Opening Theory

Ivan is standing on his own in the corner while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around. The men are saying things to one another like: Back a bit there, Tom. Mind yourself now. Alone, Ivan is standing, wanting to sit down but uncertain which of the chairs need to be rearranged still and which are in their correct places already. This uncertainty arises because the way in which the men are moving the furniture corresponds to no specific method Ivan has been able to discern. A familiar arrangement is slowly beginning to emerge—a central U shape composed of ten tables, with ten chairs along the outer rim of the shape, and a general seating area around the outside—but the process by which the men are reaching this arrangement seems haphazard. Standing on his own in the corner, Ivan thinks with no especially intense focus about the most efficient method of arranging, say, a random distribution of a given number of tables and chairs into the aforementioned shape. It’s something he has thought about before, while standing in other corners, watching other people move similar furniture around similar indoor spaces: the different approaches you could use, if you happened to be writing a computer program to maximize process efficiency. The accuracy of these particular men would be, Ivan thinks, pretty low, like actually very low.

While he’s thinking, a door opens—not the main town-hall door but a smaller fire-exit door at the side—and a woman enters. She’s carrying a set of keys. The other men hardly seem to notice her entrance: they just glance over in her direction and then away again. No one says anything to her. It’s probably one of those situations other people find instantly comprehensible, and everyone other than Ivan has already worked out at a glance exactly who this woman is and why she’s here. She happens to be very attractive, he notices, which makes her presence in the room all the more mysterious. After a moment, Ivan sees that the other men, although they have not directly acknowledged the woman, seem to be behaving differently, lifting the tables with heftier motions of their arms and shoulders, as if the tables have become heavier since she walked in. Showing off in front of her, he realizes, and he even seems to see her smiling to herself, maybe because she has come to the same conclusion or maybe because they’re all pretending to ignore her. Now, perhaps noticing Ivan watching, she looks back at him, a friendly kind of relieved look, and with her keys in her hand she approaches the corner where he’s standing.

Hello there, she says. My name is Margaret. I’m a member of staff here. I’m sorry to ask, but do you know whether the little man has arrived yet? This chess prodigy. I think we’re supposed to keep an eye on him.

He looks down at her. She has said all this in a smiling, funny, almost apologetic tone, as if sharing a joke with him. She looks somewhat older than he is, he thinks, not a lot older—in her thirties, he would guess. Ah, he says. You mean Ivan Koubek?

That’s right, she says. Is he here?

Yes. I am him.

She gives an embarrassed flutter of laughter at this, lifting her hand to her chest, jangling her set of keys. Oh, my God, she says. I’m so sorry. Crossed wires, obviously. I thought . . . I don’t know why. I thought you were about twelve.

Well, I was once, he says.

She laughs again at that, sincerely it seems, and the feeling of making her laugh is so nice that he also starts to smile, even though he knows she’ll see his braces that way. Ah, that explains it, she says. No, I am sorry, how silly of me. Did you have an O.K. time getting here?

He goes on looking at her a moment, and then, as if belatedly hearing her question, he replies quickly: Oh, right, it was O.K. I got the bus.

Still gently smiling, she says: And I was told you might need a lift back to your accommodation after the event, is that right?

He pauses again. Her eyes are friendly and encouraging. Definitely it would be creepy of him to read too much into her friendly looks, since she’s literally at work right now, being paid to stand here talking to him. Although, he remembers, he is also kind of at work, being paid to stand here talking to her, even if it’s not really the same. Yeah, he says. I don’t know where it is exactly, the accommodation. But I guess I could get a taxi.

She’s putting her keys into the pocket of her skirt. No, no, she says. We’ll look after you, don’t worry.

The club captain comes over finally and introduces himself. His name is Ollie; he’s the one who collected Ivan from the bus station earlier. The woman says again that her name is Margaret, and then Ollie lifts his hand in Ivan’s direction, saying: And this is our guest, Ivan Koubek. She exchanges a glance with Ivan, just a very quick glance of amusement shared between the two of them, and then she answers: Yes, I know. Ollie begins talking to her about the event, what time it will begin and end and which of the studio rooms they’ll be using tomorrow morning for the workshop. In silence, Ivan watches them talking together. She works here, the woman named Margaret, here at the arts center: that explains her sort of artistic appearance. She’s wearing a white blouse, and a voluminous patterned skirt in different colors, and neat flat shoes of the kind ballerinas wear. He begins to experience, while she stands there in front of him, an involuntary mental image of kissing her on the mouth: not even really an image, but an idea of an image, a realization that it will be possible to visualize this at some later point, what it would be like to kiss her, a promise of enjoyment simply to picture himself doing that, which is harmless enough, only a private thought. And yet he also feels at the same time an abrupt desire to draw her attention back to him in real life, which he suspects he could do just by addressing her, just by saying something or asking a question aloud, it doesn’t even matter what.

Do you play chess? he asks.

They both look up at him. Too late now, he realizes he’s being weird. He can see it, it’s perceptible in her face and even in Ollie’s. How weird, to ask her for no reason whether she plays chess, and it wasn’t even related to what they were talking about. Cheerfully, however, she answers: No, I’m afraid not. I don’t have a brain for that kind of thing. I suppose I know what the pieces do, and that’s about it.

With grim regret at having spoken, Ivan nods his head.

Gesturing to the hall behind them, Ollie says: We don’t have much to boast about in the gender-equality department, unfortunately.

Oh, I wouldn’t worry, she says. We had a knitting group in the other week, they were just as bad. Anyway, I won’t keep you. If you need anything, I’ll be upstairs in the office.

Ollie thanks her. Ivan says nothing.

Glancing up at him, she adds: And good luck with your match later. I might come and watch if I get a minute.

He looks at her a moment longer before saying: Right. Thank you.

She goes back out the side door then, closing it behind her.

Nice woman, Ollie remarks. Ivan says: Yeah.

They go on standing by the wall together, watching the other men set up the chairs and tables. What does it mean when people say that kind of thing, like “nice woman”? Is it a coded way of saying the person is attractive? Ivan wonders if Ollie also experienced a certain captivated feeling when this woman Margaret looked into his eyes. Why did it take him so long to come and speak to her then? But maybe, like Ivan, he gets shy around the opposite sex. Ollie is small and portly, and wears glasses, and might be fifty years of age. Also, he wears a wedding ring: married. It’s difficult to imagine him experiencing feelings of captivation while talking to a beautiful woman. But a person’s outward appearance does not define the boundaries of their internal feelings, Ivan knows. Whether the woman named Margaret was wearing a ring, he didn’t notice. The fact of her being so good-looking was impossible not to notice: she’s probably sick of hearing about it from men.

Ivan has come to understand that it must be awkward to receive unwanted sexual comments and invitations, and there was that one occasion even in his own case, which was also a man, which probably just goes to show. He would personally go to great lengths to avoid ever encountering that guy again, not that he even did anything bad, but purely from the awkwardness. Then imagine being an attractive woman and it’s not just one man you have to avoid but almost all of them. At the same time, how to reach a mutually agreeable situation without one person making an advance on the other which may turn out to be unwanted? It’s like the problem with the chairs and tables. In a haphazard and inefficient way, without any fixed method, solutions can be reached, and, evidently, are reached all the time, considering that someone like Ollie is married. People get to know each other, things happen, that’s life. The question for Ivan is how to become one of those people, how to live that kind of life.

Now, says Ollie beside him. What can we do for you before things get started? Would you like a cup of coffee? They have a nice little coffee shop out the front here.

Ivan nods his head slowly. The chairs and tables are all set up, ten tables evenly spaced, ten chairs. One of the men is even starting to lay out the chessboards. Sure, says Ivan. A coffee would be good, thank you. Just espresso, if they have it.

I’ll pop out for you, says Ollie.

Ivan watches Ollie leave the hall, through the main doors, toward the lobby. Soon, he will return with Ivan’s coffee, and then the event will begin, and Ivan will play ten chess games at the same time. He finds in his experience it’s better not to dwell on these matters in advance. To contemplate the approach of the event gives him an intense physical sensation or, rather, a coördinated array of physical sensations: in his chest, his hands, his stomach, a hot feeling, tightness, nausea, shading even into light-headedness, a sense that he can’t see properly, that something is wrong with his eyes, and then he starts feeling like he’s going to be sick. On certain occasions, he actually has been sick, after contemplating too deeply the inexorable approach of a scheduled event. At the same time, he’s not at all nervous about the chess. That aspect will be easy and, he knows, ultimately pleasant. Nothing will, or even really can, go wrong. The physical anxiety that accompanies chess events—exhibition games, tournaments—does not bear any meaningful relationship to the events themselves, except a chronological one: it arrives beforehand and goes away afterward. His mind knows this, but his body does not.

For this and other reasons, Ivan considers the body a fundamentally primitive object, a vestige of evolutionary processes superseded by the development of the brain. Just compare the two: the human mind weightless, abstract, capable of supreme rationality; the human body heavy, depressingly specific, making no sense at all. It just does things: no one knows why. It begins for some reason to attack itself or to proliferate cells where they don’t belong. No explanation. Does the mind do that? No. Well, in the case of mental illness, he thinks, O.K., sure, it can do similar things, but that’s different. Is it different? Anyway. Ivan’s own mind is far from perfect, often incapable of completing the relatively straightforward tasks with which it is presented, but at least the mind responds to reasoning. Sentience, he thinks. The body is an insentient object, animated by a sentience it does not share, like an insentient car is animated by a sentient driver. More or less everyone can accept the death of both body and mind past a certain point, like past the age of ninety, say, or at least it’s acceptable in theory if you don’t think about it too much. But to accept that because the body dies, at any point in time, the mind must also die, just literally whenever?

Ivan’s brother, Peter, who is thirty-two and has a graduate degree in philosophy, says this school of thought on the relations between body and mind has been refuted. To Ivan, this is like when people say the king’s gambit has been refuted. People are always using that word, “refuted,” just because they read it on some forum somewhere, “King’s Gambit Destroyed in One Move” or whatever, and the move will literally be 3 . . . d6. Thank you, Bobby Fischer! Not that Peter is someone who says things simply because he saw them on forums. He’s an adult man who has a social life and might not even know what forums are. But mutatis mutandis. He probably just heard in a lecture once that the mind and the body are not considered to be separate anymore, and he was like, Got it. Peter is the kind of person who goes along the surface of life very smoothly. He talks on the phone a lot and eats in restaurants and says that schools of philosophy have been refuted. In any case, Ivan has to admit that Peter organized pretty much everything around their father’s funeral and that Ivan himself did nothing; he can admit that freely. Probably he should have shown more gratitude on that front.

As for the whole thing about Peter giving the eulogy and Ivan not, that was a mutual decision. Obviously, Ivan regrets that now, he’s been over that already, the regret, again and again, but it’s his own fault, not Peter’s, not even shared but exclusively his own. He didn’t think about it enough beforehand, clearly. But what’s the point in dwelling? It’s not as if there’s going to be a second funeral for his father at which Ivan can make up for his mistake by saying all the things that later came into his mind to say.

The human mind, for all the credit he was just giving it a minute ago, is often repetitive, often trapped in a familiar cycle of unproductive thoughts, which in Ivan’s case are usually regretful in nature. Minor regrets, like asking that woman Margaret whether she played chess—horrible—and major regrets like declining or, rather, failing to say anything at his own father’s funeral. Major regrets like devoting his life to competitive chess only to watch his rating drop steadily for several years to the point where, etc. He’s been over all that before, the irretrievability of the past, what’s done being done, and in any case now is not the time. Instead, he’s going to eat the small chocolate bar he brought in his suitcase and drink a cup of coffee. It’s good to visualize these actions in advance, how he’ll unwrap the chocolate bar, what the coffee will taste like, whether it will be served with a saucer or just in a cup by itself. These are the right kinds of things for him to think about at this moment: precise things, tangible, replete with sensory detail. And then the games will begin.

By the time Margaret finishes dinner, it’s dark outside the window of the bistro, the glass blue like wet ink. Garrett behind the till asks her what they have on tonight, and she says the chess club are in. Cheerfully he answers: Each to their own. Every week or two, the same routine: another performance and, afterward, another stranger sitting in the passenger seat of Margaret’s car, chattering away about something, and then gone again. Comedians, Shakespearean actors, motivational speakers. And now chess players. Funny. She liked him actually, the young man with the braces on his teeth. Her mistake about him being a little boy, that was embarrassing, but he made a joke of it, which she liked. Slightly awkward, of course: those high-I.Q. people usually are. Although, she thinks, leaving the restaurant, buttoning her raincoat, he was still a lot more polite than the others, especially that officious man Oliver Lyons, who was basically quite rude. In the chess player, she thinks, you have an example of a friendly, likable person, perhaps lacking in some of the finer social nuances, whereas Ollie Lyons is a man who simply relishes the modicum of authority that he believes attaches itself to his captaincy of the local chess club.

It’s raining outside, water spilling from the gutters overhead, and Margaret fixes her scarf over her hair. Funny, the feeling she had, talking to the two of them, as if she and the chess prodigy were in one camp together and Ollie in the other. Why: a sense of being outside the group, perhaps. Retrieving her keys from the bottom of her handbag now, she continues toward the office, nodding hello to that nice man from the bakery. She finds with her fingers the external key and lets herself into the building, gently pulling the door closed behind her. Rain drums on the roof, drips quietly from her raincoat onto the tiles, while she makes her way along a low, cool corridor and, unlocking a side door, enters the hall.

Inside, all the lights are turned up bright, and thirty or forty spectators are seated in a tense, whispering silence. The players are seated on the outer side of the U-shaped arrangement of tables. And on the inside the chess player, Ivan Koubek, is standing alone, leaning over a particular table, with one arm folded across his chest, using the other hand to rub his jaw. He looks very tall and pallid, looming there above the chessboard, while his opponent, an older man with a ruddy face, is sitting comfortably in the chair opposite. Ivan moves one of the pieces—Margaret, standing in the doorway, can’t see which—and then he walks to the next table. Touching the pieces, his hands look precise and intelligent, like the hands of a surgeon or a pianist. When he’s gone, his opponent starts scribbling something down on a sheet of paper. The spectators are sitting on plastic chairs, watching, some taking photographs or videos with their phones.

The next one of Ivan’s opponents is a small child, a girl who can’t be more than eleven years old. She has golden hair tied up in a purple scrunchie. When Ivan reaches her table, his back to the door where Margaret is standing, the girl moves a piece, and he responds immediately, without taking time even to think. Margaret waits for him to move on to the next table before she slips inside, clicking the door shut behind her. Some people look up at the sound, but Ivan does not. He continues along the same path, sometimes standing wordlessly for ten seconds, twenty seconds, cradling his jaw, and then moving a piece and carrying on to the next table. Without taking her eyes from him, she sits down on one of the nearby chairs, drawing her bag and coat onto her lap.

Surveying the tables, Margaret gathers that two of the games are over already. The players are sitting back sheepishly, and the board in front of each is set up with a white king standing in the center. Ivan’s king, she thinks, since he’s playing with the white pieces, and it even looks like him, tall and thin, which is funny. Do chess players think of themselves that way, as the king piece? But, from what Margaret remembers of chess, the king is weak and cowardly and spends most of the game hiding in the corner. At the next table, Ivan stretches his arm up over his head and places the flat of his hand between his shoulders, rubbing the base of his neck with his fingertips. Under his arms are two darkened circles of sweat. The room is not especially warm, though it is very bright, so probably he’s sweating from the sheer force of concentration.

At the back of the room, someone says something that Margaret can’t hear, and there follows a murmur of laughter. Ollie, who is seated at one of the tables, and whose game is still proceeding, turns to glare in the direction of the laughter, which drops away into silence. Standing at the little girl’s table again, Ivan moves his queen and in a toneless voice says: Checkmate. The girl turns to look at two adults sitting behind her, a man and a woman, who must be her parents. Margaret can see them smiling at the girl and putting their thumbs up, mouthing: Well done! The girl turns back to the board and writes something down on her sheet of paper, and then she passes it over the table and hands Ivan her pen. He leans down to scribble something at the bottom of the sheet, and then straightening up he offers her his hand. With a broad, beaming smile full of milk teeth, she accepts, and they shake.

In silence, the games continue. Another player seems to give in, shaking Ivan’s hand, and then another: men from the chess club who were here arranging chairs earlier. Finally, the only one left is Ollie. He has put on a jacket and tie, Margaret notices—he wasn’t wearing a tie earlier today, but now he is, a red one with a light stripe. Ivan Koubek hasn’t changed clothes; he’s wearing the same light-green button-down shirt and dark trousers. His sneakers are dirty, and Margaret can see that the sole is coming away from the body of the left shoe. Ollie looks up at Ivan now and gives a little nod, and Ivan nods back. Ollie writes something down on his sheet of paper, and so does Ivan, and they shake hands.

The other players start to applaud, and then everyone is applauding. Margaret lets go of the handbag in her lap to clap along. She gathers from the general energy of the ovation that Ivan has defeated Ollie and won all ten games. Ivan nods his head to acknowledge the applause, which is growing louder rather than fading, and someone at the back of the room gives a long, loud whistle. Ivan stands there inclining his head, smiling politely without showing his teeth, bathed in the cheers of the spectators. Ollie gets to his feet from behind his table, and slowly the applause subsides. He thanks everyone for coming, and thanks Ivan and congratulates him on a “clean sweep,” and after a little more clapping and thanking of various people the event comes to an end. People start to get out of their seats, talking to one another, gathering their things, and one of the chess-club men props open the main door to let the audience file out.

Margaret sees that Ivan has gone back to speak to the little girl with the scrunchie. He has his back to Margaret, but she can hear him talking. You played a really good game, he’s saying. Do you know where you made a mistake? The girl shakes her head. Let me show you, he says, and that way you won’t do it again. To her parents, he says: You don’t mind, do you? It’s going to take, like, one minute. She played a good game otherwise. He’s setting the board up while he’s speaking. Around them, the spectators are leaving, checking their phones, zipping up jackets. Margaret is standing by her chair, thumbing the strap of her handbag absent-mindedly, her long raincoat hanging loose, unbuttoned. You remember this position? Ivan says. The girl nods her head, staring down at the board in front of her. After a few seconds, he asks: Do you see now why it was a bad idea to move that rook? She looks up at him solemnly and nods her head again. That’s all right, you’re learning, he says. You played really nicely. Maybe we’ll have a rematch in a couple of years. Her parents are smiling, her father with his hand on the girl’s shoulder. It’s so kind of you to take the time, the mother says. I’m sure you’re exhausted. Ivan straightens up from the table. I’m all right, he says. The father is looking behind Ivan now, at Margaret, and Ivan follows his gaze and sees her standing there. She smiles, and he looks back at her without speaking. She can see that his forehead is still damp.

Congratulations, she says.

Oh, he replies. Well, whatever. Thank you.

He wipes his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt—noticing that she noticed, maybe. The room around them is emptying out, the girl and her parents saying goodbye and leaving. Inattentively, Ivan says to them: O.K., bye.

I believe I have the honor of giving you a lift home, Margaret says.

Ivan looks her in the eyes, a very direct look, even, she thinks, intense, with that feeling, again, of their belonging wordlessly somehow to the same camp. Right, he says. I think the others are going for a drink now. But I can skip that, I don’t mind.

Would you like a drink? she says. You deserve one after what you’ve been through. I’m astonished you’re still on your feet.

He smiles at her, showing his braces again, the new white ceramic braces that young people have now. Yeah, there’s a lot of walking around, he says. That’s what people say: Forget about the chess, practice the walking. Were you— He breaks off here, with a look that is shyly proud. Were you watching, or? he asks.

Margaret feels suddenly very kindly toward him, a rush of kindly feeling, to see him look so proud of himself. Oh, I was spellbound, she says. Not that I had any idea what was going on. What do you think, would you like to go out and celebrate?

He’s still looking at her. Sure, he says. I’ll get my things.

She goes to join the group at the door. Ollie tells her they’re going for a drink in the Cobweb, and she says she’ll come along. She knows one of the men vaguely from town, the retired chemist Tom O’Donnell, and another man says his name is Stephen, and another Hugh. When Ivan joins them, they all leave the hall together. The men are talking about chess, using vocabulary of which Margaret has only the vaguest comprehension—gambits, sacrifices—and in the long corridor their voices echo off the walls and ceiling. Though the conversation seems to be directed toward Ivan, he isn’t speaking, only walking quietly with his small black suitcase. The case has wheels, but he isn’t wheeling it, just carrying it by the handle. Before they go out onto the street, Margaret turns the lights off and then gets up onto a little step stool to set the alarm while the others wait, while Ivan waits behind her. He’s watching her, she thinks, but how does she know without looking? And she doesn’t look, she just knows, as if his eyes are sending out little needles in her direction and she can feel the needles pricking painlessly on her skin.

She feels for him, surrounded by these blustering middle-aged people, men who admire him and at the same time fear and perhaps resent him, men who want to impress him but also to intimidate or slight him. And yet she seems to feel that Ivan is well aware of the dynamic between himself and the other men, and that this awareness has something to do with his watching Margaret while she sets the alarm. But how to know, how to interpret the watching, when he doesn’t say anything to her or even seem to want to?

Outside, the rain has softened into mist and the street lights are on. The chemist, Tom O’Donnell, is putting up his umbrella.

Tell us, the man named Stephen says, where is that name Koubek from?

Slovakia, says Ivan.

You don’t sound Slovakian, Stephen replies.

No, yeah, Ivan says. I’m from Kildare. My dad was Slovak, but he moved here in the eighties. And my mother is Irish. O’Donoghue.

They are walking across the car park, passing Margaret’s car, and she unlocks it so that Ivan can leave his suitcase in the boot. The other men go on talking. Her hair is getting wet, and she takes her scarf off and knots it over her head while Ivan closes the boot down quietly and says: Thank you. She feels for an instant a strange urge to turn to the other men, saying something like: I said I would drop him back to his accommodation. This would be, she thinks, a bizarre remark. No one is wondering why Ivan is so quietly and obediently placing his suitcase into the boot of her car. To offer an explanation would suggest that something is in need of explaining, raising the spectre of other, alternative explanations, which have as yet occurred to no one. A terrible thing to say. She says nothing. They all keep walking together, through a little paved alleyway to the Cobweb Bar, and Ollie holds open the door for Margaret to enter first.

Inside, the bar is warm and quiet. Along the walls are padded benches with tables in front of them, and old advertisements, dimly lit. Margaret unties her scarf from her hair, letting her eyes half close, inhaling the warm, familiar atmosphere. It’s Friday, she thinks, the working week is over, it’s not so bad to sit in a bar with all these men for just a little while, to be for a while the only woman in the warm enclosed room. Let me get you a drink, Ollie says. Margaret says she’ll have lemonade. And Ivan? Ollie asks. I presume you’re of legal age by now, are you? Ivan gives an embarrassed laugh at that and answers: Yeah, I’m twenty-two. Ollie asks what he would like to drink in that case, and Ivan says a glass of Italian beer. Slipping her coat off her shoulders, Margaret finds a space to sit on one of the soft leatherette benches, with a low table between herself and Ivan. One of the other men asks her if she watched the games, and she says: Oh, yes, what a performance. Ollie goes up to order at the bar, and the others get up to help him or to insist on paying for their own drinks, leaving Margaret and Ivan alone in the corner. The fact that they have been left alone together is present to her with a kind of insistent, intrusive feeling, and wanting to make light conversation she says aloud: So, were you ever in trouble?

For a moment, he says nothing. You mean, like, in the chess just now? he asks.

Yes, I’m sorry. That’s what I meant.

Self-consciously, he smiles, and he’s rubbing at his shoulder with his fingertips again. Right, obviously, he says. No, I wasn’t in trouble really. I mean, I do draw games sometimes, if it’s a lot more people or the players are better. But with these local club players I wouldn’t worry about it. He swallows now, glancing back at the bar, and then says in a friendly voice: Ah, but you won’t tell them I said that, maybe.

She smiles also, at the backward glance, his friendly tone, almost conspiratorial. No, don’t worry, she says. But don’t you ever lose games?

In an exhibition? Not too often, because I’ll only play people below a certain rating, which would be a lot lower than mine. I lose competitive games, though. All the time. I’m, like, not actually that good at chess.

She starts laughing then, and he smiles along with her, which she finds sweet: his unfeigned pleasure at being funny. That’s hard to believe, she says.

He glances down at his hands. His fingernails are bitten, she notices. Well, I mean relatively, he says. Still examining his hands, frowning, he adds: We don’t have to talk about chess, by the way. I know you don’t play.

No, but it’s always interesting to hear people talk about things they’re passionate about.

He looks up at her again. Is it? he says.

Uncertainly, smiling, she replies: Don’t you think it is?

I don’t know, he says. Being honest, I’ve never thought about that. But I will think about it, now that you’ve said it. I suppose it depends what you mean—“passionate.” I find some people can be very boring when they talk, but maybe it’s because, actually, they’re not passionate enough. He gives another smile now. I don’t know if I even am that passionate about chess, he adds, but I suppose everyone probably thinks I am.

What do you think you’re passionate about? she asks.

At this, he blushes. She can see him, even in the dim light, blushing, and he says something that sounds like: Hmm. Alarmed, she says with forced cheerfulness, too loudly: Never mind, you needn’t tell me. Then she regrets saying that, too. The other men are coming back from the bar, finally. Ollie leans over to hand Margaret a cold, damp glass, saying: A lemonade for the lady. They’re taking seats around the table, drinking, talking, but Ivan is not talking, only looking at the side of her face while she avoids his eye. Maybe he’s watching her because he doesn’t know what else to do, she thinks, because he feels awkward or ill at ease. Maybe he wants to catch her eye because he has something particular he wants to say, and by avoiding his gaze she’s only prolonging the interval during which he feels it necessary to keep looking. Or maybe—the idea intrudes forcefully into her thoughts—maybe he’s looking at her for sexual reasons.

It is not possible for Margaret to exclude such thoughts completely from her life, however much she might in certain circumstances like to. Ideas intrude which are shameful, sad, even obscene and immoral. Most of the time, she can go through life interacting pleasantly with the people around her, pleasantly and superficially, never thinking or wanting to think about the profound and so carefully concealed sexual personalities of others. But it is not possible all the time to be so unconscious of other people, the disguised aspects of their lives. This young man with the braces on his teeth, who spends his weekends visiting arts centers to play chess in front of spectators, carrying a cheap black suitcase around and leaving it in the corners of rooms, this young man also has sexual thoughts and feelings, almost certainly, almost everyone does, especially at the age of twenty-two. He’s still looking at her even now. Why did she say the word “passionate” to him when they were talking? And why did he repeat it so many times, three or even four times? Is the word “passionate” or is it not basically an obscene item of vocabulary? No, it isn’t. But is it like a small bandage placed over an item of vocabulary that is in fact obscene? Maybe yes. A word with blood running through it, a red word. In casual conversation, it’s better to use words that are gray or beige. Where did it come from, then, this word “passionate”? She knows where. From that so firmly suppressed feeling, present all along, that when he looks at her, when he speaks to her, he is addressing not only the superficial but also the deep, concealed parts of her personality—without meaning to, without knowing how not to.

Beside them, the other men are talking about a famous chess player from the nineteenth century. You know he was Irish, Ollie says. His father was an Irishman. Murphy. The others disagree about that. Ivan sits drinking from his glass and looking at Margaret; she can feel again the pressure of his eyes on the side of her face, while she goes on pretending to listen, pretending to smile. Finally, she turns and meets his gaze. They look at each other without speaking. Belonging, it could not be clearer, to the same camp, separate from the rest. And he puts his glass down on the table. Clearing his throat, he says to the others: Listen, thank you. I’ll see you in the morning. They all want to congratulate him again and slap him on the back, and Margaret needs a minute anyway to put her raincoat back on, and to find her scarf hanging over the back of a chair.

Out of the bar together and into the dark street, they walk with the rain falling around them. For a while, not speaking, not even looking at each other, they walk side by side, and this is simple and correct. Margaret asks Ivan where he’s staying, and he takes out his phone to show her the address, down in the holiday village by the lake. In the car park, she unlocks her car and they get inside together, closing the doors, and all her acts and gestures are just the necessary things that follow after getting into a car: putting the key in the ignition, and turning the lights on, securing her seat belt. These actions more or less perform themselves, ritually, and she has no decisions to make, nothing at all to do, except to feel and observe herself checking the rearview mirror, reversing out of her parking space. Ivan sits with his hands in his lap, saying nothing. Outside, the car park is glowing with the skeletal orange light of the street lamps, the paved surfaces dappled and glistening. She turns on her wipers and they click and scrape rhythmically over the windscreen.

It happens all the time that she drives someone home like this or drops them at the station, and they sit in the car together this way, chatting about something. It’s just work. And if Ivan doesn’t want to chat, if he wants to sit there looking at his hands and then looking at her and back at his hands again, that’s O.K.—he’s only twenty-two, and very gifted at one particular kind of board game, and after all there’s no formal etiquette for the situation. Finding yourself in the car of an older woman after a presumably strenuous public event, being driven to your accommodation with your little black suitcase: no one ever teaches you how to behave under such circumstances. If he wants to sit in silence, looking at his bitten fingernails, that’s all right, no problem. She, too, of course, is sitting in silence and has nothing to say. They come off the main road and down onto the small lane leading to the holiday cottages, the gravel crunching noisily under the tires of Margaret’s car. She has done nothing wrong, has done nothing at all, in fact, beyond what is required for the purpose of driving Ivan from the bar to the holiday village. If she made a little error in the conversation earlier, if she used one little dubious word or phrase, asking him what he was passionate about, that was excusable, even in a sense deniable, because subjective. She pulls up outside one of the houses, a white bungalow with peeling paint and darkened windows.

This is you, I think, she says.

It’s the first time either of them has spoken since they got in the car, and inside the sealed environment her voice has a compressed sound. Ivan looks out the window at the bungalow.

Thank you, he says.

She tells him it’s no problem. He nods his head, and once more he looks at her. Would you like to come inside? he asks.

Doubtingly, he goes on looking at her, as if to say he’s sorry to ask, and he waits for her to answer. There’s something so vulnerable in his look, in his tone of voice. Is there anything she can say to explain? About her job, and how much older she is, and her life situation. But her explanations will only sound like lies. Nobody when they’re rejected believes it’s really for extraneous reasons. And it almost never is for extraneous reasons, because mutual attraction—which even makes sense from the evolutionary perspective—is simply the strongest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing. She lets her eyes drop down for just a fraction of a second to his hands, which are resting in his lap: fine-looking, sensitive hands, she noticed that earlier, when he was playing chess.

O.K., she says.

The house is damp and chilly, and all the rooms are dark. Ivan is carrying his suitcase, and Margaret finds a light switch in the hall. Overhead, a bare bulb comes on, with no lampshade, and in the corner by the door the wallpaper is mildewed. In a friendly, conversational tone of voice, she says: Not what I’d call luxurious. It’s the chess club that booked this for you, by the way, not us. He smiles at that, showing his braces again. I’ve seen worse, he says. Sometimes I just have to sleep on someone’s floor. She hangs up her coat and scarf, and he puts down his suitcase. They go along the hall together, into a living room with a kitchenette. He turns the light on this time. There’s a red cloth sofa, and a small dining table, and a sliding glass door leading into the back garden. Margaret goes to look in the kitchen, and Ivan follows after her. On a shelf above the microwave is a box of tea and a tin of instant coffee, and someone has even put milk and butter in the fridge.

I wonder if Ollie came in and stocked the kitchen personally, she says. I think he might have a crush on you.

Ivan laughs at that, looking gratified. I could tell he was happy with how his game went, he says. Which is kind of sad, because he actually made a lot of mistakes.

You’re not a professional, are you? she asks. I mean, you don’t play chess full time.

He says no, but he does get paid for exhibition games, and for coaching. Then he clears his throat and afterward says nothing. She remembers when she was nervous around men, as a young person—though, of course, it’s different for women. Impossible to imagine a girl of twenty-two behaving as Ivan has behaved tonight, as he is behaving even now. Not that he seems more powerful or domineering than a girl, not that at all: rather, that he seems to have taken on exclusive responsibility for what appears to him a very difficult task—the task, unless she is mistaken, of seducing an older woman he has just met—and to feel frustrated with himself for not knowing how to accomplish this task, frustrated and guilty. These feelings would not arise in a young woman. Different feelings, equally unpleasant, but different. At the same time, isn’t Margaret herself playing her part in these feelings, in this drama? Is it not, after all, a drama with two principal actors? She is not offering, she notices, to accept any shared responsibility for the accomplishment of the task Ivan has set himself. She has indicated, by entering the holiday cottage, that she may well be available to be seduced; but she is not helping him along toward success in that respect. To help, however, would obviously be injurious to her dignity, far more than the present situation is to his. She asks him if he’s in college, and he says he just finished a degree in theoretical physics. Another silence falls. The house is cold; her back is cold against the fridge door.

Sorry I’m being so awkward, he says.

I don’t think you are, really.

Well, I’m definitely a lot more awkward than you are, he replies. You know, when you’re talking, everything you say sounds so normal and, like, smooth. I can never get words to come out that smoothly. You’re the type of person who can just go up to someone and start a conversation. It’s very— He breaks off here, and then shyly he goes on: I was just going to say, it’s very attractive, but maybe I shouldn’t say that.

She turns her eyes away, oddly flustered now after all. Ah, she says. Well, I don’t know.

He’s looking at his hands again, examining the little pink stubs of his fingernails. I’m sorry, he says. Just because you’re being nice to me, it obviously doesn’t mean . . . you know. It went through my head, or whatever, but it’s probably stupid. Like, yeah, Ivan, I’m sure she thought it was really cool and sexy when you beat all those elderly guys at chess.

She feels a strange, light, amused sensation at his words, as though, concluding that the negotiations have fallen through, he wants only to show how nicely he can take defeat. Well, not only elderly guys, she says. You also beat a ten-year-old girl.

He gives a little laugh. Yeah, she wasn’t too bad for a ten-year-old, he says. Although she made one serious blunder. I actually had to go back and talk to her afterward. It was three or four intelligent moves and then a horrible mistake.

I guess you only make good moves, she says.

I don’t make horrible mistakes, he answers.

I do.

Looking over at her, he starts to smile again—revising, she thinks, the presumption of failure. Under the dim ceiling light, she can see the wire of his braces wet and gleaming. O.K., he says. Interesting. That’s very interesting to me.

Are you sure you’re twenty-two? she asks.

Yeah, I’m sure. Do you want to check my I.D.?

Would you mind?

He puts one of his hands into his pocket and takes out a wallet to show her an age card. She notices the hand trembling a little.

The photograph is not too nice, he says. Or I don’t know, maybe that’s just what I look like.

She removes the thin plastic card from the wallet and studies it under the light. Born in 1999, she says. Jesus. I started college in 2004.

Really? You’re what age, then? Thirty-five.

Thirty-six, she says. She’s still looking down at the card, at the small black-and-white image of Ivan’s face, grave and sombre. You know, I actually did think it was impressive when you won all those chess games earlier, she says. I thought you were glamorous.

He gives a sweet, foolish smile. Ah, wow, he says. That’s nice of you to say. I definitely don’t feel glamorous. But that’s cool of you to be so nice.

She hands the card back, and he puts it in his wallet. Do your parents play chess? she asks.

Well, no, not really, he says. My mother, not at all. And my dad did play a little bit, but actually, uh . . . he just passed away. Very recently, like three or four weeks ago. Four weeks, I guess it is.

Oh, God, she says. Ivan, I’m so sorry to hear that.

Yeah. He had cancer for a long time. So it wasn’t unexpected.

She’s looking at him, but he’s looking at the floor. She says: My dad . . . not that it’s the same, I’m sorry. But my dad died a couple of years ago. I can imagine how you must be feeling.

He looks back at her now, dark quiet eyes, and she feels him very close. It is kind of hard, he says. And, like, weird or whatever. I don’t know if you felt that.

Of course.

My parents were split up as well, he says. And I lived with my dad mostly. Not to give you my whole life story, I’m sorry.

Don’t be sorry. Do you have siblings?

An older brother. Who’s a lot older, like ten years. But we’re not close or anything. Before she can reply, Ivan clears his throat and adds: He actually . . . Just that you were asking if the other people in my family play chess. My brother does, but he’s not very good.

Tentatively now, she smiles. Ah, she says. Compared to you, I suppose not.

Right. Although, if you want to know something sad, I already hit my peak like four years ago. I was playing really well for a while, I mean, really well. But I’m not able to play like that anymore. I don’t know why. It makes me depressed when I think about it. You have all these dreams that you’re going to keep getting better and better. And then in reality you just start getting worse, and you don’t even understand why. Is this boring to hear about?

Margaret says: No, it isn’t. He’s looking down at his hands again.

I don’t know, he says. The one thing I said to myself in the car was, If she comes inside with you, don’t start talking to her about chess. It takes up too much of my life already, to be quite honest. Like, to say the absolute truth, I spend too much time on it, because I’m not even that good. Although it makes me really sad to admit that. You know, a lot of people told me I was letting it take up too much time, and I just thought they didn’t understand. But now I think, Maybe I’ve really wasted a lot of my life. Like when other people were out having fun, getting girlfriends or whatever, I was at home basically reading. You have to read a lot of opening theory—that’s the beginning of a game, the first moves. Which have all been played before, so you just have to learn them. It’s not even that interesting, but it has to be done. So you have all these openings that come from books, and you have all these endgame strategies, which can be honestly kind of formulaic. And you’re learning all this for what? Just to get to an O.K. position in the middle game and try to play some decent chess. Which most of the time I can’t even do anyway. Sometimes I think, if I could go back to age fifteen, I would give up. I was already pretty good then, I haven’t gotten much better. And I could have used that time to get more of a social life. I don’t lie in bed every night just thinking about chess, you know. I won’t go into detail on what I do think about, but I can tell you, it’s usually not related to chess at all.

She’s smiling, listening, nodding her head, and yet his words give her a strange feeling, a feeling in the pit of her stomach.

But don’t you think you enjoyed it? she says. All the time you spent practicing, don’t you think it made you happy sometimes?

With a pained expression, picking at his thumbnail, he answers: Yeah, there is that side of it. I did win a lot of games. And I played at big tournaments, I beat some good players. I have played some very nice chess. One or two games, I would say, better than nice. That’s the other side. You’re right. And if I gave up when I was fifteen, and I tried to be more social and talk to girls more, it might not have worked anyway. You know, I don’t think I would have become this really popular guy just from not playing chess. You can drive yourself crazy thinking about different things you could have done in the past. But sometimes I think, actually, I didn’t have that much power over my life anyway. I mean, I couldn’t give myself a new personality out of nothing. And things just kind of happened to me.

She is silent after he finishes speaking, and her eyes are turned toward the floor, bare yellow linoleum.

Are you really bored now? he asks.

After a moment she replies: Not at all. It’s true, you can drive yourself crazy thinking about different things you could have done in the past. I drive myself crazy in that way, too.

He’s looking at her, she knows. Yeah? he says. Why?

When I was your age . . . That’s not right, a little older than you. In my twenties, I met someone. And later we got married. Legally, we still are, because it’s all so complicated. But we don’t live together anymore. It’s like you said, you can drive yourself crazy thinking about these things. The other lives you could have had. And the life you did have, after it’s over—where did it go? I mean, what are you supposed to do with it? Anyway. It’s lucky you’re thinking about all this now, when you’re only twenty-two. When I was that age, my life hadn’t even started happening to me yet. I hardly remember anything from before then, honestly, that’s the truth. You know, everyone in their twenties has these problems you’re talking about—feeling left out and thinking people don’t like you. Those aren’t serious problems at your age, even if they feel that way. Maybe you’re on a different wavelength from some of the girls you’ve met in college. But I can tell you, you’re very attractive. You really are. Women are going to fall in love with you, believe me. That’s when the problems start.

She looks up at him now, and he’s looking back at her, an intense silent look. She tries to laugh, and her laughter has a helpless sound. Margaret, he says, can I kiss you? She doesn’t know what to do, whether to laugh again or start crying. O.K., she says. He comes over to where she’s standing against the fridge and kisses her on the mouth. She feels his tongue move between her lips. Drawing away slightly, he murmurs: Sorry about my braces, I hate them so much. She tells him not to apologize. Then he kisses her again. It is, of course, a desperately embarrassing situation—a situation that seems to render her entire life meaningless. Her professional life, eight years of marriage, whatever she believes about her personal values, everything. And yet, accepting the premise, allowing life to mean nothing for a moment, doesn’t it simply feel good to be in the arms of this person? Feeling that he wants her, that all evening he has been looking at her and desiring her, isn’t it pleasurable? To embody the kind of woman he believed he couldn’t have—to incorporate that woman into herself and allow him to have her. Pressed against her, his body is thin and tensed and shivering. And what if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?

In the morning, Margaret wakes alone in the holiday cottage to the sound of her alarm: Saturday, 8:30 a.m. After finding the phone and fumbling to switch the noise off, she lies back down in solitude, empty of thought, hearing a faint humming noise elsewhere, like a fridge or a dishwasher. The ceiling is finished in stippled plaster, the peaks and dimples casting small irregular shadows in the light from the window. Weak watery morning light. The minutes pass. She sits up and finds her clothes on the floor, damp, crumpled, and turns yesterday’s underwear inside out to put it back on again. With something like detached curiosity, with a pale inward blankness, she thinks about Ivan, who has gone now, who has left her in bed alone—she remembers him the night before, very deep inside her, saying: Ah, fuck. Well, that’s what boys his age like to do at weekends. Why not with her? She’s not bad-looking, so they say, not old yet, no longer really married, and she failed to put up the resistance he seemed to expect. Her lack of resistance, so unusual, fascinated and stirred him. Also, he was grieving over his father, she thinks, and in grief people do uncharacteristic things, behave irresponsibly, get drunk and sleep around. Not that he had been drunk last night. He’d had, if she recalls correctly, a single glass of beer. Will he tell his friends about her? she wonders.

The chess prodigy, Ivan Koubek. Almost nothing about him was really explained. Quietly he seemed to observe other people, and to perceive a great deal, and when he spoke, his words conveyed a sort of loneliness she found touching. He was very nice to her in bed, she remembers: so nice that it’s difficult for her, even now, to regret completely the whole ludicrous episode. She has never in her life spent the night with a stranger before. But then Ivan did not, at the time, seem to her like a stranger: he seemed, all too consciously, to belong to her own camp. Yes, that again—and what does it even mean? Now, in any case, her life will return, unexplained, to whatever it was before. But no, she thinks, because its shapelessness has been exposed to her, the old values and meanings floating off, unattached, and how can she go about reattaching them? And to what? In another room, the whirring noise comes suddenly to a halt, and she can hear something like a curtain hissing along a rail. Oh, she thinks. Oh, Christ, he’s been in the shower. Frantically she gets to her feet, finishes dressing, and with darting hands makes the bed, hearing his footsteps now along the hall.

When Ivan enters the room, his hair is wet, and he’s wearing a clean gray sweatshirt. Ah, he says. You’re awake. I was wondering if I should wake you. He coughs and continues: Anyway, this is awkward, but they only gave me one bath towel, and it’s wet now. I hope that’s not really annoying. I’m sorry I didn’t ask first, but you were sleeping, like I said.

She stands at the bottom of the bed with her arms folded. Her face feels tired and swollen, her eyes swollen, hot. It’s no problem, she replies. I’ll shower when I get home.

Right, he says. Right, that’s what I thought. Sorry.

By his ear, he has a small thin cut, where she supposes he has cut himself shaving. Do you need a lift to your workshop? she asks. I don’t mind driving you.

Oh. That actually would be cool, if it’s all right.

She’s toying with a button on her cardigan. Sure, she says. And look, if you don’t mind, I would be grateful if you didn’t tell people at the event today. About last night. I’m sorry to ask, but I think it would be difficult for me at work if everyone knew.

He gives a strange little laugh. No, obviously, he says. I mean, I get you, but that’s not the kind of thing I would tell people at a chess workshop anyway. The conversation doesn’t really go there. For like, a lot of different reasons.

Without looking up, she nods her head and says: Are you going— She breaks off, smiling, wiping her nose with her fingers. I was going to ask if you were going home today, she says. But I don’t even know where you live.

Oh, I live in Dublin, he says. And yeah, I’m going back today. On the bus.

Her eyes are hot, her face is hot, she’s nodding, pretending for some reason to button up her cardigan.

I probably have to go soon, he says. To be on time for the thing.

Sure. I’m ready.

Right, I just want to say something to you first.

She looks up at him, and he’s looking back at her—a very direct and intense look, like yesterday evening, when the games were finished and everyone else was leaving, the same look. Can I give you my number? he says. Like, in case you ever think about me. I could just put the number into your phone, and then it would be there, you wouldn’t even have to look at it again if you didn’t want to. What do you think?

With her fingers, she dabs at her eyes. Let me think about it, she says.

Outside, a wet chilly morning, the branches of trees dripping overhead. They get in the car together and drive back the same way they came the night before, and again they’re not speaking, again the windscreen wipers scrape back and forth. Once she has parked outside the building, she says: You can give me your number. But I don’t know if I’ll get in touch or not. O.K.? And, if you don’t hear from me, it won’t be because I haven’t thought about you. I will think about you. I just have to figure out what’s best. He says he understands, and he keys the number into her phone. The time on the dashboard is 8:56 a.m. He gets out of the car, and she watches him walk up to the main entrance of the building, carrying his black suitcase. One of the wheels on the case is hanging askew, broken—she can see that now. That’s probably why he carries it, instead of using the wheels.

At the entrance, he turns back and looks at her over his shoulder. Then he’s gone, the door swinging shut behind him. The door of her own workplace, with its flat rectangular handle, with one glass panel broken at the bottom and patched with brown tape. She has been contained before, contained and directed, by the trappings of ordinary life. Now she no longer feels contained or directed by these forces; no longer directed by anything at all. Life has slipped free of its netting. She can do very strange things now; she can find herself a very strange person. Young men can invite her into holiday cottages for sexual reasons. It means nothing. That isn’t true: it means something, but the meaning is unfamiliar. ♦

This is drawn from “Intermezzo.”