Chess Story by Stefan Zweig

Author:Stefan Zweig
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-59017-560-6
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2011-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

It actually took me a few minutes to realize that what these players were engaged in was basically the same game that in desperation I had attempted to play against myself for months. The coded designations with which I had to make do during my grim exercitia were only stand-ins, symbolizing these ivory pieces; my surprise that this movement of pieces on the board was what I had visualized in subjective space could be compared to that of an astronomer who uses the most complex methods to work out on paper the existence of a new heavenly body and then actually sees it in the sky as a distinct, white, physical star. I stared at the board as though held by a magnet, seeing my figments, knight, rook, king, queen, and pawns, as real pieces carved out of wood; I had to transform my abstract computational world back into that of the pieces on the board before I could understand the state of play. Gradually I was overcome by curiosity to see a real game between two players. And then came the embarrassing moment when, forgetting all courtesy, I intruded on your game. But that bad move of your friend’s hit a nerve. When I stopped him I was acting purely instinctively, I stepped in on impulse just as, without thinking, you seize a child who is leaning over a railing. My gross impertinence became clear to me only later.”

I hastened to assure Dr. B. that we were all glad to have had this unforeseen opportunity to make his acquaintance and that for me, after everything he had told me, it would be doubly interesting to be able to watch the improvised tournament the next day. Dr. B. shifted uneasily.

“No, really, don’t expect too much. It will be nothing but a test for me … a test to see whether I … whether I am at all capable of playing an ordinary chess game, a game on a real chessboard with actual pieces and a live opponent … for now I doubt more and more whether those hundreds and perhaps thousands of games I played were actually proper chess games and not just a kind of dream chess, a fever chess, a delirium of play, skipping from one thing to another the way dreams do. I hope you will not seriously expect me to offer a genuine challenge to a chess master, indeed the greatest in the world. My only interest, the only attraction for me, is a postmortem curiosity to know whether that was chess or madness in the cell, whether at that time I was just on the brink or already over the edge—that’s all, nothing else.”

Just then the sound of a gong came from one end of the ship, summoning us to dinner. We must have been talking for two hours—Dr. B. reported everything in much more detail than I have set down here. I thanked him warmly and took my leave. But before I could move

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