THE big liner, due to sail from New York to Buenos Aires at midnight, was filled with the activity and bustle incident to the last hour. Visitors who had come to see their friends off pressed hither and thither, page-boys with caps smartly cocked slithered through the public rooms shouting names snappily, baggage, parcels and flowers were being hauled about, inquisitive children ran up and down companion-ways, while the deck orchestra provided persistent accompaniment. I stood talking to an acquaintance on the promenade deck, somewhat apart from the hubbub, when two or three flash-lights sprayed sharply near us, evidently for press photos of some prominent passenger at a lastminute interview. My friend looked in that direction and smiled.

“You have a queer bird on board, that Czentovic.”

And as my face must have revealed that the statement meant nothing to me he added, by way of explanation, “Mirko Czentovic, the world chess champion. He has just finished off the U.S.A. in a coast-tocoast exhibition tour and is on his way to capture Argentina.”

This served to recall not only the name of the young world champion but also a few details relating to his rocket-like career; my friend a more observant newspaper reader than I, was able to eke them out with a string of anecdotes. At a single stroke, about a year ago, Czentovic had aligned himself with the solidest Elder Statesmen of the art of chess, such as Alekhin, Capa-blanca, Tartakover, Lasker, Boguljobov; not since the appearance of the nine-year-old prodigy, Reshevsky, in New York in 1922, had a newcomer crashed int the famed guild to the accompaniment of such widespread interest. It seems that Czentovic’s intellectual equipment, at the beginning, gave small promise of so brilliant a career. The secret soon seeped through that in his private capacity this champion wasn’t able to write a single sentence in any language without misspelling a word, and that, as one of his vexed colleagues, wrathfully sarcastic, put it, “He enjoys equal ignorance in every field of culture.” His father, a poverty-stricken Yugoslavian boatman on the Danube, had been run down in his tiny vessel one night by a grain steamer, and the orphaned boy, then twelve, was taken in charge by the pastor of their obscure village out of pity. The good man did his level best to instill into the indolent, slowspeaking, low-browed child at home what he seemed unable to grasp in the village school.

But all efforts proved vain. Mirko stared blankly at the writing exercise just as if the strokes had not already been explained a hundred times; his lumbering brain lacked every power to grasp even the simplest subjects. At fourteen he still counted with his fingers, and it was only by dint of great strain that he could read in a book or newspaper. Yet none could say that Mirko was unwilling or disobedient. Whatever he was told to do he did: fetched water, split wood, worked in the field, washed up the kitchen, and he could be relied upon to execute—even if with exasperating slowness—every service that was demanded. But what grieved the kindly pastor most about the blockhead was his total lack of co-operation. He performed no deed unless specially directed, asked no questions, never played with other lads, and sought no occupation of his own accord; after Mirko had concluded his work about the house, he would sit idly with that empty stare one sees with grazing sheep, without participating in the slightest in what might be going on. Of an evening, while the pastor sucked at his long peasant pipe and played his customary three games of chess with the policesergeant, the fair-haired dull-wit squatted silent alongside them, staring from under his heavy lids, seemingly sleepy and indifferent, at the checkered board.

One winter evening, while the two men were absorbed in their daily game, a rapid crescendo of bells gave notice of a quickly approaching sleigh. A peasant, his cap covered with snow, stamped in hastily to tell the pastor that his mother lay dying and to ask his immediate attendance in the hope that there was still time to administer extreme unction. The priest accompanied him at once. The police-sergeant, who had not yet finished his beer, lighted a fresh pipe preparatory to leaving, and was about to draw on his heavy sheepskin boots when he noticed how immovably Mirko’s gaze was fastened on the board with its interrupted game.

“Well, do you want to finish it?” he said jocularly, fully convinced that the sleepyhead had no notion of how to move a single piece. The boy looked up shyly, nodded assent, and took the pastor’s place. After fourteen moves the sergeant was beaten and he had to concede that his defeat was in no wise attributable to avoidable carelessness. The second game resulted similarly.

“Balaam’s ass!” cried the astounded pastor upon his return, explaining to the policeman, a lesser expert in the Bible, that two thousand years ago there had been a like miracle of a dumb being suddenly endowed with the speech of wisdom. The late hour notwithstanding, the good man could not forgo challenging his half-illiterate helper to a contest. Mirko beat him too, with ease. He played toughly, slowly, deliberately, never once raising bowed broad brow from the board. But he played with irrefutable certainty, and in the days that followed neither the priest nor the policeman was able to win a single game.

The priest, best able to assess his ward’s various short comings, now became curious as to the manner in which this one-sided singular gift would resist a severer test. After Mirko had been made somewhat presentable by the efforts of the village barber, he drove him in his sleigh to the near-by town where he knew that many chess-players—a cut above him in ability, he was aware from experience—were always to be found in the cafe on the main square. The pastor’s entrance, as he steered the straw-haired, red-cheeked fifteen-year-old before him, created no small stir in the circle; the boy, in his sheepskin jacket (woollen side in) and high boots, eyes shyly downcast, stood aside until summoned to a chess-table.

Mirko lost the first encounter because his master had never employed the Sicilian defence. The next game, with the best player of the lot, resulted in a draw. But in the third game and the fourth and all that came after he slew them, one after the other.

It so happens that little provincial towns of Yugoslavia are seldom the theatre of exciting events; consequently, this first appearance of the peasant champion before the assembled worthies became no less than a sensation. It was unanimously decided to keep the boy in town until the next day for a special gathering of the chess club and, in particular, for the benefit of Count Simczic of the castle, a chess fanatic. The priest, who now regarded his ward with quite a new pride, but whose joy of discovery was subordinate to the sense of duty which called him home to his Sunday service, consented to leave him for further tests. The chess group put young Czentovic up at the local hotel, where he saw a water-closet for the first time in his life. The chess-room was crowded to capacity on Sunday afternoon. Mirko faced the board immobile for fours, spoke no word, and never looked up; one player after another fell before him. Finally a multiple game after was proposed; it took a while before they could make clear to the novice that he had to play against several contestants at one and the same time. No sooner had Mirko grasped the procedure than he adapted himself to it, and trod slowly with heavy, creaking shoes from table to table, eventually winning seven of the eight games.

Grave consultations now took place. True, strictly speaking, the new champion was not of the town, yet the innate national pride had received a fillip. Here was a chance, at last, for this town, so small that its existence was hardly suspected, to put itself on the map by sending a great man into the world. A vaudeville agent named Koller who supplied the local garrison cabaret with talent, offered to obtain professional training for the youth from a Viennese expert whom he knew, and to see him through for a year if the deficit were, made good. Count Simczic who in his sixty years of daily chess had never encountered so remarkable an antagonist, signed the guarantee promptly. That day marked the opening of the astonishing career of the Danube boatman’s son.

It took only six months for Mirko to master every secret of chess technique, though with one odd limitation which later became apparent to the votaries of the game and caused many a sneer. He never was able to memorize a single game, or, to use the professional term, to play blind. He lacked completely the ability to conceive the board in the limitless space of the imagination. He had to have the field of sixtyfour black and white squares and the thirty-two pieces tangibly before him; even when he had attained international fame he carried a folding pocket board with him in order to be able to reconstruct a game or work on a problem by visual means. This deficit, in itself not important, betrayed a want of imaginative power and provoked animated discussions among chess enthusiasts similar to those in musical circles when it discovers that an outstanding virtuoso or conductor is unable to play or direct without a score. This singularity, however, was no obstacle to Mirko’s stupendous rise, At seventeen he already possessed a dozen prizes, at eighteen he won the Hungarian mastery, and finally, at twenty, the championship of the world. The boldest experts, everyone of them immeasurably his superior in brains, imagination, and audacity, fell before his tough, cold logic as did Napoleon before the clumsy Kutusov and Hannibal before Fabius Cunctator, of whom Livy records that his traits of phlegm and imbecility were already conspicuous in his childhood. Thus it occurred that the illustrious gallery of chess masters, which included eminent representatives of widely varied intellectual fields—philosophers, mathematicians, constructive, imaginative, and often creative talents—was invaded by a complete outsider, a heavy, taciturn peasant from whom not even the cunningest journalists were ever able to extract a word that would help to make a story. Yet, however he may have deprived the newspapers of polished phrases, substitutes in the way of anecdotes about his person were numerous, for, inescapably, the moment he arose from the board at which he was the incomparable master, Czentovic became a grotesque, an almost comic figure. In spite of his correct dress, his fashionable cravat with its too ostentatious pearl tie-pin, and his carefully manicured nails, he remained in manners and behaviour the narrow-minded lout who was accustomed to sweeping out the priest’s kitchen. He utilized his gift and his fame to squeeze out all the money they would yield, displaying petty and often vulgar greed, always with a shameless clumsiness that aroused his professional colleagues’ ridicule and anger. He travelled from town to town, stopped at the cheapest hotels, played for any club that would pay his fee, sold the advertising rights in his portrait to a soap manufacturer,and oblivious of his competitors’ scorn—they being aware that he hardly knew how to write-attached his name to a Philosophy of Chess that had been written by a hungry Galician student for a businessminded publisher. As with all leathery dispositions, he was wanting in any appreciation of the ludicrous; from the time he became champion he regarded himself as the most important man in the world, and the consciousness of having beaten all those clever, intellectual, brilliant speakers and writers in their own field and of earning more than they, transformed his early unsureness into a cold and awkwardly flaunted pride.

“And how can one expect that such rapid fame should fail to befuddle so empty a head?” concluded my friend who had just advanced those classic examples of Czentovic’s childish lust for rank.“Why shouldn’t a twenty-one-year-old lad from the Banat be afflicted with a frenzy of vanity if, suddenly, by merely shoving figures around on a wooden board, he can earn more in a week than his whole village does in a year by chopping down trees under the bitterest conditions? Besides, isn’t it damned easy to take yourself for a great man if you’re not burdened with the slightest suspicion that a Rembrandt, a Beethoven, a Dante, a Napoleon, ever even existed? There’s just one thing in that immured brain of his—the knowledge that he hasn’t lost a game of chess for months, and as he happens not to dream that the world holds other values than chess and money, he has every reason to be infatuated with himself.”

The information communicated by my friend could not fail to excite my special curiosity. I have always been fascinated by all types of monomania, by persons wrapped up in a single idea; for the stricter the limits a man sets for himself, the more clearly he approaches the eternal. Just such seemingly world-aloof persons create their own remarkable and quite unique world-in-little, and work, termite like, in their particular medium. Thus I made no bones about my intention to examine this specimen of one-track intellect under a magnifying glass during the twelve-day journey to Rio.

“You’ll be out of luck,” my friend warned me. “So far as I know, nobody has succeeded in extracting the least bit of psychological material from Czentovic. Underneath all his abyssmal limitations this sly farm-hand conceals the wisdom not to expose himself. The procedure is simple: except with such compatriots of his own sphere as he contrives to meet in ordinary taverns he avoids all conversation. When he senses a person of culture he retreats into his shell; that’s why nobody can plume himself on having heard him say something stupid or on having sounded the presumably bottomless depths of his ignorance.”

As a matter of fact, my friend was right. It proved utterly impossible to approach Czentovic during the first few days of the voyage, unless by intruding rudely, which, of course, isn’t my way. He did, sometimes, appear on the promenade deck, but then always with hands clasped behind his back in a posture of dignified self-absorption, like Napoleon in the familiar painting; and, at that, those peripatetic exhibitions were carried off in such haste and so jerkily that to gain one’s end one would have had to trot after him. The lounges, the bar, the smoking-room, saw nothing of him. A steward of whom I made confidential inquiries revealed that he spent the greater part of the day in his cabin with a large chess-board on which he recapitulated games or worked out new problems.

After three days it angered me to think that his defence tactics were more effective than my will to approach him. I had never before had a chance to know a great chess-player personally, and the more I now sought to familiarize myself with the type, the more incomprehensible seemed a lifelong brain activity that rotated exclusively about a space composed of sixty-four black and white squares. I was well aware from my own experience of the mysterious attraction of the royal game, which among all games contrived by man rises superior to the tyranny of chance and bestows its palm only on mental attainment, or rather on a definite form of mental endowment. But is it not an offensively narrow construction to call chess a game? Is it not a science, a technique, an art, that sways among these categories as Mahomet’s coffin does between heaven and earth, at once a union of all contradictory concepts: primeval yet ever new; mechanical in operation yet effective only through the imagination; bounded in geometric space though boundless in its combinations; ever-developing yet sterile; thought that leads to nothing;mathematics that produce no result; art without works; architecture without substance, and nevertheless, as proved by evidence, more lasting in its being and presence than all books and achievements; the only game that belongs to all peoples and all ages; of which none knows the divinity that bestowed it on the world, to slay boredom, to sharpen the senses, to exhilarate the spirit? One searches for its beginning and for its end. Children can learn its simple rules, duffers succumb to its temptation, yet within this immutable tight square it creates a particular species of master not to be compared with any other—persons destined for chess alone, specific geniuses in whom vision, patience, and technique are operative through a distribution no less precisely ordained than in mathematicians, poets, composers, but merely united on a different level. In the heyday of physiognomical research a Gall would perhaps have dissected the brains of such masters of chess to establish whether a particular coil in the grey matter of the brain, a sort of chess muscle or chess bump was more conspicuously developed than in other skulls. How a physiognomist would have been fascinated by the case of a Czentovic where that which is genius appears interstratified with an absolute inertia of the intellect like a single vein of gold in a ton of dead rock! It stands to reason that so unusual a game, one touched with genius, must create out of itself fitting matadors. This I always knew, but what was difficult and almost impossible to conceive of was the life of a mentally alert person whose world contracts to a narrow, black-andwhite one-way street; who seeks ultimate triumphs in the to-and-fro, forward-and-backward movement of thirty-two pieces; a being who, by a new opening in which the knight is preferred to the pawn, apprehends greatness and the immortality that goes with casual mention in a chess handbook-of a man of spirit who, escaping madness, can unremittingly devote all of his mental energy during ten, twenty, thirty, forty years to the ludicrous effort to corner a wooden king on a wooden board!

And here for the first time, one of these phenomena, one of these singular geniuses (or shall I say puzzling fools?) was close to me, six cabins distant, and I, unfortunate, for whom curiosity about mental problems manifested itself in a kind of passion, seemed unable to effect my purpose. I conjured up the absurdest ruses: should I tickle his vanity by the offer of an interview in an important paper, or engage his greed by proposing a lucrative exhibition tour of Scotland? Finally it occurred to me that the hunter’s never-failing practice is to lure the woodcock by imitating its mating cry, so what more; successful way was there of attracting a chess master’s attention to myself than by playing chess?

At no time had I ever permitted chess to absorb me seriously, for the simple reason that it meant nothing to me but a pastime; if I spend an hour at the board it is not because I want to subject myself to a strain but, on the contrary to relieve mental tension. I “Play” at chess in the literal sense of the word, whereas to real devotees it is serious business. Chess, like love, cannot be played alone, and up to that time I had no idea whether there were other chess lovers on board. In order to attract them from their lairs I set a primitive trap in the smoking-room in that my wife (whose game is even weaker than mine) and I sat at a chessboard as a decoy. Sure enough, we had made no more than six moves before one passer-by stopped, another asked permission to watch, and before long the desired partner materialized. MacIver was his name; a Scottish foundation-engineer who, I learned, had made a large fortune boring for oil in California. He was a robust specimen with an almost square jaw and strong teeth, and a rich complexion pronouncedly rubicund as a result, at least in part surely, of copious indulgence in whisky. His conspicuously broad, almost vehemently athletic shoulders made themselves unpleasantly noticeable in his game, for this MacIver typified those self-important worshippers of success who regard defeat in even a harmless contest as a blow to their self-esteem. Accustomed to achieving his ends ruthlessly, and spoiled by material success, this massive self-made man was so thoroughly saturated with his sense of superiority that opposition of any kind became undue resistance if not insult. After losing the first round he sulked and began to explain in detail, and dictatorially, that it would not have happened but for a momentary oversight; in the third he ascribed his failure to the noise in the adjoining room; never would he lose a game without at once demanding revenge. This ambitious crabbedness amused me at first, but as time went on I accepted it as the unavoidable accompaniment to my real purpose—tempt the master to our table.

By the third day it worked—but only half-way. It may be that Czentovic observed us at the chess-board through a window from the promenade deck or that he just happened to be honouring the smokingroom with his presence; anyway, as soon as he perceived us interlopers toying with the tools of his trade, he involuntarily stepped a little nearer and, keeping a deliberate distance, cast a searching glance at our board. It was MacIver’s move. This one move was sufficient to apprise Czentovic how little a further pursuit of our dilettantish striving was worthy of his expert interest. With the same matter-of-course gesture with which one of us disposes of a poor detective story that has been proffered in a library—without even thumbing its pages—he turned away from our table and left the room. “Weighed in the balance and found wanting,” I thought, slightly stung by the cool, contemptuous look, and to give vent to my ill-humour in some fashion, I said to MacIver, “Your move didn’t seem to impress the master.”

“Which master?”

I told him that the man who had just walked by after glancing disapprovingly at our game was Czentovic, international chess champion. I added that we would be able to survive it without taking his contempt too greatly to heart; the poor have to cook with water. But to my astonishment these idle words of mine produced quite an unexpected result. Immediately he became excited, forgot our game, and his ambition took to an almost audible throbbing. He had no notion that Czentovic was on board: Czentovic simply had to give him a game;the only time he had ever played with a champion was in a multiple game when he was one of forty, even that was fearfully exciting, and he had come quite near winning. Did I know the champion personally?—I didn’t.—Would I not invite him to join us? I declined on the ground that I was aware of Czentovic's reluctance to make new acquaintances. Besides, what charm would intercourse with third-rate players hold for a champion?

It would have been just as well not to say that about third-rate players to a man of MacIver’s brand of conceit. Annoyed, he leaned back and declared gruffly that, as for himself, he couldn’t believe that Czentovic would decline a gentleman’s courteous challenge; he’d see to that. Upon getting a brief description of the master’s person he stormed out, indifferent to our un-finished game, uncontrollably impatient to intercept Czentovic on the deck. Again I sensed that there was no holding the possessor of such broad shoulders once his will was involved in an undertaking.

I waited, somewhat tensed. Some ten minutes elapsed and MacIver returned, not in too good humour, it seemed to me.

“Well?” I asked.

“You were right,” he answered, a bit annoyed. “Not a very pleasant gentleman. I introduced myself and told him who I am. He didn’t even put out his hand. I tried to make him understand that all of us on board would be proud and honoured if he’d play the lot of us. But he was cursed stiff-necked about it; said he was sorry but his contract obligations to his agent definitely precluded any game during his entire tour except for a fee. And his minimum is $250 per game.”

I had to laugh. The thought would never have come to me that one could make so much money by pushing figures from black squares to white ones. “Well, I, hope you took leave of him with courtesy equal to his.”

MacIver, however, remained perfectly serious. “The match is to come off at three to-morrow afternoon. Here in the smoking room. I hope he won’t make mincemeat of us easily.”

“What! You promised him the $250?” I cried quite taken aback.

“Why not? It’s his business. If I had a toothache and there happened to be a dentist aboard, I wouldn’t, expect him to extract my tooth for nothing. The man’s right to ask a fat price; in every line the big shots are the best traders. So far as I’m concerned, the less complicated the business, the better. I’d rather pay in cash than have your Mr. Czentovic do me a favour and in the end have to say ‘Thank you.’ Anyway, many an evening at the club has cost me more than $250 without giving me a chance to play a world champion. It’s no disgrace for a third-rate player to be beaten by a Czentovic.”

It amused me to note how deeply I had injured MacIver’s self-love with that “Third-rate”. But as he was disposed to foot the bill it was not for me to remark on his wounded ambition which promised at last to afford me an acquaintance with my odd fish. Promptly we notified the four or five others who had revealed themselves as chess-players of the approaching event and reserved not only our own table but the adjacent ones so that we might suffer the least possible disturbance from passengers strolling by.

Next day all our group was assembled at the appointed hour. The centre seat opposite that of the master was allotted to MacIver as a matter of course; his nervousness found outlet in the smoking of strong cigars, one after another, and in restlessly glancing ever and again at the clock. The champion let us wait a good ten minutes—my friend’s tale prompted the surmise that something like this would happen—thus heightening the impressiveness of his entry. He approached the table calmly an imperturbably. He offered no greeting. “You know who I am and I’m not interested in who you are” was what his discourtesy seemed to imply, but he, began in a dry, businesslike way to lay down the conditions. Since there were not enough boards on the ship for separate games he proposed that we should play against him collectively. After each of his moves he would retire to the end of the room so that his presence might not affect our consultations. As soon as our countermove had been made we were to strike a glass with a spoon, no table-bell being available. He proposed, if it pleased us ten minutes as the maximum time for each move. Like timid pupils we accepted every suggestion: un-questioningly. Czentovic drew black at the choice of colours, while still standing he made the first counter-move, then turned at once to go to the designated waiting place where he reclined lazily while carelessly examining an illustrated magazine.

There is little point in reporting the game. It ended, as it could not but end, in our complete defeat, and by the twenty-fourth move at that. There was nothing particularly astonishing about an international champion wiping off half a dozen mediocre or sub-mediocre players with his left hand; what did disgust us, though, was the lordly manner with which Czentovic caused us to feel, all too plainly, that it was with his left hand that, we had been disposed of. Each time he would give a quick, seemingly careless look at the board, and would look indolently past us as if we ourselves were dead wooden figures; and this impertinent proceeding reminded one irresistibly of the way one throws a mangy dog a morsel without taking the trouble to look at him. According to my way of thinking, if he had any sensitivity he might have shown us our mistakes or cheered us up with a friendly word. Even at the conclusion this sub-human chess automaton uttered no syllable, but, after saying “Mate,” stood motionless at the table waiting to ascertain whether another game was desired. I had already risen with the thought of indicating by a gesture—helpless as one always remains in the face of thick-skinned rudeness—that as far as I was concerned the pleasure of our acquaintance was ended now that the dollars-and-cents part of it was over, when, to my anger, MacIver, next to me, spoke up hoarsely: “Revanche!”

The note of challenge startled me; MacIver at this moment seemed much more like a pugilist about to put up his fists than a polite gentleman. Whether it was Czentovic’s disagreeable treatment of us that affected him or merely MacIver’s own pathological irritable ambition, suffice it that the latter had undergone a complete change. Red in the face up to his hair, his nostrils taut from inner pressure, he breathed hard, and a sharp fold separated the bitten lips from his belligerently projected jaw. I recognized with disquiet that flicker of the eyes that connotes uncontrollable passion such as seizes players at roulette when the right colour fails to come after the sixth or seventh successively doubled stake. Instantly I knew that this fanatical climber would, even at the cost of his entire fortune, play against Czentovic and play and play and play, for simple or doubled stakes, until he won at least a single game. If Czentovic stuck to it, MacIver would prove a gold-mine that would yield him a nice few thousands by the time Buenos Aires came in sight.

Czentovic remained unmoved. “If you please,” he responded politely. “You gentlemen will take black this time.”

There was nothing different about the second game except that our group became larger because of a few added onlookers, and livelier, too. MacIver stared fixedly at the board as if he willed to magnetize the chess-men to victory; I sensed that he would have paid a thousand dollars with delight if he could but shout “Mate” at our cold-snouted adversary. Oddly enough, something of his sudden excitement entered unconsciously into all of us. Every single move was discussed with greater emotion than before; always we would wrangle up to the last moment before agreeing to signal Czentovic to return to the table. We had come to the seventeenth move and, to our own surprise, entered on a combination which seemed staggeringly advantageous because we had been enabled to advance a pawn to the last square but one; we needed but to move it forward to c1 to win a second queen. Not that we felt too comfortable about so obvious an opportunity; we were united in suspecting that the advantage which we seemed to have wrested could be no more than bait dangled by Czentovic whose vision enabled him to view the situation from a distance of several moves. Yet in spite of common examination and discussion, we were unable to explain it as a feint. At last, at the limit of our ten minutes, we decided to risk the move. MacIver’s fingers were on the pawn to move it to the last square when he felt his arm gripped and heard a voice, low and impetuous, whisper, “For God’s sake! Don’t!”

Involuntarily we all turned about. I recognized in the man of some forty-five years, who must have joined the group during the last few minutes in which we were absorbed in the problem before us, one whose narrow sharp face had already arrested my attention on deck strolls because of its extraordinary, almost chalky pallor. Conscious of our gaze, he continued rapidly:

“If you make a queen he will immediately attack with the bishop, then you’ll take it with your knight. Meantime, however, he moves his pawn to d7, threatens your rook, and even if you check with the knight you’re lost and will be wiped out in nine or ten moves. It’s practically the constellation that Alekhin introduced when he played Boguljobov in 1922 at the championship tournament at Pistany.”

Astonished, MacIver released the pawn and, like the rest of us, stared amazedly at the man who had descended in our midst like a rescuing angel. Anyone who can reckon a mate nine moves ahead must necessarily be a first-class expert, perhaps even a contestant now on his way to the tournament to seize the championship, so that his sudden presence, his thrust into the game at precisely the critical moment,partook almost of the supernatural.

MacIver was the first to collect himself. “What do you advise?” he asked suppressedly.

“Don’t advance yet; rather a policy of evasion. First of all, get the king out of the danger line from g8 to h7. Then he’ll probably transfer his attack to the other flank. Then you parry that with the rook, c8 to c4; two moves and he will have lost not only a pawn but his superiority, and if you maintain your defensive properly you may be able to make it a draw. That’s the best you can get out of it.”

We gasped, amazed. The precision no less than the rapidity of his calculations dizzied us; it was as if he had been reading the moves from a printed page. For all that, this unsuspected turn by which, thanks to his cutting in, the contest with a world champion promised a draw, worked wonders. Animated by a single thought, we moved aside so as not to obstruct his observation of the board.

Again MacIver inquired: “The king, then; to h7?”

“Surely. The main thing is to duck.”

MacIver obeyed and we rapped on the glass. Czentovic came forward at his habitual even pace, his eyes swept the board and took in the countermove. Then he moved the pawn h2 to h4 on the king’s flank exactly as our unknown aid had predicted. Already the latter was whispering excitedly:

“The rook forward, the rook, to c4; then he’ll first have to cover the pawn. That won’t help him, though. Don’t bother about his pawns but attack with the knight c3 to d5, and the balance is again restored. Press the offensive instead of defending.”

We had no idea of what he meant. He might have been talking Chinese. But once under his spell MacIver did as he had been bidden. Again we struck the glass to recall Czentovic. This was the first time that he made no quick decision; instead he looked fixedly at the board. His eyebrows contracted involuntarily. Then he made his move, the one which our stranger had said he would, and turned to go. Yet before he started off something novel and unexpected happened. Czentovic raised his eyes and surveyed our ranks; plainly he wanted to ascertain who it was that offered such unaccustomed energetic resistance.

From this moment our excitement grew immeasurably. Thus far we had played without genuine hope, but now every pulse beat hotly at the thought of breaking Czentovic's cold disdain. Without loss of time our new friend had directed the next move and we were ready to call Czentovic back. My fingers trembled as I hit the spoon against the glass. And now we registered our first triumph. Czentovic, who hitherto had executed his purpose standing, hesitated, hesitated and finally sat down. He did this slowly and heavily, but that was enough to cancel—in a physical sense if in no other—the difference in levels that had previously obtained. We had necessitated his acknowledgment of equality, spatially at least. He cogitated long, his eyes resting immovably on the board so that one could scarcely discern the pupils under the heavy lids, and under the strained application his mouth opened gradually, which gave him a rather foolish look. Czentovic reflected for some minutes, then made a move and rose. At once our friend said half audibly:

“A stall! Well thought out! But don’t yield to it. Force an exchange, he’s got to exchange, then we’ll get a draw and not even the gods can help him.”

MacIver did as he was told. The succeeding manoeuvres between the two men—we others had long since become mere supernumeraries—consisted of a back-and-forth that we were unable to comprehend. After some seven moves Czentovic looked up after a period of silence and said, “Draw.”

For a moment a total stillness reigned. Suddenly one heard the rushing of the waves and the jazzing radio in the adjacent drawingroom; one picked out every step on the promenade outside and the faint thin susurration of the wind that carried through the windowframes. None of us breathed; it had come upon us too abruptly and we were nothing less than frightened in the face of the impossible: that this stranger should have been able to force his will on the world champion in a contest already half lost. MacIver shoved himself back and relaxed, and his suppressed breathing became audible in the joyous “Ah” that passed his lips. I took another look at Czentovic. It had already seemed to me during the later moves that he grew paler. But he understood how to maintain his poise. He persisted in his apparent imperturbability and asked, in a negligent tone, the while he pushed the figures off the board with a steady hand:

“Would you like to have a third game, gentlemen?”

The question was matter-of-fact, just business. What was noteworthy was that he ignored MacIver and looked straight and intently into the eyes of our rescuer. Just as a horse takes a new rider’s measure by the firmness of his seat, he must have become cognizant of who was his real, in fact his only, opponent. We could not help but follow his gaze and look eagerly at the unknown. However, before he could collect himself and formulate an answer, MacIver in his eager excitement, had already cried to him in triumph:

“Certainly, no doubt about it! But this time you’ve got to play him alone! You against Czentovic!”

What followed was quite extraordinary. The stranger, who curiously enough was still staring with a strained expression at the bare board, became affrighted upon hearing the lusty call and perceiving that he was the centre of observation. He looked confused.

“By no means, gentlemen,” he said halting, plainly perplexed.“Quite out of the question. You’ll have to leave me out. It’s twenty, no, twenty-five years since I sat at a chess-board and...and I’m only now conscious of my bad manners in crashing into your game without so much as a by your leave....Please excuse my presumption. I don’t want to interfere further.” And before we could recover from our astonishment he had left us and gone out.

“But that’s just impossible!” boomed the irascible MacIver, pounding with his fist. “Out of the question that this fellow hasn’t played chess for twenty-five years. Why, he calculated every move, every counter move, five or six in advance. You can’t shake that out of your sleeve. Just out of the question—isn’t it?”

Involuntarily, MacIver turned to Czentovic with the last question. But the champion preserved his unalterable frigidity.

“It’s not for me to express an opinion. In any case there was something queer and interesting about the man’s game; that’s why I purposely left him a chance.”

With that he rose lazily and added, in his objective manner: “If he or you gentlemen should want another game to-morrow, I’m at your disposal from three o’clock on.”

We were unable to suppress our chuckles. Everyone of us knew that the chance which Czentovic had allowed his nameless antagonist had not been prompted by generosity and that the remark was no more than a childish ruse to cover his frustration. It served to stimulate the more actively our desire to witness the utter humbling of so unshakable an arrogance. All at once we peaceable, indolent passengers were seized by a mad ambitious will to battle, for the thought that just on our ship, in mid ocean, the palm might be wrested from the champion—a record that would be flashed to every news agency in the world—fascinated us challengingly. Added to that was the lure of the mysterious which emanated from the unexpected entry of our saviour at the crucial instant, and the contrast between his almost painful modesty and the rigid self-consciousness of the professional. Who was this unknown? Had destiny utilized this opportunity to command the revelation of a yet undiscovered chess phenomenon? Or was it that we were dealing with an expert, who, for some undisclosed reason, craved anonymity? We discussed these various possibilities excitedly; the most extreme hypotheses were not sufficiently extreme to reconcile the stranger’s puzzling shyness with his surprising declaration in the face of his demonstrated mastery. On one point, however, we were of one mind:to forgo no chance of a renewal of the contest. We resolved to exert ourselves to the limit to induce our godsend to play Czentovic the next day, MacIver pledging himself to foot the bill. Having in the meantime learned from the steward that the unknown was an Austrian, I, as his compatriot, was delegated to present our request.

Soon I found our man reclining in his deck-chair, reading. In the moment of approach I used the opportunity to observe him. The sharply-chiselled head rested on the cushion in a posture of slight exhaustion; again I was struck by the extraordinary colourlessness of the comparatively youthful face framed at the temples by glistening white hair, and I got the impression, I cannot say why, that this person must have aged suddenly. No sooner did I stand before him than he rose courteously and introduced himself by a name that was familiar to me as belonging to a highly respected family of old Austria. I remembered that a bearer of that name had been an intimate friend of Schubert, and that one of the old Emperor’s physicians-in-ordinary had belonged to the same family. Dr. B. was visibly dumbfounded when I stated our wish that he should take Czentovic on. It proved that he had no idea that he had stood his ground against a champion, let alone the most famous one in the world at the moment. For some reason this news seemed to make a special impression on him, for he inquired once and again whether I was sure that his opponent was truly a recognized holder of international honours. I soon perceived that this circumstance made my mission easier, but sensing his refined feelings, I considered it discreet to withhold the fact that MacIver would be a pecuniary loser in case of an eventual defeat. After considerable hesitation Dr. B. at last consented to a match, but with the proviso that my fellow-players be warned against putting extravagant hope in his expertness.

“Because,” he added with a clouded smile, “I really don’t know whether I have the ability to play the game according to all the rules. I assure you that it was not by any means false modesty that made me say that I hadn’t touched a chess-man since my college days, say more than twenty years. And even then I had no particular gifts as a player.”

This was said so simply that I had not the slightest doubt of its truth. And yet I could not but express wonderment at his accurate memory of the details of positions in games by many different masters;he must, at least, have been greatly occupied with chess theory. Dr. B. smiled once more in that dreamy way of his.

“Greatly occupied! Heaven knows it’s true enough that I have occupied myself with chess greatly. But that happened under quite special, I might say unique, circumstances. The story of it is rather complicated and it might go as a little chapter in the story of our agreeable epoch. Do you think you would have patience for half an hour...?”

He waved towards the deck-chair next to his, I accepted the invitation gladly. There were no near neighbours. Dr. B. removed his reading spectacles, laid them to one side, and began.

“You were kind enough to say that, as a Viennese, you remembered the name of my family. I am pretty sure, however, that you could hardly have heard of the law office which my father and I conducted—and later I alone—for we had no cases that got into the papers and we avoided new clients on principle. In truth, we no longer had a regular law practice but confined ourselves exclusively to advising, and mainly to administering the fortunes of the great monasteries with which my father, once a Deputy of the Clerical Party, was closely connected. Besides—in this day and generation I am no longer obliged to keep silence about the Monarchy—we had been entrusted with the investment of the funds of certain members of the Imperial family. These connections with the Court and the Church—my uncle had been the Emperor’s household physician, another was an abbot in Seitenstetten—dated back two generations; all we had to do was to maintain them, and the task allotted to us through this inherited confidence—a quiet, I might almost say a soundless, task—really called for little more than strict discretion and dependability, two qualities which my late father possessed in full measure; he succeeded, in fact, through his prudence in preserving considerable values for his clients through the years of inflation as well as the period of collapse. Then, when Hitler seized the helm in Germany and began to raid the properties of churches and cloisters, certain negotiations and transactions, initiated from the other side of the frontier with a view to saving at least the movable valuables from confiscation, went through our hands and we two knew more about sundry secret transactions between the Curia and the Imperial house than the public will ever learn of. But the very inconspicuousness of our office—we hadn’t even a sign on the door—as well as the care with which both of us almost ostentatiously kept out of Monarchist circles, offered the safest protection from officious investigations. In fact, no Austrian official had ever suspected that during all those years the secret couriers of the Imperial family delivered and fetched their most important mail in our unpretentious fourth floor office.

“It happened that the National Socialists began, long before they armed their forces against the world, to organize a different but equally schooled and dangerous army in all contiguous countries—the legion of the unprivileged, the despised, the injured. Their so-called ‘cells’ nested themselves in every office, in every business; they had listening-posts and spies in every spot, right up to the private chambers of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg. They had their man, as alas! I learned only too late, even in our insignificant office. True, he was nothing but a wretched, ungifted clerk whom I had engaged, on the recommendation of a priest, for no other purpose than to give the office the appearance of a going concern;all that we really used him for were innocent errands, answering the telephone, and filing papers, that is to say papers of no real importance. He was not allowed to open the mail. I typed important letters myself and kept no copies. I took all essential documents to my home, and I held private interviews nowhere but in the priory of the cloister or in my uncle’s consultation-room. The measures of caution prevented the listening-post from seeing anything that went on; but some unlucky happening must have made the vain and ambitious fellow aware that he was mistrusted and that interesting things were going on behind his back. It may have been that in my absence one of the couriers made a careless reference to ‘His Majesty’ instead of the stipulated ‘Baron Fern,’ or that the rascal opened letters surreptitiously. Whatever the reason, before I had so much as suspected him he managed to get a mandate from Berlin or Munich to watch us. It was only much later, long after my imprisonment began, that I remembered how his early laziness at work had changed in the last few months to a sudden eagerness when he frequently offered, almost intrusively, to post my letters. I cannot acquit myself of a certain amount of imprudence, but after all, haven’t the greatest diplomats and generals of the world too been out-maneuvered by Hitler’s cunning? Just how precisely and lovingly the Gestapo had long been directing its attention to me was manifested tangibly by the fact that the S.S. people arrested me on the evening of the very day of Schuschnigg’s abdication, and a day before Hitler entered Vienna. Luckily I had been able to burn the most important documents upon hearing Schuschnigg’s farewell address over the radio, and the other papers, along with the indispensable vouchers for the securities held abroad for the cloisters and two archdukes, I concealed in a basket of laundry which my faithful housekeeper took to my uncle. All of this almost literally in the last minute before the fellows stove my door in.”

Dr. B. interrupted himself long enough to light a cigar. I noticed by the light of the match a nervous twitch at the right corner of his mouth that had struck me before and which, as far as I could observe, recurred every few minutes. It was merely a fleeting vibration, hardly stronger than a breath, but it imparted to the whole face a singular restlessness.

I suppose you expect that I’m going to tell you about concentration camp to which all who held faith with our old Austria were removed;about the degradations, martyrings and tortures that I suffered there. Nothing of the kind happened. I was in a different category. I was not put with those luckless ones on whom they released their accumulated resentment by corporal and spiritual degradation, but rather was assigned to that small group out of which the National Socialists hoped to squeeze money or important information. My obscure person in itself meant nothing to the Gestapo, of course. They must have guessed, though, that were the dummies, the administrators and confidants, of their most embittered adversaries, and what they expected to compel from me was incriminating evidence, evidence against the monasteries to support charges of violation by those who had selflessly taken up the cudgels for the Monarchy. They suspected, and not without good reason, that a substantial portion of the funds that we handled was still secreted and inaccessible to their lust for loot—hence their choice of me on the very first day in order to force the desired information by their trusted methods. That is why persons of my sort, to whom they looked for money or significant evidence, were not dumped into a concentration camp but were sorted out for special handling. You will recall that our Chancellor, and also Baron Rothschild, from whose family they hoped to extort millions, were not planted behind barbed wire in a prison camp but, ostensibly privileged, were lodged in individual rooms in a hotel, the Metropole, which happened to be the Gestapo headquarters; the same distinction was bestowed on my insignificant self.

“A room to oneself in a hotel—sounds pretty descent doesn’t it? But you may believe me that they had not in mind a more decent but a more crafty technique when, instead of stuffing us ‘prominent’ ones in blocks of twenty into icy barracks, they housed us in tolerably heated hotel rooms, each by himself. For the pressure by which they planned to compel the needed testimony was to be exerted more subtly than through common beating or physical torture: by the most conceivably complete isolation. They did nothing to us; they merely deposited us in the midst of nothing, knowing well that of all things the most potent pressure on the soul of man is nothingness. By placing us singly, each in an utter vacuum, in a chamber that was hermetically closed to the world without, it was calculated that the pressure created from inside, rather than cold and the scourge, would eventually cause our lips to spring apart.

“The first sight of the room allotted to me was not at all repellent. There was a door, a table, a bed, a chair, a wash-basin, a barred window. The door, however, remained closed night and day; the table remained bare of book, newspaper, pencil, paper; the window gave on a brick wall; my ego and my physical self were contained in a structure of nothingness. They had taken every object from me: my watch, that I might not know the hour; my pencil, that I might not make a note; my pocket-knife, that I might not sever a vein; even the slight narcotic of a cigarette was forbidden me. Except for the warder, who was not permitted to address me or to answer a question, I saw no human face, I heard no human voice. From dawn to night there was no sustenance for eye or ear or any sense; I was alone with myself, with my body and four or five inanimate things, rescuelessly alone with table, bed, window, and basin. One lived like a diver in his bell in the black ocean of this silence—like a diver, too, who is dimly aware that the cable to safety has already snapped and that he never will be raised from the soundless depths. There was nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see; about me; everywhere and without interruption, there was nothingness, emptiness without space or time. I walked to and fro, and with me went my thoughts to and fro, to and fro, ever again. But even thoughts, insubstantial as they seem require an anchorage if they are not to revolve and circle around themselves; they too weigh down under nothingness. One waited for something from morn to eve and nothing happened. Nothing happened. One waited, waited, waited; one thought, one thought, one thought until one’s temples smarted. Nothing happened. One remained alone. Alone. Alone.

“That lasted for a fortnight, during which I lived outside of time, outside the world. If war had broken out then I would never have discovered it, for my world comprised only table, door, bed, basin, chair, window and wall every line of whose scalloped pattern embedded itself as with a steel graver in the innermost folds of my brain every time it met my eye. Then, at last, the hearings began. Suddenly I received a summons; I hardly knew whether it was day or night. I was called and led through a few corridors, I knew not whither; then I waited and knew not where it was, and found myself standing at a table behind which some uniformed men were seated. Piles of papers on the table, documents of whose contents I was in ignorance; and then came the questions, the real ones and the false, the simple and the cunning, the catch questions and the dummy questions; and whilst I answered, strange and evil fingers toyed with papers whose contents I could not surmise, and strange evil fingers wrote a record and I could not know what they wrote. But the most fearsome thing for me at those hearings was that I never could guess or figure out what the Gestapo actually knew about the goings on in my office and what they sought to worm out of me. I have already told you that at the last minute I gave my housekeeper the really incriminating documents to take to my uncle. Had he received them? Had he not received them? How far had I been betrayed by that clerk? Which letters had they intercepted and what might they not already have screwed out of some clumsy priest at one of the cloisters which we represented?

“And they heaped question on question. What securities had I bought for this cloister, with which banks had I corresponded, do I know Mr. So-and-so or do I not, had I corresponded with Switzerland and with God-knows-where? And not being able to divine what they had already dug up, every answer was fraught with danger. Were I to admit something that they didn’t know I might be unnecessarily exposing somebody to the axe, if I denied too much I harmed myself.

“The worst was not the examination. The worst was the return from the examination to my void, to the same room with the same table,the same bed, the same basin, the same wall-paper. No sooner was I by myself than I tried to recapitulate, to think of what I should have said and what I should say next time so as to divert any suspicion that a careless remark of mine might have aroused. I pondered, I combed through, I probed, I appraised every single word of testimony before the examining officers. I restated their every question and every answer that I made. I sought to sift out the part that went into the protocol, knowing well that it was all incalculable and unascertainable. But these thoughts, once given rein in empty space, rotated in my head unceasingly, always starting afresh in ever-changing combinations and insinuating themselves into my sleep.

“After every hearing by the Gestapo my own thoughts took over no less inexorably the martyrizing questions, searchings and torments, and perhaps even more horribly, for the hearings at least ended after an hour, but this repetition, thanks to the spiteful torture of solitude, ended never. And always the table, chest, bed, wallpaper, window;no diversion, not a book or magazine, not a new face, no pencil with which to jot down an item, not a match to toy with—nothing, nothing, nothing. It was only at this point that I apprehended how devilishly intelligently, with what murderous psychology, this hotel-room system was conceived. In a concentration camp one would, perhaps, have had to wheel stones until one’s hands bled and one’s feet froze in one’s boots; one would have been packed in stench and cold with a couple of dozen others. But one would have seen faces, would have had space, a tree, a star, something, anything, to stare at, while here everything stood before one unchangeably the same, always the same, maddeningly the same. There was nothing here to switch me off from my thoughts, from my delusive notions, from my diseased recapitulating. That was just what they purposed: they wanted me to gag and gag on my thoughts until they choked me and I had no choice but to spit them out at last, to admit-admit everything that they were after, finally to yield up the evidence and the people.

“I gradually became aware of how my nerves were slacking under the grisly pressure of the void and, conscious of the danger, I tensed myself to the bursting point in an effort to find or create any sort of diversion. I tried to recite or reconstruct everything I had ever memorized in order to occupy myself—the folk songs and nursery rhymes of childhood, the Homer of my high-school days, clauses from the Civil Code. Then I did problems in arithmetic, adding or dividing, but my memory was powerless without some integrating force. I was unable to concentrate on anything. One thought flickered and darted about: how much do they know? What is it that they don’t know? What did I say yesterday—what ought I to say next time?

“This simply indescribable state lasted four months. Well, four months; easy to write, just about a dozen letters! Easy to say, too: four months, a couple of syllables. The lips can articulate the sound in a quarter of a second: four months. But nobody can describe or measure or demonstrate, not to another or to himself, how long a period endures in the spaceless and timeless, nor can one explain to another how it eats into and destroys one, this nothing and nothing and nothing that is all about, everlastingly this table and bed and basin and wall-paper, and always that silence, always the same warder who shoves the food in without looking at one, always those same thoughts that revolve around one in the nothingness, until one becomes insane.

“Small signs made me disturbedly conscious that my brain was not working right. Early in the game my mind had been quite clear at the examinations; I had testified quietly and deliberately; my twofold thinking—what should I say and what not?—had still functioned. Now I could no more than articulate haltingly the simplest sentences, for while I spoke my eyes were fixed in a hypnotic stare on the pen that sped recordingly across the paper as if I wished to race after my own words. I felt myself losing my grip, I felt that the moment was coming closer and closer when, to rescue myself, I would tell all I knew and perhaps more; when, to elude the strangling grip of that nothingness, I would betray twelve persons and their secrets without deriving any advantage myself but the respite of a single breath.

“One evening I really reached that limit: the warder had just served my meal at such a moment of desperation when I suddenly shrieked after him: ‘Take me to the Board! I’ll tell everything! I want to confess! I’ll tell them where the papers are and where the money is! I’ll tell them everything! Everything!’ Fortunately he was far enough away not to hear me. Or perhaps he didn’t want to hear me.

“An event occurred in this extremest need, something unforeseeable, that offered rescue, rescue if only for a period. It was late in July, a dark, ominous, rainy day: I recall these details quite definitely because the rain was rattling against the windows of the corridor through which I was being led to the examination. I had to wait in the ante-room of the audience chamber. Always one had to wait before the session; the business of letting one wait was a trick of the game. They would first rip one’s nerves by the call, the abrupt summons from the cell in the middle of the night, and then, by the time one was keyed to the ordeal with will and reason tensed to resistance, they caused one to wait, meaningless meaningful waiting, an hour, two hours, three hours before the trial, to weary the body and humble the spirit. And they caused me to wait particularly long on this Thursday, the 27th of July; twice the hour struck while I attended, standing, in the ante-room; there is a special reason, too, for my remembering the date so exactly.

“A calendar hung in this room—it goes without saying that they never permitted me to sit down; my legs bored into my body for two hours—and I find it impossible to convey to you how my hunger for something printed, something written, made me stare at these figures, these few words, ‘27 July,’ against the wall; I wolfed them into my brain. Then I waited some more and waited and looked to see when the door would open at last, meanwhile reflecting on what my inquisitors might ask me this time, knowing well that they would ask me something quite different from that for which I was schooling myself. Yet in the face of all that, the torment of the waiting and standing was nevertheless a blessing, a delight, because this room was, after all, a different from my own, somewhat larger and with two windows instead of one, and without the bed and without the basin and without that crack in the window-sill that I had regarded a million times. The door was painted differently, a different chair stood against the wall, and to the left stood a filing cabinet with documents as well as a clothes—stand on which three or four wet militia coats hung—my torturers’ coats. So that I had something; new, something different to look at, at last something different for my starved eyes, and they clawed greedily at every detail.

“I took in every fold of those garments; I observed for example, a drop suspended from one of the wet collars and, ludicrous as it may sound to you, I waited in an inane excitement to see whether the drop would eventually detach itself and roll down or whether it would resist gravity and stay put; truly, this drop held me breathless for minutes, as if my life had been at stake. It rolled down after all, and then I counted the buttons on the coats again, eight on one, eight on another, ten on the third, and again I compared the rank marks; all of these absurd and unimportant trifles toyed with, teased, and pinched my hungry eyes with an avidity which I forgo trying to describe. And suddenly I saw something that paralysed my gaze. I had discovered a slight bulge in the side-pocket of one of the coats. I moved closer to it and thought that I recognized, by the rectangular shape of the protrusion, what this swollen pocket harboured: a book! My knees trembled: a book!

“I hadn’t had a book in my hand for four months, so that the mere idea of a book in which words appear in orderly arrangement, of sentences, pages, leaves, a book in which one could follow and stow in one’s brain new, unknown, diverting thoughts, was at once intoxicating and stupefying.

Hypnotized, my eyes rested on the little swelling which the book inside the pocket formed; they glowered at the spot as if to burn a hole in the coat. The moment came when I could no longer control my greed;involuntarily I edged nearer. The mere thought that my hands might at least feel the book through the cloth made the nerves of my fingers tingle to the nails. Almost without knowing what I did, I found myself getting closer to it.

“Happily the warder ignored my singular behaviour; indeed it may have seemed to him quite natural that a man wanted to lean against a wall, after standing erect for two hours. And then I was quite close to the coat, my hands purposely clasped behind me so as to be able to touch the coat unnoticed. I felt the stuff and the contact confirmed that here was something square, something flexible, and that it crackled softly-book, a book! And then a thought went through me like a shot:steal the book! If you can turn the trick, you can hide the book in your cell and read, read, read-read again at last. The thought, hardly lodged in me, operated like a strong poison; at once there was a singing in my ears, my heart hammered, my hands froze and resisted my bidding. But after that first numbness I pressed myself softly and insinuatingly against the coat; I pressed—always fixing the warder with my eye—the book up out of the pocket, higher and higher, with my artfully concealed hands. Then: a tug, a gentle, careful pull, and in no time the little book was in my hand. Not until now was I frightened at my deed. Retreat was no longer possible. What to do with it? I shoved the book under my trousers at the back just far enough for the belt to hold it, then gradually to the hip so that while walking I could keep it in place by holding my hands on the trouser-seams, military fashion. I had to try it out, so I moved a step from the clothes-stand, two steps, three steps. It worked. It was possible to keep the book in place while walking if I but kept pressing firmly against my belt.

“Then came the hearing. It demanded greater attention than ever on my part, for while answering I concentrated my entire effort on securing the book inconspicuously rather than on my testimony. Luckily this session proved to be a short one and I got the book safely to room, though it slipped into my trousers most dangerously while in the corridor on my way back and I had to simulate a violent fit of coughing as an excuse for bending over to get it under my belt again. But what a moment; that, as I bore it back into my inferno, alone at last yet no longer alone!

“You will suppose, of course, that my first act was to seize the book, examine it and read it. Not at all! I wanted, first of all, to savour the joy of possessing a book; the artificially prolonged and nerveinflaming desire to day-dream about the kind of book I would wish this stolen one to be: above all, very small type, narrowly spaced, with many, many letters, many, many thin leaves so that it might take long to read. And then I wished to myself that it might be one that would demand mental exertion, nothing smooth or light; rather something from which I could learn and memorize, preferably—oh, what an audacious dream!—Goethe or Homer. At last I could no longer check my greed and my curiosity. Stretched on the bed so as to arouse no suspicion in case the warder might open the door without warning, tremblingly I drew the volume from under my belt.

“The first glance produced not merely disappointment but a sort of bitter vexation, for this booty, whose acquirement was surrounded with such monsterous danger and such glowing hope, proved to be nothing more than a chess anthology, a collection of one hundred and fifty championship games. Had I not been barred, locked in, I would in my first rage, have thrown the thing through an open window; for what was to be done—what could be done—with nonsense of the kind? Like most of the other boys at school, I had now and then tried my hand at chess to kill time. But of what use was this theoretical stuff to me? You can’t play chess alone, and certainly not without chess-men and a board. Annoyed I thumbed the pages, thinking to discover reading matter of some sort, an introduction, a manual; but besides the bare rectangular reproductions of the various master games with their symbols a1-a2, Kt.-f1-Kt.-g3, etc.-to me then unintelligible, I found nothing. All of it appeared to me as a kind of algebra the key to which was hidden. Only gradually I puzzled out that the letters a, b, c stood for the vertical rows, the figures 1 to 8 for the rows across, and indicated the current position of each figure; thus these purely graphic expressions did, nevertheless, attain to speech.

“Who knows, I thought, if I were able to devise a chess-board in my cell I could follow these names through; and it seemed like a sign from heaven that the weave of my bedspread disclosed a coarse checker-work. With proper manipulation it yielded a field of sixty-four squares. I tore out the first leaf and concealed the book under my mattress. Then, from bits of bread that I sacrificed, I began to mould king, queen, and the other figures (with ludicrous results, of course), and after no end of effort I was finally able to undertake on the bedspread the reproduction of the positions pictured in the chess book. But my absurd bread-crumb figures, half of which I had covered with dust to differentiate them from ‘white’ ones, proved utterly inadequate when I tried to pursue the printed game. I was all confusion in those first days; I would have to start a game afresh five times, ten times, twenty times. But who on earth had so much unused and useless time as I, slave of emptiness, and who commanded so much immeasurable greed and patience!

“It took me six days to play the game to the end with out an error, and in a week after that I no longer required the chess-men to comprehend the relative positions and in just one more week I was able to dispense with the bedspread; the printed symbols, a1, a2, c7, c8, at first abstractions to me, automatically transformed themselves into visual plastic positions. The transposition had been accomplished perfectly. I had projected the chess-board and its figures within myself and, thanks to the bare rules, observed the immediate set-up just as a practised musician hears all instruments singly and in combination upon merely glancing at a printed score.

“It cost me no effort, after another fortnight, to play every game in the book from memory or, in chess language, blind; and only then did I begin to understand the limitless benefaction which my impertinent theft constituted. For I had acquired an occupation—a senseless, a purposeless one if you wish—yet one that negated the nothingness that enveloped me; the one hundred and fifty championship games equipped me with a weapon against the strangling monotony of space and time.

“From then on, to conserve the charm of this new interest without interruption, I divided my day precisely: two games in the morning, two in the afternoon, a quick recapitulation in the evening. That served to fill my day which previously had been as shapeless as jelly; I had something to do that did not tire me, for a wonderful feature of chess is that through confining mental energy to a strictly bounded field the brain does not flag even under the most strained concentration; rather it makes more acute its agility and energy. In the course of time the repetition of the master games, which had at first been mechanical, awakened an artistic, a pleasurable comprehension in me. I learned to understand the refinements, the tricks and feints in attack and defence; I grasped the technique of thinking ahead, planning combinations and riposting, and soon recognized the personal note of each champion in his individual method as infallibly as one spots a particular poet on hearing only a few lines. That which began as a mere time-killing occupation became a joy, and the personalities of such great chess strategists as Alekhin, Lasker, Boguljobov and Tartakover entered into my solitude as beloved comrades.

“My silent cell was constantly and variously peopled, and the very regularity of my exercises restored my already impaired intellectual capacity; my brain seemed refreshed and, because of constant disciplined thinking, even keenly whetted. My ability to think more clearly and concisely manifested itself, above all, at the hearings;unconsciously I had perfected myself at the chess-board in defending myself against false threats and masked dodges, from this time on I gave them no openings at the sessions and I even harboured the thought that the Gestapo men began, after a while, to regard me with a certain respect. Possibly they asked themselves, seeing so many others collapse, from what secret sources I alone found strength for such unshakable resistance.

“This period of happiness in which I played through the one hundred and fifty games in that book systematically, day by day, continued for about two and a half to three months. Then I arrived unexpectedly at a dead point. Suddenly I found myself once more facing nothingness. For by the time that I had played through each one of these games innumerable times, the charm of novelty and surprise was lost, the exciting and stimulating power was exhausted. What purpose did it serve to repeat again and again games whose every move I had long since memorized? No sooner did I make an opening move than the whole thing unravelled of itself; there was no surprise, no tension, no problem. At this point I would have needed another book with more games to keep me busy, to engage the mental effort that had become indispensable to divert me. This being totally impossible, my madness could take but one course: instead of the old games I had to devise new ones myself. I had to try to play the game with myself or, rather, against myself.

“I have no idea to what extent you have given thought to the intellectual status of this game of games. But one doesn’t have to reflect deeply to see that if pure chance can determine a game of calculation, it is an absurdity in logic to play against oneself. The fundamental attraction of chess lies, after all, in the fact that its strategy develops in different wise in two different brains, that in this mental battle Black,ignorant of White’s immediate manoeuvres, seeks constantly to guess and cross them, while White, for his part, strives to penetrate Black’s secret purposes and to outstrip and parry them. If one person tried to be both Black and White you have the preposterous situation that one and the same brain at once knows something and yet does not know it;that, functioning as White’s partner, it can instantly obey a command to forget what, a moment earlier as Black’s partner, it desired and plotted. Such cerebral duality really implies a complete cleavage of the conscious, a lighting up or dimming of the brain function at pleasure as with a switch; in short, to want to play against oneself at chess is about as paradoxical as to want to jump over one’s own shadow.

“Well, briefly, in my desperation I tried this impossibility, this absurdity, for months. There was no choice but this nonsense if I was not to become quite insane or slowly to disintegrate mentally. The fearful state that I was in compelled me at least to attempt this split between Black ego and White ego so as not to be crushed by the horrible nothingness that bore in on me.”

Dr. B. relaxed in his deck-chair and closed his eyes for a minute. It seemed as if he were exerting his will to suppress disturbing recollection. Once again the left corner of his mouth twitched in that strange and evidently uncontrollable manner. Then he settled himself a little more erectly.

“Well, then, I hope I’ve made it all pretty intelligible to this point. I’m sorry, but I doubt greatly that the rest of it can be pictured quite as clearly. This new occupation, you see, called for so unconditional a harnessing of the brain as to make any simultaneous self-control impossible. I have already intimated my opinion that chess contest with oneself spells nonsense, but there is a minimal possibility for even such an absurdity if a real chess-board is present, because the board, being tangible, affords a sense of distance, a material extraterritoriality. Before a real chess-board with real chessmen you can stop to think things over, and you can place yourself physically first on this side of the table, then on the other, to fix in your eyes how the scene looks to Black and how it looks to White. Obliged as I was to conduct these contests against myself—or with myself, as you please—on an imaginary field, so I was obliged to keep fixedly in mind the current set-up on the sixty four squares, and besides, to make advance calculations as to the possible further moves open to each player, which meant—I know how mad this must sound to you—imagining double, triply, no, imagining sextuply, duodecibly for each one of my egos, always four or five moves in advance.

“Please don’t think that I expect you to follow through the involutions of this madness. In these plays in the abstract space of fantasy I had to figure out the next four or five moves in my capacity of White, likewise as Black, thus considering every possible future combination with two brains, so to speak, White’s brain and Black’s brain. But even this auto-cleaving of personality was not most dangerous aspect of my abstruse experiment; rather it was that with the need to play independently I lost my foothold and fell into a bottomless pit. Then mere replaying of championship games, which I had been indulging in during the preceding weeks, had been, after all, no more than a feat of repetition, a straight recapitulation of given material and, as such, no greater strain than to memorize poetry or learn sections of the Civil Code by heart; it was a delimited, disciplined function and thus an excellent mental exercise. My two morning games, my two in the afternoon, represented a definite task that I was able to perform coolly; it was a substitute for normal occupation and, moreover, if I erred in the progress of a game or forgot the next move, I always had recourse to the book. It was only because the replaying of others’ games left my self out of the picture that this activity served to soothe and heal my shattered nerves; it was all one to me whether Black or White was victor, for was it not Alekhin or Boguljobov who sought the palm, while my own person, my reason, my soul derived satisfaction as observer, as fancier of the niceties of those jousts as they worked out. From the moment at which I tried to play against myself I began, unconsciously, to challenge myself. Each of my egos, my Black ego and my White ego, had to contest against the other and become the centre, each on its own, of an ambition, an impatience to win, to conquer, after each move that I made as Ego Black I was in a fever of curiosity as to what Ego White would do. Each of my egos felt triumphant when the other made a bad move and likewise suffered chagrin at similar clumsiness of its own.

“All that sounds senseless, and in fact such a self-produced schizophrenia, such a split consciousness with its fund of dangerous excitement, would be unthinkable in a person under normal conditions. Don’t forget, though that I had been violently torn from all normality, innocently charged and behind bars, for months martyrized by the refined employment of solitude—a man seeking an object against which to discharge his long-accumulated rage. And as I had nothing else than this insane match with myself, that rage, that lust for revenge, canalized itself fanatically into the game. Some-thing in me wanted to justify itself, but there was only this other self with which I could wrestle; so while the game was on, an almost maniac excitement waxed in me. In the beginning my deliberations were still quiet and imposed; I would pause between one game and the next so as to recover from the effort;but little by little my frayed nerves forbade all respite. No sooner had Ego White made a move than Ego Black feverishly plunged a piece forward; scarcely had a game ended but I challenged myself to another, for each time, of course, one of my chess-egos was beaten by the other and demanded satisfaction.

“I shall never be able to tell, even approximately, how many games I played against myself during those months in my cell as a result of this crazy insatiability; a thousand perhaps, perhaps more. It was an obsession against which I could not arm myself; from dawn to night I thought of nothing but knights and pawns, rooks and kings, and a b and c, and ‘Mate!’ and ‘Castle’; my entire being and every sense embraced the checkered board. The joy of play became a lust for play;the lust for play became a compulsion to play, a frenetic rage, a mania which saturated not only my waking hours but eventually my sleep, too. I could think only in terms of chess, only in chess moves, chess problems; sometimes I would wake with a damp brow and become aware that a game had unconsciously continued in my sleep, and if I dreamt of persons it was exclusively in the moves of the bishop, the rook in the advance and retreat of the knight’s move.

“Even when I was brought before the examining Board I was no longer able to keep my thoughts within the bounds of my responsibilities; I’m inclined to think that I must have expressed myself confusedly at the last sessions, for my judges would glance at one another strangely. Actually I was merely waiting, while they questioned and deliberated, in my cursed eagerness to be led back to my cell so that I could resume my mad round, to start a fresh game, and another and another. Every interruption disturbed me; even the quarter-hour in which the warder cleaned up the room, the two minutes in which he served my meals, tortured my feverish impatience; sometimes the midday meal stood untouched on the tray at evening because the game made me forgetful of food. The only physical sensation that I experienced was a terrible thirst; the fever of this constant thinking and playing must already have manifested itself then; I emptied the bottle in two swallows and begged the warder for more, and nevertheless felt my tongue dry in my mouth in the next minute.

“Finally my excitement during the games rose—by that time I did nothing else from morning till night—to such a height that I was no longer able to sit still for a minute; uninterruptedly, while cogitating on a move, I would walk to and fro, quicker and quicker, to and fro, to and fro, and the nearer the approach to the decisive moment of the game the hotter my steps; the lust to win, to victory, to victory over myself increased to a sort of rage; I trembled with impatience, for the one chess-ego in me was always too slow for the other. One would whip the other forward and, absurd as this may seem to you, I would call angrily,‘quicker, quicker!’ or ‘Go on, go on!’ when the one self in me failed to riposte to the other’s thrust quickly enough. It goes without saying that I am now fully aware that this state of mine was nothing less than a pathological form of overwrought mind for which I can find no other name than one not yet known to medical annals: chess poisoning.

“The time came when this monomania, this obsession, attacked my body as well as my brain. I lost weight, my sleep was restless and disturbed, upon waking I had to make great efforts to compel my leaded lids to open; sometimes I was so weak that when I grasped a glass I could scarcely raise it to my lips, my hands trembled so; but no sooner did the game begin than a mad power seized me: I rushed up and down, up and down with fists clenched, and I would sometimes hear my own voice as through a reddish fog, shouting hoarsely and angrily at myself,‘Check!’ or ‘Mate!’

“How this horrible, indescribable condition reached its crisis is something that I am unable to report. All that I know is that I woke one morning and the waking was different from usual. My body was no longer a burden, so to speak; I rested softly and easily. A tight, agreeable fatigue, such as I had not known for months, lay on my eyelids; the feeling was so warm and benignant that I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes. For minutes I lay awake and continued to enjoy this heavy soddenness, this tepid reclining in agreeable stupefaction. All at once I seemed to hear voices behind me, living human voices, low whispering voices that spoke words; and you can’t possibly imagine my delight, for months had elapsed, perhaps a year, since I had heard other words than the hard, sharp, evil ones from my judges. 'You’re dreaming,’ I said to myself. ‘You’re dreaming! Don’t, in any circumstances, open your eyes. Let the dream last or you’ll again see the cursed cell about you, the chair and wash-stand and the table and the wall-paper with the eternal pattern. You’re dreaming—keep on dreaming!’

But curiosity held the upper hand. Slowly and carefully I raised my lids. A miracle! It was a different room in which I found myself, a room wider and more ample than my hotel cell. An unbarred window emitted light freely and permitted a view of trees, green trees swaying in the wind, instead of my bald brick partition; the walls shone white and smooth, above above me a high white ceiling. I lay in a new and unaccustomed bed and—surely, it was no dream—human voices whispered behind me.

“In my surprise I must have made an abrupt, involuntary movement, for at once I heard an approaching step. A woman came softly, a woman with a white head-dress, a nurse, a Sister. A delighted shudder ran through me: I had seen no woman for a year. I stared at the lovely apparition, and it must have been a glance of wild ecstasy, for she admonished me, ‘quiet, don’t move.’ I hung only on her voice, for was not this a person who talked! Was there still somebody on earth who did not interrogate me, torture me? And to top it all—ungraspable wonder!—a soft, warm, almost tender woman’s voice. I stared hungrily at her mouth, for the year of inferno had made it seem to me impossible that one person might speak kindly to another. She smiled at me—yes, she smiled; then there still were people who could smile benevolently—put a warning finger to her lips, and went off noiselessly. But I could not obey her order; I was not yet sated with the miracle. I tried to wrench myself into a sitting posture so as to follow with my eyes this wonder of a human being who was kind. But when I reached out to support my weight on the edge of the bed something failed me. In place of my right hand, fingers, and wrist I became aware of something foreign—a thick, large, white cushion, obviously a comprehensive bandage. At first I gaped uncomprehendingly at this bulky object, then slowly I began to grasp where I was and to reflect on what could have happened to me. They must have injured me, or I had done some damage to my hand myself. The place was a hospital.

“The physician, an amiable elderly man, turned up at noon. He knew my family and made so genial an allusion to my uncle, the Imperial household doctor, as to create the impression that he was well disposed towards me. In the course of conversation he put all sorts of questions, one of which, in particular, astonished me: Was I a mathematician or a chemist? I answered in the negative.

“‘Strange,’ he murmured. ‘In your fever you cried out such unusual formulas, c3, c4. We could make nothing of it.’

“I asked him what had happened to me. He smiled oddly.

“‘Nothing too serious. An acute irritation of the nerves,’ and added in a low voice, after looking carefully around, ‘And quite intelligible, of course. Let’s see, it was March 13, wasn’t it!’

“I nodded.

“‘No wonder, with that system,’ he admitted. ‘You’re not the first. But don’t worry.’ The manner of his soothing speech and sympathetic smile convinced me that I was in a safe haven.

“A couple of days thereafter the doctor told me quite of his own accord what had taken place. The warder had heard shrieks from my cell and thought, at first, that I was disputing with somebody who had broken in. But no sooner had he shown himself at the door than I made for him, shouted wildly something that sounded like ‘Aren’t you ever going to move, you rascal, you coward?’ grasped at his windpipe, and finally attacked him so ferociously that he had to call for help. Then when they were dragging me, in my mad rage, for medical examination, I had suddenly broken loose and thrust myself against the window in the corridor, thereby lacerating my hand—see this deep scar. I had been in a sort of brain fever during the first few days in the hospital, but now he found my perceptive faculties quite in order. ‘To be sure,’ said he under his voice, it’s just as well that I don’t report that higher up or they may still come and fetch you back there. Depend on me, I’ll do my best.’

“Whatever it was that this benevolent doctor told my torturers about me is beyond my knowledge. In any case, he achieved what he sought to achieve: my release. It may be that he declared me irresponsible, or it may be that my importance to the Gestapo had diminished, for Hitler had since occupied Bohemia, thus liquidating the case of Austria. I had merely to sign an undertaking to leave the country within a fortnight, and this period was so filled with the multitude of formalities that now surround a journey—military certificate, police, tax and health certificates, passport, visas—as to leave me no time to brood over the past. Apparently one’s brain is controlled by secret, regulatory powers which automatically switch off whatever may annoy or endanger the mind, for every time I wanted to ponder on my imprisonment the light in my brain seemed to go off; only after many weeks, indeed only now, on this ship, have I plucked up enough courage to pass in review all that I lived through.

“After all this you will understand my unbecoming and perhaps strange conduct to your friends. It was only by chance that I was strolling through the smoking-room and saw them sitting at the chessboard; my feet seemed rooted where I stood from astonishment and fright. For I had totally forgotten that one can play chess with a real board and real figures, forgotten that two physically separate persons sit opposite each other at this game. Truly it took me a few minutes before I remembered that what those men were playing was what I had been playing, against myself during the months of my helplessness. The cipher-code which served me in my worthy exercises was but a substitute, a symbol for these solid figures; my astonishment that this pushing about of pieces on the board was the same as the imaginary fantastics in my mind must have been like that of an astronomer who, after complicated paper calculations as to the existence of a new planet, eventually really sees it in the sky as clear white, substantial body. I stared at the board as if magnetized, and saw there my setup, knight, rook, king, queen, and pawns, as genuine figures carved out of wood. In order to get the hang of the game I had voluntarily to transmute it from my abstract realm of numbers and letters into the movable figures. Gradually I was overcome with curiosity to observe a real contest between two players. Then followed that regrettable and impolite interference of mine with your game. But that mistaken move of your friend’s was like a stab at my heart. It was pure instinct that made me hold him back, a quite impulsive grasp like that with which one involuntarily seizes a child leaning over a banister. It was not until afterwards that I became conscious of the impropriety of my intrusiveness.”

I hastened to assure Dr. B. that we were all happy about the incident to which we owed his acquaintance and that, after what he had confided in me, I would be doubly interested in the opportunity to see him at tomorrow’s improvised tournament.

“Really, you mustn’t expect too much. It will be nothing but a test for me—a test whether I—whether I’m at all capable of dealing with chess in a normal way, in a game with a real board with substantial chess-men and a living opponent—for now I doubt more than ever that those hundreds, they may have been thousands, of games that I played were real games according to the rules, and not merely a sort of dreamchess, fever-chess, a delirium in which, as always in dreams, one skips intermediate steps. Surely you do not seriously believe that I would measure myself against a champion, that I expect to give tit for tat to the greatest one in the world. What interests and fascinates me is nothing but the humous curiosity to discover whether what went on in my cell was chess or madness, whether I was then at the dangerous brink or already beyond it—that’s all, nothing else.”

At this moment the gong summoning passengers to dinner was heard. The conversation must have lasted almost two hours, for Dr.B. had told me his story in much greater detail than that in which I assemble it. I thanked him warmly and took my leave. I had hardly covered the length of the deck when he was alongside me visibly nervous, saying with something of a stutter:

“One thing more. Will you please tell your friends beforehand, so that it should not later seem discourteous, that I will play only one game....The idea is merely to close an old account—a final settlement, not a new beginning....I can’t afford to sink back a second time into that passionate play-fever that I recall with nothing but horror. And besidesbesides, the doctor warned me, expressly warned me. Everyone who has ever succumbed to a mania remains for ever in jeopardy, and a sufferer from chess poisoning—even if discharged as cured—had better keep away from a chess-board. You understand, then—only this one experimental game for myself and no more.”

We assembled in the smoking-room the next day promptly at the appointed hour, three o’clock. Our circle had increased by yet two more lovers of the royal game, two ship’s officers who had obtained special leave from duty to watch the tourney. Czentovic, too, not as on the preceding day, was on time. After the usual choice of colours there began the memorable game this homo obscurissimus against the celebrated master.

I regret that it was played for thoroughly incompetent observers like us, and that its course is as completely lost to the annals of the art of chess as are Beethoven’s improvisations to music. True, we tried to piece it together from our collective memory on the following afternoons but in vain; very likely, in the passion of the moment we had allowed our interest to centre on the players rather than on the game. For the intellectual contrast between the contestants became physically plastic according to their manner as the play proceeded. Czentovic, the creature of routine, remained the entire time as immobile as a block, his eyes unalterably fixed on the board; thinking seemed to cost him almost physical effort that called for extreme concentration on the part of every organ. Dr. B., on the other hand, was completely slack and unconstrained. Like the true dilettante, in the best sense of the word, to whom only the play in play—the diletto—gives joy, he relaxed fully,explained moves to us in easy conversation during the early intervals, lighted a cigarette carelessly, and glanced at the board for a minute only when it came his turn to play. Each time it seemed as if he had expected just the move that his antagonist made.

The perfunctory moves came off quite rapidly. It was not until the seventh or eighth that something like a definite plan seemed to develop. Czentovic prolonged his periods of reflection; by that we sensed that the actual battle for the lead was setting in. But, to be quite frank, the gradual development of the situation represented to us lay observers, as usually in tournament games, something of a disappointment. The more the pieces wove themselves into a singular design the more impenetrable became the real lie of the land. We could not discern what one or the other rival purposed or which of the two had the advantage. We noticed merely that certain pieces insinuated themselves forward like levers to undermine the enemy front, but since every move of these superior players was part of a combination that comprised a plan for several moves ahead, we were unable to detect the strategy of their back-and-forth.

An oppressive fatigue took possession of us, largely because of Czentovic’s interminable cogitation between moves, which eventually produced visible irritation in our friend too. I observed uneasily now the longer the game stretched out, he became increasingly restless, moving about in his chair, nervously lighting a succession of cigarettes, occasionally seizing a pencil to make a note. He would order mineral water and gulp it down, glass after glass; it was plain that his mind was working a hundred times faster than Czentovic’s. Every time the latter, after endless reflection, decided to push a piece forward with his heavy hand, our friend would smile like one who encounters something long expected and make an immediate riposte. In his nimble mind he must have calculated every possibility that lay open to his opponent;the longer Czentovic took to make a decision the more his impatience grew, and during the waiting his lips narrowed into an angry and almost inimical line. Czentovic, however, did not allow himself to be hurried. He deliberated, stiff and silent, and increased the length of the pauses the more the field became denuded of figures. By the forty-second move, after one and a half hours, we sat limply by, almost indifferent to what was going on in the arena. One of the ship's officers had already departed, another was reading a book and would look up only when a piece had been moved. Then, suddenly at a move of Czentovic’s, the unexpected happened. As soon as Dr. B. perceived that Czentovic took hold of the bishop to move it, he crouched like a cat about to spring. His whole body trembled and Czentovic had no sooner executed his intention than he pushed his queen forward and said loudly and triumphantly, “There! That’s done with!”, fell back in his chair, his arms crossed over his breast and looked challengingly at Czentovic. As he spoke his pupils gleamed with a hot light.

Impulsively we bent over the board to figure out the significance of the move so ostentatiously announced. At first blush no direct threat was observable. Our friend’s statement, then, had reference to some development that we short-thoughted amateurs could not prefigure. Czentovic was the only one among us who had not stirred at the provocative call; he remained as still as if the insulting “Done with” had glanced of him unheard. Nothing happened. Everybody held his breath and at once the ticking of the clock that stood on the table to measure the moves became audible. Three minutes passed, seven minutes, eight minutes—Czentovic was motionless, but I thought I noticed an inner tension that became manifest in the greater distension of his thick nostrils.

This silent waiting seemed to be as unbearable to our friend as to us. He shoved his chair back, rose abruptly and began to traverse the smoking room, first slowly, then quicker and quicker. Those present looked at him wonderingly, but none with greater uneasiness than I, for I perceived that in spite of his vehemence this pacing never deviated from a uniform span; it was as if, in this awful space, he would each time come plump against an invisible cupboard that obliged him to reverse his steps. Shuddering, I recognized that it was an unconscious reproduction of the pacing in his erstwhile cell; during those months of incarceration it must have been exactly thus that he rushed to and fro, like a caged animal; his hands must have been clenched and his shoulders hunched exactly like this; it must have been like this that he pelted forward and back a thousand times there, the red lights of madness in his paralysed though feverish stare. Yet his mental control seemed still fully intact, for from time to time he turned impatiently towards the table to see if Czentovic had made up his mind. But time stretched to nine, then ten minutes.

What occurred then, at last, was something that none could have predicted. Czentovic slowly raised his heavy hand, which, until then, had rested inert on the table. Tautly we all watched for the upshot. Czentovic, however, moved no piece, but instead, with the back of his hand pushed, with one slow determined sweep, all the figures from the board. It took us a moment to comprehend: he gave up the game. He had capitulated in order that we might not witness his being mated. The impossible had come to pass: the champion of the world, victor at innumerable tournaments, had struck his colours before an unknown man, who hadn’t touched a chess-board for twenty or twenty-five years. Our friend the anonymous, the ignotus, had overcome the greatest chess master on earth in open battle.

Automatically, in the excitement, one after another rose to his feet;each was animated by the feeling that he must give vent to the joyous shock by saying or doing something. Only one remained stolidly at rest:Czentovic. After a measured interval he lifted his head and directed a stony look at our friend.

“Another game?” he asked.

“Naturally,” answered Dr. B. with an enthusiasm that was disturbing to me, and he seated himself, even before I could remind him of his own stipulation to play only once, and began to set up the figures in feverish haste. He pushed them about in such heat that a pawn twice slid from his trembling fingers to the floor; the pained discomfort that his unnatural excitement had already produced in me grew to something like fear. For this previously calm and quiet person had become visibly exalted; the twitching of his mouth was more frequent and in every limb he shook as with fever.

“Don’t,” I said softly to him. “No more now; you’ve had enough for to-day. It’s too much of a strain for you.”

“Strain! Ha!” and he laughed loudly and spitefully. “I could have played seventeen games during that slow ride. The only strain is for me to keep awake.—Well, aren’t you ever going to begin?”

These last words had been addressed in an impetuous, almost rude tone to Czentovic. The latter glanced at him quietly and evenly, but there was something of a clenched fist in that adamantine stubborn glance. On the instant a new element had entered: a dangerous tension a passionate hate. No longer were they two players in a sporting way; they were two enemies sworn to destroy each other. Czentovic hesitated long before making the first move, and I had a definite sensation that he was delaying on purpose. No question but that this seasoned tactician had long since discovered that just such dilatoriness wearied and irritated his antagonist. He used no less than four minutes for the normal, the simplest of openings, moving the king’s pawn two spaces. Instantly our friend advanced his king’s pawn, but again Czentovic was responsible for an eternal, intolerable pause; it was like waiting with beating heart for the thunder-clap after a streak of fiery lightning, and waiting—with no thunder forthcoming. Czentovic never stirred. He meditated quietly, slowly, and as I felt, increasingly, maliciously slowly—which gave me plenty of time to observe Dr. B. He had just about consumed his third glass of water; it came to my mind that he had spoken of his feverish thirst in his cell. Every symptom of abnormal excitement was plainly present: I saw his forehead grow moist and the scar on his hand become redder and more sharply outlined. Still, however, he held himself in rein. It was not until the fourth move, when Czentovic again pondered exasperatingly, that he forgot himself and exploded with, “Aren’t you ever going to move?”

Czentovic looked up coldly. “As I remember it, we agreed on a tenminute limit. It is a principle with me not to make it less.”

Dr. B. bit his lips. I noticed under the table the growing restlessness with which he lifted and lowered the sole of his shoe, and I could not control the nervousness the that overcame me because of the oppressive prescience of some insane thing that was boiling in him. As a matter of fact, there was a second encounter at the eighth move. Dr. B., whose self-control diminished with the increasing periods of waiting, could no longer conceal his tension; he was restless in his seat and unconsciously began to drum on the table with his fingers. Again Czentovic raised his peasant head.

“May I ask you not to drum. It disturbs me. I can’t play with that going on.”

“Ha, ha,” answered Dr. B. with a short laugh, “One can see that.”

Czentovic flushed. “What do you mean by that?” he asked, sharply and evilly.

Dr. B. gave another curt and spiteful laugh. “Nothing except that it’s plain that you’re nervous.”

Czentovic lowered his head and said nothing. Seven minutes elapsed before he made his move, and that was the funereal tempo at which the game dragged on. Czentovic became correspondingly stonier;in the end he utilized the maximum time before determining on a move, and from interval to interval the conduct of our friend became stranger and stranger. It appeared as if he no longer had any interest in the game but was occupied with something quite different. He abandoned his excited pacing and remained seated motionlessly. Starring into the void with a vacant and almost insane look, he uninterruptedly muttered unintelligible words; either he was absorbed in endless combinations or—and, this was my inner suspicion—he was working out quite other games, for each time that Czentovic got to the point, a move he had to be recalled from his absent state. Then it took a minute or two to orient himself. My conviction grew that he had really forgotten all about Czentovic and the rest of us in this cold aspect of his insanity which might at any instant discharge itself violently. Surely enough, at the nineteenth move the crisis came. No sooner had Czentovic executed his play than Dr. B., giving no more than a cursory look at the board, suddenly pushed his bishop three spaces forward and shouted so loudly that we all started.

“Check! Check, the king!”

Every eye was on the board in anticipation of an extraordinary move. Then, after a minute, there was an unexpected development. Very slowly Czentovic tilted his head and looked—which he had never done before—from one face to another. Something seemed to afford him a rich enjoyment, for little by little his lips gave expression to a satisfied and scornful smile. Only after he had savoured to the full the triumph which was still unintelligible to us did he address us, saying with mock deference:

“Sorry—but I see no check. Perhaps one of you gentlemen can see my king in check!”

We looked at the board and then uneasily over at Dr. B. Czentovic’s king was fully covered against the bishop by a pawn—a child could see that—thus the king could not possibly be in check. We turned one to the other. Might not our friend in his agitation have pushed a piece over the line, a square too far one way or the other? His attention arrested by our silence, Dr. B. now stared at the board and began, stutteringly:

“But the king ought to be on f7—that’s wrong, all wrong—Your move was wrong! All the pieces are misplaced-the pawn should be on g5 and not on g4. Why, that’s quite a different game – that’s—”

He halted abruptly. I had seized his arm roughly, or rather I had pinched it so hard that even in his feverish bewilderment he could not but feel my grip. He turned and looked at me like a somnambulist.

“What—what do you want?”

I only said “Remember!” at the same time lightly drawing my finger over the scar on his hand. Automatically he followed my gesture, his eyes fixed glassily on the blood-red streak. Suddenly he began to tremble and his body shook.

“For God’s sake,” he whispered with pale lips. “Have I said or done something silly? Is it possible that I’m again...?”

“No,” I said, in a low voice, “But you have to stop the game at once. It’s high time. Recollect what the doctor said.”

With a single movement Dr. B. was on his feet. “I have to apologize for my stupid mistake,” he said in his old, polite voice, inclining himself to Czentovic. “What I said was plain nonsense, of course. It goes without saying that the game is yours.” Then to us: “My apologies to your gentlemen, also. But I warned you beforehand not to expect too much from me. Forgive the disgrace-it is the last time that I yield to the temptation of chess.”

He bowed and left in the same modest and mysterious manner in which he had first appeared before us. I alone knew why this man would never again touch a chess-board, while the others, a bit confused, stood around with that vague feeling of having narrowly escaped something uncomfortable and dangerous. “Damned fool,” MacIver grumbled in his disappointment. Last of all, Czentovic rose from his chair, half glancing at the unfinished game.

“Too bad,” he said generously. “The attack wasn’t at all badly conceived. The man certainly has lots of talent for an amateur.”

今天午夜有一艘巨型客轮将从纽约驶往布宜诺斯艾利斯。轮船即将起锚，此刻船上呈现一派常见的紧张和繁忙景象。到码头上来为朋友送行的客人拥挤不堪，歪戴着帽子的电报投递员穿过一个个休息室，高声喊着旅客的名字；有的旅客拽着箱子，手里拿着鲜花；孩子们好奇地在客轮的阶梯上跑上跑下，乐队不知疲倦地在甲板上卖劲地演奏。我站在上层甲板上同一位朋友聊天，稍稍避开这喧嚷的人群。这时，我们身旁闪光灯刺目地闪了两三下——大概是某位知名人士在起航前的一刻还在接受记者的快速采访和照相。我的朋友朝那边看了看，笑着说：“岑托维奇在您船上，他可是个罕见的怪物。”听了他的话，我脸上显然露出十分不解的表情，所以他接着便解释道：“米尔柯·岑托维奇是国际象棋世界冠军。他在美国从东到西的巡回比赛中取得全胜，现在要乘船到阿根廷去夺取新的胜利。”

经他一说，我真想起了这位年轻的世界冠军，甚至还记起了他一鸣惊人、名满天下的若干细节；我的朋友看报要比我仔细得多，所以能拿好些奇闻逸事来补充我所知道的那点细节。大约在一年以前，岑托维奇一下子就跻身于阿廖欣、卡帕布兰卡、塔尔塔柯威尔、拉斯克、波戈留波夫等久负盛名的棋坛高手的行列。自从七岁神童列舍夫斯基在一九二二年纽约国际象棋比赛中一鸣惊人以来，棋坛上还从来没有因哪位无名之辈闯入名声显赫的高手之中而引起那么大的轰动。因为岑托维奇的智力素质一开始绝不会预示他的前程会那么光彩夺目，平步青云。他不久就露馅了：这位国际象棋大师在日常生活中无论用哪种语言都写不出一句没有错误的句子，正如一位被他惹恼的棋手尖刻地嘲讽的那样，“在任何方面，他都全方位地缺乏教养”。他父亲是多瑙河上一名赤贫的南斯拉夫船夫，一天夜里小船被一艘运粮食的轮船撞翻，父亲遇难。当地那个偏僻小村里的神甫出于同情，便收养了这位当时才十二岁的孩子。这位好心的神甫想方设法给他辅导，以弥补这不爱说话、有点迟钝、脑门很宽的孩子在村校里未能学会的功课。

但是，神甫的心血全都是白费。米尔柯两眼瞪着那几个给他讲了上百次的字总还是不认识；课堂上讲的最最简单的东西，他那迟钝的脑袋也理解不了。他都十四岁了，算数还得靠扳手指头，读书看报对这个半大不小的男孩子来说那是特别费劲的事。但是，这倒不能说米尔柯不乐意或者脾气倔。让他干什么，他都乖乖地去干，担水，劈柴，下地干活，收拾厨房，要他干的事，他样样都干得很认真，尽管慢腾腾得让人恼火。不过，最使好心的神甫生气的，还是这怪癖的孩子对什么事都漠不关心。你不专门叫他，他就什么也不干。他从不提问题，不和别的孩子一起玩，不特别关照他干什么事，他自己从来不去找活干。家务一干完，米尔柯就坐在屋里发呆，目光空虚无神，就像牧场上的绵羊对周围发生的事情熟视无睹，无动于衷。晚上，神甫叼着农家的长烟斗，照例要同巡警队长杀三盘棋。这时，这位头发金黄的少年总是默默地蹲在一旁，沉重的眼皮下，那双眸子盯着画着格子的棋盘，好似昏昏欲睡、漫不经心的样子。

一个冬日的晚上，两位棋友正专心致志地在进行每天的对弈，这时从村道上飞快驶来一辆雪橇，叮叮当当的铃声越来越近。一个农民急匆匆地奔进屋来，他戴的帽子上已经积了一层白雪。他说，他的老母亲已经生命垂危，他恳请神甫尽快赶去，及时给她施行临终涂油礼。神甫毫不迟疑，当即随他前去。巡警队长杯里的啤酒还没喝完，他又点了一袋烟，正准备穿上他那双沉重的高腰皮靴回家的时候，忽然发现米尔柯的目光一动不动地紧紧盯着棋盘上刚开始的那局棋。

“嗨，你想把这盘棋下完吗？”巡警队长开玩笑说。他确信，这睡眼惺忪的小伙子连棋子都不会走。男孩怯生生地抬眼望着他，然后点了点头，就坐到神甫的位子上。走了十四步棋，巡警队长就输了，并且不得不承认，他的失败绝非是不小心走了昏着的原因。第二盘棋的结局也没有什么改观。

“真是出现了‘巴兰的驴子’！”神甫回家以后惊奇地大叫起来。巡警队长对《圣经》不太熟悉，所以不懂这句话的意思。神甫便向他解释，说两千年前就发生过类似的奇迹：一头不会说话的牲口突然说出了智慧的话。尽管时间已晚，神甫还是忍不住要同他那半文盲的学生对弈一盘。米尔柯也是不费吹灰之力就把他赢了。他的棋下得坚韧、缓慢、果断，他那俯在棋盘上的宽阔的脑袋连抬都不抬一下。他的棋下得极其稳健，无懈可击；接连几天巡警队长和神甫都没能赢过他一盘。神甫收养的这个孩子在其他方面智商极低，对于这一点他比谁都更了解，也更能做出评判。现在他当真很想弄明白，这种单方面的奇特的才能究竟能在多大程度上经受住更为严格的考验。他让米尔柯到乡村理发师那儿去把乱蓬蓬的金黄色的头发理一理，好让他显得有几分样子，然后就坐雪橇带他到邻近的小镇上去。他知道，小镇广场上的咖啡店的一角常常聚集着一群瘾头很大的棋友，根据经验，他知道自己的棋不是这帮人的对手。这位头发金黄、脸颊红红的十五岁少年，今天身穿皮毛里翻的羊皮袄，脚蹬沉重的高腰皮靴。当神甫将他推进咖啡馆时，使得在座的棋友中激起不小的惊讶。进了咖啡馆，少年人怯生生地低垂着双眼，诧异地立在一角，直到人家叫他到一张棋桌上去，他才动窝。第一盘米尔柯输了，因为他在好心的神甫家里从未见过所谓西西里开局的下法。第二盘他就已经同镇上最优秀的棋手弈成和棋。从第三四盘开始，他就一个接一个地把所有对手杀得落花流水。

在南斯拉夫外省的小城里，激动人心的事情是很少发生的；所以这位农民冠军的初次亮相，对于聚集在那里的这帮绅士来说立即就成了轰动的新闻。大家一致决定，无论如何也得让这位神童在城里待到明天，以便把国际象棋俱乐部的其他成员都召集起来，尤其是好到城堡里去通知那位狂热的棋迷——西姆奇茨老伯爵。神甫以一种完全新的自豪心情打量着他所抚养的这个孩子，但是在为自己慧眼独具而感到乐不可支的时候，却不愿耽误自己的职责应做的主日礼拜，于是表示同意把米尔柯留下来，做进一步的考验。于是年轻的岑托维奇由棋友出钱住进旅馆，当晚他第一次见到抽水马桶。第二天是星期日，下午棋室里挤满了人。米尔柯一动不动地在棋盘前坐了四个钟头，一言不发，连眼睛都不抬起来看一下，就一个接一个战胜了所有棋手。最后有人建议下一盘车轮战。大家解释了好一会儿，才让这位脑袋不开窍的少年明白，所谓车轮战，就是他一个人同时跟好几个棋手对弈。米尔柯一搞清楚这种下法，就进入状态，拖着他那双沉重的咯吱作响的靴子缓步从一张桌子走到另一张桌子，结果八盘棋他赢了七盘。

此后，大家进行了广泛的讨论。虽然严格说来这位新冠军并非本城居民，可是当地的民族自豪感却熊熊地点燃了。这么一来，地图上的这座迄今为止还几乎没有被人注意的小城，说不定会第一次获得向世界输送一位名人的荣誉呢。一位名叫科勒的经纪人平时专门介绍女歌星、女歌手到驻军歌舞剧场去演出，这时也表示，他在维也纳认识一位杰出的小个子国际象棋大师，只要有人提供一年的资助，他就准备把这位年轻人安排到那里去接受棋艺方面的专门培养。西姆奇茨伯爵六十年来天天下棋，还从未遇见过这么一个奇特的对手，当即便认捐了这笔款项。从这一天开始，这位船夫的儿子就春风得意，青云直上了，令世人为之惊讶不已。

半年以后，米尔柯便掌握了国际象棋技艺的全部奥秘。不过，他还有一个奇怪的弱点，这一弱点让他后来多次在行家面前露出马脚，并为他们所嘲笑。因为岑托维奇始终不会凭记忆下棋，用行话来说，就是不会下盲棋，即使下一盘也不行。他完全缺乏那种把棋盘置于无限的想象空间的能力。他面前总得有张画着六十四个黑白相间的方格的棋盘和三十二颗摸得着的棋子；在他享有世界声誉的时候，他还随身带着一副棋盘可以折叠的袖珍象棋，在他想把一盘名棋复盘或是解决某个问题时，直接就能具体看到棋子的位置。这点瑕疵本身是微不足道的，但却暴露出他缺乏想象力，这就像音乐界一位卓越的演奏家或指挥不打开乐谱就不能演奏或指挥一样。但是这个奇怪的缺憾并没有影响米尔柯令人惊讶的飞黄腾达。他十七岁就获得了十多个国际象棋奖，十八岁摘取匈牙利冠军，二十岁终于夺得世界冠军。那些棋风最凌厉的冠军在智力、想象力和勇气方面个个都要比他高出不知多少，可是在他坚韧而冷峻的逻辑面前却一一败下阵来，就像拿破仑败在慢腾腾的库图佐夫手下，汉尼拔败在费边·康克推多手下一样，据李维的记述，康克推多也是在小时候就表现出冷漠和低能的显著特点。于是，卓越的国际象棋大师的画廊里第一次闯进了一位与精神世界完全不沾边的人。要知道，画廊中的国际象棋大师的行列里汇聚了智力超凡的各种类型的人物——哲学家、数学家，以及计算精确、想象力丰富和往往富于创造性的人物——可是岑托维奇却只是个农村青年，他性格迟钝，寡言少语，即使是最精明的记者也休想从他嘴里套出一句有新闻价值的话来。当然，岑托维奇从不向报纸提供精练的警句格言，不久报上刊登了关于他这个人的大量逸事，这一点也就得到了弥补。在棋桌上，岑托维奇是无与伦比的大师，可是从他离开棋盘站起身来的一刻起，他就成了一个荒诞不经的、近乎滑稽可笑的人物，而且无可救药。尽管他穿了一身庄重的黑西服，打了豪华的领带，领带上别了一枚有点显摆的珍珠别针，尽管对指甲做了精心修剪，但是他的整个举止风度仍然是那个头脑简单、在村里替神甫打扫房间的乡下少年。他极其粗俗吝啬，贪得无厌，一心想方设法利用自己的天赋和声望去捞取一切可以捞取的金钱，那样子既笨拙又厚颜无耻，惹得棋界同行既好笑又好气。他从一座城市到另一座城市，总是下榻在最便宜的旅馆，只要答应给他报酬，即使是最寒碜的俱乐部，他也去下棋；他同意把自己的肖像印在肥皂广告上，甚至不顾竞争对手的嘲笑——他们深知，他是个三句话都写不好的草包——把自己的名字卖给一本叫作《国际象棋的哲学》的书，实际上为那个专门以逐利为目的的出版商撰写这本书的是一名加里西亚大学的学生，是个无名之辈。像所有性格坚韧的人一样，他也根本不懂得可笑一说；自从在世界比赛中取胜以来，他就自以为是世界上最重要的人物了，他觉得，所有那些绝顶聪明、才智过人、光灿夺目的演说家和著作家也都在他们各自的战场上被他一一斩于马下，尤其是他挣的钱比他们多，这个具体事实将他原来的犹豫不决变成了冷酷的、往往是拙劣地有意显露的趾高气扬。

“不过，这种平步青云怎么能不叫这空虚的脑袋感到飘飘然呢？”我的朋友说。他还给我讲了岑托维奇颐指气使、目空一切的可笑事例。“一个从巴纳特来的二十一岁的乡巴佬，突然间在木棋盘上摆弄几下棋子，在一星期之内赚的钱就比他全村全年伐木和干重活辛辛苦苦挣的钱还多，他怎么能不踌躇满志，沾沾自喜呢？还有，要是一个人压根儿就不知道这个世界上曾经有过伦勃朗、贝多芬、但丁和拿破仑，那不是很容易把自己看作伟人吗？这小伙子那孤陋寡闻的脑袋里只知道一件事，那就是几个月来他从未输过一盘棋，而且正因为他不知道除了象棋和金钱之外，这个世界上还存在着其他有价值的东西，所以他完全有理由沉湎于飘飘欲仙的感觉之中。”

我的朋友讲的这些情况大大激起了我特殊的好奇心。我平生对患有各种偏执狂的人、一个心眼儿到底的人最有兴趣，因为一个人知识面越是有限，他离无限就越近；正是那些表面上看来对世界不闻不问的人，在用他们的特殊材料像蚂蚁一样建造一个奇特的、独一无二的微缩世界。因此我对自己的意图毫不隐晦：在开往里约热内卢的十二天航程中仔细观察这位智力单轨发展的奇怪标本。可是，朋友提醒我：“您的运气恐怕不会这么好。就我所知，迄今为止还没有一个人能从岑托维奇那里弄到一星半点可用作心理分析的材料。这个狡猾的乡巴佬虽然知识极其贫乏，但却非常聪明，从不暴露自己的弱点，其实他的办法极其简单，那就是除了从几家小旅店找来的境况与他相仿的几个同乡外，他不跟任何人说话。他只要感到有个有教养的人在场，就立刻爬进他的蜗牛壳；所以谁也无法夸口，说是曾经听到过他的一句蠢话，或是摸清了他缺乏教养到何种程度。”

确实，我的朋友说得不错。旅行的头几天的情况就表明，不硬着脸皮去纠缠就根本不可能接近岑托维奇。当然，这种死皮赖脸的事我是做不出的。有时他倒也走上上层甲板，但每次总是反背着双手，目中无人，显出一副陷入沉思的样子，宛如那幅名画上的拿破仑；此外，在甲板上散步本来很逍遥，可是他总是匆匆忙忙、风风火火的样子，想跟他搭句话，你得跟在他后面小跑步才行。他又从来不在休息室、酒吧和吸烟室露面；我向服务员悄悄打听过，得知他一天的大部分时间都待在自己的舱房里，在一个大棋盘上研究棋局或把下过的棋重新摆一摆。

他的防御技术比我想接近他的意愿还要巧妙，为此三天以后我真的开始生气了。我一生中还从未有机会同一位国际象棋大师结识，现在我越是竭力想赋予这种类型的人以普通人性，就越觉得难以想象，人的大脑怎么能一辈子都完全围着一个有六十四个黑白方格的空间转呢！根据自己的切身体验，我知道这种“国王的游戏”具有神秘的魅力，在人所想出来的各种游戏中，唯有这种游戏绝对容不得半点偶然的随心所欲，它的桂冠只给予智慧，或者更确切地说，只给予某种特殊形式的天赋。那么，把国际象棋称作一种游戏，岂不是犯了侮辱性的限制之罪吗？它难道不也是一门学问，一种艺术，飘浮于这两者之间，就像穆罕默德的棺椁飘浮在天地之间一样？它难道不是一对对矛盾的无与伦比的结合吗？它是古老的，却又永远是崭新的；它在布局上是机械的，不过只有通过想象才能极尽其妙；它被限制在几何形的呆板的空间里，然而在其组合上却是无限的；它是不断发展的，但又是毫无创造性的；它是得不到结果的思想，是什么也算不出的数学，是没有作品的艺术，是没有物质的建筑，尽管如此，在其存在和此在方面却证明比所有的书籍和艺术作品更久长；它属于各个民族和各个时代，而且无人知晓，是哪位神灵把这种游戏带到人间来供人们消遣解闷，磨砺禀性，激励心灵的。它何处为始，何处是终？每个孩子都能学会它的初步规则，每个臭棋篓子都可以一试身手，然而就在这固定不变的小小的方块之内却会产生一类特殊的大师，与他们相比，所有其他的人都望尘莫及。他们只是在棋艺方面有天赋，他们是特殊的天才，在他们身上想象力、耐心和技巧也分配得十分精确，并一一起着作用，就像在数学家、诗人和音乐家身上一样，只不过层次和结合不同而已。从前观相术盛行的时候，要是加尔解剖了象棋大师的颅脑就好了，这样就可确定，这些国际象棋天才的大脑灰质是否有一种特殊的曲纹，他们的颅脑里是否有一种比常人更发达的象棋肌或象棋突。像岑托维奇这样的棋手，在绝对迟钝的智力中散布着特殊的天赋，就像在一百公斤不含矿质的岩石中含有一条金脉一般！他这样的实例要是激发起那些观相术家的兴趣就好了。这样一种独一无二的天才游戏是定会造就出特殊的棋王来的，对于这一点，一般来说，我一直都很清楚，然而很难想象，甚至不能想象，一个思想活跃的人竟一辈子把自己的世界仅仅局限在黑白方格之间狭窄的单行轨上，只在三十二颗棋子前后左右的挪动中寻找成功的喜悦，一个人开局先走马而不走卒竟是件了不起的大事，能在棋谱的某个不起眼的地方提到一笔就意味着不朽——总之，一个人，一个会思想的人，十年，二十年，三十年，四十年如一日，将自己思想的全部张力一次又一次可笑地用在把木头棋子“王”逼到木制棋盘上的角落里去，而自己竟没有发狂！

现在，这么一位了不起的人，这么一个奇特的天才，或者说这么一个谜一般的傻瓜第一次离我那么近，在同一艘船上，相隔仅六个船舱，但是我真倒霉，我虽然对有关精神方面的事最好奇，而且这种好奇心往往会变成一种激情，尽管这样，我还是未能接近他。于是我就想出一些荒诞透顶的计谋：我假装要为一家重要报纸去采访他，以刺激他的虚荣心；要不我抓住他贪得无厌的心理，建议他到苏格兰去参加一场报酬颇丰的比赛。末了我想起猎人的一个非常灵验的办法：要把山鸡引过来，就学山鸡交尾时的叫声。那么要把象棋大师的注意力吸引到自己身上来，难道还有比自己去下棋更有效的高招吗？

我一生中从来就不是一个正经八百的国际象棋艺术家，其原因十分简单，那就是我总不把下棋当一回事，只不过是下着玩玩的；要是我坐下来下一小时棋，那可不是为了去劳神费脑，相反，是为了使紧张的脑子得到放松。我是本着“玩”这个字的真正意义下棋的，而别人，那些真正棋手却是为了“较量”。下棋和谈恋爱一样，必须有个对手，而此刻我还不知道，除了我们，船上是否还有其他爱下国际象棋的人。为了把他们引出洞来，我就在吸烟室里设下一个简陋的圈套：我同我妻子在棋桌上对弈，尽管她的棋比我还臭。这样我们就像捕鸟人，网开一面，专等鸟儿来自投罗网。果然，我们走了还不到六个回合，有个人打旁边走过时就停了下来，还有一位请求我们允许他观战；最后来了一位我们所期盼的对手，他向我叫阵，要同我对弈一盘。他名叫麦克康纳，是苏格兰深井采油工程师，我听说，他在加利福尼亚钻探石油发了大财。从外表上看，麦克康纳体格粗壮，方方的腮帮结实坚硬，牙齿坚固，脸色很好，透着红润，大概是威士忌喝多了，至少这是一部分原因。引人注目的是他那宽阔的肩膀，真有点儿运动员的威武架势，可惜下棋的时候也锋芒毕露，因为这位麦克康纳先生是属于踌躇满志、极其自负的那种类型的人，即使是一盘无足轻重的棋，下输了，他也觉得是贬低了自己的人格。这位白手起家的大块头阔佬，生活中习惯于一意孤行，为自己的成功感到飘飘然，骨子里都渗透着顽固不化的优越感，因此他把任何阻力都看作是对他极不礼貌的反抗，几乎就等于是对他的侮辱。输了第一盘，他就沉下了脸，并且啰唆开了，蛮不讲理地说，这盘棋只是一时疏忽才输的，第三盘输了，他又把原因归之于隔壁船舱里声音太吵；他每输一盘棋，绝不肯就此罢休，必定立即要求再下一盘。起初我觉得这种顽固的虚荣心很好玩；后来我想，我的本意是把世界冠军吸引到我们桌上来，所以只把他的虚荣心看作是实现我的意图的一种不可避免的伴生现象。

第三天我的计划成功了，但也只是成功一半。无论是岑托维奇从上层甲板上看我们下棋，或是他只是偶尔光临一下吸烟室——反正，他一见我们这些门外汉竟在摆弄他的这门艺术，就下意识地走近了一步，从这个适当的距离朝我们的棋盘投来审视的一瞥。这时正好该麦克康纳走棋。这一步棋就足以让岑托维奇明白，对于他这位大师级的人来说，我们这点儿业余棋手的水平是不值得继续看下去的。就像我们在书店里人家向我们推荐一本蹩脚的侦探小说，我们看都不看一眼就露出不言而喻的表情将书搁在一边一样，现在他也以同样的表情从我们棋桌边走开，出了吸烟室。“他掂量了一下，觉得没意思。”我思忖，对他那种冷冰冰的、瞧不起人的目光心里有点生气。为了发泄一下我的气恼，我就对麦克康纳说：

“您这步棋大师似乎不怎么看得上眼。”

“哪个大师？”

我向他解释说，刚才从我们身边走过、并以鄙夷的目光看我们下棋的那位先生就是国际象棋大师岑托维奇。我还补充了一句，说，就让他去好了，我们两人认了，名人的鄙视不会使我们伤心的；穷人只有这点能耐。然而出乎我的意料，我随便这么一说，竟对麦克康纳先生产生了完全意想不到的作用。他立刻就激动起来，忘掉了我们的棋局，他的虚荣心上来了，激动得几乎可以听到脉搏怦怦跳动的声音。他说，他根本不知道岑托维奇在船上，无论如何岑托维奇得跟他下盘棋。他一生中还从来没有跟一位世界冠军下过棋，除了有次跟另外四十个人一起同世界冠军下过一盘车轮战。就是那盘棋也是够紧张的，当时他还差点儿赢了呢。他问我是否认识这位国际象棋冠军，我说不认识。他又问，我想不想去跟他打招呼，把他请到我们这儿来？我没有答应，因为据我所知，岑托维奇不怎么愿意结识新交。另外，对一位世界冠军来说，跟我们这些三流棋手下棋又有什么吸引力呢？

嗨，对于一个像麦克康纳这样虚荣心很强的人，我是不该说什么三流棋手之类的话的。他生气地往后一靠，陡然说，就他而言，他不信一位绅士客气地去请岑托维奇下棋，会遭他拒绝。应他之请，我给他简要描述了这位世界冠军的为人。听了以后他便满不在乎地撂下我们这盘棋，心急火燎地冲到上层甲板上去找岑托维奇。我又一次感到，这位宽肩膀的人一旦想要干什么事，是阻挡不了的。

我颇为紧张地等待着。十分钟以后，麦克康纳先生回来了，我觉得他不那么兴高采烈。

“怎么样？”我问。

“您说得不错，”他有点生气地回答，“他是个不怎么讨人喜欢的先生。我做了自我介绍，告诉他我是谁。他连手都没有伸给我。我试图让他明白，要是他跟我们下盘车轮战，我们船上所有的人都会感到骄傲，感到荣幸。妈的，他就是不答应。他说很遗憾，他同他的经纪人签了合同，合同特别规定，在整个这次巡回比赛期间，他不得下没有报酬的棋，而他的最低酬金是每盘二百五十美元。”

我笑了。“这点我倒从未想到，在黑白方格上挪动几下棋子竟是一桩进项那么多的买卖。那么，我想，您也就客客气气地告辞了吧。”

然而，麦克康纳仍然十分严肃地说：“棋局定在明天下午三点钟，就在这个吸烟室。我希望，不要让他不费吹灰之力就把我们杀得落花流水。”

“怎么？您同意给他二百五十美元了？”我惊诧地叫了起来。

“干吗不给？C’est son métier.要是我牙痛，而船上碰巧有个牙科大夫，我也不会白要他给我拔牙呀。这人要价很高，这是对的。各行各业里货真价实的行家也都是生意人。在我来说，买卖说得越清楚越好。我宁愿付现金，也不愿求什么岑托维奇先生对我大发慈悲，到头来还得感谢他。再说，我在船上的俱乐部里有个晚上输掉的就超过二百五十美元，而这还不是同世界冠军下呢。对‘三流棋手’来说，败在岑托维奇手下也不算丢脸。”

我注意到，我说的“三流棋手”这句无辜的话竟深深伤害了麦克康纳的自尊心，我心里真觉得好笑。但是，既然他打算为这个玩笑付出昂贵的价码，那么对他的这种过分的虚荣心，我也就不好加以非议了，更何况他的虚荣心最终将介绍我去结识这个怪人呢。我们赶紧将这件行将发生的大事通知了迄今为止曾宣称自己是棋手的那四五位先生，并让人为即将举行的比赛做好准备，为了尽量不受过往旅客的干扰，不仅要把我们这张桌子，而且还要将紧挨着的几张桌子统统预先定好。

第二天，我们的人在约定时间全部到齐。中间那个席位正对国际象棋大师，当然是给麦克康纳留的。他一支接一支地抽着很冲的雪茄，以缓和内心的紧张，并一再焦急地看手表。这位世界冠军让大家足足等了他十分钟之久——根据我朋友所讲的故事，我早就预感到他会来这一手的——这样，他的出场就更显出稳操胜券的神态。他从容不迫、泰然自若地走到棋桌旁。他也不做自我介绍，一来就以乏味的专业语气讲了各项具体安排，他的这种无理行为似乎是说：“我是谁，你们都知道，至于你们是些什么人，我不感兴趣。”因为船上没有那么多棋盘，所以没法下车轮战，他就建议我们大家一起来下他一个人。他说，为了不打搅我们商量，每走一步棋，他就到这房间头上的另一张桌子上去。遗憾的是没有小铃，所以我们每走了一步，马上就要用匙子敲敲杯子。他建议，如果我们没有异议，每步棋的时间最多十分钟。我们像腼腆的小学生一样，对他的每项建议当然都表示同意。挑颜色时，岑托维奇猜得黑棋。他还站着就走了第一步，接着便立即转身走到他建议的位置上等候去了。他懒洋洋地往椅子上一靠，顺手拿起画报翻翻。

谈论这盘棋的本身，并没有多大意思。不言而喻，它的结局本在情理之中：以我们的彻底失败而告终，而且弈至第二十四回合就输掉了。一位世界冠军不费吹灰之力就横扫五六个中下流棋手，这事本身并不值得大惊小怪；令我们耿耿于怀的，只是岑托维奇盛气凌人的那副样子，他让我们大家清楚地感觉到，他轻而易举就把我们赢了。每次他都似乎只是漫不经心地朝棋盘上看一眼，懒洋洋地从我们身边走过，那神情就好像我们都是木头棋子似的。这种无理的姿态不由得叫人想起，有人朝癞皮狗扔去一根骨头，却不去看它一眼。其实照我看，他要是稍微通情达理一点，是可以指出我们的错误，或者说句客气话来对我们加以鼓励的。可是下完这盘棋，这个没有人性的国际象棋机器人连一个鼓励的字都没有说，在说了“将死了”之后就一动不动地站在桌子前等着，看我们是否还想跟他再下一盘。像人们对付厚颜无耻的粗鲁之辈一样，我站起来无可奈何地把手一摊，表明随着这桩美元交易的结束，至少就我来说，我们这场愉快的相识也就到此为止了。令我气恼的是，我身边的麦克康纳这时却声音沙哑地说道：“再下一盘！”

麦克康纳挑战性的话简直使我大吃一惊；事实上他此刻给人的印象是个正要出拳的拳击家，而不是温文尔雅的绅士。也许这是他对岑托维奇对待我们的那种让人受不了的态度的回敬，也许仅仅是他一碰就跳起来的那种病态的虚荣心在作怪——反正麦克康纳的性格全变了。他满脸通红，一直红到额头的发根；由于心里生气，他的鼻翼鼓鼓的；显然，他身上在冒汗；他紧紧咬着嘴唇，深深的皱纹从嘴角一直伸到雄赳赳地往前突出的下巴。我在他的眼睛里发现了遏制不住的激情的烈焰，我心里感到不安。这种烈焰通常只有玩轮盘赌的赌徒，如果他下了双倍赌注，但接连六七次就是没碰上他所押的那个颜色时才会出现。此刻我知道，这种狂热的虚荣心将使他同岑托维奇不停地对弈下去，按原来的赌注或者加倍，一直下到他至少赢一盘为止，即使要耗掉他全部资产也在所不惜。如果岑托维奇坚持奉陪到底，那么他就在麦克康纳身上发现了一个金窖，他在到达布宜诺斯艾利斯之前就可以从这个金窖里挖出好几千美金来。

岑托维奇一动不动。“请吧，”他客气地回答，“现在该诸位先生执黑了。”

第二局也没有什么改观，只不过又来了几位好奇者，所以我们这个圈子不仅扩大了，而且也活跃多了。麦克康纳两眼直愣愣地盯着棋盘，仿佛他要以赢棋的愿望对棋子施行催眠术似的；我感觉到，为了向对手这个冷血动物扯着嗓门欢叫一声“将死了”，即使牺牲一千美元，他也会兴高采烈的。奇怪的是，他那强忍的激动不知不觉中也感染了我们。现在，每走一步都要进行比第一局更为热烈的讨论，每次直到最后一刻，在大家都同意给信号叫岑托维奇到我们桌上来的时候，总还会有人对大家的意见提出异议。渐渐地，我们弈至第十七步了。这时出现了极为有利的局势，对此我们自己都感到惊奇，因为我们成功地把C线上的卒一直推进到倒数第二格的c2；只要将卒往前推进到c1，我们的卒就可以升变为一个新后了。由于这个胜机过于一目了然，我们心里反倒不很踏实；我们大家都心存疑虑，担心这个表面上看来是我们取得的优势极可能正是岑托维奇故意给我们设下的圈套，因为他对棋局看得比我们远得多。但是无论我们大家怎么煞费苦心地探索和讨论，还是找不到这个暗藏的花招。最后，允许我们考虑的时间快完了，我们决定就冒险走这一着。麦克康纳的手指都碰到了卒，想把它推到最后一个方格里。这时他感觉到胳膊猛的一下被紧紧抓住，有人轻声而激动地对他耳语：“上帝保佑！不能走这着！”

我们大家都情不自禁地转过脸去。一位大约四十五岁上下的先生，瘦削的脸上轮廓分明，脸色像石灰一样，白得出奇，先前在甲板上散步时就引起过我的注意。几分钟前我们的全部注意力都集中在解决那步难棋，他大概就是那时来到我们这儿的。他感觉到我们的目光都在注视着他，便匆匆补充道：

“您现在如果把卒子升变为后，他马上就会用象c1来吃掉它，您再回马吃掉象。但是，这期间他把他的通路卒走到d7，威胁你们的车，你们即使跳马将军，也没有用，再走九到十步棋你们就输了。这同一九二二年皮斯吉仁大赛上阿廖欣与波戈留波夫交手时下的棋局几乎完全一样。”

麦克康纳大为诧异，其惊奇的程度绝不亚于我们。他放下手里的棋子，两眼紧紧盯着这位不速之客，这位像是从天而降、来助我们一臂之力的天使。一个能够预先计算出九步之后会有杀着的人，准是一流专家，说不定也是去参加这次国际象棋大赛的，没准还是冠军争夺者呢。他恰好在关键时刻突然到来并且伸出援助之手，这简直是异乎寻常的事。麦克康纳第一个回过神来。

“您有什么主意呢？”他激动地悄悄问道。

“卒子不要马上往前走，而是先避开！尤其要先把王从g8这个危险位置撤到h7。这样，他或许就转而进攻另一翼去了。不过您可把车从c8退到c4来阻挡；于是，他就得多走两步，丢掉一个卒，这样也就失去了优势。这么一来，盘面上就成了卒对卒，如果您防守不出破绽，就可以下成和棋。更高的奢望是达不到了。”

我们再次惊诧不已，啧啧称奇。他计算得那么精确和快速，真有点邪乎，这些步子他仿佛是照棋谱念的。真是意想不到，我们与世界冠军对弈的这盘棋在他的参与下，居然有下和的机会，怎么说也神了。我们大家不约而同地往旁边挪了挪，好让他看到棋盘。麦克康纳又问了一次：

“那么就把王从g8走到h7？”

“对！最要紧的是先避开！”

麦克康纳照此走了一着，我们敲了玻璃杯。岑托维奇迈着惯常的漫不经心的步子走到我们桌边，朝我们这步对着打量一眼，接着就把王翼的卒h2进到h4，同我们这位素不相识的救星所预言的完全一样。这位陌生人这时激动地悄声说：

“进车，进车，从c8进到c4，这样他就非得保卒不可。不过他这样走也无济于事！您马c3进d5，不用管他的通路卒，这样就重新建立了均势，随后就全力压过去，不用守了！”

我们不明白他所说的。对我们来说，他说的全是中文。不过一旦对他着了迷，麦克康纳也就不假思索地照他的意见行棋。我们又敲了玻璃杯，把岑托维奇叫了过来。这回他第一次没有迅速做出决定，而是紧张地注视着棋盘。随后他下的那着棋正是这位陌生人先就向我们点明的。岑托维奇落子以后正转身要走，可是就在他尚未转身之前，发生了一件谁也没有意想到的新奇事。岑托维奇抬起眼睛，把我们每个人都打量一番；很显然，他是想找出那个一下子对他进行这么顽强抵抗的人来。

从这一瞬间起，我们心情之激动到了难以估量的程度。在此之前我们下棋的时候并没有抱多大的希望，现在我们都想煞煞岑托维奇的冷漠和傲慢。这个想法使我们大家热血沸腾，兴奋不已。但是，这时我们的新朋友已经对下一步棋做了安排，我们可以把岑托维奇叫来了。我拿起匙子敲玻璃杯的时候，手指都在发抖。现在我们第一个胜利已经到来了。岑托维奇此前一直是站着下棋的，现在他犹豫了好一阵，终于坐了下来。他坐下去的时候动作缓慢而迟钝；就这样，他与我们之间纯粹从身体上来说，他迄今为止的那种居高临下的架势没有了。我们迫使他至少在空间上同我们处于同一平面上。他考虑了很长时间，低垂的眼睛一动不动地紧盯棋盘，因此几乎连他黑眼睑下面的眼珠也看不到。在紧张的思考中，他的嘴慢慢地张开，这样就赋予他的圆脸以一种单纯的表情。岑托维奇考虑了几秒钟，然后走了一着棋，就站了起来。我们的朋友随即低声说道：

“这步棋是拖延战术！想得倒好！但是不要上他的当！逼他兑子，非兑不可，这样便是和棋了，现在神仙也帮不了他的忙。”

麦克康纳完全照他的意思走棋。接下来的几步双方你来我往，我们对此更是莫名其妙，实际上我们其余的人早就沦为了摆摆样子的龙套。大约弈了七个回合之后，岑托维奇经过长时间的思考，抬起头来说：“和了。”

一刹那室内鸦雀无声。我们突然听到海浪的喧啸，休息厅的收音机里传来爵士音乐，甲板上散步者的脚步声以及从窗缝里透进来的轻微的风声都听得清清楚楚。我们人人屏住呼吸，事情来得太突然，大家还没有回过神来，这位陌生人居然能将他的意志强加于世界冠军，把这盘已经输了一半的棋下和，这真使我们目瞪口呆。麦克康纳突然往后一靠，随着快乐的“啊！”的一声，他憋着的那口气咻的一下从嘴里吐了出来。我又对岑托维奇进行了观察。在下最后这几着棋的时候，我就觉得，他的脸色仿佛更加苍白了。但是他很善于控制自己，仍然保持着看起来满不在乎的木讷神情，一面用镇定的手归拾棋盘上的棋子，一面漫不经心地问道：

“先生们还想下第三盘吗？”

这个问题他纯粹是就事论事地从纯商业的角度提的。但奇怪的是，他提问时并没有看麦克康纳，而是抬起眼睛直接紧紧地盯着我们的救星。他准是从最后几着棋上认出了他事实上的、真正的对手，就像一匹马能从骑者更加稳健的骑姿上认出一位新的、更好的骑手来一样。无意中我们也随着他的目光急切地望着这位陌生人。可是陌生人尚未来得及考虑或答复，正陶醉在虚荣之中、万分激动的麦克康纳就已经以胜利的姿态在冲着他喊了：

“那当然！但是现在您得一个人跟他下！您一个人同岑托维奇对弈！”

然而，这时发生了一件未曾预料到的事情。很奇怪，这位陌生人还一直在紧张地盯着那张棋盘，而棋盘上的棋子已经收拾起来了。他感觉到所有人的眼睛都在注视他，而且人家又那么热情地在同他说话，不觉大为骇然，脸上现出十分慌张的神情。

“绝对不行，先生们，”他结结巴巴地说，显然有点惊惶失措，“这完全不可能……没有考虑的余地……我已经有二十年，不，是二十五年没有挨过棋盘了……我现在才看到，未得你们允许就参与你们的棋局，这样的举止是多么的不得体……请你们原谅我的冒失……我一定不再继续打搅了。”听了这话我们都很愕然，大家还没有回过神来，他已经转身离开了吸烟室。

“这根本不可能！”性格豪爽的麦克康纳用拳头捶着桌子吼道，“他说有二十五年没有下过棋了，绝对不可能！他每一着棋，每一步对着都预先算到五六步之外。这种本事绝非瞬息之间就可学会的。所以他说的绝无可能——是不是？”

最后这个问题麦克康纳是下意识地向岑托维奇提的。但是这位世界冠军不为所动，依然是冷冰冰的。

“对此我无法做出判断。但是不管怎么说，这位先生的棋下得有点奇怪，也很有意思，因此我也故意给了他一个机会。”说着，他便懒洋洋地站起身来，并以他讲究实际的方式补充道：

“如果这位先生或者在座的诸位先生明天想再下一局，那我从下午三点钟以后愿意奉陪。”

我们都忍不住轻声笑了。我们每个人都知道，岑托维奇绝不是慷慨地让给我们这位不相识的援手一个机会，他的这种说法无非是掩饰自己没有下好的一个幼稚的遁词而已。因此我们心里滋长起更加强烈的愿望，要亲眼看着把他这种盛气凌人的态度打掉。我们这些心平气和、懒懒散散的乘客心里一下子生起一股疯狂的、充满虚荣心的战斗豪情，因为如果正巧在我们这艘航行在汪洋中的船上能摘下国际象棋世界冠军头上的桂冠，这个记录定会由电讯迅速传遍全世界。这个想法很具挑战性，令我们为之着迷。另外，那种神秘而蹊跷的事也颇有刺激性：恰好在关键时刻我们的救星出乎意料地来介入我们的棋局，他那几乎有点怯生生的谦虚同那位职业棋手那种趾高气扬的神气正好形成对照。这位陌生人是谁？难道通过这里的这次偶然巧遇我们竟找到了一位尚未被发现的国际象棋天才？或是出于某种尚不清楚的原因，一位著名的国际象棋大师对我们隐瞒了自己的名字？我们兴奋地讨论了所有这些可能性。我们认为，为了把这个陌生人谜一般的胆怯和出人意料的自述同他精妙绝伦的棋艺联系在一起，即使是最最大胆的假设也不为过。不过有个问题我们大家的意见是一致的，那就是绝不放弃再杀一盘。我们决定，要不遗余力地促使我们的支援者第二天同岑托维奇对弈一盘，麦克康纳答应由他来承担这次比赛经济上的风险。这期间我们从乘务员那里了解到，我们不认识的这位先生是奥地利人，而我是陌生人的同乡，所以大家就委托我把大家的请求转达给他。

不用很长时间，我就在甲板上找到了匆匆溜掉的那位先生。他正躺在躺椅上看书。我在朝他走去之前，先抓住这个机会将他端详一番。他轮廓分明的脑袋枕在枕头上显得稍稍有些疲劳；这张还比较年轻的脸显得出奇的苍白，这再次引起我的特别注意；两鬓的头发雪白，白得闪闪发亮。不知是什么原因，我有这么个印象，觉得这个人准是突然变老的。我刚走到他跟前，他就很有礼貌地站起身来，介绍自己的姓名。我听了马上就觉得很熟悉，这是奥地利一家古老的名门望族的姓氏。我想起姓此姓的人中，有位是舒伯特的密友，老皇帝有位御医也出身于这个家族。我向B博士转达我们的请求，希望他接受岑托维奇的挑战，他听了显然感到非常惊讶。这表明，他根本不知道刚才与之对弈的是位世界冠军，而且是目前战绩最好的世界冠军，而那盘棋他却光荣地将对手顶住了。由于某种原因，我说的这个情况似乎对他产生了特殊的印象，因为他一再反反复复地问，我是否真有把握，他的对手确实是公认的世界冠军。我马上就发现，这个情况使得我的任务完成起来容易得多了，至于万一棋输了，经济上的风险将由麦克康纳来承担这件事，由于考虑到B博士比较敏感，所以觉得还是不对他说为好。经过好一阵犹豫，B博士最终答应比赛一次，不过他特别请我提醒其他几位先生，千万不要对他的棋艺抱过分的希望。

“因为，”他脸上带着沉思的微笑补充说，“我真不知道，我能不能正确地按照各种规则来下棋。我从中学时代起，也就是说自二十多年以来我连棋子都没有再摸过，请相信我，这绝不是假谦虚。就是在那个时候，我下棋也没有特殊的才华。”

他这话说得极其自然，使我对他的真诚没有一点儿怀疑。可是他对各个大师的每盘具体的棋局又记得那么清楚，对此我又不得不表露出我的惊讶；我说，无论怎么说，他至少在理论上对国际象棋总是做过很多研究吧。B博士又露出那奇怪的梦幻般的笑容。

“做过很多研究！——天知道，倒可以这么说，我对国际象棋做过许多研究。但那是在非常特殊的、是在史无前例的情况下发生的。这是一个相当复杂的故事，充其量只能把它当作我们这个可爱的伟大时代的一个小插曲。要是您有半小时耐心的话……”

他指了指旁边的一把躺椅。我愉快地接受了他的邀请。我们周围没有其他人。B博士把看书时戴上的老花镜摘下放于一边，开始说：

“承蒙您提到，您是维也纳人，还记得我们家的姓氏。不过我猜您准没听说过那个律师事务所。它起初是我父亲和我、后来是我单独主持的，因为我们不办理报上讨论的案件，我们的规矩是不接受新的当事人的委托。实际上我们已经不再从事正式的律师事务了。我们的业务只限于法律咨询，主要是受委托管理大修道院的财产，我父亲以前是天主教党的议员，所以同各大修道院关系很密切。此外，有些皇室成员的财产也委托我们管理。因为君主政体已经成了历史，所以这方面的情况我们今天可以谈了。我们家族同皇室以及天主教会的联系从上两代就开始了，我叔叔是皇帝的御医，另一位叔叔是塞滕施特滕修道院院长。我们只是保持了这些联系。这是一种静悄悄的，我想说是一种无声的活动，因为当事人对我们家族历来都很信任，所以我们依旧做着这份工作。这个工作只要求严格的保密和可靠，此外并没有更多的要求，而先父正是具有这两种品质的典范；由于他的谨慎，所以无论是在通货膨胀的年代还是政权变革时期，实际上他都为当事人成功地保存了可观的财富。后来德国希特勒上台，开始掠夺教会和修道院的财产，于是德国那边就同我们进行各种谈判和交易，以通过我们的手保住他们的动产免遭没收，关于罗马教廷和皇室进行的某些秘密政治谈判，我们两人知道的比外界知道的要多得多。正因为我们事务所并不惹人注目，门上连牌子都不挂，外加我们两人都很小心谨慎，有意避免同保皇派来往，所以我们很保险，没有人擅自对我们进行调查。事实上在那些年里奥地利当局从未料到，皇室的秘密信使交接最重要的信件一直都是在我们设在五层楼上的那个不起眼的事务所里进行的。

“纳粹分子早在扩充军备，妄图征服世界之前，就开始在其邻国组织一支同样危险的和训练有素的军队——由受歧视、受冷落和受损害的人组成的军团。他们在每个机关企业里都设立了所谓的‘支部’；他们的坐探和间谍无处不在，包括在陶尔斐斯和舒施尼格的私人宅邸里。就是在我们这个很不起眼的事务所里也安插了他们的人，可惜我知道得太晚了。当然，此人只不过是个可怜而无能的办事员。他是一位神甫介绍来的，我雇用他的唯一目的，就是为了使我们事务所对外像是个正规机构的样子；实际上我们只用他办些无关紧要的差事，接接电话，整理整理文件，当然是那些无足轻重、不会引起怀疑的文件。他不许拆信件，所有的重要信件都是我亲手用打字机打的，不留副本；每份重要文件我都拿回家去；所有的秘密会谈全都挪到修道院院长办公室或我叔叔的诊室去进行。由于采取了这些预防措施，所有重大的事情这名坐探一件都未曾看到；但是由于发生一件不幸的偶然事件，这心怀叵测、追名逐利之徒一定发现我们不信任他，背着他做了种种很有意思的事。也许有次我们不在，信使没有按照约定称‘贝恩男爵’，而是一不小心说了‘陛下’这个词，要不就是这无赖非法拆看了信件——总之，在我怀疑他之前，他就从慕尼黑或柏林接受了监视我们的任务。一直到后来，我被捕入狱已经很久了，我才想起，开始的时候他工作马虎大意，而在最后几个月却忽然变得积极起来，而且好多次几乎是死皮赖脸地主动要求将我的信件送往邮局。我不能说我没有某些疏忽大意之处，但是那些伟大的外交家和将军到头来不也是被希特勒那套伎俩狠狠地耍弄了吗？盖世太保早就将我牢牢地盯住了，下面这件事就是最具体的证明：就在舒施尼格宣布下野的那个晚上，也就是希特勒进入维也纳的前一天，我已经被党卫队逮捕了。幸好，我一听到舒施尼格的辞职演说，就把最最重要的文件全部烧毁了，余下的文件连同为证明几所修道院和两位大公爵存在国外的财产所不可缺少的凭据，我真是在冲锋队破门而入之前的最后一分钟将其统统塞在一只盛脏衣服的筐里，让我那年迈而可靠的女管家送到我叔叔那边去的。”

B博士停下来点了一支烟。借着闪烁的火光，我发现他的右嘴角神经质地抽搐了一下，这我先前就已经注意到了，现在我观察到，每隔几分钟就要抽搐一次。这只是微微抽动一下，就像拂过一丝微风，但是它却使这张脸显出引人注意的心神不安的神情。

“您大概在猜想，现在我要给您讲关于集中营的事——所有忠于我们古老的奥地利的人都被押解来关在那里——讲我在集中营里受到的侮辱、拷打和刑讯了吧。这样的事情并没有发生。我被列入另外一类。我没有被驱赶到那些不幸的人那儿去，纳粹分子对他们施行肉体和精神折磨，把长期积聚起来的仇恨一股脑儿都发泄在他们身上。我被归入另外一类人之中，这类人数量不多，纳粹分子想从他们身上逼取金钱或者重要情报。本来，盖世太保对我这个本不值一提的小人物当然毫无兴趣，但他们一定已经获悉，我们曾经是他们最顽强的敌人的财产代理人、经管人和亲信，他们指望从我身上榨取可以构成罪证的材料，既可用来反对修道院，证明它们非法牟利，也可用来反对皇室以及所有那些在奥地利不惜流血牺牲为维护君主王朝而竭尽全力的人。他们猜想——真的，这倒并非空穴来风——我们经手转移出去的那些资金，绝大部分还藏着，他们想夺过去，可又无从下手；所以他们当天就把我抓了去，想用他们那套行之有效的方法迫使我供出这些秘密。他们想要在我这类人身上榨取金钱或者重要材料，所以没有把我们送进集中营，而是给我们以特殊待遇。您也许还记得，我们的首相以及罗特席尔德男爵——纳粹分子指望从他的亲属那里敲诈数百万——都没有被投进铁丝网围着的战俘营，而是表面上给予优待，被送进大都会饭店——同时也是盖世太保的总部——每人住一单间。我这个不起眼的小人物居然也得到了这种奖励。

“在饭店里住单间——这话本身听起来就极其人道，不是吗？可是请您相信我，他们没有把我们这些‘知名人士’塞进二十个人挤在一起的冰冷的木棚里，而是让我们住在供暖还不错的饭店单间里，这绝不是他们给予我们的一种更人道的待遇，而是挖空心思想出来的更加狡猾的方法。他们想从我们嘴里逼出他们所需要的‘材料’，采用的不是毒打或者用刑，而是以杀人不见血的方式，采用最最狡猾歹毒的隔离手段。他们并没有对我们怎么样，只是将我们置于完全的虚空里。大家都知道，像虚空那样对人的心灵所产生的那种压力是世界上任何东西都办不到的。他们把我们每个人分别关在一个完完全全的真空里，关进一间同外界绝对隔绝的房间里，不用拷打和冰冻从外部给我们压力，而是让我们从内心产生一种压力，最终砸开我们的两片嘴唇。乍一看，安排给我的房间绝对不能说不舒服。这房间有一扇门，一张床，一把沙发椅，一个洗脸盆，一扇上了栅栏的窗户。可是这扇门白天黑夜都是锁着的，桌上不许放纸和铅笔，窗户外面是一道防火墙；在我周围，甚至在我自己身上都是空无所有。我的每样东西都被搜走了：搜走手表，让我不知道时间；搜走铅笔，我就无法写东西；搜走小刀，使我无法割断动脉血管；就连抽支烟稍微提提神也不允许。除了不许说话、不许回答问题的看守，我见不到一张人的脸，听不到一点人的声音；从早晨到夜晚，从夜晚到早晨，眼睛、耳朵以及所有其他感官都得不到一丝养料，你成天寂寂一身，茕茕孑立，守着桌子、床、窗户、洗脸盆等四五件不会说话的东西，一筹莫展；你就像玻璃罩里的潜水员，身处寂静无声的黑黝黝的海洋里，甚至感觉到通向外部世界的绳索已经扯断，你永远不会被人从这无声的深底拉回到水面上去了。整天没什么事可做，没什么东西可听，没什么东西可看，你的周围到处是一片虚空，一片绵延不断的完全没有空间和时间的虚空。你走来走去，走去走来，来来回回，循环往复。但是，即使是看似毫无实体形迹的思想也需要一个支撑点啊，否则它就要开始旋转，就要毫无意义地围着自己转圈；思想也受不了虚空。你从早到晚期待着什么，可是什么也没有发生。你等啊，等啊，等啊，你想啊，想啊，想啊，直到太阳穴发痛。什么也没有发生。你仍是孤独一人。孤独一人。孤独一人。

“这样延续了十四天，我在时间之外，世界之外生活的十四天。要是当时爆发了战争，我也不会知道；我的世界就只有桌子、门、床、洗脸盆、沙发椅、窗户和墙这几样东西，我整天凝视着同一面墙上的同一张壁纸，久而久之，壁纸上锯齿形图案的每根线条都好似用刻刀刻进我大脑深处的褶皱里去了。后来，审讯终于开始了。突然来传我了，也弄不清那是白天还是夜里。他们喊了我的名字，押着我穿过几条走廊，也不知道要带我到哪里去；后来，在一个什么地方等着，也不知道那是什么地方，突然，又站在了一张桌子前面，桌旁坐着几个穿制服的人。桌上堆着一叠纸：那是档案，不知道里面是些什么材料。接着就开始提问，这些问题真真假假，有的单刀直入，有的阴险奸诈，有的声东击西，有的设置圈套；你回答问题的时候，陌生而恶毒的手指在翻材料，你不知道里面有些什么东西，陌生而恶毒的手指在审讯记录上写些什么，你不知道写的是什么。可是，对我来说，这次审讯中最可怕的是，我始终猜不出，也估计不到，盖世太保对我们事务所的事情确实已经知道了哪些，哪些想从我口里获取。我已经对您说过，在最后一刻让女管家把那些可以构成罪证的文件送到我叔叔那里去了。可是，他收到这些文件了？他没有收到？那个坐探办事员泄露了多少？他们截住了多少信件？这期间在我们代理的那些德国修道院也许已经敲开了某个糊涂神甫的嘴，那么到底逼出了多少秘密？他们问呀，问呀，没完没了地问。我给修道院买过哪些有价证券，同哪些银行有通信往来？我认不认识一位某某先生？我收到过瑞士或者某某地方的信件没有？我一点也估计不出，他们到底查到了多少问题，所以我每个回答关系都非常重大。要是我承认了他们尚未掌握的某件事，我也许就会无谓地使某人罹难；我要是什么都不承认，那就自己害了自己。

“不过，审讯还不是最可怕的。最可怕的是审讯以后回到我那虚空之中，回到那个有着同一张桌子、同一张床、同一个洗脸盆和同样的壁纸的同样的房间里。因为只要我单独一人的时候，我就要重新琢磨审讯的情况，思考怎么回答才最聪明，下次提审也许会因我说话不小心而引起他们的怀疑，如果这样，我该怎么说才能弥补。我仔细思量，反复琢磨，认真检查我向预审官说的每一句证词，把他们提出的每个问题和我回答的每一句话都简要重复一遍，想估量一下我说的话有哪些可能被记录在案。不过我知道，我永远也估计不出来，也不会知道。但是这些思想一旦在这虚无的空间里发动起来，就不停地在脑袋里转动，翻来覆去，循环往复，还不断地想出一些新的事情来，而且睡着了脑袋里还在转；每次审讯之后，我脑子里还在经历着那些提问，深究和折磨的煎熬，或许甚至比审讯时的折磨更为残忍，因为每次审讯一个小时就结束了，而审讯之后由于寂寞的无情折磨，脑袋所受的煎熬却是没有完结的时候。我的四周总是只有桌子、柜子、床、壁纸、窗户，没有任何分散我注意力的东西，没有书，没有报纸，没有陌生的面孔，没有可以记点东西的铅笔，没有可以用来玩的火柴，没有，没有，什么都没有。现在我才发觉，把人单独囚禁在饭店的房间里这一套做法用心何其险恶，对人精神上的摧残又何其厉害。要是在集中营里，也许得用小车推石头，推得两只手磨出血来，两只脚冻僵在鞋里，可能得二三十人挤在一个又臭又冷的小屋里。可是你能看到人的脸，可以将目光投向一片田地，一辆手推车，一棵树，一颗星星，以及别的什么东西，而这里呢，你周围都是同样的东西，始终都是这些东西，从来不会改变，真是可怕。这里没有什么东西可以使我分心，使我从自己的思想、从自己的胡思乱想、从自己病态地将审讯时的提问和自己的回答不断复述中解脱出来。而这一点恰恰正是他们打的如意算盘——他们要憋死你，要让你自己的思想来憋你，直到憋得你喘不过气来，你别无他法，最后只好向他们吐露真相，将他们想要的一切招供出来，归终把材料和人统统抛了出来。我渐渐感觉到，在这虚空的令人毛骨悚然的压力下，我的神经开始松弛了，我意识到这种危险，便把神经绷得紧紧的，我想，即使把每根神经都绷断，也要找到或者想出点事情来分散自己的注意力。为了使自己有点事做，我就试着把以前会背的东西，如民歌、儿歌、中学课本里的幽默故事、民法条款等，一一朗诵出来，并再复述一遍。后来我又试着演算，随便拿些数字来相加、相除，可是在虚空中我的记忆缺少附着力，没有能使我的思想集中在上面的东西。脑袋里老是出现和闪烁着这个想法：他们知道什么？我昨天说了些什么，下次又该说些什么？

“这种真是难以描述的状况延续了四个月。四个月，写起来容易，才不过两个字！说起来也容易：四个月，一共才四个音节。嘴唇动一下就把这几个音发出来了：四个月！但是谁也无法描述、测定，谁也无法用直观例子向别人、也无法向自己说明，在没有空间、没有时间的情况下时间有多长，无法向别人讲清楚，这虚空，虚空，你周围的虚空是如何蛀食和摧毁你的心灵的，整日所见就只有桌子、床、洗脸盆和壁纸，屋里成天都是沉默，成天是同一个看守，他看都不看你一眼就把饭塞了进来，时时刻刻是同样的思想在虚空中围着你转啊转，直弄得你神经错乱，疯疯癫癫为止。我心里惴惴不安，从一些细小的征兆中我发觉自己的脑子混乱了。起先，在审讯的时候心里是清楚的，陈述冷静沉着，深思熟虑；哪些该说，哪些不该说，这种双重思维还在起作用。现在我连说最简单的句子都是结结巴巴的，因为我在作法庭陈述时，眼睛总像是着了魔似的愣愣地盯着那支往纸上做着记录的笔，仿佛我想追上自己说的话似的。我感觉到，我的力气越来越不济了，我感觉到，为了救我自己，我将会把自己所知道的一切，也许还有更多的东西全部交代出来，为了摆脱虚空的窒息，我将会出卖十二个人，供出他们的秘密，而我自己呢，除了片刻休息之外，什么好处也得不着，我感觉到这样的一刻越来越近了。一天晚上确已走到了这一步：在我快要憋死的当间，看守恰好给我送饭来，于是我就突然朝他背后喊：‘您带我去审讯！我什么都交代！什么都交代！我要交代文件在哪儿，钱在哪儿！我统统都交代，彻底交代！’幸好他没有听到更多的东西，或许他也不想听我说。

“在这极其艰难的时刻，发生了一件意想不到的事。这件事把我救了，至少在一段时间里把我救了。那是七月底一个乌云密布的阴沉沉的雨天：我所以还清楚地记得这个细节，那是因为我被押去审讯、穿过走廊时，雨水正噼噼啪啪地打在玻璃窗上。我得在预审的候审室里等着。每次带去受审都得等，让你等，这也是一种手法。首先，通过叫喊，通过深夜里突然把你从囚室里提溜去受审，让你的神经高度紧张起来，然后，等你做好审讯准备，思想和意志都振作起来准备反击时，他们又让你等着，毫无意义地、无缘无故地等着，一小时，两小时，三小时地等着，等得你身心交瘁。在星期四，七月二十七日，这一天他们让我等得特别长，让我在候审室站着等了两个小时；这个日期我所以还记得，那是有个特别原因的。在候审室里当然不许我坐，我在那里站了两个小时，腿都要站断了。候审室里挂了一本月历，我无法向您解释，在当时如饥似渴地向往着印刷的和手写的东西的情况下，我是如何目不转睛地，如何牢牢地紧盯着墙上‘七月二十七日’这几个字的；我仿佛把这几个字吞进了肚里，刻在了脑子里。随后我又等着，等着，眼睛注视着房门，看它什么时候终于会打开，同时心里在思考，审判官这次会问我什么问题，不过我也知道，他们问的问题可能和我准备的截然不同。但是不管怎么说，这种等待和站立的折磨同时也是一件好事，一种快乐，因为这间屋子怎么说也和我那间不一样，不一样，要稍微大一点，有两扇窗户，而我那间只有一扇，还有，这里没有床，没有洗脸盆，窗台上也没有那道明显的、我观察了几百万次的裂缝。房门油漆的颜色也不一样，靠墙放着另一把沙发椅，左边是一个档案柜，以及一个有挂钩的衣帽架，挂钩上挂着三四件湿军大衣，那是折磨我的刑警们的大衣。也就是说，我在这里可以看到一些新东西，同我那屋里不一样的东西，我那饥饿的眼睛终于又可以看到一些别的东西了，它们贪婪地盯着每一件东西。我细细察看这几件大衣上的每一个皱褶，譬如说，我看到一件大衣的湿领子上挂着一颗水滴，您听起来一定很好笑。我怀着莫名其妙的激动心情等待着，看这颗水滴最后会不会克服重力作用，继续长久地附着在衣领上——是的，凝视着这颗水滴，屏住呼吸对它凝视了数分钟之久，仿佛这颗水滴上悬挂着我的生命似的。后来水滴终于滚落下来了，我就开始数大衣上的纽扣，一件是八颗，另一件也是八颗，第三件是十颗，接着我又比较大衣的翻领；我饥渴难当的眼睛以一种我无法描述的贪婪触摸、把玩和抓住所有这些可笑的微不足道的小事。突然，我的目光呆呆地盯着一样东西。我发现，一件大衣的口袋鼓鼓的。我走近一些，凸起的东西呈长方形。从这一点我就看出这个略为有点鼓突的口袋里藏着的东西：一本书！我的双膝开始发抖：一本书！我已经有四个月手里没有拿过书了，光是想象一本书，想象书里可以看到一个挨一个的字排列成一本书的一行行，一页页，一张张，可以阅读和追踪别的一些新的、不熟悉的、可以分散注意力的思想，并将这些思想记在脑子里——光是这么一想。就令你心驰神往，销魂荡魄。我的眼睛像着了魔似的紧紧盯着那个小小的鼓突的地方，我的灼热的目光紧紧盯着那个不显眼的地方，仿佛想要在大衣上烧个窟窿似的。我终于无法抑制自己的贪欲；我下意识地一点点移近去。我思忖，这回至少可以隔着呢料拿手触摸一本书了。这个想法使我手指上的神经一直热到指甲上。几乎在不知不觉中，我往那儿越挨越近。幸好看守没有注意我这个肯定很奇怪的举动；也许他也觉得，一个人直直地站了两个小时以后，想稍微往墙上靠靠，这是很自然的。我终于站在挨大衣很近的地方了，我故意把双手反背着，以便人不知鬼不觉地碰到大衣。我触摸了呢料，透过面料我确实感觉到有个长方形的东西，这东西可以弯曲，而且还会窸窣作响——一本书！一本书！偷走这本书！这个念头像枪弹似的穿过我的脑子。也许会成功，你可以把书藏在囚室里，然后就读啊读，终于又可以读到书了！这个想法刚闪进我的脑袋，就像烈性毒药似的发生作用了：我耳朵里一下子嗡嗡直响，我的心怦怦直跳，双手冰凉，都不听使唤了。但是经过第一阵沉迷之后，我又轻轻地、巧妙地更往大衣挨近，两眼紧紧盯着看守，同时用藏在背后的双手把口袋里的那本书从下往上托起。接着将书一把抓住，再轻轻地、小心翼翼地一抽，突然，这本不很厚的小书就到了我的手里。现在我才为自己的行为感到后怕。但是我又不能再把书放回去了。可是把书往哪儿放呢？我把书从背后塞到裤子里，掖在系腰带的地方，再从那里将它慢慢挪到腰部，这样走路的时候我就可以像军人那样用手贴着裤缝，把书压住。现在该做第一次试验了。我离开衣架，一步，两步，三步。行。只要把手紧紧压着腰带，走路的时候就可以把书夹住。

“接着就开始审讯了。这次受审我付出的精力比哪次都多，因为这回我在回答问题的时候其实并没有把全部精力集中在我的口供上，而是首先一心想着要不露声色地把书夹住。幸好这次审讯很快就结束了，我安然将书带到我的房间——我不想详述种种细节来耽误您的时间，因为在走廊里书一下从裤子里滑了下来，真危险，我不得不假装一阵剧烈的咳嗽，咳得弯下腰去，把书重新安然塞回到腰带下。不过，当我带着这本书回到我的地狱里，终于独自一人、可又不再是独自一人的时候，我是什么样的心情啊！

“您大概会想，我一定立即抓起书来看了看，就读了起来。完全不是！首先我要品味一下阅读前的乐趣。我身边有了一本书，自己可以先去幻想一番，这本窃得的书最好是哪一类，这是一种故意延缓的、并且使我的神经奇妙地兴奋起来的快乐：首先这是一本印得很密的书，有很多很多字，有很多很多薄薄的书页，这样我就可以多读一些时间，再就是，我希望这是一本能够在精神上给我激励的作品，不是肤浅的、轻松的作品，而是本可以学习、可以背诵的作品，最好是诗歌，是歌德或荷马——这是个多么大胆的梦啊！可是我终于无法继续控制住自己的欲望和好奇心了。我往床上一躺——这样，万一看守突然把门打开，他也抓不住我的把柄——哆哆嗦嗦地从腰带下抽出书来。

“看了第一眼就使我大为扫兴，甚至感到极其恼怒：冒着那么大的危险窃得的这本书，积聚着那么热烈的期望的这本书只是一本棋谱，是一百五十盘名局汇编。要不是我的窗户闩着，关得严严实实的，我一怒之下不把书从窗户里扔出去才怪，我要这么一本毫无意义的书有什么用？我上中学时像大多数学生一样，无聊的时候偶尔也下棋玩玩。可是这本理论的东西我要它干吗？没有对手可不能下棋，更不用说没有棋子和棋盘了。我懊恼地把这本棋谱浏览了一下，心想说不定会发现什么可读的东西呢，譬如说一篇序言啦，一篇导读啦。但是除了一盘盘名局的光巴巴的正方形棋图以及棋图之下起先令我莫名其妙的符号，诸如a2—a3，Sf1—g3之外，其他什么也没有。这一切我觉得像是一种无法解开的代数方程式。后来我才渐渐地猜出，a、b、c这些字母代表经线，数字1至8代表纬线，两者相合就可以确定每个棋子的位置。这么一来，这些纯粹图解式的示意图毕竟获得了一种语言。我思忖，也许我可以在囚室里做一个棋盘，然后就照着棋谱把这些棋局摆一摆；像是上天的旨意，我床单的图案恰好是粗线条的方格子。把床单好好一叠，终于把它摺出六十四个方格来了。于是我就先把书藏在褥子底下，并将书的第一页撕掉。接着我就开始用我省下来的小块面包屑做成王、后等棋子的样子，不言而喻，棋子做得很可笑，很不完美。经过不断努力，我终于可以在方格床单上摆出棋谱上标明的各个位置了。我把这些可笑的面包屑棋子的一半涂上灰，使颜色深一些，以示区别。但是当我试图用这些棋子将一局棋从头到尾复盘时，起初我失败了。头几天我摆棋的时候，摆着摆着就乱套了，一局棋我就得摆五次，十次，二十次，每次都是从头摆起。不过世界上有谁像我这个虚空的奴隶拥有那么多无法利用的和毫无用处的时间呢？又有谁有那么多无法估量的欲望和耐心呢？六天以后我已经能完美地把这盘棋下完了，再过八天我连面包屑都不用放在床单上，就可以把棋谱上这一盘每步棋的位置记得清清楚楚，再过八天，连方格床单也用不着了。起先棋谱上a1、a2、c7、c8这些抽象的符号现在在我脑子里都自动变成了一个个看得见的形象化的位置。这个转化完全成功了：我将棋盘连同棋子都投影在我的脑袋里，光用棋界用语就能看到每步棋的位置，就像一位训练有素的音乐家，只要朝乐谱看上一眼，就足以听出各个声部以及和声来。又过了十四天，我已经能毫不费力地背下棋谱上的每一盘棋——用行话来说，就是下盲棋。现在我才开始懂得，我这次大胆的偷窃给我带来了无可估量的欣慰。因为我一下子有事做了——如果您愿意也可以说这是毫无意义、毫无用处的事，不过它确实摧毁了包围着我的虚空，有了一百五十盘棋的棋谱，我就有了一件神奇的武器来抵御令人窒息的时空的单调。为了使这项新找来的事儿始终保持它的魅力，从现在起我把每天的时间做了精确的划分：上午摆两盘，下午摆两盘，晚上再快速复一次盘。在此之前，我的日子像明胶一样无形无状地延伸着，现在可是填得满满的了，我有事做了，而又不感到疲倦，因为下棋具有一种奇妙的好处，可使智力专注于一个狭窄的范围里，不论如何费劲思考，脑子也不会松弛，相反，会更加增强大脑的灵活和张力。起初我只是机械地照着名局摆棋，在这过程中，在我心里慢慢开始出现一种对国际象棋的艺术妙趣横生的理解。我学会了进攻和防御的精微着法，行棋布阵的谋略和深邃的洞察力，我掌握了预先计算，互相呼应和巧妙应着等技巧，不久就能准确无误地识得每位国际象棋大师棋风的个人特点，就像一个人只消读几行诗就能确定该诗出自哪位诗人之手一样。这件事开始时纯粹是为了填满时间而干的，现在变成了享受，阿廖欣、拉斯克、波戈留波夫、塔尔塔柯威尔等伟大的国际象棋战略家的形象，宛若亲爱的朋友，都来到我这寂寞的斗室。棋局中无穷无尽的变化使这间不会说话的囚室每天都充满了生气，正是因为我的练习很有规律性，使我原本已经受了损害的思维能力又恢复了自信；我感觉到我的脑子又重新活跃和振奋起来了。而且由于不断进行思维训练，甚至还好像磨得更锋利了。我考虑问题的时候思路更清晰，思想更集中，这一点尤其是在审讯的时候得到了证明：不知不觉中，在棋盘上对付虚假的讹诈和暗藏的诡计方面达到了完美无缺的程度；从这时起提审的时候我再也不露出任何破绽，我甚至还觉得，盖世太保们渐渐开始带着某种敬意来观察我了。也许他们在暗暗自问，他们看着其他人都垮了，唯独我还在进行不屈不挠的反抗，这种力量是从哪些秘密源泉汲取的？

“这是我的幸福时光，我日复一日地将棋谱上的一百五十盘棋局系统地一一进行复盘，这段时间大约延续了两个半月至三个月。随后出乎意料，我又遇到了一个死点。突然之间我又重新面对一片虚空，因为我把每盘棋都从头到尾下了二三十次，这样，这些棋局就失去了新鲜的魅力，不再给人以惊喜，先前那种令人兴奋、令人激动的力量枯竭了。这些棋局的每一步我早已背得滚瓜烂熟，再一次又一次地将它们重复又有什么意思？刚一开局，这盘棋的进程就像自动在我心里展开了，已经不再有惊喜，不再有紧张，不再有任何问题了。为了使自己有事可做，为了给自己制造已经成了不可或缺的劳累，并分散自己的注意力，我真需要另一本汇集了别的棋局的书。可是这是完全不可能的，所以在这条奇怪的歧途上只有一条路：必须自己发明新的棋局来代替旧的棋局。我必须设法跟自己下，更确切地说，是向自己作战。

“我不知道，对于这种‘游戏中的游戏’——同自己对弈的精神状态您了解到何种程度。但是只要粗略一想，就足以明白，下国际象棋是一种纯粹的、没有偶然性的思维游戏，因此要跟自己对弈的想法从逻辑上来说是荒谬的。国际象棋的引人入胜之处，从根本上来说仅仅在于其战略是在两个不同的脑袋里不同地发展的，在这种精神战争中黑方并不知道白方的花招，所以不断想方设法去猜测和挫败其诡计，同时就白方而言，对于黑方的秘密意图它力图预先加以识破，给予反击。如果现在执黑和执白是同一个人，那情况就十分荒谬了：同一个大脑同时对一些事情既应该知道，又不应该知道，作为白方在行棋的时候，它能奉命忘掉一分钟前黑方的愿望和意图。这种双重思维其实是以意识的完全分裂为前提的，大脑的功能就像机械仪表一样，开关自如。想要自己战自己，这在国际象棋中是个悖谬，就像一个人想要跳过自己的影子一样。

“好了，说简短些吧，这种背理和荒谬之事我在绝望中竟试了几个月之久。可是，为了使自己不至于陷入完全精神错乱或者智力的彻底衰颓，除了去做这件荒唐事之外，我别无选择。我那可怕的处境逼得我不得不至少去试一试，把自己分裂成一个黑方我和一个白方我，要不然我就得被我周围恐怖的虚空压垮。”

B博士往躺椅上一靠，闭了一会儿眼睛。他仿佛要把令人心烦意乱的回忆强压下去似的。他左边嘴角上又出现了奇怪的抽搐，他无法控制的抽搐。接着，他在躺椅上把身子略为坐直一些。

“这样，到此为止，我希望已经把一切都向您讲得相当清楚了。但遗憾的是我自己也拿不准，其余的事是否也能那么清楚地说给您听。因为这件新工作要求脑子保持绝对的紧张，这就使它不能同时进行任何自我控制。我已经向您提到过，照我看，同自己对弈这本身就很荒谬绝伦；但是即使是荒唐事，面前总有一个实实在在的棋盘，那毕竟还有一个最小的机会，而棋盘这个真实的东西毕竟还容许保持一定的距离，允许享受物质上的治外法权。面对摆着真实的棋子的真实的棋盘，纯粹从身体方面来说，就可以一会儿站在桌子的这一边，一会儿站在桌子的另一边，以便一会儿从执黑的立场，一会儿从执白的立场来把握和运筹局势。但是像我这样迫不得已把向我自己进行的厮杀，要是您愿意的话，也可说是同我自己进行的厮杀投影在一个意想中的空间里。我被迫在脑子里清楚地把握住六十四个方格上每一边的阵势，此外不仅要计算出眼前的行棋，而且也要计算出对弈双方下几步可能要走的棋，确切地说，我要两倍、三倍地盘算，不，是六倍、八倍、十二倍地盘算，我要为每一个我，为黑方我和白方我预先想出四五步棋，我知道，这一切听起来是多么荒谬。请您原谅，我希望您仔细考虑一下我的这种疯癫状态。在抽象的幻想空间中下棋的时候，我作为白方棋手，同时又作为黑方棋手都得为各方预先算出四五步，也就是说，对于棋局发展进程中所出现的各种情况在一定程度上得预先跟两个脑子，跟白方的脑子和跟黑方的脑子配合好。但是即使是这种自我分裂在我这费解的试验中还不是最危险的，由于我独立想出了一些棋局，结果失去了立足之地，坠入了无底深渊。像我前几个星期所练习的那样，光是照名局来下，归终只不过是一种复制的成果，纯粹是对已有物质的重复，这并不比背诵诗歌或者默记法律条文更费劲，这是一种局限的、按部就班的活动，因而是一种绝妙的脑力训练。我上午练习两盘棋，下午练习两盘，这是规定的定额，没有一丝激动我就可以将它完成；这四盘棋是我的正常工作，再说，要是我在下棋的过程中走错了，或者走不下去了，总还可以向棋谱求教。所以对于我受了震惊的神经来说，这是很有疗效的，更能起镇静作用，因为照别人的棋局摆棋不会使自己卷进搏杀中去；管他是黑棋赢还是白棋赢，对我来说都无所谓，这是阿廖欣或波戈留波夫，是他们在争夺比赛的桂冠，而我本人，我的理智，我的心灵，仅仅是作为观众、作为行家里手在品味棋局的转折突变和赏心悦目。但是从我想跟自己搏杀的一刻起，我就下意识地开始向自己挑战了。两个我中的每一个我，黑棋我和白棋我，在互相竞争，为了自己的一方，每一个我都雄心勃勃，心浮气躁，想取胜，想赢棋；作为黑棋我每走一步心里就万分紧张，不知白棋我会怎么应对。我的两个我中的任何一个，要是另一个我走错一步棋就兴高采烈，得意扬扬，而同时对于自己的漏着则怒容满面，忧心如焚。

“这一切看起来毫无意思，事实上这种人为的精神分裂，这种意识分裂，它所带来的危险的心情激动，在正常人的正常状态下是难以想象的。但是，请您不要忘记，我是从正常状态下被强行拉出来的，是个囚犯，无辜遭到监禁，几个月来受尽别人精心策划的寂寞的折磨，早就要将他积聚起来的愤怒向任何东西发泄了。因为我没有别的东西，只有这种向自己进攻的游戏，所以便将我的愤怒，我的复仇欲望统统狂热地倾注到下棋中去。我心里有种东西自以为是，可是我又只有心里的另一个我是我能与之相搏的，所以我下棋时的激动几乎到了发狂的程度。开始我思考的时候还是不慌不忙，谨慎周到的，在一盘棋和另一盘棋之间还安排了休息时间，好让自己歇一歇，放松一下；可是渐渐地，我那被激动起来的神经就不容许我再等了。我的白棋我刚走一步，我的黑棋我就已毛毛腾腾地向前挺进了；一盘棋刚结束，我就向自己挑战，要下第二盘，因为我这两个我每次总有一个被另一个战胜而要求再下一盘，好扳回来。由于这种疯狂的贪婪心理，这几个月在我的囚室里我同自己究竟厮杀了多少盘，我连个大概数都说不出来——也许一千来盘，也许更多。这是一种我自己无法抗拒的癫狂；从早到晚，我什么也不想，想的只是象、卒、车、王和a、b、c，‘将死’和‘王车易位’等等，我整个身心都被逼到这个有格子的方块上去了，下棋的乐趣变成了下棋的欲望，下棋的欲望又变成了一种强制，一种棋瘾，一种疯狂的愤怒——不仅浸透在我清醒的时间里，而且也渐渐控制了我的睡眠。我思考的只能是下棋，只能是行棋，只能是下棋过程中出现的问题；有时我醒来，额头湿漉漉的，我断定，睡着了甚至还下意识地在继续下棋，要是我梦见了人，那这个梦一定仅仅是在动象、车的时候，在马往前跳或往后跳的时候做的。就是在被提审的时候，我也不再能明确地想到我的责任了；我感觉到，最近几次审讯的时候，我说的话一定相当的语无伦次，因为，因为审讯官们有时面面相觑，感到诧异不解。实际上，在审讯官们向我提问以及他们互相商量的时候，我心里涌动着那糟糕的欲望，只等着把我重新押回我的囚室去，好继续下棋，继续疯狂地下棋，重新下一盘，再下一盘。每次中断都会使我神经紊乱；就是看守来清扫囚室的一刻钟，给我送饭来的两分钟，也使我那狂热的急躁不安的心情大受折磨；有时候到了晚上我那盒饭还在那儿放着，碰都没有碰过，我下棋下得忘了吃饭。我肉体上能感觉到的唯有可怕的口渴；这大概是由于不停地思考，不停地下棋而上火了；一瓶水我两口就喝干了，就缠着看守，让他再给我水，但一会儿我又感到口干舌燥了。最后，下棋的时候——我从早到晚别的什么都不干——我的情绪竟激动到不再能够静静地坐上片刻的程度；我一面思考棋局，一面不停地走来走去，越走越快，棋局越是临近收尾，心情就越是急躁；那种赢棋、取胜的欲望，击败我自己的欲望，渐渐变成了一种愤怒。我焦躁不安，浑身颤抖，因为我身上一方的我总嫌另一方的我走棋太慢。一方就催促另一方；要是我身上一方的我觉得另一方的我应着不够快，我就开始骂自己：‘快，快！’或者‘往前，往前！’您也许觉得这很可笑吧。当然，我今天心里很清楚，我的这种状况完全是精神过分紧张导致的一种病态反映，对于这种病状我还找不到别的名称，只好把它叫作迄今医学上还不清楚的‘棋中毒’。后来，这种偏执的癫狂不仅开始侵蚀我的大脑，而且也开始侵蚀我的身体了。我消瘦了，睡不好觉，恍恍惚惚，每次醒来都要费好大的劲才能睁开沉甸甸的眼皮；有时我感到极度虚弱，连拿水杯手都抖得非常厉害，要费很大力气才能把杯子送到嘴边；但是一开始下棋，一股狂热的力量就来了：我紧握拳头走来走去，有时宛如透过一层红雾听见我自己的声音沙哑地、凶狠地冲着自己叫喊：‘将死了！’

“这种令人心惊胆战、难以描述的危机状况是如何出现的，我自己也说不清楚。我所知道的全部情况就是，一天早晨我醒来，觉得跟以往完全不一样。我全身像散了架似的软绵绵地躺着，舒适而安逸。一种深深的、适意的倦意，我几个月来未曾有过的倦意压着我的眼皮，是那么温暖、惬意，起先我犹犹豫豫，竟不愿把眼睛睁开。我醒着躺了几分钟，继续享受恬适的昏昏沉沉的境界，暖融融地躺着，感官陶醉在飘飘欲仙的快感之中。突然，我觉得似乎听见身后有声音，是活人的说话声，我这时心里的狂喜之情您是想象不出的，以往几个月，将近一年以来，除了法官席上那种生硬、凶狠、毒辣的话之外，我没有听到过别的声音。‘你在做梦，’我对自己说，‘你在做梦！千万不要睁开眼睛！让梦境再延续一会儿，要不然你又要看见围绕着你的那间该死的囚室，那把椅子、那个洗脸台和那图案永远不变的壁纸。你在做梦——继续做下去吧！’

“可是，好奇心还是占了上风。我慢慢地、小心翼翼地睁开眼。奇迹出现了：我处在另一个房间里，这房间比我饭店里的那间囚室宽大。窗户上没有加栅栏，阳光可以不受遮挡地照射进来，窗户外不是我那呆板的防火墙，一眼望去就可看到迎风摇曳的绿树，室内四壁光洁，雪白闪亮，我上面的天花板又白又高——真的，我躺在一张陌生的新床上，这确实不是梦，我身后有人的声音在低语。惊讶之余，我大概是不由自主地使劲动了一下，因为我马上就听到有人走来的脚步声。一个女人步履轻盈地走了过来，头发上罩着白软帽，是个看护，是护士。我惊奇得浑身打了一阵战栗：我已经有一年没有见过女人了。我愣愣地凝视着这个妩媚的身影，我的目光一定极为兴奋和狂热，因为走过来的护士急忙‘安静！请您安静！’地说着，让我平静下来。可是我只是聆听她的声音——这不是一个人在说话吗？再说还是一个柔和、温暖，简直可以说是甜美的女人的声音。真是不可思议的奇迹！我贪婪地望着她的嘴，一个人居然能怀着善意同别人说话，这在我这个在地狱里待了一年的人看来，简直是不可能的。护士朝我微笑——是的，她在微笑，居然还有人会善意地微笑——接着她把食指压着嘴唇，意思是让我别出声，然后就轻声地走了。但是我却不能听从她的命令。这个奇迹我还没有看够呢。我硬是想在床上坐起来，好看看她的背影，看看这个善良的人性之奇迹。我想在床沿上欠身坐起来，但未能做到。另外，我感觉到右手的手指和手腕那儿有点儿不对劲，有一个厚厚的大白卷，显然是用很多绷带包扎起来了。我惊奇地望着我手上厚厚的、奇怪的白色包扎，先是摸不着头脑，随后我慢慢开始明白了我在哪儿，并开始思索我自己究竟出了什么事。一定是他们把我打伤了，或者是我自己弄伤了手。我正躺在一家医院里。

“中午大夫来了。他是位和气的、年纪较大的先生。他知道我们家的姓，并非常尊敬地提到我当御医的叔叔，我马上就感觉到，他对我是一片好意。在随后的交谈中，他向我提出了各种各样的问题，尤其是一个使我感到惊讶的问题：我是不是数学家或者化学家。我说都不是。

“‘怪了，’他喃喃地说，‘您发烧的时候老是大声嚷着一些奇怪的公式——c3、c4什么的。我们大家都听不懂。’

“我向他打听，我究竟出了什么事。他意味深长地笑笑。

“‘不很严重。是神经急性刺激。’他先是小心翼翼地往四处看了看，然后轻声补充说，‘这毕竟是可以理解的。在三月十三日之后，是吧？’

“我点点头。

“‘碰上他们使的这种方法，神经受点刺激并不奇怪，’他喃喃地说，‘您并不是第一个。不过您放心好了。’

“看到他悄悄叫我放心的那种态度以及他对我劝慰的目光，我知道，在他这儿我是非常安全的。

“两天以后，这位好心的大夫相当坦率地把事情发生的经过告诉了我。那天，看守听见我在囚室里大喊大叫，开始他以为有人进了我的屋，我在同此人吵架。他刚到房门口，我就朝他扑了过去，冲着他大喊大叫，嘴里喊着‘跑啊，你这恶棍，你这胆小鬼！’诸如此类的话，并想卡住他的脖子，最后我发了狂似的向他袭击，他不得不大喊救命。我正处于疯狂状态，后来他们就把我拖来让大夫检查，我大概突然挣脱了，就朝走廊里的窗户扑去，打破玻璃，把自己的手割破了——您看这里还有个很深的疤。在医院里的头几夜，我是在大脑极度兴奋的状态下度过的，不过现在他觉得我的意识完全清醒了。‘当然，’他悄悄补充说，‘这一点我还是不向这帮先生报告为好，否则到头来他们又要把您送回到那儿去了。请您相信我，我会尽力而为的。’

“这位乐于助人的大夫是怎么向那些折磨我的人汇报我的情况的，我不得而知。反正他达到了想要达到的目的：把我释放。可能是他说，我神经已经错乱，或者也许在此期间对盖世太保来说，我已经无足轻重了，因为希特勒在那以后已经占领了波希米亚，这样，对他来说，奥地利事件就算了结了。这样，我就只需签个字，保证在十四天内离开我们的祖国。这十四天我为办理一个以前的世界公民今天出国所必需的成千项手续而奔忙：军方和警方的同意证明、税务证明、申请护照、办签证、办健康证明等等，因而没有时间对往事多加思考。看来我们大脑里有一些力量在神秘地起着调节作用，会自动排除那些使我们灵魂讨厌的和对我们灵魂具有危险的东西，因为每当我要回忆我被囚禁的那段日子，我的脑子就有几分糊涂；直到好几个星期以后，实际上是上了这艘船之后，我才重新找到勇气，静下心来思考自己身上所发生的事。

“现在您一定会理解，为什么我对您的朋友们的态度会那么不得体，或许还让人百思不得其解呢。我确实完全是闲逛偶然经过吸烟室才看见您的朋友们坐在那里下棋的；我又惊又怕，感觉到我的脚像长了根似的不由自主地站立在那里。因为我全忘了可以在一个真正的棋盘前用真正的棋子下棋，全忘了下棋的时候有两个完全不同的人真真切切互相面对面地坐着。我用了好几分钟才想起，这两个棋手在那里下的，其实同我在束手待毙的情况下跟我自己下了好几个月的那种棋是一回事。我发现，我疯狂地练习时所使用的那些密码只是这些骨制棋子的代替和象征；让我感到惊喜的是，棋子在棋盘上的移动同我在思维空间中假想的走步是一样的，正如一位天文学家用复杂的方法在纸上算出了一颗新行星，后来果真在天空中看到了这颗皎洁晶莹的星星的实体。我的惊喜同那位天文学家的惊喜大概很相似。我像是被磁铁吸住了，凝视着棋盘，望着那儿我的棋图——马、象、王、后、卒等木雕的真实棋子；为了看清这局棋的阵势，我不得不下意识地先将这些棋子从我那抽象的符号世界里退出来，进入活动棋子的世界中来。好奇心渐渐主宰了我，想观看两位棋手之间真正的较量。这就发生了很尴尬的事，我竟把礼数忘到了九霄云外，参与到你们的棋局中来了。但是您的朋友那步昏着像在我心里捅了一刀。我阻止他走那一步，这纯粹是一种本能行为，是感情冲动的表现，正如一个人看到一个孩子弓身挂在栏杆上，就不假思索地将他一把抓住一样。后来我才意识到，我一性急就贸然行事，这有多么唐突。”

我赶忙对B博士说，通过这件偶然的事能与他相识，我们大家都很高兴，对我来说，在听了他向我吐露种种情况后，要是在明天的临时棋赛上能见到他出场，定会兴趣倍增。B博士听了，做了个不安的动作。

“可别这么说，您真的不要对我抱过多的希望。对我来说，这不过是试一试罢了……试试我到底能不能正常地下棋，能不能用实实在在的棋子同一个活跃着生命力的人在真正的棋盘上对弈……因为我现在越来越怀疑我下过的几百盘，或许是数千盘棋是否真正符合国际象棋的规则，会不会仅仅是一种梦里的棋，一种谵妄棋，一种谵妄游戏，做这种游戏总像是在梦里一样，许多中间阶段都跳过去了。希望您不是当真指望让我不自量力，竟以为能与国际象棋大师，而且是当今世界第一高手较量一番，但愿您对此不要抱有认真的指望。使我感到兴趣并让我全力以赴的，仅仅是一种事后的好奇心，想证实一下我那时在囚室里是在下棋还是已经疯了，我当时是处在危险的暗礁之前，还是已经到了它的另一面——仅此而已，只是仅此而已。”

这时船尾响起了进晚餐的锣声。我们聊了几乎两个小时了，B博士对我讲的，要比我在这里归纳的多得多。我衷心向他表示感谢，并向他告辞。但是我刚走上甲板，他就从后面追了来，他激动地、甚至有点结结巴巴地补充说：

“还有件事！请您马上先转告诸位先生，免得我到时候显得没有礼貌；我只下一盘……就让这盘棋把旧账画上个句号——彻底了结，而不是新的开始……我不想第二次染上如痴如狂的棋瘾，这种棋瘾现在回想起来都感到胆战心惊……还有，还有，当时大夫警告过我……郑重其事地警告过我。对某种东西染上了瘾，永远存在着危险，中过棋毒的人即使已经治好了，最好还是不要挨近棋盘……所以，您明白——只下一盘棋，对我自己做个试验，绝不多下。”

第二天，在约定的时间三点钟，我们大家都准时聚集在吸烟室里。我们这边又增加了两位“国王游戏”的爱好者，他们是船上的高级海员，是专门向船上请了假来看比赛的。岑托维奇也没有像昨天那样让别人等他。按照规定挑好了棋子的颜色之后，这场值得纪念的、由Homo obscurissimus对著名的世界冠军的国际象棋比赛就开始了。可是很遗憾，这盘棋只是为我们这些外行观众下的，其进展情况没有保存，没有载入国际象棋年鉴，就像贝多芬的一些钢琴即兴曲没有留下乐谱一样。尽管我们在以后的几个下午想一起根据记忆将这盘棋复原，结果是白折腾一场；也许在棋赛进行过程中我们对两位棋手倾注了过多的热情，因而忽视了棋局的进程。因为两位棋手在外表上表现出来的智力差异，在棋局进行过程中愈来愈在形体上显得清楚。岑托维奇这位行家在整个比赛时间里像块石头，一动不动，两眼低垂，紧盯棋盘；在他来说，思考的时候简直像要付出体力似的，使他全部器官不得不高度集中。相反，B博士的举止轻松自如，无拘无束。作为真正的业余爱好者，B博士的身体是完全放松的，就业余爱好者这个词的最美好的意义上来说，下棋只是游戏，是令人快乐的游戏。在头几步棋的间隙时间里，他在闲聊中给我们讲棋，并潇洒地点着一支烟，只有轮到他走的时候，他才往棋盘上看上一分钟。他每次都给别人这样的印象，仿佛他早就在等着对手的这步棋了。

开局的几步熟套棋下得相当快。到了第七或第八回合一个明确的计划好像才出来。岑托维奇考虑的时间越来越长，由此我们感到，争取优势的真正战斗开始了。说实话，局势的渐渐发展像真正比赛时的每盘棋一样，对我们这些外行来说是相当失望的。因为棋子越是相互交织，形成一个特殊图案，我们对真正的情况就越是捉摸不透。我们既搞不清这位棋手的目的何在，不明白另一位有何打算，也不知道两人之中哪位是先手。我们只看到一个个棋子像起重机似的在挪动，想砸开敌阵，但是他们这样来来往往有何战略意图，我们却不得而知，因为慎重的棋手每走一步都要预先推断出好几步。另外，我们渐渐感到一种令人瘫痪的疲倦，这主要是由于岑托维奇考虑的时间拖得没完没了引起的，这显然也开始激怒了我们的朋友。我心情不安地发现，这盘棋时间拉得越长，他在椅子上心神不宁地动得越厉害。由于烦躁不安，他一会儿一支接一支地抽着烟，一会儿又抓起铅笔记点什么。接着他又要了一瓶矿泉水，心急火燎地把水一杯杯灌下肚去；显然，他的推断要比岑托维奇快一百倍。每次，岑托维奇没完没了地考虑以后，决定用他笨重的手将一个子往前一挪，我们的朋友就像见到期待已久的事情终于发生了一样，随即微微一笑，马上就应了一着。他的判断力极其神速，脑袋里一定把对方的一切可能性都预先计算出来了；因此，岑托维奇思考的时间越长，他就越发心烦意乱，在等待的时候他的嘴边强压着一股子火气，几乎是一股子敌意。可是岑托维奇却仍然不慌不忙。他顽固地思索着，默不作声，棋盘上的棋子越少，他琢磨的时间就越长。到第二十四个回合就已足足下了两小时四十五分钟，我们大家已经坐得疲惫不堪，对棋台上的进展几乎无动于衷了。船上的高级海员一个已经走了，另一个拿着本书在看，只是在棋手走子的时候才抬头瞥上一眼。可是等到岑托维奇的一步棋一走，这时意想不到的事突然发生了。B博士一发现岑托维奇抓住马要往前跳，就像准备扑跳的猫一样弓缩着身子。他浑身开始发抖，岑托维奇的马一跳，他就把后狠狠地往前一推，以胜利的姿态大声说：“好！结束战斗！”说完便将身子往后一靠，双臂交叉搁在胸前，并以挑战的眼光看着岑托维奇。他的瞳孔里突然闪烁着一团灼热的光。

我们大家不由得都俯下身来看着棋盘，想搞清以胜利者的姿态高声宣布的这一步棋。第一眼看不出有什么直接的威胁。那么我们朋友的话一定是就局势的发展而言的，而这一发展我们这些考虑得不远的业余爱好者还计算不出来。听到那挑衅性的宣告，岑托维奇是我们中唯一不动声色的人；他平心静气地坐着，仿佛压根儿没有听见“结束战斗！”这句侮辱性的话似的。室内没有任何反应。因为我们大家下意识地屏住了呼吸，所以那只放在桌上做计时用的闹钟的滴答声一下子听得清清楚楚。三分钟，七分钟，八分钟——岑托维奇一动不动，可是我觉得，由于心里紧张，他厚厚的鼻孔似乎张得更宽了。对于这种默默的等待，我们的朋友似乎也同我们一样觉得难以忍受。他突然站了起来，开始在吸烟室里走来走去，起先走得很慢，后来越走越快，越走越快。我们大家都有些奇怪地望着他，不过谁也没有我着急，因为我注意到，虽然他走来走去显得很急，然而他的脚步所迈经的那个空间范围每次都是一样的，这就仿佛他在空荡荡的房间里每次都碰到一个看不见的障碍物，迫使他不得不往回走。我不禁打了个冷战，我发现，他这样走来走去，无意中重现了他从前那间囚室的尺寸：在他被囚禁的几个月中一定也是这样，双手抽搐，肩膀蜷缩，同关在笼子里的动物一样跑来跑去；他在那儿一定就是这样，就只能是这样来来往往跑了上千次，在他僵呆而兴奋的目光里闪烁着发狂的红光。不过他的思维能力看来尚未受到损伤，因为他不时烦躁地朝棋桌转过脸去，看看岑托维奇此刻是否做出了决定。九分钟，十分钟过去了。这时终于发生了我们之中谁也没有料到的事。岑托维奇缓缓抬起他那只一直一动不动地搁在棋桌上的手。我们大家都紧张地注视着他将作出的决断。然而岑托维奇没有走子，而是翻过手，手背果断地一推，将所有的棋子慢慢拨出棋盘。过了一会儿我们才明白：岑托维奇放弃了这盘棋。为了免得当着我们的面明显地被将死，他缴械了。难以置信的事发生了，世界冠军、无数次比赛的折桂者，在一个无名之辈面前，在一个已有二十年或者二十五年没有碰过棋盘的人面前卷起了旗帜。我们的这位匿名朋友，棋界的无名小卒，在公开比赛中战胜了当今世界国际象棋第一高手！

不知不觉中我们激动得一个个都站了起来。我们每个人都觉得，B博士一定会说点或做点什么来疏导一下我们快乐的受到惊吓的情绪。唯一纹丝不动地保持着镇定的便是岑托维奇。过了一阵，他抬起头来，用冷漠的目光望着我们的朋友。

“还下一盘吗？”他问道。

“当然。”B博士回答，他那种热情让我感到很不对头。我还没来得及提醒他自己下的“只下一盘”的决定，他就已经坐下了，并开始急急忙忙地把棋子重新摆好。他将棋子集拢的时候是那么激动，以致一个卒子两次从他哆哆嗦嗦的手指间滑到地上；我原先心里就极不好受，现在见他很不自然的激动神情，我心里非常害怕。因为他本是个文质彬彬、温文尔雅的人，现在显然兴奋过度；他嘴角上的抽搐也更频繁，他像发了高烧，全身不住地颤抖。

“别下了！”我在他耳边悄悄说，“现在别下了！您今天已经够了！对您来说，这太费神了。”

“费神！哈哈哈……”他恶狠狠地放声大笑，“要不是这么磨蹭，这期间我都可以下十七盘了！这么慢的速度，又不好睡着，这才是唯一让我费神的呢！——行了！这回您开棋吧！”

最后这几句话他是对岑托维奇说的，语调激烈，近乎粗鲁。岑托维奇静静地、泰然自若地望着他，但是他冷漠的目光似乎是一只攥紧的拳头。突然，两位棋手之间出现了新的情况：危险的紧张气氛和强烈的仇恨。现在已不再是两位互相一比高低的棋手，而是两个敌人，都发誓要把对方消灭。岑托维奇犹豫了很长时间才走第一步棋，我明显地感到，他是有意拖那么长时间的。显然，这位训练有素的战略家已经发现，恰恰是由于他下得慢才弄得对手筋疲力尽和烦躁不安的。因此他用了至少有四分钟，才走了一步最普通、最简单的开局棋：按常规把王前卒往前挪两格。我们的朋友立即以王前卒向迎，可是岑托维奇又做了一次没完没了的停顿，简直让人难以忍受；这就像天上划过一道强烈的闪电，大家心里怦怦直跳，等着惊雷，可是惊雷就是不下来。岑托维奇一动不动。他静静地、慢慢地思索着，我越来越确定地感觉到，他这慢是恶毒的；不过这倒给了我充裕的时间去对B博士进行观察。他刚把第三杯水喝下；我不由自主地想到，他给我讲过在囚室里感到一种发高烧似的口渴。这时他身上已经明显地出现了所有反常的激动的征兆；我看见他的额头潮湿了，手上的伤疤比先前更红更显著了。但是他还控制着自己。到了第四个回合，岑托维奇考虑起来又是没完没了，这下B博士沉不住气了。

“总得走棋呀！”

岑托维奇抬起头，冷冷地看着他。“据我所知，我们是约定的，每步棋有十分钟思考时间的呀！我下棋，原则上都不少于这个时间。”

B博士紧紧咬着嘴唇。我发现，在桌底下，他的脚烦乱地、越来越烦乱地摆来摆去往地板上蹭。我有一种预感，觉得他身上正在酝酿着某种荒唐的东西。这种预感压得我喘不过气来，使我自己也无法阻挡地变得越来越神经质了。事实上，下到第八个回合又发生了一个风波。B博士等啊等，等得越来越不能自制，他再也无法抑制自己的张力了；他坐在那儿不停地来回晃动，而且禁不住开始用手指头敲着桌子。岑托维奇抬起他那沉重的乡巴佬式的脑袋。

“可以请您别捶桌子吗？这对我是个打搅。这样我无法下棋。”

“哈哈！”B博士短短地笑了一声，“这一点倒是都看见了。”

岑托维奇涨红着脸，严厉而带着恶意地问道：“您这话是什么意思？”B博士又短短地、幸灾乐祸地笑了起来。“没有什么意思。只不过您显然非常不耐烦了。”

岑托维奇没有吭声，低下了脑袋。

过了七分钟他才走子。这盘棋就是以这种慢死人的速度继续进行着。岑托维奇常常在发愣，而且似乎越来越厉害，后来他总是到约定思考时间的最大限度时才决定走一步棋，而从一个间歇到另一个间歇，我们朋友的举止变得越来越奇怪。看来他似乎毫不关心这盘棋，而是在忙于别的事呢。他不再焦灼地跑来跑去，而是一动不动地坐在他的座位上。他的眼睛直瞪瞪地、几乎是迷乱地凝视着前面的虚空，不停地喃喃自语，说的话谁也不懂；他不是沉湎在没完没了的棋阵组合，就是在创造另一些新的棋局——我怀疑他是在想新棋局——因为在岑托维奇终于走了一步棋之后，每次都得别人提醒B博士，把他从心不在焉的状态中叫回来。随后他每次都只需一分钟了解一下局势；我越来越怀疑，处在这种突然剧烈发作的冷冰冰的精神错乱状态中，其实他早把岑托维奇和我们大家忘掉了。果然，下到第九个回合，危机就爆发了。岑托维奇刚一落子，B博士连棋盘都没有好好瞅一眼，便突然把他的象向前挺进三格，并喊了起来，声音大得把我们大家吓了一跳：

“将！将军！”

大家怀着希望看到一步妙着的心情，立即一齐注视着棋盘。但是一分钟以后所发生的情况，我们谁也没有料到。岑托维奇缓慢地、非常缓慢地抬起头，把我们这群人一个挨一个看了一遍，此前他从未这样做过。他显出一副得意扬扬的神气，他的嘴唇上渐渐开始浮现出一丝得意的、嘲讽的微笑。一直等到他把他这个我们仍不理解的胜利充分享受以后，才带着虚假的客套朝我们这帮人转过脸来。

“遗憾——我可看不出有‘将’的棋。也许哪位先生看出对我的王构成了将军？”

我们望着棋盘，随后又不安地看着B博士。岑托维奇的王格确实有一个卒保护着，挡住了对方的象，也就是说，对王构不成将军，这样的棋是孩子都能看得出的。我们心里都很不安。难道是我们的朋友情急之中走偏了一个子，走远了一格还是走近了一格？我们的沉默引起了B博士的注意。现在他眼睛盯着棋盘，开始急躁地、结结巴巴地说：

“但是王确实应该在f7上呀……它的位置错了，完全错了。您走错了！棋盘上所有的棋子位置全错了……这个卒应该在g5上，而不该在f4……这完全是另一盘棋呀……”

他突然顿住了。我使劲抓住他的胳膊，确切地说，我是在狠狠地掐他的胳膊，他虽然正处在激动不安的迷惘中，大概还是感觉到我在掐他。他转过脸来，像个梦游者似的紧紧望着我。

“您……想干什么？”

我只说了句“Remember！”别的什么都没说，同时用手指触了触他手上的疤。他下意识地跟着我的动作做了一遍，目光呆滞地望着自己手上那道血红的伤痕。接着他突然开始颤抖起来，全身起了一阵寒战。

“上帝保佑，”他苍白的嘴唇悄声说道，“我说了什么荒唐话，做了什么荒唐事吗……到头来我又……？”

“没有。”我对他悄悄耳语，“但是您得立即中断这盘棋，现在是关键时刻。请您想一想大夫对您说的话！”

B博士猛地站了起来。“请原谅我的愚蠢的错误，”他以往日那种客客气气的声音说，并向岑托维奇鞠了一躬，“当然，刚才我纯粹是胡说八道。这盘棋理所当然是您赢了。”接着他又转向我们。“我也要请诸位先生原谅。不过我预先告诫过你们，要你们不要对我抱太多期望。请原谅我的出丑——这是我最后一次试下国际象棋。”他鞠了一躬就走了，他的神情和先前出现时一样，谦虚而神秘。只有我知道，此人何以再也不会去碰棋盘，而其他人还都有点迷惑不解地呆在那里，心里隐隐约约地感觉到，在千钧一发之际避免了一场极不愉快和极其危险的冲突。“Damned fool！”麦克康纳在失望之余叽里咕噜地骂了一句。岑托维奇最后一个从座位上站起来，还朝那盘下了一半的棋看了一眼。

“可惜，”他大度地说，“这个进攻计划一点不坏。对一位业余爱好者来说，这位先生的天赋委实是异乎寻常的。”