The Lesson (2 page)

A knock came at the door of Loring's house. When she went to see to it, there were two there: a boy and his mother. The boy's name was Stan. His mother said things like, he is a prodigy, and, he can already read nearly anything, and, well, listen to him speak—it is just like talking to an adult.

Loring looked at this Stan. Will you speak? He spoke a bit, not much. I can play chess, he said. Will we play?

Who has he played? Loring asked. Nearly everyone, the answer was. He's beaten them all, his father, his uncle, a man in the town square. I see, said Loring. How old is he? Five, five years old, or will be within the month.

Set up the board, she said to the boy. The board, though, was already set up. So, she disordered the pieces and pushed them all off. Set it up, she ordered. Be quick about it. To the mother, she said, it is often telling how a person does this.

He stumbled a bit and was clumsy, for the pieces were large. But soon he had the board all set up properly.

They sat down to play, and this is how it was: There was a mother standing by a door, dressed nicely in the sort of clothes one wears for a visit. There was a little boy sitting on a chair much too big for him before a chess set. And there was an old woman in clothes she had worn these many years, in a chair she had sat in this many years, before a chess set she had used for many years.

The first game the boy lost quickly. It was over as soon as it had begun. But the second—in the second, a very odd thing happened. He played an actual opening, and played it properly—and the opening was that that had been conceived by Loring's husband, the Wesley-Fetz Counter Gambit. It was not much used. Ezra had used it, but few others. And now here, this boy was playing it.

He looked up suddenly from the board and his gaze met hers. She was sitting there, this old woman, sitting there with a child, and yet when he looked at her then, his eyes were like leaden impressions. They riveted her. She, hand still outstretched, having taken the bishop, was frozen, peering at him, and to her it seemed terrifying: as though she could see her husband, staring at her through the child's face.

She coughed several times and looked away, set the bishop down. He made some move. She looked back at him and it was gone. He was simply a boy, some boy. She made a move and he would be forced to exchange queens. The boy resigned, and looked steadily out the window.

—I accept him as a student, said Loring.

They set up the board and stood.

—He is a prodigy, his mother said again. I am sure you can teach him a lot.

—We shall see, said Loring. Perhaps there is not much to teach.

—I don't know what you mean.

Then she and the mother made arrangements, and the cost was established. The boy would come seven times over the course of the summer, once a week on Tuesdays, and stay the day. The mother gave some deposit and rose to go to the door.

—Until next week, she said.

—Goodbye, said Loring.

The boy looked at her and said nothing. Loring shut the door and then went and stood by the chessboard. Her heart was beating very fast, and she felt that something was happening, but she couldn't say what. There was a photograph of her husband on the wall of that parlor, but in that moment Loring would not look at it. This feeling, that she could not do so—what did it mean? She could not say, and troubled, she went out of the house and shut the door.

While it was true that she was often seeing her husband, or having the feeling he had just left a place where she was arriving, still rarely had she seen him so clearly.

If a person were to die and be born again into a new body, in what way would that happen? In what way would the previous life inhabit the new life? Who knows such answers and may be trusted to speak truthfully?

Tuesday morning came.

And soon the sound of the knocker.

Loring opened the door and held it partway. In with the boy. Some pleasantries with the mother there by the door, and then the departure. Loring came from the hall to the parlor where the boy was waiting.

—Your mother and I have made a bargain. But you and I have made no bargain at all.

This was the sort of manner she had always adopted.

The boy watched her.

She sat in a high-backed chair by the fireplace. Her back was to the boy.

—I offer you also a bargain. I will teach you things about chess that will be helpful to you in your play. In return for that, you will do your best to listen to what I tell you. I don't like to repeat myself, and in fact, I won't. That's how it is.

The boy came around and sat on the hearth rug.

—Shall I say what I want?

He really didn't look very much like a child at all.

—That's what a bargain is, replied Loring.

—Will you answer all questions? Not just chess questions?

—But you are here to learn chess.

The boy started to say something, then stopped. He messed around with his foot and then spoke up.

—My parents would never be able to tell. They don't really know anything about chess.

—I see, said Loring. Let's say then that that's our bargain.

She reached out her hand and the boy took it. They shook.

In the night she had had a dream about her husband. He was on a ship carved from wood, from some enormous single tree. The captain of the ship was sitting frozen in a chair nailed to the deck. The mate was shouting that there must be some crack in the wood, somewhere, but that it could not be found. Her husband was not the captain, but he might have been, and if he wasn't, then he was elsewhere in the ship. The night was early in that sea, and the waves grew worse the closer it came to dawn. If the crack could not be found…All night, Loring had this dream, repeating, and each time she strained to remember how it had ended before, but could not. When she woke, she found that she was sitting in the chair in the parlor, and facing her husband's picture on the wall. What could she say to him, were she to see him? One never knows the uses of the things one does.

And then she was there at this bargaining, and just done shaking the boy's hand, remembering the dream, and the long night.

—We will then begin, she said. Chess is a complicated game. It is complicated not simply because of the complications of the pieces and the squares, but also because of how people feel about chess. You will often meet people and play them and you will find that when you beat them in chess they feel they have been defeated completely, as though your mind were proved better than theirs. This is not true, of course. But many people believe it to be true, and even some who know that it is not true will still feel that it is true, viscerally. So, the question is, in what way can this be used as a part of the game. Well, actually, that is not the question at the moment. At the moment I am just describing the game, and showing you that this too is a part of it. Another part of the game is stamina. One can become tired over a series of games. Hopefulness can mediate the effects of that exhaustion.

Stan was looking in the other direction. It was unclear whether or not he had been listening.

—Where did you learn to play? he asked.

—I was taught by my brother. He was also a master, but much older.

—Where is he?

—Oh, he died very long ago.

—Was he that old?

—No, he was killed. By mistake.

There was a clock on the mantel. It made a distinct tick and one might imagine that the boy, in future years, would think back on his time in that quiet room, and that the particular ticking of that clock would be recalled to him as part and parcel of that moment. In fact, one never knows what one will remember or why. There is a clock museum, for instance, at least it is called a clock museum (it is the front room of someone's house), where there are at least two hundred clocks, all going at the same time. The noise is bewildering and wonderful. Everyone who hears it feels they must return and sit a little longer in one of the chairs here and there throughout the room, but of course, they do not come back.

Just as the return to the clock museum is lost, so is the sound of the clock in the Wesley house. The boy was drowsing and wakes at a loud tick. Loring was watching him and considering. They had just played another three games, all of which the boy lost. She had told him to look at the games, and to tell her in ten minutes why he had lost, and in the thinking, curled up in that black oak chair by the wall, he had fallen asleep.

—I have a question for you, he said.

He was wearing a very light brown color and this made him appear sympathetic to all those who saw him that morning. Someone in the street had even said to someone else, why, that is a fine little boy. Not everything in the world is for the worse.

Of course, this is not at all true. It is simply an explanation of the light brown color, and in that sense I stand by the anecdote.

—What is your question?

—Is that your husband on the wall?

Loring was astonished. Could he know nothing about Ezra? One is always surprised by the lack of knowledge others show about our dead. But for
him
not to know? When she had seen Ezra looking through his eyes?

—He was a chess player as well. That's him, there. Fifteen years ago, I believe it was taken. I would have to say that: that it was fifteen years ago. Or perhaps longer, perhaps twenty-five.

—Was he very good?

—He was the strongest one for some years, the strongest of all. The best players would gather in some city, to play for some purse, I too, and he would defeat us all. But his style was too wild, and it tired him.

—I don't understand.

—I will explain this eventually. For now, to answer you. He was also, like me, a master. Now, do you know what went wrong in those games?

—No.

—Figuring out what you did wrong and fixing it, that's what being a chess player really is.

The bell rang, then, and a bunch of letters fell through the slot in the front door. The two in the parlor could hear them land, one by one on the wood floor of the hall.

—One moment, said Loring.

She was gone and came back and in coming back took a dull knife from the drawer of a desk. One letter she opened. The others she had left by the door. This letter was small, and shaped like a letter. Not all letters are, you know!

—Hmmm, she said.

and

—Something is ready in town. I am going to go down and pick it up. You shall come with me. We'll get lunch there. There's nothing to eat in the house anyway.

The boy got his coat and she fetched hers from a peg in the hall. Out the door they went. The hour was eleven. It was that sort of day where eleven means waiting. So, in that way, it was very comfortable to set out at such a time.

Beyond the door, the street was also extremely concerned with the hour of eleven, and with waiting. The street was solemn in that way, observant of the hour. The boy was very solemn at first, too, and strove to walk slowly, at the pace that Loring set, but at the canal he could not help but climb onto the lip and run with wildness back and forth. Loring said nothing in warning, and did not discourage him in the slightest. You must have imagined that she would permit behavior of this sort! It is quite clear from her character, as someone might tell you who knew her well, or who had known her. If you would speak to such a person about her, they might tell you a story such as this:

Why, once, on a bet, in younger days, she had stolen an automobile. She had been that sort of young woman—and nothing was too much for her. Someone tried to rob her once, an Italian, and she had brandished a knife at him. Do you see?

But now the boy had found a piece of glass. He brought it to her, in this way, saying,

—A piece of glass.

She took it and looked at it. Much of the deep depression that surrounds us in life has to do with this one thing—that we can't even see the smallest plainest objects.

—Not much use, she said, unless you put it on top of a wall where someone might climb and cut themselves. The walls in old parts of Spain are like that. The tops are all broken bottles.

This was the sort of fact that a boy likes to hear, she thought to herself.

—Looking down a hill at the old stone houses with their intermittent walls, one can see the sun setting fire to the tops of those in the distance, when the sun strikes properly.

—Can I have it back?

—Of course.

She handed him the glass and he took it. In the exchange, she touched his hand, and as during their bargain, was momentarily shaken. It was a child's hand. This was an odd thing to recall when looking at a child, when speaking with a child, but you must understand, already the boy was not entirely a child. And yet the hand restored it all again.

—But I don't want to carry it, he said. And I can't put it in my coat.

—Why don't you hide it? she said. Put it somewhere. You can get it on the way back.

He looked around for a spot, but was having trouble.

—Well, the best place is probably wherever it was. If you can find that spot, exactly, I'm sure it will all go very well for you.

He looked around on the ground for that spot. At this moment a man came up.

—Have you lost something? he said.

The situation was explained to him. He frowned.

—Throw it into the canal. It will go somewhere, and if you find it again, then it will really mean something.

This was as good a suggestion as any, and so Stan threw the glass into the canal. He was at first worried that he had thrown it too much, and not let it drop enough, because he wanted it to be as much seemingly the will of the glass, as his own will. And yet it went off and was gone, and that was enough.

The man also went off and was gone.

—The people, you see, said Loring, who walk by the canal, are quite different from the regular run of people. Why this man, for instance, fit the bill. Not always is it the case that people come with a worthwhile suggestion.

—Fit the bill?

—Of the place—he joined the category of people who are interesting enough to want to walk by the canal, even though it is a bit dingy and old and doesn't get cleaned nearly often enough.

—Well, I like the canal.

—I'm glad of that, said Loring. I used to walk here every day. I still do. I still do. But I used to walk here with my husband. Every day.

And so they passed on along the canal and out into a square. Across the square they went and there in a building, Loring claimed something or other, a package of some sort, something she had left and was now obtaining, perhaps repaired or restored. The details are not all clear. Out into the street she went, and with Stan, she made her way to a stall where sandwiches were made. Finest Quality, it said.

—Can I ask you another question?

—When we are through eating.

—But if I ask now, will that be all right? You can answer later.

—Go ahead.

—What things end up in dreams? I remember some things that have happened that happen again. But other dreams are things that never happened, or terrible things—nightmares. But even the nightmares—why are they of one sort and not another? Why one night am I falling and another night being chased?

They ate their sandwiches and Stan's became a bit of a mess.

—Is it true about the sandwiches? Are these good?

—There was a cafe that used to be here. Their sandwiches were quite wonderful, but they came cut into many pieces and served on china. One would get tea with them, and sometimes little pastries.

—Where is it?

—It's gone.