A Sort of Love Story Part Three: Little Capablanca

by Travis Cravey

Marcel Ardivan

Peter Cortez learned how to play chess as a boy from his grandfather, Reynaldo, who watched after him while his parents worked. Reynaldo would take him to the Calle Ocho café near Domino Park and tell Peter to sit while the older Cuban men would complain bitterly about the past, drink coffee, and play chess. Reynaldo would occasionally wave the boy over, point at the board, and ask him, “What do you suggest, little Capablanca?” The men would laugh and Reynaldo would kiss Peter’s forehead and push him back to his chair.

After the third time, Reynaldo and Peter returned home, and Peter asked, “Who is Capablanca?”

“The greatest chess master of all time. The greatest Cuban of all time, as well.” Reynaldo went to his book case and pulled out a thin hardback, titled Chess Fundamentals by World Champion José Raúl Capablanca.

“Read that,” the old man had said.

So the next time they went to the café, Peter, while basking in the praise and obvious pride of his grandfather, would diligently stare at the book’s chess diagrams, and wonder at the strange writing within.

It would take Peter a whole summer to play every game in the book on the chess board his parents bought him, take another eight years to finally beat his grandfather. He was nineteen, visiting on spring break from college, and when his grandfather resigned, all the old men at the Calle Ocho cheered. Reynaldo cried, proudly saying, “¡Mijo, el pequeño Capablanca!” to all the other men.

A few years later, when Reynaldo died, several of the old men from that day shook the hand of a now grown Peter, crying and laughing as they told him that his grandfather mentioned him every time they sat, how his grandson would someday be as great as Capablanca. Peter smiled, thanked the men before their families helped them away. Peter would never be Capablanca, never be a master. If all the study had taught him anything, it was that the old men were average players at best, and that he was barely above average.

In college Peter had kept a chess board in his room, as much to impress any woman who came in as to play. He continued to play, sporadically, as he grew older, married, and started a business. As he settled into his forties, he was telling his nephew a story about Reynaldo one Saturday afternoon and became nostalgic.

“You should join a club,” his wife had said. Peter nodded, but he knew that he wasn’t good enough to play against real players, that he had neither the skill nor the ego needed to play and lose in front of others.

Then one day, while paging through a chess magazine at the bookstore, he first heard of correspondence chess. It seemed to fit his needs: it favored strategic play over tactical, and could be played far away from judging eyes.

And now he was walking away from it. He was sad. The board made him think of his family, of his grandfather. But it also made him think of her, how she’d gently tease him as he pondered a move.

But that was past. Peter had written the Chess Association his resignation, sent his opponents one last card, briefly describing his intent to resign and play no more. All had been polite or sympathetic, seldom both. It didn’t matter. They had their own lives, their own worries. That some man in North Carolina was having a rough time mattered very little.

One opponent had angrily written back, though, and Peter regretted that he knew why. Mike Hollis, from somewhere outside Philadelphia, had yet to acknowledge Peter’s resignation because Peter had sent a move to him a few days before deciding not to prolong the game. Hollis wrote to Peter that he was irritated, having wasted time on a game that he did not wish to be over, a game that he demanded be continued.

Peter wished that he had not been so careless with Hollis, but assured himself that his thoughtlessness was not purposeful and promised himself that he would write another note to Hollis as soon as he had a moment. It was all, Peter told himself, surely a simple misunderstanding.