The Chess  Match

            The  following account is a true story based on an actual series of events a few years ago.

             Father Pietro liked to play chess.  He liked chess because he didn't have to talk to anyone.  Now he was obliged to play chess by mail.

             As a priest, he was a failure.  As a chess player, he was only pretty good.   He had been assigned to a small church in a small and now virtually non-existent village in northern Italy where almost everyone had left for the big city.  The church and the priest remained.  He was ignored and almost forgotten by  his superiors who were relieved not to have to think of him anymore and not to have to account for his whereabouts any longer.  He was frozen in time doing exactly what he started doing in 1973, virtually unchanged, uncomplicated  and unencumbered.  The small church in the small town, lost among the hills  in northern Italy, was a refuge for those who didn't like change.  The mass, the ritual, the garments, the language were the same for the past 30 years and probably for the past 300 years.  Father Pietro adapted easily to this pattern.  He did not get bored easily; he enjoyed the memorized ritual and  the simple life and nothing could be simpler than the absent flock in this small  deserted village in northern Italy.

             He was truly a very simple man, and one of the reasons that the bishop and his  superiors had forgotten him was that he had so little to offer.  He was not  a great or even a modest intellect.  There was nothing profound in his  thinking.  He was a humble man, and his humility was largely justified by his modest accomplishments.  He was not even a deeply religious man.  He gave his religion little thought and conducted the ritual by rote.  This  required little insight, less contemplation and even less introspection.  Most egregious in the eyes of his superiors was that he was very lazy.  His  was the ultimate caricature of lack of ambition.  He had not even the remotest thought of advancement.  He did as little as was necessary so as  not to get dismissed, and he ultimately ended up in a position guaranteed to attract no attention to himself.  The combination of lack of intellect, a  very weak religious commitment, very modest ambition and extremely poor interpersonal skills matched him, the deserted village in northern Italy and the  church perfectly, and everyone was content.

             He used to play chess with the village carpenter and handyman, a man called Ludovico.  They couldn't stand each other.  Their initial cordial tolerance soon turned into a passive dislike and then ultimately into a  consummate hatred.  Father Pietro couldn't stand Ludovico's constant chatter.  The priest reminded Ludovico often that this was a game of  concentration and silence, but Ludovico would not shut up.  It was clear  that his chatter was meant to irritate and distract the poor helpless priest, and the more he blathered on, the more Father Pietro fumed.  He could stand it no longer and insisted that he could not play unless Ludovico stopped his  endless prattle, but Ludovico persisted and it only got worse.  It passed the point of compromise and accommodation.

             He resented Ludovico's lack of religiosity.  He didn't care that Ludovico was a lapsed Catholic, that he didn't come to mass and that he had no religion.   What the priest found increasingly intolerable was his constant taunting and his delight in repeating the litany of jokes about the church and the pope.  What was perhaps most troublesome for Father Pietro was the intellectual challenges Ludovico constantly posed; devised with cunning and set only to  humiliate the simple isolated priest.  Father Pietro was no intellectual  match for Ludovico, and they both knew it.  Ludovico was no great intellect  either, but he was clever enough with words and he mixed in enough sly comments  with jokes and insults bathed in a mixture of faulty logic, erroneous misconceptions, idiotic rumors and ridiculous stories that circulated in the regional tabloids to try the patience of a saint.  Father Pietro did not qualify. 

             What ultimately bothered the priest the most was that he was convinced Ludovico cheated at chess.  How does one cheat at chess, a game that defies  dishonesty and devious trickery?  But Ludovico was relentless.  He  couldn't stand losing, which he did with predictable regularity.  Although  Father Pietro was no match for Ludovico's modest chess game, he more than made  up for it with his silence.  He was able to concentrate, memorize and  strategize while Ludovico prattled on about the pope and the church.  When  Ludovico was about to lose, he became increasingly agitated and abusive and the  humiliation of defeat mortified him.  And then he cheated.  He accidentally pushed the board off the table, brushing his elbow across the board when he was reaching for the wine.  He refused to agree where the pieces were, although they both had the board memorized and both knew their positions  full well.  He sometimes distracted the poor priest and snatched a piece  from the board, and no protest or complaints were ever resolved.  Most  intolerable was when he accused Father Pietro of cheating, an accusation which was enough to bring the poor man to tears.

             The chess match was increasingly intolerable for Ludovico as well.  He was  infuriated by the priest's silence and his inability or his unwillingness to  engage in the simplest pedestrian conversation: the weather, the football match,  the wine they drank.  All he got from the good Father were one-word answers, destined not to provoke any controversy or to elicit any additional  response or questions.  Ludovico initially attributed this reticence to stupidity, but ultimately he came to realize that the priest sat quietly to  provoke him, his nemesis, and finally to win the chess match.

             Ludovico hated that he usually lost, and "to such a simpleton" made it even worse.  He knew that he was the better chess player, but he was unable to  concentrate and missed critical moves with all his talking and taunting.  Ludovico hated the unbathed smell of the priest, his stale breath and his rotten teeth and his unwashed clothes.  Ludovico was a fastidious man despite his current lower class labor.  He was educated, was once an actor in the big city, played the organ, was always well dressed and neatly shaved.  He was charming and urbane for this deserted village.  He hated the hair on Father Pietro's nose, his jaundiced eyes and the food stains on his shirt covering his fat belly.  They were an ill-suited match. 

             That evening Ludovico had been given to more than his usual relentless taunting,  and the news of a recent minor church scandal had provided him with much more  than he needed to provoke the priest.  Ludovico was losing badly and checkmate was imminent.  He changed his diatribe from the church to the  pope and then to the priest, and Father Pietro could stand it no longer.   He felt a burning in the pit of his stomach and then up into his chest with a  brackish taste in the back of his throat.  He reached for the bottle of wine to pour another glass and then he paused for a moment.  He brought the bottle down with all his strength on poor Ludovico's forehead, with all his anger and frustration, with all his despair and sadness.  Ludovico's eyes  were wide open with a look of disbelief and astonishment when the bottle struck.  There was no blood.

             Ludovico died later that night on the way to the hospital cradled in the arms of  the distraught priest.

             Father Pietro cried when he called the police, and he wept for weeks afterward.

             He now plays chess by mail, with people he has never met and has never talked to.  He has days or even weeks to contemplate his next few moves.  There is no e-mail in prison and there is no one in prison with any interest in  chess.  He doesn't have to talk to anyone in prison.

Stuart Frank, M.D.

Internal Medicine

Third Place, Prose