"No problem. I have it all memorized."
"You do?"
"It's like a fine painting. You don't forget it so easily,' he explained. "Sit," he said, pointing to the seat across from him.
I sat quickly. He folded his hands and leaned over the board.
"Let's get more into it now. You know the board, the way the pieces move, the object of the game, some of the rules. The pawn. as I began to explain, moves in a most unusual way. This is one of the trickiest moves to learn and usually drives my students nuts. We call it capturing en passant. which is French for--"
"'While passing'," I said.
He nodded, showing he was impressed. "You know French?"
"I'm in second year. I took it as an elective."
"Tres bien," he said. "Okay. Here's the story about this move. During the early days of chess, pawns could only move a single square at a time. Some changes were created in Europe to speed up the game. One of these. as I explained, was that the pawn can move two squares if it has not yet moved. Now. I didn't explain that when a pawn moves all the way down to the last rank on the board, it becomes another piece."
"What do you mean, another piece?"
"It gets promoted, only you can't promote it to a king. A queen, yes, but not a king. Most of the time, it's a queen, so it's possible to have many queens on the board. And don't say something dumb like too many chiefs and not enough Indians."
"I wasn't going to," I said, laughing. He laughed, too.
"Getting back to the en passant. It became possible for a pawn to move all the way down the board without the opponent's pawn ever having a chance to capture it. Here's how the en passant rule applies. For one move, and one move only, the black pawn can respond by capturing the white pawn as if it had moved only a single square. To effect the capture, the pawn is moved forward diagonally."
He demonstrated with the white and black pawn.
"Only pawns can capture en passant, and only a pawn on an adjacent file or row, can capture in this manner. Understand?"
"I think so," I said.
It's a hard one. I know, Just watch as I move the pieces and do it again."
I watched him play against himself. As he moved pieces, he announced what he was doing.
"See?"
"Yes." I said. It was still a little cloudy, but I didn't want him to get discouraged about teaching me. "Who taught you how to play chess?'"
"My father."
"Your father? But I thought you said..."
"It was practically the only thing we did together. He could drink and still play well. After a time. I began to anticipate his moves, and he got so he started to forget. I stopped playing with him then."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry about. It was what was and no longer is. My grandfather used to
say that if you dwell on the past, it will capture you, imprison you. Go outside and bury the unhappiness. I remember once I hurt myself, tripped and slid and scraped my palms raw. I cried until I ran out of tears. Then I sulked until my grandfather took me out back and dug a hole, 'Go on.' he said. Throw your unhappiness into the hole.' I had no idea what to throw, but I made a gesture that meant it, and he said. 'Good.' and filled the hole. 'Now you will forget the pain.' he promised. and I did."
I smiled skeptically,
"Try it sometime," he told me. "Okay, let's return to the king."
"Actually, my sister thinks like you do. She says you can't dwell on the game before, no matter if you won or lost. You have to look to the next game. She's very strong that way."
He nodded.