Prologue: my name is Radika, and I’m a 17-year-old college student studying Biochemistry in Mumbai. What follows is one entry from my dad’s personal journal, which I extracted from our ancestral home after he passed away quite recently from lung cancer.
It is true that my father was an avid chess player; it is also true that I underwent a massive surgery in my early childhood. But I never knew the true circumstances of my successful medical operation. I wish I hadn’t known. In any case, there is a reason why I’m publishing this now. You see, barely a week after he passed away, I got a type-written letter to my home address (which I will attach to the end of this narrative). This letter is the reason why I’m publishing what I think is the relevant portion of my dad’s journal.
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1 e4
Out of all the 20 possible opening moves in Chess, the most common (and logical) move is to push your King’s pawn two squares ahead. Most chess analysis engines agree that with the move e4, White has an advantage of +0.3 (i.e., 300 centipawns) at the beginning of every game. Normally, 300 cp may not be much; but this game was anything but normal. It could be the difference between losing an eye or a toe.
1 … e5
My opponent’s voice was barely above a raspy, wheezy, whisper, but then again, freshly losing two lobes of lungs tends to have that effect on people. Since we were both tied to our chairs, our hands cuffed to the armrests and legs cuffed to the chair’s legs, none of us was able to actually touch the pieces. We had to spell out the move and the elegantly dressed assistant would make the moves on the board on our behalf.
2 Nf3
On a drizzly Saturday night, playing a casual round with my friends, I would probably have gone for something flashy and romantic, like the King’s Gambit. But now was not a time to experiment. This game demanded a steady, and above all, unpredictable hand.
2 … f6
What. The. Fuck.
You see, Human Chess, for the most part, is what you probably think it is. It’s Chess, except that humans take the place of pieces (and pawns). When chess pieces and pawns get captured, the corresponding actors get evicted from the board, with no actual harm being inflicted upon them. It’s great for exhibitions and entertainment. But this wasn’t that kind of Human Chess. Hell, not even close. In this specific tournament, when you won, you won in dollars; but when you lost, you paid in cash – or organs.
3 “Bishop to c4”
The deceptively simple Italian game. Given the circumstances, I wanted to keep my cards close to my chest. When the pros and cons, so to speak, varied between losing a kidney and winning about 10,000 bucks, I’m sure you’d have done the same. So far, I had lost only one kidney, and I intended to keep the rest of my organs to myself, thank you very much.
3 … b6
Evasive, timid, and meek. Therefore, unequivocally, bad. My opponent was surely reeling from his recent losses and wasn’t ready for direct conflict. It was perfectly understandable: he had, after all, lost one entire lung, one kidney, and a part of his liver. He had to be safe; therefore, he wanted to play it safe.
Too bad for him I had a completely different agenda.
4 “Knight takes e5”
I said in the most casual tone I could muster. A sigh of exclamation rippled through the hundreds of ‘patrons’ behind grotesque masks. (Yes, very Eyes-Wide-Shut-esque, but with much graver consequences. But we’ll get to that part shortly.) Sacrificing a whole Knight this early in the game was sure to up the entertainment value – and consequently, my bonus if I manage to pull this off.
It was only after I had scanned the room I happened to look upon the face of my opponent. His eyes were wide in shock, and he was visibly shaking, evident from the quivering of his beard. The die has been cast, and now it was upon him to choose which destiny awaited him. He could choose a long, tedious, positional battle or alternatively, a short but bloody massacre. Your choice, old man.
4 … “f takes e5”
His voice was firm enough but that wasn’t gonna fool me. He knew what was coming and he thought he could bluff me.
Not today, old man.
5 “Queen to h5, check”
I said meekly enough, but chess-wise, it was the equivalent of a slap across the face. Now, he had two choices: cover with the pawn or move the king. Any chess player in his/her right mind would have seen which was the right choice. But then again, the fact that my opponent was probably not in his right mind was exactly what I was counting on. After all, it hasn’t even been, six hours after he ‘donated’ about one-third of his liver, and it’d be safe to say that he was not in his right mind.
5 … “King to e7”
Et voila. The trap has sprung. Bye-bye, old man. Sorry for your loss, you will be dearly forgotten. After all, my daughter’s life and the money needed for her surgery were more important to me than a total stranger’s life.
6 “Queen takes e5, checkmate”
A sharp inhale from my opponent, a moment’s silence, and…
“No! No, please, no…”
His voice was drowned in the thunderous applause of the patrons, and as the chair he was cuffed to was bodily lifted and taken away, I didn’t even bother to look back.
I had won. My sweet little angel would live. As a true father, I had provided.
And as I vowed to my dear sweetheart Eileen, I would never play for bets.
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Epilogue: here ends my dad’s only ever entry on that fateful chess tournament. I am 100% sure that that sort of thing is illegal here, but I have no way of finding out who organised it, where it was held, or why it was such a macabre deal. In fact, it wouldn’t even be a priority for me right now, unless the letter I received today morning hadn’t mentioned that.
The letter was printed on a piece of rough, almost hand-made paper, and someone had used an actual typewriter to type it. After all, typewriters were not so rare in this part of the world. The eerie part was that it carried no name, no signature, no letterhead, no crest, and not a single fingerprint. It had only two sentences:
“Your dad paid for your life with my dad’s life. Time to pay up.”