Writers & Lovers(68)

He smiles and takes a breath. ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita—’ he stops and laughs at my expression. ‘My accent is really bad.’

‘It’s atrocious. But go on.’

‘Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che la diritta via era smarrita. I took a Dante class in college, and we had the choice of reciting five pages in English or one page in bad Italian.’

‘It’s a beautiful first line.’

‘I think of it a lot more than I ever thought I would.’

‘I’ve really lost my cammin.’

‘We all lose our cammin.’

‘It’s so physical. It feels like my body is rejecting me.’

He nods like he really knows what I mean. ‘Have you tried, you know, concentrating on the top of your head then your forehead then—’

‘It just makes it worse. The only thing that helps is clenching.’

‘Clenching?’

I lift up my arm and squeeze my right fist. I count to ten and release it. I raise my left fist and squeeze and he copies me. I release and he releases. We do many muscles this way, arms, stomach, legs, feet. The last thing I show him are the face muscles, squeezing everything tight shut then opening our eyes and mouth wide. We look like crazed demons guarding a temple.

Afterward things feel smoother.

‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘I feel like I’m floating.’

We go outside. There are a few games going on at the chess tables.

‘Hey,’ Silas says, touching my jacket, ‘Let’s play.’

The guy at the last table is alone, waiting for a player. Silas asks him if we can play just ourselves and hands him ten bucks and the guy takes off. Silas lets me have the guy’s seat, which is still warm and faces out to the rest of the courtyard and down Mass. Ave. toward Central Square. He takes the chair opposite. I haven’t played in a long time. My father taught me on a small travel board with a magnetic bottom. We’d play on airplanes. This one is inlaid, black and tan, in the stone table. The pieces are marble, black and ivory.

‘Ok, you’re Adolf Anderssen and I’m Lionel Kieseritzky,’ he says, straightening his knights. ‘It’s London, eighteen fiftyone. Bishop’s Gambit. White opens.’ He points to my pawn above the king and I move it up two squares and he nods. He moves his opposite pawn to face mine directly. ‘I have this book about famous chess matches, and sometimes I play them.’ He looks up at me. ‘My version of clenching. Escaping into someone else’s mind for a little while.’ He taps the pawn above my king’s bishop and I move it up one and he shakes his head and I move it up another, putting it directly and unnecessarily at risk from the only pawn he’s moved.

‘Why would I do that?’

‘It’s a risk.’ He takes my pawn. ‘But I think it gives you more control of the center of the board.’

I don’t see why I have more control, having voluntarily lost a chess piece. He has me move a bishop, then he slides his queen across the board and says, ‘Check.’

‘Damn.’ I move my king to the right, and he nods. ‘Now I can’t castle.’

‘That’s right.’

I get two of his pawns, and he gets my bishop and another pawn. We are reckless, Anderssen and I. When cornered, we go on the offense, sacrificing needlessly.

‘The funny thing about this game—it’s called the Immortal Game—is that they played it on a sofa during a break in a really intense seven-week world tournament. This was just a casual game, a game to relax between matches.’

‘Maybe it’s relaxing for you. But I’m getting crushed.’

He takes my rook, and his queen is poised to get my other rook and then my king. Instead of defending them, he has me move a dinky pawn one square in the middle of the board, threatening no one.

‘Brilliant,’ Silas says. And he takes my other rook with his queen. ‘Check.’

I move my king up a square. It’s all over. He’s got his bishop and his queen after me, and I’ve got no one. But instead of going after my king he brings out a knight from the back row.

I study the board. I see why he feels threatened. I move my knight and take his pawn. ‘Check.’

‘Yes! That’s what he did.’ He slides his king over one.

And then I see it. I see it so clearly. I move my queen forward three squares. ‘Check.’

He takes my queen with his knight. I move my bishop diagonally one. His king is pinned. Either way he goes, one of my knights will get him.

‘Checkmate,’ I yell at him. ‘Checkmate!’

Silas whoops and raises both hands for me slap.

‘How did that happen?’ I look at all the pieces I lost at the side of the table, two pawns, two rooks, a bishop, and a queen. ‘How did he do that?’

‘He didn’t need them. He just had the guts to keep fighting.’

‘I do feel kind of immortal now.’

He laughs. He looks happy and doesn’t try to hide it.

I walk him to his car on Oxford Street. His school has early release on Wednesdays, but he has to tutor a kid at two and he’s late. We walk close, my shoulder brushing against his upper arm like it did on the river that night.

‘When I moved that pawn and you said brilliant, I didn’t get it. But that pawn blocked your queen from coming back and saving you.’