Fiction｜Check and...
a submission for the STSC Symposium: Preconception
Hello,
This short story is on the darker side. I translated it from the original Russian (will open a pdf file) for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. This month’s theme is “Preconception”, and I think this story works for both meanings of the word. Also, I’d like to give props to DALL-E for the illustration this time, I think it’s just wonderful.
Check and...
The first few days after the wreck were the hardest. That is only natural, even though the uninhabited island was almost perfect to end up on. The trees bore fruits that were edible and sweet, the wild goats were not at all wild in their behavior, and the food salvaged from the ship would last for many months. There were no predatory animals, reptiles, birds, or fish on the island, or if there were, they kept out of sight, preferring smaller prey to humans. Not far from the shore, where the survivors had been thrown by the raging sea, they found a small but cozy cave suitable for temporary living. The only thing that made life unbearable for one of the survivors was the other survivor. More precisely, the second one was a woman.
Before their joint ordeal, the survivor—let's call him Harry, for lack of a better name—had not known her. Well, not in the strict sense—they had met a couple of times at parties through mutual friends. They might have even slept together once, though neither of them remembered or admitted to it. In short, they were strangers to each other, and even somewhat unpleasant. They ended up on the same yacht purely by chance.
To cut the story of their arrival on the island to the bare essentials, it was all organized by Harry's boss and friend, Trent. Trent was a big man in every sense of the word. He was large and low-slung, his social status and financial situation often caused Harry severe heartburn, and most importantly, Trent was a man of broad tastes and extensive interests. Yachts, the Caribbean Islands, and uninhibited, carefree young women barely of age were among his interests. Being a successful banker, Trent had the means to indulge all three interests simultaneously. But as a man of great ambition, he needed company, mostly consisting of his subordinates. That's how Harry ended up on the yacht. Harry's comrade in misery ended up there for a completely different reason, which has already been mentioned.
The attentive reader can fill in the rest of the story on their own.
When the wave threw a gasping and barely alive Harry onto the shore, he had already resigned himself to his fate. Twelve minutes in the raging, uncontrollable sea were enough to break the already cracked will to live of a bank clerk. At some point, he simply stopped resisting the elements and closed his eyes, ready to meet his fate. That's what saved him. She was saved by a miracle. During the wreck, she was going down to the lower deck in search of a bathroom, and when the yacht was torn in half, she managed to grab onto a wooden beam. When she surfaced on the shore, she found Harry there, but he felt no joy at this discovery.
Their first half-day on the island was spent coming to terms with their situation. After walking along the shore and looking at the remnants of the yacht and the remains of their acquaintances, Harry burst into hysterical laughter, while his companion simply closed her eyes and sat down on the ground. Soon, he joined her. Sitting on the sand warmed by the Caribbean sun, hugging each other like sick children, they stayed until the evening. With the sunset, a sobering coolness set in, and they decided to find some sort of shelter. Discovering a small grotto hidden from the outside world, they crawled into it and had sex. It was the best sex of their lives.
The next day, they began to collect the remains of the shipwreck. The sea was calm and quiet, as if nothing had happened the day before. Quite a lot of items survived; after a few hours, they had amassed an impressive collection. They became the proud owners of two plastic loungers, a whole crate of canned meat, three fishing rods without tackle, a small ax for chopping ice, a chessboard, several kitchen knives, a butcher's cleaver, a gas lighter, a miraculously intact canister of water, three life jackets, a huge piece of tarpaulin, a frighteningly long and pointed piece of aluminum that Harry called "a spear," three chess pieces—a white rook, a black pawn, and a black knight—three expensive leather jackets, two pairs of boots, a diamond necklace, and a pile of useless wooden, metal, and plastic junk. Everything else was washed away by the merciless sea.
Together, they dragged all the found items ashore. Harry took it upon himself to set up a home and build defensive fortifications against potential dangers the island might hold, while his cohabitant went in search of food. They unanimously decided to save the canned food for worse times. Both were dissatisfied with their involuntary partner—Harry thought of her as a vapid and spoiled girl, and she, in turn, probably saw him as a soft-bodied, weak-willed idiot. In some ways, both were right.
Boredom consumed the following days. They had provisions, and after several unsuccessful attempts, they managed to start a fire with the lighter; the nights were warm and fresh, allowing them to sleep under the open sky. If those who say hardships bring people together are right, then the two survivors of the shipwreck didn't stand a single chance of bonding. The only thing they did together was have sex; it turned out they had nothing much to talk about.
It was the unbearable, lingering boredom that eventually brought them closer together.
On the fourth day of their stay on the island, Harry, who had been rummaging through the salvaged items from the ship in a vain attempt to find a mobile phone, noticed the chessboard. He had never played chess in his life, not even on a computer, but he knew the rules. Since childhood, from the weekends spent at his grandmother's, Harry has remembered that the knight moves three squares straight and one square to the side, the bishop diagonally, and the rook straight ahead. The only thing missing for his plan was the pieces; Harry looked around and saw two plastic chairs, one white, the other black.
Cutting plastic with a butcher's cleaver proved difficult. But desperation prevailed, and soon Harry had twenty-nine uneven pieces of plastic, which, along with the three found pieces, made a complete set. Harry spent a bit more time carving the letters "R", "B", "N", and four small crowns—for kings and queens—on each piece with a knife. The pawns remained unmarked. Harry arranged the pieces in the proper order and went to find his cohabitant.
She was sunbathing, lying completely naked by the very edge of the shore. Hearing Harry's proposal, she shrugged without enthusiasm but agreed; she was bored. She didn't know how to play, and the first two days were spent memorizing the rules. Eventually, Harry simply wrote them in the sand with his finger—big, crooked letters forming clumsy words: "PAWN—ONE SQUARE FORWARD TWO ON THE FIRST MOVE", "KING—ONE SQUARE IN ANY DIRECTION", "KNIGHT—THREE STRAIGHT ONE ASIDE". They managed to play a real game for the first time on the seventh day of their lives together. Harry won without much difficulty and, for the first time, realized that his companion didn't annoy him that much. And the sex that day was much more interesting than usual. After that, they played every day.
Their games gradually became more complex and sophisticated. Initially just a way to pass the time, chess gradually took up an increasingly important part of each of their lives. Each move became carefully thought out and calculated, and the games took much longer to play. If at the beginning they could play three or four games a day, a month later, two-thirds of a day would be spent on a single game. While his partner pondered her next move, drawing possible combinations in the sand, Harry would walk along the beach and look into the distance. There were no rescue ships; no one was searching for the shipwreck survivors. They were needed by no one.
His partner was not interested in ships; she was fully immersed in chess. At first, she played with uncertainty, often confusing the pieces and making blunders, but soon her play became sharp and aggressive, her attacks cruel and uncompromising, her mistakes rare and insignificant. One fine evening, she checkmated Harry for the first time, and after that, she never lost again. That same evening, their sexual relationship ended: she apologized and said that Harry no longer interested her in that regard.
Harry's life became difficult. Now, to play at least on par with his neighbor, he had to pay attention to her habits, listen to her desires, understand her soul—and still lose. More often than not, however, their games ended in a draw. Each game now lasted many days, each move was pondered for hours, and the sand was filled with intricate combinations made up of their own and invented symbols. Harry's routine was simple: he ate, slept, swam in the sea, walked along the beach, drew with his toe in the sand, masturbated, and played chess. That was the extent of his activities. His unfortunate companion had even fewer needs. Most of her life revolved around the game, with breaks for sleep and food growing shorter and shorter. Her short hair bleached nearly white by the sun, her skin turned tanned, and her body became dried out and gaunt. She herself began to resemble a chess piece, a black bishop with a white spot on its head.
The chess set itself also changed. From formless pieces of plastic with scratched letters, they first turned into small wooden figures clumsily carved from crate remnants, and then grew larger and took on more and more accurate shapes. To occupy himself, Harry began practicing wood carving, searching for larger pieces of wood for this purpose. His grand dream, his opus magnum, was to carve large figures to better feel the game, to be fully immersed in it. He had already found a sufficiently flat stone area deep in the island, marked it into sixty-four squares, and diligently whitened half of them with a found chunk of limestone. All that was left was to find the right pieces of wood—thirty-two large blocks, stumps, or logs. Chopping trees with a butcher's cleaver was inconvenient, but Harry tried very hard. This was the only thing that distracted him from the games with his neighbor, in which he was increasingly certain to lose.
A month on the island stretched the average duration of a move to days. Harry did not rush to make the inevitable mistake, preferring to calmly carve another figure from a log, while his game partner spent all this time calculating. And watching her was also torture. Harry himself had stopped understanding the once-invented signs and scribbles that she drew in the sand with a sharp knife, then she would look at them, frown for a long time, erase them, and draw new ones. But the fact remained—the calculations worked, and she played better and better.
Harry had been in love with her for a long time—the cold, calculating, detached chess machine. And just as long he knew his love was hopeless because to spark reciprocal feelings, he needed to interest her, and to do that, he needed to defeat her, which he could not do. So they lived on: he, giving her ever larger figures, and she, indifferently accepting the offerings.
Both were happy in their own way.
It went on for quite some time until Harry's partner made a mistake. Whether it was fatigue and sleep deprivation or just the wind scattering the sand formulas at the right moment, there was a mistake. And it was so obvious that even Harry noticed it. By this time, they were playing with large, knee-high wooden chess pieces on a stone plateau, but each could model the situation on a small board. Harry never did this, she always did. But this time, Harry noticed the mistake. He took the small board, carefully arranged the carved pieces, and began to think. He started writing combinations in the sand. Calculating. A couple of hours later, his head ached from hunger and heat, but he didn't give up. He knew this was his chance. The only one, and possibly the last one. Victory was within his grasp, but he needed to play this game perfectly. By the end of the second day, he made his move. This time, his neighbor thought for no more than three minutes. She had already calculated everything and was waiting for Harry to make a mistake. He didn't. Another move, and another—Harry did everything right. His opponent lost a rook in a fork. Then her queen fell into an inevitable trap. They both knew the outcome of the game was decided.
The moves accelerated. Now, most of the time was spent moving the heavy wooden piece from square to square. Move—and her knight was taken by a pawn. Move—and a cunning bishop put the king in check. Harry's heart pounded wildly. For the first time in his life, he had calculated something correctly from start to finish. The girl grew sullen. Finally, the last move was left. The checkmate with a queen, a pawn, and a king was almost complete. Only one move was left, to push the pawn forward one square. Harry confidently approached the board, strained to lift the pawn, and triumphantly turned around, wanting to make sure his companion saw his victory.
A heavy wooden chess knight, carved by him, struck his face. Harry fell, the pawn rolled away. The knight rose and fell on his head, then again and again. The blood-stained figure rose and fell until Harry's neighbor exhausted herself.
She walked over to her king and toppled it on the board.
Then she sat down on the sand and waited for rescue.
Little is known about her further fate.
This story was translated and published for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month, STSC members share something around a set theme. This cycle, the theme was “Preconception”.
If you are a writer, you might consider joining us.
I have also finished translating my novel to English, and now I really need beta-readers. So if you’re up for it, send me an email at me@asimonov.me. Beta-reading will include, well, reading the novel plus answering a quick questionnaire, which is mostly multiple-choice questions and will probably take you 5–10 minutes. I might also ask you some follow-up questions afterwards.
The novel is called “A Grain of Salt”. On the one hand, it is a novel about scientific discovery, beliefs, and truth, and how to merge them into a coherent world picture. On the other hand, it is a novel about ghosts and a little bit about Israel. On the third hand (oh, no!), it is a novel about loss. A dishonest marketologist might call it “Ghostbusters meets Harry Potter” but it is much less commercial than either.
Best,
K.
I love these sorts of crafty fables that themselves move like chess pieces in the sand...
Nice story! I think I know the female character!