Night Soldiers

his mind wandered. Where was Marike? He’d not seen her at breakfast.

Suddenly, a tragedy. Ozunov’s remaining bishop came wheeling out of ambush and snapped up his queen. Damn! Khristo quickly checked his pawns to see which had snuck farthest down the board. No solace there. Finally, for want of anything better to do, he threatened Ozunov’s castle with a pawn. How on earth had Ozunov finagled his queen? His eyes wandered to the piece, lying on its side among the ranks of the dead by the edge of the board. Would he not have taken the bishop with his queen on the previous move if the path had been open? How had he missed it?

The game progressed, snow drifted in the street below, Khristo’s forces were slowly picked to pieces. He tried to concentrate, to see the distant implications of each possible move, but the suddenly captured queen obsessed him. From that blow he would not recover, but he wanted at least to see the reason of it. In time, he realized what Ozunov had done. At first he could not believe it, but finally had to accept the fact that Ozunov had brazenly cheated him. Why? He didn’t know. Even the strongest had a weakness somewhere-they’d taught him that themselves. Perhaps Ozunov could not bear to lose.

Toward the end of the game, as Ozunov chased his king mercilessly around the board-stopping only to pick off one of the few motley survivors-the Stoianev temper asserted itself. Khristo determined that he would not be fooled quite so easily and, just then, a distraction in the form of a telephone call came to his aid.

Soon enough the game was over, a last faithful knight eliminated, a few helpless pawns standing around like poor relations at a funeral. Ozunov reached over and laid Khristo’s king on its side.

“Check,” he said, “and mate, I believe. You agree?”

“Yes,” Khristo said.

“You dislike to lose, Khristo Nicolaievich?”

“Yes, comrade Major.”

“Then you must learn to play better.”

“I agree, comrade Major.”

“Losing your queen, that’s what finished you I believe.”

Khristo nodded agreement.

“A very simple stratagem. Plain as your nose, eh?”

Khristo was not sure how to answer. Ozunov smiled, as though to himself, and poked idly at the bowl of his pipe with a toothpick. “I knew an Englishman once, a few years after the Revolution, it was my job to know him. We spent many hours in conversation, it was a most pleasant assignment really. There was nothing we did not speak of, women, politics, religion. All those matters that men like to speculate about when they are at ease. From this man I learned a particular thing. Fair play, he called it. Not such a simple notion, perhaps, when you probe to find its heart. A kind of code, which each gentleman must honor individually in order for all to benefit. In time I came to understand that it was a good system for those who had more than they needed, for those who could afford to give something away. But I also realized that I had never known anybody like that. Nobody I ever knew could say, ‘Here, you take it, I do not deserve it. I do not need it so badly that I will cheat and lie to get it.’ Perhaps some day we may indulge ourselves in that fashion, we may have so much that we can afford to give some of it away, but not now. Can you understand this?”

Khristo looked hesitant. Ozunov laughed at his discomfort. “Yes, boy, I cheated you. I moved a piece while you were daydreaming out the window, enchanted by our Russian snow. I acknowledge it!”

“But why, comrade Major? You could have won without that.”

“Yes, I could have. You do some things well, comrade student, but you play chess like a barbarian. I wanted merely to teach you something, that is my job now.”

“Teach me what, comrade Major?”

Ozunov sighed. “I am told Lenin once called it the Bolshevik Variation, simply another strategy, like the Sicilian Defense. It has two parts to it. The first is this: win at all cost. Do anything you have to do, anything, but win. There are no rules.”

Khristo hesitated. He had a response to this, but it was very bold and he was not sure of himself. At last, he took the leap.

“I have learned what you wanted to teach me, comrade Major,” he said, opening his hand to show Ozunov the white pawn he had stolen when the telephone rang.

“You’re a good student,” Ozunov said. “Now learn the second part of the Variation: make the opponent play your game. And the more he despises your methods, the more you must make him use them. The more he arms himself with virtue, the more you must make him fight in the dirt. Then you have him.”

He gestured with his pipe toward the white pawn lying on Khristo’s palm. “Keep that,” he said. “A student prize from Ozunov. You have won the copy of Vladimir Ilyich’s speeches, now you will have something to remind you, in times to come, how to turn them into prophecies.”

“Wake now, please.”

The hand jerked his shoulder. His body rose upright, by itself it seemed, and he suddenly found himself sitting. He struggled to get his eyes open. What time was it? His heart was beating like a drum at being torn from deep sleep.

“You are up? No falling back down in a heap?”

It was Irina Akhimova, one of the night guardians, an immense woman with tiny eyes and a voice like a ripsaw.

“Dress yourself, Khristo Nicolaievich. Quickly, quickly.”

At last his eyes opened. The dormitory was dark, the windows revealed snow drifted over the sill, black night above. Goldman stirred in the next bed. Somebody coughed, a toilet flushed. Ozunov’s chess game had kept him awake a long time the night before, his mind tossed on the sea.

“What is it?” His voice was thick.

“Angels dancing on the roof!” Her harsh voice cut through the room. “How should I know?” She grabbed him by the hair, not so playfully. “And wear your warmest things, little rooster, lest your manhood become an icicle.”

She let him go with a flourish. He swung out of bed; she didn’t take her eyes off him while he dressed. When he visited the toilet, she waited just outside. He wound a scarf around his throat, put on a sweater and his wool jacket.

“Very well,” he said.

She looked at him critically. Reached to a nail above his bed, whipped his peaked cap from it and put it on him, pulling it down as far as it would go. Then she took him above the elbow and led him out of the room. There was a mug of tea for him on the table in the parlor and a man’s silhouette in the shadows.

“Here he is,” Irina Akhimova said to the shape, “and good morning to you.” She left abruptly. The man moved forward and stopped. His body was very still; he stared at Khristo and his eyes did not blink.

Khristo had never before seen anyone like him. He came from an unknown world, and this world, sealed, alien, hung about him like a shadow. His overcoat was finely made, with a soft collar standing upright.

On his head was a fur cap, set at an angle. He was perfectly shaven and smelled of cologne. He had longish, lank black hair, strong cheekbones, dark eyes so deeply set they seemed remote and hidden.

“I am Sascha,” he said. “Drink your tea quickly and come with me.”

Khristo gulped his tea. The voice was educated and genteel, but there was no question of not doing whatever it told you to do. He put the cup down. The man gestured toward the door.

The air outside was like ice, dead still, bitter with wood and coal smoke. White plumes blossomed slowly from every chimney. The snow was cleared away in a path to the street, where a low black car idled unevenly in front of the building. Sascha opened the back door for him, then went around and climbed in the front seat. The driver was bulky and thick-necked, with a hat like Sascha’s set square on his head.

They moved slowly down the street on packed snow. The lights picked out dark bundles, which Khristo knew to be women, wielding shovels. They drove in silence, the driver turning the wheel gingerly as they crawled around the corners. On the horizon, Khristo could see a fading of the darkness, a thin light that he had come to know as the winter dawn. The upholstery in the car had a strong musty smell. Sascha moved the sleeve of his coat back an inch, he was wearing a watch.

Khristo tried to quiet his breathing, to slow it down. He did not want these men to know what he was feeling.