For fifteen years I have played the same person every Thursday, and for fifteen years I have not won.
Not because I am worse. He is simply better. That distinction matters, and over fifteen years I have learnt not to confuse the two.
Everyone at the club knows us. They call us “the Thursday two”. They do not know our names, only that we come at five on Thursdays, play until eight, and that he usually wins.
Last week I won.
Not because I had got better. But because on the twenty-fourth move he played something he had not played in fifteen years. He did not blunder badly. Only a little. And I noticed.
When it was mate, he looked at the board for a long time.
“That didn’t happen,” he said.
“It did.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand. You have to write it down.”
We always write it down. That is our custom: after every game we write the moves in a notebook, and at the end we add the result. Fifteen years, two notebooks.
That evening we did not write it down. He picked up the pen, then put it down.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t want to write it down.”
“Why not?”
“Because if we write it down, then this will be the first one in this notebook that I did not win. And then I can no longer keep telling myself that I am simply better.”
That sentence was longer than anything he had said to me in fifteen years.
“And?” I asked.
“And I don’t know what is left if I am not better.”
I did not know what to say. I packed up the pieces, slowly, the way I always do, and thought that in fifteen years I had never asked him why he came every Thursday.
“Why do you come?” I asked.
“Because you are the only one who takes it seriously.”
“That’s not true. Everyone at the club takes it seriously.”
“Not the game. Me.”
There were only the two of us left in the room. The club organiser was packing up in the back room, and you could hear him pushing the chairs back into place.
“Fifteen years,” I said. “That is long enough for a person to talk about more than the game.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t.”
With that he stood up and left.
The following Thursday he came. He sat down, set up the pieces, and said:
“Let’s write it down.”
“The last one?”
“Yes. And that we didn’t write it down that evening, and why.”
We wrote it down. In the notebook, one under the other, the way we always do. And underneath: “This was the first. Afterwards we talked.”
We did not become a couple that autumn. Two years later we did. But the chess did not change: every Thursday at five, until eight.
Last week I won again. He said it was starting to become a habit.
It is not true. But I let him say it, because I know why he says it: because now we both know the board was only ever a pretext.
For fifteen years we played so that we would not have to talk. Now we play because it is good.
And because afterwards we always talk.
