avenue, where she could hear music coming from the kursaal, and then, unable to master her curiosity, she went back again to the window, but this time deliberately making the gravel creak so as to convince herself she was not spying. His window was open, the blind unlowered, and in the bright depth of the room she saw him take off his jacket, tense his neck muscles and yawn. And in the slow, massive motion of his shoulder, the image of which continued to heave and turn before her eyes as she hastily walked away in the darkness toward the illuminated terrace of the hotel, she fancied the presence of a mighty fatigue after undivulged but surely miraculous labors.
Luzhin was indeed tired. Lately he had been playing too frequently and too unsystematically; he was particularly fatigued by playing blind, a rather well-paid performance that he willingly gave. He found therein deep enjoyment: one did not have to deal with visible, audible, palpable pieces whose quaint shape and wooden materiality always disturbed him and always seemed to him but the crude, mortal shell of exquisite, invisible chess forces. When playing blind he was able to sense these diverse forces in their original purity. He saw then neither the Knight’s carved mane nor the glossy heads of the Pawns—but he felt quiteclearly that this or that imaginary square was occupied by a definite, concentrated force, so that he envisioned the movement of a piece as a discharge, a shock, a stroke of lightning—and the whole chess field quivered with tension, and over this tension he was sovereign, here gathering in and there releasing electric power. Thus he played against fifteen, twenty, thirty opponents and of course the sheer number of boards told—since it affected the actual playing time—but this physical weariness was nothing compared to the mental fatigue—retribution for the stress and rapture involved in the game itself, which he conducted in a celestial dimension, where his tools were incorporeal quantities. He also found a certain solace in these blind games and the victories they afforded him, for in recent years he had been having no luck at international tournaments; a ghostly barrier had arisen that kept preventing him from coming first. Valentinov had happened to foretell this in the past, shortly before they parted. “Shine while you can,” he had said after that unforgettable tournament in London, the first after the war, when the twenty-year-old Russian player came out the victor. “While you can,” repeated Valentinov slyly, “because you won’t be a boy prodigy much longer.” And this was very important for Valentinov. He was interested in Luzhin only inasmuch as he remained a freak, an odd phenomenon, somewhat deformed but enchanting, like a dachshund’s crooked legs. During the whole time that he lived with Luzhin he unremittingly encouraged and developed his gift, not bothering for a second about Luzhin as a person, whom, it seemed, not only Valentinov but life itself had overlooked. He showed him to wealthy people as an amusingmonster, acquired useful contacts through him, and organized innumerable tournaments, and only when he began to suspect that the prodigy was turning simply into a young chess player did he bring him back to his father in Russia, and afterwards, like a kind of valuable, he took him away again when he thought that perhaps he had made a mistake, that the freak still had a year or two of life left in him. When even this span had run out he made a gift to Luzhin of some money, the way one does to a mistress one has tired of, and disappeared, finding fresh amusement in the movie business, that mysterious astrological business where they read scripts and look for stars. And having departed to the sphere of jaunty, quick-talking, self-important con-men with their patter about the philosophy of the screen, the tastes of the masses and the intimacy of the movie camera, and with pretty good incomes at the same time, he
Luzhin was indeed tired. Lately he had been playing too frequently and too unsystematically; he was particularly fatigued by playing blind, a rather well-paid performance that he willingly gave. He found therein deep enjoyment: one did not have to deal with visible, audible, palpable pieces whose quaint shape and wooden materiality always disturbed him and always seemed to him but the crude, mortal shell of exquisite, invisible chess forces. When playing blind he was able to sense these diverse forces in their original purity. He saw then neither the Knight’s carved mane nor the glossy heads of the Pawns—but he felt quiteclearly that this or that imaginary square was occupied by a definite, concentrated force, so that he envisioned the movement of a piece as a discharge, a shock, a stroke of lightning—and the whole chess field quivered with tension, and over this tension he was sovereign, here gathering in and there releasing electric power. Thus he played against fifteen, twenty, thirty opponents and of course the sheer number of boards told—since it affected the actual playing time—but this physical weariness was nothing compared to the mental fatigue—retribution for the stress and rapture involved in the game itself, which he conducted in a celestial dimension, where his tools were incorporeal quantities. He also found a certain solace in these blind games and the victories they afforded him, for in recent years he had been having no luck at international tournaments; a ghostly barrier had arisen that kept preventing him from coming first. Valentinov had happened to foretell this in the past, shortly before they parted. “Shine while you can,” he had said after that unforgettable tournament in London, the first after the war, when the twenty-year-old Russian player came out the victor. “While you can,” repeated Valentinov slyly, “because you won’t be a boy prodigy much longer.” And this was very important for Valentinov. He was interested in Luzhin only inasmuch as he remained a freak, an odd phenomenon, somewhat deformed but enchanting, like a dachshund’s crooked legs. During the whole time that he lived with Luzhin he unremittingly encouraged and developed his gift, not bothering for a second about Luzhin as a person, whom, it seemed, not only Valentinov but life itself had overlooked. He showed him to wealthy people as an amusingmonster, acquired useful contacts through him, and organized innumerable tournaments, and only when he began to suspect that the prodigy was turning simply into a young chess player did he bring him back to his father in Russia, and afterwards, like a kind of valuable, he took him away again when he thought that perhaps he had made a mistake, that the freak still had a year or two of life left in him. When even this span had run out he made a gift to Luzhin of some money, the way one does to a mistress one has tired of, and disappeared, finding fresh amusement in the movie business, that mysterious astrological business where they read scripts and look for stars. And having departed to the sphere of jaunty, quick-talking, self-important con-men with their patter about the philosophy of the screen, the tastes of the masses and the intimacy of the movie camera, and with pretty good incomes at the same time, he
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