The Flanders Panel

“We’re off to Penjamo, one j no aitches?”

“Yes.”

“And what does ‘’We’re off to Penjamo, one j no aitches‘ mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something I say under my breath, or else think, whenever I make an important move, just before I actually pick up the chess piece.”

“But that’s completely irrational.”

“I know. But however irrational your gestures or idiosyncrasies are, they reflect your way of playing. They tell you about the character of your opponent too. When it comes to analysing a style or a player, any scrap of information is useful. Petrosian, for example, was a very defensive player, with a great instinct for danger. He would spend the whole game preparing defences against possible attacks, before his opponents had even thought up such attacks.”

“He was probably paranoid,” said Julia.

“You see how easy it is? The way someone plays might reveal egotism, aggression, megalomania. Just look at the case of Steinitz. When he was sixty, he was convinced he was in direct communication with God and that he could beat Him, even if he gave away a pawn and let Him play White.”

“And our invisible player?” asked Cesar, who was listening attentively, his glass halfway to his lips.

“He’s good,” replied Munoz without hesitation, “and good players are often complicated people. A chess master develops a special intuitive feel for the right move and a sense of danger about the wrong move. It’s a sort of instinct that you can’t explain in words. When he looks at the chessboard he doesn’t see something static; he sees a field crisscrossed by a multitude of magnetic forces, including the forces he himself contains.” He looked at the ball of bread on the tablecloth for some seconds before moving it carefully to one side, as if it were a tiny pawn on an imaginary board. “He’s aggressive and he enjoys taking risks. For example, the fact that he didn’t use his queen to protect the king. The brilliant use of the black pawn and then the black knight to keep up the pressure on the white king, leaving the tantalising possibility of an exchange of queens. I mean that this man…”

“Or woman,” put in Julia.

Munoz looked at her uncertainly.

“I don’t know about that. There are women who play chess well, but not many. In this case, the moves made by our opponent, male or female, show a certain cruelty and, I would say, an almost sadistic curiosity. Like a cat playing with a mouse.”

“So, summing up,” Julia said, ticking the points off on her fingers, “our opponent is very probably a man and far less probably a woman, someone with plenty of self-confidence, aggressive and cruel by nature and a kind of sadistic voyeur. Is that right?”

“Yes, I think so. And he enjoys danger. That much is obvious from his rejection of the classic approach whereby Black is always relegated to a defensive role. What’s more he has a good intuitive sense of what his opponent’s moves might be. He’s able to put himself in someone else’s shoes.”

Cesar puckered his lips, gave a silent whistle of admiration and looked at Munoz with renewed respect. The latter now had a distant air, as if his thoughts had again drifted far away.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Julia.

Munoz took a while to answer.

“Nothing special. On a chessboard, the battle isn’t between two schools of chess, but between two philosophies, between two world-views.”

“White and Black, isn’t that it?” Cesar said, as if he were reciting lines from an old poem. “Good and evil, heaven and hell, and all those other delightful antitheses.”

“Possibly.”

Munoz shrugged. Julia looked at his broad forehead and at the dark shadows under his eyes. Burning in those weary eyes was the little light that so fascinated her and she wondered how long it would be before it flickered out again, as it had on other occasions. When that light was there, she felt a genuine desire to delve into his inner life, to know the taciturn man sitting opposite her.

“And what school do you belong to?”

He seemed surprised by the question. His hand moved towards his wine glass but stopped halfway and lay motionless on the tablecloth. His glass had remained untouched since the beginning of the meal.

“I don’t think I belong to any school,” he replied quietly. He gave the impression that talking about himself represented an intolerable violation of his sense of modesty. “I suppose I’m one of those who sees chess as a form of therapy. Sometimes I wonder what people like you, people who don’t play chess, do to escape from depression and madness. As I told you once before, there are people who play to win, like Alekhine, Lasker and Kasparov, like nearly all the grand masters. Like our invisible player, I suppose. Others, like Steinitz and Przepiorka, concentrate on demonstrating their theories and making brilliant moves.”

“And you?” asked Julia.

“Me? I’m neither aggressive nor a risk-taker.”

“Is that why you never win?”