albeit a fine one). His unruly hair looked like it was always ready for a street battle, and he lacked full vision in his right eye. He loved to don an eye patch, but equally enjoyed switching the patch from one eye to the other, or even to remove it to see people struggle to know into which pupil to look. His poor vision meant he only did this when stationary, to avoid accidents. This was one of his many ideas of fun. Yet his strong, handsome features outweighed his quirks. He was a strapping six foot three and boasted a lean jaw, olive skin, mocha eyes, and a regulation fashion sense. However, he always donned at least one distinctive, unforgettable item on any given day. This might be a solid silver pocket watch (engraved, chiming, charming), or bright red socks; or, to complement a handlebar mustache, he would loop around his sinewy neck a gold chain with a miniature comb attached. He christened the comb “Jezebel” and would run her through his hirsute top lip.
Drago had flat feet and a tendency to waffle on about absolutely nothing for an age, often to complete strangers. But he had a huge heart. The whole town knew it, as he teased and trundled through his daily life without setting their world on fire.
Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders.
—Savielly Tartakower
May 1901. Near Sarajevo.
Most adults fell in love with Johan’s deep blue eyes, but his contemporaries at school preferred to concentrate on the size of his ash-blond mopped head, which was larger than average at best. At worst, he resembled a fugitive from Easter Island.
Johan walked with that six-year-old’s nongait, which, accentuated by the size of his head and pipe-cleaner legs, verged on a cute stagger.
Of his two passions, soccer and chess, he was far better at chess. With a ball, his will was strong, but not his art. His feet were way too small to keep his head from overstepping his center of gravity, and down he would come. His stock answer whenever some clever clogs informed him that he had fallen over was to slowly get up, dust himself off, and say that he was merely trying to break a bar of chocolate that he had in his back pocket.
On the chessboard, however, he could be nasty. His innocent blue eyes and waifish body masked a killer instinct. In front of the sixty-four squares, he was closer in spirit to Attila the Hun than to Little Lord Fauntleroy.
It must have been the size of that head.
In Johan’s ninth summer, Senad Pestic, the Bosnian grand master and stooping old Arab, came to a school ten miles away from Johan’s, on the southern slopes of Mount Igman, to play against all the best boys in the area. It was an annual event and Johan’s first time. The matches were scheduled for four-thirty, after school and at forty tables set up in a circle in the main hall.
One of Johan’s uncles, Toothless Mico, usually ferried him to chess meets, but tonight Johan wanted only one person to be there: his mother. She would be so proud of her only child, and the little boy always wanted to please her. But she was too busy selling the fruit of (and for) her feudal boss from a makeshift hut in the town square. He comforted himself that if he continued to progress at the game, before long he would be beating grand masters for fun.
The grand master would play games against all the boys simultaneously. The honor in being the last to lose was immense, and legends could grow around boys who had come close to victory. No one from the area had ever beaten the old genius. Each board had a rudimentary clock to the right of the set, on the old guy’s side, consisting of oversized hourglasses, egg timers, and abaci. Each board had a different-shaped bean counter, loaned from the classrooms. Every time the sands of time ran out on a player, a bean was shifted.
Heads! Johan won the flip of a coin and chose white.
Good versus evil, Johan chanted inside his skull, as if the future of mankind depended on him. Good versus evil.
After twenty revolutions, some boys had been humiliated and were back in the schoolyard kicking their heels or being herded home by their shamed parents. Not Johan Thoms. His stubborn little legs did not even reach the floor from his seat. He pulled his socks up to below his bare knees every ten minutes or so and waited for his enemy to approach. He left one shoelace untied, for that, to the superstitious boy, represented Pestic—“the one Johan Thoms would famously undo.”
The grand master spent more time at Johan’s table than at any of the others, and Johan’s confidence grew as he realized he was at least doing better than his contemporaries.
The little boy (white) had adopted the Oleg Defense. Pestic (black) was wide-eyed at this feisty approach; one had to know the play in depth, its history, its options and permutations, if one were to succeed.
Johan made the crusty old codger scratch his manky head. That, though, could easily have been a flea, causing some bother at the funeral of one of his thousand or so relatives whose ancestors had made this genius their home a decade before.
Johan heard the vile twin curses idi u kurac2 and tizi pizdun3 for the first time that day, as Fleabag glanced up to look at Johan’s eyes, right, left, right, left, as if to double-check that the boy knew what he was doing. Young Johan rolled his eyes.
Johan had placed his knights centrally, to offer control of the whole board before a forced exchange from Pestic. Each player was now left with only one.
Pieces were now traded at a steady pace. Johan felt that if he had the choice of either position—his or Pestic’s—he would take his own.
Queens made their way into the action.
Pestic surveyed the battlefield, from a lofty height, in a scabby gray suit with bobbles of worsted around the elbows and collar. His chin shoved through white whiskers. His mouth was uneven, his lips were badly chapped, and his teeth leaned erratically, like brown tombstones. Greasy wisps of gray-and-silver hair grew randomly across his skull. His crown generously shed itself onto the back line of his pawn’s defense. This tall, bent, skinny wretch had clearly thrown his lot into the game he loved. His shirt looked as if some poor soul had tried to scrub it clean. His mauve tie was badly knotted, and was no longer at the apex of his collar as he returned again to Johan. He looked like he had lost a love, and had never recovered. His brown eyes, however, were clear and youthful, and did not hide the fierce intelligence behind them.
* * *
Only half a dozen boys remained.
Old Fleabag now had to pull up a seat for each visit to Johan’s board.
Johan sneaked in a castle maneuver. Fleabag followed. His clock ticked. Both clocks ticked, but Johan’s seemed to him to move in slow motion.
Hmm, thought Johan. Flea by name, flee by nature . . .
Johan’s neurons were firing as he offered an exchange which, when accepted, left the boy a pawn up.
Johan consolidated with a centrally placed queen covering his outlying pieces.
Everything was now under the cover of a compatriot piece. He had never before lined up such a defense (which by its very nature, was morphing into an attack).
Cometh the hour, cometh the urchin.
Johan spotted a trap, revealing an undiscovered check which left him a major piece up, as well as his pawn advantage. He then eagerly exchanged queens, to whittle away any remaining leverage from Fleabag.
If the game had been halted now, Johan Thoms would have been crowned champion. He was way ahead. He (white) held a centrally placed rook, a white-squared bishop, a knight, and five pawns.
Pestic (black) had four pawns, a black-squared bishop, and a rook.
*