Tactics of Conquest (3 page)

It used to be the same way in the old days, so I was prepared for this. Pulling little odd clumps and patches of recollection as one might remove the skin from a diseased animal, I know the sameness: Rio de Janeiro one week and Moscow the next; a stopover in Bern for the Interzonals and a series of exhibitions in the Americas. Then up to Iceland for a simultaneous exhibition (two hundred and fifty dollars plus expenses), into Poland to observe the quarter-finals of the Junior Masters and lecture; here, there, and everywhere but always the same board, the same pieces, the same mad, twinkling eyes refracted across the board. Certainly life is being lived now at a more intense
and psychotic pitch. It is quite one thing to move over
a world
lacking a sense of locale but I talk now of the universe itself.

Nevertheless, life goes on and here we are in the Cluster.

Here we sit in this huge auditorium, my opponent and I, I and my opponent, Louis showing little corpuscles of red and blue floating under the stricken white of his face as he focuses himself upon the board in a kind of shuddering attention. His fingers twitch. I have known Louis all or most of my life but truly a depersonalization has occurred since this madness began, and now it is hard to think of him as old Louis, foolish, piggish Louis. He is merely the opponent even though the Overlords constantly try to build up the human interest aspects through the media, encouraging articles about our personal habits as well as the relationship we are supposed to have had in our youth. Photographs are taken, preferences are asked; sometimes I could shriek. I will not allow myself to think of the pig as a person now—the killer instinct is what counts in championship chess—and so I merely watch his swarthy little body across the board. A faint, deadly mask of purpose extrudes itself over his clumsy, honest features.

Well, he has taken a full twenty minutes on the clock for this opening: this almost unprecedented. It is possible to take twenty minutes to
reply
to an opening but when one has the first move it is customary to plot out the nature of the attack the evening before and to then start briskly, confidently, building up time on the clock which can be more judiciously applied later. Nevertheless, Louis has fallen into some confusion; it is clear that he does not feel well—a benevolent utter stupidity
masks his features now. When he entered the hall several of the Overlords had to push/pull him to the table, conferring nervously with tentacles, and when he collapsed into the chair, sitting numbly before the pieces for twenty minutes, I am sure that it occurred to the Overlords (and to an audience of many billions—and to me) that the man might be very ill.

In fact, I was waiting for a physician, perhaps the very one who attended me, to come from the side and minister to him, pop or probe an eyeball for refraction of light, but no, no, Louis sat alone, untended, and I was alone, untended, and after a long time a forefinger came out almost imperceptibly from that gnarled, riven, ruined hand of his and he pushed a pawn in the customary manner, raising his eyebrows, looking up at me when the move was complete with a mad little gleam of purpose, and in that light I divined his cunning scheme. He was trying to reduce me to blubbering uncertainty by stalling.

Rumors of my breakdown must have reached him—how could they not? we all travel together although of course we are kept strictly separated by the Overlords—and he was playing upon it in the hope that I might go, literally, to pieces on the stage and in front of some fifty-five billion. How truly cunning of him! How intuitive and vicious! Of course this could
not
happen. Not for nothing have I competed at the highest level for forty years; not for nothing have I learned the tricks and maneuvers of our deadly game. I stared back at the fool impassively and in due time his face began to shrink like an aging flower, fallen upon itself in little petals and clusters
of
woe, and then I looked at the board fully, willing him away,
bringing upon it the range of concentration. I would now destroy him.

Pawn to King Four.

He
would
open with his standard King’s Pawn. He would be looking for a transposition into the Ruy Lopez at the earliest time and I have known this not only in life but in dreams as far as I can remember: The very shape, the very
odor
of his game was apparent to me in those dreams. Looking at his impermeable skull, at the blankness of those eyes, it was as if I could glare through to absolute purpose and this was horrifying. I was not prepared for it.

It was as if I was glimpsing the little ropes and tentacles of possibility by which we all live, strung through the dead or dying meat of the brain locked within his skull, and I became nauseated from too much insight. It was necessary for me to return my attention to the board which I did in little glimmers and shimmers of attention until the nausea passed and in the fullness of concentration I was able to plan my attack.

Throughout the capacious auditorium there are murmurs. As in the first instants surrounding true sleep, I am conscious of them as waves of sound: sometimes assaulting, sometimes receding, carrying me further and further into the darkest heart of possibility, a sea of voices at all times surrounding me, carrying me onward. I am amply conscious of them but there are times—now is one—when they literally overtake and so I look up from the board, peering the other way, staring into that vast, dissonant buzz, the amorphous forms beyond, wishing that they would keep quiet.

I would leap from the board, cursing, make an exhibition of myself once again but I cannot do it. I cannot risk yet another scene lest I gain a reputation
for instability. In the early matches, for instance, I protested all the time. I objected to audience noises, objected to the shading of the lights, complained about the behavior of the referees, argued about the weight of the pieces, threatened to withdraw from the match unless terms were met, gave unauthorized interviews and so on—but none of these ploys were able to gain me more than a few instants’ silence and respect before the alarming breach of manners would start again. I am afraid that I struck some observers as insane in those early matches. Comments on psychopathology reached me; I struck fear into the hearts of those who were dependent upon me to save their way of life. This was unfair since I am not at all temperamental, merely a sweet-natured if rather idiosyncratic fellow who must at all times be able to
concentrate
... but once labeled, twice endangered, and it was necessary for me to demonstrate in many small ways after these difficult early matches that I was not unnerved.

Signing autographs in the lobbies, giving interviews for the intergalactic press, putting on a pleasing public face for the sake of a sympathetic press, helped people forget about my earlier displays. That was the intention, in any event. Certainly, failed or successful, it is too late for me to worry about any of that now. Rather, I bring down the curtain in my mind just as I was able to do from the age of eight, when my chess career began, and rivet my fullest attention upon the board. Always, it must come to this.

In this concentration I vaguely sense that Louis has left the board, has wandered backstage, as both of us do, to sip at the trays of wines put out for our refreshment, nibble then at the pungent
little cheeses and the fauna of a hundred thousand worlds—the glutton. No one eats as he does; he belches continually. But I must decide what to do with the maddening King’s Pawn, an opening which fifteen hundred years after the invention of the game still has not been solved to the limit of its possibilities. Chess is a trapdoor into uncertainty; standard openings keep that door shut Perhaps the Overlords have a similar problem.

Surely they must for even now, at the fifteenth game of the match, having lived with this situation for months, it is difficult indeed to deduce their purposes: whether they are, as they say, the controlling forces of limitless space and time (of which our universe itself comprises a tiny segment) or whether, horrifyingly, the Overlords may merely be the agents of
another
race about whom we know nothing and who are merely using the bureaucracy of these empurpled creatures to administer a solution. I have been thinking along these lines recently; surely this must be psychotic. I would reject this line of thought but it hardly matters anyway; the outcome will be the same, Louis will be defeated.

Still, it would be better if I knew that the Overlords were as they presented themselves, and not merely a cosmic crew of civil servants come to work upon a niggling problem in the Old District. This line of thought will not be pursued. No further. Not in the midst of a complex Ruy Lopez. Forget it. I am sorry that I got into this to begin with.

INTERREGNUM:
King’s Rook

Once, when I was twenty-one, still among the youngest of the grandmasters, a group of the
others thought that it might be amusing for them to deposit a prostitute in my hotel room, thus initiating me into the wonders of sex. Of course I knew their purpose and was ready for the moment myself. Therefore I left my door unlocked and open so that their prostitute could enter quietly and without attracting undue attention.

Still, I rather resented the way in which they played me for a naive fool and in truth have never really forgiven them for this episode although I can see their point. Why not?

She was a splendid bitch in her early thirties: high-heeled and with a suitcase which she opened before the door was fully closed to reveal a stunning array of whips, leather, spikes, lingerie and other fetishistic delights. I had done extensive reading in the literature of sex by that time and knew the significance of all these. “Are you a virgin?” she said, kicking the door closed and chaining it. “That’s what I’ve heard. Virgins are fun.”

“I am not a virgin,” I lied, “but whether I am or not is hardly the question. The question is what you’re doing here in my room.”

I motioned to the omnipresent pocket chess set, at this time poised in midst of a replay of the Immortal Game, the Andersson Queen having penetrated to the seventh rank for that masterful sacrifice. “I’m preparing for a match.”

“A group of your friends told me I was wanted.”

“Well,” I said, “aha, well, there was no need for them to suggest that; I’m quite happy and fulfilled and I resent this a good deal.” The hotel was in Switzerland, Bern, I believe, although it is difficult to be certain about matters of this sort. As I say, matters tend to jumble together, at least retrospectively, and all cities are the same when
one is on the grandmaster circuit. “Perhaps you’d better leave,” I said, “come on, get along with you.”

“But I can’t,” she said petulantly. “I mean, I can’t do that. They gave me one hundred deutsch-marks to come here and promised me another seventy-five if I would tell them what happened. They said to show you a good time.” Petulance modulated to temper, she swung a foot prettily.

This admission, so without true affect, struck a chill. Did they consider me so naive? Did they know that through my analytic powers I had long since deduced from pictorial and written pornography the significance and gymnastics of the sex act, had recreated it in my own mind? They had taken me for stupid and I never like being taken for stupid, particularly since I was then leading the Interzonals five and a half to two and a half, I recall, with only two easy games against those also-rans Barker and Still to come. “I’m afraid that you’ve been sent to the wrong room,” I pointed out. “I know everything about sex and I surely don’t want to buy it.”

This had a rather sanctimonious air because her attitude became defensive. “What do you think I am?” she said, closing the lid on her suitcase of wonders. “And what do you think this is?”

“Well, all right,” I said, an unaccustomed tenderness intruding. I feel the same way when I have destroyed opponents. “I am truly sorry.”

“You must think that I’m a whore,” she said, turning to excellent German (I am multi-lingual), backing away, the suitcase dangling from her hand like a scrotal sac. “You must think that they sent me into your rooms for the sick purposes of prostitution, rather than education. I am disgraced; you have disgraced my mother and my
father and my forebears—” (at this point my transliterative ability breaks down; she perhaps did not speak this formally). “I can no longer tolerate being treated in such a fashion by such a, young gentleman.” She reached a hand toward the door but was entrapped by her own cunning, for the door she had locked failed to open, of course, and instead of a grandiose exit she was forced to a penitent confrontation. “Very well,” she said, holding the suitcase awkwardly, “you may now dismiss me.”

“I will do nothing of the sort,” I pointed out. “It has not occurred to me to dismiss you.” At that moment a pure, jolting rage seized me, rage at the other grandmasters who took me for a naive fool, rage at this woman who thought me some kind of crazy fetishist, rage at my own inexperience and choices which I realized for the first time had driven me from knowledge. “I will have my way with you,” I said, and divested myself of my clothing, a, shiny one-piece relaxation suit, on the spot. I stood before her, with the collaboration of the zipper, almost instantaneously nude, and what I always like to refer to as my King’s Rook stiffened and beat beneath me like a little bird winging its way toward a nest. I pushed against her my massive bearlike hands, conveying her to the bed. The suitcase fell from her hand, bounced like a trampoline on the floor and then a lock gave, disgorging whole units of merchandise: rubber casings of some sort, feathers, a dildo, a false breast. “I will show you my capability,” I announced. Dragging her over to the bed, I seized upon her dress with shaking hands and, fumbling and ripping, managed to denude her.

“You are playing light with my honor,” she said in poorly translated formalese. “I do not think
that I can permit such liberties to be taken with my person or my body.” But too late, too late, she was naked beneath me, naked above me and over and under, our two bodies locked together like Pawns meeting in the center of the board in a zigzag confrontation and I felt her Queen’s Pawn beneath me beginning to flower with its own purpose, my King’s Rook writhing and moving into her inexorably.