‘It’s true. You are. For the last five years, you’ve been raking in the money like never before,’ he laughed. ‘I think that you have more reason than ever to treat me to lunch today.’
Black would have had no problem turning him down, but put that way, a fine lunch with the policeman of a neutral country in honour of the Allied victory seemed like a good idea. He informed the kitchen that he would be taking his meal outside on the terrace, and that he would be entertaining a guest.
The waiters marvelled at the sight of the two men sitting together at the table, raising their glasses in a toast.
‘To victory!’ said Black.
‘To peace!’ said Cardoso. ‘Wholehearted congratulations for winning the war. But let me tell you, the real winners here are us Portuguese. We survived the war without spilling a drop of blood.’
‘And wholehearted congratulations to you, too,’ said the American.
*
All through lunch they reminisced about their various adventures during these wartime years. The policeman was more cheerful than usual, and they mentioned various happenings, each giving his own version. They recalled the refugee crisis, how long it had lasted and all the work they had had to do, and yet it had seemed to be over in a flash. They remembered the late President of Poland, the French film-maker Jean Renoir, the Duchess of Windsor. They agreed that the Spanish artist with twirled moustaches, whose name they could not remember, was seriously crazy, and that German dissidents were incredibly boring. The inspector took the opportunity to repeat his anecdote about the Spanish general who told him: ‘As soon as I hear the word intellectual, I reach for my pistol.’
Their conversation led them to the incident with the diplomat who in 1942 killed himself and his wife after gambling away his own and the state’s money. They could not remember if he had been Croatian or Estonian, or if his wife was Greek or Armenian, but they both vividly remembered the horrifying sight of human brains and blood splattered on the walls and mirrors of the hotel room.
Before leaving, the inspector felt it appropriate to warn Black:
‘This is half-time for you. There’ll be more work when the other side starts trying to escape. Your hotel is already full of Krauts, right?’ said Cardoso, slapping Black on the back before making his way out.
* * *
A week later, the two men, Cardoso with his wife and Mr Black with Gaby, ran into each other at Lisbon’s Politeama cinema, after the national première of Casablanca. Made in 1942, its screening had been postponed for reasons understandable to anyone who knew the meaning of neutrality. This was not the first time that they had met at a première. And once again, they were pleased to see each other, and talked about their impressions of the movie. Everybody liked it very much.
‘They flew away to Lisbon. Afterwards, I’m sure they stayed at our hotel,’ said the boy.
‘If there were any vacancies,’ said Black.
‘And if they could pay,’ Cardoso agreed.
CHESS PLAYERS
An elderly man walked into the green sitting room on the ground floor of the Palácio hotel. It was only up close that you could see, mostly from his eyes, that he was not as old as he seemed at first glance. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, but overweight, sallow of face and sluggish. You could tell from the way he walked and breathed that his body was worn down and that he had serious health issues. The enlarged capillaries on his nose indicated that he was probably inclined to drink; his thin grey hair, parted on the side, revealed his scalp; the skin on his head and his bloated, sickly face were marked with red, scaly patches of psoriasis; he had not shaved that day but there was no stubble; the shoulders of his dark overcoat were sprinkled with dandruff, like snow. Just as he was about to sit down in the nearest armchair he noticed a boy playing chess by himself at a table by the window. He walked over and stood behind him, but the boy was concentrating on a chess combination and did not notice the man. The boy had wheat-coloured hair and side-locks which immediately reminded the old man of the hat he had had as a child, made of fox fur and with ear flaps.
‘Bonjour,’ the man said, speaking with a soft Russian accent.
The boy jumped, as if startled awake from a dream.
‘May I help you?’ The corpulent gentleman reminded him of a prince from an opera. He smiled. He was still a polite child.
The man introduced himself: ‘I am Alexander Alexandrovich.’ The boy thought that the old man even sounded like a prince but all he said was:
‘I am Gavriel Franklin. Gaby.’
‘I see that you’re playing chess by yourself, and I wanted to offer myself as a partner, if you need one. I haven’t played in a while. I miss playing.’
‘I always need a partner.’
The boy was pleased. Chess is always much better when it is played against a real rather than an imaginary opponent. True, the old man reeked of alcohol and did not look like a worthy opponent, but Gaby, chronically short of a chess partner, would accept anyone who offered to play. Usually it would be just one game, because Gaby would win in just a few moves, so it was pointless to ask for a rematch.
The man removed his overcoat and laid it down and the boy got up to help him take his seat on the opposite side of the table. They placed the pieces on the board.
‘How long have you been playing?’ the man asked.
‘Since I was little. I played with my father, and here I play almost every day.’
‘You have somebody to play against?’
‘When I don’t, I play against myself,’ the boy said.
‘I started playing at a young age too. My mother taught me and afterwards I played a lot, really a lot, but less and less these last few years, and in the past six months not once.’
The boy was all smiles, and the old man liked that.
‘Since you’re a guest here, I’ll let you make the first move,’ said Gaby, turning the board around so that the old man had the white pieces.
‘Thank you so much. You’re a very nice boy,’ Alexander Alexandrovich said, appreciating the child’s generosity.
There’s no talking when you are playing chess. But the boy quickly realized that he had to take the old man seriously. Yes, he was a bit slow, but he played well, and Gaby had his work cut out to achieve a draw. The old man liked the way Gaby played, too.
‘You have a good mind,’ said the old man. ‘Shall we play another game again tomorrow?’
‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ said the boy.
‘I’m glad. Now I’m going to stretch my legs a bit; I’ve been sitting for too long.’
‘And I have to walk the dog. Do you want to come with us to the park?’
‘An excellent idea,’ said the old man, finishing off his glass of cognac. ‘My doctor says I should walk. But we’ll have to take it slowly if we go together.’
They walked slowly, talking about chess, but also about other, mostly trivial things. The boy talked about his dog, and the man talked about his recently deceased cat. Both deliberately avoided mentioning an important detail that could have embarrassed the other. The boy did not tell the old man that he was the chess champion of the hotel. The old man did not tell the boy that he was the chess champion of the world.
MANUFACTURE NATIONALE DE SÈVRES
Bowed over the black pieces on the board was a bald head; the older man was sitting quietly, moving slowly, observing the world through swollen eyelids. Hovering over the white pieces was the restless tousled head of the boy. Following the game from a discreet distance was a younger man with watery blue eyes and long, almost white eyelashes.
It was the boy’s turn. He moved the white knight from B4 to C6. Nothing else in the room changed: three pairs of eyes continued to watch the new arrangement of the pieces. After a while, the older player said what they all saw:
‘I think you’ve achieved another draw,’ he said to his opponent, reaching out to shake hands.
The boy was Gaby, though it might be better to call him a
young man now. When you are fifteen, every new hair on your chin and pimple on your face makes you that much less of a child. He had been to the barber two or three times already to shave the hair off his upper lip. He had grown. He was already taller than most adult men, and judging by his long legs he still had more to grow.
On the other hand, he looked less extraordinary than he had when he was a child. When he first came, he had been very striking indeed. In the meantime, his hair had lost some of the golden glow of his childhood and his clothes were different. When he outgrew his suit or scraped his knee or elbow, he needed a new outfit, which meant that in the last year or two he had had a new suit made for him every few months. Yes, the tailors were told that the new suit had to be de la même façon as the old one, and yes, they did their best to ensure that it was so, but tailors are artists and each one of them, sometimes without even knowing it, left their mark. The result was that each new suit looked less and less like the long lost original, and the boy came to look more and more like a person of the times. The only unusual thing about it was that, young though he might be, he always wore black, as if in mourning.
Even the wide-brimmed hat that differentiated him from everybody else no longer looked like the one he had worn when he first arrived. He had changed more hats than suits, always ordering another one in black. Once he lost his hat somewhere, another time the wind swept it off into the sea, and twice Fennec chewed it up. So, the hatters often had nothing to copy a new one from. In such situations, Gaby and Bruno would choose the block that most resembled the original. As a result, the black Hassidic hat suffered even more drastic changes than his suit; it no longer stuck out as it used to, and he had become so relaxed that he often even forgot to take it with him, especially if he was not going into town. Now only the side-locks attracted attention, and the hotel barber, the slicked-down Senhor-Silvio, tried to make sure they were not too noticeable.
Before the grandmaster’s arrival, Gaby had been the hotel’s reigning champion. That was not mentioned anymore; there was no point now that the world champion was present. The two of them played chess every day. The world champion swore that Gaby was a promising chess player and was improving by the day.
The inebriated grandmaster seldom stood up, and when he did it was with difficulty. Ensconced in his armchair, he straightened the blanket over his legs to keep them warm.
‘Is it tomorrow that you don’t have school?’ he asked the boy.
‘No. Tomorrow is Sunday.’
‘What do you say to the two of us meeting up straight after breakfast and me showing you who’s really the champion...? Eh? Instead of you constantly taking advantage of me being tipsy,’ laughed the grandmaster, as if pleased that the boy was doing so well. Then he turned to the man watching them. ‘Isn’t that so, doctor?’
The pale man laughed.
‘Do you really want me to come tomorrow morning?’ the boy asked. He was fearless on the chess board.
‘Come, of course come. It’s agreed. Around eleven.’
The boy left, but ready to return the next day.
‘Doctor, would you be so kind as to top up my drink,’ the grandmaster politely asked the pale man once they were alone.
‘Is that really necessary?’ the man asked.
‘It’s best with cognac, please,’ the grandmaster observed.
*
The watery-eyed doctor was Vladimir Kirilovich Potapov. The story of how he wound up here is a complicated one. He was born in Moscow of princely lineage but remembered little of Russia – he had left as a small boy. He spoke Russian fluently, with a barely noticeable French intonation. He had spent the war in Switzerland and had come to Portugal four months earlier, intending to move to Argentina and open his own surgery there. He was waiting for an immigration visa, which could take a while. He had come with his French wife and baby daughter, who had the same clear face as her father. They were planning to sail to Buenos Aires as soon as they could.
He had taken a room at the Palácio shortly after Mr Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine; it happened to be right across from the grandmaster’s but it was in the hotel restaurant that they had actually met. The old man usually ate in his room but this particular evening he was sitting alone in the restaurant. The doctor had recognized him and walked over to his table.
By addressing him in Russian, he had managed to arouse the old man’s interest. There’s nobody you can have a better time with than somebody who speaks your own language. Moreover, Dr Potapov was a chess fan, and the two men, both with nothing to do, spent every day together.
*
‘The boy is special. Different,’ said the doctor.
‘My dear doctor, nothing is strange to me anymore. I’ve met a king with republican views, a rich man who is a communist, a priest who is godless, a Jew who is anti-Semitic. I met a tsar who was assassinated... You see that vase over there, Vladimir Kirilovich?’ The grandmaster pointed to the big vase, eared like a jug, its pale green porcelain decorated with gilded ornamentation.
The doctor looked at the vase standing in a corner of the bar, partly concealed behind bottles of alcohol.
‘That vase is all I have from Russia. I didn’t inherit it, I earned it. That’s probably why I love it so much,’ said the chess player. He was mumbling a little, as if his tongue got in the way; it was getting harder to understand what he was saying. ‘Take a closer look. See the coat of arms? What do you say?’
‘It’s the imperial coat of arms. You’re not telling me that it’s an urn containing the tsar’s ashes, are you?’ Potapov laughed.
The idea of keeping the imperial ashes in his room amused Alekhine too.
‘It’s not an urn. It’s more of a vase. It has the coat of arms because Tsar Nikolai gave it to me – personally in 1909 when I won the all-Russian amateur tournament in St Petersburg. Not much older than Gaby. Look at the beautiful, fine workmanship. Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. The finest porcelain the West is capable of making.’
Sitting in his armchair, a glass of cognac in his hand, the grandmaster became lost in thought. He took a sip to wet his lips and then started to talk:
‘You know, my friend, in ’21, I worked as an interpreter for the Comintern. It was considered to be a decent job at the time in Moscow, which meant that I didn’t go hungry and didn’t have to toil in a factory. I met a Swiss journalist there. I was twenty-eight and she was forty. We got married. She was a communist, a delegate attached to the Comintern, and the Bolsheviks let me leave Russia with her, though it was supposed to be just temporary. All I wanted was to get away from that God-forsaken country, our fatherland. I knew from the start that I did not want to return, at least not while they were in power. But I didn’t want to attract attention. So, I packed two suitcases, as if for a long trip. The night before I left, I decided to take this vase along as well... They probably realized that I wouldn’t be coming back, but they accepted my story that I was taking it as a present for my in-laws.’
The grandmaster stopped there. At such times, and they were not infrequent, when the old sot became lost in thought, his listener would have to prod him if he wanted to know the end of the story. The doctor was curious.
‘And? What happened then?’ he asked.
‘The two of us left for Paris. In Russia, where it was bedlam, she was the only thing that looked sane, normal; I felt that she was the only person I could share my life with... But as soon as we came to the West I started noticing her faults, and we began quarrelling... The difference in age, in mentality, in everything, was simply too great. We split up that same summer... And so, the marriage, my second marriage, was over but the vase remained. I took it with me wherever I moved. When war broke out in France, I went to the front and left it behind in our country summer house, which the Germans then confiscated. Before Grace, my current so-called wife, fled the countryside for Paris she hid the vase on the property. Throughout the war, until last winter, we didn’t know what had happened to my porcelain trophy. I
had already reconciled myself to the fact that it had disappeared or been destroyed. As soon as we managed to get back into the house I started looking for it. The box was badly damaged, but the porcelain had miraculously survived in one piece. Grace stayed on to sell the house and I brought the vase here with me... And now?’
The old chess player sat gazing at the ornate object for a long time until he came to a decision.
‘I’ll give it to whoever takes my title from me... Who else?’
OH! LIFE IS SO HARD!
The patient sat quietly while the doctor took his pulse, using his wristwatch. Then he listened to the man’s chest with his cold stethoscope.
‘Cough... Once more... Good. Now lie down here so that I can check your abdomen,’ said the doctor.
The old man stretched out on the bed and unbuttoned his shirt, letting the doctor use both hands to feel his flabby stomach.
Dr Potapov laid his stethoscope on his lap and said:
‘You seem to have just a cold, and there’s no real cure for that. But that’s not the worst thing. Your liver is considerably enlarged. You must stop drinking, you really must,’ he said, as if pleading for a personal favour.
‘I know that,’ Alekhine said calmly. ‘I’ve been told by doctors that I haven’t got a liver, I’ve got a pâté.’ But that failed to elicit a smile from the doctor. ‘Moreover, your colleagues have already diagnosed cirrhosis and duodenitis and arteriosclerosis, whatever all that means.’
‘That means that you are destroying yourself with every glass you take and if you don’t give up your deadly habits you won’t be long for this world. Believe my every word, grandmaster. Your situation is alarming.’
‘And if I stop drinking, how much more time will I have, doctor?’
‘If you give up alcohol and live an orderly life, you could have a few more years.’ Dr Potapov was an intelligent man and a dedicated medic, but he was not a prophet. He could not be more precise than that. ‘The liver is a strange organ. There’s always the chance that it may recover.’
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