So my day, otherwise as formless as jelly, was full, I was busy, without becoming tired, for chess had the marvelous merit that, because the intellectual energies were corralled within a narrowly circumscribed field, even the most strenuous mental effort did not tire the brain, but rather increased its agility and vigor. At first I played the games through quite mechanically; yet gradually a pleasurable, aesthetic understanding awoke within me. I grasped the fine points, the perils and rigors of attack and defense, the technique of thinking ahead, planning moves and countermoves, and soon I was able to recognize the personality and style of each of the chess masters as unmistakably as one knows a poet from only a few of his lines; what had begun as no more than a way to pass the time was becoming a pleasure, and the figures of the great chess strategists—Alekhine, Lasker, Bogoljubov, Tartakower, and the rest—became beloved companions in my solitude. Each day my silent cell was filled with ceaseless novelty, and the very regularity of my exercitia restored the acuity of my intellectual faculties: I felt my mind refreshed, even honed, so to speak, by the constant mental discipline. The fact that I was thinking more clearly and coherently was especially evident during the interrogations. At the chessboard I had unconsciously perfected a defense against false threats and concealed tricks; from then on I no longer let down my guard during the questioning, and it even seemed to me that the Gestapo men were beginning to regard me with a certain respect. They had seen all the others break; perhaps they were quietly wondering what secret wellspring had given me alone the strength for such unshakable resistance.

“This happy time continued for about two and a half or three months: day after day I systematically played through the hundred fifty games in that book. Then, unexpectedly, I came to a standstill. Suddenly I was once again facing nothingness. For once I had played each game twenty or thirty times through, it lost the charm of novelty, of surprise, its previous power to excite, to arouse, was exhausted. What was the point of repeating over and over games whose every move I had long since learned by heart? As soon as I made the opening move, the succeeding ones automatically reeled off in my mind, there was nothing unanticipated, no suspense, no problems to solve. To keep myself busy, to create the demands and the distraction that I now couldn’t do without, I would actually have needed another book with different games. But since this was completely impossible, there was only one way to continue with this strange diversion: I had to make up new games to replace the old ones. I had to try to play with, or rather against, myself.

“Now I don’t know how much thought you have given to what goes on intellectually in this most remarkable of games. But a moment’s reflection should be enough to tell you that in chess, a game of pure reasoning with no element of chance, it is a logical absurdity to want to play oneself. The basic attraction of chess lies solely in the fact that its strategy is worked out differently in two different minds, that in this battle of wits Black does not know White’s schemes and constantly seeks to guess them and frustrate them, while White in turn tries to outstrip and thwart Black’s secret intentions. Now if Black and White together made up one and the same person, the result would be a nonsensical state of affairs in which one and the same mind simultaneously knew and did not know something, in which as White it could simply decide to forget what it had wished and intended to do as Black a moment earlier. In fact what is presupposed by this kind of duality of thought is a total division of consciousness, an ability to turn the workings of the brain on or off at will, as though it were a machine; playing chess against oneself is thus as paradoxical as jumping over one’s own shadow. Well, to make a long story short, in my desperation I attempted this impossibility, this absurdity, for months. Illogical as it was, I had no other choice if I was not to lapse into absolute madness or total intellectual inanition. My awful situation was forcing me to at least try to divide myself into a Black Me and a White Me in order not to be crushed by the horrendous nothingness around me.”

Dr. B. leaned back in his deck chair and closed his eyes for a moment. It was as though he was trying to forcibly repress a disturbing memory. Again there was the strange uncontrollable twitch at the left corner of his mouth. Then he drew himself up a little higher in his reclining chair.

“So—I hope I’ve been fairly clear so far. But unfortunately I’m not at all certain that I can make you see the rest of it as clearly. For this new occupation required such total mental exertion that it became impossible to keep a grip on myself at the same time. I said that I think it’s inherently absurd to want to play chess against yourself; nevertheless, this absurdity would stand a minimal chance if you had a chess-board in front of you, because the board’s reality would give it a certain distance, some outward substance. In front of a real chessboard with real pieces you can stop to think, you can physically position yourself first on one side of the table, then on the other, considering the situation first from Black’s standpoint, then from White’s.