Chapter Text
Prologue
In the vast white of the endless night, in the dreamless realm of dreams, I searched for you in vain.
Never again have I seen your shadow.
I would beg for a single dream — but there, no dreams exist.
When Svetlana Sergievsky stepped out of her husband’s house, anger had already consumed her mind; whatever sense of duty or pity remained in her heart was gone. It was entirely because of his outrageous insult. Before his lawful wife, he wrapped a strip of black crepe around his arm and announced that he would mourn his wife.
Svetlana was bewildered and asked what was wrong with his head.
Calmly, he said he was no longer her husband.
“You really have lost your mind!” she said.
As she walked back to her own house, she pressed her lips tight and held back tears. Svetlana began to question herself: knowing full well there was no longer any affection left for her in him, why did she still insist on visiting him, checking if he was all right? She looked up at the sky. It was still faintly bright—light filtering through a veil of black. She did not know how long the white nights would last, but the thought of the black crepe made her uneasy, so she lowered her head and quickened her pace in silence.
On the way, she passed Molokov and his agents. He asked if she had just come from her husband’s place.
“He’s gone mad,” she said. “He’s in mourning for his mistress.”
Everyone knew Anatoly Sergievsky was openly mourning his lover as if she were his wife. But no one knew what had truly happened before that.
When Svetlana sat in her room and looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a face that was sorrowful but dignified. She had always given the impression of gentle resilience. She was one of those who spoke little, yet even without a smile, people felt as though her heart was smiling—so that one could not help but feel a kind of warmth toward her.
In more than ten years of marriage, Svetlana had earned the affection of all her friends and the devotion of her children—only to lose her husband’s heart. Of course, no one blamed her for it.
Not even Anatoly Sergievsky himself.
The day before Svetlana went to see him, Anatoly himself had no idea what astonishing act he would soon commit. He had gone to bed fully dressed and did not know how long he had slept, since the only timepiece in the house was his chess clock. When he finally got up, he felt the dull ache and weakness of a body that had overslept. Anatoly thought little of it; his heart was far more exhausted than his body.
Twelve hours later, he returned home clutching a strip of black crepe. During that time, many had seen him at the café playing chess, and others had seen him buying bottles of wine on his way back. He greeted acquaintances as usual, merely nodding lightly when someone passed. Everyone knew his solitary temperament; some, seeing him carry alcohol home for once, thought this self-restrained man must be in rather good spirits.
Anatoly Sergievsky was wearing a light khaki suit and a white polo shirt—the same outfit he had worn at the last World Chess Championship. It was unlike his usual taste. During the forty-one years he had lived in the Soviet Union before his defection, people were used to seeing him in black or gray, sitting by the chessboard with a pensive expression.
From the time he learned to play chess at age five during the Siege of Leningrad, he had gradually revealed his prodigious talent, until people regarded him as the only hope to defeat the American player Frederick Trumper and reclaim the crown that had always belonged to the Soviet masters. Even Mikhail Tal had praised his skill:
“You don’t need every move to be brilliant—just better than your opponent’s. And Sergievsky always defeats you with a harmony of logic and imagination.”
Anatoly had loved chess because it was the only realm in which his self could wander freely under political oppression. He remembered once, during a university course on dialectical theory, he had been so sleepy he began sketching a chessboard on his notebook and silently playing against himself—until the lecturer suddenly called on him to answer, ‘How do you understand essence and phenomenon?’
He froze; he hadn’t heard the question at all. The next day, the Party secretary(There are Party branches in various institutions. ) summoned him, lectured for half an hour, and finally sighed at his unresponsive face:
“All right then, comrade—you’re a chess player!”
In that moment, Anatoly knew no one could ever read the rebellion hidden inside his chess.
When Svetlana came to his house, she found him amid scattered bottles, a chessboard by the bed, and vomit on the floor. She had no doubt that he could have choked to death in his sleep. She couldn’t understand why a man who never drank had suddenly been dead drunk. She woke him; he looked at her with bloodshot eyes and asked why she had come.
“I came to see if you were all right,” she said.
Anatoly gave a bitter smile. “Come now—we both know you’re here out of pity.”
For a moment, Svetlana didn’t know what to say. Deep down, she knew he was right. Her pity for him was what gave her the strength to go on living.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
Anatoly had gone to the café. Alexander Alekhine could easily recall the younger man. As a player devoted to originality and famed for his unorthodox style, Alekhine admired the way Anatoly fused reason with imagination.
“He treats chess as art,” Alekhine said.
He remembered clearly how they had once played a slow game lasting five hours, then four games of blind chess afterward. A good opponent had always lifted their spirits. He also knew Anatoly carried some deep disquiet within him but thought it was merely the discomfort of exile. Alekhine cited his own example: that living abroad was no tragedy for a Russian; what mattered was the game.
Anatoly explained that his unease had other causes—but whatever those causes were, he did not wish to speak of them.
“Very well,” Alekhine said. “Let’s just talk about chess.”
Anatoly tried to focus, but he couldn’t ignore a middle-aged man moving among the players. The man had brown hair and a slightly heavy build; when he walked, his steps landed with deliberate force, as though each one were too heavy, making him waddle faintly like a penguin. Yet his footsteps were not loud—he seemed to tread hard precisely to avoid making sound. His face was ordinary, but in it Anatoly recognized a familiar stubborn light. It shone not from any single feature but from the combination of bright, fixed eyes, high cheekbones, and a slightly protruding chin.
Alekhine followed Anatoly’s gaze, thought for a moment, and said the man was Hungarian.
“They put their family names first—like the Chinese,” he said, chuckling.
He did not know how deeply that sentence struck Anatoly. Anatoly could hardly believe in such coincidence; he felt as if he stood on the brink of truth, close enough to touch it—yet he hesitated, uncertain if he had the courage to know.
No one knew when the café had first been built. As long as anyone could remember, it had been a gathering place for top chess players and their spectators. At first, it was a brick-and-stone building with a wooden sign over the door reading The Jackdaw Café. Some thought it must have been founded in Kafka’s era or later. Eventually it had electricity, then concrete walls and coffee machines—though hand-ground coffee was still served. It kept expanding, and some suspected it would one day rise into a full building called The Jackdaw Café.
There were many players, many spectators, countless guests coming and going. Yet it was this middle-aged man with the defiant glint in his eyes who caught Anatoly’s gaze.
If Anatoly had been a man capable of enduring the torture of silence forever, he would never have chosen to defect from the Soviet Union. The third time he looked up and saw the man, he finally could not help himself—he stood and walked toward him.
The man seemed surprised that Anatoly should approach but greeted him politely, shaking his hand and praising his play. Anatoly, expressionless, spoke a few words in English, learning the man’s name was Vassy Zoltán—Zoltán Vassy in Russian order. Suddenly Anatoly asked if his wife’s name was Ilona.
The answer was yes.
Then, with a sharp cramp twisting his stomach like a knife, Anatoly asked,
“Do you have a daughter—her name in English is Florence? She was ten in Budapest, 1956.”
When he heard the answer, Anatoly said nothing more. He walked out of the café, ignoring Mr. Vassy’s invitation to visit his home and meet his wife.
He saw a city full of flowers, yet he could not catch the scent of his rose.
He held the chess pieces in his hands but no longer knew what move to make.
He bought bottles of wine—only yearning for a dream.
When Svetlana heard of his wish to dream, she said in astonishment,
“But none of us dream anymore!”
Anatoly stood silent for a moment, as if still half lost in the haze of sleep. Then he turned away and began to search for the strip of black crepe he had asked his mother for—that was right after he had first awoken to find no dream awaiting him. He had stumbled to her house, dazed, and startled her.
“Your hand is burning hot, Tolya,” she had said. “Are you feverish?”
He waved her off and hurried home, desperately trying once more to sink back into dreams.
Now, awakened from his second attempt, he calmly wrapped the black crepe around his arm, loop after loop.
Svetlana was on the verge of tears. She begged Anatoly to tell her what he meant to do.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “I’m in mourning for my wife.”
“Your wife is standing right in front of you!”
“Not you,” he said.
He lifted a queen from the chessboard, set it gently aside, and, filled with pain and a strange solemn tenderness, said,
“You know I loved her. I’m not your husband anymore.”
To her, it was the cruelest, most humiliating act he had ever committed. Trembling with rage, fists clenched, she turned and stormed out of his house.