Tactics of Conquest (17 page)
Next time, I take the wraps off.
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Chorale
Conversations
Dwellers of the Deep
Galaxies
Gather in the Hall of the Planets
Guernica Night
Herovit’s World
In the Enclosure
On a Planet Alien
Overlay
Revelations
Scop
Tactics of Conquest
The Cross of Fire
The Day of the Burning
The Destruction of the Temple
The Empty People
The Falling Astronauts
The Gamesman
The Last Transaction
The Men Inside
The Remaking of Sigmund Freud
The Sodom and Gomorrah Business
Universe Day
For Harry Harrison and Burt Sands—They’d like each other.
BISHOP
: A minor piece. Moves on the diagonal of its own color and may capture any piece it displaces. Louis reminds me of a Bishop in a certain way because the Bishop is a highly phallic piece, its head looking something like that of an uncircumcised genital. This is the way in which I have always thought of my opponent. Bishops are roughly equivalent to Knights in the point-count system of chess, and become more powerful in the end game when there is a wider area of empty board to potentially control. A Bishop exchanged for a Knight is generally advantageous in the opening, even in middle-game, but unwise in the end. I have often imagined Louis dressed in Bishop’s cloak and costume, inclining at some altar above which I rise to enormous height. “Bless me, bless me,” he says, and I say to him, “Who can bless a Bishop but the Pope?” as he caresses me with burning fingers, a perishing touch, a cold and curiously motionless eye. “Well, of course,” he says.
CHESS
: The Royal Game. Supposedly invented in Persia in the twelfth century, but there are antecedents suggesting origin centuries earlier. Actually its origins are unclear. Played on a board of sixty-four squares, alternating red and black,
with seven kinds of pieces, comprising a total of sixteen pieces per side. Has struck scholars and literati for many years as a metaphor for war or for life. Metaphors are ignored by grandmasters, who know the truth: that only the game matters, that it can be explained only on its own terms, that it is really about nothing. About everything.
DAVID
: Myself, the central figure of this commentary and its transcriber. One of the finest human beings among the contemporary grandmasters. Warm and engaging, always willing to help a newcomer and to cheer an aging colleague in the years of his decline. An international grandmaster, rated twentieth in corrupt ratings. Actually, the best in the world. Fifty years, two months and some days old tomorrow: clean-shaven, honest, dedicated and brilliant, wearing lightly upon himself the obligation to defend against darkness the forces of light. Neither a virgin (like his opponent) nor a pederast (like his opponent) but somewhere in the difficult territory between. A fine chess player equipped to deal with all schools, but particularly distinguished in defense against the Ruy Lopez.
FIANCHETTO
: Chess attack. The Bishop is brought to KN2 where it menaces opposing Rooks and can command the longest possible diagonal, thereby tying up the opponent’s development Well-known in Larsen’s attack, a transposition of the Sicilian defense.
FISCHER
: Robert James Fischer (b. 4/9/43), reigning world chess champion. A difficult, cantankerous chessmaster who was American Junior
Champion at the age of fourteen, and is in sore need of discipline.
FOOL’S MATE
: A kind of attack. (See
RUY LOPEZ).
FOOL’S MATE IN FOUR
: A highly subtle and rarefied kind of attack.
KING
: Primary chesspiece, the checkmating (or threatened capture) of which is the object of the Royal Game. Kings may move one square in any direction on any given move but may not move into check, nor within less than one square’s opposition of an opposing King. The most important, and yet by virtue of its limitations the weakest of the pieces, one of those ironies with which chess is replete. Useful in the end game. Largest of the pieces and most satisfying to feel when wedged deep into the moistly sweating palm, the fingers coming densely over it, the King welding itself into that pocket like a precious jewel, the trembling head of it a conductor of knowledge, the King itself leaving a stain of implication over that palm which will always be hidden from view.
(See BISHOP.)
KNIGHT
: Minor chesspiece, roughly equivalent to the Bishop in matching power and attacking force. More useful than the Bishop in the opening, equal in the middle game, less effective in the end game. In the Staunton chess pattern it is in the figure of a horse’s head; in more elaborate patterns may be seen as a rider upon a horse. Moves two squares laterally and one square diagonally, or vice versa. The only piece which can hop over enemy pieces.
KNIGHT FORK
: The simultaneous menacing of two pieces by the Knight, a deadly and devastating move most often seen as simultaneous check-and-attack upon a Rook in the early game. Because of the peculiar properties of the Knight (its relative inaccessibility, its mobility, its grotesque features and tendency to leave droppings all over the board) it is that piece most conducive to simultaneous attack. Queen and Bishop Forks, however, have been heard of.
LOUIS
: My opponent. Fifty years, two months and some days old tomorrow. An embodiment of all the forces of evil in the universe: a lecher, a celibate, a, fool, a clown, a poseur, a pervert, a cheat, a thief, a liar, a sadist and a doppelganger. Impotent since adolescence because of a congenital malformation of the penis which makes it impossible for him to attain erection, much less pleasure a female. Has a FIDE rating slightly higher than mine because he bribed certain officials. Now, well into the years of his decline, deeply conversant with his impending senescence and death, most of the felonies and atrocious acts of this individual are necessarily behind him. We shared many childhood experiences and there was a certain similarity of personality (in early years) and career, meaning that we have been occasionally confused with one another. Such relationships or concurrence of traits have not existed for many years, though, and there is no similarity whatsoever. We are entirely different, everyone knows this. Louis, that repulsive individual, represents the forces of evil whereas I represent only the good. In all acts of adolescent homosexuality he was the aggressor and I merely the
passive receptacle. I did not know what I was doing. I must have been ill.
OVERLORDS
: The managers of the contest. An alien race of undetermined origins and motives who have made the arrangements for the chess match to decide the fate of the universe as between the forces of good and evil. Purple, ententacled individuals who speak a good English because of their possession of transliterative devices.
Rumors that they have created the match merely for sport and have lied to the principals in order to heighten the level of tension are completely false. Friendly and humanoid in many ways, their appearance is grotesque and disgusting and I will not discuss them again, ever.
QUEEN
: Most powerful chesspiece. May move in any direction, laterally or diagonally, if not interposed by her own men. Symbolizes to many literary people the Mother, the Matriarchal Component, the Unattainable Vulva, the Punishing Earth-Mother and so on, all of this being the purest nonsense. The essential component of almost all opening mating attacks. The same height and dimensions as the King, but in the Staunton pattern not as satisfyingly
round
—meaning that it is less pleasant to fondle as a phallic substance.
(See BISHOP.)
ROOK
: Also known as the Castle. (A medieval term.) Second most powerful piece, it can move laterally in any direction although not diagonally. Particularly effective when “doubled,” i.e., one Rook on the same file as the other Rook leads to a powerful, often a mating, attack. Considered to be half as powerful as the King. May “castle,”
i.e., under certain obscure conditions it may change positions with the King, usually in the early game. Particularly powerful in the end game when the board is open and the full thrust and power, probing into distances, opening up the flower of possibility, can be seen and felt.
RUY LOPEZ
: Standard opening attack for White, supposedly invented by a Spanish priest with nothing more useful to do in the Dark Ages. This attack involves a penetration of the center by the King and Queen’s Pawns with the subsequent rapid opening of the Bishop file, from which squares the Knights may control the center. Direct and powerful attack meant to march down the board; it is easily defeated by a Sicilian defense in which the advance of the pieces is blocked. Now in partial disfavor, the Ruy Lopez has been displaced by the modernists. It is still often seen in amateur games. The Ruy Lopez is capable of producing a Fool’s Mate against an inexperienced or nervous player who might fail to note positioning of the Queen and King’s Bishop.
SICILIAN DEFENSE
: A common refutation of the Ruy Lopez, employed by many experts and well within the technical facilities of all grandmasters.
(See RUY LOPEZ.)
VENUS
: Third planet of the Sol system on which the fifth game (P—K4, P—K4; B—B4, QN—R4; Q—B3, QN—QB3; Q X B
MATE
) was played.
ZUGZWANG
: Commonly, “move-bound”; that situation in which a player has established a strong defense but is now on the move, and is
confronted with the fact that every move he makes will expose him to attack. No matter what the helpless player does, the move will cost him the game. He wishes that he could dispense with the move; he wishes that the intolerable metronome of chess (Move–
move
, Move–
move
, Move–
move
) could be broken. But no matter what he does he must return again and again to that same realization: that his carefully prepared defense will be torn apart and
by his own hand
. His destruction
resides within himself
and he can do nothing, absolutely nothing to prevent it; no matter what he does his game is coming apart.
Now he is trying to figure a way out of the trap; perhaps he could leave the table and have some lice and conversation, and
return as if he had already moved
, smiling winsomely, shrugging his shoulders. But the intolerable, implacable referee will not be fooled, there is no way to fool him; always there is that figure of the referee who controls the universe of chess. No way around it, the trap is complete; now the player knows that he is doomed and as he rises from the table, palms flat to board, his eyes sweeping the surroundings with a mixture of peril and glee (because there is something almost sensual about disaster), he sees his opponent, the blank, empty eyes of his opponent waiting for the move that will give him the game. Their eyes mesh, features blend together into a gelatinous mix that makes them indistinguishable. Fleeing from the hall, burbling small cries, the man in
zugzwang
understands at last the truth. Nothing, nothing, nothing is ever to be done about that or the clock of his mortality.
Coming out of that deadly faint in the junkyard, looking at the wreckage beyond us, contemplating the wreckage within, I turned upon Louis, seeing in his eyes what I took to be the oldest, boldest, coldest knowledge of all: that he had possessed me, and in digging within had known not only the secrets of the flesh but some more intricate and corrupt condition, something which in the parting of me he had discovered and would now know, beyond refutation, for all time. It was all that I could do to bear the intensity of his gaze (or perhaps I am thinking only of the intensity of my own knowledge at this point). He was not looking at me at all. In fact I am fairly clear on this point: He was not looking at me, had rolled half away from me, an arm poised across his eyes, lying on his back, respiring in a shallow way, small convolutions of his legs and thighs the only indications of that catastrophic entrance. How could I have thought that he was looking at me? How could I possibly have imagined that he was looking at me when in truth he was looking deep within and the two of us, like fish dumped from an aquarium, were rolling on the carpet of the world, withdrawn into the deadly rattling postures of life’s release? I must try to keep my reflection of these events as straightforward as possible. I
must never, never substitute the imagined for the real.
“It can’t be,” I said. “You can’t have done this to me, it’s impossible, I won’t accept it,” and similar youthful, fervent denials. It is important to say that I had never pictured my virginity, my precocity, my innocence ripped from me in quite such a humiliating fashion, nor, even in my most devilish fantasies, had I conceived that it would be Louis who would be the perpetrator. “I tell you, it never happened, I won’t accept the fact that it happened, I deny, I deny.” He rolled then, poised on haunches, looking, slavering dog-fashion, down at the wreckage of the junkyard. All history and desire was reclaimed in those artifacts which lay across one another, ruined slag at the place of all resting. “This can’t be happening,” I said. As these protestations and youthful misdirections came burbling from me a mad and cunning idea began to take shape within for the first time: If I said that it never happened, if I paid no notice to it, then in any true sense it would
not
have happened. We are able to make our realities in life, as over the chessboard, in the patterns which we impose upon our own consciousness. “No,” I said again in a slightly firmer tone. “No, it never happened at all, Louis, and that’s all there is to it.” Of course his cooperation would be necessary; I saw this even then. “I’m quite sure that you’ll agree with me.”
