dare you to do it.”
“I’ll recite the full contents of this conversation ‘to them. I’m sure they’ll be interested enough to want to take it up with you further. I have nothing more to say; you are no man of honor.”
No. This would not work at all. It is clear why Louis and I can reach no arrangement. The match must go on its accustomed course, straight through to his destruction. Nevertheless, this must be said and in the network of the mind I will say it: I have tried. Surely I have tried. His condition is not my fault.
Queen to Queen Bishop Three. Queen to Queen Bishop Three. While Louis vomits somewhere in a rear stall, the putrid waters of his intestines merging with the chemically treated fluids of the Deneb System, I contemplate this move. Louis has always had this tendency to develop his majors too rapidly; it is a serious failing. Commentators have noticed this. I have brought it to their attention.
Well I remember how in the Berlin Interzonals Louis wedged open his Rook file with a stupid and premature castle which allowed Barker, his opponent, to penetrate to the seventh rank with his Queen. The mop up was deadly and almost immediate: A Rook doubled the Queen and placed Louis into almost immediate
zugzwang
and his resignation followed but five moves later. Barker (whose game has improved although still well below my level) discussed this with me later over cruller and tea, having accepted Louis’ collapsewith a rare grace which touched me although I would rather that he had spat in the fool’s eyes.
“He has aspects of brilliance,” Barker conceded, “but he cannot handle the majors properly. It is a pity.” He stuffed the cruller into his mouth, began to chew with a series of rather disgusting noises and gestures ... quite repulsive, really.
“I think that his basic problem might be a lack of patience,” Barker said, “although again—” taking a sip of coffee, swilling it around, mingling the fluid with the crumbs of cruller, “—perhaps he overestimates his abilities and finds himself more surprised than any of us when time and again his premature attack with the majors finds itself most thwarted. Difficult to say,” Barker added, putting the cruller in the coffee, twirling it until it became encrusted with sugar and the fluid of the coffee, and then, opening his mouth wide, put the cruller into his mouth like sacrament, rubbing together his palms with a groan of satisfaction. “Don’t you think so?”
It was difficult for me, sitting at the table in this rather crowded coffee shop at Bern, to keep a calm and inscrutable expression. But I tried. It is the very
corporeality
of life which I find repellent and this is one of the reasons why I find chess appealing: Here we have a highly abstract, coldly mathematical game devoid of odors, scents, implications, belches, coughs, sniffles, accusations and all of those elements which so contribute to the making of what non-masters erroneously call “real life.” There is a certain pleasure in abstraction; I would not diminish it.
This aversion to the normally material waste-and-flow of mortality may be a little abnormal but it is abnormal only in the richer sense of the word, a deviation which raises me to a higher level altogether.So it was difficult, looking at Barker (who now having finished his cruller turned upon me a pair of eyes as brightly impenetrable as a puppy’s), to keep good control over myself. “Perhaps,” I said, “perhaps. But then again he may be a weak player.”
“Weakness is no excuse,” Barker said, extending a forefinger, licking it with a flourish, then, his tongue working like a butterfly’s, doing the same to the remaining fingers on his left hand. “There are good; players, weak players, brilliant players and unsound ones, but at all levels the personality will hold. Each game is an individual expression I of its maker; ten different weak players will be I weak in a different way and having done
“I’ll recite the full contents of this conversation ‘to them. I’m sure they’ll be interested enough to want to take it up with you further. I have nothing more to say; you are no man of honor.”
No. This would not work at all. It is clear why Louis and I can reach no arrangement. The match must go on its accustomed course, straight through to his destruction. Nevertheless, this must be said and in the network of the mind I will say it: I have tried. Surely I have tried. His condition is not my fault.
Queen to Queen Bishop Three. Queen to Queen Bishop Three. While Louis vomits somewhere in a rear stall, the putrid waters of his intestines merging with the chemically treated fluids of the Deneb System, I contemplate this move. Louis has always had this tendency to develop his majors too rapidly; it is a serious failing. Commentators have noticed this. I have brought it to their attention.
Well I remember how in the Berlin Interzonals Louis wedged open his Rook file with a stupid and premature castle which allowed Barker, his opponent, to penetrate to the seventh rank with his Queen. The mop up was deadly and almost immediate: A Rook doubled the Queen and placed Louis into almost immediate
zugzwang
and his resignation followed but five moves later. Barker (whose game has improved although still well below my level) discussed this with me later over cruller and tea, having accepted Louis’ collapsewith a rare grace which touched me although I would rather that he had spat in the fool’s eyes.
“He has aspects of brilliance,” Barker conceded, “but he cannot handle the majors properly. It is a pity.” He stuffed the cruller into his mouth, began to chew with a series of rather disgusting noises and gestures ... quite repulsive, really.
“I think that his basic problem might be a lack of patience,” Barker said, “although again—” taking a sip of coffee, swilling it around, mingling the fluid with the crumbs of cruller, “—perhaps he overestimates his abilities and finds himself more surprised than any of us when time and again his premature attack with the majors finds itself most thwarted. Difficult to say,” Barker added, putting the cruller in the coffee, twirling it until it became encrusted with sugar and the fluid of the coffee, and then, opening his mouth wide, put the cruller into his mouth like sacrament, rubbing together his palms with a groan of satisfaction. “Don’t you think so?”
It was difficult for me, sitting at the table in this rather crowded coffee shop at Bern, to keep a calm and inscrutable expression. But I tried. It is the very
corporeality
of life which I find repellent and this is one of the reasons why I find chess appealing: Here we have a highly abstract, coldly mathematical game devoid of odors, scents, implications, belches, coughs, sniffles, accusations and all of those elements which so contribute to the making of what non-masters erroneously call “real life.” There is a certain pleasure in abstraction; I would not diminish it.
This aversion to the normally material waste-and-flow of mortality may be a little abnormal but it is abnormal only in the richer sense of the word, a deviation which raises me to a higher level altogether.So it was difficult, looking at Barker (who now having finished his cruller turned upon me a pair of eyes as brightly impenetrable as a puppy’s), to keep good control over myself. “Perhaps,” I said, “perhaps. But then again he may be a weak player.”
“Weakness is no excuse,” Barker said, extending a forefinger, licking it with a flourish, then, his tongue working like a butterfly’s, doing the same to the remaining fingers on his left hand. “There are good; players, weak players, brilliant players and unsound ones, but at all levels the personality will hold. Each game is an individual expression I of its maker; ten different weak players will be I weak in a different way and having done
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