The Queen's Gambit

avec deux parties seulement.” Frenchmen, and she understood the words!
She stopped walking and stood where she was for a moment, taking in the
fine gray buildings across the avenue, the light on the trees, the odd smells
of this humane city. She might have an apartment here someday, on the
Boulevard Raspail or the Rue des Capucines. By the time she was in her
twenties she could be World’s Champion and live wherever she wanted to
live. She could have a pied à terre in Paris and go to concerts and plays, eat
lunch every day in a different café, and dress like these women who walked
by her, so sure of themselves, so smart in their well-made clothes, with their
heads high and their hair impeccably cut and combed and shaped. She had
something that none of them had, and it could give her a life that anyone
might envy. Benny had been right to urge her to play here and then, next
summer, in Moscow. There was nothing to hold her in Kentucky, in her
house; she had possibilities that were endless.
She wandered the boulevards for hours, not stopping to buy anything,
just looking at people and buildings and shops and restaurants and trees and
flowers. Once she accidentally bumped into an old lady while crossing the
Rue de la Paix and found herself saying, “Excusez-moi, madame” as easily
as if she had been speaking French all her life.
There was to be a reception at the building the tournament was in at four-
thirty; she had difficulty finding her way back and was ten minutes late and
out of breath when she arrived. The playing tables had all been pushed to
one side of the room, and the chairs placed around the walls. She was
ushered to a seat near the door and handed a small cup of café filtre. A
pastry cart was wheeled by with the most beautiful pastries she had ever
seen. She felt a momentary sadness, wishing that Alma Wheatley could be
there to see them. Just as she was taking a napoleon from the cart she heard
loud laughter from across the room and looked up. There was Vasily
Borgov, holding a coffee cup. The people on each side of him were bent

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toward him expectantly, taking in his amusement. His face was distorted
with ponderous mirth. Beth felt her stomach turn to ice.
She walked back to her hotel that evening and grimly played a dozen of
Borgov’s games—games that she already knew thoroughly from studying
them with Benny—and went to bed at eleven; she took no pills and slept
beautifully. Borgov had been an International Grandmaster for eleven years
and World Champion for five, but she would not go passive against him this
time. Whatever happened she would not be humiliated by him. And she
would have one distinct advantage: he would not be as prepared for her as
she was for him.
***
She went on winning, beating a Frenchman the next day and an Englishman
on the day after. Borgov won his games also. On the next to the last day
when she was playing another Dutchman—an older and more experienced
one—she found herself at the table next to Borgov. Seeing him so close
distracted her for a few moments, but she was able to shrug it off. The
Dutchman was a strong player, and she concentrated on the game. When
she finished, forcing a resignation after nearly four hours, she looked up
and saw that the pieces were gone from the next table and Borgov had left.
Leaving, she stopped at the desk and asked whom she would be playing
in the morning. The director shuffled through his papers and smiled faintly.
“Grandmaster Borgov, mademoiselle.”
She had expected it, but her breath caught when he said it.
That night she took three tranquilizers and went to bed early, uncertain if
she could relax enough to sleep. But she slept beautifully and awoke
refreshed at eight, feeling confident, smart and ready.
***
When she came in and saw him sitting at the table, he did not seem so
formidable. He was wearing his usual dark suit, and his coarse black hair
was combed neatly back from his forehead. His face was, as always,
impassive, but it did not look threatening. He stood up politely, and when
she offered her hand he shook it, but he did not smile. She would be playing

---

the white pieces; when they seated themselves he pressed the button on her
clock.
She had already decided what to do. Despite Benny’s advice, she would
play pawn to king four and hope for the Sicilian. She had gone through all
of Borgov’s published Sicilian games. She did it, picking up the pawn and
setting it on the fourth rank, and when he played his queen bishop pawn she
felt a pleasant thrill. She was ready for him. She played her knight to king
bishop three; he brought his to queen bishop three, and by the sixth move
they were in the Boleslavski. She knew, move by move, eight games in
which Borgov had played this variation, had gone over each of them with
Benny, analyzing each remorselessly. He started the variation with pawn to
king four on the sixth move; she played knight to knight three with the
certainty that came from knowing she was right, and then looked across the
board at him. He was leaning a cheek against a fist, looking down at the
board like any other chess player. Borgov was strong, imperturbable and
wily, but there was no sorcery in his play. He put his bishop on king two
without looking at her. She castled. He castled. She looked around herself at
the bright, beautifully furnished room she was in with its two other games
of chess quietly in progress.
By the fifteenth move she began to see combinations opening up on both
sides, and by the twentieth she was startled by her own clarity. Her mind
moved with ease, picking its way delicately among the combination of
moves. She began to pressure him along the queen bishop file, threatening a
double attack. He side-stepped this, and she strengthened her center pawns.
Her position opened more and more, and the possibilities for attack
increased, although Borgov seemed to side-step them just in time. She knew
this might happen and it did not dismay her; she felt in herself an
inexhaustible ability to find strong, threatening moves. She had never
played better. She would force him by a series of threats to compromise his
position, and then she would mount threats that were double and triple and
that he would not be able to avoid. Already his queen bishop was locked in
by moves she had forced, and his queen was tied down protecting a rook.
Her pieces were freeing themselves more with every move. There seemed
to be no end to her ability to find threats.
She looked around again. The other games were finished. That was a
surprise. She looked at her watch. It was after one o’clock. They had been

---

playing for over three hours. She turned her attention back to the board,
studied it a few minutes and brought her queen to the center. It was time to
apply more pressure. She looked across the table at Borgov.
He was as unruffled as ever. He did not meet her eyes but kept his on the
board, studying her queen move. Then he shrugged almost imperceptibly
and attacked the queen with a rook. She had known he might do that, and
she had her response ready. She interposed a knight, threatening a check
that would take the rook. He would have to move the king now and she
would bring the queen over to the rook file. She could see half a dozen
ways of threatening him from there, with threats more urgent than the ones
she had been making.
Borgov moved immediately, and he did not move his king. He merely
advanced a rook pawn. She had to study it for five minutes before seeing
what he was up to. If she checked him, he would let her take the rook and
then station his bishop ahead of the pawn he had just pushed, and she would
have to move her queen. She held her breath, alarmed. Her rook on the back
rank would fall, and with it two pawns. That would be disastrous. She had
to back her queen off to a place where it could escape. She gritted her teeth
and moved it.
Borgov brought the bishop out, anyway, where the pawn protected it. She
stared at it a moment before the meaning of it dawned on her; any of the
several moves she could make to dislodge it would cost her in some way,
and if she left it there, it strengthened everything about his position. She
looked up at his face. He was regarding her now with a hint of a smile. She
looked quickly back at the board.
She tried countering with one of her own bishops, but he neutralized it
with a pawn move that blocked the diagonal. She had played beautifully,
was still playing beautifully, but he was outplaying her. She would have to
bear down harder.
She did bear down harder and found excellent moves, as good as any she
had ever found, but they were not enough. By the thirty-fifth her throat was
dry, and what she saw in front of her on the board was the disarray of her
position and the growing strength of Borgov’s. It was incredible. She was
playing her best chess, and he was beating her.
On the thirty-eighth move he brought his rook crisply down to her second
rank for the first threat of mate. She could see clearly enough how to parry

---

that, but behind it were more and more threats that would either mate her or
take her queen or give him a second queen. She felt sick. For a moment it
dizzied her just to look at the board, at the visible manifestation of her own
powerlessness.
She did not topple her king. She stood up, and looking at his emotionless
face, said, “I resign.” Borgov nodded. She turned and walked out of the
room, feeling physically ill.
***
The plane back to New York was like a trap; she sat in her window seat and
could not escape the memory of the game, could not stop playing through it
in her mind. Several times the stewardess offered her a drink, but she forced
herself to decline. She wanted one only too badly; it was frightening. She
took tranquilizers, but the knot would not leave her stomach. She had made
no mistakes. She had played extraordinarily well. And at the end of it her
position was a shambles, and Borgov looked as though it had been nothing.
She did not want to see Benny. She was supposed to call him to pick her
up, but she did not want to go back to his apartment. It had been eight
weeks since she left her house in Lexington; she would go back and lick her
wounds for a while. Her third-prize money from Paris had been surprisingly
good; she could afford a quick round trip to Lexington. And there were still
papers to sign with her lawyer. She would stay a week and then come back
and go on studying with Benny. But what else had she to learn from him?
Remembering for a moment all the work she had done readying herself for
Paris, she felt sick again. With an effort she shook it off. The main thing
was to get ready for Moscow. There was still time.
She called Benny from Kennedy Airport and told him she had lost the
final game, that Borgov had outplayed her. Benny was sympathetic but a
little distant, and when she told him she was going to Kentucky for a while
he sounded irritated.
“Don’t quit,” he said. “One lost game doesn’t prove anything.”
“I’m not quitting,” she said.
***

---

In the pile of mail waiting for her at home were several letters from Michael
Chennault, the lawyer who had arranged for the deed to the house. It
seemed there was some kind of problem; she did not yet have clear title or
something. Allston Wheatley was creating difficulty. Without opening the
rest of the mail she went to the phone and called Chennault’s office.
The first thing he said when he came on the line was “I tried to get you
three times yesterday. Where’ve you been?”
“In Paris,” Beth said, “playing chess.”
“How sweet it must be.” He paused. “It’s Wheatley. He doesn’t want to
sign.”
“Sign what?”
“Title,” Chennault said. “Can you get over here? We’ve got to work it
out.”
“I don’t see why you need me,” Beth said. “You’re the lawyer. He told
me he’d sign what was necessary.”
“He’s changed his mind. Maybe you could talk to him.”
“Is he there?”
“Not in the office. But he’s in town. I think if you could look him in the
eye and remind him you’re his legal daughter…”
“Why won’t he sign?”
“Money,” the lawyer said. “He wants to sell the house.”
“Can the two of you come here tomorrow?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the lawyer said.
She looked around the living room after hanging up. The house still
belonged to Wheatley. That was a shock. She had barely seen him in it, and
yet it was in fact his. She did not want him to have it.
Although it was a hot July afternoon, Allston Wheatley was wearing a
suit, a dark-gray salt-and-pepper tweed, and when he seated himself on the
sofa he pulled up the creases in the pants legs, showing the whiteness of his
thin shanks above the tops of his maroon socks. He had lived in the house
for sixteen years, but he showed no interest in anything in it. He entered it
like a stranger, with a look that could have been anger or apology, sat down
at one end of the sofa, pulled his pants legs up an inch and said nothing.
Something about him made Beth feel sick. He looked exactly the way he
had looked when she first saw him, when he came to Mrs. Deardorff’s
office with Mrs. Wheatley to look her over.

---

“Mr. Wheatley has a proposal, Beth,” the lawyer was saying. She looked
at Wheatley’s face, which was turned slightly away from them. “You can
live here,” the lawyer said, “while you are finding something permanent.”