The Queen's Gambit

her a draw. She opened her eyes and looked at his face. Borgov never
offered draws, but he was offering her one. She could accept it and the
tournament would be over. They would stand up to be applauded and she
would leave the stage in a tie with the champion of the world. Something
went slack inside her, and she heard her own silent voice saying, Take it!
She looked back at the board—at the real board that sat between them,
and saw the endgame that was about to emerge when the dust settled.
Borgov was death on endgames; he was famous for it. She had always hated
them—hated even reading Reuben Fine’s book on endgames. She should
accept the draw. People would call it a solid achievement.
A draw, however, was not a win. And the one thing in her life that she
was sure she loved was a win. She looked at Borgov’s face again and saw
with mild surprise that he was tired. She shook her head. No.
He shrugged and took the bishop. For a brief moment she felt like a fool,
but she shook it off and attacked his queen with her knight leaving her own
en prise. He moved his queen where he had to and she brought the knight
up for the fork. He moved the king and she lifted his heavy queen from the
board. He took hers. She attacked the rook and he moved it back by a
square. That had been the whole point of the sequence beginning with the
bishop—cutting down the scope of the rook by forcing it to a less
threatening rank—but now it was there she was unsure what to do next. She
had to be careful. They were headed toward a rook and pawn ending; there
was no room for imprecision. For a moment she felt stuck, without
imagination or purpose and afraid of error. She closed her eyes again. There
was an hour and a half on her clock; she had the time to do it and do it right.
She did not open her eyes even to see the time remaining on her clock or
to look across the table at Borgov or to see the enormous crowd who had
come to this auditorium to watch her play. She let all of that go from her

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mind and allowed herself only the chessboard of her imagination with its
intricate deadlock. It did not really matter who was playing the black pieces
or whether the material board sat in Moscow or New York or in the
basement of an orphanage; this eidetic image was her proper domain.
She did not even hear the ticking of the clock. She held her mind in
silence and let it move over the surface of the imagined board, combining
and recombining the arrangements of pieces so the black ones could not
stop the advance of the pawn she would choose. She saw now that it would
be her king knight pawn, on the fourth rank. She moved it mentally to the
fifth and surveyed the way the black king would advance to block it. The
white knight would halt the king by threatening a key black pawn. If the
white pawn stepped forward to the sixth rank its move must be prepared for.
It took a very long time to find the way, but she kept at it remorselessly. Her
rook was the key, with a threatened hurdle—four moves in all—but the
pawn could make the step. Now it had to move forward again. This was
inchmeal, but the only way to do it.
For a moment her mind became numb with weariness and the board
unclear. She heard herself sigh as she forced it back to clarity. First the
pawn must be supported by the rook pawn, and to get the rook pawn up
meant a diversion by sacrificing a pawn on the other side of the board. That
would give Black a queen in three and cost White the rook to remove it.
Then the white pawn, safe for a moment, slipped forward to the seventh
rank, and when the black king sidled up to it, the white rook pawn came up
to hold it in place. And now the final move, the advance to the eighth rank
for promotion.
She had come this far—these twelve moves from the position on the
board that Borgov saw—by following hints and guesses and making them
concrete in her mind. There was no question it could be done. But she saw
no way to move the pawn that final square without having the black king
snip it off just before queening, like an unbloomed flower. The pawn looked
heavy and impossible to move. She could not budge it. She had got it this
far and there was no way to go further. It was hopeless. She had made the
strongest mental effort of her life, and it was a waste. The pawn could not
queen.
She leaned wearily back in her chair with her eyes still closed and let the
screen of her mind go dark for a moment. Then she brought it back for a

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final look. And this time with a start she saw it. He had used his bishop for
taking her rook and now it could not stop her knight. The knight would