My First Suicide

The Double of Tolstoy’s Son-in-Law

I

When, in the autumn of 2002, I came upon a reproduction in the newspaper of an old photograph showing Lev Tolstoy playing chess, I had the feeling that something just wasn’t right. It is easy to say now that the icy shaft of a mystery had run through me, or that the goddess of incomprehensible coincidences had placed a significant kiss upon my brow, or that the sulfurous wings of the angel of darkness had brushed me — or something like that. Today it is easy, exceedingly easy, and, given my stylistic impulses, shockingly easy to say so. But at that time, none of these far reaching metaphors came to my mind. Every sepia-toned millimeter was exceedingly intense, but intensity is too little for a mystery.

As if for fear that I might disturb some sort of integrity, I didn’t cut the picture out; instead, I kept the entire newspaper. I put it into the drawer in which I keep the shot for my air rifle, and from time to time — decidedly too often — I would take it out and stare at it with fascination, and I would study it through a magnifying glass, and I looked at it under the light, and I probed the texture with my fingers, and I considered entirely seriously how to get to the laboratories where they could take an X-ray of it, magnify it to unparalleled graininess, out of which a secret sign would loom and establish the crucial, all-revealing DNA of the paper on which it was printed.

At all costs, and in vain, I attempted to decode the sudden and obsessive presence of Tolstoy’s chessboard in my brain.

You all know such situations: an inconceivably distinct detail of a distant landscape; a strange light, nobody knows from where; a house, seen from the window of a train, toward which someone is running along a sandy path; the shadow of the suddenly turned head of a passer-by; the arrangement of objects on a table — someone, something, nobody knows what, suddenly comes to mind and gives you no peace.

The photograph of Tolstoy playing chess gave me no peace for three years. To this day, I don’t have total peace, perhaps even quite the contrary, but at least I have been able to formulate certain suppositions. If I were the narrator of a detective novel, I would say that I have established the direction of the investigation.

I suppose it would not be beside the point to emphasize that I am not an especially ardent fan — either of chess or of Tolstoy. There is nothing frivolous in this confession. Especially as far as Tolstoy is concerned. I admire the author of War and Peace. I admire him inordinately and devoutly. Perhaps even, if someone were to force me to name the greatest novelist in history — a little bit shooting in the dark, but with inexorable intuition — I would name him. After all, if a novel is supposed to create a world — or even a universe — he was the most fully successful at it. I say that I am not an ardent fan, only because I don’t know him well. You can’t be an ardent fan of something you don’t know inside and out. Fanaticism presupposes cognitive perfection. And I know well, I even know very well, only one of his texts. Most certainly, I can confess with a pure conscience that I am an ardent fan of that one text. I’m an ardent fan of “The Death of Ivan Ilych.” I consider this story the masterpiece of all masterpieces, the limit of human possibilities in the art of narration. All Tolstoy’s other things I esteem and admire. I esteem and admire, but — please understand me well — I don’t catch their scent.

Truly great, truly near, and truly intense writers have a scent. Nabokov smells of sea salt, Erofeev of honeysuckle, Márquez of saltpeter, Zweig of a November sky. Iwaszkiewicz of pine needles. Broch of glacial waters flowing down into a valley, Platonov of a burning-hot smithy.

Tolstoy doesn’t have a smell. Unless prose has the smell of dying, and death is like air.

A few years ago I bought a fourteen-volume edition of his works in a used book store; of course, I didn’t read everything, but I read War and Peace once, Anna Karenina and Resurrection twice, “Kreutzer Sonata” three, or perhaps even four times. I return to “Ilych” frequently, and always, as I read the last sentence — about “the death that is finished”—I get goosebumps. But I never had any sort of “Tolstoy phase,” some sort of Tolstoyan preoccupation or obsession. And it is not a matter of common platitudes: that the adoration of a great genius whose works have been published in the form of “Collected Works” is always marked by a certain coolness; that, granted, one admires Shakespeare, Goethe, or Dante, but that one doesn’t go mad over them; and even — to tell the truth — that one rarely reads them before going to sleep. Such bullshit doesn’t apply to me. I read the classics before going to sleep. Or rather at dawn, for in the evening, whatever I pick up, whatever classic, whatever Flaubert, whatever Dickens, before I get to the end of the first page — I fall asleep. But I awake at dawn, and then I read the classics. With admiration and without any madness. Apparently, once a person is of an age when he reads only at dawn, and only classics, it is too late for great obsessions. Even the obsession — and it was an obsession — with the picture in the newspaper, in which Tolstoy plays chess, didn’t incline me to obsessive reading of his collected works.

The caption under the photograph declared that in his old age his favorite game was chess; but if this was the case, did he write even one sentence about chess? It seemed, more or less, that, in the cosmos created by him, there ought also to be a place for chess, but where should one look for it? It seems to me that neither in Karenina, nor in Resurrection, and absolutely not in “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” is there a single word about chess. Granted, the idea of thoroughly studying his remaining works — from the point of view of the presence of chess motifs — occurred to me, but nothing more. That intriguing idea did not become deed in the least. Of course, when you can’t establish something, you have to invent it. That’s what experiencing the world through literature is about. The foolishly beautiful idea that I myself might compose a mysterious story about the unknown chess episode in the life of Tolstoy was, however, entirely beyond my reach.

I didn’t have even a preliminary intuition whether the magnetism that drew me to this picture was hidden in the writer himself, who was bent over the chessboard, or in his opponent, who was dressed in the fashion of the landed gentry (and whose face, incidentally, seemed to me strangely familiar), or in the members of the household, gathered in great numbers around them, who were seemingly cheering on one or the other, but who were actually posing for the photograph. (Although Sophia Tolstoy seems to have been genuinely cheering — in any case, she is looking intently at the black figures with which her husband is playing.)

Finally, I made the effort, and with the help of a certain petite, but inordinately enterprising Russianist, vintage 1968, I established who is who on the daguerreotype. Incidentally, the petite, but inordinately enterprising Russianist, vintage 1968, who, at first, thought I had come up with a subtle pretext for you-know-what, then, that I was a maniacal nutcase, finally herself became excited about the topic and assembled an extensive group of materials proving that, after all, chess played no trivial role in Tolstoy’s life. She even obtained a special book from Moscow, published in the sixties, entitled Tolstoy i shakhmaty [Tolstoy and Chess]. I looked everything over carefully, I made notes, but I knew from the beginning that these were only formal activities, which would by no means push anything forward. And indeed — they did not.

The secret was probably in chess itself. But — to repeat — I’m a mediocre chess player. Of course, it is possible to speak here of more intense emotions and greater proficiency. The fact, however, that I know more about chess than about the life and works of Lev Tolstoy does not mean that I know a lot about chess. Granted, I used to have a few strong opening moves. Now it is up and down. Now, even that ability, if it’s not fading, certainly doesn’t show any sparks; but I used to have a few strong opening moves. Perhaps even excellent. Nothing but grandmasters were my teachers. That’s right. Each was a grandmaster, and each had his own distinct and unforgettable style of play: Grandpa Pech — bawdy renaissance style; Grandma Pech — fierce style; Uncle Ableger — lightning fast style; Uncle Paweł—devout style. With the exception of Mother, all the members of the household played chess.

The chessboard, which we would place on the table covered with a sky blue oilcloth in our gigantic kitchen, was similar to Tolstoy’s. I don’t wish to say anything by this. Nor do I multiply cheap effects, nor do I make second-rate jokes. I simply state that our chess set in the old house in Wisła originated — like the chess set they played on in Yasnaya Polyana — in those mythic epochs when the chessboard and the box were separate. Granted, the genius who came up with the idea that the box, after it was opened out, could become the chessboard, had made his discovery. And in fact — as is evident from old prints, at the least — he had made his discovery ages ago. But luckily this discovery hadn’t made it to Cieszyn Silesia by the fifties of the twentieth century. And if it had made it to Cieszyn Silesia, it hadn’t made it to Wisła. And if it had made it to Wisła, it hadn’t made it to our house.

An atavistic-sentimental antipathy, stemming from those times, toward the box that becomes a chessboard once it is unfolded, does not — of course — keep me awake at night. I am not consumed day and night by that hatred, but it equals my antipathy to magnetic chess pieces. On the whole, I try to fight my own neuroses. But that one I cultivate.

First (first!) you have to lay out the chessboard. Then (then!) pour out the chess pieces from the box. Pour them out on the chessboard! Not onto the table! No pouring out onto the table! And while placing the pieces, and while putting the pieces away, the chessboard must be in place! Before play, the pieces are to be in the box; during play, on the chessboard. Outside the chessboard stand only dead chess pieces!

Father must have had the same phobias. That’s why he insisted on the drawer, and at first even on two drawers. He played pretty well. Not as lightning fast as Uncle Ableger, who adored playing tournament chess and imposed a frightful tempo, drove his opponent on, and — I have to admit — mostly won, although sometimes in his frantic rush he committed blunders you wouldn’t believe. And not as fiercely as Grandma Pech, who couldn’t stand to lose. And not as hedonistically and generously as Grandpa Pech, who, for the sake of beauty and amusement, forgot about results and, to a certain extent, specialized in losing. And not so prayerfully as Uncle Paweł, who thanked God after each successful move.

Father didn’t play either so lightning fast, or so fiercely, or so sybaritically, or so piously — but efficiently and mercilessly enough. After all, chess is merciless by its very nature. In the art of moving chess pieces, there can be no mercy — at most, there can be an error in the art.

I think that, as a child, I must truly have been not so bad. I must have been — because I don’t remember anything. And I remember all the ruined games: the crumbling dam we had made out of stones over the stream in Partecznik; a lost match with a IIc team; the disaster in the church trivia contest — when I said that it was Cain and Abel who were twins, rather than Jacob and Esau; lost points during ping-pong tournaments in the Lutheran Church House. I remember all the blocks in the evening games of dominoes; all the disturbed oars and boat-hooks in the pile of pick-up-sticks; all the un-cast sixes in games of Sorry! on holiday evenings; and all the unnamed mountains and rivers in States, Cities — but I don’t recall any lost chess games. In other words, I must have won. And won for real, because there was no custom of allowing a young person to win for encouragement — not in our house, nor in Lutheran houses in general. On the contrary — there was the principle of humiliating, from the very beginning, the young person’s every ability, grinding him down, kicking him in the ass. If he manages to cope, there is hope for him, if not — oh, well — the Lord God welcomes various sorts at His table.

I remember the flow and the musical naturalness of play. I didn’t have the sense of the infallibility of any move — I had the sense that there simply wasn’t any other move. Probably, in my case, the famous cognitive innocence had to do with chess, and not with drawing. Most children, as is well known, draw in interesting ways at the beginning; once they grow up a little and begin to draw more consciously, that is to say, to lie, to contrive — the gift vanishes. I grew up a little, began to contrive, the gift vanished. Nowadays I rarely play, and for the last five years all the more rarely, since I play exclusively with myself. If I come upon a chess puzzle in some journal, I am usually able to solve it, and usually — without bragging — it doesn’t take me more than a quarter of an hour.

Today’s newspapers rarely publish chess puzzles. I don’t intend in the least to whine about the fact that we have come to live in evil times, in which lamentable computer games have supplanted the game of kings, or anything of that sort. Absolutely not. I don’t have inclinations toward those sorts of banalities, and when, in moments of weakness, they come over me, I summon up the rest of my mental forces, and I fight them in their infancy. Besides all that, I believe that all “games and entertainments of kings” ought to be limited to the elite, and that, in general, only those things that a small, the smallest number of persons cultivates and practices are worthy of note.

I remark upon the sporadic presence of chess problems in today’s journals in order to make excuses for a certain eccentricity. Namely, browsing through the newspapers and magazines at the Empik bookstore — not with the goal of finding a chess puzzle, in any case, not exclusively with that goal — I noticed that a weekly called New State, which is completely unknown to me and always just takes up space on the shelves, publishes not so much chess puzzles as a special chess rubric, even on a decent level, and that, in addition, those half columns (true, they are of a small size) were edited by a rather — judging by the picture — attractive female chess-master with the exotic name of Iweta. I began to buy it rather regularly. I cut out the descriptions of the games and the commentaries by the attractive female chess-master with the exotic name; the rest of New State I throw away without reading — so much for my eccentricity.

I have three chess sets. A large one (“Classic?” “Royal?” “Olympic?”) — clearly I’m not certain of even the basic terminology; in any case — the chess board measures sixteen inches on a side — it is significantly bigger than the one in Wisła, but the shape of the figures is identical to those that perished together with the house, which has turned into ruin and dust. Pawn, rook, horse, runner, lady, king. The ancient pattern and — since they are taken from my world — the ancient names. No completely unfamiliar knight, bishop, queen. Whenever I hear or read that someone makes a move with his knight, bishop, or queen, I’m not certain at first what game we’re talking about. I’m exaggerating — but only slightly and for symbolic effect. Further — I’m ashamed to admit it — I also have magnetic chess pieces. Yes, it’s true. Small, classical, but, nonetheless — magnetic. It is — it goes without saying — a piece of shoddy barbarity.

Just as the genuine art of carpentry should be practiced without a single nail, so in genuine chess there is no place for any metal elements. Far greater principles than these are regularly broken for the mother of all shoddiness: human convenience. Alleged convenience. Supposedly in certain situations — for instance, on a trip — it is extremely convenient to play with magnetic chess pieces. I don’t know. I avoid travel. Supposedly not only in certain, but in absolutely all situations, computerized chess is even more convenient than the magnetic version. Here I know even less. I use a computer exclusively as a typewriter. For me, the first is worse than the second, and the second is worse than the first. Magnetic chess is worse than the computerized version, but also the computerized is worse than the magnetic. As in life: all scales are in sharp decline. All scenarios are black. True, computerized pieces of shit will supplant magnetic pieces of shit, but this is small consolation, because, seemingly annihilated by the new thing, the slightly magnetized freaks won’t disappear at all; rather they will take on a venerable patina and will become rarities sought after by collectors of twentieth-century design, and perhaps even of twentieth-century art. The circle is closing. The loop is tightening. But I give my word of honor: it wasn’t for the patina that I bought the magnetic chess set.

I bought it — in a men’s gift shop on Krucza Street — because it constantly seemed to me that a bizarre instability reigned over my usual chess set, on which I incessantly played the Tolstoyan game. I suppose I don’t have to emphasize, or even point out, that I set up the pieces as soon as I saw the photo. I examined them carefully, I played out successive variants, I returned to the starting point, etc. But with time — this lasted a good couple of months — I began to get the bizarre, though in this case perhaps only too justified, impression that something, someone, some sort of spirit or some other demon was changing the positions of the pawns and other figures, that they were gliding over the chessboard by themselves — the devil only knows.

The solution turned out to be highly disappointing. The Ukrainian woman who cleans for me once a week, and who is — incidentally — amazingly pedantic, wasn’t able to resist, and she dusted the chessboard as well. Once I figured out what was going on, I reprimanded her severely, and I absolutely forbade her to go anywhere near the chessboard. But as is usually the case with threats, I felt a lack of security, and so, with the goal of at least minimally strengthening the stability of the position, I bought the magnetic chess set.

True, as soon as I saw, while still in the store, the shocking English inscription on the box—“Made without child labour”—I hesitated for a moment. After all, as soon as a person of my generation hears that it is not true that we put children to work, there naturally appears a vision of millions of little, emaciated Chinese, hungry and cold, milling or even sculpting the pawns, bishops, and rooks. Such a vision presented itself to me, but it quickly vanished. I’ll say it honestly: it vanished before it appeared.

My third chess set is a present from a woman I would like to forget. Clearly, however, that wish is weaker than the desire of possession. I haven’t gotten rid of this souvenir, which is all the stranger in that it is a trashy curio to boot. Only — to vent ungentlemanly disdain — a calamitous woman, or rather, only a catastrophic woman, only a woman that catastrophic could hope that anyone would believe that the pseudo-Indian imitation of wood, marble, ivory, copper, ceramic — and whatever else have you — was imported from Bombay, when it was most certainly acquired in the underground passageway under Central Station. And that’s in the best case scenario.

As to literature about chess, I have an anthology of all the matches of Bobby Fischer, three volumes of the Biographical Dictionary of Polish Chess Players, an English-language monograph on the “Sicilian defense,” as well as a fundamental and, frankly speaking, totally insane work entitled With Chess Through the Ages and History. I haven’t read any of these titles even superficially, but then, the number of the books I put off for reading during more peaceful times is much more considerable and their topics wider. By more peaceful times, I mean days, nights, weeks, and months, the lion’s share of which will not be consumed by the passionate chasing of girls. When this happens, when I awake at dawn and begin to read some classic, I will read until the afternoon, and perhaps even — if I feel like it — until dusk. Something tells me I won’t live to see this epoch of peace and quiet, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t collect books.

II

Someone might say that, by constantly emphasizing that I supposedly don’t know much about chess, I am being coy and am obscuring things, since it irrefutably follows from the story I am telling that I must be an entirely decent chess player. Well, without a shadow of a doubt and with deadly solemnity, I declare that I am a miserable chess player, not to say no player at all. And one fundamental detail disqualifies me: I don’t know, and I have never completely mastered, the art of chess description. I have mastered it only to the point where I can decode the notation of the newspaper chess riddle without making embarrassing errors, and this is truly little.***** The chessboard of my childhood was composed of wooden cream- and dark-brown-colored fields, called “white” and “black,” glued onto canvas; and the paradox of the terminology ended here for us. Not I, nor a single one of the house’s grandmasters, had the least inkling that there existed some sort of a7s, c5s, f3s. I wouldn’t bet my life on it that they could answer without consideration just how many fields and how many pieces there were. And if anyone should tell them that it is possible to play on a scrap of paper, they would be laughed at. Sensual pleasures weren’t their strong suit, but there was no point in playing without touching the pieces, without their leisurely or impetuous movement, without permanent staring at the position of the pieces, which slowly dissolves (and yet entrances to the end in its mysterious symmetries). Professional arguments — that if you haven’t mastered description, you will also have trouble with chess memory; that, granted, you will remember the position of the pieces, but a memory like that is not very capacious, because the pieces are spatial, and not very many of them will stick in your head — these professional arguments were not for us, and to this day they make no impression upon me.

Supposedly the mind of the professional chess player is filled with hundreds of thousands of combinations. I have only a couple of them in my head. Although, without a doubt, in the untangling of precisely this history, a few more might come in handy. Just a dozen, just a few tens, just a hundred.

Perhaps I wouldn’t stare for months and years at the position of the pieces on Tolstoy’s chessboard like there’s no tomorrow. Perhaps the position of the pieces itself would open up some sort of secret trap-door in my mind. But I stared, and I didn’t have a chance, since even if I had seen such a position at some point, I didn’t recall it. Even if I had heard this melody at some point, with my wretched ear for music, I didn’t have a chance of repeating it. A classic says: if you remember — you need only connect; but I couldn’t connect, because I didn’t remember. I didn’t have a clue what to connect with what.

Today, I see clearly that I was also afflicted with a peculiar blindness. I carefully examined every square millimeter of the photograph, but I didn’t see the stylish little table on which the chessboard was standing. No: it wasn’t that I didn’t notice, or I didn’t attach sufficient importance to it — I simply didn’t see. I had a bizarre, or perhaps not at all bizarre, but rather a well-justified block. I didn’t see what was in front of my nose, and I didn’t remember the first storyline. I pounded my blind head on the photo of Lev Tolstoy playing chess, as if on the Great Wall of China, or on the Berlin Wall. And I stood before that photograph, as if at the Wailing Wall or at the Iron Curtain. And nothing. No move, not a hand, nor a foot. Neither a bishop, nor a rook.

Until once, in one of my common and daily-experienced epiphanies; once, namely, after glimpsing, at the intersection of Krucza and Żurawia Streets, the most perfect suntan in the world; once — to put it more precisely — on a certain November afternoon, when I was just about to chase after the shoulders emerging from a lizard-green dress and opalescing like Nestlé milk chocolate; when I was already — I’ll say it honestly — chasing after them; when at any moment I was about to change my shape and state of concentration and become a drop of sweat on the withdrawing back of the super babe I had glimpsed by chance — it suddenly dawned on me. Suddenly I stood as if rooted in the ground, suddenly I gave up the chase, suddenly I became myself again. Suddenly the torment caused by this ill-fated photograph vanished; suddenly I realized whom the fellow playing chess with Tolstoy resembled.

He had reminded me of someone the entire time, but this was — so to say — a side uncertainty. An ornamental uncertainty. And so, taken as a whole, the picture was troubling from A to Z, and in it — on top of all that — someone reminds me of somebody. But the fact that he reminds me of someone seems unimportant: it is too ostentatious, it is too much on the surface, and it also looks like a mysterious, although trite, addendum. The main hieroglyphs were almost certainly registered on the chessboard; the match, which had barely begun, might go in any direction, and hundreds of possible combinations could be puzzles and their solutions. Thousands of pages and stories recorded by the brilliant writer might contain entries and exits from the labyrinths. In the end, probably it is in them that we will find the beautiful and intricate crux of the matter, and not in the fact that someone here resembles someone else. Someone always resembles someone else; and when you set off from a small town into the great world, you constantly come upon people in this world who are doubles of people who lived in the neighborhood, and — outside of anatomic pranks — there are no secrets here. I could write a whole book about the doubles of old citizens of Wisła I have met in the world, and it would be a superficial work. Even the similarity of old Lazar to Winston Churchill or of Szarzec from Partecznik to Paul VI is of little significance, to say nothing of the lesser cases of similarity.

It appears that I myself am disappointed with my own solution. Yes and no. I am, because it turned out that the key to the mystery is to be found in the addendum to the mystery that was lying on the very surface. And I’m not disappointed, because the principle that a good horror contains answers to fundamental questions — the nature of evil, the devil, and the other world — proved true as gold in my own thriller.

III

The landed gentryman playing chess with Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy reminded me of a certain driver from the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy. We saw him a total of one time, and although both Mother and I, and the other members of the household, well remembered his feats, his face and external appearance were completely erased. And here you have it, after staring at the photograph for three years, on its surface appeared that same — the spitting image of that — good-natured, but essentially hypocritical smile; that same high forehead passing over into a bald spot; that same slovenly and disheveled beard. I had found it. The truth lay on the surface. It was darkest under the lantern. I had for the telling one of the basic and, for a short time, frequently recalled family stories. What is more, a thoroughly family chess story. Recalled frequently, but for a short time, for it soon turned out that all of us preferred to forget these not entirely understandable events from — today it will already be — more than forty years ago.

For an engineer at the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Father disappeared without a trace decidedly too frequently. He always returned, however, and there is no point in hiding it: these were sorry returns. Always sozzled, always the worse for wear, and always with that same old story: namely, that he had been playing ping-pong with his colleagues until the break of dawn.

When he got lost during the move to Krakow, however, the matter looked ominous. For the first time, we were certain that he was no longer alive.

It was a sweltering August in the year 1962. I was ten years old, and I was at the apogee of all possibilities. After some dozen months of incessant soccer playing, I had become a consummate forward. In a thick journal with a green binding, which I had received for my birthday, I was writing a detective/romance novel. In the expectation of God knows what sort of mystery, I traipsed around after a certain oddly dressed female vacationer. Almost every night, I dreamed of great flights over the Earth and breath-taking landings in yellow grass. I was in love with Claudia Cardinale and — as befitted a true man — I didn’t care in the least about reciprocity on her part. Beginning in the fall, we were to be living in Krakow, and each day of that summer had the taste of final things.

Father placed an order with Master Sztwertnia for bookshelves that were to occupy one whole wall in the Krakow apartment, a hanging kitchen cabinet, and a special little table for playing chess.

“What do you mean, a little table for playing chess?” Mother wrung her hands. “A little table for chess? It’s a disgrace to order something like that. Master Sztwertnia is a serious craftsman! He isn’t going to make any absurdities! What’s the point of a little chess table!” Mother screamed. “Can’t you play on a normal table?”

“No,” Father responded dully.

“You are Newton!” Mother raised her gaze to the heavens. “You are the great scientist Isaac Newton!”

Probably for the hundredth time, for there was no lack of opportunities, she cited the anecdote about Sir Isaac Newton, who, so they say, weary of constantly opening the door for the cat and her kittens as they sauntered back and forth, ordered two openings to be cut over the threshold — a large one for the cat and a smaller one for the kittens—“as if,” she choked, “as if the small cats couldn’t manage to pass through the large hole! Newton! A genuine Isaac Newton! And besides, when are you going to play that chess? When? Since you are never home.”

“On Sunday,” Father answered arrogantly, and Mother capitulated and glanced in the direction of Grandma Pech, as if seeking comfort and understanding. Every time Grandma heard about the little chess table, she would shudder, as if it were a matter of deviltry in the strict sense; she didn’t cross herself, she didn’t make the sign of the cross, since we don’t do that on a daily basis; but she would wave it off in despair and immediately, from the spot where she happened to be standing at the moment, rush off, as if she were rushing into panicky flight that would take her as far as the eye could see, and after a few steps she would suddenly halt and glance furtively at the old man to see whether he had come to his senses, and seeing that he hadn’t come to his senses, she would lend her features an expression that said: Get thee hence, Satan!

Grandpa gave a faint smile, chuckled quietly, laughed in the depths of his soul. It wasn’t so much the little chess table that delighted him as the panic into which the women fell on account of this piece of equipment. But even he, after a certain time, lost his composure, became morose, drew Father aside, and tried to reason with him:

“Think this over, Józef. Just think it over. I myself, as you know, adore chess, but why go overboard? We play chess, but we aren’t real chess players. All of us, almost all of us in this house, play chess, but our house is not a house of real chess players. To say nothing of a house of chess playing professionals, chess playing gamblers, or chess playing addicts. We play the way the Lord God commanded: on Sunday afternoons, on long winter evenings, on holidays. And we play with the sort of chess set He commanded, and on the sort of chess board that is pleasing to Him. Why do you want more, Józef? Why do you need this little chess table?”

“In order to play chess on it,” Father answered dully. “In order to play chess on it in Krakow. On Sunday afternoons. On long winter evenings and on holidays.”

“On holidays,” Grandpa responded, “I hope you will come visit us. And then we will play as we always have. I don’t understand you, Józef. Take, for example, beds. We all sleep in normal beds, all people in general sleep in normal beds: wooden, with straw pallets and mattresses, and under eiderdown. And that is how it should be. But you, Józef, with that little chess table of yours, you are behaving as if, for unknown reasons, you wished for yourself who knows what sort of bed. Air mattresses like at the swimming pool, silk bedspreads like in a brothel, and bamboo frames like in the Congo. Think this over, Józef. After all, this is, basically, deviltry.”

“No,” Father responded, “it isn’t the same thing. An air mattress is not a little chess table. The chess board glued to the table top isn’t a coverlet in a brothel. The Congo isn’t Krakow. The entire problem,” Father paled, and drops of sweat broke out on his forehead, “the entire problem stems from the confusion of concepts. The confusion of everything with everything else—that’s the deviltry. The muddling of everything with everything else—that’s demonism. There’s no point discussing it. I won’t give in.”

IV

The tension grew. We awaited Master Sztwiertnia as if for the Second Coming of the Lord, who will judge the advocates and enemies of eccentricity. When, at long last, the drone of his dilapidated Willys resounded in the courtyard, when he himself appeared in the doorway in an ancient collarless shirt, in a worn out brown suit marked here and there with streaks of sawdust; when he sat down at the table in our huge kitchen, and when, after a discussion, or rather, after a cursory review of the structural details of the bookshelves, which were to cover the entire wall, and of the hanging kitchen cabinet; when, self-conscious and the object of the glares of Mother and Grandmother, Father removed from his breast pocket a folded piece of paper with a carefully sketched project for a little chess table — at this point a terrible, explosion-pregnant quiet fell over the kitchen. The master carpenter placed the paper on the table, his silver head inclined ever lower, the women standing at the stove looked at my old man with disgust. It can’t be helped; since he didn’t want to listen to our warnings, since in spite of our admonitions he insisted on committing this prank, now he’ll get what’s coming to him. The master will give him a thorough chewing-out out on the spot and tell him not to bother a serious professional with such caprices. Grandfather sat on the opposite side of the table and smiled cheerfully — for him, every solution was attractive from the narrational point of view. He had said his bit, given his warning — OK, he had a clean conscience, and now, somewhat excited and light of heart, he awaited a hell of a lark.

The master bent ever lower over the page, then he suddenly straightened up and said: “Wait, wait a minute.” And he reached into the side pocket of his jacket and extracted, first, a massive carpenter’s pencil and then — smiling apologetically — an equally massive case holding round glasses in a wire frame, and he put those glasses on his nose and looked at the drawing a good while longer, and he tapped it with his pencil, and it seemed to us all that he was definitively putting a nail in the misguided construction, and he tapped one more time and said: “Wait, wait a minute. One drawer will suffice, but it should be on the side.”

Jesus Christ! Master Sztwiertnia hadn’t put a nail in it, he had only pointed out a flaw in the construction.

Few, very few times in my life have I seen my old man completely happy. Three, perhaps four times. Once, when we were coming down from Partecznik and suddenly, as we came around the bend, our just finished house came into view on the opposing slope in the yellowish radiance of the sun that was setting over Czantoria — perhaps then he was happy. Perhaps he was happy when, a year before he died, he returned home from the hospital, opened the gate, went up the stairs, and life, so it seemed, was before him. Perhaps when, forty years earlier, at the parent-teachers meeting, Mr. Kogutko told him that I was the best mathematician in the class, he was happy, because he didn’t yet know that my career as a mathematical genius would end soon, and hopelessly. Perhaps he was happy when, with superhuman effort in inhuman conditions, he completed work on his greatest invention: a machine that automatically watered balcony flower boxes. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn’t. But then, when Master Sztwiertnia treated his project for a little chess table with dignity and curiosity, he was absolutely euphoric.

At first, like a student made self-conscious by unexpected recognition, he didn’t really know what to do. But he quickly overcame his triumphal abashment, and — not favoring either his female antagonists (who were suddenly intently focused on the tea kettle with its sluggishly boiling water) or his ally (which, immediately, judging by his euphoric countenance, Grandfather had become) with even a single glance — he launched upon detailed inquiries with Master Sztwiertnia.

One drawer for the figures and pawns will suffice, but it must be on the side, because that is both convenient, and it maintains the principle of impartiality. Chess is a game in which, before the beginning of the match, the pieces must not be kept on the side of any one of the players. Two drawers, one on each side — OK; but if there is one, then it must be in the middle. Sufficiently deep in order not to unsettle the balance; which is all to the good, since it will be firmly planted. And it won’t be necessary to pull it out the whole way; so that it will be possible to keep something important in its depths. For instance, photographs that you rarely look at or other paraphernalia intended for a man’s use. Sztwiertnia winked knowingly. Panicky hisses began to reach us immediately from the direction of the kitchen stove, but those were already a different sort of indignation. This was ritualistic indignation, and full, for that reason, of a peculiar relief. An indignation that was prepared, practiced, and even studied. An indignation expected by those who were going to feel indignant. An indignation that itself was anticipating its own venting. Not deprived of genuine excitement, but not sensational.

It was universally known that master Sztwiertnia was a rabid sex maniac and would shift every conversation, sentence, and situation in his favorite direction. The fact, however, that the master, in exploiting his uncommon talents, left signs of his obsession everywhere he could — this aroused genuine panic. Sztwiertnia had hands of gold, he could do practically everything, he dabbled in every craft and every art, he played numerous instruments, he also drew and painted magnificently. And it was well known that when you ordered from Sztwiertnia — for instance, a cabinet — it would be a cabinet slightly surpassing in beauty and solidity all the Kalwaria, Gdańsk, and other cabinets of the world; but it was also well known that, somewhere in its nooks and corners, the master — as if it were the author’s signature — would hide a troublesome detail, a lascivious ornament, an obscene bit. And that it wouldn’t be some bare ass with a huge tit tossed off with his carpenter’s pencil. No way! The master would produce perfect mythological scenes, nudes worthy of Titian, Rubenesque shapes; he was realistic like Ingres, sensual like Renoir, perverse like Manet, distinctive — and particularly irremovable — like a Japanese woodcut. No need to add that, following the model of the old masters, Sztwiertnia often gave his nudes faces known to everyone in the neighborhood. The most notorious was the image of a muscular satyr with the head of Pastor Kalinowski embracing a buck-naked nymph, with the face of Ryfka Deresewicz, frozen in a spasm of absolute transport — oil on wood. The wood was the bottom of a huge feast table ordered by the parish for the Church House in commemoration of the founding of our church. The history of the origin of this masterpiece, its concealment, revelation, and destruction — this is a topic for another story.

It was clear what the studied hisses of the women signified and what they concerned. Bad enough that there was to be a little chess table, but now with pornography inside it to boot. But the Master, who adored reactions full of more or less feigned indignation, this time didn’t even twitch.

“Wait, wait a minute.” On his pale countenance appeared what seemed to be a truly erotic flush. “Wait, wait a minute. It isn’t fitting that the chessboard be glued onto the tabletop. I’ll say more, Mr. Engineer, it isn’t fitting either that it be glued in, recessed. That is, it must be recessed, but it can’t be any chessboard taken from some sort of factory-made chess sets. It must be an original chessboard. And we will have to make it, cut sixty-four squares, half with dark veneer, half colorless. Or it would be even better if we make the dark squares of walnut, or even better, black oak, and the white of sycamore. This will harmonize with the pine and be elegant. Wait! Wait a minute!”

V

Wait, wait a minute. Toward the end of August, Master Sztwiertnia appeared with the finished miracle under his arm. He set it down carefully in our fieldstone-covered courtyard and began to unwrap it from under numerous layers of The Workers’ Tribune. The removal of the successive veils ought to have been like the baring of a body, like a striptease, but it wasn’t. That is, on the one hand it was something more, on the other something less. More, because the solicitude with which Sztwiertnia removed the subsequent sheets of The Workers’ Tribune was some sort of hyper-solicitude and hyper-tenderness. With such extreme delicacy one doesn’t disrobe a woman, with such extreme delicacy one doesn’t even dismantle an atomic bomb. Less, because the languor of the Master’s movements also flowed from the fact that he was drunk as a lord — a sensation in itself, since Sztwiertnia practically didn’t drink at all.

Finally, the incomprehensible architecture was made visible, finally there spread before us the view of a cathedral in the desert, of a statue extracted from the swamps, of a fresco unveiled from under layers of Roman plasters, and slowly we approached its curves, symmetries, and radiance, and nobody knew what to say, for none of us had known such beauty and such selflessness before. And no one knew that such a thing existed, that it even could exist. Even the women had delight in their eyes, because you could feel that, without the help of God, it was impossible to bring something like that into existence. And then we began to touch it, test it, push and pull the drawer, count the squares; to examine what sort of luster the chessboard had when viewed from an angle. And we examined Master Sztwiertnia’s masterpiece more and more conscientiously, more and more carefully did we follow its turns, leaps, and perspectives, and then we just stopped pretending that we were looking at it for the beauty of the construction, for the color, for the play of lights. Ever more impatiently and entirely openly and — that’s right — shamelessly did we investigate it, inch by inch, in search of the seal of love, which, on an object that perverse, must have been infinitely perverse. We pulled out the drawer and examined the bottom and the underside of the drawer, and the bay for the drawer, and we looked under the tabletop and everywhere. And there wasn’t anything anywhere, and we glanced with uncertainty at the Master, who stood nearby and smoked Extra Strongs. We looked at him in the hope that he would give us some hint, if only the path leading to the erotic miniature, which perhaps it would be necessary to study through a magnifying glass, but those studies would be well worth the trouble. The Master, however, didn’t say anything; he smoked, reeled slightly, came to, and once he had come to, and once he had finished smoking, he shook his head and said: “There isn’t anything there; that little table is the very essence of screwing in and of itself.”

VI

Everything was now ready — the hanging kitchen cabinet, the bookshelves that were to fill an entire wall — and innumerable boxes stood in the courtyard in a covered spot, where, supposedly, even after the war there had stood an ancient coach, and where its scattered and corroded specter still roamed. Services, sets of knives and forks, towels, three wedding presents that hadn’t been opened in ten years, a vacuum cleaner, photograph albums, books, a floor lamp, an exceptionally beautiful étagère, a gigantic couch, an even larger armchair (a present from the bishop), pieces of crystal, a Capital City radio, several bales of material for window curtains — all this was supposed to fit into the two Krakow rooms, in which we would finally start living like human beings.

“You don’t live like human beings here?” Grandma Pech asked. “Is rain pouring on your heads?”

“Rain isn’t pouring on our heads, but that doesn’t mean that we live like human beings. We have no life here at all. We are dying here. In any case, I will die here any moment now.”

Mother’s voice shook strangely and childishly. I didn’t really understand in any detail what was going on, but that it was a contest between life and death — this much was clear. In any case, it was clear at least once a week. Once a week, Father would come home from Krakow. Then my bed linen would be transferred from the great marital bed, where I slept excellently, to the hard couch against the wall, on which bad dreams tormented me and on which I always woke up in the middle of the night. The lamps at the head of my parents’ bed would be lit, Father would wander around the room in nothing but his pajama bottoms, shifting objects from place to place, poking around the books, and repeating — practically shouting — spasmodically: “Forgive me for living, just forgive me for living! Forgive me for living, but this doesn’t depend on me, although who knows, who knows!” Mother would follow my old man with a tired and hostile glance; on the other side of the wall, in the small room in which my grandparents slept, there would resound a cough, the floor would creak, you could hear shuffling, the door would open, Grandpa would appear in it in remarkable underclothes, and say: “Calm down, we beg you, calm down. Calm down. After all, you both have higher educations!” Father would find some book, put a jacket on his naked body, and go to the kitchen. Mother would turn out the light. I could still hear her spasmodic and despairing whisper. I would begin to fall off to sleep. The nightmares would return.

In the morning at breakfast, the talk was always about engineer Kowala, who had already made plans for the entire attic; the walls would be raised and brightened, there would be five rooms there and enough space that Józek would be able to set up even two ping-pong tables for himself. Father, pale and sleepy, would respond furiously that they should stop bothering him with ping-pong tables, because positing ping-pong tables as an element of a life-plan is a muddling of everything with everything else, it’s demonism. He doesn’t intend to play ping-pong, he intends to do something yet in life. “I have this capricious desire to do something yet in life that is in keeping with my education and interests. I know that this is incomprehensible for you, and that, in your opinion, I ought to just sit here and fart around, but I, unfortunately, am not interested. I want to do something in science. I won’t become an Einstein, because the war took away a good bit of my life, and you can’t get that back, but at least I want to try. Do you all understand? And he,” Father pointed with a nod of his head in my direction, “he also deserves a different start in life. Different from the one I got. I can’t do much for him, but at least I can provide him with a different start.”

VII

I packed my bags daily. Every day, I placed my books and toys anew in an old, navy blue suitcase. Depending on my mood, I would promise them a trip to Krakow or condemn them to stay forever in Wisła. “You didn’t acquit yourself today,” I would say to my Piko model train set, “the move to Krakow is an honor, and you haven’t earned it,” and I would remove the little cars and tracks, and I would close the suitcase ostentatiously, so that the victim was conscious of the irreversibility of its fate. “Do I make excessive demands upon you?” I asked my Finnish knife. “No, I demand of you elementary effort. I repeat: elementary effort. But you can’t even manage that. Unfortunately, Krakow is a city for tough people, not for wimps. Everybody off! Be my guest,” I would say to my stamp albums in an icy tone, “be my guest. If you don’t like it, just go on sitting here. Be my guest, sit here to the end of the world and fart around!” The following day I would return to grace those I had spurned, and I would cast into the abyss the Czech crayons, the East German sets of miniature tools, periscopes, slide projectors, magnets, adventure and fantasy novels, which were already feeling like they were practically in Krakow (you rested on your laurels too early, lazy bones!); and so on, over and over. I strutted about like a madman. I was an absolute ruler and absolutely capricious. I deserted my world, and with the ghastly delight of an underage emperor I cast it into the abyss.

The motionless, green surface of water in the swimming pool, the triangulation tower on Czantoria excellently visible in the russet radiance, the ball turning dark from the wet grass on the soccer field Start, the smell of mown hay at the villa Almira, the dark radiance of the skin of the girl sitting in front of me at the movie theater, the air thickening in the afternoons like a magnifying glass — all of this was to be abandoned here forevermore, deprived of my presence, my glances, and my touch. My absence was punishment, and the punishing was sweet.

But in the evening, Chowderhead the cat would jump on my bed. I felt the beating of his heart, I petted his head, trustingly nestled in the eiderdown, and I bawled, and I howled from despair. It was perfectly clear that here, in the gigantic house with a garden and courtyard, it will be a million times better for him than in two rooms in Krakow, and it was perfectly clear that we would come for holidays and vacations; and I would be with him then to my heart’s content; and everything fell to pieces, and the entire incredible summer of the year 1962 was so distinct that it drew a curtain over my despair, and to this day I am certain that the entire evil of my life and all my ordeals are retribution for abandoning Chowderhead the cat. I am paying for his year of solitude with my ghastly and unbearable solitude. For the last year of his life — when he looked for me in empty rooms, when he would jump up onto cold sheets, when he would sniff abandoned objects, when, in the hope that, when he woke up, everything would be as before — he would go to sleep and wake up, and I still wasn’t there with him. The path of my life was recorded in the animal heart of Chowderhead the cat. I didn’t choose that path. Father went missing during the move — that was a sign of doom. But abandoning Chowderhead — this was the choice of doom.

VIII

The oddly dressed female vacationer walked in the direction of Oasis. With the light heart of the chosen one, I hastened after her. She turned toward the Dziechcinka; today she was wearing a violet, long-sleeved dress with gigantic, russet fern fronds. When she was under the viaduct, she disappeared; this time, more than usual, it appeared that she had vanished in thin air. I looked around for a while, without panic, and without great nervousness; her sudden disappearance belonged to the order of things. I returned home. In the courtyard stood a special truck with a special tarp.

Father had been announcing all summer long that a special truck from the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, covered with a special tarp, driven by a special driver, would come to collect our belongings. It had finally arrived and — no big deal. I was disappointed. Not by the truck itself, for, after all, I knew my old man’s excesses well enough not to imagine some sort of heavenly chassis or golden tarps, but by the fact that the world had moved. The pieces of furniture, boxes, objects heaped under the shed had been more unusual in their immobility than they were now as — one after another — they were set in place under the tarp. All the men were working, but on the back of the truck stood a slovenly unshaved guy, with a high forehead that was verging on a bald spot, and he directed the work imperiously and with a false smile.

IX

It goes without saying that I didn’t have a clue that he was deceptively similar to someone with whom Lev Tolstoy had played chess more than half a century before. I didn’t have a shadow of any sort of forebodings, no divine intuitions whatsoever; no otherworldly missives reached me that the special driver of the special truck from the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy — who was bestowed with the inclinations of a leader, and who had just arrived from Krakow for our possessions — was similar to the son-in-law of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

It seems that I didn’t mention this yet, but the petite, and yet inordinately enterprising Russianist, vintage 1968, had in the end established irrefutably that, on the photograph that had so absorbed me, the author of Anna Karenina was playing chess with his son-in-law, Mikhail Sergeyevich Sukhotin. I couldn’t mention it, because when I began to write and to look into the matter, I didn’t know this yet. Now I know, and I am supplementing the data. A friend and disciple of Tolstoy, Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov, also came into question, since, as my Russianist claims, he likewise played chess with Tolstoy, and he, too, was photographed in the course of such a game.

But there is no doubt that in the photo, the story of which I have been telling all this time, it is the son-in-law. Arguments of a — I would say — spiritual nature also speak in favor of this: the guy at the chessboard has struck a submissive and flattering pose, as if he were apologizing for not losing straight-away, on the first move. Most likely, everyone who played with Tolstoy struck such a pose, but with the player for whom Tolstoy was also a father-in-law, such a pose could without a doubt be more distinct. After all, if you are rolling the daughter of the author of Resurrection, you have to show some humility. Something for something.

X

Neither I, nor Father, nor Grandpa, nor either uncle, nor the Nikandy boys, who were helping us load our sticks of furniture onto the truck — none of us knew that the guy was a double for Tolstoy’s son-in-law, but all of us could see only too well that something wasn’t right about him.

He rushed about the platform like a madman, shouted out commands in the most genuine fury, in a moment he would restrain himself and pretend that it was all jokes and playacting, that he viewed these incidents from an infinite distance. A second later the fury would possess him again, and he would rage, and he would go at it hammer and tongs, the virtuoso of every sort of packing, loading, and arranging of objects. It was absolutely clear that he was giving us stupid commands and superfluous orders, that he was pretending to be God knows who, and he sweated atrociously while doing it. “Wet as a drowned rat, and there he goes giving commands,” Uncle Ableger finally said under his breath, and as is usual in such situations, a silly, coarse, perhaps even vulgar sentence — after all, it wasn’t entirely clear what it meant — defused the situation and, at the same time, took on the characteristic of some sort of aphorism, or perhaps incantation. “Wet as a drowned rat, and there he goes giving commands,” we repeated, lifting boxes, and we split our sides laughing. “Wet as a drowned rat, and there he goes giving commands!” Tolstoy’s son-in-law — helpless in the face of our laughter and wishing to use the classic method to blur the lines of our laughter — laughed along with us. The results were ghastly, since he laughed with the zeal of the class dunce who was pretending that he best understood the joke he didn’t get. But also, slowly, both his and our laughter died down. Slowly we neared the grand finale — everything was already under the tarp, arranged with the more or less alleged perfection, secured, tied down, wedged in. The little chess table, wrapped in so many layers of The Worker’s Tribune that it looked like a miniature Orthodox church or an atomic mushroom cloud, stood — I remember — almost in the middle, tightly fortified by boxes. Grandma Pech still gave them a bag of apples. She still ran across the courtyard with a package of cutlets for the entire week, wrapped in paper that was already beginning to leak grease. Still, at the last minute, I came to the decision that I would pardon its laziness, and that, after all, I would take The Mysterious Island with me to Krakow, and I threw it into the truck, and — Bombs Away! The final chapter of The Book of Exodus had been composed.

It was getting toward one o’clock. It was probably the most torrid day of the summer. We washed under a black rubber hose pulled out from the laundry room, from which flowed fantastic water, icy and fragrant of fecund meadows. Grandma was preparing dinner in the kitchen, and it suddenly turned out that Tolstoy’s son-in-law had vanished. Just a moment ago he had been by the vehicle, just a moment ago, naked to the waist, he was pouring water on himself like a maniac and boasting of some sort of infinite knowledge concerning the art of pouring water, just a moment ago he was sitting in the cab, just a moment ago he was bustling about, here and there — and now he’s gone. The guy’s gone. He’s not in the can, he’s not under the tarp, he isn’t in the courtyard, he’s not in front of the house. Jesus Christ! Stung by our laughter, our constantly repeated “Wet as a drowned rat, and there he goes giving commands,” he took offense and ran off further than the eye can see! We had gone too far; after all, the guy worked like a dog, was busy as a bee, worked his ass off with the rest of us. So what if he was a bit strange? Better strange and industrious, than normal and a lazy bum. He couldn’t stand it, and he disappeared into thin air. We knew of such reactions. Disappearing without a trace — that was a constant custom of Grandma Pech. Whenever so much was going on all around that she couldn’t stand it, she would up and vanish, hide away somewhere in the depths of the house, and often it was necessary to search for her for a long time, and with our hearts in our throats. Yet another peculiar and complicated story. How were we supposed to know that he had the same habit? But, after all, he didn’t disappear in the house, he didn’t hide away in our loft, he didn’t climb up into the attic. He took off somewhere, and that was the last we saw of him. A fine state of affairs. Mother had been in Krakow for a few days already, getting the new apartment ready, making space between the new super sofa beds for our Wisła stuff, and now we didn’t know whether there is any point to any of it. My old man wouldn’t go by himself — he doesn’t have a driver’s license. In our house, nobody at all has a driver’s license. The Nikandy boys can probably drive anything, but none of them has a driver’s license either. A tragedy. Simply a tragedy. Or rather — as it was to turn out — the subtle prologue to a tragedy.

Because Grandpa Pech had also vanished. He had vanished, but only for a short time. For — let’s say — a quarter of an hour. He returned after a quarter of an hour, leading Tolstoy’s ashamed, and highly abashed, son-in-law. He hadn’t wanted to cause any trouble during the family dinner, which, as he understood, was also in a certain sense a farewell dinner. He hadn’t wanted to cause any inconvenience. He wasn’t a guest here, he was here to work. He had run out to town for a moment for a cold lemonade. For a cold lemonade before the trip, and for strengthening. Grandpa shrugged it all off, especially upon hearing the words lemonade and strengthening, but all ambiguity was immediately hushed up by the peals of laughter and the spasmodic cries of the women. How could he go for lemonade when there is so much compote stored up in the house! Hundreds of gallons! From our own apples! From our own garden! You can drink and drink, and even so, you’ll never drink it all up. And even if — a new batch will be ready in a flash! Or we can open last year’s! Whatever kind you like! Cherry! Plum! Pear! Please, drink, be our guest! And no need to ask — feel right at home and help yourself! But now you must sit down to the table! You’ve got to eat dinner before the trip! Compote is one thing, but dinner is quite another!

Tolstoy’s son-in-law did indeed soak up whole jugs of compote, but the rest didn’t go down so well. Maybe two spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup, the meat barely at all, the potatoes and cucumber salad scattered about on the plate. Basically, this was unfathomable. It never happened in our parts that a grown man wouldn’t wipe his plate clean. So something wasn’t quite right with him after all. Stomach ulcers? Something even worse? God forbid!

He excused himself constantly and in a roundabout way, saying that he was very sorry, but before a trip — especially such a difficult trip — he eats little, because an abundant meal lowers his psychophysical efficiency. It wasn’t very clear what he was talking about. This was the first time we had ever heard about the harmful effects of eating. But it seemed that pangs of conscience were still consuming us, because everyone zealously nodded in agreement with everything he said — besides, what was there to talk about, now that it was time to set off? The bells call us to devotions from the tower, Mother from the doorway to supper. They’re already calling, it’s time. Time to go home, time.

Just before starting out, Tolstoy’s son-in-law announced that he had to stretch his legs, and especially straighten his back, and walk a bit. And again he disappeared beyond the gate; this time, however, he returned lightning fast and in a suddenly fine mood. Grandpa again shrugged it off, but they were already leaving. Father sat on the right. I opened the gate. The Star, as huge as a hill, rolled along over the field rocks, drove out onto the road in a blue cloud of exhaust, turned left, set off toward the center of town, disappeared in the darkening perspective, and vanished for the ages. Like a stone in water. For ever and ever. Not a trace, not a peep. Now you see them, now you don’t.

I traipsed about the house; from the window in the attic you could see everything, as if it were on the palm of your hand. Suddenly, everything became so near and so distinct, like I was staring through binoculars: female sprinters ran around the playing field, frontier guards walked along the border on Stożek Mountain, the cat walked through the garden on a precise diagonal, there was something terrible in the clouds over the Jarzębata, the bridge groaned under a black Wartburg. In the desolate room, I opened the green-bound notebook with my detective/romance novel, but I didn’t have any ideas. I thought that in a couple days — when I finally landed in the new apartment, about which Father told such miraculous things, when I went out on the high balcony and saw Cracovia stadium down below, when, from the other room, I caught sight of the roofs of the city heaped up and overlapping like wings of a biplane — then I would certainly begin to write up a storm. I would go by train on Saturday with Grandpa Pech: Wisła — Goleszów — Skoczów — Czechowice — Chybie — Trzebinia — Krakow Main Station; on Sunday I would look around a bit, and on Monday I would get going with the book. As you can see: at an exceptionally early age, I found myself in the clutches of the old writer’s superstition — that supposedly a change of place will help. And I remained stuck in it for a long time. Until recently, to tell the truth.

I closed the notebook, and I was just about to dash out onto the soccer field. Any day now, Poland’s national team was supposed to arrive, perhaps it was already there and was having its first practice. I laced up my tennis shoes — probably on the way I would come upon the female vacationer in her next incredible long sleeve dress; I was already in the doorway, I was already turning the door handle, when Mother telephoned from Krakow: “What’s going on? When did they leave? They still aren’t here! They left around two, and it’s already seven! What’s going on?”

Grandpa, usually the calmest member of the household, immediately began to swear under his breath that it’s no wonder. It’s no wonder that they haven’t arrived, because if the driver has to have a lemonade in every roadhouse along the way, lemonade, cold lemonade, they won’t get there even by tomorrow. He spoke too soon. They didn’t get there by the next day. They didn’t get there at all. They never got there. A thunderbolt struck out of the clear blue sky, and everything burned up.

All evening — telephone calls. From Krakow, and to Krakow. There and back again. Through the intercity exchange. Except that Mrs. Gertruda — who had been the telephone operator forever, and who had been hopelessly in love with Grandpa forever — connected us without our having to wait our turn, and quickly. But what good are quick connections when there is nothing to talk about. They aren’t there, and that’s that. Are they there? No. An hour later — are they there? No. All night long — are they there? No. In the morning — are they there? No.

Before noon, Grandma locked herself in the back room, and there resounded the creaking of a wardrobe that was almost never opened. I was afraid. I was afraid that funeral dresses were hanging in the never-opened wardrobe. I feared preparations for Father’s funeral. I didn’t want him — once they had finally found him — to lie in an open coffin in the biggest room. I didn’t want Grandma to wipe his parchment face with spirits. I didn’t want to sleep under the same roof with his corpse. Of the two evils, it would be better that he never be found; that he land — together with the special truck driven by the special driver from the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy — in America, or on the Moon.

Today, when the most diverse attacks on long-distance freight trucks are our daily bread, when almost on a daily basis entire columns of trucks or entire segments of train cars disappear without a trace, as if they had evaporated — this causes no sensation whatsoever. But back then? A gigantic Star loaded to the hilt has vanished without a trace? Impossible. In any case, the militia didn’t believe it. Neither the Wisła nor the Krakow militia officers believed it. They shook their heads doubtfully, they observed us with a flicker of compassion, and they continually asked whether Father perhaps had had some plans. And whether, before the current disappearance, it had previously happened that he would disappear? And whether, before the current ill-fated trip, he had also recently taken a trip somewhere? Where do you have in mind? That’s just it, where? Perhaps he had taken some unusual business trips lately? Perhaps he had made some calls? Using the intercity exchange? Perhaps international? Perhaps he had submitted the paperwork for a passport? Do we understand correctly that you have acquaintances in London? Were there any letters from them recently? We aren’t suggesting anything. Nothing at all. But whenever someone vanishes with all his belongings, he usually knows what he is doing. And usually, after a certain amount of time, he turns up. In London, or in Munich, or in West Berlin. Absolutely not? Are you sure? Well, in that case, let’s hope for the best. Patrols are on the road, and as soon as we know anything, we’ll let you know. Sooner or later he’ll turn up. After all, he’s not a needle. If he isn’t on a ship sailing for America, he’ll turn up. He’ll turn up. The ill-fated vehicle will turn up. The unlucky Star will turn up. It will turn up. In the middle of the road, in the middle of life, in the open field. Covered by a yellow hill and a hazelnut grove. With an almost entirely burned tarp.

On the morning of the third day, Master Sztwiertnia will drive down in his famous Willys that still remembers the war, he will take Grandpa, without a word they will set off, and, after not quite three hours of careful driving, they will find the place as if drawn straight to it. Suddenly, from the right-hand side, some sort of stench will come to them, the smell of burning, barely perceptible smoke, and they will turn, although there won’t be a road there. Only after a moment will tire tracks appear in the grass. Father, unshaven and battered, will be sitting on a ripped open box, which had been removed from the back of the truck, and out of which were pouring dictionaries and encyclopedias; his face covered in his hand, elbows resting on the little chess table.

In the first moment, they didn’t even notice the crack, because the base and the table top were incredibly strongly and intricately bound with twine, and it seemed that those pieces of twine still came from the packing, that the innumerable layers of The Worker’s Tribune had been removed, but the pieces of twine had been left. Only later did it turn out that he must have spent the entire three days that he had been in the field attempting every which way to put the severed table back together.

Master Sztwiertnia’s masterpiece had been precisely — absolutely precisely — split in two, as if from the blow of a blade that was incredibly forceful and precise. On the split chessboard: a greasy paper that had once contained the cutlets, a gnawed-at apple, a partly burned scrap of The Worker’s Tribune. Besides, everywhere around there were burnt pages of The Worker’s Tribune—was he sending signals with the lit newspapers, or what? Of Tolstoy’s son-in-law — it goes without saying — not a trace, which perhaps was only for the better.

Suddenly, it was swarming, the local inhabitants were running through the fields, the militia Nyska drove up with bravado, a firetruck with the siren going, with its crew ready to act, neared from the horizon, from the nearest cottage a woman was bringing bread and milk, the heavens were parting.

The keys — left behind by Tolstoy’s son-in-law, as it turned out — were in the ignition. With the exception of the burnt tarp, the vehicle was lacking nothing; the things were completely untouched by the fire, even the ties and the reinforcements were still there; there would be no problem in setting off for Krakow with everything. With a parade, to the accompaniment of car horns, escorted by the highway patrol, volunteer escort cars at the front. The triumphal entry upon the Dębnicki Bridge was in preparation. With everything, perhaps even with an orchestra. With everything, with the exception of the little chess table, which had been split in two and was tied up with pieces of twine.

XI

What cataclysms had come upon them? What storms? What apocalypses? What was their sequence? Had Tolstoy’s son-in-law suddenly felt faint and decided to take a bit of a nap on the shoulder of the road? Had the earth opened up beneath him? Had he dashed off for the next, this time irrevocable, cold lemonade? Had they decided to arrange an eccentric picnic with cutlets and chess pieces in a meadow at the side of the road? Had a phenomenal Syrena with shining arms suddenly appeared before their hood and lead them astray? Had the Star caught fire out of the blue, and, in the panic of the flames, had they turned off the road wherever they could? Had the mysterious driver set off for help, but hell had swallowed him up somewhere on the way? Had a lightning bolt of mysterious vengeance fallen out of the sky and sliced the chess table in half? All these possibilities and all these events mixed up together at once?

Father remained silent. “You’ll never find out,” he would answer Mother’s pesterings, which went on for years. “You’ll never find out. By my word, never.” And indeed — he never breathed even a word.

Then, in the middle of the road, in the middle of life, beyond the yellow hill — when it came to the little chess table, what to do with it, whether to take it to Krakow, or rather have Master Sztwiertnia take it back with him to Wisła and try to salvage it — not so much did he not say anything as, simply, he couldn’t say anything. Even when he wanted to, he couldn’t get a word out — his throat had entirely stiffened. Was he crying?

Moreover, the Master was not inclined to attempt to salvage it. He didn’t like this story. He examined the suspiciously even break — it looked as if it had been made by a scroll saw — he studied it precisely, and he shook his head with a sense of the absolutely unfathomable. He glanced at the sky, as if only up there could there be saws that cut so diabolically.

He agreed to take it back with him, he brought it back, but that was that — it is no problem to fit a little chess table into a terrain vehicle. Especially in two pieces. He brought it back, but he didn’t take it to his workshop. He didn’t hasten to start gluing or to make any other repair. He most clearly didn’t wish to engage the forces that could work so thunderously. He brought it back and placed it on a spot next to the shed, next to the specter of an ancient coach. Wait, wait a minute. Now’s not a good time for me. I’ll take it and repair it when the right moment comes. Nine years later, Master Sztwiertnia died. The great funeral procession went through all of Wisła, from the church to Gróniczek. Over the grave we sang to him of eternal light: “Dear light, dear light, that scatters the malevolent blight…” We sang beautifully, and from the depths of our hearts, for it was clear that Master Sztwiertnia was in God’s lights.

The little table leaning against the wall slowly turned into who knows what. Over the next decades it became overgrown with a crust of bird excrement, woody roots, and fossilized dust. Anyone who didn’t know would never guess the sense of its formlessness.

Sometimes, in my dreams, I see the great Star turning into the dark field. The tarp on it is burning, and in the yellow glow Father is setting up chess pieces on the most beautiful chessboard in the world. He begins to play with someone, but I don’t know with whom, because the other one is in darkness.

XII

After writing this story, I couldn’t resist giving in to sentimentalism: I collected the remains that had been consumed by heat waves, frosts, and bark beetles; I brought them to Warsaw, and I took them for renovation to famous masters from the gallery of old furniture on Ząbkowska Street. Last week — once the construction had regained its former radiance and splendor, once it had again become beautiful like music (more beautiful, because music ages beautifully), and once I had placed it with great pomp in the large room on Sienna Street — I discovered two pawns in the drawer, one white and one black. I was certain that they hadn’t been there. I call the masters: “Where’d the pawns come from. They certainly weren’t there before.” “They were there, but immovable and almost invisible, sunk into the mass of the wood, overgrown with fossilized cobweb.”

Two dead pawns. The beginning of every chess match. The beginning of every match in the world. The beginning of Lev Tolstoy’s match with his son-in-law. In the photograph you can clearly see that they had just begun. They have behind them the first exchange of pawns. The white pawn in the drawer, and the black pawn in the drawer. From here on, everything is possible. The game can go in any direction.

*****It is little, but it is intense. If you know Zweig’s Chess Story, and you must know it, you will understand: I always was, and am, on the side of Czentowic.