Pensioners find solace in chess
ing. Swallows wheel and scream in the seamless, bright sky; it will be light past 10 oclock. The chess players in Shevchenko Park will sit here till night falls, hunched in dark coats, rarely looking up to see the birds. Some of them have been coming here for half a lifetime, some come every day. Some of the chess pieces are so old theyre held together with bits of tape; bandaged kings and queens fallen on hard times along with their owners at the end of a turbulent century. On the domino and backgammon tables money changes hands amid the rattle of the dice, the clickety-click of dominoes slapped down. Chess, say the players, is a nobler game, and no one here plays it for money. The men play out of love for its abstract geometry; they play with a sense of despair that outside the black-and-white simplicity of the board there is little in life to absorb them anymore, and nowhere else they can go. The pensioners who bring their chess and backgammon boards to the park in central Kyiv all cite poverty as their prime reason for being here. Kyiv has several chess clubs, but all charge a fee and many are open only to professionals. Shevchenko Park is free, and, since the City Council put in wooden benches and tables, even comfortable. Pensioners come for the fresh air and friends, and because they have nothing else to do. If you are a pensioner with no job, you wont spend the whole day doing housework. Its nice to go out and meet friends, said 62-year-old Nikolai, who declined to give his last name. Nikolai still works at nearby Shevchenko University, while his chess partner Vladimir has a dacha to keep him busy. Nevertheless, they both have time to come to the park twice a week. A great chess player can keep up to 50 moves in mind, and if he knows his partner well he can predict as many of his moves in advance from an opening gambit, says Alexander Suslov as he watches the pair play. Nikolai says he knows 70-year-old Vladimir like the back of his hand; they have been coming here to play for 15 years. Yet the games still hold their fascinations, as does the place. As soon as one game finishes, they line up the pieces for the next and politely decline to speak further. Suslov, 57, is a former candidate master in chess who gave up because his head started hurting. He talks about Russian grandmaster Alexei Alekhine, who died from a brain hemorrhage. To be on the safe side, Suslov just watches now, or plays dominoes. He has played here in Shevchenko Park since 1968 in his time off duty from the police force. Now that he is retired, its the cheapest place to go. Anyone can come and play here if they bring their own board, but there is no system of tournaments and no park champion. Most partners seem to stick together, learning to anticipate those 50 moves, some surrounded by a circle of spectators offering advice. Many pairs use chess clocks, and on one table a game of speed chess is in progress, the players slamming down the timers after each rapid move, somehow finding time to chain-smoke in-between. They soon attract a circle of admirers, to whom they are completely oblivious. One old woman stands watching a domino game. She lives alone, so she comes here for the company. She doesnt play because the men dont give her a chance, she said. She is the only woman in sight. There are few young people. Only pensioners gather here, says Suslov. Young people are busy with other things; work, family, children. Where can pensioners go? They come here purely to rest. Suslov says students sometimes sit here studying, or playing cards for money. Sergei Malesh, 23, has not come here for either, however. He is here to watch the chess, and to learn. Sometimes I watch, sometimes play … sometimes theres a good player who is worth watching, sometimes it seems I can play better than him, he says. Malesh studies at the Medical Institute opposite the park, and comes here in his spare time, up to five times a week. He admits he is an exception among his peers, most of whom have other concerns and interests. Malesh says that, for him, chess is the best way to unwind after a hard days work. For pensioners, it has come to replace work. They have nothing left in life, so they come here, they eat here, its already a way of life, says Malesh. They cant not come here. … Its like going to work, they cant imagine life without it. Players come to the park year-round, undeterred by snow and frost, according to Valentin Nazimko. All pensioners value the fresh air, he says. Nazimko comes here every day to play dominoes, after a morning on the beach if the weather is fine. It sounds like a good life. Its the opposite of a good life, he says. He has traveled round the world with the Soviet fleet, spent 30 years as a pyrotechnician at the Dovzhenko film studios. Now he is a pensioner, and the only thing that remains is dominoes, which he and his opponents cannot afford to play for money. His father taught him to play when he was six. Later, it was a favorite game on the fleet. Now he is suddenly famous, he says with sarcasm. Foreigners have come to watch the players in the park and take photographs. The players take no notice. They remain absorbed in their games until it is too dark to tell black from white. Then they have no choice but to go home.
