Strategies in Square 65

They chose a patch of shadow and they have concentrated on the game, creating, in addition to the 64 squares the board has, a virtual square number 65 where the scorching heat seems not to reach.

Two Cubans of different ages and histories tightening the ropes of the reasoning and intelligence, trying to give their best, devising moves, strategies.

The pawns advance, the bishop is positioned in the best of the squares, a hand is raised, it seems he is going to move the queen, but no. The hand moves back to lean on the sturdy bench, but he does it as if he were resting on a shoulder, so delicate and careful is the movement.

It’s that perhaps, due to the traps of thermometers and this summer of tense jaw, the player has thought of his queen, who is already waiting for him with lunch almost ready and she gets impatient without knowing that he, in his own way, he is also thinking of her, she is no longer beautiful or young, but continues, like the first day, glad to see her by his side every morning. No, there’s not a queen's gambit.

But the rook he moved it, and he lost it. It was a mistake. The other one was quick, as was the one with his new sneakers. Before starting the game they praised the sneakers and he gave thanks with huge pride.

“He did it – recalls the player – as if he felt the sneakers as a part of him, the extension of him. Actually, it should have been the sneakers that had to say thank you and not the boy.

"But sometimes the self is confused with some shoes, or with a car, or with a card of…"

The opponent's look interrupts his reflection, and warns him to look sharp, that he is about to lose the knight.

But it doesn't happen because he thinks hard about the next move. Definitely, they are there designing strategies not to checkmate the other, but to beat time, to beat themselves.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff