The Lesson

Five Years Later

A knock came at the door of Loring’s house. When she went to see to it, there were two there: a boy and his mother. The boy’s name was Stan. His mother said things like, he is a prodigy, and, he can already read nearly anything, and, well, listen to him speak — it is just like talking to an adult.

Loring looked at this Stan. Will you speak? He spoke a bit, not much. I can play chess, he said. Will we play?

Who has he played? Loring asked. Nearly everyone, the answer was. He’s beaten them all, his father, his uncle, a man in the town square. I see, said Loring. How old is he? Five, five years old, or will be within the month.

Set up the board, she said to the boy. The board, though, was already set up. So, she disordered the pieces and pushed them all off. Set it up, she ordered. Be quick about it. To the mother, she said, it is often telling how a person does this.

He stumbled a bit and was clumsy, for the pieces were large. But soon he had the board all set up properly.

They sat down to play, and this is how it was: There was a mother standing by a door, dressed nicely in the sort of clothes one wears for a visit. There was a little boy sitting on a chair much too big for him before a chess set. And there was an old woman in clothes she had worn these many years, in a chair she had sat in this many years, before a chess set she had used for many years.

The first game the boy lost quickly. It was over as soon as it had begun. But the second — in the second, a very odd thing happened. He played an actual opening, and played it properly — and the opening was that that had been conceived by Loring’s husband, the Wesley-Fetz Counter Gambit. It was not much used. Ezra had used it, but few others. And now here, this boy was playing it.

He looked up suddenly from the board and his gaze met hers. She was sitting there, this old woman, sitting there with a child, and yet when he looked at her then, his eyes were like leaden impressions. They riveted her. She, hand still outstretched, having taken the bishop, was frozen, peering at him, and to her it seemed terrifying: as though she could see her husband, staring at her through the child’s face.

She coughed several times and looked away, set the bishop down. He made some move. She looked back at him and it was gone. He was simply a boy, some boy. She made a move and he would be forced to exchange queens. The boy resigned, and looked steadily out the window.

— I accept him as a student, said Loring.

They set up the board and stood.

— He is a prodigy, his mother said again. I am sure you can teach him a lot.

— We shall see, said Loring. Perhaps there is not much to teach.

— I don’t know what you mean.

Then she and the mother made arrangements, and the cost was established. The boy would come seven times over the course of the summer, once a week on Tuesdays, and stay the day. The mother gave some deposit and rose to go to the door.

— Until next week, she said.

— Goodbye, said Loring.

The boy looked at her and said nothing. Loring shut the door and then went and stood by the chessboard. Her heart was beating very fast, and she felt that something was happening, but she couldn’t say what. There was a photograph of her husband on the wall of that parlor, but in that moment Loring would not look at it. This feeling, that she could not do so — what did it mean? She could not say, and troubled, she went out of the house and shut the door.

While it was true that she was often seeing her husband, or having the feeling he had just left a place where she was arriving, still rarely had she seen him so clearly.

If a person were to die and be born again into a new body, in what way would that happen? In what way would the previous life inhabit the new life? Who knows such answers and may be trusted to speak truthfully?