[...] To work in a nice place with a few interesting people, to have friends with whom to discuss life and ideas. To attend the theatre, to hear live music, to arrange the use of the studio room on Monday nights for the local philosophy reading group. Oh, Kierkegaard, that’ll be interesting. To exercise once again, for a little time, who knows how long, the power to charm and fascinate, to be the object of an intense and searching desire. And to feel inside herself the reciprocating force of desire, this is what she gets, a life of her own.

[...] Sylvia too was becoming emotional, he could see that, and she put her arms around him, saying he deserved to be happy, he deserved all the happiness in the world. And the feeling between them in that moment, wasn’t that true? Doesn’t the feeling between people have a truth of its own? Not in the sense of formal propositional truth-value, no. But then why does that word, ‘truth’, have a certain sensation to it, which is not exhausted by the formal definition?

As of this week, Ivan’s online chess rating is within six points of his highest ever, a record achieved when he was only eighteen. Every time he begins a new game now, he feels a light buoyant sensation, like his brain is floating up above the game, up to a vantage point very high and refined, from which he can see everything clearly. When a move suggests itself to him for no obvious reason, he need only apply the slightest pressure to his intuition, a few seconds or minutes of conscious calculation, in order to feel the strength of the intuition asserting itself forcefully in response: because after the exchange, for instance – forcing his opponent to withdraw the rook and then taking with the pawn on g5, exposing the light-squared bishop, trading, after all that – then white’s knight will be trapped. And this image, this idea of the trapped knight, was there in Ivan’s mind, unexpressed, not even visualised, but present, folded into itself, preparing to be made real. There inside him, the trapped knight: the hidden idea that manifested its own reality, the idea that created itself. And after the game is over, pacing around his flat, or maybe walking the streets, breathing the cold winter air, breath of his body blossoming into mist, he feels impressed and humbled by the work his brain has done for him, humbled and impressed. Like, thank you, brain, whatever you are. A strange little room in his head where things happen secretly: which in fact seems so impressive it crosses over into being alarming. Of course, he thinks, all his other vital organs also perform their work without his conscious knowledge, carrying out all their various finely calibrated tasks. What makes the brain any different? It has always been Ivan’s philosophy, at least in previous phases of his life, that the brain is indeed different, that the body is merely a sack of flesh and the brain an animating consciousness. But on his walks around the city lately – after long arduous chess games in which his brain has played a role he has not entirely understood – it has occurred to him that perhaps the mind and body are after all one, together, a single being. And that he should be humbled not only by his brain, but by his body also, a complex and beautiful system for the sustenance of life itself. When he and Margaret are together, for instance, the intelligence that animates instinctively his gestures, touching, is that not the same intelligence that suggests to him the move that will later trap the knight? It is the same, himself, his own intelligence, his personhood. And for this he feels a tender wounding gratitude, a sense of blessing, that he exists simply in this body, in this mind, that he is himself, this one person, rich in priceless resources which to his conscious mind remain almost infinitely unknown.

[...] He will finally have the opportunity to qualify for his second IM norm, moving him one step closer to the three norms he needs to secure the title, but he will also have the opportunity to fail, to lose rating points, to slip further away from his goal, perhaps even unreachably far, so far that the goal is no longer attainable. And in that case, rather than forging ahead to become a grandmaster, he would just drop out of the chess world in his early twenties as so many failed hopefuls do, with his sad little FM title more like an embarrassment than an accolade. But that won’t happen, he thinks, not with the way he’s playing lately. And even if it does happen: so be it. There is more to life than great chess. Okay, great chess is still a part of life, and it can be a very big part, very intense, satisfying, and pleasant to dwell on in the mind’s eye: but nonetheless, life contains many things. Life itself, he thinks, every moment of life, is as precious and beautiful as any game of chess ever played, if only you know how to live.

She has attached a picture: his small green casserole dish on one of the hotplates. Disorientated feeling, as though his centre of gravity disturbed, walls shifting: like passing out, he thinks. As if he will pass out there and then, and at the thought, remembering, he sits down on a kitchen chair. The little green dish on the stovetop, what time you home. Christ, he thinks, what is he doing, what on earth. In the bath the other night, murmuring in her ear, I want you to be happy. Was he lying then: and why, for what, for what possible reason. Strong sudden impulse he feels to begin praying, already mouthing the silent words, and then frightened by himself he stops. To pray for what: forgiveness, guidance. From whom: God he barely believes in, sentimental Jesus commanding us to love one another. In over his head, fathoms over, and something has to be done. How capable he has been of holding in his mind with no apparent struggle such contradictory beliefs and feelings. The false true lover, the cynical idealist, the atheist at his prayers. Everything lethally intermixed, everything breaching its boundaries, nothing staying in its right place. She, the other, himself. Even Christine, Ivan, this married girlfriend of his. Their father: from beyond the grave. Conceptual collapse of one thing into another, all things into one. No. To answer first the simple question of where to sleep tonight. Marry me. I love you. What time you home.

[...] Ivan said he could come and see her during the week sometimes, if she wanted. Work at her house in the daytime, while she went into the office. Dinner together in the evening, maybe watch a film afterwards, his arm around her shoulders. All the unhappiness that life has visited on them both: dissolved however briefly in that feeling, shared image of that quiet contentment. Maybe, she said. Light and silvery high the music feathers through the air around her, sadly soft. And why not after all. Why not accept wholeheartedly life’s offerings. [...]

They hang up. Margaret rises from the table, turns the lights on, fills the kettle. Rushing sound of the tap. Her reflection dim and bubbled in the dark window glass. Gradually these situations arise, she can see that now, just one step after another, and by the time a few weeks or months have passed, your life is no longer recognisable. You are lying to almost everyone you know. You have come to care too passionately, too fully and completely, for an unsuitable person. You can no longer visualise your own future: not only five years from now, but five months, even five weeks. Everything is in disarray. All this for one person, for the relation that exists between you. Your fidelity to the idea of that relation. In the light of that, you have come to hold too loosely many other important things: the respect of your family, the admiration of your colleagues and acquaintances, even the understanding of your closest friends. Life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting. There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence. People, other people, make it impossible. But without other people, there would be no life at all. Judgement, reproval, disappointment, conflict: these are the means by which people remain connected to one another. Because of Margaret’s friends, her former marriage, her family, colleagues, people in town, she is not entirely free to live the limitless spontaneous life that she has imagined for herself. But because of Ivan, because of whatever there is between them, she is, on the other hand, not entirely free to return to her previous existence either. The demands of other people do not dissolve; they only multiply. More and more complex, more difficult. Which is another way, she thinks, of saying: more life, more and more of life.

Outside on the street, the first mouthful of cold dark air, yes. No need to go home yet. Stay in town for a while, have a drink, settle his nerves. And on that point, he takes from his wallet a foil sheet and tosses back without tasting two pills. Slipping phone from pocket he walks back towards the Green, tapping out a few messages: You around? With what seems touching loyalty Gary replies: Few of us in Mulligan’s. Seat here with your name on it. [...]

[...] No, he thinks, no, no: the only question is how to choose. Should he take the cash prize or the new car, what do you think. Pitting one philosophy against another. Maturity against youth. Yes, sobriety against decadence, intellect against appetite, he could go on. Better instead to specify. On the one hand, the love of his life, high principle of his conscience, his complicated feelings for whom have prevented him, let’s be honest, from developing any kind of serious attachment to anyone else for the last, whatever, fourteen years. Certain difficulties, certain problems to be negotiated, but isn’t that what it means to love someone? On the other hand, his captive, his tormentor, on whom he has lavished how much money, jewellery, gifts, who likes it a little rough, who has with mischievous pleasure outwitted him at every move, and with whom he is feebly and defeatedly in love. Each attempt to contend with her, to win back some little portion of his pride, has only sunk him deeper. Good against evil.

[...] Correcting undergraduate essays together in the evenings, reading aloud the worst sentences to make each other laugh. On her little stereo system, the Barenboim recording of the 40th Symphony. Walking over together to their tenants’ union meetings arm in arm, heads bent, absorbed in conversation. With his fingers now he wipes his eyes. The image of that life: how beautiful, how painful, to believe it could after all be possible. For so long it has hurt too much even to think. And now everything hurts so much all the time that to think makes no difference, to think even lends a kind of sweetness to the terrible pain. The life they could have had together. The refuge of a shared home, their books, furniture, watercolours. Gatherings at the kitchen table, friends calling round for dinner, arguing, laughing. The love they could have given to their own children. Wanted to give. Impossible ever to feel again like a good person, even halfway good, when all the good he had wanted to do in life was closed off to him forever. Had no route left through which to travel. Remained inside him, trapped, festering, turning into something stranger and worse. Proliferation of inappropriate attachments. Holding hard, harder, clutching, not letting go. Well, if that’s suffering, he thinks, let me suffer. Yes. To love whoever I have left. And if ever I lose someone, let me descend into a futile and prolonged rage, yes, despair, wanting to break things, furniture, appliances, wanting to get into fights, to scream, to walk in front of a bus, yes. Let me suffer, please. To love just these few people, to know myself capable of that, I would suffer every day of my life. [...]