Stalin’s Ghost (13 page)

A
mid the car lots and body shops that stretched along Leningrad Prospect the Casino of the Golden Khan was a fantasy of Oriental domes and minarets. Outside crouched the Russian winter. Inside spread a hush of luxury, of columns carved from malachite around a pool for golden koi and murals of a dreamlike Xanadu. A gilded statue of a Mongol archer presided over a gaming hall with tables for blackjack, poker and American roulette. Only members and their guests made it through the security check at the door and membership cost fifty thousand dollars. That way the club didn’t have to run a credit check.

Because the Golden Khan was more than a casino. It was a social club for millionaires. More business was done informally in the intimate lobbies and bars of the Golden Khan than in any office, and nothing impressed a client as much as dinner at the Khan; the casino’s restaurant featured steak tartare, naturally, and the most expensive wine list in Moscow, keeping in mind the mafia chief who sent back a bottle because it wasn’t expensive enough. A walk-in humidor stored cigars in mahogany drawers with the millionaire’s name etched in brass. A Russian
banya
and a Siamese spa refreshed the exhausted millionaire and sent him back to the tables. Escorts, Russian and Chinese, were available for a millionaire’s company or solace or good luck. Waitresses wafted by in harem pants carrying drinks. In the Xanadu tradition, the club had originally boasted an indoor menagerie of falcons, peacocks and a rare Tasmanian devil. The devil proved to look like a large rat that shrieked hideously and continually in competition with the peacocks until it dropped dead of exhaustion, while the peacocks were succeeded by parrots that said in a variety of voices, “Hit me!”

On occasion, as a civic gesture, the Golden Khan televised a beauty contest for the victims of a terrorist attack, a lingerie show for wounded soldiers or a chess tournament to benefit homeless kids. Admittedly, chess was a castaway. No one had time to play chess anymore, although every Russian knew how to play chess, agreed it was a measure of the intellect and assumed it was a special Russian talent. So, on what the management expected to be a slow winter morning—the millionaires tucked in their Swedish bed-sheets or SUVs—the general public was allowed into an area of the hall where mahogany blackjack tables with blue felt and padded armrests were temporarily replaced by folding tables, chessboards and game clocks. Parrots sidestepped on their perches. Security men in black suits set up a barrier of brass stands and golden ropes as players and supporters filtered in: veterans full of craftiness, a team of university students who were serenely confident, teenage girls with evasive eyes and a prodigy toting his booster seat. Each was a local legend, the winner of wars fought in dormitories and city parks. They had until ten to check in under a banner that declared “Blitz for Moscow Youth!” The event would have been a perfect challenge for Zhenya, but Platonov had checked the list of entrants and failed to find any sign that the boy had risen to the bait. Even so, it might lure him out as a spectator.

Arkady and Platonov stayed out of sight with the show’s producer in a van parked outside and watched on monitors as the presenter rehearsed her marks. She was petite as a gymnast and so excited she looked like a sparkler waiting to be lit.

The producer had the short ponytail of a part-time artist. He said, “A month ago she was runner-up for Miss Moscow; now she’s a presenter. We’re breaking her in by taping a somewhat inconsequential event. Chess? Give me a break.” Madonna sang from his pants and he pulled out a cell phone. “Excuse me.”

The van’s interior was cold and close, dimly lit by the glow of the screens and full of the sharp edges of audio, video and transmission gear. For the occasion Platonov had found a bow tie. Arkady wore, under his pea jacket and turtleneck, gauze swathed in salve; he was learning how many times a day a man had to turn his head. Walking to the car had been difficult. Driving was torture. Speaking was nearly impossible. Arkady had said hello when he boarded the van; otherwise he was mute.

After an animated conversation on the phone the producer began madly throwing switches at a console and said, “There’s been a change. The soccer game is canceled due to weather and we have to fill in. We’re going live in two minutes. You may have noticed there’s not enough room here to swing your dick. So you don’t touch anything—and maintain silence except to pass along any information about chess if I need it. If I need it I will hold up my right hand. Otherwise, act like your friend here, the one with nothing to say.” He pulled on a headset and tipped back for a better view of the presenter. “Lydia, Yura, Grisha, I have some news for you. We have to start early. We’re going live.”

On the screen Arkady saw the presenter’s personal candlepower rise as she got the word. The two cameramen with her finished mounting an overhead camera over the number one table before they picked up their handhelds. In the van the producer launched three conversations at the same time, choreographing the cameras and cueing her. At five, four, three, two, one, Lydia appeared next to a roulette table to welcome viewers to “a special benefit live at the exclusive Casino of the Golden Khan, the world-famous home of high-stakes gaming.”

A plastic shade on the van’s rear window was open a crack. Arkady squinted through it at a parking lot that was a maze of ruts in old snow. It was weird, the geometry of reality, he thought. How it changed depending on where you stood.

Platonov muttered in Arkady’s ear, “Chess is not gaming. Cretins! Besides, this tournament is not even chess. We used to play in real chess halls with real rules. It’s blitz. It’s not even blitz, it’s television.”

On screen the presenter asked herself, “For those who don’t follow chess closely, you may ask yourself what exactly is blitz?”

“In a regular…,” the producer said.

She said, “In a regular game of chess a player has two hours to make forty moves. In blitz he has five minutes. For this tournament, for motivation, in case of a tie the winner will be determined by the flip of a coin. The pace, as you can imagine, is rapid and exciting.”

“Like a mugging,” Platonov said.

The producer said, “Knockout…”

She said, “The competition will be a knockout system. Who plays white will be determined, again, by a flip of a coin, actually a casino chip. White or black, if you lose, you’re out. We have sixteen competitors, players of all ages who have survived preliminary rounds.”

Platonov stared at the monitor. “I recognize some. Whack-offs, dilettantes, anarchists.”

The producer shot Platonov a warning scowl.

The presenter said, “Our tournament champion will win a thousand dollars and the Casino of the Golden Khan will donate to children’s shelters across the city a thousand dollars.”

A thousand? That much was swept up in loose chips every night, Arkady thought.

“And there is a special bonus. The tournament champion will play a game with legendary Grandmaster”—she stopped to hear the producer’s feed—“Ilya Platonov. Are we ready?”

Platonov spied a different question in Arkady’s eyes and said, “They’re giving me five hundred. An honorarium. They say I can talk about the chess club.”

Arkady doubted it. They’d trot Platonov in and out like a dancing bear.

She unhooked a golden rope. “Find your tables, please.”

In the van the producer punched in music to scurry by as the players milled around and found their assigned tables. One camera scanned a player with shaky hands that had shaved him badly, a girl chewing on her hair, a fresh-cheeked university student Buddhalike at his board. The other camera focused on supporters: an anxious mother who pressed a handkerchief to her mouth, a girlfriend with chess books stacked on her knees and on the back row, fresh from the drunk tank, Victor. Fifteen players were in their seats. One was missing.

“We seem to be short one player.” The presenter found a place card at an empty seat. “E. Lysenko. Is there an E. Lysenko here?”

Arkady was jolted. E. Lysenko was Zhenya. Was he there?

The opponent was a stickler for the rules. He folded his arms and informed her, “You’ll have to give me a bye.”

“We’ll have to give him a bye,” the producer said into his microphone. “Start the games. Come on, Lydia! We need action.”

“It looks as if we will have to give you a bye,” she said at her end. “So, you go through the first round and you didn’t have to lift a finger.”

In the van Arkady said, “It’s not ten o’clock yet. There are five minutes to go. You’re starting early.”

The producer waved him off.

“It’s not ten,” Arkady said.

The producer told Platonov, “I liked your friend more as a dummy. Get him out of here.”

Arkady pulled the microphone off the producer’s head and spoke to the presenter directly. “Wait! Give him a chance.”

“He’s here,” she said.

In an anorak with the hood halfway up, Evgeny Lysenko, called Zhenya, looked like a sentry posted at a miserable border. At twelve years old he was short and slight and his natural gait was a reluctant shuffle. His hair was drab, his features ordinary. He habitually looked down to avoid attention and Arkady realized that Zhenya must have been among the spectators the entire time, waiting in the shadow of his hood until the last second before claiming his seat.

“How did his name get on the list?” Platonov asked.

“Sorry.” Arkady gave the headset back. His throat burned.

“Get fucked,” said the producer.

The opponent won the flip and chose white. He observed to Zhenya, “No time to clean your fingernails?”

Zhenya’s nails had black moons from his living in railroad cars around Three Stations. He stared at them as his opponent opened with his king pawn. Zhenya went on studying the dirt that lined his hands. The opponent waited. Every second was precious in blitz. Other boards jumped with moves and the slap of time buttons.

The producer told Arkady, “After all that, your boy froze.”

A minute passed. Players at the nearer tables stole glances at Zhenya, who left the white pawn alone and unchallenged in the center of the board. Early moves were the easiest, but Zhenya looked transfixed. Two minutes passed. The time clock was digital, with two LCD faces set in tough plastic for the occasional toss by an unhappy loser. The camera zoomed in. It was difficult to tell in all the motion on other boards who was winning or losing, but Zhenya’s board and clock made it immediately plain who was falling further and further behind. His opponent didn’t know how to set his expression. At first he was pleased to see Zhenya, by all appearances, at a loss. As the seconds passed he felt more and more uneasy, as if forced to dance alone. Someone was being humiliated; he could no longer say who. He said nothing to Zhenya; speaking over the board after play began was against the rules. Zhenya stood and the opponent half stood, expecting the boy to quit. Instead, Zhenya took off his anorak and hung it over the back of the chair to settle in for longer analysis.

With two minutes to go, Zhenya went into action. It wasn’t so much the development of black pieces that was extraordinary as the rapidity with which he met white’s every move. White would advance a piece and hardly hit the time button when black did the same, so that the clicks of the buttons came in pairs and the enormous time advantage white had for his moves came to seem pointless, even ridiculous. He began to play at Zhenya’s pace, conceding doubled pawns for a promising queenside push. He traded pieces at a slight disadvantage, saw the queenside attack fade, was stampeded into a high-speed exchange that cleared the board and, stripped, watched as a black pawn strolled to promotion. Cameras, guests and finished players watched as the white king dropped. The loser sank into his chair, still confused. It was the sort of loss that could kill a game for a man, Arkady thought. Zhenya looked for the next opponent.

Platonov’s verdict in the van was, “Nothing but tricks. If you let Zhenya set the rhythm, of course he’ll overwhelm you. In blitz you don’t play with your head. There’s no time to think. You play with your hands and the little shit has very fast hands. But now everyone knows how strong he is. Vanity will be his downfall.”

Zhenya’s second opponent was the prodigy. Perched on his booster seat the boy leveled an unblinking gaze at Zhenya, who had picked his fingernails during intermission. The producer ate it up.

“Two boys from different planets and neither of them Earth. Get tighter.”

When the prodigy won the coin toss, the camera closed in on a smile trying to hide in a corner of his lips. He had the voice of a choir soprano. “White, please.”

Playing black again, Zhenya answered from the start, simply countering and developing his pieces, castling, leaving no obvious weaknesses and mounting no clear attack. Trench warfare. He was even in material until the prodigy did to Zhenya what Zhenya had done to his first opponent and lumbered him with doubled pawns, the first chink in black’s defense. It had promise. Trying to protect his men Zhenya lost offense, and no offense made for an overburdened defense. Targets started to appear. It was so hard to choose, the prodigy squirmed in his seat. It wasn’t until he was down to fifteen seconds on his clock that he realized Zhenya had almost a full minute left on his. At which point, black unveiled a long diagonal across the board and a pin on white’s queen. Not a serious pin, not one that couldn’t be refuted with no more than two or three minutes of analysis. The prodigy’s hand hovered. It was still in the air when his clock said 0:00.

Platonov sneered. “Some victory. He fooled a baby. He managed time better than an opponent who could barely see over the chessboard.”

“It’s down to four players,” Arkady said.

“I never said he wasn’t talented. I said he was wasting his talent. He only plays for money and this, this, this is the proof. In a casino. Look at him.” Platonov pointed to the television screen. Zhenya had pulled up his hood, as good as hiding his face. “He thinks he’s Bobby Fischer.”

During the intermission, a girl Zhenya’s age dared to break into Zhenya’s solitude to offer him a stick of gum the careful way someone feeds a half-wild animal. When the intermission was over she stayed in the player’s seat opposite him and he chewed more thoughtfully.