The Queen's Play (5 page)

Yet play had not commenced.

Previously, having settled before the board, Misa had waited for the queen to begin the game. The first few moments passed quickly
without either of them realizing that the dice was still between the queen's fingers, and that she seemed to be giving some consider- ation to this simplest of acts, simple because what flowed from it was beyond their control and reckoning. When after a whole minute, they were still waiting, she started to grow impatient, wishing to intervene, and yet did not. Instead she kept looking now at the queen, and now at the board, telling herself, hold on a moment, just one moment, look it is about to happen, see, see, the fingers are loosening, an experience so real and paradoxical, the experiencer simultaneously crowning and annihilating
time
, that before long she had begun to relish the waiting, forgetting herself and her surroundings, and sinking deeper into a stasis from which she wished not to recover. The first conscious pause in a life which had been until then only movement, swirling and swooning in a river rush of motion, it was intoxicating, this instantaneous peace, this mental vacuity miraculously spreading to the very edge of her fingernails. On the board, the pieces stood frozen, their shadows clashing and quivering each time a cluster of clouds scudded across the sky.

Meanwhile, the queen was thinking. Is this a model of war? Could it not be improved further? But how and what for? Freedom, freedom, grant me some freedom, and I will show you what for! What an idea! Doubting the perfection of the ancients! These cleverly contrasting and unique movements of different forces, this delicate harmony of numbers in a most suitable alliance with the geometry of angles, the perfect weight and beauty of the pieces which when lifted between the fingers transmitted a charge to the head, and united you with a chunk of carved wood in an inexplicable way, creating altogether a dazzling array of possibilities, and releasing in the player a jet of joy which could be experienced nowhere beyond the square field of the game, could this be bettered?

But there then was the dice, making intelligence hostage to its throw at every step. And this in spite of the old taboo against games of chance, which inevitably led to gambling. Yet this most ancient of
prohibitions was passed over, indeed, what was unthinkable, the great texts themselves sanctioned its use in the present case. A clear signal at the crucial role fate played in deciding the course of battles and empires. Armies clashed, warriors moved, but not without the invisible shackles of destiny round their ankles. Through the agency of the dice, the very gods entertained themselves, while the players were reduced to helplessly push wood, at least until skill and strategy were nearly useless in deciding victory or ruin. A most natural and inevitable system. For what has will alone ever achieved? No, the game was perfect, every alternative had been looked at from all sides by generations of players, warriors, and philosophers, the effect of every component on the collective whole thoroughly examined. No, one could so much as tinker with it.

But perhaps one could. Just a little. Nothing added or removed from the board, of course. But how about a slight realignment, a consolidation of forces? Don't we already play as if the opposite army was an ally, each player commanding not one but two sets of forces? Haven't we between us anyway dispensed with the tedium of four players tiring each other out before the real contest may begin? Why then we must join the forces at the start itself, and draw up the armies face to face, looking straight at one another, as on a battlefield. In the very least, it would open more space. More space without removing a single piece from the board? An illusion, a deceit of the eye, and yet how utterly real, necessary, and advanta- geous. Whoever heard of four armies clashing at random with each other. That is not war, that is mayhem. On top of which you could seldom plan and move at will. The dice! The dice! The dice!

The two opposing strains of thought had long enmeshed the queen. They had consumed not just the past half hour, but ran back months, maybe years, and had now found sudden expression against her conscious wish, as if some strange impulse, unable to hold on further and resolving the matter of itself, had forced her hand.

But there was hardly anything new about this mental dialectic. It was the same old conflict rearing its head in the most rigid of places,
namely, rules of play. The same old vacillation between following ancient precepts and discovering for oneself, beliefs one had grown up with which had dwindled before events, desires, choices that forced one to see differently, between tradition and especial insight, between the steadily gathering press of fate and the strong, if fitful, resistance of the will.

Let us do things differently for once, continued the queen, quite unaware of how much time had passed since she had first picked up the dice, and quite forgetting her strange and unexpected previous assertion. But before that you must relay back to me the rules of play. Everything as if you were initiating me into the game. All that the queen wished before putting her thoughts into effect was simply to hear in another voice, coming from outside of her, rules that had already been made more or less redundant in her head, so as to confirm and fix their absurdity for anyone who cared to see, and thus absolve herself from the wound she was going to inflict upon the heart of age-old principles.

Quickly coming into her element, the sudden stasis all but forgotten where now only suspense gathered with each passing moment, such is the fate of even our noblest of experiences, the constant consigning to oblivion of all that we see and feel in order to go on living, and without even a questioning glance, Misa, deftly tempering her rising interest with the right measure of respect, began to speak.

Four players, four teams, four kings, ready for their four-pronged attack. The throw of the dice. A cuboid, marked with
two, three
,
four
, and
five
, respectively, on each of its longer sides,
six
and
ace
being of no use here. Each number a clarion call for one or another piece to proceed. So if the throw turned up
five
, either the king or any of the pawns moved, if the throw be
four
, the elephant, if
three
, the horse, and if
two
, the ship or the chariot entered the field. The king moved one square in any direction, the pawn, one square straight forward, but struck the enemy through either angle, in advance. The elephant moved, so far as its path was clear, in the
direction of any of the four cardinal points, while the horse leaped over three squares in an oblique direction. The ship, where it was not hindered by any piece, moved two squares diagonally. The ship and the pawns mutually captured each other, but could not take a superior piece. The king, elephant, or the horse, however, could capture any of the adverse forces at pleasure, but were themselves subject to be captured only by the king, elephant, or the horse of an adversary. Obviously, preserving the king was of utmost impor- tance, and when either of the middle pawns had reached the opposite end of the board, it assumed the power of an elephant or the horse whose very square it had attained.

True, true, interrupted the queen impatiently, and yet the weakest flank of each army is opposed to its antagonist's strength, and the piece in each army which would be of most use on the flanks, is placed in a situation where its operations are cramped, and although it appears that two armies are allied against the other two, the incon- venience of their battalia remains in great measure. Besides, it also appears that each separate army has to guard against the treachery of its ally, as well as against the common enemy, for it is recom- mended, and allowed to either of the kings, to seize the throne of his ally, that he may obtain complete command of both armies, and achieve conquest for himself alone. And as if this wasn't enough, the use of dice to determine the moves is fatal to the true enjoyment of the game, where we often see the most consummate abilities defeated by chance, the queen's voice, excited, almost furious, rang higher than usual.

Sparing not even a glance to the help who had been standing in attendance all this while, oblivious to everything except orders, the queen asked for a spare set of pieces to be brought her. This being done, and without waiting for the other set to arrive or feeling the need to explain her actions, she began to remove the red and yellow warriors from the board. At last only sixteen remained, eight of green and eight of black, covering the two opposite corners, but facing each other.

When the handsomely carved sandalwood box was given her, the queen hastily removed the lid, picking out black and green pieces at random from among the red and yellow ones that together lay jumbled up deep in its purple silk insides, but deposited them carefully, symmetrically, green on this side, black on the far side, lingering over each shape, feeling every curve, every edge, as she left them over one by one in their newly assigned squares. In such lingering was a new burgeoning insight, henceforth every move would emanate from and depend on her, life or death was no mere chance now, not some abstract, distant consequence thrust on you by a tiny rolling stone, but fiercely personal, a matter of careful planning, strategy, skill and daring, and, thrust or parry, she alone were responsible for what would follow. Pieces which until then had been so much wood or ivory, presently assumed in her eyes a new importance, and she saw in them, for the very first time, the love and handiwork of families and generations of craftsmen, scores of them even now maintained on royal patronage, who, busy and bent in their dim crowded workshops, eye following the hand, hand following the eye as it marked light incisions across the neck of the wooden horse to depict its mane, or shaped into a four-petaled flower or jewel the tip of the king's crown, poured their artistry for days and months in sculpting these miniatures of inconceivable beauty. Theirs was an art reflected solely in their touch, here supple, leaving the lightest of impressions to depict the wind in the sails of a ship on move, there deep and piercing, to capture the precise look in the elephant's eye, keen but wary. Only now, only in the plan she had for them could these tiny warriors ever hope to measure up to the labour of their creators.

Once the queen's task was accomplished, there stood from left to right, along the entire width of the board, two vast armies looking at each other in place of four divided smaller troops, awkwardly positioned as it now seemed, in right angles to their neighbours. A wide empty stretch of squares separated the two conjoined forces, where the battle would soon take place. But just as she had done this,
a thought came to her, and she swept the green pieces off the board with a gentle swing of her hand, replacing them instead with the yellow ones, yellow being the farthest colour from black among the three, at last a contest between true opposites.

For each team, in the middle, were the two kings, flanked on either side by elephants, horses, and, in the extremities, the ships or the chariots. And before them, closing the ranks, eight pawns or foot soldiers. Unconsciously, perhaps, this was the moment the queen had been waiting for. She promptly picked up the knife lying in the fruit platter close at hand, and with a swift short stroke slashed the tip of the crown of one of her kings. Repeating this gesture with the black piece, she at last looked up at Misa, who had been closely watching every move lest she drew a wrong inference, and, bending over the board, placed the piece back in its square with a sharp decisive thump, stating rather matter-of-factly, Here's the queen. Like her diminished crown, she has only half the powers of the king. She may proceed only one square diagonally around him. As of the rest, you know the moves, and there is the dice no more. An open space from left to right for a clean head-to-head engagement. And, for once, let's begin with you. Here pausing briefly so as to not appear too assertive, she remarked rhetorically, though also a bit uncertainly, Now then, shall we play?

But Misa couldn't move. Following everything, doing nothing. Stilled into inertia by the crushing weight of such vast unexpected freedom, she continued to gaze at the board, as if from far away. Free to choose, yet not daring to do so. Which of the ten pieces to push forth, she pondered, unable to decide. In her thoughts several possible openings one by one ran their course with lightning speed, petering out invariably into the ranks of the enemy troops. At best, she could see four or five moves ahead, after which all grew muddled, and she had to begin anew. This, however, was not the only difficulty. Hardly did she devise the first opening,
devise?
, could that be the word?, could it be anything but a studied randomness?, she became painfully aware of how pathetically one-
sided and stillborn any strategy was bound to be, unless, of course, the other's progress into the game was matched step for step with a swift response, relentlessly rethinking, redeveloping, improvising one's plans to remain a step ahead of the opposition. Your thought soared briskly above the board where it engaged the adversary in a slow, imperceptible duel, each threading through the other's advances, striking and defending by turn, hot pursuits that could abruptly end up in blind alleys, weak spots that disappeared like mirages or lay carelessly open to attack like so many traps, thrusts repelled, forces redeployed. Movements, which had earlier appeared blunt and accidental, were suddenly sharp and vicious, gleaming with devilish intent, bent solely on slaying swiftly without thought or mercy. Previously the dice had dictated everything, and there was little need to think in advance. Tactics were more or less useless then. You moved in the manner chance decreed. But now the entire task fell on you, and how pitifully ill-prepared you were for it. With such meagre means at your disposal how could you ever begin to understand the full sweep of its complexity? Too much freedom was now concentrated in the square field of the board. It was unbearable. There was evil in this. Tremendous evil. One would never emerge unscathed from the game's pull.