The Third Reich

AUTUMN 1942. WINTER 1942

“I thought you’d gone,” says El Quemado.

“Where?”

“Back home, to Germany.”

“Why would I leave, Quemado? Do you think I’m scared?”

El Quemado says no no no, very slowly, almost without moving his lips, avoiding my eyes. He only stares at the game board; nothing else holds his attention for more than a few seconds. Nervous, he shifts from wall to wall, like a prisoner, but he avoids the balcony area as if he doesn’t want to be seen from the street. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and on his arm, on the burns, there’s a very faint gloss of mossy green, possibly the residue of some lotion. And yet it wasn’t sunny at all today, and as far as I can remember I never saw him applying lotion even on the most scorching days. Should I deduce that this is a growth? Is what looks to me like moss actually new skin, regenerated? Is this his body’s way of replacing dead skin? Whatever it is, it’s disgusting. By the way he moves I’d say that something is bothering him, though with his kind it’s impossible to say for sure. Suddenly his luck with the dice is overwhelming. Everything goes his way, even the most lopsided attacks. Whether his movements are part of an overarching strategy or the result of chance, of random strikes here and there, I can’t say, but it’s undeniable that beginner’s luck is with him. In Russia, after a series of attacks and counterattacks, I’m forced to retreat to the Leningrad–Kalinin–Tula–Stalingrad–Elista line, at the same time as a new Red threat, double-pronged, looms far to the south in the Caucasus, poised to attack Maikop, which is almost undefended, and Elista. In England I manage to hold on to at least one hex— Portsmouth—after a massive Anglo-American offensive that, despite everything, fails to achieve its goal of running me off the island. With Portsmouth still in my grasp, London remains under threat. In Morocco, El Quemado disembarks two corps of American infantry—his only simpleminded play—with seemingly no purpose other than to annoy and to divert German forces from other fronts. The bulk of my army is in Russia, and for now I don’t think I can pull out even a replacement unit.

“So why did you come if you thought I was gone?”

“Because we had an agreement.”

“Do you and I have an agreement, Quemado?”

“Yes. We play nights, that’s the agreement. Even if you’re gone, I’ll come until the game is over.”

“One of these days they won’t let you in or they’ll kick you out.”

“Maybe.”

“One of these days too I will decide to leave, and since it’s not always easy to find you I might not be able to say good-bye. I could leave you a note on the pedal boats, true, if they’re still on the beach. But one of these days I’ll get up and go and everything will be over before ’45.”

El Quemado smiles fiercely (and his ferocity reveals glimpses of a precise and insane geometry) with the certainty that his pedal boats will remain on the beach even when every pedal boat in town has retired to winter quarters. The fortress will still stand, he’ll still wait for me or for the shadow even when there are no tourists or the rains come. His stubbornness is a kind of prison.

“The truth is there’s nothing between us, Quemado. By ‘agreement’ do you mean ‘obligation’?”

“No, I see it as a pact.”

“Well, we don’t have any kind of pact, we’re just playing a game, that’s all.”

El Quemado smiles, says yes, he understands, that’s all it is, and in the heat of combat, with the dice going his way, he pulls new photocopies folded into quarters out of his pocket and offers them to me. Some paragraphs are underlined and there are spots of grease and beer on the paper that speak of likely study at a bar table. As with the first offering, an inner voice dictates my reactions. Thus, instead of reproaching him for a gift that might well hide an insult or a provocation—though it might also be the innocent device (involving politics rather than military history!) by which El Quemado engages in discussion with me—I proceed to calmly pin them up next to the first photocopies, in such a way that at the end of the operation the wall behind the head of the bed looks completely different from usual. For a moment I feel as if I’m in someone else’s room: the room of a foreign correspondent in a hot and war-torn country? Also: the room seems smaller. Where do the photocopies come from? From two books, one by X and the other by Y. I’ve never heard of them. What kind of strategic lessons do they have to teach us? El Quemado averts his gaze, then smiles innocently and says that he’s not ready to reveal his plans. This is an attempt to make me laugh; out of politeness, I do.

The next day El Quemado comes back even stronger, if possible. He attacks in the East and I have to retreat again, he masses forces in Great Britain, and he begins to advance from Morocco and Egypt, though very slowly for the time being. The patch on his arm has disappeared. All that’s left is the burn, smooth and flat. His movements around the room are confident, even graceful, and they no longer reveal the nervousness of the day before. Still, he doesn’t talk much. His preferred topic is the game, the world of games, the clubs, magazines, championships, matches by correspondence, conventions, etc., and all my attempts to steer the conversation in a different direction—for example, toward the person who gave him photocopies of the Third Reich rules—are in vain. When he’s told something he doesn’t want to hear, he sits there like a rock or a mule. He simply acts as if he hasn’t heard. It’s likely that my tactics are too subtle. I’m cautious, and ultimately I try not to hurt his feelings. El Quemado may be my enemy, but he’s a good enemy and those are hard to come by. What would happen if I were honest with him, if I told him what the Wolf and the Lamb have told me and asked him for an explanation? In the end, I’d probably have to choose between taking his word or theirs. Which I’d rather not have to do. So we talk about games and gamers, a subject of seemingly endless appeal to El Quemado. I think if I took him with me to Stuttgart—no, Paris!—he would be the star of the matches: the sense of the ridiculous that I sometimes feel—stupid, I know, but it’s true—when I get to a club and from a distance I see older people trying their hardest to solve military problems that to the rest of the world are old news would vanish solely with his presence. His charred face lends dignity to the act of gaming. When I ask him whether he’d like to come with me to Paris, his eyes light up, but then he shakes his head. Have you ever been to Paris, Quemado? No, never. Would you like to go? He’d like to, but he can’t. He’d like to play other people, lots of matches, “one after the other,” but he can’t. All he’s got is me, and that’s enough for him. Well, there are worse fates; I am the champion, after all. That makes him feel better. But he’d still like to play other people, though he doesn’t plan to buy the game (or at least he doesn’t say so), and in the middle of his speech, I have the impression that we’re talking about different things. I’m documenting myself, he says. After an effort I realize that he’s talking about the photocopies. I can’t help laughing.

“Are you still going to the library, Quemado?”

“Yes.”

“And you only borrow books about the war?”

“Now I do, but before I didn’t.”

“Before what?”

“Before I started playing with you.”

“So what kind of books did you borrow before, Quemado?”

“Poetry.”

“Books of poetry? How nice. What kind of poetry?”

El Quemado looks at me as if I’m a bumpkin:

“Vallejo, Neruda, Lorca… Do you know them?”

“No. Did you learn the poems by heart?”

“My memory is no good.”

“But you remember something? Can you recite something to give me an idea?”

“No, I only remember feelings.”

“What kind of feelings? Tell me one.”

“Despair…”

“Nothing else? That’s all?”

“Despair, heights, the sea, things that aren’t closed, things that are partway open, like something bursting in the chest.”

“Yes, I see. And when did you stop reading poetry, Quemado? When we started Third Reich? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have played. I like poetry too.”

“Which poets?”

“Goethe.”

And so on until it’s time to leave.