Game of Life
Published on May 02, 2024.
“Lebnshpil” (“Game of Life”) is the fourth story in Berl Grynberg’s collection Dos Bloye Shifele (The Little Blue Boat), published in Buenos Aires in 1948. Like the majority of Grynberg’s work, the stories in this collection focus mainly on Jewish immigrants to Argentina—most of them working class or newly middle class and all reckoning to some degree with assimilation and cultural alienation. Grynberg is particularly known for creating naturalistic situations that become metaphorical or mystical.
“Game of Life” concerns a game of chess. Jews have enjoyed playing chess since the Middle Ages and have dominated professional chess in modern times to such a degree that it is sometimes referred to as “the Jewish game.”
The two adult characters in “Game of Life,” Dovid and Shloyme, are close friends yet almost polar opposites in many respects. Dovid is a married man and a father; Shloyme is a bachelor with fewer responsibilities than his friend. Although the two play chess together daily, it is not until Dovid’s young son, Yosele, joins them that the hidden tensions between the men surface in an unexpected and frightening way.
This translation was made with the generous permission of Berl Grynberg’s grandchildren, Bernardo Elffman and Paula Elffman, of Buenos Aires, Argentina. — Edith McCrea
Dovid was sitting next to his son Yosele, a boy just under the age of seven who was playing a game of chess with his father’s friend, Shloyme.
Dovid looked darkly at the chessboard, his gaze fixed intently upon the chess pieces and the black and white squares, and with each minute that passed, with each move that his friend made in answer to his son’s, Dovid grew more incensed at his friend, who was playing so mercilessly and relentlessly against his son, playing with such unbridled ambition, as if he were competing against a full-grown player and wanted to win unconditionally.
The friend, Shloyme, seemed intoxicated by his mounting triumphs on the chessboard. With each piece that he won from his small opponent, he gave a delighted murmur of self-congratulation. He rubbed his nose, slapped his knees, and teased, “Well, you can surrender now—it’s a waste of time!”
Yosele didn’t look his father’s friend in the eye and didn’t answer him. He was flushed, his face burning with shame and helplessness. When he made an answering move, he held the piece in the air for a moment and then cautiously placed it on a square. His small hand trembled.
Shloyme took great pleasure in the trembling of the little hand. He laughed and said, “Why are you shaking? Don’t worry, I won’t go easy on you!”
Dovid rose from his chair, biting back his anger and irritation. He couldn’t watch the game anymore. It wasn’t even a game anymore; there, on the chessboard, circled a pack of black wolves, chasing and devouring some weak little white sheep. Every minute there were fewer and fewer white sheep left. Then all that remained was the shepherd—the king himself—among the gang of wolves, and they were closing in on the king-shepherd from all sides and would soon devour him.
Yosele was struggling. He knew he was going to lose, but he didn’t want to give up: with each move that avoided the inevitable fall of his king, he rejoiced and reassured himself. He was like someone hoping against hope to prevent the imminent death of a beloved animal, willing it to live another minute, another second, anything to delay the oncoming death throes . . .
Dovid could not remain at the table any longer. He stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the street. He stared at a cat that lay napping on the ledge of the opposite window. Or perhaps he didn’t really notice the cat; he was thinking only about his son and his friend. Here we have a large man and a small boy, and both have the same goal: both want to win and neither wants to lose. His friend Shloyme is a full-grown man, and no longer a young one; he’s almost forty. Soon it will be fifteen years since Dovid first met his friend, and as far as Dovid knows, Shloyme’s life has been following a random and senseless path. Shloyme has remained a solitary bachelor, never had any female companionship and perhaps never sought any. Six or seven months out of the year, Shloyme works in a factory and earns barely enough to keep body and soul together; his entire life trickles away over cups of black coffee in the café.
In the off-season he sometimes disappears, and you might unexpectedly come upon him in a city plaza, napping on a bench, haggard and shaggy-haired, with red-rimmed eyes from sleepless nights and a sickly, phosphorescent glow in his pupils. Now that Dovid has become a family man and has a home, Shloyme comes over often, and even when he doesn’t, they see each other every day, because for the past two years Dovid and Shloyme have been working in the same factory, under the same boss. Now, in the off-season, Shloyme is at Dovid’s house all day long, playing chess and drinking mate.
But today the devil put the idea into young Yosele’s head that he should play a game of chess with Shloyme, and for more than an hour now Dovid hasn’t known what to do with himself. If he weren’t too ashamed, he would grab the chess pieces and smash them to smithereens. It doesn’t bother him that Shloyme will win and Yosele will lose, because it couldn’t possibly be otherwise; what upsets him is his son’s pitiful confusion and Shloyme’s childish delight in his own cleverness, his refusal to be even a little generous . . . And how many times has he, Dovid, been generous to his friend on the chessboard? Why, even a blind man could see that he goes out of his way to let Shloyme win, because he knows how much this will please him. So naturally, he would expect Shloyme to grant his son this tiny, meaningless triumph in return, to reimburse him . . . repay him . . .
Shloyme interrupted Dovid’s thoughts. He pounded his brawny fist on the table and burst out joyfully, “You can go to bed now, Yosele . . . checkmate! Tell your dad he should buy you a teeny, tiny little chess set so you can learn a little something . . .”
Yosele’s nerves couldn’t take any more. He grabbed several pieces from the chessboard and threw them straight into Shloyme’s face, and then, throwing himself at the enormous man with his small fists upraised, he began hammering on Shloyme’s face and shouting hysterically: “Bad guy! Cheater! You said bad things that got me all mixed up . . . bad guy, idiot, take that! Toma! Desgraciado!”
Yosele continued hammering on Shloyme’s face with undiminished fury while his father’s friend, big and strong as he was, assumed a gallant, resolute air and did not defend himself. He merely turned a little pale, blocked his face with his calloused hands, bent his head backward, and made a simple request, at first laughingly and then in earnest: “Stop, Yosele . . . you’re going to knock my eye out! Stop, calm down! Go easy on me, Yosele!”
Dovid, meanwhile, remained rooted in place as though turned to stone. In all his son’s short and sheltered life, he had never seen the little boy so overexcited, so overwrought, not even when he had needed a very serious ear operation. Dovid’s paralysis and confusion lasted only a few seconds, however. He sprang quickly to his son, grabbed him firmly with both hands, and began to yell at him in a stern, fatherly voice. “What’s going on here? What’s the matter with you? What kind of behavior is this? Huh, Yosele?!”
Yosele grew even wilder and more infuriated. He gnashed his small, pearly teeth and started thrashing his legs as if he wanted to kick Shloyme like an unruly dog, and he kept screaming, “Let me go, Papá . . . I’ll kill him!”
The blood rushed to Dovid’s head. With a ferocity utterly unfamiliar to him, he grabbed his son with all his strength by the soft young shoulders, started shaking him, then pushed him to the floor, shouting and growling like a lion, with bulging and bloodshot eyes. “Who taught you to hit your elders? Who did you learn that from? Was it from me? Huh? I’ll make an end of you right now!”
Yosele turned his head helplessly to the left and gasped, weeping, “Papá . . . Papá!”
Dovid didn’t even hear; he kept on shaking his son and roaring, “So this, this, is how I brought you up? You raise your hand against an adult? Against a guest who comes to my house? That’s the kind of respect I taught you? I’ll turn you into rubble!”
Shloyme, who had pulled himself together by now, jumped up and tore the father from the son with a single heave. Then, as Dovid tried to throw himself at his son again, Shloyme jerked him away so hard that Dovid fell backward against the dresser. The big glass fruit bowl fell off the dresser onto the floor and broke with an explosive crash; Shloyme grabbed Yosele by the hands, retreated a little way toward the door, and yelled, “Don’t go crazy, Dovid . . . a kid is a kid! Get ahold of yourself!”
Dovid didn’t answer. He just looked from his quietly sobbing son to his still-pale friend and said nothing. Shloyme was cuddling Yosele against himself, kissing him on the head, kissing his still-balled-up fists and soothing him. “Come on, let’s be friends again. I’m sorry, little man. We’ll go back to being friends, amigos, okay? Choca!” He tickled Yosele on the chin.
Yosele, sweaty and panting, closed his eyes as though he were asleep. But Shloyme continued tenderly and patiently tickling Yosele’s face, holding out his palm for a friendship slap from the childish hand and coaxing, “Come on, give me five! Choca!”
Finally, on Yosele’s face, with its closed eyes and tightly pressed lips, a merciful little smile began to shine. Only a child can forgive like that. Shloyme grabbed the little hand and laid it against his face and spoke from the heart to his friend Dovid. “What a Yosele you have! He’s going to grow up to be a real Yosl! You know, I’m truly jealous of you for having this rascal!”
Dovid’s anger ebbed. He tried not to smile at his little boy, but he couldn’t suppress the incomprehensible and joyous smile that burst out on his face. And soon similar smiles were shining on his son’s face and his friend’s. But all of them looked down at the floor, at the scattered chess pieces and the bits of broken glass from the flowered fruit bowl. The two grown men and the child examined the scene as though all three, perhaps, understood that on the floor lay not just the pieces of the ancient and wise game of chess, which must be played well, and not just the shards of a broken bowl, but also pieces of an unending, complicated, delicate, and much more difficult game—the game of our human life . . .
Berl Grynberg was born in Warsaw in 1906, went to work at age 13, and emigrated to Argentina at 17. From 1926 on, he worked as a Linotype operator for the Buenos Aires Yiddish daily Di prese. His stories soon began appearing in Yiddish periodicals in Argentina and abroad. He published six fiction books: Morgnvint (1934); Di eybike vokh (1938); Blut un vayn (1944); Dos bloye shifele (1948); Libshaft (1952, winner of the 1953 Argentinian Hofer-Leyb Prize for Literature); and Dos goldene feygele (1955). He died by suicide in 1961.
Edith O. McCrea translated Shira Gorshman’s 1993 novel, Khanes Shof un Rinder (Hanah’s Sheep and Cattle) into English as a 2022 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow. She completed the YIVO Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture in 2021. She holds an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a BA in English from Cornell University. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
