Prologue
The Twelfth Chair
The hands were steady. That was the first thing anyone would have noticed, if there had been anyone to notice.
They were old hands, thin and spotted, and they were setting out a chessboard on a card table in a kitchen with the blinds down. The pieces were white and black wood, worn smooth at the tops where thumbs had pressed them for years. The hands put them in their places one at a time. Pawns first. Then the rooks, then the knights. They did not hurry. They had done this many thousands of times.
When the last piece stood in its square, the hands did not start a game. They reached under the table and brought up a list.
It was a single sheet of paper, folded and unfolded so often that it had gone soft at the creases. Twelve names ran down the left side in blue ink. Beside each name, in a smaller hand, someone had written a short line. Fell asleep in week one. Said yes to the policeman. Went home early. Five of the names had a black line through them. Those five had not been crossed out by the person who owned the hands. They had been crossed out by time. They were dead, or gone, or no use anymore.
Seven names were left.
The player read them aloud, quietly, as someone reads a prayer they no longer need the book for. Then the player took a pencil and made a small mark next to the last one on the list, the name at the bottom, which had been underlined twice.
Foreman.
On the wall above the card table hung a photograph of a woman in a green cardigan. She was laughing at something outside the frame. She had a chalk mark on her sleeve. In the picture she looked like a person who had never in her life been afraid of being wrong.
The player looked at her for a long time.
"Nine years," the player said. "Tomorrow, I think."
The kettle began to whistle on the stove. The player did not get up. After a while it stopped by itself, because it had boiled dry.
On the board, the player picked up a white pawn from the front of the king's side and held it up to the light. Then the player set it down again, two squares forward, in the middle of the board. The oldest opening in the world. The one every child learns first. It looks like nothing. It looks like a person taking a small step toward the door.
There was a telephone on the table beside the board. The player dialed a number from memory, and waited, and when someone picked up on the other end, did not say hello.
"It's time," said the player.
"Which one first?"
"The girl." The hands closed over the wooden king, very gently. "She's the only one of them who has done nothing wrong. That is why it has to be her."
The line went quiet.
"And then," said the voice on the phone, "the father?"
"And then the father." The player set the king down in its square. "Everyone makes one small move, and then it's over, and nobody was ever to blame. That is how a man dies, and nobody is responsible. That is the whole idea. I just want him to see it from the other side of the board."
The player turned off the lamp. The board went dark, except for the white pawn in the middle of it, which caught a thin line of light from under the blind and held it, like a candle that someone had left on a table in an empty room.