The Hidden Letters of Velta B. by Gina Ochsner Read Free Book Online Page A

would not move a knight onto a black square and I usually castled my king, hedging him in as soon as I could. You can imagine what a horrible player I was. But my lack of skill worked to my personal advantage. In less than a week, the regional open chess tournament was to be held in the hall and I could spend more time with Jutta.
    Everyone was talking about it—even people who didn’t care for chess—for nothing quite this important had taken place at the hall in a long time. Every afternoon Jutta showed me opening moves: the gambits, the King’s and Queen’s Indian, the Nimzo-Indian, and explained to me again and again the importance of controlling the two key middle squares. Then we practiced closing moves—Greco’s Mate, the Smothered Mate, Blackburne’s Mate, Anastasia’s Mate—until Jutta was satisfied I could hold my own with the other beginners and maybe even a few of the intermediate players. Each afternoon we did this while Mrs. Ilmyen studied Latvian grammar texts on account of the language law. Mrs. Ilmyen already had her nursing credential. She worked both at a clinic in Balvi and the one here in town, but she said she needed to prove her fluency in Latvian if she wanted to get a promotion. If any of this was bothering Jutta, she did not show it—that’s how good at suffering she was, concentrating all her attention on those black-and-white chess pieces. Each piece, she said, was like a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, each combination of moves and pieces spelled different phrases, the words to different outcomes. But the more I looked at the board, the fuzzier it became, squares and pieces swimming before my eyes. One day, just a week before the big tournament when I thought I’d never have a genius moment in my life and that this was my particular suffering, I discovered I’d trapped Jutta quite suddenly in a Smothered Mate. She was so kind as to allow me to believe I had orchestrated this all by myself. “Well, well.” Mr. Ilmyen beamed behind his glasses when he saw the board, and later he patted me on the shoulder as I squeezed past him through their front door.
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    One night Uncle sat with your grandfather on the divan, a half-empty bottle wedged in the cushion between them. They were watching a low-budget Russian shock-news program. Filmed from the passenger’s seat of a careening news-station car, the show captured the day’s most cataclysmic or grisly events, most of which were car accidents involving hapless pedestrians knocked clean out of their shoes.
    When the potatoes were done, I laid out the table as Mother called the men to dinner.
    â€œYou’re not getting drunk, are you?” She grinned ferociously at Uncle Maris, but her slate-gray eyes were as hard as flint.
    â€œOh, Biruta. Calm down.” Uncle laughed. “Drunks are people, too, you know. Young men get drunk because they don’t know who they are; old men get drunk because they do.” In each hand Uncle held a bottle of vitamins. As he spoke, he shook the bottles, underscoring each word with a percussive rattle.
    â€œI beat Jutta Ilmyen today in chess,” I whispered to Mother, my clumsy attempt to steer the conversation to safer topics.
    â€œOh, Inara!” Mother said, her eyes shiny.
    Uncle Maris tapped his fork on his plate. “So tell me—who are these Ilmyens?”
    â€œNobody,” Rudy said.
    â€œNeighbors,” I said.
    â€œBut not Latvian?”
    â€œWell . . . ,” Father hedged.
    â€œSo why do you go over there so much?” Uncle Maris asked me.
    I rolled my eyes heavenward and sighed. “They’re God’s chosen people, which is to say they are special, which is to say they are expert in the art of suffering. They are also very smart.”
    â€œWell, if they’re so special and smart, why do Mr. Ilmyen’s elbows show through his sleeves?” Rudy piped up.
    Uncle Maris smiled