فصل 4

FOUR

At the entrance to the gym a desk had been set up, and two men in white shirts were sitting behind it. Behind them were rows of long tables with green-and-white chessboards. The room was full of people talking and a few playing; most of them were young men or boys. Beth saw one woman and no colored people. Pinned to the desk near the man on the left was a sign that read ENTRY FEES HERE. Beth walked up to him with her five dollars.

“Do you have a clock?” the man asked.

“No.”

“We have a clock-sharing system,” he said. “If your opponent doesn’t have one, come back to the desk. Play starts in twenty minutes. What’s your rating?” “I don’t have a rating.”

“Have you ever played in a tournament before?”

“No.”

The man pointed to Beth’s money. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure.”

“We don’t have a woman’s section,” he said.

She just stared at him.

“I’ll put you in Beginners,” he said.

“No,” Beth said, “I’m not a beginner.”

The other young man had been watching them. “If you’re an unrated player, you go in Beginners with the people under sixteen hundred,” he said.

Beth had paid little attention to ratings in Chess Review, but she knew that masters had at least 2200. “What’s the prize for Beginners?” she said.

“Twenty.”

“What about the other section?”

“First prize in the Open is one hundred.”

“Is it against any rule for me to be in the Open?”

He shook his head. “Not a rule, exactly, but—”

“Then put me in it.” Beth held out the bills.

The man shrugged and gave Beth a card to fill out. “There are three guys out there with ratings over eighteen hundred. Beltik may show up, and he’s the state champion. They’ll eat you alive.” She took a ball-point pen and began filling in the card with her name and address. Where a blank said “Rating” she put a large zero. She handed the card back.

They started twenty minutes late. It took them a while to get the pairings posted. When they were putting the names on the board Beth asked the man next to her if it was done at random. “Not at all,” he said. “They arrange it by ratings on the first round. After that, winners play winners, and losers, losers.” When her card was finally put up it said “Harmon—Unr—Black.” It was put under one that said “Packer—Unr—White.” The two cards were by the number Twenty-seven. They turned out to be the last two.

She walked over to Board Twenty-seven and seated herself at the black pieces. She was at the last board on the farthest table.

Sitting next to her was a woman of about thirty. After a minute, two more women came walking over. One was about twenty, and the other was Beth’s opponent—a tall, heavy high school girl. Beth looked over the expanse of tables, where players were getting settled or, already seated, were beginning games; all of them were male, mostly young. There were four female players at the tournament and they were all clumped together at the far end, playing against one another.

Beth’s opponent sat down with some awkwardness, put her two-faced chess clock at the side of the board and held out a hand. “I’m Annette Packer,” she said.

Her hand felt large and moist in Beth’s. “I’m Beth Harmon,” she said. “I don’t understand about chess clocks.” Annette seemed relieved to have something to explain. “The clock face nearest you measures your playing time. Each player has ninety minutes. After you move, you press the button on top, and it stops your clock and starts your opponent’s. There are little red flags over the number twelve on each clock face; yours will fall down when the ninety minutes are up. If it does that, you’ve lost.” Beth nodded. It seemed like a lot of time to her; she had never put more than twenty minutes into a chess game. There was a ruled sheet of paper by each player, for recording moves.

“You can start my clock now,” Annette said.

“Why do they put all the girls together?” Beth said.

Annette raised her eyebrows. “They’re not supposed to. But if you win, they move you up.” Beth reached out and pressed down the button and Annette’s clock began ticking. Annette took her king’s pawn somewhat nervously and moved it to king four. “Oh,” she said, “it’s touch move, you know.” “What’s that?”

“Don’t touch a piece unless you’re going to move it. If you touch it, you have to move it somewhere.” “Okay,” Beth said. “Don’t you push your button now?”

“Sorry,” Annette said and pressed her button. Beth’s clock started ticking. She reached out firmly and moved her queen bishop’s pawn to its fourth square. The Sicilian Defense. She pressed the button and then put her elbows on the table, on each side of the board, like the Russians in the photographs.

She began attacking on the eighth move. On the tenth she had one of Annette’s bishops, and on the seventeenth her queen. Annette had not even castled yet. She reached out and laid her king on its side when Beth took her queen. “That was quick,” she said. She sounded relieved to have lost. Beth looked at the clock faces. Annette had used thirty minutes, and Beth seven. Waiting for Annette to move had been the only problem.

The next round would not be until eleven. Beth had recorded the game with Annette on her score sheet, circled her own name at the top as winner; she went now to the front desk and put the sheet into the basket with the sign reading WINNERS. It was the first one there. A young man who looked like a college student came up as she was walking away and put his sheet in. Beth had already noticed that most of the people here weren’t good-looking. A lot of them had greasy hair and bad complexion; some were fat and nervous-looking. But this one was tall and angular and relaxed, and his face was open and handsome. He nodded amiably at Beth, acknowledging her as another fast player, and she nodded back.

She began walking around the room, quietly, looking at some of the games being played. Another couple finished theirs, and the winner went up front to turn in the record. She did not see any positions that looked interesting. On Board Number Seven, near the front of the room, Black had a chance to win a rook by a two-move combination, and she waited for him to move the necessary bishop. But when the time came he simply exchanged pawns in the center. He had not seen the combination.

The tables began with Board Number Three rather than One. She looked around the room, at the rows of heads bowed over the boards, at the Beginners Section far across the gym. Players were getting up from their chairs as games ended. At the far side of the room was a doorway she hadn’t noticed before. Above it was a cardboard sign saying “Top Boards.” Beth walked over.

It was a smaller room, not much bigger than Mrs. Wheatley’s living room. There were two separate tables and a game was going on at each. The tables sat in the center of the floor and a black velvet rope on wooden staunchions kept the watchers from getting too close to the players. There were four or five people silently watching the games, most of them clustered around Board Number One, on her left. The tall, good-looking player was one of them.

At Board One two men were sitting in what seemed to be utter concentration. The clock between them was different from the others Beth had seen; it was bigger and sturdier. One man was fat and balding with a darkness to his features like the Russians in the pictures, and he wore a dark suit like the Russians’. The other was much younger and wore a gray sweater over a white shirt. He unbuttoned his shirtsleeves and pulled up the sleeves to his elbows, one arm at a time, not taking his eyes from the board. Something in Beth’s stomach thrilled. This was the real thing. She held her breath and studied the position on the board. It took a few moments to penetrate it; it was balanced and difficult, like some of the championship games in Chess Review. She knew it was Black’s move because the indicator on his clock was moving, and just as she saw that knight to bishop five was what was called for, the older man reached out and moved his knight to bishop five.

The good-looking man was leaning against the wall now. Beth went over to him and whispered, “Who are they?” “Beltik and Cullen. Beltik’s the State Champion.”

“Which is which?” Beth said.

The tall man held a finger to his lips. Then he said softly, “Beltik’s the young one.”

That was a surprise. The Kentucky State Champion looked to be about the age of Fergussen. “Is he a grandmaster?” “He’s working on it. He’s been a master for years.”

“Oh,” Beth said.

“It takes time. You have to play grandmasters.”

“How much time?” Beth said. A man in front of them by the velvet ropes turned and stared at her angrily. The tall man shook his head, pursing his lips for silence. Beth turned back to the ropes and watched the game. Other people came in and the room began to fill up. Beth held her place at the front.

There was a great deal of tension in the middle of the board. Beth studied it for several minutes trying to decide what she would do if it were her move; but she wasn’t certain. It was Cullen’s move. She waited for what seemed an awfully long time. He sat there with his forehead supported by clenched fists, knees together under the table, motionless. Beltik leaned back in his chair and yawned, looking amusedly at Cullen’s bald head in front of him. Beth could see that his teeth were bad, with dark stains and several empty spaces, and that his neck wasn’t properly shaved.

Finally Cullen moved. He traded knights in the center. There were several fast moves and the tension lessened, with each player relinquishing a knight and a bishop in trades. When his move came again he looked up at Beltik and said, “Draw?” “Hell, no.” Beltik said. He studied the board impatiently, screwed up his face in a way that looked funny, smacked a fist into a palm, and moved his rook down to the seventh rank. Beth liked the move, and she liked the way Beltik picked up his pieces firmly and set them down with a tiny graceful flourish.

In five more moves Cullen resigned. He was down by two pawns, his remaining bishop was locked into the back rank, and the time on his clock was almost up. He toppled his king with a kind of elegant disdain, reached over and gave a hasty handshake to Beltik, stood up and stepped over the rope, brushing past Beth, and left the room. Beltik stood and stretched. Beth looked at him standing over the board with the toppled king, and something in her swelled with excitement. She felt goose bumps on her arms and legs.

Beth’s next game was with a small and bristly man named Cooke; his rating was 1520. She printed it in at the top of the score sheet by Board Thirteen: “Harmon—Unr: Cooke–1520.” It was her turn to play white. She moved pawn to queen four and pressed Cooke’s clock, and he moved instantly with pawn to queen four. He seemed wound up very tight and his eyes kept glancing around the room. He couldn’t sit still in his chair.

Beth played fast too, picking up some of his impatience. In five minutes they had both developed their pieces, and Cooke started an attack on her queenside. She decided to ignore it and advanced a knight. He hastily pushed a pawn up, and she saw with surprise that she could not take the pawn without risking a nasty double attack. She hesitated. Cooke was pretty good. The 1500 rating must mean something, after all. He was better than Mr. Shaibel or Mr. Ganz, and he looked a little scary with his impatience. She slid her rook to the bishop’s home square, putting it below the oncoming pawn.

Cooke surprised her. He picked up his queen bishop and took one of the pawns next to her king with it, checking her and sacrificing the piece. She stared at the board, suddenly unsure for a moment. What was he up to? Then she saw it. If she took, he checked again with a knight and picked off a bishop. It would win him the pawn and bring her king out. Her stomach was tight for a moment; she did not like being surprised. It took her a minute to see what to do. She moved the king over but did not take the bishop.

Cooke brought the knight down anyway. Beth traded the pawns over on the other side and opened the file for her rook. Cooke kept nagging her king with complications. She could see now that there was really no danger yet if she didn’t let it bluff her. She brought the rook out, and then doubled up with her queen. She liked that arrangement; it looked to her imagination like two cannons, lined up and ready to fire.

In three moves she was able to fire them. Cooke seemed obsessed with the maneuvers he was setting up against her king and blind to what Beth was really doing. His moves were interesting, but she saw they had no solidity because he wasn’t taking in the whole board. If she had been playing only to avoid checkmate, he would have had her by the fourth move after his first check with the bishop. But she nailed him on the third. She felt the blood rushing into her face as she saw the way to fire her rook. She took her queen and brought it all the way to the last rank, offering it to the black rook that sat back there, not yet moved. Cooke stopped his squirming for a moment and looked at her face. She looked back at him. Then he studied the position, and studied it. Finally he reached out and took her queen with his rook.

Something in Beth wanted to jump and shout. But she held herself back, reached out, pushed her bishop over one square and quietly said, “Check.” Cooke started to move his king and stopped. Suddenly he saw what was going to happen: he was going to lose his queen and that rook he had just captured with, too. He looked at her. She sat there impassively. Cooke turned his attention to the board and studied it for several minutes, squirming in his seat and scowling. Then he looked back to Beth and said, “Draw?” Beth shook her head.

Cooke scowled again. “You got me. I resign.” He stood up and held out his hand. “I didn’t see that coming at all.” His smile was surprisingly warm.

“Thanks,” Beth said, shaking his hand.

They broke for lunch and Beth got a sandwich and milk at a drugstore down the block from the high school; she ate it alone at the counter and left.

Her third game was with an older man in a sleeveless sweater. His name was Kaplan and his rating was 1694. She played Black, used the Nimzo-Indian defense, and beat him in thirty-four moves. She might have done it quicker, but he was skillful at defending—even though with White a player should be on the attack. By the time he resigned she had his king exposed and a bishop about to be captured, and she had two passed pawns. He looked dazed. Some other players had gathered around to watch.

It was three-thirty when they finished. Kaplan had played with maddening slowness, and Beth had gotten up from the table for several moves, to walk off her energy. By the time she brought the score sheet to the desk with her name circled on it, most of the other games were over and the tournament was breaking up for supper. There would be a round at eight o’clock that evening, then three more on Saturday. The final round would be on Sunday morning at eleven.

Beth went to the girls’ room and washed her face and hands; it was surprising how grubby her skin felt after three games of chess. She looked at herself in the mirror, under the harsh lights, and saw what she had always seen: the round uninteresting face and the colorless hair. But there was something different. The cheeks were flushed with color now, and her eyes looked more alive than she had ever seen them. For once in her life she liked what she saw in the mirror.

Back outside by the front table the two young men who had registered her were putting up a notice on the bulletin board. Some players had gathered around it, the handsome one among them. She walked over. The lettering on top, done with a Magic Marker, read UNDEFEATED. There were four names on the list. At the bottom was HARMON: she held her breath for a moment when she saw it. And at the top of the list was the name BELTIK.

“You’re Harmon, aren’t you?” It was the handsome one.

“Yes.”

“Keep it up, kid,” he said, smiling.

Just then the young man who had tried to put her in the Beginners Section shouted from the table, “Harmon!” She turned.

“Looks like you were right, Harmon,” he said.

Mrs. Wheatley was eating a potroast TV dinner with whipped potatoes when Beth came in. Bat Masterson was on, very loudly. “Yours is in the oven,” Mrs. Wheatley said. She was in the chintz chair with the aluminum plate on a tray in her lap. Her stockings were rolled down to the tops of her black pumps.

During the commercial, while Beth was eating the carrots from her TV dinner, Mrs. Wheatley asked, “How did you do, honey?” and Beth said, “I won three games.” “That’s nice,” Mrs. Wheatley said, not taking her eyes from the elderly gentleman who was telling about the relief he had gotten from Haley’s M.O.

That evening Beth was on Board Six opposite a homely young man named Klein. His rating was 1794. Some of the games printed in Chess Review were from players with lower ratings than that.

Beth was White, and she played pawn to king four, hoping for the Sicilian. She knew the Sicilian better than anything else. But Klein played pawn to king four and then fianchettoed his king’s bishop, setting it over in the corner above his castled king. She wasn’t quite sure but thought this was the kind of opening called “Irregular.” In the middle game, things got complex. Beth was unsure what to do and decided to retreat a bishop. She set her index finger on the piece and immediately saw she had better move pawn to queen four. She reached over to the queen pawn.

“Sorry,” Klein said. “Touch move.”

She looked at him.

“You have to move the bishop,” he said.

She could see in his face he was glad to say it. He had probably seen what she could do if she moved the pawn.

She shrugged and tried to act unconcerned, but inside she was feeling something she hadn’t felt before in a chess game. She was frightened. She moved the bishop to bishop four, sat back and folded her hands in her lap. Her stomach was in a knot. She should have moved the pawn.

She looked at Klein’s face as he studied the board. After a moment she saw a little malicious grin. He pushed his queen’s pawn to the fifth square, punched his clock smartly and folded his arms across his chest.

He was going to get one of her bishops. And abruptly her fear was replaced by anger. She leaned over the board and placed her cheeks against her palms, studying intently.

It took her almost ten minutes, but she found it. She moved and sat back.

Klein hardly seemed to notice. He took the bishop as she hoped he would. Beth advanced her queen rook pawn, way over on the other side of the board, and Klein grunted slightly but moved quickly, pushing the queen pawn forward again. Beth brought her knight over, covering the pawn’s next step, and more important, attacking Klein’s rook. He moved the rook. Inside Beth’s stomach something was beginning to uncoil. Her vision seemed extremely sharp, as though she could read the finest print from across the room. She moved the knight, attacking the rook again.

Klein looked at her, annoyed. He studied the board and moved the rook, to the very square Beth had known, two moves ago, that he would move to. She brought her queen out to bishop five, right above Klein’s castled king.

Still looking annoyed and sure of himself, Klein brought a knight over to defend. Beth picked up her queen, her face flushing, and took the pawn in front of the king, sacrificing her queen.

He stared and took the queen. There was nothing else he could do to get out of check.

Beth brought her bishop out for another check. Klein interposed the pawn, as she knew he would. “That’s mate in two,” Beth said quietly.

Klein stared at her, his face furious. “What do you mean?” he said.

Beth’s voice was still quiet. “The rook comes over for the next check and then the knight mates.” He scowled. “My queen—”

“Your queen’ll be pinned,” she said, “after the king moves.”

He looked back to the board and stared at the position. Then he said, “Shit!” He did not turn over his king or offer to shake Beth’s hand. He got up from the table and walked away, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Beth took her pencil and circled HARMON on her score sheet.

When she left at ten o’clock there were three names on the UNDEFEATED list. HARMON was still at the bottom. BELTIK was still at the top.

In her room that night she could not get to sleep because of the way the games kept playing themselves over and over in her head long after she had stopped enjoying them.

After several hours of this she got out of bed and in her blue pajamas walked over to the dormer windows. She raised a shade and looked out at the newly bare trees by the light of the street lamp, and at the dark houses beyond the trees. The street was silent and empty. There was a sliver of a moon, partly obscured by clouds. The air was chilly.

Beth had learned not to believe in God during her time in Methuen’s chapel, and she never prayed. But now she said, under her breath, Please God let me play Beltik and checkmate him.

In her desk drawer, in the toothbrush holder, were seventeen green pills, and there were more in a little box on her closet shelf. She had thought earlier about taking two of them to help her doze off. But she did not. She went back to bed, exhausted now and her mind blank, and slept soundly.

On Saturday morning she had hoped to be playing someone with a rating over 1800. The man at registration had said there were three who were that high. But on the pairings she was shown playing Black against someone named Townes with a rating of 1724. That was lower than her last game, the evening before. She went to the desk and asked about it.

“That’s the breaks, Harmon,” the man in the white shirt said. “Consider yourself lucky.” “I want to play the best,” Beth said.

“You have to get a rating before that happens,” the young man said.

“How do I get a rating?”

“You play thirty games in USCF tournaments and then wait four months. That’s how you get a rating.” “That’s too long.”

The man leaned toward her. “How old are you, Harmon?”

“Thirteen.”

“You’re the youngest person in the room. You can wait for a rating.”

Beth was furious. “I want to play Beltik.”

The other man at the table spoke up. “If you win your next three games, honey. And if Beltik does the same.” “I’ll win them,” Beth said.

“No, you won’t, Harmon,” the first young man said. “You’ll have to play Sizemore and Goldmann first, and you can’t beat both of them.” “Sizemore and Goldmann shit,” the other man said. “The guy you’re playing now is underrated. He plays first board for the university team and last month he came in fifth in Las Vegas. Don’t let the rating fool you.” “What’s in Las Vegas?” Beth asked.

“The U.S. Open.”

Beth went to Board Four. The man seated behind the white pieces was smiling as she came up. It was the tall, handsome one. Beth felt a bit rattled to see him. He looked like some kind of movie star.

“Hi, Harmon,” he said, holding out his hand. “It looks like we’ve been stalking each other.” She shook his big hand awkwardly and seated herself. There was a pause for a long minute before he said, “Do you want to start my clock?” “Sorry,” she said. She reached out to start it, almost knocked it over but caught it in time. “Sorry,” she said again, almost inaudibly. She pressed the button and his clock started ticking. She looked down at the board, her cheeks burning.

He played pawn to king four, and she replied with the Sicilian. He continued with book moves and she followed with the Dragon variation. They traded pawns in the center. Gradually she got her composure back, playing these mechanical moves, and she looked across the board at him. He was attentive to the pieces, scowling. But even with a scowl on his face and his hair slightly mussed he was handsome. Something in Beth’s stomach felt strange as she looked at him, with his broad shoulders and clear complexion and his brow wrinkled in concentration.

He surprised her by bringing his queen out. It was a bold move, and she studied it for a while and saw that there wasn’t any weakness to it. She brought out her own queen. He moved a knight to the fifth rank, and Beth moved a knight to the fifth rank. He checked with a bishop, and she defended with a pawn. He retreated the bishop. She was feeling light now, and her fingers with the pieces were nimble. Both players began moving fast but easily. She gave a non-threatening check to his king, and he pulled away delicately and began advancing pawns. She stopped that handily with a pin and then feinted on the queenside with a rook. He was undeceived by the feint and, smiling, removed her pin, and on his next move continued the pawn advances. She retreated, hiding her king in a queenside castle. She felt somehow spacious and amused, yet her face remained serious. They continued their dance.

It made her sad in a way when she eventually saw how to beat him. It was after the nineteenth move, and she felt herself resisting it as it opened up in her mind, hating to let go of the pleasant ballet they had danced together. But there it was: four moves and he would have to lose a rook or worse. She hesitated and made the first move of the sequence.

He didn’t see what was happening until two moves later, when he frowned suddenly and said, “Jesus Christ, Harmon, I’m going to drop a rook!” She loved his voice; she loved the way he said it. He shook his head in mock bafflement; she loved that.

Some players who had finished their game early had gathered around the board, and a couple were whispering about the maneuver Beth had brought off.

Townes went on playing for five more moves, and Beth felt genuinely sorry for him when he resigned, tipping his king over and saying “Damn!” But he stood up, stretched and smiled down at her. “You’re one hell of a chess player, Harmon,” he said. “How old are you?” “Thirteen.”

He whistled. “Where do you go to school?”

“Fairfield Junior.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know where that is.”

He was even better-looking than a movie star.

An hour later she drew Goldmann and Board Three. She walked into the tournament room at exactly eleven, and the people standing stopped talking when she came in. Everyone looked at her. She heard someone whisper, “Thirteen fucking years old,” and immediately the thought came into her mind, along with the exultant feeling the whispered voice had given her: I could have done this at eight.

Goldmann was tough and silent and slow. He was a short, heavy man, and he played the black pieces like a gruff general trained in defense. For the first hour everything that Beth tried he got out of. Every piece he had was protected; it seemed as though there were double the usual complement of pawns to protect them.

Beth got fidgety during the long waits for him to move; once after she had advanced a bishop she got up, and went to the bathroom. Something was hurting in her abdomen, and she felt a bit faint. She washed her face with cold water and dried it on a paper towel. As she was leaving, the girl she’d played her first game with came in. Packer. Packer looked glad to see her. “You’re moving right on up, aren’t you?” she said.

“So far,” Beth said, feeling another twinge in her belly.

“I heard you’re playing Goldmann.”

“Yes,” Beth said. “I have to get back.”

“Sure,” Packer said, “sure. Beat his ass, will you? Just beat his ass.”

Suddenly Beth grinned. “Okay,” she said.

When she got back she saw that Goldmann had moved, and her clock was ticking. He sat there in his dark suit looking bored. She felt refreshed and ready. She seated herself and put everything out of her mind except the sixty-four squares in front of her. After a minute she saw that if she attacked on both flanks simultaneously, as Morphy did sometimes, Goldmann would have difficulty playing it safe. She played pawn to queen rook four.

It worked. After five moves she had opened his king up a little, and after three more she was at his throat. She paid no attention to Goldmann himself or to the crowd or to the feeling in her lower abdomen or the sweat that had broken out on her brow. She played against the board only, with lines of force etched for her into its surface: the small stubborn fields for the pawns, the enormous one for the queen, the gradations in between. Just before his clock was about to run out she checkmated him.

When she circled her name on the score sheet she looked again at the number of Goldmann’s rating. It was 1997. People were applauding.

She went directly to the girls’ room and discovered that she had begun to menstruate. For a moment she felt, looking at the redness in the water below her, as though something catastrophic had happened. Had she bled on the chair at Board Three? Were the people there staring at the stains of her blood? But she saw with relief that her cotton panties were barely spotted. She thought abruptly of Jolene. If it hadn’t been for Jolene, she would have had no idea what was happening. No one else had said a word about this—certainly not Mrs. Wheatley. She felt a sudden warmth for Jolene, remembering that Jolene had also told her what to do “in an emergency.” Beth began pulling a long sheet from the roll of toilet paper and folding it into a tightly packed rectangle. The pain in her abdomen had eased. She was menstruating, and she had just beaten Goldmann: 1997. She put the folded paper into her panties, pulled them up tight, straightened her skirt and walked confidently back into the playing area.

Beth had seen Sizemore before; he was a small, ugly, thin-faced man who smoked cigarettes continuously. Someone had told her he was State Champion before Beltik. Beth would play him on Board Two in the room with the sign reading “Top Boards.” Sizemore wasn’t there yet, but next to her, at Board One, Beltik was facing in her direction. Beth looked at him and then looked away. It was a few minutes before three. The lights in this smaller room—bare bulbs under a metal protection basket—seemed brighter than those in the big room, brighter than they had been in the morning, and for a moment the shine on the varnished floor with its painted red lines was blinding.

Sizemore came in, combing his hair in a nervous, quick way. A cigarette hung from his thin lips. As he pulled his chair back, Beth felt herself becoming very tight.

“Ready?” Sizemore asked gruffly, slipping the comb into his shirt pocket.

“Yes,” she said and punched his clock.

He played pawn to king four and then pulled out his comb and started biting on it the way a person bites on the eraser end of a pencil. Beth played pawn to queen bishop four.

By the middle game Sizemore had begun combing his hair after each move. He hardly ever looked at Beth but concentrated on the board, wriggling in his seat sometimes as he combed and parted and reparted his hair. The game was even, and there were no weaknesses on either side. There was nothing to do but find the best squares for her knights and bishops and wait. She would move, write the move down on her score sheet and sit back in her chair. After a while a crowd began to gather at the ropes. She glanced at them from time to time. There were more people watching her play than watching Beltik. She kept looking at the board, waiting for something to open up. Once when she looked up she saw Annette Packer standing at the back. Packer smiled and Beth nodded to her.

Back at the board, Sizemore brought a knight to queen five, posting it in the best place for a knight. Beth frowned; she couldn’t dislodge it. The pieces were thick in the middle of the board and for a moment she lost the sense of them. There were occasional twinges in her abdomen. She could feel the thick batch of paper between her thighs. She adjusted herself in her chair and squinted at the board. This wasn’t good. Sizemore was creeping up on her. She looked at his face. He had put away his comb and was looking at the pieces in front of him with satisfaction. Beth leaned over the table, digging her fists into her cheeks, and tried to penetrate the position. Some people in the crowd were whispering. With an effort she drove distractions from her mind. It was time to fight back. If she moved the knight on the left… No. If she opened the long diagonal for her white bishop… That was it. She pushed the pawn up, and the bishop’s power was tripled. The picture started to become clearer. She leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath.

During the next five moves Sizemore kept bringing pieces up, but Beth, seeing the limits to what he could do to her, kept her attention focused on the far left-hand corner of the board, on Sizemore’s queenside; when the time came she brought her bishop down in the middle of his clustered pieces there, setting it on his knight two square. From where it sat now, two of his pieces could capture it, but if either did, he would be in trouble.

She looked at him. He had taken out his comb again and was running it through his hair. His clock was ticking.

It took him fifteen minutes to make the move, and when he did it was a shock. He took the bishop with his rook. Didn’t he know he was a fool to move the rook off the back rank? Couldn’t he see that? She looked back at the board, double-checked the position and brought out her queen.

He didn’t see it until the move after next, and his game fell apart. He still had his comb in his hand six moves later when she got her queen’s pawn, passed, to the sixth rank. He brought his rook under the pawn. She attacked it with her bishop. Sizemore stood up, put his comb in his pocket, reached down to the board and set his king on its side. “You win,” he said grimly. The applause was thunderous.

After she had turned in the score sheet she waited while the young man checked it, made a mark on a list in front of him, stood up and walked to the bulletin board. He took the pushpins from the card saying SIZEMORE and threw the card into a green metal wastebasket. Then he pulled the pins out of the bottom card and raised it to where Sizemore’s had been. The UNDEFEATED list now read: BELTIK, HARMON.

When she was walking toward the girls’ room Beltik came out of “Top Boards” striding fast and looking very pleased with himself. He was carrying the little score sheet, on his way to the winners’ basket. He didn’t seem to see Beth.

She went over to the doorway of the “Top Boards” room, and Townes was standing there. There were lines of fatigue in his face; he looked like Rock Hudson, except for the weariness. “Good work, Harmon,” he said.

“I’m sorry you lost,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s back to the drawing board.” And then, nodding to where Beltik was standing at the front table with a small crowd gathered near him, he said, “He’s a killer, Harmon. A genuine killer.” She looked at his face. “You need a rest.”

He smiled down at her. “What I need, Harmon, is some of your talent.”

As she passed the front table, Beltik took a step toward her and said, “Tomorrow.”

When Beth came into the living room just before supper, Mrs. Wheatley looked pale and strange. She was sitting in the chintz armchair and her face was puffy. She was holding a brightly colored postcard in her lap.

“I’ve started menstruating,” Beth said.

Mrs. Wheatley blinked. “That’s nice,” she said, as though from a great distance.

“I’ll need some pads or something,” Beth said.

Mrs. Wheatley seemed nonplused for a moment. Then she brightened. “That’s certainly a milepost for you. Why don’t you just go up to my room and look in the top drawer of my chiffonier? Take all you require.” “Thank you,” Beth said, heading for the stairs.

“And, dear,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “bring down that little bottle of green pills by my bedside.” When Beth came back she gave the pills to Mrs. Wheatley. Mrs. Wheatley had half a glass of beer sitting beside her; she took out two of the pills and swallowed them with the beer. “My tranquility needs to be refurbished,” she said.

“Is something wrong?” Beth asked.

“I’m not Aristotle,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “but it could be construed as wrong. I have received a message from Mr. Wheatley.” “What did he say?”

“Mr. Wheatley has been indefinitely detained in the Southwest. The American Southwest.” “Oh,” Beth said.

“Between Denver and Butte.”

Beth sat down on the sofa.

“Aristotle was a moral philosopher,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “while I am a housewife. Or was a housewife.” “Can’t they send me back if you don’t have a husband?”

“You put it concretely.” Mrs. Wheatley sipped her beer. “They won’t if we lie about it.” “That’s easy enough,” Beth said.

“You’re a good soul, Beth,” Mrs. Wheatley said, finishing her beer. “Why don’t you heat the two chicken dinners in the freezer? Set the oven at four hundred.” Beth had been holding two sanitary napkins in her right hand. “I don’t know how to put these on.” Mrs. Wheatley straightened herself up from her slumped position in the chair. “I am no longer a wife,” she said, “except by legal fiction. I believe I can learn to be a mother. I’ll show you how if you promise me never to go near Denver.” ***

During the night Beth woke to hear rain on the roof over her head and intermittent rattling against the panes of her dormer windows. She had been dreaming of water, of herself swimming easily in a quiet ocean of still water. She put a pillow over her head and curled up on her side, trying to get back to sleep. But she could not. The rain was loud, and as it continued to fall, the sad languor of her dream was replaced by the image of a chessboard filled with pieces demanding her attention, demanding the clarity of her intelligence.

It was two in the morning and she did not get back to sleep for the rest of the night. It was still raining when she went downstairs at seven; the backyard outside the kitchen window looked like a swamp with hillocks of near-dead grass sticking up like islands. She was not certain how to fry eggs but decided she could boil some. She got two from the refrigerator, filled a pan with water and put it on the burner. She would play pawn to king four against him, and hope for the Sicilian. She boiled the eggs five minutes and put them in cold water. She could see Beltik’s face, youthful, arrogant and smart. His eyes were small and black. When he stepped toward her yesterday as she was leaving, some part of her had thought he would hit her.

The eggs were perfect; she opened them with a knife, put them in a cup and ate them with salt and butter. Her eyes were grainy under the lids. The final game would begin at eleven; it was seven-twenty now. She wished she had a copy of Modern Chess Openings, to look over variations on the Sicilian. Some of the other players at the tournament had carried battered copies of the book under their arms.

It was only drizzling when she left the house at ten, and Mrs. Wheatley was still upstairs asleep. Before she left, Beth went into the bathroom and checked the sanitary belt Mrs. Wheatley had given her to wear, and the thick white pad. It was all right. She put on her galoshes and her blue coat, got Mrs. Wheatley’s umbrella from the closet and left.

She had noticed before that the pieces at Board One were different. They were solid wooden ones like Mr. Ganz’s and not the hollow plastic pieces that sat on the other boards at the tournament. When she walked by the table in the empty room at ten-thirty she reached out and picked up the white king. It was satisfyingly heavy, with a solid lead weight and green felt on the bottom. She placed the piece on its home square, stepped back over the velvet rope and walked to the girls’ room. She washed her face for the third time that day, tightened her sanitary belt, combed her bangs and went back to the gymnasium. More players had come in. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her skirt so that no one could see they were trembling.

When eleven o’clock came she was ready behind the white pieces at Board One. Boards Two and Three had already started their games. Sizemore was at Board Two. She didn’t recognize the others.

Ten minutes passed, and Beltik did not appear. The tournament director in the white shirt climbed over and stood near Beth for a minute. “Hasn’t shown yet?” he said softly.

Beth shook her head.

“Make your move and punch the clock” the director whispered. “You should have done it at eleven.” That annoyed her. No one had told her about that. She moved pawn to king four and started Beltik’s clock.

It was ten more minutes before Beltik came in. Beth’s stomach hurt and her eyes smarted. Beltik looked casual and relaxed, wearing a bright-red shirt and tan corduroy pants. “Sorry,” he said in a normal voice. “Extra cup of coffee.” The other players looked over at him with irritation. Beth said nothing.

Beltik, still standing, loosened an extra button on his shirt front and held out his hand. “Harry Beltik,” he said. “What’s your name?” He must know what her name was. “I’m Beth Harmon,” she said, taking his hand but avoiding his eyes.

He seated himself behind the black pieces, rubbed his hands together briskly and moved his king pawn to the third square. He punched Beth’s clock smartly.

The French Defense. She had never played it. She didn’t like the look of it. The thing to do was play pawn to queen four. But what happened if he played the same? Did she trade pawns or push one of them forward, or bring out her knight? She squinted and shook her head; it was difficult to picture what the board would look like after the moves. She looked again, rubbed her eyes, and played pawn to queen four. When she reached out to punch the clock she hesitated. Had she made a mistake? But it was too late now. She pressed the button hastily and as it clicked down Beltik immediately picked up his queen pawn, put it on queen four and slapped down the button on his clock.

Although it was difficult to see with her usual clarity, she had not lost her sense of the requirements of an opening. She brought out her knights and involved herself for a while in a struggle for the center squares. But Beltik, moving fast, nipped off one of her pawns and she saw that she couldn’t capture the pawn he did it with. She tried to shrug off the advantage she’d allowed and went on playing. She got her pieces off the back rank, and castled. She looked over the board at Beltik. He seemed completely at ease; he was looking at the game going on next to them. Beth felt a knot in her stomach; she could not get comfortable in her seat. The heavy cluster of pieces and pawns in the center of the board seemed for a while to have no pattern, to make no sense.

Her clock was ticking. She inclined her head to look at its face; twenty-five minutes were gone, and she was still down by a pawn. And Beltik had used only twenty-two minutes altogether, even including the time he’d wasted by being late. There was a ringing in her ears, and the bright light in the room hurt her eyes. Beltik was leaning back with his arms outstretched, yawning, showing the black places on the undersides of his teeth.

She found what looked like a good square for her knight, reached out her hand and then stopped. The move would be terrible; something had to be done about his queen before he had it on the rook file and was ready to threaten. She had to protect and attack at the same time, and she couldn’t see how. The pieces in front of her just sat there. She should have taken a green pill last night, to make her sleep.

Then she saw a move that looked sensible and quickly made it. She brought a knight back near the king, protecting herself against Beltik’s queen.

He raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly and immediately took a pawn on the other side of the board. There was suddenly a diagonal open for his bishop. The bishop was aimed at the knight she’d wasted time bringing back, and she was down by another pawn. At the corner of Beltik’s mouth was a sly little smile. She quickly looked away from his face, frightened.

She had to do something. He would be all over her king in four or five moves. She need to concentrate, to see it clearly. But when she looked at the board, everything was dense, interlocked, complicated, dangerous. Then she thought of something to do. With her clock still running she stood up, stepped over the rope and walked through the small crowd of silent spectators to the main gym floor and across it to the girls’ room. There was no one there. She went to a sink, washed her face with cold water, wet a handful of paper towels and held them for a minute to the back of her neck. After she threw them away she went into one of the little stalls and, sitting, checked her sanitary napkin. It was okay. She sat there relaxing, letting her mind go blank. Her elbows were on her knees, her head was bent down.

With an effort of will she made the chessboard with the game on Board One on it appear in front of her. There it was. She could see immediately that it was difficult, but not as difficult as some of the games she’d memorized from the book at Morris’s Book Store. The pieces before her, in her imagination, were crisp and sharply focused.

She stayed where she was, not worrying about time, until she had it penetrated and understood. Then she got up, washed her face again and walked back into the gym. She had found her move.

There were more people gathered in “Top Boards” than before; as games ended they came in to watch the finals. She pushed by them, stepped over the rope and sat down. Her hands were perfectly steady, and her stomach and eyes felt fine. She reached out and moved; she punched the clock firmly.

Beltik studied the move for a few minutes and took her knight with his bishop, as she knew he would. She did not retake; she brought a bishop over to attack one of his rooks. He moved the rook the button down on his clock, leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath.

“It doesn’t work,” Beth said. “I don’t have to take the queen.”

“Move,” Beltik said.

“I’ll check you first with the bishop—”

“Move!”

She nodded and checked with the bishop. Beltik, with his clock ticking, quickly moved his king away and pressed the button. Then Beth did what she had planned all along. She brought her queen crashing down next to the king, sacrificing it. Beltik looked at her, stunned. She stared back at him. He shrugged, snatched up the queen and stopped his clock by hitting it with the base of the captured piece.

Beth pushed her other bishop from the back rank out to the middle of the board and said, “Check. Mate next move.” Beltik stared at it for a moment, said, “Son of a bitch!” and stood up.

“The rook mates,” Beth said.

“Son of a bitch,” Beltik said.

The crowd that had now filled the room began applauding. Beltik, still scowling, held out his hand, and Beth shook it.