The Old Chessboard

I never thought that one day, rationally, I would decide to leave a piece of torn paper, handwritten in hurried, almost illegible handwriting, on the old dusty chessboard that sat atop boxes stacked in my grandfather's attic. Hoping for an answer. And yet.

It wasn't my grandfather's death that was the great tragedy of that period a few years ago. Perhaps the worst trauma was when my grandmother decided to come and live with us and make us all her slaves. Don't get me wrong, I love my grandmother and I am an adoring model grandson, grateful that she has provided me with a parental model that I am sure I will not adopt. The fact is that, even before the death of her sweet husband, my grandmother had begun to be unbearable. And I don't mean that as a euphemism, to exaggerate. 

'Samuel, come here,' she would croak, even though she knew full well that I found the use of my full name irritating, before giving me unlikely orders that I couldn't wait to carry out, such as cutting her nails or smearing a terrible-smelling ointment on her festering skin. And instead of thanking me and appreciating the unmotivated help and willingness I provided, she would just grunt, wrinkling her aquiline nose and staring at me with grim eyes that had long since lost their colour.

Rumour had it, mainly from my mother, that she had once been a loving and caring woman, but I find that hard to believe.

That witch was born a contemptuous shrew and will remain so until she breathes her last breath (probably using that too to insult me or something I've done). 

That's why, when she called me from her usual spot in the living room armchair on that particular day, my reaction was not the most enthusiastic. But snorting and gritting my teeth, perhaps even muttering a couple of curses, I left my room and went downstairs to assist the old woman because I knew it would please my mother. Not for any other reason. Because the spirit of service and chivalry had fallen to the bottom of my list of motivations quite some time ago. 

'What is it, Granny?' I asked as politely as I could manage, pulling my lips into a forced smile.

'You must go home,' she announced, her voice cracking in its usual peremptory tone. 

'I'm already home, Granny,' I replied patiently, thinking that hers was a normal delusion from senile dementia or something similar. 

'No, Samuel, you have to go to my house,' she reiterated, the lucidity in her eyes fading. She seemed to be talking in a dream. She was probably referring to where she lived with my grandfather, a small house in the countryside with nothing but trees and barren land around it.

'Your house? To do what?' I was starting to get a little worried. She usually gave me orders in a confident, cold voice, saying words that, however unpleasant, were always reasonable and sensible. Now a thin layer of sweat covered her wrinkled forehead, while her parched lips moved as if she were speaking, without making a sound.

'You have to move the pieces,' she whispered in a faint voice, breathing heavily and rapidly. 

"Pieces? What pieces? What are you talking about?" A chilling anxiety ran up my spine. There was no one else in the house; my parents were still at work. There was definitely something wrong with her. What should I do? Call for help? 

'Attic,' she gasped. 'Her.' She grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly.

'I don't understand, Grandma.' I felt so helpless. What she was saying seemed important, at least to her, but I didn't understand. She was talking nonsense, and I feared that something bad was happening. A tiny, terrible part of me thought, 'Finally,' but I dismissed it before the thought could be completed. I decided to call an ambulance, so I pulled my hand away from hers and left my grandmother muttering to herself in her armchair for a moment. I returned to her with the phone in my hand, the emergency number already dialled, when I stopped suddenly, my eyes wide. The usual grin had returned to distort her lips, while her pale cheeks had regained colour and my grandmother looked at me disdainfully, with a contempt I had learned to ignore. 

"What are you looking at?" she spat condescendingly, almost irritated by my surprise, as if I were the crazy one. Deciding not to question the old witch's strange behaviour, I put on my trainers before opening the front door to go out.

"Where are you going?" she asked me from the living room.

"To your house," I replied, as if it were obvious. Because she had asked me that a few minutes earlier.

'To do what?' My answer seemed to really surprise her. It was unusual, since the building she had abandoned was rarely a topic of conversation. However, I was the one who should have been surprised, since she was the one who had asked me. It was all becoming so absurd.

'I don't know,' I said sincerely, before slamming the door behind me.

My grandparents' old house was surrounded by a large green garden dotted with fruit trees. A short cobbled path cut through the grassy expanse to the wooden door. Ivy now covered the entire front of the house, stretching across the stone walls like fingers, embracing it until it reached the chipped windows, once adorned with colourful flowers. The reddish roof tiles were barely hanging on, dotted with holes and cracks and crowned by a crooked chimney, part wood, part rock, which stood atop the house like an unlikely hat. The wooden door panels were now rotten and stained dark, while the windows were covered with a thick layer of dust. It had been a little paradise surrounded by greenery, full of memories and scents. Now it was nothing more than an old abandoned house, the kind that kids dare each other to enter on Halloween night, believing it to be haunted by ghosts. 

After taking a deep breath, I walked up the path to the decaying door. It was ajar, almost like a mouth about to say something, although the only sound it made was the screeching of the hinges as I entered. I tried not to dwell too much on the pungent smell of damp and mustiness, nor on the bare, dust-covered rooms of the house, convinced that if I didn't think about it too much, my courage would take longer to evaporate. By now, mould and dust had covered most of the surfaces, dimly lit by the afternoon light coming through the holes in the ceiling, while an oppressive silence muffled every sigh. I hurried towards the attic, climbing a narrow staircase, the wood creaking menacingly under my footsteps. The room was still full of boxes and old furniture piled up in precarious stacks, the glass of the skylight so filthy that the light struggled to enter. Dust particles floated in the air along with a faint smell of old paper and leather. 

At that point, I realised that, despite my good intentions and desire to learn, I had no idea what to look for. Grandmother had muttered something about pieces, but considering that the attic was overflowing with old junk, she could have been referring to anything. After sighing to give myself courage, I began opening the boxes and rummaging through them to find pieces of something, thinking that it might be a jigsaw puzzle or broken porcelain shards. The stifling heat soon began to stick to me like a second skin, sweat forming around my lips. I rummaged through more than a dozen boxes, finding nothing but crockery and ornaments, some clothes from seventy years ago and books that looked so old that just looking at them could crumble the pages. Just when I was thinking of giving up and going home, I saw it. It was resting on an old, dusty, dark wooden bedside table, almost completely hidden by the piles of boxes and furniture surrounding it. The wooden squares alternated, light and dark, in neat rows as if they were toy soldiers standing arm in arm. The pieces at the ends were the same size as the fingers of a hand, masterfully carved in minute detail, with features such as the queen's crown or the horse's mane. A chessboard. My grandfather's chessboard. 

When I was little, my grandfather had taught me how to play chess. 

'This is called a pawn,' he had finally explained, holding one of the smallest pieces between his fingers after showing me the others. 'It can move forward one square, two if it's the first time you move it.' 

'But then it's useless,' I said, with the whiny tone of a six-year-old. 'It's not as strong as the queen or the rook.' My grandfather laughed.

'It doesn't move in the same way, but that doesn't mean it's not strong, as you say,' he replied patiently. 'You'll learn that even small pawns can win games.' Then we started playing and, of course, he defeated me with a pawn checkmate. 

We played in the garden of his house, on a small iron table that wobbled slightly. Sometimes my grandmother would bring us a cup of tea or freshly baked biscuits, their sweet smell mingling with that of the wood. At first, my grandfather let me win. I only knew how the pieces moved, not how to win games. Then I started to learn strategies and plans of action, sharing with my grandfather that sense of control and excitement that came with being the masters of that little world of sixty-four squares, the satisfaction of being able to choose the best moves and path, the frustration of losing an important piece. I never became a champion or anything like that, but over the years I had almost given up chess altogether. After all, it was our pastime, our game. Continuing without him seemed unfair to me.

Now it made sense. The attic, the pieces. I just didn't know why. Without paying too much attention to it, my mind still lost in speculation, I picked up the white pawn in front of the king. I moved it forward two squares, to e4, before leaving the attic and returning home, confused and preoccupied. I didn't know I had just started a game. Because the next day, when I returned to my grandparents' dusty attic, the black king's pawn had advanced two squares, now standing in front of mine. An opponent's piece had moved, and it wasn't me who had moved it.

'Is everything all right, Sam?' my mother asked me during dinner that evening. 'You seem a little preoccupied.' She and my father had been talking for a few minutes, their conversation disturbed by the clinking of cutlery on plates, and I hadn't said a word yet. I didn't even know what they were talking about. I was very much preoccupied.

'Everything's fine,' I replied distractedly, without looking up from my plate, 'I'm just tired.' It was a partial truth, if we can call my worries about my chess game against a mysterious opponent tiring. A ghost, perhaps. I hadn't told anyone what had happened. After all, who would believe me?