h2>Dating : Games of Death
With the recent hoopla over the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit I was reminded I’m perhaps the worst living chess player known to humanity.
It’s a bold claim I know.
With the caveat we’re excluding young children, the educationally subnormal, and only including, anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the rules of chess, I’m probably the lowest unranked chess play in the world.
When did I come to this shocking realisation?
In Vietnam, on a slow train to Nha Trang, that’s when.
“You’re getting away at the right time. There’s a storm on the way tomorrow. A big one. Real big one.”
A kindly, English speaking, conductor on inspecting our tickets directed us to the correct train.
“Ooo… first class. You boys high rollers, hey?”
This chap was the real life equivalent of the bit character who appears at the start of a disaster movie with the sole purpose of foreshadowing the protagonists upcoming trials…
Nothing can possibly go wrong
Or…
It’s an unsinkable ship
We clambered on the sleeper train trying, unsuccessfully, not to knock into our diminutive fellow passengers with our hefty rucksacks.
We were leaving the DMZ and heading south.
Hanoi had been hard work. Asian megacities are intense.
First there’s the stifling humidity and the parched dust to get acclimatised with.
I know humidity and dust are a contradiction, but believe me, in the east they go together like peaches and cream.
And they’re busy, like, really, really, busy. Forget London. This is another level of busyness. People everywhere. Bicycles, motorbikes, brass too.
And it’s all coming at you in a continuous wave.
Then you’ve got the ambient noise. If New York is the city that never sleeps, Hanoi is the city that never shuts up.
I’d lie in my rented bed, invariably stoned, at the dead of night, except there was nothing dead about it.
There was always a distant sound to lock onto.
A rapid fire conversation I didn’t understand. The high pitched whine of a moped engine. And the dogs. Hanoi was a land of barking dogs.
I felt like country mouse walking around the urban sprawl. All wide eyed and slacked jawed wondering how my city slicker cousin lives like this.
You might not have picked up on this but I liked Hanoi. Seriously, it’s a good city. It was just an assault on the senses and a little overwhelming.
Francis and I were ready to move on.
Our attempts to explore the north of the country were hampered by heavy rain.
When you’re an entitled Englishman it comes as something of a surprise when you discover everywhere below Western Europe doesn’t have perpetual sunshine.
Go south and chase the rays, the locals cried.
Nha Trang is the place for you. The best golden sandy beaches in all of Southeast Asia.
It was an enticing prospect to any Brit who likes to be beside the seaside, drinking booze, whilst getting redder than a gay baboon’s arse, which is pretty much all of us.
With this in mind we enthusiastically settled in our respective bunks, for our twelve hour cross country jaunt, on this communist version of the Orient Express.
Vietnam was opening up and transitioning to a free market economy but still had all the trappings of a Marxist-Leninist Republic.
There were grills over the windows. The carriages were decorated with red stars, hammers and sickles. And patriotic Vietnamese marching music was constantly piped through the train tannoy system.
It was dour, nonetheless, we were excited to have a sleepover on a train.
Not long after the train departed the porter came to our private compartment with the food and drinks trolley.
Francis had declared on numerous occasions…
“I don’t like Chinese food.”
He’d always been a fussy eater at the best of times, and obviously we weren’t in China, but Francis had no more appreciation for the subtleties of Vietnamese cusine so his dietary options were extremely limited.
Though the onboard catering was of such a low quality even a greedy guts like me turned it down.
We settled for purchasing twelve cans of lager.
We locked the compartment door, cracked open a tin, skinned up a joint and surreptitiously got out our heroin and Kit-Kat stash for perusal.
Yes, you read that right…
Kit-Kat
Let me explain before you rush to judge.
I was reticent about discussing my brief dalliance with heroin as it puts me in a terrible light. Let’s face it on the totem of wickedness smack heads are just below murderers and rapists.
But what can I do?
Lord Byron said, Keats writes from imagination, I write from experience.
And if you think I’m a self-indulgent prick who’s comparing his reprehensible behaviour to Byron, because he thinks it makes him sound dangerous yet sophisticated, you’d be spot on.
In my defence I bought the brown by mistake.
We had a routine you see.
After a day spent exploring Hanoi and the surrounding areas one of us would venture out at dusk to buy weed.
Being my turn I left the hostel and got a lift, riding pillion, on one of the numerous motorcycle taxis waiting outside and headed to the less salubrious end of town.
It looked like any other bar but apparently it was run by some organised crime outfit. Supposedly, there was a gentleman’s agreement between the authorities and the Hanoi underworld where the latter could sell vice and contraband to western tourists, with impunity, at certain designated locations.
All participants had to be discreet mind you, lest we forget, it was still an authoritarian state.
Periodically, the police would give an unsuspecting drugs tourist the curly finger and make an example of them.
I had no knowledge of the Vietnamese penal system but I was sure a blonde haired, blue eyed pretty boy wouldn’t fare well in such an environment.
So not wanting the wheel of misfortune to land on me, I chose at random from the gaggle of dealers hanging outside the establishment and negotiated with hurried caution, mindful of the nonchalant looking paramilitaries on the other side of the street.
The dealer was unconcerned by the police presence but was equally keen to complete the transaction…
“Helloween?”
Huh, Helloween are a German heavy metal band.
“What?”
“You want helloween?”
The first concert I ever attended was Iron Maiden on their Seventh Tour of a Seventh Tour at the Apollo. The support act was Helloween.
This meant the first band I actually ever saw live, not including the English folk trio, the Houghton Weavers who performed at a Saint Winifred’s junior school assembly, was Helloween*.
A clear sign to proceed.
And I thought in this context Helloween was a strain of cannabis.
Hear me out…
You’ve got Skunk, Northern Lights, Purple Haze, White Widow, etc. All groovy sounding names. Why not Helloween?
“Yes, I want Helloween.”
I handed over the dollars and quickly stashed the package.
With a sense of mild exhilaration I leapt back on my two wheeled steed, and the rider, who had kept the engine running sped off into the Hanoi night.
I’ll tell you a curious, much overlooked, thing…
The thrill of buying drugs is better than the high of taking drugs.
“This is heroin.”
Francis had taken the junk out of the bum bag I’d tossed on the chair.
“OMG. That’s what helloween meant.”
But in this story mother is rather pleased Jack has come back from market with nothing but magic beans to show for it.
Francis reasoned travel is all about broadening ones horizons.
Which lead to this moment debating on the rattling train when would be an appropriate time to taste this most forbidden of fruits for the first time.
We tentatively agreed sunset on some deserted corner of a Nah Trang beach would be the setting.
“Wanna play chess?”
I’d brought with me a travel chess set contained within a smart, Filofax sized, leather attaché case.
I aspired to chess. I believed a chess player was a really learned thing to be.
I knew the fundamentals of the game but had never found the opportunity to play.
Francis on the other hand, despite not being particularly academic, took great pride in the fact that as a youngster he was captain of the Didsbury Road chess team.
My move…
What felt like a zillion games over an hour, maybe two, Francis dispatched me with brutal, wordless, efficiency.
No quarter was given, but you know what, some was kind of expected.
I was an absolute beginner and Francis didn’t humour me for a second.
It started raining.
I’d had enough of my corpse being kicked and and I went for a mooch around the train.
Whilst strolling through steerage, amongst the throng of smiling locals, I came across a solitary westerner.
Claude, unsurprisingly, was French. This is probably confirmation bias, but with his pinched face, mop of curls and John Lennon spectacles he seemed quintessentially Gallic.
There was a brief conversation about where we were from and where we were going. The usual sort of chat you have with the one stranger in a room full of strangers who happens to look like you.
I continued my exploration but found little else of interest. I got more beer and headed back to our carriage, noting it was dark already, and the rain was really starting to come down.
Someone was sleeping in my bed.
Well, not sleeping, but perched on the edge of my bunk, rolling a joint with our weed.
“Hey Man, I thought I’d come and see you.”
It was my old mate, Claude from Provence.
Clearly, he smelt the marijuana during our brief encounter.
So in the spirit of entente cordiale we drank beer and shared a spliff.
“You guys homosexual, no?
“NO”
Claude assumed because we were traveling companions, Francis and I, must be lovers.
It was quite a leap of imagination, based on scant information, but it seemed a very on brand assumption for a Frenchman to make.
Isn’t it great when foreigners live up to their national stereotype?
Once he’d drained his can, Claude thanked us for our hospitality, and returned to the cheap seats, but not before he clocked the board…
“I love chess. Next time we play.”
The night had drawn in. Our train, which could never be described as a bullet, was now moving ever so slowly. I assume this was because of the adverse weather. I say assume as there was no one in charge, who spoke English, to ask for sure.
No matter, we’d be pulling into sunny Nah Trang at some point tomorrow morning, albeit, a few hours late.
I awoke with a jolt.
Have you ever slept in a bed on a train? The rhythmic forward momentum gently rocks you into a contented sleep. Though the hit from the bong I had before getting my head down may have contributed to my sense of tranquility.
The peace had been broken by the howling wind and thudding rain. The train was still rocking but this time side to side.
We were at a dead stop.
“I don’t think we missed that storm.”
Master of the understatement.
Francis was stood in front of the compartment window, fingers interlinked with the grill, staring into the yonder.
He could see nothing through the glass as it looked like we were going through a car wash.
The power flicked on and off and I said the obligatory line in such a situation…
They’re here
I stepped out of our compartment into the carriage. Not a soul insight. Everyone must be hunkering down in their designated corner of the train. Save for the monsoon outside the only sound was the patriotic marching music playing over the tannoy. When we first boarded it was comedic, then it became irritating, but now as the storm grew in intensity, it took on a haunting quality.
And it never stopped. Not for one second. Even when the lights went off. The orchestra played on.
I crossed the threshold back to safety.
“Wanna game of chess?”
Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.
Besides, there was fuck all else to do.
We picked up exactly from where we’d left off.
A handful of moves and then checkmate. Some games it took longer to set the board up.
What did Francis get out of this?
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy dishing out a senseless beating as much as the next man, but after awhile, come on.
He could have experimented with new tactics or extended the odd game and fooled me into thinking I had a chance. What about a bit of showboating?
Hell, he could have tried to teach me how to play.
Nope.
Francis just made his moves, silently smirking, as he dished out more blunt force trauma.
This was my Kobayashi Maru. The classic Star Trek no-win scenario.
And just like James T Kirk I tried to come up with an unorthodox solution to a hopeless situation…
“Shall we smoke the ‘H’ now?”
I sensed Francis wouldn’t take much convincing.
“What better time to do it than trapped on a stationary train to nowhere in the middle of a monsoon?”
We cracked open the Kit-Kats and plundered the foil so we could, as the Kool Kids say, chase the dragon.
We took a deep breath, and with an excessive amount of ceremony, and the aid of a plastic straw and a cigarette lighter we smoked heroin.
The world suddenly started to move in slow motion.
“Fra-n-cis. Paaaaaas the weeeeed. I’ll skiiiin uppp a jooooint.”
I didn’t really want a spliff. In fact I didn’t want or need anything at that moment in time and space. I just wanted something to do with my new found enthusiasm for life.
Rematch?
Of course he wanted a rematch.
I had a new strategy.
Prussian General Carl Von Clausewitz said, the object of war is not to be more powerful than your opponent but to force him to give up. That’s what the American Colonists did to the British Empire. That’s what the Vietcong did to America. That’s what Rocky Balboa did to Apollo Creed.
And that was what I was going to do to Francis.
Fuck me, heroin is a hell of a drug.
We played again. Nothing, except our much improved bonne humeur, changed. Till there was a knock at the door.
We cleaned up the evidence of our recent deviant lifestyle choice.
“Hey guys, it’s Claude, we’ve come to play chess.”
We?
The knocking became more persistent.
I quickly put on Grandma’s bonnet and half-moon glasses and got comfy in the rocking chair as Francis unbolted the cottage door.
“Come in.”
Have you heard the one about the Frenchman, the American and the Thai lady?
Alongside Claude were, barrel chested Vietnam War veteran, Rex, and his new bride, Suki.
“What about the storm, guys?”
They came bearing gifts.
“I know you dudes prefer Guinness but this was all they had.”
Come on Rex, Guinness is Ireland, not England, Ireland.
Nonetheless, we gratefully received the new comers contribution to our soirée.
Rex from Illinois, was at a guess, in his fifties and had been a Corporal in the 75th Ranger Regiment during the Vietnam War.
This trip was something of a pilgrimage for Rex as he was returning to Saigon for the first time since 1973.
Being quite the history enthusiast it’s to my eternal regret I didn’t take this opportunity to question Rex at length about his time at war.
I was too busy trying to keep my shit together.
I could tell you even less about Suki. She was in her thirties and had three children, from previous relationships, who were currently being cared for by her parents in Thailand. It was their intention to one day settle the family in Illinois.
Otherwise, she just smiled, occasionally giggling at the funny accents, whilst clinging on to her beau.
I reckon Suki had a hard life before meeting Rex. The eyes being a window to the soul and all that.
I started to set up the chess board. I had no desire to expose my skills to an international audience but I had to do something with myself.
Francis who was naturally taciturn with strangers, slunk in his bunk and easily avoided eye contact.
For our impromptu tournament we adopted a roundrobin format where the winner stayed on.
I never stayed on.
We discovered Claude learnt chess whilst at boarding school. During the holidays he would play against his father, a cold, austere man, who largely ignored our boy from Provence. Only on this field of battle did Pater give the attention Claude felt he deserved.
Meanwhile, Rex also learned invaluable life lessons playing the game with his father. Fortunately, Rex’s tale was a much more uplifting one that could have come straight from Walton’s Mountain.
Rex grew up in the sixties amongst the rolling corn fields of his family’s farmstead. Isolated, as they were, Rex use to while away the hours playing chess. Pa used the game as a metaphor to impart homespun wisdom on his boys.
My dad died when I was seven so he didn’t teach me much.
That’s not an excuse mind you. Francis’s dad, Thick Alan, couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel, and Franny still turned out to be a pretty nifty player.
Claude sneered…
“You are shit.”
He smelt the blood of an Englishman.
“You’re wasting my time. I’ll forfeit the title before I play you again.”
Claude, in his contempt couldn’t have been more French if he wore Breton stripe and smoked Gitanes.
“Now then Claude, Guy is trying his best.”
I’m not sure what was worse, Claude’s disgust, or Rex’s condescension.
“No, I show him again and again. He learns nothing.”
Even Suki who only had the rules explained to her a couple of hours earlier beat me with ease.
Francis was loving this.
And we were having a good time. The monsoon had brought us together and we coalesced around the chess board. Everyone was drunk and stoned, which deadened my fear of being exposed as a junkie.
The power went down.
The darkness made us focus on the screeching wind.
“Le Mistral…”
Le what?
“This is like Le Mistral back home.”
Claude pointed to the sky.
“Crazy wind.”
He lit a joint, which momentarily illuminated his features, and settled back…
“Behind everything beautiful in Provence is Le Mistral.”
Sounds good so far.
“There’s never a cloud in the sky. Le Mistral clears all the dust and pollution. So the light is different. You’ll never seen another sunrise like it anywhere.”
Claude took a long, thoughtful drag…
“But when the seasons are changing the wind is so strong it wails for days on end. It gets to you after awhile. It unsettles the animals.”
He tapped his skull.
“And sends the weak minded mad.”
We listened to the raging gusts as the spliff went round the darkened compartment. Till Francis broke the silence…
“You’re not gonna flip out on us are you, Guy?”
They laughed.
I don’t know. You lose a few games of chess in a confined space and suddenly you’re relegated to the village idiot.
Eventually the storm broke and a new day dawned.
I slowly stirred from a fitful daytime sleep. I was alone in the compartment.
Due to flooding on the line the train was again at a standstill but we had moved a few kilometres down the track to a lay-by in the middle of the jungle.
I looked out of the window and saw the majority of my fellow passengers were stood outside the train, enjoying the hazy late afternoon sun, and the opportunity to stretch their legs.
We’d all been on this ride for so long it was our world now. We were train people.
I assumed Francis and the rest of the gang were out there too. Perhaps they’d sourced some food? Thus far we’d been living off boiled rice and Kit-Kats.
I briefly thought about the venomous centipedes, vipers, cobras, and tigers in the surrounding jungle, and most dangerous of all, the guars, giant horned cows, who can go on murder rampages if startled.
But my rumbling tummy overcame any trepidation and I headed down the carriage to find my friends.
“Hey, Pretty Boy.”
Who?
“Come here, Pretty Boy.”
Moir?
“I not tell you again, come here.”
It was Suki, Queen of the Train People.
Suki and Rex had a compartment at the end of the carriage. Suki looked imperious as she wafted herself with a paper fan.
There was no sign of Rex
“Oh, hi Suki.”
“You think I stupid because I’m a girl and don’t speak English so good.”
For the record I didn’t ever think Suki was stupid.
“I’m not stupid. I’m smarter than you, you’re stupid.”
Steady on old girl….
“I know what you were up to. Rex doesn’t but I do. Rex likes you. If he knew, very disappointed. Rex would beat you like a mule.”
Oh Jesus, I knew where this was heading.
“I saw you sneaking off and I see your eyes.”
Don’t say it.
“You take helloween.”
It was my first time, I swear.
“You handsome but not smart. You worse chess player in the world. You carry on, you not even be handsome anymore. Then you die and break your mother’s heart.”
I bought it by accident and it was Francis’s idea to smoke it. Actually, why isn’t Francis getting a telling off?
“I grow up on Bangkok streets and I see terrible pain it cause.”
Then she slapped me across the face.
“I’m sorry, Suki. I’ll never do it again.”
And I meant it.
“It done now. And you listen. Between us. You leave. Go find the boys.”
“Thank you, Suki.”
On the third day, two and half days late, we finally arrived in Nha Trang.
The excitement was palpable as the train snaked around the coast, on the approach to the station, and we could see the sun glistening on the water.
As we disembarked, as ever accompanied over the tannoy by the Vietnamese state symphony orchestra, we said our goodbyes to our travel buddies.
They were carrying on all the way to Saigon.
I’m not very tactile. I’m more a firm hand shake kinda guy. However, on this occasion I accepted the big bear hug Rex gave me.
The five of us had shared quite an experience and we knew we’d never meet again.
Before friending and following you had these brief encounters.
They never grow old or become sullied by mistakes or changes of heart. Memories trapped in time, preserved in amber.
I know when those three look back on this little adventure they’ll remember me as the worst chess player in the world.
And you know what, I rather like that.
*Whilst writing this I googled Iron Maiden’s 1988 British tour. It turns out the support act was Killer Dwarf. For over thirty years I thought I’d seen Helloween. That’s another thing the internet has ruined.
