Warlight(40)

I could not remember the last time my mother had touched me. I was never sure whether she was going to teach me or brutalize me during those tournaments. At times she looked insecure, a woman from an earlier decade, mortal. It felt like a stage set. Something about those nights allowed me to focus on just her across our table in the semi-darkness—even if I knew she was the distraction. I saw how quick her hands were, how her eyes were interested only in what I was thinking. It seemed to both of us there was no one else in the world.

At the end of that game, before retiring, though I knew she would be up a few more hours on her own, she set up the chess board again. “This is the first game I memorized, Nathaniel. This is the game in the opera house I told you about.” She stood over the board and played both hands, one hand white, one hand black. Once or twice she waited, to let me suggest a move. “No, this!” she’d say, not with irritation at my choice, but with wonder at the master’s move. “You see, he went here with the bishop.” She kept moving her hands faster and faster, until all of the blacks were overcome.

It had taken me a while to realize that I would in some way have to love my mother in order to understand who she now was and what she had really been. This was difficult. I noticed, for instance, that she did not like leaving me alone in the house. She avoided going out if I decided to remain indoors, as if she suspected me of wishing to rummage through whatever of hers was private. This was my mother! I mentioned this to her once and she was so embarrassed I pulled back and apologized before she needed to defend herself. I would later discover she was someone adept in the theatre of war, but I felt the response was not a performance. The only time she revealed something of herself was to show me a few pictures that her parents had kept in a brown envelope in their bedroom. There was the serious schoolgirl face of my seventeen-year-old mother under our lime-tree bower, as well as photographs of her with her strong-willed mother and a tall man, sometimes with a parrot on his shoulder. He had a recognizable presence and reappeared in a handful of later pictures with my mother, slightly older, and her parents at the Casanova Revue Bar in Vienna—I was able to read the name on the large ashtray on the table, next to the dozen or so empty wineglasses. But otherwise there was nothing at White Paint that gave away anything about her adult life. If I were Telemachus I would find no proof of her activities as that disappeared parent, no evidence of those journeys of hers on wine-dark seas.

Most of the time we puttered about, staying out of each other’s way. I was relieved to go off to work each morning, even on Saturdays. Then one evening, after one of our light suppers, I became conscious of my mother’s restlessness, and that she was clearly eager to get out of the house even with the possibility of oncoming rain. Grey clouds had been above us all day.

“Come. Will you walk with me?”

I didn’t want to, and I could have pushed it, but I decided to go along and was greeted with an actual smile. “I’ll tell you more about that game at the opera,” she said. “Bring a coat. It will rain. We don’t want that to turn us back.” She locked the door and we headed west onto one of the hills.

How old was she around that time? Perhaps forty? I was now eighteen. She had married young, the habit and fashion of the time, though she had studied languages at university, and once told me she had wished to take a law degree. But gave that up and instead raised two children. She was in her early thirties, so still youthful, when war started and she began working as a signals operative. Now she was striding beside me in her yellow slicker.

“Paul Morphy was his name. It was October 21, 1858….”

“Okay. Paul Morphy,” I said, as if ready for the second serve she was about to send over the net.

“Okay.” She half laughed. “And I will only tell you this once. He was born in New Orleans, a prodigy. At twelve he beat a Hungarian grand master who was traveling across Louisiana. The parents wanted him to become a lawyer but he gave that up and followed the game. And the greatest match in his life was the one played in the Italian Opera House in Paris against the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard—who are remembered for only one reason, that they were beaten by this twenty-one-year-old.” I was smiling to myself. All these titles! I still remembered Agnes naming one of the dogs who had eaten her dinner in Mill Hill the “Earl of Sandwich.”

“But it was also the situation and location where the game was played that made them all famous, as if it were a scene in an Austro-Hungarian novel or an adventure like Scaramouche. The three players were sitting in the Duke of Brunswick’s private box, practically above the stage. They could have leaned down and kissed the prima donna. And it was the opening night of Bellini’s Norma, or The Infanticide.

“Morphy had never seen Norma and was eager to witness the performance for he simply loved music. He was sitting with his back to the stage, so he’d play quickly, then turn back to the footlights. Perhaps that’s what made it a masterpiece, each move being a fast sketch in the sky, barely touching the reality of earth. His opponents would debate among themselves and make a tentative move. Morphy would turn, glance at the board, push forward a pawn or a knight, and return to the opera. His clock time during the whole game was probably less than a minute. It was inspired, it is still inspired, still considered one of the remarkable games. He was playing White.

“So the game begins with the Philidor Defence, a passive opening for Black. Morphy is not interested in taking black pieces in the early stages, preferring to mass his forces for a quick checkmate so he can get back to the opera. Meanwhile the theoretical discussions by his opponents grow louder and louder, irritating the audience and the lead singer, Madame Rosina Penco, who is playing the High Priestess Norma and keeps flinging her stare towards the Duke’s box. Morphy brings out his queen and a bishop, working together to dominate the centre of the board, forcing Black into a tight defensive position.”