Non que non tronabas pistolita.
—Mexican slang14
Spring 1946. Bosnia
For a while, Elena was nursing two children. She doted over the baby, who had already developed the proud and distinctive widow’s peak of her father, and who possessed the black-marble, obsidian eyes of her mother. The girl’s absolute will to live was a joint parental gift.
Meanwhile, Elena poured liquids into her son’s mouth, force-fed him mashed-up foods. Even on his best days, he resembled a forlorn street dog. Then, gradually, he began to emerge from his semivegetative state to notice the new life before him.
“Mother! This child may be the key to our survival,” Johan said one afternoon, watching the two of them.
“She shall be. She is a miracle. But we cannot continue to call her ‘this child’ and ‘she.’ You need to name her.”
“I know. Her nerve reminds me of someone close to me. I shall name her after this formidable lady, a previous savior of mine. The girl will be known as Blanchita.”
“That is beautiful!” said Elena as she set about playing mother, a role that delighted her beyond words. “And will she be a Thoms?”
Johan’s answer was based not on a (perhaps) subconscious desire to distance the poor girl from his darkened past, but on something far more visceral.
“Blanchita, like her father, shall have no surname, for she, too, is unique.
“The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.”
* * *
Just as he had once nursed the girl’s father, Johan discovered again his paternal instincts. And so Blanchita grew up, nestled in a loving home, amid the rubble of his destruction, the source of which she remained blissfully unaware.
In the fall of that year, Johan recalled Portugal, and visited the remains of the school in Argona in an attempt to found a local chapter of a certain chess club. After all the children had left for the day, he met a teacher in a corridor. That hallway made him tingle with memories. The professor was in his early sixties, and approached Johan with caution.
“May I help you?” he asked Johan.
“I believe so. But I do not know where or how to start without you thinking me a madman, a charge to which I gladly and proudly confess. There are different kinds, and I am the type that means no harm. I promise you this much as an opening gambit. Do you play chess?”
The teacher was sure he was indeed dealing with a madman, but he indulged this character, for there was something in his manner that reminded him of someone he had once adored in this very place. Before he answered Johan’s question, he paused and then posed one of his own: “You’re Thoms, aren’t you? You are. I remember you. You nearly beat old Pestic at chess. And I certainly remember your father, that much is assured. I adored him. We all did, for he was a fine man. And yes, I do play. He taught me. I am Vrbicek. Please come with me and we may talk in comfort.”
Vrbicek held out his hand to Johan, who took it and replied, “Johan. You know the rest.”
The pair walked into the dim light of the staff room, where Johan was offered a comfortable battered chair. Vrbicek pulled a flask from his pocket, took a swig, and offered it to Johan, who thanked him before also glugging the cheap grog.
“Tell me what you want. If it is in my power to facilitate, then you shall have it,” said Vrbicek.
“Thank you, my friend. It is a tale that starts in Portugal many years ago. With a bunch of boys about the same age as the ones who eagerly ran out of here a few minutes ago. I shall make them want to stay until way past dusk each night, and not go home. But then to go home when they are asked and to adore each minute they have with their parents. Please indulge me and let me tell you the story of the Young Hooligans’ Chess Club at the End of the World, and how I taught them how to glide. And gently so . . .”
Vrbicek settled into a comfortable chair of his own, lighting a pipe and showing the early signs of a wide, handsome grin.
* * *
Johan soon had a Portuguese flag shipped to him from Vienna, flew it above the school on the evenings when the club met, and ordered a silver trophy bearing the Young Hooligans’ coat of arms.
The boys and girls (whose company soon included a growing, blooming Blanchita) learned to say “hello” and “you’re welcome” in many different languages, along with a cheeky, saucy one-liner guaranteed to bring a broad smile to the face of a particular foreigner. Non que non tronabas pistolita. The difference between may and can followed. They all soon knew the absolute ease and marvelous effect of a well-intentioned “please” and a well-timed “thank you.” The others developed a deep sibling love for Blanchita; she grew up surrounded by the smiling faces of the chess-warrior-hooligans. Their parents were continually delighted, as Drago Thoms would have been, too.
When the Young Hooligans in Portugal found out in their annual letter from Johan that Cicero had died but had left a daughter (and one named Blanchita at that), they offered (of course, they did) to send all of their book royalties to her. Johan replied with a compromise to split them: one-third to each of the clubs, and one-third for Blanchita. This made sense to Johan, as Kaunitz’s generosity was no more.
For many years, Johan continued to make a regular pilgrimage to the Count’s old estate, to remember his dear friend. He would sit on that same old stone bench by the lake and try to dredge up images which seemed so near, yet so distant that it could well have been a different life, or maybe a movie he had once seen in the old fleapit cinema in Porlock.
One year, a ten-year-old Blanchita swore she had seen a deer in the woods, but Johan pulled her quickly toward him and changed the subject. It was around this time that he started to call her Bandita instead. She loved this the first time she heard it, giggled loudly and at length, and playfully rubbed her face on his stubble, as he himself had once loved to do with Drago. He thought he had heard her call him father. He thought of her real father, and wished that he were there that day with them; the bravest Roman for many a century.
Most evenings ended for Blanchita with stories of Catalina and Cicero. On her eleventh birthday, he gave her a sturdy silver crucifix which her father had once (or twice) placed on Johan on a hospital bed.
Blanchita’s genetic clash of Spanish beauty and bristling Roman courage was quite the sight to behold. Her accentuated, elevated cheekbones only just managed to mask a fury and a desire for a scrap. So well measured was this disguise that the full, lurking wrath rarely had to be unveiled. Johan was convinced that her beauty and potency had helped her win several closely fought chess battles, too. Blanchita sensed that some went out of their way to avoid playing her, and so she also took up a solitary pursuit: the piano. She taught herself, with the aid of a baby grand rescued from the University of Sarajevo, a gramophone from Bascarsija, and a regular stream of vinyl discs, which would arrive with a Belgrade, Prague, or Budapest postmark. Johan could not think of bad things when he heard her play, nor could he be distracted by any pain when he met her on the chessboard. He knew this was close to the ultimate anesthetic he sought.
“A Blue Rose by any other name . . . ,” he would say as they began each game.
* * *
And so, Johan and his keen and starry-eyed protégés traveled one night on a potholed track to another school, where the old man had almost had his moment of glory decades before. This time he took his mother with him, but on the return home, he had the same vision as before.
Once again, Johan fell asleep in the cart on the dirt track back, waking from time to time with images of a chessboard on the lids of his eyes, opening them to see the image transposed onto the stars in the clear night sky.
Once again, Mars was his rook, the moon his queen.
Once again, he saw an army of a thousand pawns in the celestials, which made him wonder (once again) why he was allowed only eight.
He hugged Blanchita tightly, and wondered if she saw the same thing.