: his pieces were having difficulty talking to one another. The only seemingly safe chance of communication was by carrier pigeon, a wishful process that required the help of the elements. Lisa’s pieces all had the iPhone5. Both players now sank into reflection, and Lisa realized that she needed to channel the thoughts of this mysterious man on the other side of the continent.
Lisa suddenly realized that her opponent needed to see that placing his hopes in carrier pigeons was delusional, especially since her iPhones were all equipped with an avian GPS monitoring app. He too would need to give up a piece. His only chance would be for his knight to light himself on fire and gallop into Lisa’s camp. Yes, he would die. But he would give his fellows enough time to find themselves as Lisa surrounded and killed th
e kamikaze knight.
Davidson didn’t lose any of his material by sending the carrier pigeon up. And it was not even clear how he could lose anything tangible in the next couple moves. But he had lost a tempo. And with that tempo Lisa moved on top of him, completely. Fuck you, Ted. She sealed off his structure. He might have felt safe, he still wasn’t going to lose any of his stuff immediately, but the walls were now slowly moving in. He would be forced to choose a prison wall to climb. That’s when she would catch him and plant her boot on the criminal’s neck.
Rows of spectators began to assemble behind Lisa’s board, and the mate-in-twos began to whine and yelp like hungry hunting dogs. They saw Ted’s head bob up on the courtyard wall, trying to find a way out. Lisa had only used twenty minutes to fake thinking about the Panda’s first twenty moves, so she had plenty of quiet time to patiently plan every detail of the execution.
Lisa was elated when her opponent resigned. In a matter-of-fact tone, Lisa asked if he would like to look at the game. That was the custom, both players would briefly pretend to be objective in the post-mortem. But Renard said no, and slumped away. Fuck you, Ted, Lisa thought. You got what you deserved, clinging to all your stuff like a baby.
For that game Lisa won the best game prize and the upset prize for the tournament, $100. Everyone was astonished that a girl had beaten someone rated so much higher with such a reputation in the Najdorf so quickly. They said that Lisa’s novelty was of the highest theoretical importance to the Sicilian Najdorf. But Lisa was confused, and she told Igor, “I always thought that my first win against a master would feel more special. I thought I would have to do something brilliant. I mean, many of the Panda’s moves I didn’t understand. I have no idea what I would of done if Davidson had played something else.”
Igor smiled. “Opponent part of game. Opponent always have weakness. In this game your opponent like politician who always say same thing, who think he special because of opening truth he think he know. Easy for predict rigid thought. When he see you making powerful moves, big red light should have turn on. Like three notes I sing today, he could make variation. But he was convinced of his truth. Chess cruel. You search for weakness in opponent thought. Use weakness for push pieces into the emptiness. What chance for Mr. Davidson! Now he can think about the truth and the life. Like when Ruth offer you draw in losing position, you give opponent chance for think.”