Excerpt from The Chess Machine by Robert Lohr, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The next day Tibor had a bad attack of influenza. Kempelen provided medicine and blankets for the invalid but did not interrupt their journey. Meanwhile he negotiated the terms of their contract with Tibor. Kempelen was offering a weekly wage of five guilders, with free board and lodging, and an extra bonus of fifty guilders if the performance before the Empress was a success. Tibor was so overwhelmed by these figures that he never even dreamed of haggling.

 

 

Tibor had last held a steady job in the summer of the year 1761, in the Polish monastery of Obra, to which he had fled from Prussia. He worked as a gardener, learned to read and write, and daily thanked God the Father, the Savior, and above all the Holy Mother of God for the safety of the monastery walls. He did not become a monk, but then he hadn't actually promised the Virgin Mary to take vows.

In fact Tibor's time in the monastery lasted not forever but only four years. A small group of novices indulged in playing chess, in defiance of the abbot's ban on it, and Tibor was initiated into the "Game of Kings" himself. One of the novices explained the rules to the dwarf, and from his first game on Tibor defeated all his opponents. It seemed incredible that he had never played chess before. Over the weeks he became a great attraction: more and more monks were admitted to the secret chess club, played against this newly discovered chess genius, and lost to him. The dwarf enjoyed the admiration of the brothers, until one bad loser alerted the abbot to the gaming going on within his walls. A scapegoat was required, and the lot fell on Tibor. With one accord, all the novices swore that the dwarf had tempted them to play, and he had to leave Obra. He was paid his wages and given the chess set, for after all—or so the novices told the abbot—he had smuggled it into the monastery himself.

In the autumn of 1765, then, Tibor was on the road once more, and as it was a cold autumn, he decided to go south. It took him three more years to get back to the Venetian Republic. The chess set had cost him his job in the monastery, and now it was to earn him a living: he made money in the taverns along his way by winning his opponents' stakes. Often he would play for payment in kind: a meal here, a bed for the night there, a seat in the mail coach. He could undoubtedly have earned more in towns, but he avoided places of any size. It was bad enough to have a whole village gawping at him.

The small chess player was a sensation in the villages, but he was never popular, certainly not when he won the villagers' money. Tibor sought comfort from their hostility in praying to the Madonna, and he took time off to visit every roadside shrine and every chapel along his way. But the remote Mother of God wasn't always there for Tibor, so he found another and far more physical comfort: brandy. Since he spent most of the time when he wasn't on the road in hostelries, strong liquor was readily available. One night, on the border of the Venetian Republic, the inebriated Tibor was beaten and robbed on the road by villagers from whom he had won over forty guilders the day before.

Now aged twenty-four, he returned to his native land in the summer of 1769—on foot, in rags, a drunk. A few months later he left it again in Kempelen's fine carriage, wearing good clothes and with a purse full of coins.

 

 

Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen and Tibor Scardanelli reached their journey's end on the afternoon of St. Nicholas's Day. Shortly before they came to the bridge over the Danube leading to Pressburg on the far side of the river, Kempelen had the carriage halted on a slight rise. Gentle snow was falling, but it melted as soon as it touched the ground.

When Tibor had urinated, he scrutinized the city. By comparison with Venice, Pressburg appeared almost boring: a neat, tidy place that had spilled beyond its original town walls, with the huts of fishermen and ­ferrymen in front of it, and vineyards stretching away behind. Only St. Martin's Cathedral with its green tower really caught the eye. To the left rose Castle Mount, with the bulky shape of the castle lying on it like a table turned upside down, its four corner towers reaching into the gray sky like the table legs.

Excerpted from The Chess Machine by Robert Loer. Copyright © 2007 by Robert Loer. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Group. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.