The Flanders Panel

“You asked me once if there were any women who play chess,” he said at last. “And I told you that, although chess is essentially a masculine game, there are some reasonable women players. But they are the exception.”

“The exception that proves the rule, I suppose.”

Munoz frowned.

“No. You’re wrong there. An exception doesn’t prove anything; it invalidates or destroys any rule. That’s why you have to be very careful with inductive reasoning. What I’m saying is that women tend to play chess badly, not that all women play chess badly. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Which doesn’t detract from the fact that, in practice, women have little stature as chess players. Just to give you an idea: in the Soviet Union, where chess is the national pastime, only one woman, Vera Menchik, was ever considered to have reached grand master level.”

“Why is that?”

“Maybe chess requires too much indifference to the outside world.” He paused and looked at Julia. “What’s this Lola Belmonte like?”

Julia considered before answering.

“I don’t know how to describe her really. Unpleasant. Possibly domineering. Aggressive. It’s a shame she wasn’t there when you were with me the other day.”

They were standing by a stone fountain crowned by the vague silhouette of a statue that hovered menacingly above their heads in the mist. Munoz ran his hands over his hair and looked at his damp palms before rubbing them on his raincoat.

“Aggression, whether externalised or internalised,” he said, “is characteristic of many players.” He smiled briefly, without making it clear whether he considered himself to fall outside that definition or not. “And the chess player tends to be someone who’s frustrated or oppressed in some way. The attack on the king, which is the aim in chess, that is, going against authority, would be a kind of liberation from that state. From that point of view the game could be of interest to a woman.” The fleeting smile crossed his lips again. “When you play chess, people seem very insignificant from where you’re sitting.”

“Have you detected something of that in our enemy’s games?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer. I need more information. More moves. For example, women tend to show a predilection for bishop mates.” Munoz’s expression grew animated as he went into details. “I don’t know why, but those pieces, with their deep, diagonal moves, possibly have the most feminine character of all the pieces.” He gestured as if he didn’t give much credence to his words and were trying to erase them from the air. “But until now the black bishops haven’t played an important role in the game. As you know, we have lots of nice theories that add up to nothing. Our problem is just the same as it is on a chessboard: we can only formulate imaginative hypotheses, conjectures, without touching the chess pieces.”

“Have you come up with any hypotheses? Sometimes you give the impression that you’ve reached conclusions that you don’t want to tell us about.”

Munoz tilted his head a little, as he always did when confronted by a difficult question.

“It’s a bit complicated,” he replied after a brief pause. “I have a couple of ideas in my head but my problem is just what I’ve been saying. In chess you can’t prove anything until you’ve moved, and then it’s impossible to go back.”

They started walking again, between the stone benches and the blurry hedges. Julia sighed gently.

“If someone had told me that one day I’d be tracking a possible murderer with the help of a chessboard, I’d have said he was stark, staring mad.”

“I told you before that there are many links between chess and police work.” Munoz’s hand moved chess pieces in the void. “Even before Conan Doyle, there was Poe’s Dupin method.”

“Edgar Allan Poe? Don’t tell me he played chess too.”

“Oh, yes, he was a very keen player. There was an automaton known as Maelzel’s Player which almost never lost a game. Poe wrote an essay about it around 1830. To get to the bottom of the mystery he developed sixteen analytical approaches and concluded that there must be a man hidden inside the automaton.”

“And is that what you’re doing? Looking for the hidden man?”

“I’m trying to, but that doesn’t guarantee anything. I’m not Poe.”

“I hope you succeed. It would certainly be to my advantage. You’re my only hope.”

Munoz shrugged and said nothing for a while.

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” he said after they’d walked on a little further. “When I began playing chess, there were times when I felt sure I couldn’t lose a single game. Then, in the midst of my euphoria, I was beaten, and that failure set my feet firmly back on the ground.” He screwed up his eyes as if he could make out someone ahead of them in the fog. “There’s always someone better than you. That’s why it’s useful to keep yourself in a state of healthy uncertainty.”

“I find it terrible, that uncertainty.”