The Chess Game

There is a story of a man who played chess with the devil. According to the story, the man, whose name I cannot recall, was a master at the game of chess. He was so arrogant in his ability to beat anyone that he challenged the devil to a game of chess. If he won, the devil would give him whatever he desired, but if he lost, he would loose his soul. Every night at midnight he would make a move on the board, high up, in a lonely attic, sealed off from the world. The light of the stars lighted the room, and at midnight, this light would fall on a different square of the board. The chess-player took this as an indication of the move of the devil.

For months the game continued. It was a titanic struggle. The chess-player pitted all his knowledge, all his talent and experience against the craft and cunning and tremendous power of the Devil. The devil was a formidable opponent. He would lure the chess-player on with what seemed to be an easy win, but in the end, turned out to be a trap. Against the pitiful mortal knowledge of half a century, the devil drew on millennium of knowledge. The devil was a master in manipulating pieces - the pieces he was used to dealing with were people and human frailties. He played not only with the pieces of the board, but with the strings of the chess-player's heart and mind.

But one doesn't get to be a master chess-player without cunning and caution. The chess-player never rushed his moves, he always planned and thought methodically, looking out for traps. He thought several moves ahead, looking deep into the consequences of his every move. The chessboard, with its 64 squares can provide an infinity of possible moves. However, that infinity is bounded by the constraints of the board and of the game itself. Each player has a fixed number of pieces, 8 pawns, two castles, two nights, two bishops, a king and a queen, 16 pieces in total, which can only move in certain directions, and have specific powers.

The beginning offers a limited number of openings, and over the years, master chess-players have worked out and memorized these openings, so that they know how best to respond to any situation. Within any given situation on the chessboard, there may be an endless variety of ways in which the game can develop, but always there are extremely high probabilities of certain moves ending in disaster and other moves ending in success. This high probability is another constraint on the game.

The chess-player drew white, and obviously, the devil took black. This gave the chess-player the first move. The player who moves first always has the advantage. The first move on the board often determines the nature of the game to follow. The opening player dictates the moves. The chess-player opted for a bold, but well-known attack. The devil responded in a mild manner at first, allowing the chess-player dictate the pace of the game.

On cloudy nights, the sky was dark, and the stars would show no sign. The chess-player took this as a sign that the devil was still thinking. At times, the chess-players courage deserted him, and he would lie shivering on his bed, refusing to move, or roam restlessly around the streets and parks until dawn. On nights when the moon was full, a terrible radiance fell through the window of the attic, bathing the chessboard in light. The chess-player would sit back in his chair, utterly stricken, and clutch at his throat.

Time passed. The game developed. The chess-player became totally absorbed in his game. He neglected all the affairs of the world, shut himself up in his house. He had a servant who he sent on errands, to buy food and attend to the upkeep of the house. The chess-player was a wealthy man. In his time, with the aid of his razor-sharp mind and methodical planning, he had amassed a fortune. Now he used this fortune to guarantee himself a life of total seclusion.

The opening stages of the game had passed, and the chess-player appeared to be in a strong position. His pieces were well developed, he had captured two pawns. Against any mortal opponent he would have felt safe, knowing that in his situation and considering the level of the game, the probabilities were much higher that he would win. The devil had made a few sporadic faints, attempting to lure the chess-player, or maybe, lure him into a false feeling of security, but the chess-player had dismissed these moves like puffs of smoke. He adhered to the solid principles on which he was grounded, on his common sense and inborn precaution. He sealed off all roads and looked at all situations.

But the devil never allows one to dictate the nature of the game. He may give the false appearance of security and permanence, but these can vanish in an instant. The strongest and mightiest cities, standing solid and powerful today, can be swept away by the earthquake of tomorrow, towers and tall buildings crumbling in an instant and sinking into the ground, fires consuming people and houses.

One night the devil offered a move. It was slightly unconventional. One needs to understand that no move in chess stands on its own, in isolation. It is always a response to the given situation and to what has passed before. Actually, it is better to avoid using the term move, which simplifies what is a series of dynamic and changing situations. A move of a piece is like a soldier in a battle. That soldier does not stand on his own in isolation, but is always part of a planned strategy, encompassing all the pieces on the board and stretching over several moves. Each player chooses how he is going to respond to the situation, by developing his own strategy. Each response opens up the possibility of changing the direction of the game, like a traveler in a maze, who comes to a series of branched roads and knows that each path will lead him down a different road of destiny. Each move is like a little window in a room. Opening the window leads to a different perspective of the world outside, and a different route into it.

The chess-player looked at the move and immediately understood the implications. He thought deeply about it. There are moves that are more than just moves on a board. They test the nature of who one is, striking deeply into the soul of the player. This was such a move. In those first few moments, at midnight, facing the board, lit by the light of the stars, the chess-player understood clearly the nature of what was being offered to him. In those first few moments his hand reached out and grasped his queen, and then froze.

He remained in this attitude, struggling with his thoughts and emotions. Time appeared to stand still. The world revolved around his head, spinning by at an incredible rate. He was at the center of a whirlpool, sinking slowly, with his only grip being on the queen he held in his hand. Round and round the pieces spun, and the chess-player began to breathe deeply and struggle for air, as though he were suffocating.

The devil had made a bold move, somewhat unexpected. He had taken advantage of the apparently strong security of the chess-player, to make a strike into the inner citadel, surrounding the king. The king is the center or heart of the game. Loose the king and you loose the game. The king on his own has little power. He is one of the weakest pieces on the board. He has the strength and maneuverability of the smallest of pawns, and he is totally vulnerable to direct attack. The queen is the guardian of the king. She is the one who protects and oversees the working of the other pieces.
She is usually not found at the forefront of an attack, where there is danger of her being needlessly sacrificed, but always, she lies behind her pieces, an extra layer of defense, and she can attack in an instant, from almost any position, striking light lightning into an unguarded enemy.

The chess-player considered the situation. His pawns were developed on one side of the board. The devil had captured a knight in his attack, and was threatening the king indirectly. Indirectly, in this case, meant that in the next several exchanges of moves, the devil could bring his strength to bear on the king, eventually shattering the defense and toppling the monarch. The chess-player could respond in two ways. He could capture the devil's bishop with a pawn and concentrate on defending his position. This was the safe way. The devil would throw all his might and rage into the attack, and one by one all his pieces would be mowed down. Almost. A lone black pawn, hanging seemingly innocently on the far corner, had somehow slipped through the defenses, and within two moves could be brought into direct line with the king and all would be lost.

The other way was dangerous, but exiting. It would change the nature of the game. Ignore the threatening knight and make an equally daring, even arrogant counter-attack with his queen, striking deep into the territory of the enemy. He would loose his queen and a bishop in the exchange, but gain the two castles and maybe the knights of the enemy. In the end, the configuration of the pieces would change. In the end, it was a gamble with chance. Ten moves from now, he would emerge from this series of grim exchanges, into a game of open possibilities, where he would be pitting his skill against the dark power of the queen, struggling to advance a pawn and regain his own lost queen.

Safety versus arrogance? A certain road, where he maintained his dignity and position until the last move, or a seemingly foolish, arrogant move into a dark road of struggle, the ends of which he could not see? He could only see the beginnings of the road, but the devil could see the end. So it was a trap. Both roads were a trap, and he was lost. He had lost the moment he had been foolish enough to think he could play against his fate, and win.

The deepest urges within him had moved him to make the challenge, and now the same flowing of the tide within swept him on the dark road of struggle and uncertainty. He was governed by a sense of futility, by a feeling of being moved by forces over which he had no control or conception, as though he himself were merely a piece on some gigantic chessboard.

Slowly, inch by inch, the hand holding the queen moved. Then it settled down in its final resting-place. The move had been decided, destiny was sealed. The chess-player stood up, in a sudden fit of inexplicable rage, and flung the board and all the pieces into the fireplace. As a rule, he never drank, since that effected his faculties of thought, but that night he ordered a bottle of wine from his servant and drank until he passed out.

In the early hours of the morning a fire broke out in the attic of the chess-player. The flames of the fireplace, fueled by the chessboard and wooden pieces, had somehow caught onto the spilt alcohol and spread to the curtains.
The servant was woken up by the smell of smoke oozing down the passage He ran up the stairs and broke into the attic, to find his master lying senseless on the floor, while foul clouds of smoke billowed out the openings and flames leaped from the roof and windows. He dragged his master down the stairs and out of the house.

By morning, the house had burned to the ground. Much of the chess-players money had been stashed away in the attic, in the form of bank notes and various bonds and stocks. The fire had swept this all away, without trace. The chess-player was left almost penniless.

From that day on, the nature of his life changed. He wandered around from city to city like a shadow, living in small rented apartments, sleeping during the day and coming out in the evenings to haunt the restaurants and pubs, challenging people he met to a game of chess. He always won these games, the winnings including some small sum of money, or a hot meal. But he played as someone who's attention was elsewhere, and he never stayed more than a week in a single place. Something restless lay deep within, making him move from place to place. He was searching for something, but he couldn't tell what it was or where he would find it. So he moved on.

"What is your name and where are you from?" He was asked.

He would give his name and the city where he had been born, but somehow, these names had no meaning to him. "Where are you going to?", "how long are you staying here? " He could not quite answer that question. "I'm passing through", was his best response, "I'm looking for a good chess-player."

When he played, he was almost invincible. A dark, somber look would cloud his face. He always sat in the shadows. he played now with seemingly suicidal recklessness, moving at lightning speed, seemingly without stopping to think, relying on years of experience an instinct for the right move, rather than a safe and methodical approach. Whereas before he had always studied the board, shutting his mind to distractions, now he studied the players and ignored the board. Searching for the strengths and weaknesses of the player, attempting to read his thoughts and manipulate his moves. Was he in some strange sense trying to discover the tides that were moving his own inner world?

He played now always in the night. His eyesight had been damaged in the fire, so that he avoided the strong light of day, which hurt his eyes, and went about only at night. In the cafes and restaurants, he would always sit in the shade, and not look at the board, but rather at the player. He lived in a world of shadows, but saw with far greater insight into the shadows of other men and into his own twilight kingdom.

" You look like you are searching for someone," someone once said to him, as he entered a pub. "yes," he replied," I am looking for the devil."
People avoided him, and said he had become insane.

Once he came to a city where a chess-tournament was being held. " Who is playing in the tournament?" he asked.
" Some of the best players in the world. There is a young player, unbeatable. Everybody is exited about him. They say he is destined to be the next world champion."
"Ah!" said the chess-player. He entered the competition.

Every night the chess-player would come late into the hall, while others were playing, and take his seat. His opponent would have made his move, and have been waiting about half an hour for him to come. With savage speed and methodically the chess-player would demolish his opponent. Night after night the same thing happened, until people began to whisper amongst themselves about him, and crowd round his table to watch the game. No one knew who was or where he came from. He had simply paid his fees and signed on under an assumed name. He avoided speaking to people.

At the end of the week, there were two of them left. The chess-player and the young man. The young man was known to be brilliant. An extremely fast thinker and good strategist, with a style that was unconventional and creative, at times even audacious. The chess-player was a brooder, pondering over the years of experience he had amassed, seeking to see into the minds of men, into the shadow world, which they hid from his view.

The tables were drawn, the room was made ready. The spectators crowded around the table. Both players arrived late. " The later the better" the chess-player had insisted, and they had agreed to start after ten, in the evening. This time the chess-player drew black and his opponent took white.

Deep into the night the battle waged. If the young man was bold and audacious, playing with nothing much to loose, except a game, and with his whole future, lying open and promising ahead of him, the chess-player played with an equal grim recklessness, with his life amassed behind him and a dark, gaping hole opening up ahead of him, playing with nothing to loose, except his soul.

The young man had the advantage, playing white, but the chess-player fought back with a show of creative force that shattered the defenses and plans of his opponent. The young man accepted the challenge, and both descended into a shadowy world of chaos and uncertainty. The spectators gasped at the quick seesaw of events. Pieces toppled in quick succession, the weight of the game flowed back and forth from one player to the other.

Then, the end game commenced - the subtle maneuvering of the pawns, in an attempt to advance and regain the queen. The chess-player descended from the middle-game at a slight disadvantage, the white pieces were more advanced and his opponent had an extra pawn. But he was a master at the endgame. In the years of playing, he had explored the many different routes. He knew the paths and where they led, with the certainty of a blind-man.

Almost, he had him, but the young opponent, found a small door of escape. "En passant". Three of the same moves in a row. The chess-player could not win, but neither could he loose. A draw. He stood up with a strange look in his eyes, looking directly into the eyes of the young man.

" I too, was like you once, full of the energy and arrogance of youth. I thought I was invincible."
The young man stood up, and took a step back, startled by the intense gaze.

" I'd like to challenge you to a game of chess - if you like - tomorrow. At midnight. Just you and me, Here, next to the open window. It is a full moon. We will play by the light of the moon. "
The young man looked around, bewildered. He saw many faces, staring at him. People smiling challengingly. He was the best, but here was someone, maybe better than he was.

" Of course," he replied with a wry grin," it is all the same to me. Tomorrow night then, just you and me. We will play, to see who is the real champion."

" We will play for more than that", said the chess-player.

The next night, at midnight, the two men arrived at the empty hall and put the chessboard and pieces on the table. They hardly spoke, and a deep silence reigned. The hall was deep in shadows, but the moonlight shone with its full intensity on the table, lighting up the chessboard. The young man made a move to set up the pieces, but the firm, bony grasp of the chess-player, stopped his hand. He looked up.

" There is a special situation I would like to play out. It is a game I once had, years ago, but never finished. Please will you play with me."

" But.."

The chess-player interrupted: "Later, we will have another game. Let me just set up the pieces on the board and then you will see the situation." He quickly arranged the pieces.

The young man looked at the board with keen eyes. He grasped the implications almost immediately.
"Mmm, this is an interesting situation. To take the knight, a seemingly safe option, ends in an eventual loss. Mmm..."
Okay, let's play out the situation then. Who is white and who is black?

" We will draw for it," said the chess-player, in a whisper.
He took two pawns and hid them under his fists. The young man took the white pawn, and he, the black.
" Destiny is sealed then," he cried aloud, " let us commence!".
`I am playing for my soul' he said to himself `but here I take the part of the devil, playing against myself. This is indeed strange.

The young man, after a moment’s reflection, made his move. He moved the queen. The chess-player gave a small cry, " I knew it!", which made the younger man, who's attention was focused on the game, look up, startled. They continued the game in silence.
Back and forth, the battle raged. Playing black, having pondered for years over every possible move, the chess-player was formidable. His younger opponent, sharp minded and insightful as he was, was bowed down under the sheer weight. He put up a tremendous struggle. For him, the game was only a game, and he had nothing to loose, except his sense of pride. He played with all the creativity and daring he possessed.

White had lost his queen, but advanced his pawns. The black queen reigned sovereign over the board. Wherever she went destruction followed. She shattered one defense after the next, forcing white to retreat, behind ever closing lines, into increasingly tight situations. The white king was in a corner, having sacrificed all his major pieces, protected by two small pawns. Black had lost everything, except his queen. Desperately, white tried to advance his pawns. One more square, just one more square, and he would be safe. But the Black queen hounded him into a corner, trapping him there, while the black king advanced inexorably, taking away the pawns that were the last defense.

The chess-player stood up, holding the white king in front of the open window.
" I won! I won" he laughed hysterically. Then he clutched at his heart, grasping for breath. The world spun around his head. He was back in the whirlpool, sinking lower and lower.
His destiny was complete. There was no escape. The white king was floating away from him, his last grasp on the world. He fell to the ground, dead.