فصل 8

EIGHT

An hour after the plane crossed the border, Beth was absorbed in pawn-structure analysis and Mrs. Wheatley was drinking her third bottle of Cerveza Corona. “Beth,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “I have a confession to make.” Beth put the book down, reluctantly.

Mrs. Wheatley seemed nervous. “Do you know what a pen pal is, dear?”

“Someone you trade letters with.”

“Exactly! When I was in high school, our Spanish class was given a list of boys in Mexico who were studying English. I picked one and sent him a letter about myself.” Mrs. Wheatley gave a little laugh. “His name was Manuel. We corresponded for a long time—even while I was married to Allston. We exchanged photographs.” Mrs. Wheatley opened her purse, rummaged through it and produced a bent snapshot which she handed to Beth. It was a picture of a thin-faced man, surprisingly pale-looking, with a pencil-thin mustache. Mrs. Wheatley hesitated and said, “Manuel will be meeting us at the airport.” Beth had no objection to this; it might even be a good thing to have a Mexican friend. But she was put off by Mrs. Wheatley’s manner. “Have you met him before?” “Never.” She leaned over in her seat and squeezed Beth’s forearm. “You know, I’m really quite thrilled.”

Beth could see that she was a little drunk. “Is that why you wanted to come down early?”

Mrs. Wheatley pulled back and straightened the sleeves of her blue cardigan. “I suppose so,” she said.

“Si como no?” Mrs. Wheatley said. “And he dresses so well, and opens doors for me and orders dinner beautifully.” She was pulling up her pantyhose as she talked, tugging fiercely to get them over her broad hips.

They were probably f@cking—Mrs. Wheatley and Manuel Córdoba y Serano. Beth did not let herself visualize it. Mrs. Wheatley had come back to the hotel at about three that morning, and at two-thirty the night before. Beth, pretending to be asleep, had smelled the ripe mix of perfume and gin while Mrs. Wheatley fumbled around the room, undressing and sighing.

“I thought at first it was the altitude,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “Seven thousand three hundred and fifty feet.” Sitting down at the little brass vanity bench, she leaned forward on one elbow and began rouging her cheeks. “It makes a person positively giddy. But I think now it’s the culture.” She stopped and turned to Beth. “There is no hint of a Protestant ethic in Mexico. They are all Latin Catholics, and they all live in the here and now.” Mrs. Wheatley had been reading Alan Watts. “I think I’ll have just one margarita before I go out. Would you call for one, honey?” Back in Lexington, Mrs. Wheatley’s voice would sometimes have a distance to it, as though she were speaking from some lonely reach of an interior childhood. Here in Mexico City the voice was distant but the tone was theatrically gay, as though Alma Wheatley were savoring an incommunicable private mirth. It made Beth uneasy. For a moment she wanted to say something about the expensiveness of room service, even measured in pesos, but she didn’t. She picked up the phone and dialed six. The man answered in English. She told him to send a margarita and a large Coke to 713.

“You could come to the Folklórico,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “I understand the costumes alone are worth the price of admission.” “The tournament starts tomorrow. I need to work on endgames.”

Mrs. Wheatley was sitting on the edge of the bed, admiring her feet. “Beth, honey,” she said dreamily, “perhaps you need to work on yourself. Chess certainly isn’t all there is.” “It’s what I know.”

Mrs. Wheatley gave a long sigh. “My experience has taught me that what you know isn’t always important.”

“What is important?”

“Living and growing,” Mrs. Wheatley said with finality. “Living your life.”

With a sleazy Mexican salesman? Beth wanted to say. But she kept silent. She did not like the jealousy she felt.

“Beth,” Mrs. Wheatley went on in a voice rich with plausibility. “You haven’t visited Bellas Artes or even Chapultepec Park. The zoo there is delightful. You’ve taken your meals in this room and spent your time with your nose in chess books. Shouldn’t you just relax on the day before the tournament and think about something other than chess?” Beth wanted to hit her. If she had gone to those places, she would have had to go with Manuel and listen to his endless stories. He was forever touching Mrs. Wheatley’s shoulder or her back, standing too close to her, smiling too eagerly. “Mother,” she said, “tomorrow at ten I play the black pieces against Octavio Marenco, the champion of Brazil. That means he has the first move. He is thirty-four years old and an International Grandmaster. If I lose, we will be paying for this trip—this adventure—out of capital. If I win, I will be playing someone in the afternoon who is even better than Marenco. I need to work on my endgames.” “Honey, you are what is called an ‘intuitive’ player, aren’t you?” Mrs. Wheatley had never discussed chess playing with her before.

“I’ve been called that. Moves come to me sometimes.”

“I’ve noticed the moves they applaud the loudest are the ones you make quickly. And there’s a certain look on your face.” Beth was startled. “I suppose you’re right,” she said.

“Intuition doesn’t come from books. I think it’s because you don’t like Manuel.”

“Manuel’s all right,” Beth said, “but he doesn’t come by to see me.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “You need to relax. There’s not another player in the world as gifted as you are. I haven’t the remotest idea what faculties a person uses in order to play chess well, but I am convinced that relaxation can only improve them.” Beth said nothing. She had been furious for several days. She did not like Mexico City or this enormous concrete hotel with its cracked tiles and leaky faucets. She did not like the food in the hotel, but she did not want to eat alone in restaurants. Mrs. Wheatley had gone out for lunch and dinner every day with Manuel, who owned a green Dodge and seemed to be always at her disposal.

“Why don’t you have lunch with us?” Mrs. Wheatley said. “We can drop you off afterward and you can study then.” Beth started to answer, when there was a knock at the door. It was room service with Mrs. Wheatley’s margarita. Beth signed for it while Mrs. Wheatley took a few thoughtful sips and stared out the window at the sunlight. “I really haven’t been well lately,” Mrs. Wheatley said, squinting.

Beth looked at her coolly. Mrs. Wheatley was pale and clearly overweight. She held the glass by the stem in one hand while her other hand fluttered at her thick waist. There was something deeply pathetic about her, and Beth’s heart softened. “I don’t want lunch,” Beth said, “but you can drop me off at the zoo. I’ll take a cab back.” Mrs. Wheatley hardly seemed to hear, but after a moment she turned to Beth, still holding the glass in the same way, and smiled vaguely. “That’ll be nice, dear,” she said.

Beth spent a long time looking at the Galapagos turtles—big, lumbering creatures in permanent slow motion. One of the keepers had dumped a bushel of wet-looking lettuce and overripe tomatoes into their pen and the five of them pushed through the pile as a group, munching and trampling, their feet like the dusty feet of elephants and their stupid innocent faces intent on something beyond vision or food.

While she was standing by the fence a vendor came by with a cart of iced beer and, hardly thinking, she said, “Cerveza Corona, por favor,” and held out a five-peso note. The man flipped off the bottle top and poured the drink into a paper cup with an Aztec Eagle logo. “Muchisimas gracias,” she said. It was her first beer since high school; in the hot Mexican sun, it tasted wonderful. She drank it quickly. A few minutes later she saw another vendor standing by a circle of red flowers; she bought another beer. She knew she should not be doing this; the tournament started tomorrow. She did not need liquor. Nor tranquilizers. She had not had a green pill for several months now. But she drank the beer. It was three in the afternoon, and the sun was ferocious. The zoo was full of women, most of them in dark rebozos, with small dark-eyed children. What few men there were gave Beth significant looks, but she ignored them, and none of them tried to speak to her. Despite the Mexican reputation for gaiety and abandon, it was a quiet place, and the crowd seemed more like the crowd at a museum. There were flowers everywhere.

She finished her beer, bought another and continued walking. She was beginning to feel high. She passed more trees, more flowers, cages with sleeping chimpanzees. Around a corner she came face to face with a family of gorillas. Inside the cage the huge male and the baby were asleep head to head with their black bodies pressed against the bars in front. In the middle of the cage the female leaned philosophically against an enormous truck tire, scowling and biting a fingertip. Standing on the asphalt outside the cage was a human family, also a mother, father and child, watching the gorillas attentively. They were not Mexicans. It was the man who caught Beth’s attention. She recognized his face.

He was a short, heavy man, not unlike a gorilla himself, with jutting brow ridges, bushy eyebrows, coarse black hair and an impassive look. Beth stiffened, holding her paper cup of beer. She felt her cheeks flushing. The man was Vasily Borgov, Chess Champion of the World. There was no mistaking the grim Russian face, the authoritarian scowl. She had seen it on the cover of Chess Review several times, once with the same black suit and splashy green-and-gold tie.

Beth stared for a full minute. She had not known Borgov would be at this tournament. She had already received her board assignment by mail: it was Board Nine. Borgov would be Board One. She felt a sudden chill at the back of her neck and looked down at the beer in her hand. She raised it to her mouth and finished it, resolving it would be her last until after the tournament. Looking at the Russian again, she panicked; would he recognize her? He must not see her drinking. He was looking into the cage as though waiting for the gorilla to move a pawn. The gorilla was clearly lost in her own thoughts, ignoring everyone. Beth envied her.

Beth had no more beer that day and went to bed early, but she was awakened by Mrs. Wheatley’s arrival, sometime in the middle of the night. Mrs. Wheatley coughed a good deal while she was undressing in the darkened room. “Go ahead and turn the light on,” Beth said. “I’m awake.” “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Wheatley gasped between coughs. “I seem to have a virus.” She turned the bathroom light on and partially closed the door. Beth looked at the little Japanese clock on the nightstand. It was ten after four. The sounds she made undressing—the rustling and partly suppressed coughing—were infuriating. Beth’s first chess game would begin in six hours. She lay in bed furious and tense, waiting for Mrs. Wheatley to be quiet.

Marenco was a somber little dark-skinned man in a dazzling canary-colored shirt. He spoke almost no English and Beth no Portuguese; they began playing without preliminary conversation. Beth did not feel like talking, anyway. Her eyes were scratchy, and her body was uncomfortable all over. She had felt generally unpleasant from the time their plane landed in Mexico, as though she were on the verge of developing an illness that she never quite got, and she had not gone back to sleep the night before. Mrs. Wheatley had coughed in her sleep and muttered and rasped, while Beth tried to force herself to relax, to ignore the distractions. She did not have any green pills with her. There were three left, but they were in Kentucky. She lay on her back with her arms straight at her sides as she had as an eight-year-old trying to sleep by the hallway door at Methuen. Now, sitting on a straight wooden chair in front of a long tableful of chessboards in the ballroom of a Mexican hotel, she felt irritated and a bit dizzy. Marenco had just opened with pawn to king four. Her clock was ticking. She shrugged and played pawn to queen’s bishop four, trusting the formal maneuvers of the Sicilian to keep her steady until she got into the game. Marenco brought the king’s knight out with civil orthodoxy. She pushed the queen pawn to the fourth rank; he exchanged pawns. She began to relax as her mind moved away from her body and onto the tableau of forces in front of her.

By eleven-thirty she had him down by two pawns, and just after noon he resigned. They had got nowhere close to an endgame; when Marenco stood up and offered her his hand, the board was still massed with uncaptured pieces.

The top three boards were in a separate room across the hallway from the main ballroom. Beth had glanced at it that morning while rushing, five minutes late, to the place where she was to play, but she had not stopped to look in. She walked toward it now, across the carpeted room with its rows of players bent over boards—players from the Philippines and West Germany and Iceland and Norway and Chile, most of them young, almost all of them male. There were two other women: a Mexican official’s niece, at Board Twenty-two, and an intense young housewife from Buenos Aires; she was at Board Seventeen. Beth did not stop to look at any of the positions.

Several people were standing in the hallway outside the smaller game room. She pushed past them into the doorway, and there across the room from her at Board One, wearing the same dark suit, the same grim scowl, was Vasily Borgov, his expressionless eyes on the game in front of him. A respectfully silent crowd stood between her and him, but the players sat on a kind of wooden stage a few feet above floor level, and she could see him clearly. Behind him on the wall was a display chessboard with cardboard pieces; a Mexican was just moving one of the white knights into its new position as Beth came in. She studied the board for a moment. Everything was very tight, but Borgov seemed to have an edge.

She looked at Borgov and quickly looked away. His face was alarming in its concentration. She turned and left, walking slowly along the hall.

Mrs. Wheatley was in bed but awake. She blinked at Beth from the bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. “Hi, sweetie.” “I thought we could have lunch,” Beth said. “I don’t play again until tomorrow.”

“Lunch,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “Oh my.” And then; “How did you do?”

“He resigned after thirty moves.”

“You’re a wonder,” Mrs. Wheatley said. She pushed herself carefully up in bed until she was sitting. “I’m feeling wonky, but I probably need something in my stomach. Manuel and I had cabrito for dinner. It may yet be the end of me.” She looked very pale. She got out of bed slowly and walked to the bathroom. “I suppose I could have a sandwich, or one of those less inflamed tacos.” ***

The competition at the tournament was more consistent, vigorous and professional than anything Beth had seen before, yet its effect on her, once she had got through the first game after a near-sleepless night, was not disturbing. It was a smoothly run affair, with all announcements made in both Spanish and English. Everything was hushed. In her game the next day she played the Queen’s Gambit Declined against an Austrian named Diedrich, a pale, esthetic young man in a sleeveless sweater, and she forced him to resign in midgame with a relentless pressure in the center of the board. She did it mostly with pawns and was herself quietly amazed at the intricacies that seemed to flow from her fingertips as she took the center of the board and began to crush his position as one might crush an egg. He had played well, made no blunders or anything that could properly be called a mistake, but Beth moved with such deadly accuracy, such measured control, that his position was hopeless by the twenty-third move.

Mrs. Wheatley had invited her to have dinner with her and Manuel; Beth had refused. Although you didn’t eat dinner in Mexico until ten o’clock, she did not expect to find Mrs. Wheatley in the room when she came back from shopping at seven.

She was dressed but in bed with her head propped up against a pillow. A half-finished drink sat on the nightstand beside her. Mrs. Wheatley was in her mid-forties, but the paleness of her face and the lines of worry in her forehead made her look much older. “Hello, dear,” she said in a faint voice.

“Are you sick?”

“A bit under the weather.”

“I could get a doctor.”

The word “doctor” seemed to hang in the air between them until Mrs. Wheatley said, “It’s not that bad. I just need rest.” Beth nodded and went into the bathroom to wash up. Mrs. Wheatley’s appearance and behavior were disturbing. But when Beth came back into the room, she was out of bed and looking lively enough, smoothing the covers. She smiled wryly. “Manuel won’t be coming.” Beth looked inquiringly at her.

“He had business in Oaxaca.”

Beth hesitated for a moment. “How long will he be away?”

Mrs. Wheatley sighed. “At least until we leave.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “I’ve never been to Oaxaca, but I suspect it resembles Denver.”

Beth stared at her a moment and then laughed. “We can have dinner together,” she said. “You can take me to one of the places you know about.” “Of course,” Mrs. Wheatley said. She smiled ruefully. “It was fun while it lasted. He really had a pleasant sense of humor.” “That’s good,” Beth said. “Mr. Wheatley didn’t seem very amusing.”

“My God,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “Allston never thought anything was funny, except maybe Eleanor Roosevelt.”

In this tournament each player played one game a day. It would go on for six days. Beth’s first two games were simple enough for her, but the third came as a shock.

She arrived five minutes early and was at the board when her opponent came walking up, a bit awkwardly. He looked about twelve years old. Beth had seen him around the ballroom, had passed boards where he was playing, but she had been distracted, and his youth hadn’t really registered. He had curly black hair and wore an old-fashioned white sport shirt, so neatly ironed that its creases stood out from his thin arms. It was very strange, and she felt uncomfortable. She was supposed to be the prodigy. He looked so damned serious.

She held out her hand. “I’m Beth Harmon.”

He stood, bowed slightly, took her hand firmly and shook it once. “I am Georgi Petrovitch Girev,” he said. Then he smiled shyly, a small furtive smile. “I am honored.” She felt flustered. “Thanks.” They both sat, and he pressed the button down on her clock. She played pawn to queen four, glad to have the first move against this unnerving child.

It started out as a routine Queen’s Gambit Accepted; he took the offered bishop pawn, and they both developed toward the center. But as they got into the midgame it became more complex than usual, and she realized that he was playing a very sophisticated defense. He moved fast—maddeningly fast—and he seemed to know exactly what he was going to do. She tried a few threats, but he was unperturbed by them. An hour passed, then another. The move numbers were now in the thirties, and the board was dense with men. She looked at him as he was moving a piece—at the skinny little arm stuck out from the absurd shirt—and she hated him. He could have been a machine. You little creep, she thought, suddenly realizing that the adults she had played as a child must have thought the same thing about her.

It was afternoon now, and most of the games were finished. They were on move thirty-four. She wanted to get this over with and get back to Mrs. Wheatley. She was worried about Mrs. Wheatley. She felt old and weary playing this tireless child with his bright dark eyes and quick little movements; she knew that if she made even a small blunder, he would be at her throat. She looked at her clock. Twenty-five minutes left. She would have to speed up and get forty moves in before her flag dropped. If she didn’t watch it, he would have her in serious time pressure. That was something she was in the habit of putting other people in; it made her uneasy. She had never been behind on the clock before.

For the last several moves she had been considering a series of trades in the center—knight and bishop for knight and bishop, and a rook exchange a few moves later. It would simplify a good deal, but the problem was that it made for an endgame and she tried to avoid endgames. Now, seeing that she was forty-five minutes behind him on the clock, she felt uncomfortable. She would have to get rid of this logjam. She picked up her knight and took his king’s bishop with it. He responded immediately, not even looking up at her. He took her queen’s bishop. They continued with the moves as though they had been predetermined, and when it was over, the board was full of empty spaces. Each player had a rook, a knight, four pawns and the king. She brought her king out from the back rank, and so did he. At this stage the king’s power as an attacker became abruptly manifest; it was no longer necessary to hide it. The question now was one of getting a pawn to the eighth rank and promoting it. They were in the endgame.

She drew in her breath, shook her head to clear it and began to concentrate on the position. The important thing was to have a plan.

“We should perhaps adjourn now.” It was Girev’s voice, almost a whisper. She looked at his face, pale and serious, and then looked back at the clock. Both flags had fallen. That had never happened to her before. She was startled and sat stupidly in her chair for a moment. “You must seal the move,” Girev said. Suddenly he looked uncomfortable and held up his hand for the tournament director.

One of the directors came over, walking softly. It was a middle-aged man with thick glasses. “Miss Harmon must seal her move,” Girev said.

The director looked at the clock. “I’ll get an envelope.”

She looked at the board again. It seemed clear enough. She should advance the rook pawn that she had decided on already, putting it on the fourth rank. The director handed her an envelope and stepped discreetly back a few steps. Girev rose and turned away politely. Beth wrote “P-QR4” on her score sheet, folded it, put it in the envelope and handed it to the tournament director.

She stood up stiffly and looked around her. There were no more games in progress, although a few players were still there, some seated and some standing, looking over positions on the boards. A few were huddled over boards, analyzing games that had ended.

Girev had come back to the table. His face was very serious. “May I ask something?” he said.

“Yes.”

“In America,” he said, “I am told that one sees films in cars. Is this true?”

“Drive-ins?” she said. “You mean drive-in movies?”

“Yes. Elvis Presley movies that you watch from inside a car. Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor. That happens?” “It sure does.”

He looked at her, and suddenly his earnest face broke into a broad smile. “I would dig that,” he said. “I would certainly dig that.” ***

Mrs. Wheatley slept soundly through the night and was still sleeping when Beth got up. Beth felt refreshed and alert; she had gone to sleep worried about the adjourned game with Girev, but she felt all right about it in the morning. The pawn move had been strong enough. She walked barefoot from the sofa where she had been sleeping to the bed where Mrs. Wheatley lay and felt her forehead. It was cool. Beth kissed her lightly on the cheek and went into the bathroom and showered. When she left for breakfast, Mrs. Wheatley was still asleep.

Her morning game was with a Mexican in his early twenties. Beth had the black pieces, played the Sicilian and caught him off-guard on the nineteenth move. Then she began wearing him down. Her head was very clear, and she was able to keep him so busy trying to answer her threats that she was able eventually to pick off a bishop in exchange for two pawns and drive his king into an exposed position with a knight check. When she brought her queen out, the Mexican stood up, smiled at her coldly and said, “Enough. Enough.” He shook his head angrily. “I resign the game.” For a moment she was furious, wanting to finish, to drive his king across the board and checkmate it. “You play a game that is… awesome,” the Mexican said. “You make a man feel helpless.” He bowed slightly, turned and left the table.

Playing out the Girev game that afternoon, she found herself moving with astonishing speed and force. Girev was wearing a light-blue shirt this time, and it stuck out from his elbows like the edges of a child’s kite. She sat at the board impatiently while the tournament director opened the envelope and made the pawn move she had sealed the day before. She got up and paced across the nearly empty ballroom where two other adjournments were being played out, waiting for Girev to move. She looked back across the room toward him several times and saw him hunched over the board, his little fists jammed into his pale cheeks, the blue shirt seeming to glow under the lights. She hated him—hated his seriousness and hated his youth. She wanted to crush him.

She could hear the click of the clock button from halfway across the room and made a beeline back to the table. She did not take her seat but stood looking at the position. He had put his rook on the queen bishop file, as she had thought he might. She was ready for that and pushed her pawn again, turned and walked back across the room. There was a table there with a water pitcher and a few paper cups. She poured herself a cup, surprised to see that her hand trembled as she did so. By the time she got back to the board, Girev had moved again. She moved immediately, not bringing the rook to defend but abandoning the pawn and instead advancing her king. She picked the piece up lightly with her fingertips the way she had seen that piratical-looking man in Cincinnati do years before and dropped it on the queen four square, turned and walked away again.

She kept it up that way, not sitting down at all. Within three quarters of an hour she had him. It was really simple—almost too easy. It was only a matter of trading rooks at the right time. The trade pulled his king back a square on the recapture, just enough to let her pawn get by and queen. But Girev did not wait for that; he resigned immediately after the rook check and the trade which followed. He stepped toward her as if to say something, but seeing her face, stopped. For a moment she softened, remembering the child she had been only a few years before and how it devastated her to lose a chess game.

She held out her hand, and when he shook it she forced a smile and said, “I’ve never been to a drive-in either.” He shook his head. “I should not have let you do that. With the rook.”

“Yes,” she said. And then: “How old were you when you started playing chess?”

“Four. I was district champion at seven. I hope to be World Champion one day.”

“When?”

“In three years.”

“You’ll be sixteen in three years.”

He nodded grimly.

“If you win, what will you do afterward?”

He looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“If you’re World Champion at sixteen, what will you do with the rest of your life?”

He still looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he said.

Mrs. Wheatley went to bed early and seemed better the next morning. She was up before Beth, and when they went downstairs together for breakfast in the Cámara de Toreros, Mrs. Wheatley ordered a Spanish omelet and two cups of coffee and finished it all. Beth felt relieved.

On the bulletin board near the registration desk was a list of players; Beth had not looked at it for several days. Coming into the room now ten minutes before game time, she stopped and checked the scores. They were listed in order of their international ratings, and Borgov was at the top with 2715. Harmon was seventeenth with 2370. After each player’s name was a series of boxes showing his score for the rounds. “0” meant a loss, “½” a draw, and “1” a win. There were a great many “½s.” Three names had an uninterrupted string of “l’s” after them; Borgov and Harmon were two of these.

The pairings were a few feet to the right. At the top of the list was BORGOV-RAND, and below that HARMON—SOLOMON. If she and Borgov both won today, they would not necessarily play each other in the final game tomorrow. She was not sure whether she wanted to play him or not. Playing Girev had rattled her. She felt a dim unsureness about Mrs. Wheatley, despite her apparent resurgence; the image of her white skin, rouged cheeks and forced smiles made Beth uneasy. A buzz of voices had begun in the room as players found their boards, set up their clocks, settled into preparations for play. Beth shook off her unease as well as she could and found Board Four—the first board in the big room—and waited for Solomon.

Solomon was by no means easy, and the game lasted four hours before he was forced to resign. Yet at no point during all of that time did she ever lose her edge—the tiny advantage that the opening move gives to the player of the white pieces. Solomon did not say anything, but she could tell from the way he stalked off afterward that he was furious to be beaten by a woman. She had seen it often enough before to recognize it. Usually it made her angry, but it didn’t matter right now. She had something else on her mind.

When he had gone she went to look in the smaller room where Borgov played, but it was empty. The winning position—Borgov’s—was still displayed on the big board on the wall; it was as devastating as Beth’s win over Solomon had been.

In the ballroom she looked at the bulletin board. Some of tomorrow’s pairings were already up. That was a surprise. She stepped closer to look, and her heart caught in her throat; at the top of the finals list in black printed letters was BORGOV—HARMON. She blinked and read it again, holding her breath.

Beth had brought three books with her to Mexico City. She and Mrs. Wheatley ate dinner in their room, and afterward Beth took out Grandmaster Games; in it were five of Borgov’s. She opened it to the first one and began to play through it, using her board and pieces. She seldom did this, generally relying on her ability to visualize a game when going over it, but she wanted to have Borgov in front of her as palpably as possible. Mrs. Wheatley lay in bed reading while Beth played through the games, looking for weaknesses. She found none. She played through them again, stopping in certain positions where the possibilities seemed nearly infinite, and working them all out. She sat staring at the board with everything in her present life obliterated from her attention while the combinations played themselves out in her head. Every now and then a sound from Mrs. Wheatley or a tension in the air of the room brought her out of it for a moment, and she looked around dazedly, feeling the pained tightness of her muscles and the thin, intrusive edge of fear in her stomach.

There had been a few times over the past year when she felt like this, with her mind not only dizzied but nearly terrified by the endlessness of chess. By midnight Mrs. Wheatley had put her book aside and gone quietly to sleep. Beth sat in the green armchair for hours, not hearing Mrs. Wheatley’s gentle snores, not sensing the strange smell of a Mexican hotel in her nostrils, feeling somehow that she might fall from a precipice, that sitting over the chessboard she had bought at Purcell’s in Kentucky, she was actually poised over an abyss, sustained there only by the bizarre mental equipment that had fitted her for this elegant and deadly game. On the board there was danger everywhere. A person could not rest.

She did not go to bed until after four and, asleep, she dreamed of drowning.

A few people had gathered in the ballroom. She recognized Marenco, dressed in a suit and tie now; he waved at her as she came in, and she forced herself to smile in his direction. It was frightening to see even this player she had already beaten. She was jumpy, knew she was jumpy, and did not know what to do about it.

She had showered at seven that morning, unable to rid herself of the tension she had awakened with. She was barely able to get down her morning coffee in the near-empty coffee shop and had washed her face afterward, carefully, trying to focus herself. Now she crossed the ballroom’s red carpet and went to the ladies’ room and washed her face again. She dried carefully with paper towels and combed her hair, watching herself in the big mirror. Her movements seemed forced, and her body looked impossibly frail. The expensive blouse and skirt did not fit right. Her fear was as sharp as a toothache.

As she came down the hallway, she saw him. He was standing there solidly with two men she did not recognize. All of them wore dark suits. They were close together, talking softly, confidentially. She lowered her eyes and walked past them into the small room. Some men were waiting there with cameras. Reporters. She slipped behind the black pieces at Board One. She stared at the board for a moment, heard the tournament director’s voice saying, “Play will begin in three minutes,” and looked up.

Borgov was walking across the room toward her. His suit fit him well, with the trouser legs draping neatly above the tops of his shined black shoes. Beth turned her eyes back to the board, embarrassed, feeling awkward. Borgov had seated himself. She heard the director’s voice as if from a great distance, “You may start your opponent’s clock,” and she reached out, pressed the button on the clock and looked up. He was sitting there solid, dark and heavy, looking fixedly at the board, and she watched as if in a dream as he reached out a stubby-fingered hand, picked up the king pawn and set it on the fourth rank. Pawn to king four.

She stared at it for a moment. She always played the Sicilian to that opening—the most common opening for White in the game of chess. But she hesitated. Borgov had been called “Master of the Sicilian” somewhere in a journal. Almost impulsively she played pawn to king four herself, hoping to play him on ground that was fresh for both of them, that would not give him the advantage of superior knowledge. He brought out his king’s knight to bishop three, and she brought hers to queen bishop three, protecting the pawn. And then without hesitation he played his bishop to knight five and her heart sank. The Ruy Lopez. She had played it often enough, but in this game it frightened her. It was as complex, as thoroughly analyzed, as the Sicilian, and there were dozens of lines she hardly knew, except for memorizing them from books.

Someone flashed another bulb for a picture and she heard the tournament director’s angry whisper not to disturb the players. She pushed her pawn up to rook three, attacking the bishop. Borgov pulled it back to rook four. She forced herself to concentrate, brought out her other knight, and Borgov castled. All this was familiar, but it was no relief. She now had to decide to play either the open variation or the closed. She glanced up at Borgov’s face and then back at the board. She took his pawn with her knight, starting the open. He played pawn to queen four, as she knew he would, and she played pawn to queen knight four because she had to, so she would be ready when he moved the rook. The chandelier overhead was too bright. And now she began to feel dismay, as though the rest of the game were inevitable—as though she were locked into some choreography of feints and counterthreats in which it was a fixed necessity that she lose, like a game from one of the books where you knew the outcome and played it only to see how it happened.

She shook her head to clear it. The game had not gone that far. They were still playing out tired old moves and the only advantage White had was the advantage White always had—the first move. Someone had said that when computers really learned to play chess and played against one another, White would always win because of the first move. Like tick-tack-toe. But it hadn’t come to that. She was not playing a perfect machine.

Borgov brought his bishop back to knight three, retreating. She played pawn to queen four, and he took the pawn and she brought her bishop to king three. She had known this much back at Methuen from the lines she memorized in class from Modern Chess Openings. But the game was ready now to enter a wide-open phase, where it could take unexpected turns. She looked up just as Borgov, his face smooth and impassive, picked up his queen and set it in front of the king, on king two. She blinked at it for a moment. What was he doing? Going after the knight on her king five? He could pin the pawn that protected the knight easily enough with a rook. But the move looked somehow suspicious. She felt the tightness in her stomach again, a touch of dizziness.

She folded her arms across her chest and began to study the position. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the young man who moved the pieces on the display board placing the big cardboard white queen on the king two square. She glanced out into the room. There were about a dozen people standing there watching. She turned back to the board. She would have to get rid of his bishop. Knight to rook four looked good for that. There was also knight to bishop four or bishop to king two, but that was very complicated. She studied the possibilities for a moment and discarded the idea. She did not trust herself against Borgov with those complications. To put a knight on the rook file cut its range in half; but she did it. She had to get rid of the bishop. The bishop was up to no good.

Borgov reached down without hesitation and played knight to queen four. She stared at it; she had expected him to move his rook. Still there seemed to be no harm in it. Pushing her queen bishop pawn up to the fourth square looked good. It would force Borgov’s knight to take her bishop, and after that she could take his bishop with her knight and stop the annoying pressure on her other knight, the one that sat a bit too far down the board on king five and didn’t have enough flight squares for comfort. Against Borgov, the loss of a knight would be lethal. She played the queen bishop pawn, holding the piece for a moment between her fingers before letting it go. Then she sat a bit farther back in her chair and drew a deep breath. The position looked good.

Without hesitation Borgov took the bishop with his knight, and Beth retook with her pawn. Then he played his queen bishop pawn to the third rank, as she thought he might, creating a place for the nuisance bishop to hide. She took the bishop with relief, getting rid of it and getting her knight off the embarrassing rook file. Borgov remained impassive, taking the knight with his pawn. His eyes flicked up to hers and back to the position.

She looked down nervously. It had looked good a few moves before; it did not look so good now. The problem was her knight on king five. He could move his queen to knight four, threatening to take her king’s pawn with check, and when she protected against this, he could attack the knight with his king bishop pawn, and it would have no place to go. Borgov’s queen would be there to take it. There was another annoyance on her queen side: he could play rook takes pawn, giving up the rook to hers only to get it back with a queen check, coming out a pawn ahead and with an improved position. No. Two pawns ahead. She would have to put her queen on knight three. Queen to queen two was no good because of his damned bishop pawn that could attack her knight. She did not like this defensiveness and studied the board for a long time before moving, trying to find something that would counterattack. There was nothing. She had to move the queen and protect the knight. She felt her cheeks burning and studied the position again. Nothing. She brought her queen to knight three and did not look at Borgov.

With no hesitation whatever Borgov brought his bishop to king three, protecting his king. Why hadn’t she seen that? She had looked long enough. Now if she pushed the pawn she had planned to push, she would lose her queen. How could she have missed it? She had planned the threat of discovered check with the new position of her queen, and he had parried it instantly with a move that was chillingly obvious. She glanced at him, at his well-shaven, imperturbable Russian face with the tie so finely knotted beneath his heavy chin, and the fear she felt almost froze her muscles.

She studied the board with all the intensity she could muster, sitting rigidly for twenty minutes staring at the position. Her stomach sank even farther as she tried and rejected a dozen continuations. She could not save the knight. Finally she played her bishop to king two, and Borgov predictably put his queen on knight four, threatening again to win the knight by pushing up his king bishop pawn. Now she had the choice of king to queen two or of castling. Either way the knight was lost. She castled.

Borgov immediately moved the bishop pawn to attack her knight. She could have screamed. Everything he was doing was obvious, unimaginative, bureaucratic. She felt stifled and played pawn to queen five, attacking his bishop, and then watched his inevitable moving of the bishop to rook six, threatening to mate. She would have to bring her rook up to protect. He would take the knight with his queen, and if she took the bishop, the queen would pick off the rook in the corner with a check, and the whole thing would blow apart. She would have to bring the rook over to protect it. And meanwhile she was down a knight. Against a world’s champion, whose shirt was impeccably white, whose tie was beautifully tied, whose dark-jowled Russian face admitted no doubt or weakness.

She saw her hand reach out, and taking the black king by its head, topple it onto the board.

She sat there for a moment and heard the applause. Then, looking at no one, she left the room.