When she walked up the hill to the tournament in the morning, the air was still splendid and the colors bright, but she was tense. The elevator in the big hotel was crowded. Several people in it stared at her, and she looked away nervously. The man at the desk stopped what he was doing the minute she walked up.
“Do I register here?” she asked.
“No need, Miss Harmon. Just go on in.”
“Which board?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Board One.”
Board One was in a room by itself. The table was on a three-foot-high platform, and a display board as big as a home-movie screen stood behind it. On each side of the table was a big swivel chair of brown leather and chrome. It was five minutes before starting time, and the room was jammed with people; she had to push her way through them to the playing space. As she did so, the buzz of talk died down. Everyone looked at her. When she climbed the steps to the platform, they began to applaud. She tried not to let her face show anything, but she was frightened. The last game of chess she had played was five months before, and she had lost it.
She didn’t even know who her opponent was; she hadn’t thought to ask. She sat there for a moment with her mind nearly empty, and then an arrogant-looking young man came briskly through the crowd and up the steps. He had long black hair and a broad, drooping mustache. She recognized him from somewhere, and when he introduced himself as Andy Levitt, she remembered the name from Chess Review. He seated himself stiffly. A tournament director came up to the table and spoke quietly to Levitt. “You can start her clock now.” Levitt reached out, looking unconcerned, and pressed the button on Beth’s clock. She held herself steady and played her queen’s pawn, keeping her eyes on the board.
By the time they had got into the middle game, there were people jammed in the doorway and someone was shushing the crowd and trying to maintain order. She had never seen so many spectators at a match. She turned her attention back to the board and carefully brought a rook to an open file. If Levitt didn’t find a way to prevent it, she could try attacking in three moves. If she wasn’t missing something in the position. She started moving in on him cautiously, prying the pawns loose from his castled king. Then she took a deep breath and brought a rook to the seventh rank. She could hear at the back of her mind the voice of the chess bum in Cincinnati years before: “Bone in the throat, a rook on the seventh rank.” She looked across the board at Levitt. He looked as if it were indeed a chicken bone and deeply imbedded. Something in her exulted, seeing him try to hide his confusion. And when she followed the rook with her queen, looking brutal on the seventh rank, he resigned immediately. The applause in the room was loud and enthusiastic. When she came down from the platform she was smiling. There were people waiting with old copies of Chess Review, wanting her to autograph her picture on the cover. Others wanted her to sign their programs or just sheets of paper.
While she was signing one of the magazines, she looked for a moment at the black-and-white photograph of herself holding the big trophy in Ohio, with Benny and Barnes and a few others out of focus in the background. Her face looked tired and plain, and she recalled with a sudden remembered shame that the magazine had sat with its tan mailing cover in a stack on the cobbler’s bench for a month before she had opened it and found her picture. Someone thrust another copy at her to sign, and she shook off the memory. She autographed her way out of the crowded room and through yet another crowd that was waiting outside the door, filling the space between her playing area and the ballroom where the rest of the tournament was still in progress. Two directors were trying to hush the crowd to avoid disturbing the other games as she came through. Some of the players looked up from their boards angrily and frowned in her direction. It was exhilarating and frightening, having all these people pressed near her, pushing up to her with admiration. One of the women who had got her autograph said, “I don’t know a thing about chess, dear, but I’m thrilled for you,” and a middle-aged man insisted on shaking her hand, saying, “You’re the best thing for the game since Capablanca.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I wish it were as easy for me.” Maybe it is, she thought. Her brain seemed to be all right. Maybe she hadn’t ruined it.
She walked confidently down the street to her hotel in bright sunshine. She would be going to Russia in six months. Christian Crusade had agreed to buy tickets on Aeroflot for her and Benny and a woman from the USCF and would pay their hotel bills. The Moscow tournament would provide the meals. She had been studying chess for six hours a day, and she could keep it up. She stopped to buy more flowers—carnations this time. The woman at the desk had asked for her autograph last night when she came in from dinner; she would be glad to get her another vase. Before leaving for California, Beth had mailed off checks for subscriptions to all the magazines Benny took. She would be getting Deutsche Schachzeitung, the oldest chess magazine, and British Chess Magazine and, from Russia, Shakhmatni v USSR. There would be Échecs Europe and American Chess Bulletin. She planned to play through every grandmaster game in them, and when she found games that were important she would memorize them and analyze every move that had consequence or developed any idea that she was not familiar with. In early spring she might go to New York and play the U.S. Open and get in a few weeks with Benny. The flowers in her hand glowed crimson, her new jeans and cotton sweater felt fresh on her skin in the cool San Francisco air, at the bottom of the street the blue ocean lay like a dream of possibility. Her soul sang silently with it, reaching out toward the Pacific.
When she came home with her trophy and the first-prize check, she found in the pile of mail two business envelopes: one was from the USCF and contained a check for four hundred dollars and a brief apology that they couldn’t send more. The second was from Christian Crusade. It had a three-page letter that spoke of the need to promote international understanding through Christian principles and to annihilate Communism for the advancement of those same principles. The word “His” was capitalized in a way that made Beth uneasy. The letter was signed “Yours in Christ” by four people. Folded up in it was a check for four thousand dollars. She held the check in her hand for a long time. Her prize money at San Francisco was two thousand, and she had to take her travel expenses out of it. Her bank account had been dwindling for the past six months. She had hoped to get at most two thousand dollars from the people in Texas. Whatever crazy ideas they might have, the money was a gift from heaven. She called Benny to tell him the good news.
When she came in from her Wednesday morning squash game the phone was ringing. She got her raincoat off in a hurry, threw it on the sofa and picked up the phone. It was a woman’s voice. “Is this Elizabeth Harmon?”
“Yes.”
“This is Helen Deardorff, at Methuen.” She was too astonished to speak. “I have something to tell you, Elizabeth. Mr. Shaibel died last night. I thought you might want to know.”