The Chess Lesson
My father taught me chess,
My mother taught me Go,
Brother taught me stress,
Only I could teach my soul.
When one stands back and looks at it with their head to the side, it looks like a game. It is really hard to say whether or not there is supposed to be a winner or if this game is just some sort of lesson for some child-god.
He had, when he was younger and doing a bit of schooling, learned to play chess. It is a most historical game, played in the halls of the Persian princes and underneath the gilded archways of the palace at Versailles. To learn the game was surprisingly simple; pawn moves forward, queen moves every which way, and the knight moved in twos and ones. To play the game and win was a completely different matter.
That is what this looks like. It looks like that ratty old chess board in the public école's gardener's shed two blocks away from the orphanage, the wooden pieces chipped and dyed with ink. His friend – a black boy from the African colonies – plunks his pieces down carelessly in the memory with his large, strong fingers, the south sun beating in through the rough-cut window.
His pieces screamed of his incompetence for he was terrible at chess and his dark opponent was so strong; he always went into the game thinking maybe there was a miracle to be found. The miracle was never found. His strong, African friend had always beaten him, no matter how hard he had planned his attack.
And, there as he stands tied to a post years since he had last played chess, he takes no small wonder in how they have missed the simplest concept of chess's war. His hands stretch themselves against the bonds as he sees the board and pieces come to life from his memories like some great painting and book.
It seems, to him and his chess analogy, that the red already have the black cornered. The red had somehow started off with a hundred more pawns than the black, and, slowly, the pawns are all becoming individual queens. He imagines his hands moving, scurrying about the board with his black pieces, trying to fend off these renegade queens. His flighty, nifty knight has been taken out behind enemy lines and a rook cries out with its stony loyalty as it dies, cornered.
The African boy looks at him over the other end of the board. "You want too much," he says in his slow, soothing tone; "You should conserve; you are too hasty."
He thinks of his child-self bristling and his gypsy tongue wagging back: "I'm not a slate for you to write! My own blood will paint my canvas."
Drawing his lips so his smooth skin dimples on his cheeks, the boy shakes his head and checkmates him. "You, mon ami, dream too hard and too fast. I have to make you this demonstration."
Back out here, he notices the leader boy watching him, and he wonders at what he sees. He almost opens him mouth, almost says:
"Stop the game while you can, mon ami. You are dreaming too hard and too fast."
A new volley shakes the air. He watches the leader boy duck with the rest and smiles to his chess pieces, scurrying about the board. They don't take any notice of him or his stretching hands.
He says under his breath as he watches the leader boy, "Your own blood will paint your canvas; that's your dream, is it not?"
And Javert suddenly finds himself thoroughly disappointed.
The world hasn't changed at all.