Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [42]
The guerrilla chief was standing now, leaning over the balustrade. Major Barzov stood behind him, fitting a cigarette into an ornate ivory holder. "It’s a very distressing thing about chess," said Barzov, admiring the holder, turning it this way and that. "There isn’t a grain of luck in the game, you know. There’s no excuse for the loser." His tone was pedantic, with the superciliousness of a teacher imparting profound truths to students too immature to understand.
Pi Ying shrugged. "Winning this game gives me very little satisfaction. Colonel Kelly has been a disappointment. By risking nothing, he has deprived the game of its subtlety and wit. I could expect more brilliance from my cook."
The hot red of anger blazed over Kelly’s cheeks, inflamed his ears. The muscles of his belly knotted; his legs moved apart. Pi Ying must not move his queen. If Pi Ying moved his queen, Kelly would lose; if Pi Ying moved his knight from Kelly’s line of attack, Kelly would win. Only one thing might induce Pi Ying to move his knight—a fresh, poignant opportunity for sadism.
"Concede, Colonel. My time is valuable," said Pi Ying.
"Is it all over?" asked the young corporal querulously.
"Keep your mouth shut and stay where you are," said Kelly. He stared through shrewd, narrowed eyes at Pi Ying’s knight, standing in the midst of the living chessmen. The horse’s carved neck arched. Its nostrils flared.
The pure geometry of the white chessmen’s fate burst upon Kelly’s consciousness. Its simplicity had the effect of a refreshing, chilling wind. A sacrifice had to be offered to Pi Ying’s knight. If Pi Ying accepted the sacrifice, the game would be Kelly’s. The trap was perfect and deadly save for one detail—bait.
"One minute, Colonel," said Pi Ying.
Kelly looked quickly from face to face, unmoved by the hostility or distrust or fear that he saw in each pair of eyes. One by one he eliminated the candidates for death. These four were vital to the sudden, crushing offense, and these must guard the king. Necessity, like a child counting eeny, meeny, miney, moe around a circle, pointed its finger at the one chessman who could be sacrificed. There was only one.
Kelly didn’t permit himself to think of the chessman as anything but a cipher in a rigid mathematical proposition: if x is dead, the rest shall live. He perceived the tragedy of his decision only as a man who knew the definition of tragedy, not as one who felt it.
"Twenty seconds!" said Barzov. He had taken the stop watch from Pi Ying.
The cold resolve deserted Kelly for an instant, and he saw the utter pathos of his position—a dilemma as old as mankind, as new as the struggle between East and West. When human beings are attacked, x, multiplied by hundreds or thousands, must die—sent to death by those who love them most. Kelly’s profession was the choosing of x.
"Ten seconds," said Barzov.
"Jerry," said Kelly, his voice loud and sure, "move forward one square and two to your left." Trustingly, his son stepped out of the back rank and into the shadow of the black knight. Awareness seemed to be filtering back into Margaret’s eyes. She turned her head when her husband spoke.
Pi Ying stared down at the board in bafflement. "Are you in your right mind, Colonel?" he asked at last. "Do you realize what you’ve just done?"
A faint smile crossed Barzov’s face. He bent forward as though to whisper to Pi Ying, but apparently thought better of it. He leaned back against a pillar to watch Kelly’s every move through a gauze of cigarette smoke.
Kelly pretended to be mystified by Pi Ying’s words. And then he buried his face in his hands and gave an agonized cry. "Oh, God, no!"
"An exquisite mistake, to be sure," said Pi Ying. He excitedly explained the blunder to the young girl beside him. She turned away. He seemed infuriated by the gesture.
"You’ve got to let me take him back," begged Kelly brokenly.
Pi Ying rapped on the balustrade with his knuckles. "Without rules, my friend, games become nonsense. We agreed