‘You play chess?’ The man had switched off the floodlights at the far end and had come towards them, fiddling with his little photographic cigarette lighter.
‘I was the best in my school.’
He finally managed to take that little object out of the cigarette lighter-it was almost like a little telephone receiver for a doll, two small spools joined on one side by a strip of metal-and put it down next to the chessboard together with the camera. Something spiritual went through him, or rather through his hands, they started dancing over the chessboard with an airy lightness. ‘So maybe you’ve understood where the trick is. There are two white pawns on the seventh rank ready to move forward, but the attacking move can’t be from these pawns, I think the white king has to move to a square where he can escape being constantly checked by the black rook.’
She had already worked out the same move, but it revolted her to tell that to this disgusting individual. She hadn’t seen a chessboard for about ten years: it took her back to her days at boarding school, the nuns’ habits rustling as they walked through the dormitories, the cold winter mornings in the frozen church, the mass that seemed endless, torn as she was between her lingering sleepiness and her growing hunger, and the recreation period in the hall on rainy days, with competitions for reading, sewing, draughts, chess, because they must have been sporting nuns with a strong competitive spirit. And because of that memory, the only decent thing in this indecent place was that abstract, geometric object with those symbolic wooden pieces. ‘No, I think the first move should actually be the advancement of a white pawn,’ she said, but not to him, it was as if she was talking to one of her classmates at school, a long way from this place and this time and this Maurilia who was laboriously, clumsily clothing her sexuality again, stumbling over the hooks of her bra which she seemed unable to do up.
‘But then the black rook will capture the advanced pawn and the white king will be in check,’ he said. For a moment there was a very different thought in the way he looked at her: ‘I didn’t know whores were so good at chess.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. She could still hear the rain pouring in the beautiful, or maybe not so beautiful but at least quiet, recreation hall on those long-gone days, and she was sad that she couldn’t remember the classmates she’d played chess with, their faces, their voices, anything. ‘Because the white bishop-’
‘The white bishop can’t avoid capture by the rook,’ he interrupted her, passionately, and there was something disgusting even in that intellectual passion.
‘I didn’t mean that the bishop could avoid capture by the rook,’ she replied curtly. ‘I meant that the bishop goes here, to f8 and allows the pawn on g7 to go forward, free from the rook’s attack.’ Unfortunately, Maurilia, having finally arranged her bra, had approached her, and was almost leaning on her now, her warm damp body still anxious for proximity, protection, assurance that she had not been forgotten, and the soft noise of the rain coming from the garden of the school faded immediately in Alberta. She looked at that hungry, demanding human being in a significant way.
‘Oh, yes, the money,’ he said without smiling, ‘I’ll be right back, then I’ll see if your theory about the bishop works, I think it might.’
He went into the next room, and Alberta, with an instinctive gesture, took that little object composed of two round wheels. She had understood clearly what it was and what it contained: the film with the repugnant photographs of two unfortunate naked women, and one of the two unfortunate women was her, perhaps more than Maurilia, who at least didn’t really know, and would never really know, what was happening to her.
‘There, thirty for you,’ the young man said, coming back from the other room, his eyes still a little distant, in the world of that chess problem, and in his hand were two envelopes, the promised reward had been put gallantly into envelopes, and he gave one envelope to her and the other to Maurilia, ‘and thirty for you.’ At the door, before they went out, he said to her, ‘If the bishop’s move is right, then you’re really good, I’d been thinking about it all morning and hadn’t found it.’ He closed the door behind them impatiently, came back into the room, lit a cigarette and stared at the chessboard. So, first move e7 pawn to e8, which promotes to a queen. But the black rook immediately captures the queen. At this point the bishop enters the scene, in other words a3 to f8, he moved the bishop to f8 and immediately saw that it worked like that: the rook had the white king in check … No, he couldn’t, because after the third check he had to give himself up to the bishop, and no other move black made, with any piece, could stop the second white pawn from advancing, and white winning the game. Exactly as the girl had said. Pleased, but a little irritated that a girl like that should know more about chess than he did, he picked up the Minox from its place next to the chessboard and looked for the cartridge, but it wasn’t there, not even among the other chess pieces. He didn’t look hard, he was quite intelligent, and he’d already figured it out. He couldn’t run after the girls, it had been about ten minutes, he’d been ensnared by the chessboard, that filthy brunette had done it by luring him with the chess pieces.
Despite the heat, he never sweated, but at that moment he started to sweat. Slowly he put the chess pieces back in their box, thinking, if his anxiety could be called thinking, put the magazine on the chessboard and the box with the pieces on the magazine, tidily, but his disgusting hands were shaking, then he made up his mind and went to the phone hanging on the wall next to the door.
Which was why, when Alberta got out of the taxi in front of her building, after having seen Maurilia home, she saw a young man waiting, who was very well-dressed in a light Prince of Wales check suit, and a faded yellow tie, his hair was thick but very tidy and he had a kind smile. He looked a little short-sighted.
‘Excuse me, signorina.’
Here in the Viale Montenero, at a quarter past one in the afternoon, everyone was at lunch, at least those few people who had stayed in Milan. There was literally nobody in the street, almost as if they had never existed or couldn’t exist in that heat. Every now and again a car passed, and in about ten minutes a tram might pass along the ring road. She stopped, calmly aggressive, because it had never occurred to her to take liberties in the area where she lived, and she stopped partly because the young man was barring her way, not only with his body, but also with his myopic but feral look, which was in marked contrast to his polite smile.
‘I’m sorry, signorina, but I think you have a roll of film in your handbag, a roll of film you took half an hour ago from a photographer’s studio. Do you mind giving it back to me?’ and he even held out his hand in ironic trustfulness. His face, which seemed fat even though it wasn’t, it was the powerful slab-like jaws that gave that impression of fat, turned nasty only for a moment, just to show her that she should be afraid.
As in fact she was afraid, but didn’t show it, nobody could force her to yield, even a single abrupt word provoked a cold, irrepressible rebelliousness in her.
‘I don’t know you, I haven’t taken anything, I don’t know what you’re talking about, leave me alone or I’ll start screaming.’
‘Go ahead and scream,’ he said, very calmly, taking her hand and trying to push her. ‘While you’re screaming let’s get in this car, it’ll be easier to talk there.’
A car passed, she did not scream, but resisted the push. ‘I really am going to scream.’
‘Maybe you are. And maybe we’ll both end up in a police station. I wouldn’t like that to happen, and I don’t think you would either. On the other hand, if you give me that roll of film, I’ll leave immediately and you’ll avoid lots of things. Apart from the police, you’ll avoid vitriol being thrown in your face.’ He tried again to push her towards the Mercedes 230 parked a dozen metres further along the street, but Alberta suddenly escaped from him with a jerk that was unexpectedly strong in a woman and ran into the dark, hot entrance hall of her building, ran up the stairs, first floor, second, third, looked over the banisters, no, the man wasn’t following her, she would have time to open the door to her apartment, her sister was at the phone company, she didn’t come home for lunch. She managed to open it, went in, closed the door, and all at once felt ashamed: she felt contempt for her own fear when the man had grabbed her arm.