Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 26

The Elm Harbor Chess Club meets every Thursday night in an antiquarian bookstore owned by an evil old man named Karl. The establishment, which does business under the deceptively misdescriptive name of Webster amp; Sons-there never was a Webster, so he had no sons; Karl has always owned it, believing that New Englanders will more readily buy books from a shop that hints of an Anglo-Saxon provenance-rambles and zags through the second floor of a three-story brick-fronted building just beyond the northern edge of the campus, near Henley Street, the unmarked but widely accepted border between the overwhelmingly white university community and the unfamiliar, and thus, by definition, dangerous, black-and-brown world next door. On the first floor is an Indian restaurant that does a brisk student business, and one browses books or plays chess surrounded by the eye-scorching aroma of cheap curry. Cramped apartments, including Karl’s, fill the third. Probably Karl owns the whole building, but nobody knows. One reaches the store by pushing the appropriate buzzer, then opening a glass door, being careful of the diagonal crack that has been there since I was a student, and finally climbing a narrow staircase that surely violates every safety rule enacted since the nineteenth century: no railings, uneven risers that tend to pop loose unexpectedly, an impossibly sharp turn at the halfway point, and the only useful illumination the uncovered bulb on the landing, with a wattage of, perhaps, forty.

I do not know where Karl is from, but I do know that his fundamental meanness, like a cancer, has always kept him thin and bald, evidently nourishing itself on his own flesh, for he eats everything in sight. His face is an odd inverted triangle, jowly at the bottom despite his otherwise entire lack of body fat. The pupils of his eyes are colorless and pale, like the eyes of an albino. What hair he has left is piled in thin snowy wings on either side of his flat head. In my student days, Karl was a terror, not over the board, as chess players like to say, for he boasted only moderate strength, but around the club itself. If you spilled a few drops of Coca-Cola on his grimy wooden tables, those pale, lidless eyes would darken and grow monstrous, and Karl would screech obscenities for a minute and a half, never mind the players trying to concentrate. If you happened to remark that a peanut-butter cookie seemed stale-he always provided refreshments, and they usually made you sick-he would mutter, “I see,” then proceed to blunder around the rooms with a wastebasket under his arm, sweeping away everything edible or drinkable, even food you brought upstairs yourself. Karl’s comments about the games in progress, or the games just finished, were always punctuated with his proudly offensive locker-room humor-male locker-room humor, that is, and the raunchier the better; he was the master of similes comparing chess pieces to body parts, and positions on the board with those same parts at work. As for women, they should not, in Karl’s opinion, play chess at all; whenever a female student was sufficiently unfortunate to find her way to the club, Karl would be gracious and charming, the very picture of Old World courtliness. He would then proceed to rest his lustful gaze on her for the entire visit-but never on her face. Karl’s crawling, creepy stare is like a live thing, a devouring force of nature; you can feel its greedy, envious insistence even when it is directed at somebody else. Of the very few women who happened by the club in my student days, almost none returned. One brave teen, a math major, a Russian emigree whose younger brother is nowadays one of America’s better players, actually withstood Karl’s crude, unblinking scrutiny for eight weeks running before he finally managed to drive her away.

Yet there was, and still is, no other game in town.

As an undergraduate, I could hardly be kept from the chess club; during law school, I made a point of visiting at least monthly; in my ten years on the faculty, however, I have stopped in no more often than once or twice a year. Each time, Karl finds a way to treat me with the same viciously rude bonhomie I remember so painfully from my student days, for his racism, if not so deeply ingrained as his sexism, has nevertheless managed to survive the university’s lurch through integration to ethnic tribalism to diversity to multiculturalism to whatever it is we call the unbridled celebration of the self with which the nation’s campuses seem determined to welcome the new century. I am scarcely surprised, then, when I walk in the door just before meeting time and Karl, busily setting out last month’s crackers, spins in place, hitches up his too-large pants, and booms, “Well, look who has darkened my doorway again! After all this time! You get it, Doctor? Darkened my doorway!”

I would stare him down, but Karl has no time for such games, and has already turned back to his work. Two local teenagers, one of them an authentic rising star, are playing blitz games-five minutes apiece-in the corner, punctuating their rapid moves with the patter of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, circa 1950, which has somehow become the established second language of chess players all over the United States: “You patzer! You nebbish! You fish! You didn’t see that, did you? Sac, sac, mate! You should have left your king a little luft!” Actually, in the mouths of fourteen-year-old Ivy League faculty brats, it sounds very funny, and I sometimes join in just to keep the chatter going, but my business tonight is with Karl. So I say calmly: “Yes, Karl, I get it.” And Karl turns and lifts a snow-white eyebrow, as though to say he expected better.

“Yes? So? Good. So, what do you want? A game? Yes? Liebman over there is available, or he will be as soon as Aidoo finishes cutting off his balls. Here, have a cracker, Doctor.” Proffering the wicker bowl. Doctor is what he always calls me, his mocking tone another of his unsubtle insults, but ineffective because I know it for envy.

“No, thank you.”

“You do not trust my crackers? They are maybe too old for you?”

“They’re fine, Karl.”

“Then have one, Doctor.” Thrusting the bowl again. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you, but no.”

“I insist.”

I shake my head. With Karl, everything is a fight. Everything has frustrated him. They say there is an angry ex-wife someplace, sullen sons and daughters someplace else, a grandchild or two whom he never sees, and a university chair in political economy left behind when he fled Eastern Europe thirty years ago, but Karl generates rumors the way the summer sun generates heat: you have to be careful, wearing skepticism like sunblock, or you are likely to get scorched.

“Thank you,” I tell him, “but I’m not hungry.” He stares, pale eyes waiting me out. He knows I want something; he can smell hope in others, and lives to squelch it. Still, no place to go but forward. “The truth is, I have a question that calls upon your expertise.”

“My expertise,” he repeats, rubbing his perfectly shaved chin with skinny fingers. “I was not aware I had any expertise that could be of use to a professor of your eminence.”

His ridicule is unrelenting, but I refuse to be sidetracked. Karl is not much of a chess player, but he is a brilliant problemist, holding countless national and international titles for composing chess problems and solving them. He is the only person I know who is likely to possess the answer to the question that now troubles me.

Still, the simple experience of being in the chess club soothes my ragged nerves: the click of pieces being slammed down and the clack of the chess clocks and the hoots from the winners and the excuses from the losers, a splendid symphony of the titanic, tense, yet ultimately relaxing battle of mind versus mind. And relaxation I need, time away from… well, away from the very concerns that have brought me to Karl’s door.

I ask him if we can sit down, and he leads me to a corner from which he can still see the entrance, in order to make fun of whoever walks in. We sit under a cheap blowup of a book-jacket photograph of Emanuel Lasker, bearing a sloppily forged version of the great champion’s autograph- To Karl, and so forth-even though Karl would have been a toddler when Lasker died. Perhaps it was inscribed to some other Karl. I wonder whether he really believes anybody will be fooled, or whether he intends it as a joke.

“So-you need what?” Karl demands angrily, finally settling at the table after twice jumping from his chair to make members crossing the threshold feel unwelcome. He beckons me with his fingers. “What expertise?”

“It has to do with a chess problem,” I begin.

“So! A problem! Please set it up for me,” he commands, waving toward a board, and I sense his secret delight that I am actually inquiring about a subject on which he knows more than anybody else.

“No, no, it’s not a problem I’m having trouble solving. It’s-well, it’s more like a kind of problem.”

“What kind of problem?” he inquires sweetly, mimicry being the least of his misspent gifts.

“I need to know about-well, I seem to remember, years ago, when I was a student, you used to give these lectures about chess problems. …”

“Back when there were people who cared about chess problems. When chess was art, not the wretched computer-driven science it has become. In the old days, we cared more about beauty than victory. These children” -he waves toward the filling room, where the youngest child is in high school-“well, they have no concept. None. All they want to do is win. That is your culture. America spoils chess, as it spoils all things. Art? What art? Winning, all you Americans can think of is winning. Winning and getting rich. Your country is too young to have so much power. Too immature. Yet, because of your power, everybody pays attention. Everybody. You are teaching the whole world that only one thing matters!”

It occurs to me as I listen to this screed that Karl and my father probably would have gotten along, but I have to cut him off or he will preach to me the rest of the night.

“Yes, Karl, yes, exactly.” Word by word, I raise my voice to make him listen. “I want to talk about chess as an art.”

“Good! Good! At last I find a man of culture!” His words are filling the room, and a few of the players look up in irritation, but nobody admonishes him. Another rumor is that Karl once picked up a student who talked back and tossed him down the stairs.

“Thank you,” I murmur, uncertain whether he expects a response.

“So, how is it that I can help you?” he demands, his lips curled in an ungracious sneer.

“One of those lectures you gave-it was about a kind of theme in problems called the Excelsior. Do you remember that?”

“The Excelsior,” he snaps. “A helpmate. A silly idea. Sam Loyd’s invention. He invented it as a joke, and now we all take it seriously. Because we have no memory.” A shake of the wispy head. “So. The Excelsior. What about it?”

I hesitate, trying to frame my query in a way that will excite his interest rather than his ridicule. The helpmate is an unusual species of chess problem in which black moves first instead of white and the two sides cooperate so that, after a stated number of moves, black is checkmated. Sam Loyd, who lived and worked at the end of the nineteenth century, was a journalist and magician who invented many games and puzzles popular to this day. He was also one of the great developers of the art of the chess problem… and one of my father’s heroes. Sam Loyd turned everything upside down, the Judge used to say, who now and again dreamed of doing the same thing, only in law, not chess. He taught everybody that the pieces were smarter than anybody thought.

“I remember that Sam Loyd invented the Excelsior,” I tell Karl. “I remember that much from your fascinating lecture.” Pouring on the butter. “But I admit I don’t remember, um, just exactly what the Excelsior was. And, in particular”-finally selling the whole hog-“in particular, if somebody was working on a problem called the Double Excelsior with the knight…”

Karl interrupts. He is tired of the sound of my voice, as he is tired of the sound of any voice not emanating from his mouth. He prefers his own answers to other people’s questions, even when nobody has asked him anything. It is easy to believe that he used to be a professor; he would fit in perfectly over at the law school. When he speaks now, his pace is rapid and clipped, as though I am wasting his time.

“The Double Excelsior with the knight is a famous chess challenge, Doctor, and a lovely one. The only difficulty is that it happens to be impossible. Listen.” He leans close to me, pointing a bony finger as though casting a spell. “The Excelsior theme has a very clear and very silly set of rules. In an Excelsior, a white pawn begins on its home square and makes exactly five moves, moving two squares on its first move, then one square on each of the next four, so that it ends on the eighth square. And even though you are no doubt rusty, Doctor, I am sure you remember what happens when a pawn reaches the eighth square? Mmmm?”

“It promotes,” I mutter in irritation, like a child attending his first lesson.

“Exactly, exactly, it promotes, it becomes another piece-usually a queen, everybody knows this, but it can become any other piece, too, whatever the player wishes. That is the point of the Excelsior-the pawn may promote to any other piece. It does not become a queen. It becomes something else. We call this underpromotion. You have heard the term?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because you see, Doctor, the ordinary Excelsior is child’s play, so easy that, if you are solving problems and you see the words Helpmate in five moves, the first thing you do is look for a pawn to start pushing. If the only way to force mate is for a pawn to make five moves and then underpromote-well, then you have your Excelsior.”

“I understand.” But his didacticism is beginning to wear on me, and I wonder if I am on a fool’s errand.

“Good. Because, Doctor, the Double Excelsior-ah, well, that is a challenge for the sophisticated designer only.”

“Why?”

“You have forgotten what I said before? That in a helpmate it is black who plays first and the two sides cooperate to checkmate black? The Excelsior requires five moves. So does the Double Excelsior. But there is a difference. In the Double Excelsior, each side must make all five moves with just one pawn, and, on the fifth move, both sides-first black, then white-must promote to the same piece. So, if we have a Double Excelsior with a rook, black moves first, makes five moves, and on the fifth move the pawn becomes a rook. And white moves second, makes five moves, and on the fifth move the pawn becomes a rook. And after white’s fifth move, black is checkmated-but there must be no other possible line of play leading to mate except for each side to make five moves and promote to the same piece on the fifth move. You are with me, Doctor?”

“I’m with you.”

“So, a Double Excelsior with the knight would mean that the only way for white to give mate in five moves is for both players to move a single pawn exactly five times, at the end of which both players promote to a knight, and black is checkmated.”

“But you said it’s impossible…”

“That is correct.” I have touched, finally, his pedagogic side, and he is almost patient, now that he has the opportunity to do some actual teaching. “You have to understand that the other Double Excelsiors have been demonstrated. Both players promote to a rook? Done. Both promote to a bishop? Yes. But nobody has managed to make it work with the knight. Thirty years ago, forty, something like that, a chess writer issued a challenge, and offered a significant money prize to anybody who could successfully demonstrate the Double Excelsior with the knight. But the challenge has never been answered. Lots of composers have tried, but nobody, even with the aid of computers, has managed to do it. So, most of us have come around to the view that it cannot be done.”

I frown, trying to take this in. My father was trying to solve a chess problem that the composing world believes to be impossible. His immortality? I think not: his mind was more subtle than that, unless it was as simple as Lanie Cross suggested, that he suffered a nervous breakdown and was not thinking straight. But I am not so sure. I think the Judge would have wanted more. Oh, he might have possessed the raw ambition to compose the problem nobody had ever managed. He might have dreamed of being the one to do it. But the reason he put the word Excelsior in his note to me…

“Karl?”

“Yes, Doctor?” The mocking tone has returned. Karl’s attention has wandered back to the suddenly crowded room, and therefore to his regular duty of making lives miserable. “Is there a problem? Was the explanation too complicated? Or do you perhaps resent that it is black instead of white who is checkmated at the end?” He laughs. “But in the chess problem it is always black who is checkmated at the end, is it not?” Cackling, he makes to rise.

“Wait,” I say, more sharply than I intended, as though he is a student.

Karl’s eyes widen. Very little surprises him, but my tone does. Now that I have his full attention once more, I take my time. Something he just said- it is always black who is checkmated -was that it? In the Double Excelsior, black is indeed checkmated, but… but Lanie Cross said… wait…

“Karl, look. In the Double Excelsior with the knight-I mean, if you yourself were to try to construct one-which pawn would you use?”

“Eh?”

“The pawn that becomes a knight at the end? The knight that gives checkmate? It has to start somewhere, right? So-what is it, a rook pawn, a bishop pawn, what?”

“Oh, I see. It is the white queen’s knight pawn.”

Meaning the pawn that, at the beginning of the game, is standing on the square right in front of the knight that is two squares to the left of the queen.

“Why is that?”

“In theory it should make no difference. You could use any pawn to demonstrate the theme. But when Sam Loyd developed the original, he used the queen’s knight’s pawn. So a serious composer of a Double Excelsior would honor the original by using the same pawn.”

“The… uh, the white queen’s knight’s pawn.”

“Of course the white.”

“But the white queen knight’s pawn would be the second piece to move. Black moves first.”

“Again you are correct, Doctor. Of course, in the old days, some composers designed helpmates in which white moved first, and it was white who was mated at the end.” He squeezes his jowls as though trying to shrink them. “But no true artist would do it that way. Not any more. A composer must follow the rules. It is black who must lose.”

“Still, if someone wanted to design the problem so black would win-”

“That would be silly. A waste of time. Unartistic.”

“But which pawn would move first?”

Despite himself, Karl is interested. He sighs to prove he isn’t. “Any pawn would do, of course. The true artist, however, would again use the white queen knight’s pawn. Only it would now be the black pawn, moving second, that would deliver mate on the fifth move.” He is on his feet again, surprisingly light and gay, leaping toward the narrow wooden bookcase that stands in the corner. Nobody is allowed to touch the old books, many of them in German or Russian. He selects a volume and, to my surprise, thrusts it into my hands. “Take this.” He nods with some enthusiasm. “It has many examples of the Excelsior theme. Keep it as long as you like.” This astonishing and uncharacteristic act of generosity brings a solemn hush to the dozen or so members in attendance tonight.

I know at once the book will be unhelpful. I already have what I came to get.

“Thank you, Karl, but this… it’s not necessary.”

“Nonsense. But we must protect the book, of course. Here.” He hands me an aged and torn manila envelope. “You will carry it in this.”

“Karl, I…”

He holds up a warning finger. “I have loaned perhaps three or four books in all my years in your fair city. You owe me thanks.”

And he is right. He is as controlling as ever, but he is trying to help. I do owe him thanks. “Thank you,” I say, and I mean it.

Except that Karl is now embarrassed, perhaps not sure what impulse moved him to such a kindness. I suspect it was simply his delight at finding someone-in these uncultured days, as he would say-who actually showed an interest in the area of chess he knows best, an area about which almost nobody cares. I remind myself how empty a life he leads, and I smile my gratitude even as I watch his face turn sour again. I know he is going to send me off with a fresh insult, and I know how badly he needs to do it.

“Just remember what I told you, Doctor.” His brutal laugh is back.

“The Excelsior must end with the white pawn promoting and giving mate. Black moves first in the helpmate, remember, but it is still white who gives mate at the end. Always white.” He falls silent and regards me suspiciously, as though no longer sure I have come to his club on legitimate business. He leans close, his tiny fists pressing on the table in front of me. “We cannot change the way of the world over the chessboard, can we, Doctor?” Chuckling at his success in getting in the last word, Karl wanders off to torment somebody else.

I am glad to be rid of him. I hang around for another half-hour, watching a couple of games and playing a couple of games, and then, carrying Karl’s book in its protective envelope, I slip out into the frosty night.

Excelsior, my father wrote, and he repeated the word. It begins! Neither the popular Addison nor the social Mariah had much interest in chess when we were children; only the bookish Talcott. Which means that the Judge wanted me, but only me, to know that he was referring to the Double Excelsior. Unfortunately, I still do not know why he wanted me to know. Karl has told me how the Excelsior should work, and Lanie said that my father wanted black to win. But I am still chewing on cotton. I am sure there is something there that should jump out at me, but nothing does. I do not know how the arcane chess problem the Judge wanted desperately to be the first to compose could possibly be related to Angela’s boyfriend or the arrangements. Perhaps the white pawn delivered to me at the soup kitchen was a part of a composition, too, a composition with pieces that live and breathe and ache. If so, then my father was surely the composer. No doubt he was confident that I would see the connection, and the last elusive clue surely lies in that very confidence. Which leads to a question I have not heretofore considered: if I have the missing white pawn, who has the also-missing black one?

I am still turning these problems over in my mind when I realize I am being followed.