The Queen's Gambit (11 page)

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 U
NDEFEATED
. 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 U
NDEFEATED
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.