Shadows of Berlin полностью

To which Tyrell shrugs. “It’s a free country. So they say.”

Pigeons flap and bustle around the edges of the gaming tables. The great man has a head like an old melon. Not a hair remains, only the tough, spotted rind. He surveys the board with a lurking superiority, as if he has already mapped out his victory and it’s now only a matter of deploying the pieces.

“So I’m playing white?” Tyrell asks as he sits, considering the setup of the board facing him.

Yaakov lifts his eyes, his arms crossed over his sparrow’s chest, his hands tucked under his armpits as if holding his rib cage together. “Vye naught?” he declares.

A crowd has coalesced around them. A circle of interested observers whom Rachel has joined. No one speaks or even dares to cough as the game begins with a clatter of pieces sped along by the thump of the time-­clock buttons. It has the feeling of a prizefighter’s match that’s been sealed inside a mason jar. The speed with which the fingers fly and the pieces are marched across the board or snatched away is so astounding that it is like trying to focus on the view out a window on the Seventh Avenue Express bulleting down the track. Pawns, knights, bishops, are swept from the board in a rage of passive violence, their carcasses piled on the sidelines. Then Tyrell suddenly applies the brakes.

The great man has flicked a pawn two spaces forward. Not a very threatening move as far as Rachel can see, but it causes Tyrell to visibly stiffen. Keeping his gaze nailed to the board, he peels the foil from a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint and shoves it into his mouth, chewing hard at the back of his jaw. She can see the cool tension in his eyes as he decides to respond with a quick prance of his remaining knight. The great man, however, whose hands are once more tucked under his armpits, removes one hand long enough to shove his queen along a diagonal, and now Tyrell starts chewing again. Rachel tries to analyze the Russian’s expression as he sits in a forward-­leaning slouch, but he has no expression. Just the same, peeled-­egg blankness. He doesn’t even blink.

Tyrell stops chewing. His body hesitates, and then he acts. Plucking up his knight, he snatches one of the great man’s pawns and replaces it. The Russian’s hand shoots out and plunks his knight onto the middle of the board.

Rachel can see Tyrell’s eyes racing. How many moves ahead is he calculating? How many must he be calculating to beat the great man’s game? How many can he be? Another pawn moves. A bishop. A shift of the knight, and then, just when Rachel expects the board to explode, the great man pauses. There is no hesitation in his posture; he simply seems to momentarily harden into his slouch as if he has transformed into a pile of stones.

The onlookers tense. Someone takes a deep breath but then does not exhale it. Another clears a thorn of anxiety from his throat, but still the old man sits like a pillar. Has he died? Rachel begins to wonder. How long will everyone stand here before his corpse slumps over and disperses the pieces from the board with a crash? But then he stirs. He stirs, and without ceremony or comment, the Russian’s hand shoots out and topples his king.

For a moment, it seems nobody can believe what they have just witnessed. Was it an accident? Did the great man reach for a bishop and inadvertently tip the wrong piece? It can’t possibly be over, can it? Not just like that? The onlookers stare dumbly, still waiting for the next move. Even Tyrell looks stunned, or is he simply guarded? What kind of trap is this old Russki setting by resigning? It’s only the great man himself who seems utterly unconcerned. “Nize game.” He shrugs, with his hand glued under his armpits, his voice a quiet rasp of steel wool on an iron skillet. “Zo maybe you got spare steek of gum?”

22.

The World Is Stupid

Whose idea was it to go to a bar for a drink? Tyrell’s or hers? Didn’t Tyrell say, “How ’bout a quick beer?” Yes. Rachel thinks so. And she had accepted, without thought, during the elation of his lightning victory over the grand master. If ever there had been an example of the word Blitzkrieg in the world of chess, that game had been it, she thinks. Blitzkrieg in Washington Square! So it must have been his idea to go for the beer. She was simply happy to accept. Then, walking west on Washington Place, she had started noting the glances. Quick, sidelong assessments, up and down, back and forth, from the eyes of fellow New Yorkers. Nothing spoken aloud, of course. Not even a frown. But the eyes snagging them like they were hooks. A Black man, a white woman.