"It’s not so hard,” he'd told me soon after we’d started playing together. “It looks complicated, but it isn’t. There are sixty-four squares on a chess board, which means all I need to remember are sixty-four positions, and at all times, at least half of those are empty. All I need to do is attribute a letter to each piece— capital letters for yours and non-capital letters for mine. And another letter to signify an empty square. It’s quite simple when you look at it that way."
"I couldn't do it if my life depended on it," I said. "You have an exceptional memory."
Vilmos smiled a humble smile. “Nothing of the sort, I assure you. Especially if you compare my abilities to those of true grandmasters. Have you ever seen Salo Flohr play?"
“No."
"But you’ve heard of him?"
"He’s a chess player from Czechoslovakia, isn't he?"
"Not just a chess player, but a true master of the art. He’s also Jewish, but that’s beside the point. He hasn’t lived in Czechoslovakia since the Germans took over. Last I heard, he’d fled to Sweden, and if only we were all so lucky, eh? But that has nothing to do with the story I was meaning to tell you. Which is that I saw Salo
Flohr play, and it was one of the greatest moments of my life.” Vilmos’s eyes sparkled at the memory.
"When was this?"
"1936. In Prague. I traveled especially for the tournament. I watched Salo Flohr beat a florid Russian who scowled perpetually as he examined the state of the board, a state that deteriorated gradually and irremediably as the match progressed. Salo Flohr played with his usual quiet elegance, which was a pleasure to behold, but that’s not what amazed me most.”
He paused and looked at me, and I saw a tiny mischievous smile play at the corner of his mouth. He savored the role of the storyteller, and he was inviting me to draw out the story from him.
"What amazed you most?" I asked, giving him what he wanted.
"After the tournament was over," Vilmos said, "Flohr arranged a meeting with a local club of hobbyist players. They set up twenty-five tables in a semi-circle on stage at a theater hall, and on each table they placed a chess board. Flohr then proceeded to play against each of the twenty-five lucky men who’d been selected to face him, and he did so simultaneously, making a move at one table and then stepping over to the next to do the same. Of course, the state of the board was different at each table. Flohr won twenty-two of those matches, and drew the other three. Afterward, Flohr recited the sequence of moves in all those matches. Can you imagine that? Twenty-five matches!”
"It’s unbelievable," I said.
Vilmos nodded, enthusiasm lending color to his face. “I saw it with my own eyes, Adam. With my own eyes. So you see, my own memory is nothing extraordinary."
Our lunch break was short, and during it we had to eat and relieve ourselves, so we had little time for chess. Consequently, we played a lightning game, without thinking, fingers moving quickly, rubbing out letters from one square and scrawling them in another as we moved our pieces across the board. "It’s not the proper way to play,” Vilmos said, "but nothing is proper about this place, so this will have to do. After the war, after liberation, we’ll play a proper match. We'll sit in a cafe on the banks of the Danube and play, all right?”
"All right, Vilmos," I said, trying not to show my doubts that I would live to see liberation, if it ever came. "But not on the banks of the Danube. Not anywhere in Hungary.”
"Where, then?” he said, taking a bishop with his queen, leaving my left flank horribly exposed.
"My father was a devout man. Not like a yeshiva man, but he took his religion seriously, visited the synagogue regularly, and said his prayers every day. Nothing moved him as much as saying those words at the end of the Passover Seder and the Ne'ila service on Yom Kippur. L'Shana Haba’ah B'Yerushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem.”
"Your father was a Zionist?”
"Yes," I said, the old twinge of grief over his passing still sharp in my gut. I moved a rook three squares forward. “He gave money to Zionist organizations and said he would like to immigrate to the Land of Israel. My mother was dead set against the idea. She didn’t want to uproot herself and her family, and he was not the sort of man who put his foot down. Maybe he would have managed to persuade her with time, but he got ill and died before he had the chance. I was heartbroken when he died, but now I think it was for the best. At least he was spared this place."
Vilmos was quiet for a moment. From the trees came the raucous laughter of the SS guards. They were stuffing their faces with thick sandwiches and swigging from canteens. Fresh water. My mouth burned with desire for it. I had been thirsty before I came to Auschwitz, of course, but it had been a different species of thirst. This one was a continuous torture. Just like the hunger.
"So that’s where you’ll go when you're free again?" Vilmos said. "To Jerusalem?”
"It doesn’t have be Jerusalem specifically. But I’ll be going to Palestine. To the Land of Israel. Which is where we should have all gone long before the war started."
"We didn’t know," Vilmos said in a voice made brittle by regret. "How could we have known it would come to this?”
We couldn’t, of course. Only the devil could have imagined Auschwitz. And yet men had envisioned it, designed it, caused it to be built. So maybe we should have been able to foresee it. Maybe we should have known it was time to leave.
Again Vilmos was silent. Thought lines creased his forehead. He might have been thinking about his dead loved ones. I was thinking of mine.
"If not Jerusalem, then where?" he said eventually, in a lighthearted tone that sounded a bit forced. "A kibbutz?”
I shook my head and allowed myself a wry smile. "I don’t think living in a collective fits my nature. So maybe I will go to Jerusalem. Or maybe to Tel Aviv. I’ve seen pictures of the beach there, and of some of the buildings. I think I might like it there." I paused, trying to conjure up those pictures, and was surprised and gratified when they appeared crystal clear in my mind. And I wondered how it was possible to feel a longing for a place where I had never been. “Yes," I said. "I think I might like it just fine."
Right then, the Kapo shouted that lunch break was over, and we got back to work.
8
We worked until late afternoon. By that time, I was so tired my awareness had blurred, and I barely noticed what I was doing. My movements had turned automatic. Sink the spade into the ground, raise it, dump the contents into a bucket. Then repeat. Dozens, no, hundreds of times.
When the Kapo finally announced that the workday was over, I could hardly climb out of the trench. My legs were wobbly, and I kept slipping down, dirtying the knees of my trousers.
Vilmos helped me over the top, though he looked as worn out as I was, if not more. We returned our shovels to the truck and formed lines again. Two prisoners did not join the ranks. They lay on the ground like discarded rag dolls. Dead.
The Kapo berated us for our laziness and warned us to not shirk our duty the next day. “I've gone easy on you," he shouted, "but no more, you understand? No more." He pointed at Cyuri and me and then at a pair of other prisoners. "Take the bodies and let’s go. Quick march or you’ll miss your dinner, not that you deserve any."
Cyuri took the feet of one of the dead men, I grabbed his arms, and we began the trek back to camp. The dead man was nothing but skin and bones, but tired as we were, he felt as heavy as a sack of bricks.