The Stronger Sex

When I was standing at the front door of the villa, under the overhanging roof, listening to the chime of bells that I had just set going, I could almost see Cilly Klofft before me. I was expecting her to open the door, maybe in her painter’s smock again, with those eyes of hers that shone in a dim light. But it wasn’t her. It was a blonde, handsome woman in her mid-forties wearing jeans and a striped kitchen apron. She examined me briefly through the crack in the doorway before letting me in.

She gave me no chance to show my good manners, but climbed the stairs ahead of me, slippers on her bare feet, went to Klofft’s door and knocked. I heard Klofft’s voice. “Come in!”

The woman opened the door and said, “Young person is here.” Klofft’s voice replied, “He’s no young person to you, he’s a gentleman. A gentleman with a doctorate as well!” In spite of the reproof his voice was quite mild. “And how often do I have to tell you not to open the door to strangers in your apron?”

“OK, OK,” said the woman. She stood back to let me go past her into the room. “Want me bring up sandwiches now?” She spoke with a distinct accent. I thought she might be Russian.

The woman closed the door behind me. Klofft laughed. “That’s Olga! Wonderful woman. As I expect you saw for yourself. And a good soul too. Lacks a little refinement, that’s all.”

He had put out a board on the table at the balcony door where he worked and set up the chessmen. The black pieces on his side of the board were drawn up neatly in their ranks, the heads of the two knights facing forward. Beside the board stood a digital tournament clock, an elegant item in a black-and-white design. He had also prepared two boards to support the forms on which to record our moves, with pencils lying on them. And finally there were two bottles of mineral water with glasses, and behind them a bottle in a wine cooler with two wineglasses. All the glasses were crystal, as I had noticed on my first visit.

He had cleared away his employer’s reference library, including the Civil Code and the Personnel Book, and put them on the table beyond the balcony door, along with the stack of papers. A packet of today’s weekend newspapers lay there too. He had obviously looked through them already; a few pages were out of line here and there. If his wife hadn’t helped him tidy the room, he had been very industrious this morning. Or maybe Olga the wonderful woman had lent a hand.

I pulled out a chair and sat down. “A glass of white wine?” he asked, pointing to the wine cooler. “I have a very fine Garganega there, from Lake Garda.”

“Yes, I didn’t think you’d come on foot.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, of course the guardian of the law isn’t going to drink and drive.”

“Are you out of your mind? You think you can stay sober and get me drunk! No, no, my dear fellow, no dirty tricks! Not with me! By the way, what class did you play in? I never got around to asking last time you were here, you were so obsessed with the brochure of that… that quacks’ hotel.”

I looked at him in silence. He knew the answer to this barefaced provocation that was on the tip of my tongue. He was even brazen enough to grin at me. I said, “In my club I usually played in the provincial league. But in my university team I sometimes came up against stronger opponents.” I pointed to the board. “We ought to draw lots for colours. Or do you prefer to play with black?”

“Makes no difference at all to me. Just trying to be polite.” He took a white pawn off the board, put his hands behind his back, brought them out in front of him again clenched into fists and held them out for me to choose. I tapped his right fist; when he opened it, it was empty. He immediately opened his left fist, as if to prove that there was nothing fishy going on, and showed me the white pawn he was holding in it.

I took the board by two of its sides and slowly turned it until the white pieces were in front of him and the black pieces in front of me. He half-raised his hands as if to keep the chessmen from falling over and getting out of line as I performed this manoeuvre. In that position his hands began shaking slightly; he put them firmly down on the table and said, “I set the clock to thirty minutes. Agreed?”

He seemed to be wondering whether to let himself in for discussing the subject at all. But finally he said, “She’s gone off to her studio.”

“Then you thought wrong. You see,” he added, leaning slightly forward and smiling, “she does just as the mood takes her, like all females – sorry, women.” Another brief pause, and he asked, “Or isn’t that your own experience?”

I thought of Frauke, but I wasn’t inclined to discuss her with Herr Klofft. I said, “I don’t really know. Shall we start?”

“By all means.” He smiled at me, then settled into his armchair, shook hands with me, moved the pawn on square d two spaces forward and pressed the clock. I thought for a moment. The Dutch defence occurred to me – I had liked using it for quite a long time – and I responded with f5. He had not noted down his first move and, assuming that notation would be too much of an effort for him, I did not make a note of mine either.

Not that he seemed to fear making an effort. He continued with the aggressive e4 pawn move, and sacrificed his pawn on f to me to get his pieces into the game. From the tenth move on, when he made a sham sacrifice by moving his white bishop to h7, I was fighting for survival. At the fourteenth move I gave up.

He seemed very pleased. He leaned back in his chair, raised his hands and placed them together as if to rub them, but refrained and said, “Well, now I think we could have a drink. Good heavens, you can really get an opponent going!”

He drew down the corners of his mouth, nodded his head back and forth, and then said, “Ah, well – yes, playing you I think I can allow myself a glass of wine.”

“We’ll see about that.” I poured him a glass of wine, some mineral water for myself, and began rearranging the pieces on the board, this time with the black ones on his side. As I did that, I said, “I know the variant you were playing, but I couldn’t remember the best defence against it.”

“No, so I noticed. Well, your good health!” He raised the glass, put it to his lips, drank a few sips, put it down and seemed to think for a moment, raised it again and drained it. He looked at me and smiled. As he drank, his eyes had begun to water.

As I refilled his glass, he lit one of his thin black cigars. I stood the last pieces in place. He watched me, puffing the cigar a couple of times, then laid the cigar down on the rim of his ashtray and said. “Right, off we go, Alekhine!”

I suppressed a moment’s annoyance at this silly jibe and moved e4. He responded with e5. I used my opportunity to try the king’s gambit. He accepted the sacrifice and embarked on a dogged defence of his extra pawn. I was sure that I would be able to mount a decisive attack in this way, but after I had positioned my black bishop poorly in a moment of haste, he suddenly took the initiative. Move by move, he was getting the upper hand. I could see how, with the majority of surviving pawns flanking the king, he was going to have me in serious difficulties.

Before his eleventh move, which he really had to make in view of the strategy he had adopted, I suddenly noticed him hesitating. Looking up, I saw that his face had gone very red. His forehead and upper lip were damp with sweat. His right hand, which he had placed over his left hand on the table in front of him, was twitching back and forth with small, convulsive movements.

I was alarmed. Then I remembered that he had been in a similar condition when he was telling me about Katharina Fuchs and the holiday she had taken without permission. When I’d asked if he was all right, he had been furious. And by then his fit of weakness had indeed been over.

Suddenly he raised his right hand, let it hover above the board for a moment, shaking, then lowered it too fast and tried to pick up a knight. He missed, knocked the piece over and began groping blindly for it.

I picked up the knight and handed it to him. His face twisted with annoyance, but he took the piece and put it down two rows back. Luckily he managed to stand it up. Then he took out a handkerchief and rubbed his face dry. He blew out air through his lips.

The knight had been in a strong position. I could have taken it, but that would only have improved my opponent’s position, because his queen would have taken the knight’s place, making a series of acute threats available. Instead of using his advantage, Klofft had now made a weak retreat. He seemed not to have noticed the advantage he was giving me. I could move a rook into the attack on a square previously dominated by his knight.

For a moment I was overcome again by the feeling that I sometimes have to deal with when a handicapped opponent offers me a chance to go on an offensive that would decide the game. I felt sorry for him.

He sat perfectly still for half a minute, three-quarters, a whole minute and more – he still wasn’t reacting. I cautiously looked up from the board.

His face was hot and damp again. He was staring at the board spellbound, eyes wide open as if in panic. When I was on the point of calling for Olga, his right hand reached for the cigar that was shaking slightly between his lips, managed to hold it and move it to the right, still without raising his eyes from the board, intending to put the cigar down on the ashtray.

Then he suddenly seemed to lose control of the movement. His hand knocked hard against the ashtray, which fell to the floor. He let go of the cigar too, and glanced to one side, as if surprised by the clatter of the falling ashtray and looking for the cause of it.

I jumped up, retrieved the ashtray and put it on the table, put the cigar on it and trod out a few sparks that had scattered. He looked at me as if he were a chance witness to something which remained more or less incomprehensible to him. Then he said in a hoarse voice, “I have to take a piss.”

“Nonsense.” He stood up, reached for the four-wheeled walking frame behind his chair and propped himself on the two handles. Glancing sideways at the board, he said, “I retire.”

He reached for a little box on the table behind the balcony door. A thin wire ran from it to the corner, and he pressed the button set into the box. The bell he had used to summon his wife rang out on the stairs. Then he pushed his walking frame past me to the door. I was alarmed to see his right foot, as he raised it to take a step, suddenly turn to one side as if he were suffering cramp. He hesitated and looked down at his foot, breathing heavily.

Outside, I heard Olga’s voice. He replied. The two of them sounded as if they were arguing. Their voices died away. A door was closed.