The Luzhin Defense (13 page)

He moved in step with Turati. Turati scored a point and he scored a point; Turati scored a half and he scored a half. Thus they proceeded with their separate games, as if mounting the sides of an isosceles triangle and destined at the decisive moment to meet at the apex.

The nights were somehow bumpy. He just could not manage to force himself not to think of chess, and although he felt drowsy, sleep could find no way into his brain; it searched for a loophole, but every entrance was guarded by a chess sentry and he had the agonizing feeling that sleep was just there, close by, but on the outside of his brain: the Luzhin who was wearily scattered around the room slumbered, but the Luzhin who visualized a chessboard stayed awake and was unable to merge with his happy double. But still worse—after each session of the tournament it was with ever greater difficulty that he crawled out of the world of chess concepts, so that an unpleasant split began to appear even in daytime. After a three-hour game his head ached strangely, not all of it but in parts, in black squares of pain, and for a while he could not find the door, which was obscured by a black spot, nor could he remember the address of the cherished house: luckily his pocket still preserved that old postcard, folded in two and already tearing along the crease (“… 
vas vecherom
—” “expecting you this evening.”). He still continued to feel joy when he entered this house filled with Russian toys, but the joy, too, was spotty. Once, on a day with no play, he came earlier than usual when only the mother was at home. She decided to continue the conversation that had taken place at sunset in the beech coppice, and overestimating her own highly prized ability to speak her mind (for which the young men who visited their house considered her tremendously intelligent and were very much afraid of her), she swooped on Luzhin, lecturing him first of all on the cigarette butts found in all the vases and even in the jaws of the spread-eagled bear, and then suggested that there and then, this
Saturday evening, he take a bath at their place after her husband had finished his own weekly ablutions. “I dare say you don’t wash often,” she said without circumlocution. “Not too often? Admit it, now.” Luzhin gloomily shrugged his shoulders looking at the floor, where a slight movement was taking place perceptible to him alone, an evil differentiation of shadows. “And in general,” she continued, “you must pull yourself together.” And having thus put her hearer in the right mood she went on to the main subject. “Tell me,” she asked, “I imagine you’ve managed to debauch my little girl thoroughly? People like you are great lechers. But my daughter is chaste, not like today’s girls. Tell me, you’re a lecher, aren’t you?” “No, madame,” replied Luzhin with a sigh, and then he frowned and quickly drew the sole of his shoe over the floor, obliterating a certain grouping that was already quite distinct. “Why, I don’t know you at all,” continued the swift, sonorous voice. “I shall have to make inquiries about you—yes, yes, inquiries—to see if you haven’t one of those special diseases.” “Shortness of breath,” said Luzhin, “and also a bit of rheumatism.” “I’m not talking about that,” she interrupted crossly. “It’s a serious matter. You evidently consider yourself engaged, you come here and you spend time alone with her. But I don’t think there can be any talk of marriage for a while.” “And last year I had the piles,” said Luzhin dully. “Listen, I’m talking to you about extremely important things. You would probably like to get married today, right away. I know you. Then she’ll be going about with a big belly, you’ll brutalize her immediately.” Having stamped out a shadow in one place, Luzhin saw with despair that far from where he was sitting a new combination was taking
shape on the floor. “If you are in the least interested in my opinion then I must tell you I consider this match ridiculous. You probably think my husband will support you. Admit it: you do think that?” “I am in straitened circumstances,” said Luzhin. “I would need very little. And a magazine has offered me to edit its chess section …” Here the nuisances on the floor became so brazen that Luzhin involuntarily put out a hand to remove shadow’s King from the threat of light’s Pawn. From that day on he avoided sitting in that drawing room, where there were too many knickknacks of polished wood that assumed very definite features if you looked at them long enough. His fiancée noticed that with each day of the tournament he looked worse and worse. His eyes were ringed with dull violet and his heavy lids were inflamed. He was so pale that he always seemed ill-shaven, although on his fiancée’s insistence he shaved every morning. She awaited the end of the tournament with great impatience and it pained her to think what fabulous, harmful exertions he had to make to gain each point. Poor Luzhin, mysterious Luzhin.… All through those autumn days, while playing tennis in the mornings with a German girl friend, or listening to lectures on art that had long since palled on her, or leafing through a tattered assortment of books in her room—Andreyev’s
The Ocean
, a novel by Krasnov and a pamphlet entitled “How to Become a Yogi”—she was conscious that right now Luzhin was immersed in chess calculations, struggling and suffering—and it vexed her that she was unable to share in the torments of his art. She believed in his genius unconditionally and was convinced moreover that this genius could not be exhausted by the mere playing of chess,
however wonderful it might be, and that when the tournament fever had passed and Luzhin had calmed down, he would rest, and within him some kind of still unfathomed forces would come into play and he would blossom out and display his gift in other spheres of life as well. Her father called Luzhin a narrow fanatic, but added that he was undoubtedly a very naïve and very respectable person. Her mother, on the other hand, maintained that Luzhin was going out of his mind not by the day but by the hour and that lunatics were forbidden by law to marry and she concealed the inconceivable fiancé from all her friends, which was easy at first—they thought she was at the resort with her daughter—but then, very soon, there reappeared all those people who usually frequented their house—such as a charming old general who always maintained that it was not Russia we expatriates regretted but youth, youth; a couple of Russian Germans; Oleg Sergeyevich Smirnovski—theosophist and proprietor of a liqueur factory; several former officers of the White Army; several young ladies; the singer Mme. Vozdvishenski; the Alfyorov couple; and also the aged Princess Umanov, whom they called the Queen of Spades (after the well-known opera). She it was who was the first to see Luzhin, concluding from a hasty and unintelligible explanation by the mistress of the house that he had some kind of connection with literature, with magazines—was, in a word, an author. “And that thing, do you know it?” she asked, politely striking up a literary conversation. “From Apukhtin—one of the new poets … slightly decadent … something about yellow and red cornflowers …” Smirnovski lost no time in asking him for a game of chess, but unfortunately there proved to be
no set in the house. The young people among themselves called him a ninny, and only the old general treated him with the most cordial simplicity, exhorting him at length to go see the little giraffe that had just been born at the zoo. Once the visitors began to come, appearing every evening now in various combinations, Luzhin was unable to be alone with his fiancée for a single moment and his struggle with them, his efforts to penetrate through the thick of them to her, immediately took on a tinge of chess. However, it proved impossible to overcome them, more and more of them would appear, and he fancied it was they, these numberless, faceless visitors, who densely and hotly surrounded him during the hours of the tournament.

An explanation of all that was happening came one morning when he was sitting on a chair in the middle of his hotel room and trying to concentrate his thoughts on one thing alone: yesterday he had won his tenth point and today he had to beat Moser. Suddenly his fiancée entered the room. “Just like a little idol,” she laughed. “Sitting in the middle while sacrificial gifts are brought to him.” She stretched out a box of chocolates to him and suddenly the laughter disappeared from her face. “Luzhin,” she cried. “Luzhin, wake up! What’s the matter with you?” “Are you real?” asked Luzhin softly and unbelievingly. “Of course I’m real. What a thing to do, putting your chair in the middle of the room and sitting there. If you don’t rouse yourself immediately I’m leaving.” Luzhin obediently roused himself, moving his shoulders and head about, then transferred his seat to the couch, and a happiness that was not quite sure of itself, not quite settled, shone and swam in his eyes. “Tell me, when will this end?” she asked.
“How many games to go?” “Three,” replied Luzhin. “I read today in the newspaper that you are bound to win the tournament, that this time you are playing extraordinarily.” “But there’s Turati,” said Luzhin and raised his finger. “I feel sick to my stomach,” he added mournfully. “Then no candies for you,” she said quickly and tucked the square package under her arm again. “Luzhin, I’m going to call a doctor. You’ll simply die if it goes on like this.” “No, no,” he said sleepily. “It’s already passed. There’s no need for a doctor.” “It worries me. That means till Friday, till Saturday … this hell. And at home things are pretty grim. Everyone’s agreed with Mamma that I mustn’t marry you. Why were you feeling sick, have you eaten something or other?” “It’s gone, completely,” muttered Luzhin and put his head down on her shoulder. “You’re simply very tired, poor boy. Are you really going to play today?” “At three o’clock. Against Moser. In general I’m playing … how did they put it?” “Extraordinarily.” She smiled. The head lying on her shoulder was large, heavy—a precious apparatus with a complex, mysterious mechanism. A minute later she noticed that he had fallen asleep and she began to think how to transfer his head now to some cushion or other. With extremely careful movements she managed to do it; he was now half lying on the couch, uncomfortably doubled up, and the head on the pillow was waxen. For a moment she was seized with horror lest he had died suddenly and she even felt his wrist, which was soft and warm. When she straightened up she felt a twinge of pain in her shoulder. “A heavy head,” she whispered as she looked at the sleeper, and quietly left the room, taking her unsuccessful present with her. She asked the chambermaid she
met in the corridor to wake Luzhin in an hour, and descending the stairs soundlessly she set off through sunlit streets to the tennis club—and caught herself still trying not to make a noise or any sharp movements. The chambermaid did not have to wake Luzhin—he awoke by himself and immediately made strenuous efforts to recall the delightful dream he had dreamed, knowing from experience that if you didn’t begin immediately to recall it, later would be too late. He had dreamed he was sitting strangely—in the middle of the room—and suddenly, with the absurd and blissful suddenness usual in dreams, his fiancée entered holding out a package tied with red ribbon. She was dressed also in the style of dreams—in a white dress and soundless white shoes. He wanted to embrace her, but suddenly felt sick, his head whirled, and she in the meantime related that the newspapers were writing extraordinary things about him but that her mother still did not want them to marry. Probably there was much more of this and that, but his memory failed to overtake what was receding—and trying at least not to disperse what he had managed to wrest from his dream, Luzhin stirred cautiously, smoothed down his hair and rang for dinner to be brought. After dinner he had to play, and that day the universe of chess concepts revealed an awesome power. He played four hours without pause and won, but when he was already sitting in the taxi he forgot on the way where it was he was going, what postcard address he had given the driver to read and waited with interest to see where the car would stop.

The house, however, he recognized, and again there were guests, guests—but here Luzhin realized that he had simply
returned to his recent dream, for his fiancée asked him in a whisper: “Well, how are you, has the sickness gone?”—and how could she have known about this in real life? “We’re living in a fine dream,” he said to her softly. “Now I understand everything.” He looked about him and saw the table and the faces of people sitting there, their reflection in the samovar—in a special samovarian perspective—and added with tremendous relief: “So this too is a dream? These people are a dream? Well, well …” “Quiet, quiet, what are you babbling about?” she whispered anxiously, and Luzhin thought she was right, one should not scare off a dream, let them sit there, these people, for the time being. But the most remarkable thing about this dream was that all around, evidently, was Russia, which the sleeper himself had left ages ago. The inhabitants of the dream, gay people drinking tea, were conversing in Russian and the sugar bowl was identical with the one from which he had spooned powdered sugar on the veranda on a scarlet summer evening many years ago. Luzhin noted this return to Russia with interest, with pleasure. It diverted him especially as the witty repetition of a particular combination, which occurs, for example, when a strictly problem idea, long since discovered in theory, is repeated in a striking guise on the board in live play.

The whole time, however, now feebly, now sharply, shadows of his real chess life would show through this dream and finally it broke through and it was simply night in the hotel, chess thoughts, chess insomnia and meditations on the drastic defense he had invented to counter Turati’s opening. He was wide-awake and his mind worked clearly, purged of all dross and aware that everything apart
from chess was only an enchanting dream, in which, like the golden haze of the moon, the image of a sweet, clear-eyed maiden with bare arms dissolved and melted. The rays of his consciousness, which were wont to disperse when they came into contact with the incompletely intelligible world surrounding him, thereby losing one half of their force, had grown stronger and more concentrated now that this world had dissolved into a mirage and there was no longer any need to worry about it. Real life, chess life, was orderly, clear-cut, and rich in adventure, and Luzhin noted with pride how easy it was for him to reign in this life, and the way everything obeyed his will and bowed to his schemes. Some of his games at the Berlin tournament had been even then termed immortal by connoisseurs. He had won one after sacrificing in succession his Queen, a Rook and a Knight; in another he had placed a Pawn in such a dynamic position that it had acquired an absolutely monstrous force and had continued to grow and swell, balefully for his opponent, like a furuncle in the tenderest part of the board; and finally in a third game, by means of an apparently absurd move that provoked a murmuring among the spectators, Luzhin constructed an elaborate trap for his opponent that the latter divined too late. In these games and in all the others that he played at this unforgettable tournament, he manifested a stunning clarity of thought, a merciless logic. But Turati also played brilliantly, Turati also scored point after point, somewhat hypnotizing his opponents with the boldness of his imagination and trusting too much, perhaps, to the chess luck that till now had never deserted him. His meeting with Luzhin was to decide who would get first prize
and there were those who said that the limpidity and lightness of Luzhin’s thought would prevail over the Italian’s tumultuous fantasy, and there were those who forecast that the fiery, swift-swooping Turati would defeat the far-sighted Russian player. And the day of their meeting arrived.