Nowhere Near Milkwood (30 page)

BONUS STORY

Percy had taken his extensive porn collection to a pawn shop and come out with enough money for a month of food shopping, so Boris decided to take his pawn collection to a porn shop to see what he could get. This clever reversal gratified a mischievous part of his desperate self.

His pawn collection truly was remarkable and unique. He had no interest in any other kind of chess piece, only pawns. He had thousands of them stacked on all the shelves in his house, bundled into boxes, in bags stored in cupboards, scattered under the bed, in every cranny.

They came in all sizes and colours and styles. The largest was the height of a tall man and stood in the hallway like a sentinel. The smallest was carved from a grain of salt and he had misplaced it years earlier, perhaps on his chips one drunken evening. Plethora of pawns!

“The pawn has a fascinating history,” he lectured himself in the circular mirror on his living room wall, preparing his speech for the owner of the porn shop he had targeted, “and is a more interesting playing piece than most people assume it to be. Are you listening closely?”

Boris only permitted circular mirrors in his house because if he ever saw his reflection in a square mirror he began to believe he was a chess piece. Such mirrors reminded him too much of chessboard squares, that’s why. Although he adored pawns he had no desire to be one.

Nor did he wish to be any of the other pieces, so the best solution was to keep looking and talking into circular mirrors and that’s what he did. “Yes, I am listening closely,” he answered himself. After a nod of acknowledgment to his mirrored image, he continued as follows:

“The eight pawns on each side might look identical to each other, but this conformity is an illusion. Once upon a time they had individual identities. From left to right they were gambler, city guard, innkeeper, merchant, doctor, weaver, blacksmith and farmer. The sameness was only in their forms and performance. They had highly distinctive internal lives.”

Although he now wore the grimace of a man who is unconvinced by what he has heard, he in fact believed himself with any doubts. “It may sound odd but I’m able to tell very rapidly what profession a random pawn has. Put one in the palm of my hand and I only have to blink once or twice before declaring it to be a merchant or whatever. Yes, I can do this.”

He turned and gazed at his reflection over one shoulder in a manner more sinister than coy. “The ability came with long practice. It’s only the same as the astronomer who knows each star so intimately that even if one is removed from its constellation and presented to him in isolation he can speak its name. That is a magical trick but it has a mundane basis.”

He strutted off among his exhibits, the chessboards loaded with pawns on every square, the shelves, tables and cabinets full of pawns, groaning with them, the rare metal and crystal pawns dangling from the ceiling on threads as thin as spider’s silk. And as he passed, he never failed to touch each with his fingertips. He had eight fingers, for he discounted his thumbs, and each finger represented a different pawn in his mind and all were busy.

“I love every one of you,” he told his pawns, “but I have financial issues. I need to eat and thus reluctantly I must attempt to sell you, my brothers, and transform you into money. That’s a horrible alchemy. You reach the final rank and you are promoted, so you understand change, at least in principle. But this will be a disreputable conversion. I’m sorry.”

And after touring his entire house, with its sagging floorboards, he chose a handful of pawns as samples for the person he planned to sell his collection to, namely the owner of the nearest porn shop. Off he went into the day and pushed open the door of that establishment with a sigh.

The man behind the counter had a face without expressions or perhaps he left his smiles, frowns, grimaces and pouts at home every morning and went to work without them. Safer that way. Boris approached him with the air of a man who wishes to repurchase his own virginity.

But the owner asked, “What can I do for you?”

And instead of making that impossible request about his virginity, Boris placed a little velvet bag on the counter. The owner remained immobile and his eyes showed not even the smallest flicker of interest as Boris slowly opened the bag and inserted his hand into its black depths.

“These are just a few examples of what I have to offer.”

“You want to sell me something?”

“Yes, magnificent merchandise, the best of its kind.”

“I buy from my suppliers only.”

“But you will appreciate these, I assure you.”

Boris was still rummaging when he uttered those words and it seemed to the owner he was deliberately trying to increase the suspense. The truth was he kept losing his grip on what was inside. Finally he managed to pull a fistful of pawns out and stand them upright on the counter.

“What is this?” the owner said.

“An array of pawns of different styles and materials.”

“I can see that and yet...”

“They are fully functioning and I have more at home. I also own pawns more remarkable than these. Fabricated from meteoric iron, rhodium, osmium, taaffeite, orange sea glass, solidified ectoplasm, desiccated truffles, mummified pharaoh hearts and wood from extinct trees that have never been catalogued by botanists. They are truly extraordinary!”

“Don’t you understand what kind of shop this is?”

“I came here especially!”

The owner made his first gesture for many years. He shrugged and it was a shock to the muscles of his shoulders, which had atrophied from lack of use, so this shrug was followed by a wince, and that opened the floodgates of all the other pent up physical contractions and undulations inside him. His flesh rippled in sundry places for a full dramatic minute.

“I must ask you to leave,” he finally spluttered.

“Wait!” Boris was prepared for this reaction. He held up a hand to shield himself from the premature ire of the other man.

“I am waiting,” came the reply.

“Permit me to acquaint you with one of the most remarkable properties of the seemingly humble pawn. It moves one square at a time, always forwards in a straight line unless in the process of capturing a piece, when it is allowed to move diagonally. A pawn is a pawn for the entirety of its life. But what happens when it reaches the eighth rank? Why, at such a moment it is promoted! Yes, it ceases to be what it is and instantly becomes something different and better, the same way a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.”

“The ‘butterfly’ is not a piece in standard chess,” sniffed the shop owner, but he was intrigued by what Boris was saying and he allowed his gaze to roam over the pawns this unorthodox customer had assembled before him. Boris was inhaling deeply, ready to blurt the following:

“Cancel that analogy if it displeases you. The point is that the pawn is an embryonic queen. It just needs to reach the final rank. Eight steps to royalty! It’s true it doesn’t have to be promoted to a queen. That decision is up to the player who controls the pawn. It can be promoted to a rook, knight or bishop instead. It is forbidden only to remain a pawn. Sometimes it is underpromoted to avoid the condition of stalemate, but generally it’s elevated to a queen, the most powerful piece on the board. And this is true of all the pawns in my collection. I can, for example, arrange for any of the pawns you see before you to be transmuted into queens. This is essentially what I’m offering.”

“I still don’t understand. What use is that to me?”

Boris lowered his voice and leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner as if he was discussing these matters on the street rather than in the shop. This was merely a consequence of his natural discretion.

“You ask what use is a queen?!”

“Yes I do. My establishment is devoted to—”

“Exactly! And what is a queen but a woman? A powerful and thus highly erotic woman! All that’s required is for me to make the right moves with one of these pawns and then a queen will stand before you. Can you imagine that? An absolutely authentic flesh and blood queen.”

“Cleopatra!” gasped the owner.

“So you can see that what I’m offering you is something very special and deserving of considerable remuneration.”

“The Queen of Sheba!”

“Yes, possibly her too. It depends on the pawn.”

“Make those moves now! Promote those pawns now!” cried the owner in a frenzy of lust, as he grabbed two of the pawns and made them move across the counter in little hops on imaginary squares.

Boris shook his head and said, “The necessary squares do exist here in the shop, as they do everywhere in the world, but it takes a certain ability in order to discern them. They aren’t neatly arranged as on a chessboard. Permit me, if you will, to now demonstrate my meaning.”

And he took up one of the idle pawns and moved it eight times. The way he moved the piece was peculiar. First he pressed its base against the middle of his forehead, then he threw it up in the air and caught it after it had rotated once, then he pressed it against the owner’s ear, then he took it to the farthest corner of the shop and back again, then he climbed with difficulty onto the counter and pressed the pawn against the low ceiling.

“Some kind of insane dance?” the owner snarled.

“The first five moves,” said Boris.

Now he swapped the pawn from his right hand to his left, then he put it in his mouth and spat it out again, finally he flung it with considerable force to the floor. There was a flash and a puff of smoke.

“I promote you to queen!”

And Boris and the owner were no longer alone in the shop. A tall woman stood there. She was dressed in mediaeval clothes and adorned with jewellery. It might have been any one of a hundred different queens, but Boris was certain he knew who she was. He bowed low.

“It works! It works!” chortled the owner.

He hurried out from his nest behind the counter, approached the woman and immediately began caressing her with his large hands. He was testing her as if she were merchandise, an erotic toy.

“Be careful,” said Boris quietly, “I think she is—”

“Mine now!” snapped the owner.

“Yes, but there are different kinds of queen.”

“Silence! I’m occupied!”

His hands continued to rove over her body.

He was too intent on his examination of her figure to notice the glower in her eyes and the fierce set of her regal mouth. She shouted something harsh and the remaining pawns turned into knights. Their swords gleamed in the dim light of the shop interior. They moved quickly.

Boris left the shop with a solemn expression.

He had failed in his quest to sell any of his pawns. The owner had been in no position to give him money and he didn’t like to help himself to any, though the opportunity was there. He had taken something else instead but it wasn’t the same. On his way home he decided to visit his friend Percy, who offered him a dish of grapes from his recent shopping trip.

“I have a present for you.”

“Is it wine to go with all my food?” asked Percy.

“Sorry, no. It’s a head.”

He had wrapped the object in his coat and now he revealed it and flung it onto the sofa, where it settled among cushions. Percy smiled and muttered his thanks, but it was clear he didn’t really want this gift, that he had no need for it, that it was just more clutter in his house.

He pretended to be appreciative. Then he asked:

“Did you do this to him?”

Boris spoke through a mouthful of grapes.

“Good heavens, no! It was Queen Matilda who ordered his beheading. A warrior queen from one of the most traumatic periods of English history, during the civil war of the 12th Century. I didn’t bring her with me. I left her in the porn shop. Was that irresponsible of me?”

Percy frowned. “Maybe not. It could work as a promotional device.” And then he wondered why Boris laughed.