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The last day of the Moscow Invitational is a blur of color, emotions, and people.
-:-
Before the award ceremony starts, Townes finds her, kisses her on the cheek, hugs her tightly, and whispers his congratulations in her ear.
Some journalists are definitely snapping pictures with plans to print them, but Beth is still too jubilant to mind. Let them.
Mr. Booth aims his vexed look at the wall.
“You prepped to face the wolves?” Townes asks with characteristic gentility.
“How terrible can they be? Handled the journalists for five years and counting.” Beth puts on a brave face, but she learned long ago to be wary of long press conferences and reporters that twist her words and readers that jump on any sign of weakness.
“You sure you don’t want me to defenestrate a few?”
“No, you can save your serial killer instincts for the next few people who ask if we’re dating.”
“You were brilliant yesterday, really something,” Townes says as his forehead bumps hers delicately. The contact spreads a warmth through Beth. She’s still riding the glow of her mended friendship with Townes, relishing every hug he gives her and every touch they share.
“I couldn’t have done it without you. All of you.”
His laugh is quiet and low. Beth likes it. “You’re still brilliant, but you’re very wrong.”
“Are you sure you can’t stay?”
“My flight leaves too soon - I just came to see you off. I’ll call you when you’re back in Kentucky. By Saturday, right?”
“Have you seen the men playing in the park?” Beth asks abruptly, not quite ready to say Yes, I’m leaving Moscow tomorrow.
Townes grins. “The weather isn’t going to be frigid tomorrow, just bitterly cold. Might be nice to play, bring some frostbite back to the U.S.”
Beth knits her eyebrows in displeasure as she remembers, “Rule number one is to stay in my hotel at all times, unless I’m with my guard.”
“It was easy enough getting him to let you answer your phone.” Obviously, Townes has been briefed on Beth’s rules in order to reach her. “Anyway, think about it - if you can survive the temperatures of Moscow, you’ll be well enough adjusted to arctic temperatures that you could parade around Montreal wearing your summer wardrobe.”
Montreal. Beth almost forgot about her next tournament in a month. She’s excited to practice her French again - she is a bit rusty. She’s not sure yet if she could ever face Paris again, but maybe Montreal is a nice middle-ground of sophistication and home. Townes gives her a significant look, the one that could pierce her to her soul, unravel the poor subject of any interrogation. “The park is beautiful.” What he’s trying to say sinks into Beth: the park is beautiful, like chess, like her body free of the chains of pill dependence and alcohol abuse, like the first step in healing, like freedom.
She likes the idea and files it under “If I have time later.”
Speaking of time -- Beth remembers something with a jolt and grabs his notepad and pen from the pocket of his jacket.
Last night, after dinner, Beth and Townes had fallen asleep in her room. Beth had passed out, too tired to talk strategy. Two bodies, one queen-sized bed, none of the tension that teenage Beth would’ve expected. He’d woken her at 2 in the afternoon, his white t-shirt, tousled hair, and teacup so familiar and intimate.
And then the phone call - she could’ve kissed Benny over the phone if she could, could’ve kissed anyone and everyone, really, and settled for Townes’s bear hug right after the phone call had ended. But by five pm in Moscow, she needed to get dressed. In hotel rooms, she’d only ever seen herself transform into Beth Harmon and her mother into Alma Wheatley; it had been the first time she’d watched someone else. It’s surprisingly simple for Townes: a dark turtleneck, an elegant peacoat, a comb through his hair. And his notebook and pen in his coat pocket.
She grabs them now and scribbles a phone number for him, quick and tiny and hopefully legible. He puts the notepad away, and she grasps his hand, an almost desperate grab for a little bit more comfort.
“Can you call this number for me, tell her I won and I’ll pay her back once I’m back in the States? Just quickly. Her name is Jolene DeWitt,” Beth says, voice picking up speed as she and Mr. Booth are ushered into the grand hall by a primly dressed teenage boy whose round face evokes her memory of Georgi Girev. Townes lets her hand go, head nodding, eyes brimming with warmth, and, short-term plans set, Beth turns to her next task.
-:-
In the audience, Dmitri Luchenko beams at Beth when she walks in. Viktor Laev, Leonid Shapkin, Bernt Hellström, Jean-Paul Duhamel, and Jorge Flento have, for the most part, scrubbed their faces clear of any resentment and offer her respectful nods from where they sit with their families and seconds and seconds’ families. Vasily Borgov’s son sits in his lap, while his wife quietly whispers to him. The hall is grand enough that there are maybe a hundred people with entire rows to spare. Swallowing, Beth sits down by herself. Unlike the other players, empty seats surround her on all sides.
The seats could be filled with ghosts: Alma, Mr. Shaibel, Jolene, Benny, Harry, her friends. Even Alice and the father she doesn’t remember anymore linger, sending a cold shudder down Beth’s back. Mr. Booth sits a row behind her instead of next to her. She can’t find Townes in the audience.
She thinks of the hotel room that Alma would have admired, the second room that Benny could have had if she hadn’t thrown the money away, the sumptuous dinners in candlelit halls where she wordlessly sipped soup for two hours, because she had no one, even amongst her peers, to talk to. The college campus in Ohio, with students lounging and laughing together, while she could only watch from a bench, until a new friend had interrupted her from herself. A friend who is kind of a friend and kind of a god-knows-what-else, who is currently an ocean and a landmass away. Hopefully getting some rest, it’s five in the morning back in New York.
And she thinks of the phone calls she tried to make before she left: she’d called Jolene twice and Benny thrice but to no answers or avail. A letter from the USCF director sits in her suitcase, an impersonal thing wishing her good luck, because that’d been all she had. Despite the whirlwind of the last week, the loneliness still plagues her.
The board that is her life may reflect a checkmate, and Beth may be a queen, but she feels like a hanging piece, undefended, one move away from falling.
She is still trembling when she hears her name juxtaposed to “first place.” Every bone of her is vibrating, and Beth takes a steady breath and hopes her lip isn’t trembling.
They have her stand, pose for pictures, answer a few questions, and then to her relief, she stumbles back. The ceremony wraps, and they disperse for an afternoon reception for all the chess players, but Beth wants to go back to the hotel room, She imagines seclusion by herself is still miles better than the solitude of a crowded room. Maybe she can check with the cashier again as to where she can restock on pills. No, she banishes the thought.
She braces herself to stand, but she feels a tap on her shoulder. A boy who couldn’t be more than five years old looks cautiously at her. He’s donned a jean jacket, shorts, knee high socks, and leather shoes. His hair is as neatly trimmed and combed as a child’s can be. Beth recognizes him - Vasily Borgov’s son. That last she’d seen him had been with a headache, like the cunning Minerva in all her battle armor was pounding the inside of her head, fighting to split her open and take control.
“Hi, Ms. Harmon.” His voice, strongly accented, wavers.
“Hello.” Beth lets herself smile - it’s not difficult. He is clearly very sweet.
“Congratulations. You were amazing.” And he scrambles back to his mother, whom Beth now realizes is walking toward her.
“Lizaveta, congratulations.” The woman’s mellifluous voice and use of Beth's diminutive instantly puts Beth at ease. Not a hair is out of place on her bun, a most regal kind of beautiful.
“Congratulations to your husband as well.”
“You’ve probably heard it many times over, but it is such a joy to watch you play. Khrisya and I go over your games together.”
“Khrisya,” short for “Khristofór,” Russian for “Christopher.” Beth pushes away the associations of that name with one of the worst days of her life and another little boy but one she only saw from a window. “How old is he?” Beth feels a bit odd addressing the woman when the child is right there, but she figures the translator’s English is stronger.
“I’ll be five tomorrow!” The boy peeks around his mother’s legs.
Beth can’t help but laugh. “Happy birthday! I started playing chess when I was eight, much older than you.” A line she feeds to reporters, though she’s sure this boy emerged from the womb knowing how to play. The math of Khrisya’s age also clicks in her head. “Your husband only had kids after being World Champion?”
“Couldn’t find the time between traveling and playing, but being World Champion meant he could slow down just a bit.”
“Do you play?”
“I can’t be Russian, let alone married to my husband, and not pick up a few things. But mostly, I’m just a translator.”
“Do you translate for anyone else?”
“Casually so. I always thought I would work in a school, but I wouldn’t trade what I have for any of it. Call me Katya, by the way.”
Khrisya gets the courage to start a hand game with Beth. She picks it up quickly and the stiff, stuffy decorum of the Moscow hall melts away as she lets herself giggle with him. Katya and Beth talk about her Russian classes and the places Beth should travel next. Beth feels like she could talk to Katya forever, play with Khrisya for ages.
At one point, Borgov makes to approach and join them, but Mr. Booth intercepts him into a conversation.
There’s a lull in the conversation when Katya asks her next question. “This won’t be the last time people ask, but do you ever see yourself wanting a family?”
Beth considers the question - the thought’s never really occurred to her. “I’m only twenty - I have no idea.” She’s never seen anything but unhappiness in marriages, although the blithe look Vasily Borgov gives Katya from a few feet across the room might just prove her wrong.
“Is there a reason you came without a second?”
Beth looks up, startled. “How did you - ?”
“Your friend, the handsome one. ‘You came here all by yourself?’” Katya quotes.
Beth purses her lips, and there’s a swell in her chest that tries to drown out every emotion associated with her calling Benny and Benny calling her every other day when she was in Lexington until he stopped. “My second changed his mind at the last minute. My friend came instead.”
Katya doesn’t say anything, and gaze averted, Beth hopes the woman’s eyes aren’t full of curiosity, or pity, or, worse, like that makes sense. Beth wonders if Katya, like the press, knows about her whatever with Benny, assumes that she’s enchanted with the Rock Hudson journalist rather than pining for a scrawny blond man with a boy’s features and a dangerous, glittering intelligence in his eyes that no one, not even opponents, ever seems to notice. Life would’ve been so much easier if her relationship with Townes were the case, wouldn’t it?
From where she sits, Katya doesn’t need to ask whether Beth has missed having a second, having him specifically. Beth is sure it’s written all over her face. Beth can’t say she regrets telling off the Christian Crusade, but every free moment in the city she wasn’t thinking of chess or pills, she was thinking of him. His mind, his judgment, his workmanlike tenacity, his hair, his knowledge of chess, his knowledge of her. The park from her window - they could’ve walked through there, admiring the city. The bed in her room - she isn’t sure what they could’ve managed around a Crusade representative, but she was sure he would’ve fallen asleep in her bed at some point or she in his. Except for the last one, every game she goes over, she goes over alone and relies on herself. Beth has no idea where they stand now, certainly isn’t expecting a frivolous follow-up call from him at least until she gets back to the States, and thinking about this is starting to give her another headache.
All these thoughts pass through Beth in a flash - missing Benny feels like it’s ingrained. Katya speaks, “Do you think he’ll be there for you the next time?”
“Maybe if I apologize.” Beth still has no idea how to clear the air, but apologizing worked with Jolene, with Townes, so maybe it can work here.
A hum falls from Katya’s lips, as if recognizing the seed of stubbornness, the knots of uncertainty, that still rest in Beth’s stomach. “Relationships aren’t always a game, Lizaveta. Conceding does not always mean defeat.”
“How did you meet your husband?” Beth asks curiously, hoping she isn’t being too forward. “How did you know you wanted to get married to him? At all?”
Katya smiles, and her eyes resemble Townes’s a few hours ago in the way fondness and memories make them sparkle. She sighs, “That’s a story for another day. It looks like Khrisya needs to go back to the hotel now, and we need to prepare for dinner -- but here, write anytime.”
She grabs a spare pamphlet of the match and a pen to write down an address with an elegant script that Beth will admire on the plane ride home. Khrisya pats her knee as a goodbye, and the Borgov family departs.
When she leaves the grand, hallowed hall (until she can return next year), the ghosts don’t feel so much like ghosts, but like pieces of her heart she carried with her across an ocean, extensions of herself. A family, she dares to say. At the hotel, Beth books her ticket back to New York.
-:-
Beth nearly does a spit-take over the Times article she skims before dinner. They’re usually condescending, but this is beyond the pale.
When she arrives at the ballroom for the celebratory dinner, Mr. Booth gloomily at her heels, Beth scans the room quickly to find her. This dinner isn’t just for the competitors, but also the many Eastern European players who came to watch the tournament. It’s not hard to find her. In some ways, she resembles a younger, mid-twenties version of Katya, with her strong eyebrows and hair tied back. Tonight, she wears a wrap over her gown and some bracelets.
Beth isn’t usually the first to initiate conversations, but a mixture of awe and guilt propels her to speak. “Ms. Gaprindashvili.”
Nona Gaprindashvili laughs, and Beth relaxes at the warmth - this woman doesn’t hate her. “I’m barely older than you. Nona is more than fine.”
Almost startled that her age is apparently common knowledge, Beth briefly forgets what she’s going to say. Nona continues, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, formally. Congratulations on your win.”
“I feel like I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
Beth suddenly realizes ignorance might have been bliss, and she thinks maybe she should walk the conversation back to small-talk territory. “I read a Times article about the tournament, and they had some errors when they mentioned you. Did you see it?”
Nona’s face flashes and her lips purse, and Beth guesses the roar she felt in her own ears on Nona’s behalf can only be deafening for the woman looking back at her. Still, Nona’s tone stays steady. “I did not, but I am always curious as to the mistranslations.”
“They said you’d never faced men in a tournament. Not a single mention of your simultaneous exhibitions, or even your wins in Hastings.” Beth recalls dinners with Harry, where he eagerly regaled her with the biographies of past and contemporary chess players. She only remembers a few stories, but the ones involving the current Women’s World Champion always stuck out to her.
The woman takes a protracted breath. “My dear, nothing to apologize for. You are not responsible for the mistakes of stupid men.”
Beth sees a glass of pastis in a Paris bar -- another demon she hasn’t learned to exorcise yet.
“Have you heard that they say you’ve never faced women in a tournament?” Nona’s tone is wry.
Beth shakes her head, eye roll implicit, because one glance at her USCF record or any of her interviews can tell you that’s not true. She’ll play in some women’s tournaments, if the money is good. When she sees Nona laughing, Beth manages a sigh of relief and asks, “How did you learn to play chess?”
“I watched my older brother play in Zugdidi, the best player in our hometown. And then he got sick one day, so I took his place in a team championship game.” Nona waves her hand, like her accomplishment is not that interesting. “And you?”
“Mr. Shaibel, the janitor at an orphanage, taught me. He was a good man and played quite well.” These same lines Beth has delivered to a Times reporter, but here, in this conversation, there’s a fresh earnestness to her tone, something that can’t be stripped like it is for interviews.
“Shall we get dinner?” The spread does make Beth’s mouth water, just a bit, and she nods.
Nona links her arm with Beth’s and leads her over to the table. Since this is clearly not Nona’s first time in Moscow (maybe at the Invitational, specifically, no matter), Beth asks, “What do you recommend?”
“We can see if they have any satsivi - it’s not New Year’s anymore, but it’s my favorite food from Georgia. Also caviar, all the Russians eat it for the brainpower.”
Beth savors her options, piles food on her plate, and smiles at Nona sincerely. “I look up to you a lot. I’d like to be champion by age 21.”
They take their seats on two adjacent stools. “Are you coming for my title?”
“Would you let me?”
“I don’t think I could stop you, if you put your mind to it. But do you want it?”
Beth stops, a forkful of caviar halfway into her mouth. “I’m not sure - the World Champion title, maybe, but the Women’s World Champion is its own league with its own politics. I’m barely holding my own as it is.” She’s conscious more than ever of all the rumors of her drinking, that she’ll meet the same fate as her mother in Mexico City, that her humiliating hangover in Paris would be the pattern rather than the exception.
Nona seems to recognize the turmoil inside her and leans forward. “Do you want some unsolicited advice?”
Beth turns to her, ready to listen.
“You’re talented, and you’re driven, Beth. But talent and drive isn’t enough. You need to build up your psychological strength, your physical strength. You can’t just study your way to excellence. Look at Luchenko - he’s in his eighties, do you know how much care is required to stave off dementia and arthritis and aging? If you want to be where he is, you can’t take your mind and fingers for granted.”
Beth closes her eyes, pushes away a memory of Benny lecturing in Ohio about getting in shape. God, it can be irritating getting lectured, but she feels the weight of Nona’s words.
“My friend told me I should go play some chess recreationally in the park.”
Nona nods her approval. “The regulars have always been kind to the chess players here. Sometimes, finding another hobby can be helpful in achieving balance.”
Beth shrugs. “I like clothes.”
“Then someday, you can get your own fashion line. I look forward to seeing it on the runway.” Beth is struck by Nona’s intensity, even more than she is by Jolene’s or Benny’s or Harry’s. The idea that she could lean into fashion, that her clothes are something to be taken that seriously -- could they?
“What do you do for fun?”
“Football, of course. I play a lot with my husband.”
Beth’s head swivels again. “Husband?” She hadn’t been aware of this.
“Anzor. I keep him out of the press. I don’t need to give them another thing to fixate on besides my game. But it’s fun to be competitive. The football players from my country came to support me at my first World Champion match, and I go to their football matches. They say I have a ‘lucky foot.’” She smiles and turns didactic once again. “Allies are crucial, Beth, at this level. You can’t succeed on your own.”
Beth nods. Who knew her attempt at an apology and this last gala would lead to so many lessons tonight?
Her plate now empty, Nona rises to stand and gives her a warm, firm handshake. “I’m heading out now. Take care, Beth.” Nona fixes her with a meaningful look, and then pulls out another notepad and pen (does everyone have these except for Beth?) to scrawl a note, her handwriting spiky and hard enough to create ridges in the thin paper. “Oh, and if you’d like to play some correspondence while you're on your way to being World Champion, write here.”
Beth decides this is the best dinner she’s had in Moscow.