milliways_bar | (no subject)

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teja

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Being dead, Aschenbach thinks, should have made him less restless. All this talk of peace beyond the grave, though, clearly was...well, something that dignity would restrain him from putting into print or words.

Today he found himself, as he had for the past few days, wanting distraction near to the point of desperation. Reading was no good - every word reminded him of the things that he was so eager to forget. And, so, finally, he had ended up in his present position, sitting in front of a table near the Bar, a chess set before him, playing the game against himself.

Neither side of himself seems to be doing a very good job of it. But, honestly, he's hoping that he'll find an actual opponent, soon enough. For the first time in a long time, Gustav von Aschenbach really, really wants some human company.

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Teja watches him awhile.

"Greetings," he finally says.

"Hello, again."

The author lifts his head from the pieces on the board - white has black in an easily broken check, at the moment - managing a small mile in Teja's direction. When he opens his mouth again, he hesitates, as if assuring himself that he really wants to say what he's about to.

"Would you be interested in a game?"

"That looks somewhat like checkers..." Teja says. "But that game itself was not invented in my time."

"Ah - well, it isn't exactly like checkers. All the different pieces move in their own manner, and the goal is different - I could try to teach you? Or ask the Bar to provide you with instructions."

He's never been particularly good at chess, so he's not sure him giving playing instructions is quite fair.

Teja thinks.

"You might show me," he says, "and if I do not understand, I would ask for written instructions."

"Alright."

Aschenbach takes a moment to move all the pieces on both sides back to their starting places, before waving a hand over them in mild demonstration.

"All the different pieces alway start lined up just like this...all of those on the front row on each side are pawns. The ones that look a bit like castles in the corners are rooks. Next to those are the knights, then the bishops, then the king and queen."

He pauses for a moment, having been pointing each one out on the white side.

"Understand?"

Teja nods.

"So far, I do," he says.

"Good."

Aschenbach takes another moment to explain capturing pieces and a few of the weirder exceptions to movement in the game - en passant captures, castling, promotion of pawns, all that stuff that the mun would probably get the details wrong on.

"Essentially, the goal of the game is to try to get the opponent's king in 'check' - that is, in a position where it could be captured on your next turn. If your opponent's king is checked so that no legal move is possible, that's 'checkmate,' and you win."

"But one would not, actually, take the king?" Teja asks.

"No. You're not allowed to move your own king into a position where it would be in check, and the game ends at checkmate. If you don't have a legal move but you aren't in check, the game simply ends in a draw."

He knows that last bit by heart since, on the very rare occasions in his later life in which he actually played the game with others, that was generally the most that he could hope for.

Teja nods.

"Comprehensible," he says. "One would assume that it was invented by men like the Byzantines, where their leaders would lead from behind, in battle, never endangering themselves."

"I'm told that it originally came from the East, but, in truth, I don't know the history of it very well."

Aschenbach shrugs slightly, considering the ranked up pieces once again.

"And I suppose we have lost the war metaphor a bit with the queens and the bishops."

"One would wonder why a queen would fight more than a king," Teja says. "That piece might have been a general, at first, and changed names. Bishops, though -- yes, priests tend to be the most ruthless, when there is power to be gained."

"I tend to think that ruthlessness transcends occupation - but, then, I suppose the priests in my time have a great deal less power than they did in yours. Even the Pope, in the world I left, is basically a prisoner to kings, now."

The author's tone is neutral but thoughtful. He had always cared much more for the classical Greeks than for the church fathers, and he shuddered to think how his final days should have looked to him, had he been a particularly faithful man.

At least, in the end, he was only left with the personal pain of the matter.

"Deservedly so," Teja says. "The pope did much mischief, in my time."

"Much mischief in general, I'm told. Still, in my world, the Church wasn't much of a force, outside of Italy - before the Italians were the ones holding Rome, it was the French. And before that the Italians again."

The man echoes his earlier shrug.

"In any case, would you care to play, now, or I have I bored you away from it with all the rules?"

"Indeed, I would not like to put it into practice," Teja says.

"It can be frustrating at times. But it passes hours as well as anything else."

Since Teja doesn't seem interested in playing, he starts to idly conduct another game against himself, moving one of the white pawns two spaces forward.

"In truth, since hearing news of my death, I've been at a loss for things to do."

"What did you do in life?" Teja says.

"I was an author. But the project I was working on is not here with me...and I doubt I could return to it from the perspective that I left it in."

His smile is, against his will, revealingly sad.

"And I expect publishers are not abundant in this Bar, even if it has everything else."

"Indeed not," Teja says. "This is a place of many stories and less story-tellers, but one would think no story is strange enough for this place alone. And if you wrote the tales of this place, men would not easily believe you."

"And half of the ones here likely couldn't read whatever was written, I expect." The author leans back in his chair a little, idly pondering the next move on the black side of the board.

"So, you can see how my former occupation has become problematic."

"Oh no," Teja says. "Men here can read. Even Attila the Hun is learning to read, here."

"Yes, but...well, it's a question of languages. How many of the other guests here would be able to read German? And, of those, how many would come from worlds where 'German' was the same as it is in my own?"

Aschenbach looks up from the board, deciding that trying to explain this is more interesting.

"The same, I assume, would go for any other language I might try to write in."

"All languages will seem the same, by the magic of this place," Teja says. "I think I hear you speak in Gothic."

"Ah. I realized it worked that way with the spoken word...but I didn't know it applied to writing as well."

Aschenbach has a decently impressive set of languages at his disposal, so he hasn't really happened across a lot of things written up that didn't make sense to him, already.

"That would be another problem in and of itself, though - I might write something in German that would read as trash in your Gothic."

"I can read whatever note men write to me, here," Teja says. "And your German, I can somewhat understand -- you second name means 'creek of ashes', to me."

"Yes, but literature is a different question. You might translate the whole of piece literally and lose everything that makes it beautiful."

The author slowly shakes his head.

"Even in life, I had to pay close attention to who translated my works into other language. The same being done by some sort of...mechanism, even a magical one, would likely ruin it all."

"My songs are not ruined by he same token, either," Teja says. "It is not a lifeless mechanism; it would seem to be a magic that touches the soul, and the seat of understanding, rather than translating word for word."

"Mm. Well...perhaps I'll explore this 'magic,' if the urge to write strikes me again."

One of the white side's bishops takes one of the black's knights - this time, it seems, Aschenbach is letting one of the "armies" win.

"Though I doubt it."

"If that is what you did in life, one may assume that you will go on doing it, just as I am making things in the forge, and making music, and exercise my fighting skills," Teja says.

Edited 2008-07-31 21:02 (UTC)

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