The Queen's Gambit (21 page)

She shook her head to clear it. The game had not gone that far. They were still playing out tired old moves and the only advantage White had was the advantage White always had—the first move. Someone had said that when computers really learned to play chess and played against one another, White would always win because of the first move. Like tick-tack-toe. But it hadn’t come to that. She was not playing a perfect machine.

Borgov brought his bishop back to knight three, retreating. She played pawn to queen four, and he took the pawn and she brought her bishop to king three. She had known this much back at Methuen from the lines she memorized in class from
Modern Chess Openings
. But the game was ready now to enter a wide-open phase, where it could take unexpected turns. She looked up just as Borgov, his face smooth and impassive, picked up his queen and set it in front of the king, on king two. She blinked at it for a moment. What was he doing? Going after the knight on her king five? He could pin the pawn that protected the knight easily enough with a rook. But the move looked somehow suspicious. She felt the tightness in her stomach again, a touch of dizziness.

She folded her arms across her chest and began to study the position. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the young man who moved the pieces on the display board placing the big cardboard white queen on the king two square. She glanced out into the room. There were about a dozen people standing there watching. She turned back to the board. She would have to get rid of his bishop. Knight to rook four looked good for that. There was also knight to bishop four or bishop to king two, but that was very complicated. She studied the possibilities for a moment and discarded the idea. She did not trust herself against Borgov with those complications. To put a knight on the rook file cut its range in half; but she did it. She had to get rid of the bishop. The bishop was up to no good.

Borgov reached down without hesitation and played knight to queen four. She stared at it; she had expected him to move his rook. Still there seemed to be no harm in it. Pushing her queen bishop pawn up to the fourth square looked good. It would force Borgov’s knight to take her bishop, and after that she could take his bishop with her knight and stop the annoying pressure on her other knight, the one that sat a bit too far down the board on king five and didn’t have enough flight squares for comfort. Against Borgov, the loss of a knight would be lethal. She played the queen bishop pawn, holding the piece for a moment between her fingers before letting it go. Then she sat a bit farther back in her chair and drew a deep breath. The position looked good.

Without hesitation Borgov took the bishop with his knight, and Beth retook with her pawn. Then he played his queen bishop pawn to the third rank, as she thought he might, creating a place for the nuisance bishop to hide. She took the bishop with relief, getting rid of it and getting her knight off the embarrassing rook file. Borgov remained impassive, taking the knight with his pawn. His eyes flicked up to hers and back to the position.

She looked down nervously. It had looked good a few moves before; it did not look so good now. The problem was her knight on king five. He could move his queen to knight four, threatening to take her king’s pawn with check, and when she protected against this, he could attack the knight with his king bishop pawn, and it would have no place to go. Borgov’s queen would be there to take it. There was another annoyance on her queen side: he could play rook takes pawn, giving up the rook to hers only to get it back with a queen check, coming out a pawn ahead and with an improved position. No. Two pawns ahead. She would have to put her queen on knight three. Queen to queen two was no good because of his damned bishop pawn that could attack her knight. She did not like this defensiveness and studied the board for a long time before moving, trying to find something that would counterattack. There was nothing. She had to move the queen and protect the knight. She felt her cheeks burning and studied the position again. Nothing. She brought her queen to knight three and did not look at Borgov.

With no hesitation whatever Borgov brought his bishop to king three, protecting his king.
Why hadn’t she seen that?
She had looked long enough. Now if she pushed the pawn she had planned to push, she would lose her queen.
How could she have missed it?
She had planned the threat of discovered check with the new position of her queen, and he had parried it instantly with a move that was chillingly obvious. She glanced at him, at his well-shaven, imperturbable Russian face with the tie so finely knotted beneath his heavy chin, and the fear she felt almost froze her muscles.

She studied the board with all the intensity she could muster, sitting rigidly for twenty minutes staring at the position. Her stomach sank even farther as she tried and rejected a dozen continuations. She could not save the knight. Finally she played her bishop to king two, and Borgov predictably put his queen on knight four, threatening again to win the knight by pushing up his king bishop pawn. Now she had the choice of king to queen two or of castling. Either way the knight was lost. She castled.

Borgov immediately moved the bishop pawn to attack her knight. She could have screamed. Everything he was doing was obvious, unimaginative, bureaucratic. She felt stifled and played pawn to queen five, attacking his bishop, and then watched his inevitable moving of the bishop to rook six, threatening to mate. She would have to bring her rook up to protect. He would take the knight with his queen, and if she took the bishop, the queen would pick off the rook in the corner with a check, and the whole thing would blow apart. She would have to bring the rook over to protect it. And meanwhile she was down a knight. Against a world’s champion, whose shirt was impeccably white, whose tie was beautifully tied, whose dark-jowled Russian face admitted no doubt or weakness.

She saw her hand reach out, and taking the black king by its head, topple it onto the board.

She sat there for a moment and heard the applause. Then, looking at no one, she left the room.

NINE

“Give me a tequila sunrise,” she said. The clock over the bar pointed to twelve-thirty, and there was a group of four American women at one of the tables at the far end of the room eating lunch. Beth had not eaten breakfast, but she did not want lunch.

“
Con mucho gusto
,” the bartender said.

The awards ceremony was at two-thirty. She drank through it in the bar. She would be fourth place, or maybe fifth. The two who had done a grandmaster draw together would be ahead of her with five and a half points each. Borgov had six. Her score was five. She had three tequila sunrises, ate two hard-boiled eggs and shifted to beer. Dos Equis. It took four of them to make the pain in her stomach go away, to blur the fury and shame. Even when it began to ease, she could still see Borgov’s dark, heavy face and could feel the frustration she had felt during their match. She had played like a novice, like a passive, embarrassed fool.

She drank a lot, but she did not get dizzy, and her speech did not slur when she ordered. There seemed to be a kind of insulation around her that kept everything at a distance. She sat at a table at one end of the cocktail lounge with her glass of beer, and she did not get drunk.

At three o’clock two players from the tournament came into the bar, talking quietly. Beth got up and went straight to her room.

Mrs. Wheatley was lying in bed. She had a hand on her head with the fingers dug into her hair as though she had a headache. Beth walked over to the bed. Mrs. Wheatley did not look right. Beth reached out and took her by the arm. Mrs. Wheatley was dead.

It seemed as though she felt nothing, but five minutes passed before Beth was able to let go of Mrs. Wheatley’s cold arm and pick up the telephone.

The manager knew exactly what to do. Beth sat in the armchair drinking
café con leche
from room service while two men with a stretcher came and the manager instructed them. She heard him, but she did not watch. She kept her eyes on the window. Sometime later she turned to see a middle-aged woman in a gray suit, using a stethoscope on Mrs. Wheatley. Mrs. Wheatley was on the bed and the stretcher was under her. The two men in green uniform were standing at the edge of the bed, looking embarrassed. The woman took off her stethoscope, nodded to the manager and came over to Beth. Her face was strained. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Beth looked away from her. “What was it?”

“Hepatitis, possibly. We’ll know tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Beth said. “Could you give me a tranquilizer?”

“I have a sedative…”

“I don’t want a sedative,” Beth said. “Can you give me a prescription for Librium?”

The doctor stared at her for a moment and shrugged. “You don’t need a prescription to buy Librium in Mexico. I suggest meprobamate. There’s a
farmacia
in the hotel.”

***

Using a map in the front of Mrs. Wheatley’s
Mobil Travel Guide
, Beth wrote down the names of the cities between Denver, Colorado, and Butte, Montana. The manager had told her his assistant would be of whatever help she needed in phoning, signing papers, dealing with the authorities. Ten minutes after they had taken Mrs. Wheatley away, Beth called the assistant and read him the list of towns and gave him the name. He said he would call her back. She ordered a Coca-Cola
grande
and more coffee from room service. Then she undressed quickly and took a shower. There was a phone in the bathroom, but the call did not come through. She still felt nothing.

She dressed in fresh jeans and a white T-shirt. On the little table by the bed was Mrs. Wheatley’s pack of Chesterfields, empty, crumpled by Mrs. Wheatley’s hands. The ashtray beside it was full of butts. One cigarette, the last one Mrs. Wheatley had ever smoked, sat on the edge of the little tray, with a long cold ash. Beth stared at it a minute; then she went into the bathroom and dried her hair.

The boy who brought the big bottle of Coke and the carafe of coffee was very respectful and waved away her attempt to sign the bill. The telephone rang. It was the manager. “I have your call,” he said. “From Denver.”

There was a series of clicks in the receiver and then a male voice, surprisingly loud and clear. “This is Allston Wheatley.”

“It’s Beth, Mr. Wheatley.”

There was a pause. “Beth?”

“Your daughter. Elizabeth Harmon.”

“You’re in
Mexico
? You’re calling from Mexico?”

“It’s about Mrs. Wheatley.” She was looking at the cigarette, never really smoked, on the ashtray.

“How’s Alma?” the voice said. “Is she there with you? In Mexico?” The interest sounded forced. She could picture him as she had seen him at Methuen, wishing he were somewhere else, everything about him saying that he wanted to make no connections, wanted always to be somewhere else.

“She’s dead, Mr. Wheatley. She died this morning.”

There was silence at the other end of the line. Finally she said, “Mr. Wheatley…”

“Can’t you handle this for me?” he said. “I can’t be going off to Mexico.”

“They’re going to do an autopsy tomorrow, and I’ve got to get new plane tickets. I mean, get a new plane ticket for myself…” Her voice had suddenly gone weak and aimless. She picked up the coffee cup and took a drink from it. “I don’t know where to bury her.”

Mr. Wheatley’s voice came back with surprising crispness. “Call Durgin Brothers, in Lexington. There’s a family plot in her maiden name. Benson.”

“What about the house?”

“Look”—the voice was louder now—“I don’t want any part of this. I’ve got problems enough here in Denver. Get her up to Kentucky and bury her and the house is yours. Just make the mortgage payments. Do you need money?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it will cost.”

“I heard you were doing all right. The child prodigy thing. Can’t you charge it or something?”

“I can talk to the hotel manager.”

“Good. You do that. I’m strapped for cash right now, but you can have the house and the equity. Call the Second National Bank and ask for Mr. Erlich. That’s E-r-l-i-c-h. Tell him I want you to have the house. He knows how to reach me.”

There was silence again. Then she said, as strongly as she could, “Don’t you want to know what she died of?”

“What was it?”

“Hepatitis, I think. They’ll know tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Mr. Wheatley said. “She was sick a lot.”

***

The manager and the doctor took care of everything—even the refund on Mrs. Wheatley’s plane ticket. Beth had to sign some official papers, had to absolve the hotel of responsibility and fill out government forms. One had the title “U.S. Customs—Transfer of Remains.” The manager got Durgin Brothers in Lexington. The assistant manager drove Beth to the airport the following day, with the hearse discreetly trailing them through the streets of Mexico City and along the highway. She saw the metal coffin only once, looking out the window from the TWA waiting room. The hearse had driven up to the 707 at the gate and some men were unloading it in brilliant sunlight. They set it on a forklift, and she could hear the dim whine of the engine through the glass as it was raised to the level of the cargo hold. For a moment it trembled in the sunshine and she had a sudden horrific vision of it falling off the lift and crashing to the tarmac, spilling out the embalmed middle-aged corpse of Mrs. Wheatley on the hot gray asphalt. But that did not happen. The casket was pulled handily into the cargo hold.

On board Beth declined a drink from the stewardess. When she had gone back down the aisle, Beth opened her purse and took out one of her new bottles of green pills. She had spent three hours the day before, after signing the papers, going from
farmacia
to
farmacia
, buying the limit of one hundred pills in each.

***

The funeral was simple and brief. A half-hour before it began, Beth took four green pills. She sat in the church alone, in a quiet daze, while the minister said the things ministers say. There were flowers at the altar, and she was mildly surprised to see a pair of men from the funeral home step up and carry them out as soon as the minister had finished. Six other people were there, but Beth knew none of them. One old lady hugged her afterward and said, “You poor dear.”