A Strange Game

      
                перевела Мария Миллер Стоун


      WE often played chess at the vacation house.
      One night, when the silhouettes of the palm trees behind the glass wall of the foyer had dissolved into the darkness, and the players started to leave, a stranger approached me. He looked fortyish. He had good looks but his eyes were troubled.
      He asked me to have a game with him.
      We arranged the pieces on the chessboard. I waited for him to make the first move but he suddenly stiffened, staring off blankly into space. He had clearly forgotten all about me.
      “Your move,” I said impatiently.
      He flinched.
      “Oh, of course. I’m playing whites …Sorry.”
He had carefully gauged his every move but then made a major mistake and lost. When he saw me turning to leave, he began to explain hastily:
      “Wait, please wait. I wasn’t even expecting to win. I chose you because you were the most powerful player here. But I’d like to offer you to play by other rules. Don’t be surprised though… Prior to each move, we’ll flip a coin to choose whose move will be next. When the opponent’s king is in check, the turn automatically passes to his partner.
      “But that means each of us could make several moves at a time. The game would make no sense,” I said, rising to my feet, making clear that the conversation was over.
      “Oh, absolutely not! That’s how it will develop an even deeper sense,” he said significantly. He’d clearly read my mind because he added, “No, I’m not crazy. Please stay.”
“Tomorrow,” I blurted just to put him off.
However, he was not that easy to get rid of. He began to persuade me, practically beg.
      At last, I surrendered – it’s better to give in to the brainsick, you know.
      He played with the Sicilian defense opening. It was funny, anyhow, because, there immediately emerged the position that had nothing to do with that defense. Initially, I’d been the lucky one, but not until he got the opportunity to make four moves straight, and I eventually lost.
Now that the game had turned random, it wasn’t clear which plan to choose. Usually, I’d think three or four moves ahead, but now I didn’t mind consulting a computer.
      It struck me that this victory, which was absolutely undeserved, had made my partner jump with joy.
      “There now!” he exclaimed. “You’re much stronger than me, but the luck was on my side and I won! And you lost!”
As absurd as it was, his words had stuck in my mind. Could it be true that the long arm of coincidence could equalize a weak player with the strong one? It just couldn’t be happening… Now I was the one who offered another game. And again, I’d lost. He was definitely lucky.
All of a sudden, I figured out the strategy that would decrease the opponent’s chances to win. You should always assume that the next three or four moves would not be yours. It barely happened that one of the players made five moves at a time. The game turned tedious and boring, and the key thing was to keep my king from being checked, so that the turn wouldn’t pass to my opponent.
Since this was all about probabilities, the strategy could guarantee success only given many games. I grew excited. I wanted to check if my supposal worked. I proposed to play twenty games and asked which payoff would convince him of his opponent’s superiority.
“I think, fifteen: five. But that’s not going to happen.”
We finished the game well after midnight. I had won twelve games, lost three, and the rest had ended in a draw.
Triumphing, I took no notice of his defeated look. On our way up in the elevator, I thought aloud about which other principles could be used under the same game scenario. He kept quiet, looking withdrawn. 
“So how did you come up with modifying chess?” I asked.
“I did a lot of thinking in my life,” he replied, then paused and sighed heavily.
“A model of life?” I ventured.
“Yes. Except until tonight I thought that an occasion or luck gives the weak an opportunity to beat the strong.”
“If only for one game, but winning the whole match… No way.”
“I shouldn’t have played with you,” he uttered quietly.
“Don’t take it too personally,” I said. “It’s only a game.”
When the elevator stopped on the eleventh floor, he came out without saying goodbye. Still pondering over his strange behavior, I entered my hotel room.
A warm, sweet air of southern night breathed though the half-open door. I came out onto the balcony. The stars shimmered in the black abyss of the night. At times, the searchlight cut through the dark above the sea. The crickets chirped relentlessly. What a gorgeous night! Life’s so wonderful, I thought.
At breakfast, my tablemate told me:
“Have you heard about what happened here?”
“No. What?”
“A man flung himself out of the ninth floor window. That’s so terrible. By the way, I knew him peripherally. In the evenings, he also came to watch people play chess. He struck me as a weird guy. His wife had recently left him. He told me about it fragmentarily. As though she’d fallen in love with another guy who, the way he put it, was more ‘brilliant’ and successful. He hoped to win her back. He kept saying, I’ll get lucky, by all means, I’ll get lucky.