“They weren’t all cruel,” she said. “There was a man named Fergussen, some kind of attendant. He loved us, I think.”
The man from UPI who had interviewed her on her first day in Moscow spoke up. “Who taught you to play if they didn’t want you doing it?”
“His name was Shaibel,” she said, thinking of that wall of pictures in the basement. “William Shaibel. He was the janitor.”
“Tell us about it,” the woman from the Observer said.
“We played chess in the basement, after he taught me how.”
Clearly they loved it. The man from Paris-Match shook his head, smiling. “The janitor taught you to play chess?”
“That’s right,” Beth said, with an involuntary tremor in her voice. “Mr. William Shaibel. He was a damn good player. He spent a lot of time at it, and he was good.”
After they left she took a warm bath, stretching out in the enormous cast-iron tub. Then she put on her jeans and began setting up the pieces. But the minute she had it on the board and began to examine it, all the tightness came back. In Paris her position at this point had looked stronger than this, and she had lost. She turned from the desk and went to the window, opening the draperies and looking out on Moscow. The sun was still high, and the city below looked far lighter and more cheerful than Moscow was supposed to look. The distant park where the old men played chess was bright with green, but she was frightened. She did not think she had the strength to go on and beat Vasily Borgov. She did not want to think about chess. If there had been a television set in her room, she would have turned it on. If she had had a bottle of anything, she would have drunk it. She thought briefly of calling room service and stopped herself just in time.
She sighed and went back to the chessboard. It had to be studied. She had to have a plan for tomorrow morning at ten.
She awoke before dawn and lay in bed for a while before looking at her watch. It was five-thirty. Two hours and a half. She had slept two hours and a half. She closed her eyes grimly and tried to get back to sleep. But it didn’t work. The position of the adjourned game forced itself back into her mind. There were her pawns, and there was her queen. There was Borgov’s. She saw it, she could not stop seeing it, but it made no sense. She had stared at it for hours the night before, trying to get some kind of plan together for the rest of the game, moving the pieces around, sometimes on the real board and sometimes in her head, but it was no good. She could push the queen bishop pawn or bring the knight over to the kingside or put the queen on bishop two. Or on king two. If Borgov’s sealed move was knight to bishop five. If he had moved his queen, the responses were different. If he was trying to make her analysis a waste, he might have played the king bishop. Five-thirty. Four and a half hours until game time. Borgov would have his moves ready now and a game plan arrived at by consultation; he would be sleeping like a rock. From outside the window came a sudden noise like a distant alarm, and she jumped. It was just some Russian fire drill or something, but her hands shook for a moment.
She had kasha and eggs for breakfast and sat down behind the board again. It was seven forty-five. But even with three cups of tea, she somehow could not penetrate it. She tried doggedly to get her mind to open, to let her imagination work for her the way it so often worked over a chessboard, but nothing came. She could see nothing but her responses to Borgov’s future threats. It was passive, and she knew it was passive. It had beaten her in Mexico City and it could beat her again. She got up to open the draperies, and as she turned back to the board, the telephone rang.
She stared at it. During her week in this room, it had not rung once. Not even Mr. Booth had called her. Now it was ringing in short bursts, very loudly. She went over and picked it up. A woman’s voice said something in Russian. She couldn’t make out a word of it.
“This is Beth Harmon,” she said.
The voice said something else in Russian. There was a clicking in the receiver, and a male voice came through as clearly as if it were calling from the next room: “If he moves the knight, hit him with the king rook pawn. If he goes for the king bishop, do the same. Then open up your queen file. This is costing me a bundle.”
“Benny!” she said. “Benny! How can you know…”
“It’s in the Times. It’s afternoon here, and we’ve been working on it for three hours. Levertov’s with me, and Wexler.”
“Benny,” she said, “it’s good to hear your voice.”
“You’ve got to get that file open. There are four ways, depending on what he does. Do you have it handy?”
She glanced toward the desk. “Yes.”
“Let’s start with his knight to B-5 where you push the king rook pawn. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“All right. There are three things he might do now. B to B four is first. If he does it, your queen pops right up to king four. He’ll expect that but may not expect this: pawn to queen five.”
“I don’t see…”
“Look at his queen rook.”
She closed her eyes and saw it. Only one of her pawns stood between her bishop and the rook. And if he tried to block the pawn, it made a hole for her knight. But Borgov and the others could not miss that.
“He’s got Tal and Petrosian helping him.”
Benny whistled. “I suppose he would,” he said. “But look further. If he moves the rook before your queen comes out, where’s he going to put it?”
“On the bishop file.”
“You play pawn to queen bishop five and your file is almost open.”
He was right. It was beginning to look possible. “What if he doesn’t play B to B four?”
“I’ll put Levertov on.”
Levertov’s voice came over the receiver. “He may play knight to B five. That gets very tricky. I’ve got it worked out to where you pull ahead by a tempo.”
She had not cared for Levertov the one time she met him, but now she could have hugged him. “Give me the moves.”
He began reciting them. It was complicated, but she had no difficulty seeing the way it worked.
“That’s beautiful,” she said.
“I’ll put Benny back on,” Levertov said.
They went on together, exploring possibilities, following out line after line, for almost an hour. Benny was amazing. He had worked out everything; she began to see ways of crowding Borgov, finessing Borgov, deceiving him, tying up his pieces, forcing him to compromise and retreat.
Finally she looked at her watch and said, “Benny, it’s nine-fifteen here.”
“Okay,” he said. “Go beat him.”
There was a crowd outside the building. A display board had been erected above the front entrance for those who couldn’t get into the auditorium; she recognized the position immediately from the car as it drove past. There in morning sunshine was the pawn she was going to advance, the file she was going to force open.
The crowd by the side entrance was twice as big as yesterday’s. They began chanting, “Harmon! Harmon!” before she opened the limousine door. Most of them were older people; several reached out smiling, fingers outspread to touch her as she hurried past.
There was only one table now, on center stage. Borgov was sitting at it when she came in. The referee walked with her to her chair, and when she was seated he opened the envelope and reached down to the board. He picked up Borgov’s knight and moved it to bishop five. It was the move she had wanted. She pushed her rook pawn one square forward.