The Old Master looked down at the board and chessmen again, although he had seen their stiff pattern times out of mind. While the tournament director was
speaking he could wait. And as he waited the old questions rose once more in his mind. Could this
be it, the perfect game, the thing of beauty, the work of art? Could there come out of this tension of
minds, this conflict of wits, anything more than victory and defeat? This unknowing search for secret
beauty! What was the perfect game of chess? Was Capablanca right? Was it a draw, with the board
exhausted of pieces? Was it a smashing victory? Was it a thing of small advantages multiplied into
attrition?
The director's voice seeped into his reverie.
"Final round. Rolavsky the Russian champion
leading with seven points. Draws against Henderson and Zettler. Then six straight wins."
The thought of a perfect game faded. Win? Could he even draw? Could he hold off the faultless
Rolavsky, whose countrymen had for years pooled their incredibly patient testing of every defense to
the Queen's Gambit and the Ruy Lopez?
"His opponent half a point behind. No one else close
enough."
The Old Master looked up at the other playing areas roped off in the center of the ballroom.
Epstein and Creech, poised, repeating a tableau older than memory. Batchelor, bushy-haired and
nervous, glancing at tiny Zeitlin, prepared to play as if the title were balanced. The others farther
away, still figures drawn sharply together over the subtlest challenge in their lives. The huge
demonstration boards against the wall, runners and movers waiting to record the play in each game.
The crowd, impatient for the director to finish and for this game to begin.
"Ten years since he'd won
a tournament. his entry invited frankly as a sentimental gesture to the spirit of his long career, now his
amazing comeback against eight of the world's best. world's championship vacated by the death of
Alekhine. assured of second place, he has already done better than the old Lasker at Moscow. can
this grand old man of chess snatch a full point from his ninth and last opponent, the unbeatable
Russian? He needs a win, Rolavsky only a draw".
Could he win? He lingered a moment over what a
win would mean. The cash prize. Exhibitions. Tours. New editions of a champion's works.
Contracts for others. No more the poverty of a chessmaster's life, articles and annotations for
short-lived journals, books that barely paid their way, lessons to sharkish amateurs who wanted only
to beat each other. How many masters, having given their lives to the game, had died penniless, like
Alekhine?
"Additional drama. Youth and age. Tthe only player in the world with a plus score against
Rolavsky. That famous fifteen-move surprise win of his at Bitzer Lake ten years ago. Bitzer Lake!
The old master looked at the board again and wondered how he should open this time. Queen's
Gambit?
"Like his countryman, Frank Marshall, he has never played to the score, but has always
sought to make each game a work of art".
A Lopez? Had Rolavsky been saving a defense for the
Lopez ever since that savage encounter at Bitzer Lake? Could he meet it cold, as Capablanca did
Marshall's at New York and smash it? What to play? King pawn or queen pawn?
The voice
stopped. The director was at his table, starting his clock. Two hours for thirty moves. The
photographers near his table poised themselves as he moved his arm. He lifted his eyes to
Rolavsky's face and saw etched in it the sharp memory of that defeat at Bitzer Lake.
Suddenly he
felt tired, remembering the dilemma in which he had spent himself so many times in fifty years. Play
for a win or play for perfection? There rose against him the ghosts of a hundred games and a dozen
tournamentslost because he could never decide which he wanted. The clock at his elbow ticked
insistently. King pawn or queen pawn? And, as ever, in the corner of his mind, the same old
question. Could this be it, the work of art? He thought of Kieseritzky, remembered only as the loser
of that ever-famous partie to Anderssen.
Rolavsky twisted a little, and somewhere out of the
thousands of games and hundreds of players in the old man's memory there stirred a spark. The
immortal Lasker playing his fourth move at Saint Petersburg. Bishop takes knight, most drawish of
all the variations in the Lopez, and there was Lasker needing a win but playing bishop takes knight
against Capablanca. Psychological chess. Capablanca sweating away at the thought of a new
wrinkle. Lasker sitting like a stone. Rolavsky twitched again, and suddenly the old master wasn't
tired any more. Conviction freshened him like wine. He felt again as at every game, before the first
move. He smiled at Rolavsky, and moved his pawn to king four. Photographers' flashes sprang at
him. The audience riffled forward as Rolavsky duplicated the move. With no hesitation, the Old
Master moved his queen pawn beside his king pawn and listened for the buzz from the spectators.
"Center Game! Is he playing the Center Game? Mieses used to try it. But the queen moves too
soon. Hasn't been played in a tournament since Tartakower tried it at Stockholm against Reshevsky.
Is he crazy? Rolavsky will smash it to bits".
There was no way to decline the capture even if
Rolavsky had wanted to, but the younger man seemed a little slow as he took the pawn. The old
man caught his eye again, smiled again, pushed his queen's bishop's pawn forward a square, then
leaned back and waited for the avalanche.
It came with a rush, as of collapse at a distance.
Rolavsky half rose from his chair.
"Danish Gambit? Danish Gambit! Two pawns. Who can give
Rolavsky two pawns, development or no development? What does he think this is, a skittles game?
Danish. Not in a tournament since Marshall drew one with Capa twenty years ago".
Rolavsky stared
across the board, tight-lipped in contempt. Then he took the second pawn.
For a moment the old
man's mind drifted back to other ballrooms and hotels, the Crystal Palace, chop houses and
concessions, the thousand places where he had paused before a board and moved a pawn or
knight. The simultaneous play where he walked forever within a horseshoe of tables: fifteen, fifty, a
hundred sometimes, moving a piece or being waved by, ever returning and ever wondering with
each move if somewhere, in some single play, even on a greasy board with clumsy pieces, he might
pluck the secret. The thick smoke, the bad food, the hours of walking, the stale people behind the
tables straining for a win or a draw against the master and playing on even though a queen or a
couple of pieces down. He remembered, too, the glittering tournaments at Margate, Hastings, San
Remo, Monte Carlo, with jeweled women and royalty looking over his shoulder. He lived again that
moment at Breslau when Marshall plunged his queen into a nest of Lewitzky's pawns, and the
spectators, caught up in the excitement of the most elegant move ever made, showered the table
with gold pieces. Slowly he forced these memories from his mind and, as he looked out over the
spectators, moved his bishop to bishop four.
The crowd stirred uneasily, waiting for Rolavsky to
take the third pawn and then hang on through the attack. The Old Master wondered a little too.
Rolavsky always took the pawn in the Queen's Gambit, probably because it wasn't a gambit at all.
In the Danish he had to take the first and could take the second, according to the books. Schlechter
had always taken the third too. But how lately had Rolavsky played against a Danish? He was taking
too long, that young wizard. Now it came: Kinight to King Bishop three. Development. Playing safe.
The old man advanced his knight to king bishop three and tapped the clock, as after every move.
Rolavsky studied the board a long time. Again the spectators shifted about. A few moves more,
thought the Old Master, and he would know whether to hope for a draw or a win. With an edge of
sudden fear he remembered that Tchigorin had once lost a game in eight moves, Alapin in five. He
jerked his mind about and worried the chessmen as they waited for his turn. But Rolavsky was
plainly hesitating now, as if trying to recall the best line. Surely the pawn was not poisoned. Yet, one
piece out to White's two. Even before Rolavsky's fingers touched the bishop, the Old Master moved
it mentally to bishop four. There it rested and a surge of power flowed into his mind. His reply was
obvious, but he lingered over it a while, probing with his imagination the mind of his antagonist, that
mind crammed with encyclopedic knowledge of standard openings, hundreds of variations in the
Queen's Pawn. Was it shaken a little now, that fine machine? The crowd seemed to think so. A
half-caught whisper: "Why didn't he take the pawn? Why not"?
Why not? Was Rolavsky thinking of
Bitzer Lake and the thrust of rage with which he had swept the pieces to the floor at the fifteenth
move? Now the Old Master lifted his knight and removed the Black pawn at bishop three. Rolavsky
moved pawn to queen three; and as the old man castled, it was obvious that White had
compensation for the pawn sacrificed. Again the muttering. "Seven moves and Rolavsky on the
defensive. Unheard of. A Danish Gambit"?
After long thought the Russian castled, and now the Old
Master felt himself moving into that strange trance of chess intuition. Attack. Tempt a weakness. A
combination, with the pieces piling up at one spot, cleansing the board of each other's presence.
Lines of play ran through his head. The pieces on the board swirled into patterns, blended, and
stiffened into place eight or ten moves on. Tempt a weakness. But would Rolavsky move his pawn?
His whole queen side undeveloped? The Old Master put his hand to the king's knight and a small
sigh went up from the spectators. "One move. A single tempo. and Rolavsky's even. Why didn't he
pin the knight"? A moment's hesitation, and then he placed the knight at knight five. There. Now
would Rolavsky move the pawn? The precisionist wouldn't. The arrogant refuter of gambits would.
Did there linger still a trace of something from the third move? Would this Russian weaken? Rook
and pawn, did he think, for bishop and knight?
Rolavsky studied the position almost interminably.
Then he pushed his pawn to king rook three, then dropped his hand as if burnt, as if too late he had
seen beneath the surface of the board a steady fire. And now the crowd was quiet, waiting, and
there began to break into the Old Master's brain a long shaft of light. A combination, the moves
tumbling over one another with sweet promise. A game of equilibrium, a perfect tension of pieces,
everything held in suspense by a perpetual check from Black, a fantasy of eternal motion caught in
the flowing lines of a knight's pendulum move. The perfect game of chess! He could force Rolavsky
to play for a draw. Eagerly the Old Master took the bishop's pawn with his knight and waited for
Rolavsky to retake with the rook. The combination was irresistible. But would Rolavsky see the
knight check he himself would have to give, five moves later, to hold the draw? Would he take the
draw that would give him the championship of the world?
Rolavsky retook with the rook, and the
old man moved the king pawn down. The crowd, sensing something in the quick replies after so long
a series of waits, rippled with comment. "Why didn't he retake with the bishop? If pawn takes pawn,
the queen is lost. What's the old man after? No, the rook is pinned. It won't run away". At last
Rolavsky switched the threatened knight to knight five. The Old Master moved the pawn to king six
and found himself praying that Rolavsky would not take it with the bishop. The continuation
darkened his mind: He takes with his bishop, I'll take with mine; he threatens mate, queen to rook
five; I take the rook and check; he takes the bishop with the king; I check at bishop three with the
queen; he goes to the knight square, then pawn to king rook three and he's lost. But lost in a brutal
way after a blunt struggle. No charm there, no beauty, only a win. For a moment the Old Master
cursed this insane undesire to win that had cost him so many a tournament; and he hoped that
Rolavsky would take with the bishop. The pull of the title spun the chessboard before him as he
thought of the fifty years he had divided his heart between fortune and perfection. He searched
Rolavsky's face as the clock ticked off minutes. Two hours for thirty moves. Only a third of them
made, and Rolavsky still looking at the board. Too long.
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