eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
"Not since White Knights of Reykjavik, George Steiner's riveting account of the 1972 world championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, has a writer demonstrated such stunning insight into the nurturing madness that compels chess play at the master level." - Publishers Weekly
At the opening of this amazing fiction from Paolo Maurensig, The Luneburg Variation, a cadaver is discovered, the body of a wealthy businessman from Vienna, apparently a suicide without plausible motivation. Next to the body is a chessboard made of rags with buttons for pieces whose positions on the board may hold the only clue. As the plot of this passionately colored, coolly controlled thriller unfolds, we meet two chess players—one a clever, persecuted Jew, the other a ruthless, persecuting German—who have faced each other many times before and played for stakes that are nothing less than life itself.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466896383 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 139 |
| File size: | 256 KB |
About the Author
Paolo Maurensig is an Italian businessman who had never written a book until The Luneburg Variation. He is the author of a second novel, which was published in Italy in 1996. He lives just outside of Udine.
Read an Excerpt
The Lüneburg Variation
By Paolo Maurensig, Jon Rothschild
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 1993 Adelphi edizioni s.p.a. MilanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9638-3
CHAPTER 1
They say that chess was born in bloodshed.
Legend has it that when the game was first presented to the court, the sultan decided to reward the obscure inventor by granting any wish he might have. The recompense requested seemed modest: the quantity of wheat that would result from putting a single grain on the first of the board's sixty-four squares, two grains on the second, four on the third, and so on.
At first the sultan gladly agreed, but when he realized that all the granaries of his kingdom, and perhaps of all the world, could not supply such an amount, he found it advisable to extricate himself from his predicament by having the poor inventor's head cut off.
The legend doesn't mention that the sovereign later paid an even higher price, becoming so enthralled by the new game that he lost his mind. The mythical inventor's greed, it turned out, was equaled only by that of the game itself.
* * *
Today's papers report the death of a man in a village not far from Vienna. Yesterday, Sunday morning, one Dieter Frisch succumbed to a gunshot wound. The medical examiner's report sets the time of death at 4 a.m., the result of a pistol shot fired at very close range, the bullet piercing the palate and exiting through the occipital lobe.
The newspaper accounts are accompanied by a recent photo of the deceased, shown relaxing in the grounds of his villa like a country squire just back from his daily walk. Dressed in light-colored linen, lounging in a wicker chair, he seems to be extending a hand to pet one of the two dogs huddled at his feet. I look at that picture and find it hard to recognize the face, shadowed as it is by the brim of what looks like a lightweight Panama hat. Is a man's physiognomy no more than an assemblage of mass and weight, the contours of a muscular structure? Or is there something more enduring, lying unchanged beneath the relentless layerings of time? Can it be that the person I knew lurks hidden beneath that name and that countenance? Only after a few moments' concentration do the features stored deep in my memory reemerge, like a transparency superimposed over that face eroded by age yet somehow still stubbornly youthful.
The headlines make much of the passing of this "eminent personality," but say nothing about how it actually happened. Under pressure from the family, staunchly opposed to the hypothesis of suicide, nearly all the papers speak of an "accident," "mishap," or death in "mysterious circumstances." Whatever the evidence may be, it becomes worthless in the absence of a plausible motive. Everyone who knew him seems prepared to swear that he had absolutely no reason to take his own life. He had never been depressed or listless. His latest checkup, a recent one, gave him a clean bill of health, and he was in enviable shape: at the age of sixty-eight still active in his favorite sports, tennis and horseback riding, despite a slight limp ever since an operation after an injury caused by a fall from a horse. Nor was there any hint of financial trouble. In fact, a few days ago he won a multimillion-dollar construction contract from the Bundesbank.
Frisch was one of those people upon whom fate seems to smile in every domain. He married a rich heiress and had four sons, all of whom now hold prominent social positions. He led a well-ordered, quiet life, spending four days a week in Munich managing his own business and returning on Friday to Vienna, to be driven to the place where he liked to spend all his free time: a villa ringed by a vast park in turn surrounded by a 125-acre game preserve. The property, built late in the eighteenth century, has long been a tourist attraction, open to the public in summer. Visitors are allowed to view the stud farm and stroll through the grounds, a true masterpiece of gardening and water management designed more than a century ago. The highlight is a concentric maze of ten-foot-high hedges leading to a chessboard-shaped clearing paved with squares of white and black marble. On opposite sides of the board, chess pieces have been painstakingly sculpted by pruning thick shrubs as tall as a man. The black pieces are of yew, the white of boxwood.
Like most people his age, Frisch was a creature of habit. On his three days a week in the villa he awoke promptly at seven-thirty and spent exactly five minutes in an indoor cold-water pool, followed by some calisthenics and a ritually meticulous toilet. At about eight o'clock, properly dressed, he would descend to the spacious sitting room for a frugal breakfast served on fine china: a cup of unsweetened black coffee and some whole-grain toast with a touch of marmalade. He would then withdraw to his study to spend the rest of the morning on his great passion, chess. He owned everything that had ever been written on the subject and boasted a precious collection of antique sets. Though he had not competed for years, he still held a master's ranking and was the editor of an authoritative chess magazine.
All evidence suggests that nothing ever impinged on his routine until that last Friday night. His driver picked him up at the station in Vienna as usual. They exchanged only a few words on the way back to the villa, where they arrived in the middle of the night — at a quarter to one to be exact. (The driver was always careful to time the trip.) Frisch got out of the car and, as always, went first to the dogs' compound, where he petted each of his "puppies," soothing their enthusiastic welcome. He then went into the house. Just as on every Friday.
But as early as Saturday morning his elderly housemaid noticed something strange in her master's behavior. Frisch looked as though he had slept little and badly. In fact, the woman was ready to swear that if he went to bed at all, he had not even undressed. Accustomed as she was to a clockwork household routine from which she herself took the greatest solace, she was alarmed by this sudden change in the master's habits.
Devoted servant that she was, however, she felt it was not her place to say anything to anyone, not even the other members of the staff. Nor did she inform Frisch's wife, partly because the couple occupied different wings of the villa and led what were effectively separate lives, appearing together only at rare official functions. According to the housemaid's account, Dr. Frisch ate no breakfast that morning, and his lunch, served at the usual hour, was returned untouched on the tray.
He seems to have spent the whole day alone in the house, receiving no visitors. Only when our witness came to serve him dinner in his study did she notice that a lamp had been turned on. It was still on when she fell asleep, at about two in the morning.
Well after eight o'clock on Sunday morning there was still no sign of Frisch. Concerned about the unusual delay, the maid went upstairs to the bedroom. Finding it empty and the bed not slept in, she thought at first that the master had spent the night elsewhere, though such was not his wont. She began to get suspicious when she saw that none of the cars was missing from the garage. She then knocked repeatedly at the study door, calling to him loudly. When she got no reply, she decided to go in, but found no one there. At that point she felt she had no choice but to wake Frisch's wife, a step not wholly without risk, since the lady of the house suffered from insomnia and was probably just then enjoying her first real repose.
The entire staff was soon mobilized to scour the twenty-eight rooms, the cellars, and the guest quarters, an unsuccessful search that was also extended to the grounds. Finally someone thought of bringing in the master's dogs. His two beloved German shepherds had been barking constantly all morning. When the first was turned loose, he darted straight for the garden labyrinth; the second, leashed, led them unhesitatingly to the spot. Frisch's body, supine in its own blood, lay in the center of the maze; his old army pistol was recovered a few feet away. The weapon was fitted with a silencer, and no one had heard the shot.
They looked in vain for a note, but all they found on his desk was a chess set in a complicated mid-game position.
It was a very strange board: light and dark patches of coarse cloth sewn together. Buttons of various sizes represented the pieces, symbols for each having been crudely scratched into the faces, apparently with a nail.
Of all the newspapers reporting the scene discovered by the first witnesses just one, a provincial sheet possibly short of firsthand information, commented on this apparently insignificant detail. Its article concluded: "No one will ever know why Dr. Frisch chose such a rag from his precious, renowned collection. Perhaps only to use it for his last match, with death."
None of the investigators suspected that the truth was shrouded in those vaguely melodramatic words. The strange chess pieces were of course dusted for prints, but removing them from the board obliterated what may have been the sole real clue — though I must admit it would have been hard to decipher.
* * *
Various scenarios have been suggested — suicide, accident, even the occasional whisper of crime — but no one has considered the possibility that Frisch's death was an execution, albeit deferred in space and time. Nor did anyone realize that his note was encoded in that chess position, and still less that it was addressed to the judge who had just sentenced him to die. No prints but the victim's were found on the pieces, but it was I who orchestrated the game. The chess set was mine, and I could reconstruct that position and play out all its variations blindfold. That defense, which Frisch had vainly tried to demolish from the summit of his prestigious magazine, was all that linked us to an evil nightmare of the past. That defense, which Frisch had the temerity to call the "Lüneburg variation," was the lead that enabled me to track him down.
Sentence was pronounced on Friday night, on the Munich–Vienna express.
* * *
As I said, every week Dieter Frisch went to his office in Munich for four days, leaving on Tuesday and returning to Vienna on the 7:20 express on Friday evening. He had been making the trip for years, and found the ride back especially welcome, since it afforded a few enjoyable hours of leisure. His usual companion was Mr. Baum, head of the Munich office, indispensable colleague, and friend since the bygone days of the war. They nearly always found a compartment all to themselves, and after drawing the curtains to discourage potential intruders, Mr. Baum would open his small traveling bag and take out a magnetized portable chess set. Thus began what had become the Friday night ritual. It made time pass in a flash. In fact, sometimes they couldn't even finish a game, since Mr. Baum got off one station before Frisch, who would spend the last forty-odd minutes alone, in pleasant contemplation of recent games.
Those who don't play chess may tend to think of it as a tedious game best suited to idle eccentrics and the elderly — people with vast patience and plenty of time to waste.
This is only partly true, for chess also requires uncommon energy and childlike mental vivacity. If players are sometimes portrayed as old men with furrowed brows, that is a merely symbolic depiction of an activity that consumes days, years, and even lifetimes in a single, unquenchable flame. Players relish the paradoxical compensation: time is forever frozen in a loop of the eternal present, while life away from the board comes to seem unbearably fast-paced. They therefore constantly seek to rediscover that state of grace, that nebulous yet limpid condition of dominion, that comes only from concentrating the mind on the game. Boredom? The chess player doesn't know the meaning of the word. Could a soldier on the attack feel even a flicker of boredom? In the whole history of chess only the great Capablanca must have felt something akin to it at the peak of his career, his play having become so perfect, and his confidence that he was unbeatable so unshakable, that he actually suggested modifying and enlarging the board, adding new pieces to make the game more challenging. But even he soon paid dearly for his sin of presumption.
Nearly everyone has sat at a board at one time or another, hefting the pieces, moving them back and forth along the squares, fascinated by the figures depicting a king, a queen, and a whole miniature army. Many have sampled the make-believe war, felt the thrill of victory and the humiliation of defeat. But only a few — call them chosen or cursed — have seen in these totemic sculptures a distant lineage from which they can never break free. Hans Mayer (my adopted son) and I are of that breed. I only hope that for Hans it is not too late, that in view of his youth he might yet emerge unscathed. I salute him for rededicating himself to painting and for leading a quiet life in which chess is no more than a pastime. But for me there is no escape, for I have little time left to live, and even death, I fear, will bring no release. Dieter Frisch, too, was part of this coterie. For many years he enjoyed complete security — new identity, new life, new career. It was his irresistible passion for chess that brought him down.
But let me go back a few days, to that Friday, a day that began so auspiciously for Frisch. His stays in Munich were a kind of vacation for him. He spent his nights with his lover in a cozy apartment on Ludwigstrasse that he'd bought for her a few years ago. Living with her forced him to alter his habits, though hardly against his will. Spartan mornings and frugal breakfasts gave way to lazy, somnolent nine o'clock awakenings followed by lavish Bavarian breakfasts, which for the most part he merely sampled. Only at around ten would he show up at the office, making an entrance like a lord visiting his fief, greeted by adoring vassals.
That morning he was awakened at eight-thirty by a phone call from Mr. Baum reminding him that his presence was required for the signing of an important contract.
He bounded out of bed and got ready, humming in the bathroom as usual. Hilda, his lover, made the inevitable plentiful breakfast, which Frisch enjoyed more than usual. It was such a beautiful day, bathed by a radiant sunshine befitting late May, that he decided not to avail himself of the car that waited for him at the door, punctual as always. Instead he dismissed the driver and walked.
He spent the morning ironing out details of the contract, remaining in the office for a good part of the midday break. (He enjoyed showing his dependents that he was not afraid of work.) At around two he and Mr. Baum retired to their usual restaurant, where he not only allowed himself a stein of beer instead of the customary apple juice but also decided to linger after eating — another inhabitual act — nursing a glass of iced Obstler with his friend.
By the time he got back to the office it was almost four. He left word with his secretary that he did not want to be disturbed for any reason, then stretched out on the handsome, scented leather sofa in his presidential suite and dozed off.
* * *
He awoke at six-thirty — or rather, was awakened by the insistent buzzing of the intercom.
"Dr. Frisch," his secretary said, "please be advised that it is now six-thirty."
"Yes, all right," Frisch replied, clearly irritated at having been caught napping. "I know what time it is." In fact he would have been only too happy to stay asleep, and even as he spoke was not quite sure he was fully awake.
"One other thing ..." the secretary ventured. "Someone was very insistent on speaking to you today. He phoned several times to say it was urgent that he see you."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know. He refused to give his name."
Frisch now realized that he wasn't dreaming. Having recovered from his moment of bewilderment, finding himself in his own clothes and his own familiar surroundings, he also recovered the full authority that was rightfully his.
"You know very well, Miss Hermes, that I grant no appointments on Friday, especially to someone who will not identify himself."
"Of course I know it," Miss Hermes replied, justifiably offended. She had worked for the firm for twenty-two years. "That's exactly why I felt bound to inform you."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Well," Miss Hermes replied, hesitating momentarily, "I had the impression he was trying to deceive me."
"Deceive you?"
"So it seemed. He claimed to be an old friend of yours. Or rather, he said he'd been 'sent' by an old friend."
"An old friend?"
"Precisely. But I fear this was only a means of acquiring information about your movements."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Lüneburg Variation by Paolo Maurensig, Jon Rothschild. Copyright © 1993 Adelphi edizioni s.p.a. Milan. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Begin Reading,
About the Author,
Copyright,