The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [90]
I was no longer a male wasp heterosexual of upper-middle-class origin with good intentions. I was a sufferer of the worst humiliations and degradations afforded by the evil no-good-nik oppressive poison-spewing earth-defiling beauty-raping pigs. I had credentials.
I probably used this angle on my having been nuts more than I really believed it. I was still too confused about the whole thing to really believe anything and too shaky to not use anything that came to hand.
CHESS WITH NICK. I don’t know who initiated it. I may have asked him if he played. Maybe he saw my board and pieces and asked if I wanted a game. Anyway, it didn’t take long before I was sorry as hell about it.
When we sat down and set up the pieces, there was a look in his eyes like there was something understood between us. I tried to shrug it off.
My chess board was made by my grandfather, Doc. Inscribed in Gothic script were the messages “I do warn you well” on one side and “It is no child’s play” on the other. Ominous, ominous, ominous.
The hallucinations and fantasies had had heavy chess content. My father had taught me how to play when I was four. In an informal way I had been chess champ nearly everywhere I had ever been. One or two people I knew could play me about even, but I never ran into anyone who could beat me consistently, though I doubtless would have if I hadn’t so conscientiously avoided formal competition.
I lost the first game. I thought I had him a few times, but each time I felt his wrath building and was afraid that if I won something dreadful would happen. I didn’t get furious. I didn’t cry. I worried that maybe several thousand people were struck down by plague for every pawn I lost, but I didn’t let it show.
There was a second game. I felt much looser. I thought I could loosen up and maybe learn something about chess from him. Winning seemed to make him a lot more relaxed. Since he had won one game, there was no way he could feel humiliated or hurt if I won the second. I paid no attention to him. Just concentrating on the pieces like he wasn’t there. Not letting his face influence my moves. I won.
After winning I looked up. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. He won one, I won one. How could anybody feel bad about that? But he was furious, glowing red. He was just able to talk—very tersely, as his eyes bored into my brain. “Of course we have to play a third.” I tried to beg off but there was no way.
The third game was the worst. My brain was all haywire. The game took forever. I found excuses to go to the fire and get it to tell me what move to make. I didn’t trust myself, didn’t want the burden of whatever was on this game. He had his helpers too. It didn’t take long to see that.
The way he played chess certainly didn’t help my impression that he wasn’t on the level. That this should be the first person I met outside of the hospital was weird. Chess players like him don’t just show up.
I wanted out. Every time I made a good move I thought he was going to throw the board at me. This is no fun, this is no fun, this is no fun. And then to mock me, every once in a while he would look up at me with a cruel smile and say, “Fun, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I mumbled. Is he going to kill me if I beat him? Or is he going to get to kill me or win my soul or the souls of those I love if I lose? I wish someone would explain these things to me.
It was something my father had always thought would please me. A chance to play a real master. Somehow he had resurrected Paul Morphy and that was who I was playing. Morphy for morphine, more