The secrets of the chess.., p.17
The Secrets of the Chess Machine, page 17
Soon loud complaints were heard to the effect that the chess-playing automaton was not a machine at all but was guided by a human hand – after all, a machine would always have won. Kempelen invited his accusers to performances to see for themselves that the cabinet with the chessboard on top was empty, and so was the Turkish dummy, no mirrors were fitted inside it, and there were no invisible wires either under or above the table-top working Pasha’s hand like the wires operating a marionette. Magnetism was at work, they cried, until Kempelen allowed one sceptic to put a strong magnet beside the chessboard or the mysterious casket, as he liked, and it made no difference whatsoever to the Turk’s play. He also complied with a request to remove himself from the vicinity of the cabinet and the casket and, amidst the laughter of the guests, he once left the room entirely and went to get himself some refreshment, while the automaton played on even in its creator’s absence.
Jakob caught a young fellow trying to blow Spanish snuff into one of the Turk’s nostrils in order to make the supposed man inside sneeze and thus give himself away. With Branislav’s assistance, Jakob turned this young spark unceremoniously out. Another time Tibor ate something that disagreed with him and gave him wind, and after his farts had entirely enveloped him inside the machine, they made their way out, so that the spectators in the front rows noticed the smell and asked whether the Turk had been overindulging in the caraway of its native land.
Ibolya Baroness Jesenak came to two of the performances. Tibor knew she was there before she could be heard or seen from inside the cabinet, merely by the delicious fragrance of her perfume. After she came for the second time, Anna Maria informed Kempelen that he must forbid the widow Jesenak to enter the house and tell her to stop flirting with him, whereupon husband and wife fought a brief but bitter battle from which Anna Maria emerged victorious. Wolfgang von Kempelen sent a note to Ibolya Jesenak in which, with regret, he asked her to refrain from further visits.
Hiring Elise turned out to have been a good idea. Her cheerful if rather quiet nature made her presence about the house much more agreeable than Dorottya’s. Anna Maria gave her the job of tidying up the workshop after performances – though only when the Turk was locked in its room or under the supervision of Jakob, who found it a welcome assignment.
After the last performance before Easter, while she was sweeping up around the empty chess machine, he sat at the window sketching a portrait of her in charcoal, so that he had an excuse to keep looking at her.
‘How does it work?’ she asked suddenly.
Jakob looked up from his sketch.
‘How does the machine work?’ she repeated.
‘By a complicated mechanism,’ replied Jakob.
‘How can any mechanism play chess?’
‘It’s a very, very, very complex mechanism.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘What do you know about these things?’
‘Nothing. But I just can’t imagine it.’
‘It’s so, all the same.’
‘It’s not,’ Elise insisted.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
Jakob put his paper and charcoal down. ‘Very well, you win. It’s not.’
‘So?’
‘So I mustn’t tell you how it works, and you know that too.’
Elise put her broom down and took a couple of steps towards him. She glanced at the drawing. ‘That’s lovely.’
‘Not half as lovely as the model.’
Elise blushed and looked down. When she had composed herself, she said, ‘Do tell me. Please.’
‘Kempelen would wring both our necks.’
‘I won’t tell anyone else, I promise I won’t. Cross my heart.’
Jakob sighed.
‘Please, Jakob.’
‘Not for nothing.’
‘What do you want?’
With his finger on his lips, Jakob told her. ‘A kiss.’
‘To think you… the devil I will!’ replied the indignant Elise. She picked up her broom and went on sweeping. Jakob shrugged and returned to his sketch. Elise swept the floor for a while, watching Jakob out of the corner of her eye, then abruptly dropped the broom, went up to him and brushed his cheek in a quick kiss. After that, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘There you are.’
‘Are you trying to fool me?’ asked Jakob. ‘When I say a kiss, I mean a kiss. Not a goodnight peck.’
Elise looked sulky, and once again came closer for the kiss. When their lips touched, Jakob reached out to hold her by her shoulders. At first the maid resisted, then, for a sweet moment, she gave way, but finally she pushed him back again.
‘There, did that hurt?’ asked Jakob, smiling.
‘So now, how does the Turk function?’
Jakob signed to her to sit down, and she went to sit by the window with him. He moved a little closer to her and lowered his voice. ‘Do you know that some people say there’s a human being hidden inside the cabinet?’
Elise quickly nodded.
‘Well, they’re not altogether wrong.’
And then Jakob gave her his version of the truth about the chess-playing automaton: the Turk, he said, wasn’t really a wooden dummy but a real human being, a genuine, stuffed and glossily painted Turk, a dead Ottoman chess grandmaster whom he and Kempelen had stolen one night from a mausoleum in Constantinople and who had been brought back to life by the rituals of a priest of Pantheism from the Caribbean Islands. They had cut out his brain first and filled the cavity with sawdust, all but those of its meanderings that were necessary for playing chess, so now the living corpse could do nothing else. The Turk, he said, could be woken from sleep by means of a simple magic spell, and vice versa – but by now, Elise had stopped listening and cuffed Jakob’s head for his impertinence in stealing a kiss and then dishing up such a tall tale. She left the workshop in a state of high indignation. Jakob was still laughing long after the door had closed behind her.
Easter came, and on Good Friday Tibor slipped out of the house with the help of the key he had made. Jakob had replaced the stilt-like shoes that Tibor had abandoned in the Zuckermandel district and mended the torn coat. This disguise worked even in daylight, and no one paid any attention to the dwarf, who now, with a three-cornered hat on his head to keep off the rain, made pilgrimage from Donaugasse to St Saviour’s Church in Franziskanergasse.
A one-legged beggar was sitting on the church steps, close to the wall for shelter from the rain, his crutches on his lap and a bowl for alms in front of him. His right temple was criss-crossed with ugly scars. Tibor was searching for coins in his pocket – the beggar was looking another way – when a memory came back to him. He knew this man. Tibor hastily walked on with his face averted before the beggar could turn, and disappeared into the church. He stopped in the porch. The man had been none other than Walther, his comrade in the dragoons, the man who had saved his life in the Kunersdorf Hills and whom, like the rest of his column, he had last seen at Torgau. Walther had had two legs and a handsome face then. A grenade must have left the poor devil like this. How long ago it all was! He would happily have given Walther something, but he didn’t want his old comrade to know that he was here.
St Saviour’s was very much smaller than the cathedral, although the exterior was in the same massive style, but the interior was whitewashed and had gilded leaves and angels adorning many nooks and crannies, so that, in spite of the gloomy light, the church glowed. Tibor mopped the rain off his shoulders and went in. An organ was playing. He looked around. He had really meant to pray to the Madonna first and then make confession, but when the door in the side aisle opened again, Anna Maria von Kempelen came into the church with Terez, while Elise shook out their umbrella just outside the door. They mustn’t see him. Tibor fled into the nearby confessional. He could see out through its coarse wickerwork side without being seen. He’d wait here until the three of them had left the church again. The priest spoke to him, and Tibor began his confession.
When Elise and Terez appeared right outside the confessional, he was startled, stammered and fell silent. Surely Kempelen’s maid wasn’t going to confess? If she was, then she’d wait until he had finished and she would be bound to see him! No, she was helping Terez to sit down in a pew, and then knelt beside the child to pray. Tibor breathed a sigh of relief and went on with his confession. As he did so, he watched Elise, and the sight made him keep stumbling over his words. He had guessed that she was a God-fearing girl, and here was the proof of it. At least the women in Kempelen’s household hadn’t abjured their religion. And how vulnerable she looked with her eyes closed and her delicate mouth shaping silent prayers! As she did so, she was holding – here Tibor narrowed his eyes to see better – his amulet of the Madonna. Without a doubt, it was the chain from Reipzig that he had lost during the scuffle in the Weidritz streets. She must have found it in the road: the sole memento of the unknown and ugly man who came to her aid in her hour of need. Tibor wasn’t listening to the priest any more. A wave of warmth passed through his body. He didn’t emerge from his ecstatic state until Anna Maria joined the other two, and Terez squealed loud enough to be heard all over the church. Then the two women moved away with the child between them.
Tibor watched until they were out of sight, and then finally answered the priest’s question. ‘No, Father, that’s all.’
He received his penance and absolution, made sure that Elise and the others had gone and then went over to the Madonna. Elise had found his amulet, and now she was presumably wearing it around her neck, over her breasts. Tibor was happy. He knelt down in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary and thanked her for this dispensation of Providence. Then he prayed.
The strong colours of the statue of the Madonna stood out from the white background of the church: the brown of her hair, the red of her dress and the dark blue of her gold-lined cloak. In her left arm she was carrying the infant Jesus, who held a bright red apple in his hands. Her head was devoutly bent as always, so that she looked into the eyes only of someone who was either kneeling in front of her or as small as Tibor. Her hair was parted neatly in the middle and covered with a white veil only at the back of her head, so that it fell loose over her shoulders like frozen waves. The hair was carved from wood and painted, but Tibor imagined it as fragrant and silky soft. Her hands had no wrinkles or marks on them, her fingers were so slender that every one of them was a work of art. Her free right hand rested on the cloak – how wonderful it must be to feel that hand stroking you, to clasp those fingers with your own as they twined together like two perfect cogwheels, and then, with the back of your hand, to caress her regular brow, her cheeks flushing under that touch, her red lips opening slightly, sending out warm, moist breath, your touch moving over her throat and the hollow of her shoulders, the slight curve of her collarbone and, finally, going on down to the neck of the dress, draped into folds everywhere except over the breasts, which stood out under it as distinctly as her thighs. Her feet, peeping out from under the hem of her dress, were bare, so why not her thighs too? One movement of his hand and the blue cloak would be removed, another would loosen the red dress, its material would slip soundlessly down to the floor, caressing all those wonderful curves, just as his hands and his lips would soon caress them too…
Tibor gasped for breath as if he had stayed under water too long. He felt the arousal in his crotch, warm, pleasant, demanding – and so unspeakably low and vulgar, so unlike his real self. He staggered out of the church with his tricorne pulled far down over his face to hide his shame. Even the rain couldn’t quench Tibor’s lust. It went away only when he had vomited beside the wall of a building. Tibor hurried back to his room, not caring whether Elise or anyone else saw him, tore off his coat and his shirt and wondered how he could atone for such perversity – for prayer was no solution. Who was going to hear his prayer now? He even turned his rosary the chessboard upside down and took the crucifix off the wall. Then his glance fell on the watchmaking tools on his table, the little files, saws and pincers, miniature copies of the instruments of torture in Hell, and Tibor used them now with a view to escaping Hell hereafter. He drove them into his body where no one would see the marks later, cut and tore his skin until he was bleeding and his eyes were swimming with tears, and when he couldn’t go on any longer, he implored God again and again to forgive him for his degenerate desires. He half-heartedly bound up his wounds and fell into a feverish sleep – on the hard floor, so as not to alleviate his pain and to make sure he would leave no blood on the sheets.
The Palais Grassalkovich
On the occasion of the wedding at Versailles of Princess Maria Antonia, or Marie Antoinette as she was known in France, to the Dauphin Louis XVI, Prince Anton Grassalkovich, head of the Royal Hungarian Chamber, invited the Hungarian and German nobility to a ball at his summer palace on the Kohlenmarkt. Among the guests would be Duke Albert of Sachsen-Teschen and his wife Archduchess Christine, as well as Prince-Bishop Batthyany the Primate, Prince Esterhazy, Counts Palffy, Erdody, Apponyi, Vitzay, Csaky, Zapary, Kutscherfeld and Aspremont, Field Marshal Nadasdy-Fogaras and many more. There would be a dinner, a ball and, finally, a fireworks display. In between the dinner and the ball, the Prince wished to surprise his illustrious guests with an exhibition of the chess automaton, and he and Wolfgang von Kempelen had agreed at the Royal Chamber that the Turk would perform.
Grassalkovich’s surprise was a great success, and the applause for Kempelen and his chess machine in the Conference Hall of the palace was more than enthusiastic. When it came to choosing one of the guests as an opponent for the Turk, Grassalkovich invited Field Marshal Nadasdy-Fogaras to play in recognition of his military achievements. The grey-haired officer declined with thanks; he was far too old, he said, to challenge such a modern machine. Instead, he passed the honour on to a lieutenant in his regiment who was well known for his great skill at the game of chess: Janos Baron andrássy.
Baron andrássy was the first of the android’s opponents who set out not just to avoid defeat but to win, and he played even more aggressively than the Turk itself used to play: disregarding all losses, he commanded his red troops to advance, and the foot soldiers marched through the enemy lines in wedge formation. The red fusiliers fell in great numbers where they were not protected by andrássy’s cavalry, but he had broken through the white lines, and the opposing king was suddenly exposed and could save himself only by castling. Andrássy’s general went in pursuit, the officers crossed the field of battle and kept escaping the attacks of White, the Turk’s soldiers and officers were forced to the sides of the board. Andrássy seemed sure of victory, but he could no longer reach the white king, who had entrenched himself behind his guns where even the cavalry could not reach him.
And now White prepared to strike back, and the battle swung the other way. The few remaining red infantrymen were mown down, their officers were surrounded in the centre of the board. Andrássy now paid the heavy price for sacrificing all his fusiliers in the attack: even the least of the white soldiers overcame the red officers, while the Turk’s cavalry gave them cover, often in ranks of two or three, thus thwarting all possible attempts at revenge. Finally, only andrássy’s general was defending his king, but the battlefield was now open to the force of his guns, and they shot down everything in their way. Avoiding the line of fire, a white cavalryman approached the last cannon and finally took it, but a little later fell himself, cut down by the general. At the end of the skirmish, the casualties of both armies lay to right and left, red with blood and white as death, and the two kings and their generals stood on the battlefield minus their followers, lurking in opposite corners and negotiating a truce with gritted teeth, infuriated by each other’s good fortune in war. For company they had only two lost infantrymen, one white and one red, who seemed unable to realize that they had escaped the fray unscathed while all their comrades lay around them.
The game ended in a draw and two losers – or rather, two winners, for the applause for Janos Baron andrássy and Wolfgang von Kempelen’s chess-playing Turk was deafening. Even those who were unfamiliar with the rules of the game had instinctively understood which moves were bad for their favourite and which good, and the whole hall had applauded when andrássy removed a white piece from the board and groaned when the Turk took its revenge. Some of the ladies even left the hall during the game to spare their nerves, others escaped to the balcony. And what a bloody battle it had been! A piece was taken on one side or the other at every second move. Visually, andrássy had made a brave opponent for the Turk as well! Although he was sitting at a separate table, as soon as the hussar made a move he looked into the android’s false eyes, and a smile kept playing around his lips beneath his black moustache, expressing either arrogance or appreciation.
‘Austria against the Turks,’ murmured Nadasdy-Fogaras, to no one in particular. ‘The Emperor against the Sultan – a second Battle of Mohacs.’
The applause was still going on when andrássy rose and went over to the Turk’s table. Before Kempelen could stop him, he seized the Turk’s sensitive left hand and shook it with both his own. ‘We shall meet again, my good friend,’ he said. ‘This will not be the last duel between the two of us.’
Meanwhile, Prince Grassalkovich thanked Kempelen for this sensational performance, and for adjusting the cylinders inside his automaton so that it would play only for a draw and had not defeated andrássy.
