Black Chalk

Allow me first a brief explanation, some background. My apartment is a railroad flat, to use the local parlance. The name refers simply to the fact that such apartments are long and thin. Mine consists of three slender rooms, one after the other like the coupled carriages of a train. The kitchen is located at the back, the living room at the front and the bedroom in the middle. There are doorways but no doors and windows only at each end. And while the light from outside bleeds into the kitchen and living room just a little, my bedroom forms the heart of darkness in this railroad flat.

So this morning when I awake and find, for the first time in three years, my bedroom half lit by the sun, I discover the presence of a large closet at the foot of my bed. And I feel almost as if this closet has suddenly blinked into being. Yes, of course I suppose I remembered the presence of a large closet at the foot of my bed. I may no longer have a wife but I am not divorced entirely from my mind. However, my curtains and blinds have remained shut for such a long time.

Furthermore I am not an enthusiastic switcher-on of lamps or overhead lights. In the bedroom there are absolutely no working light bulbs. Because what else do I do in the bedroom but sleep? In the dark! In fact, for use in the gloomiest hours, I carry around a flashlight fastened to a loop of string that allows me to hang said flashlight from my neck. And when I need it, I use it. When I don’t, I preserve its batteries. I use lamps or overhead lights only when a task requires two hands.

But I have become distracted from matters more pressing.

Yes, this morning in the lengthening sunlight, I notice a closet and the following thought occurs to me – I have not opened the closet for so long I have forgotten its contents.

I am leaving you here on the table a moment. Discovery calls out to me. I will report back immediately, I promise you.

XI(ii) A kind of hell. Nine, ten, eleven hours ago I descended into some circle of hell. That large closet is nothing but a vault in Satan’s armoury of evil.

When I slide open one of the doors and swing my flashlight’s eager eye across the closet’s contents, I find the following: Monopoly, Chutes & Ladders, Buckaroo, Chess, Guess Who?, Clue, Operation, Risk, Backgammon, Connect Four, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Electronic Battleship, Uno, Checkers, Mah-jong . . .

At first I feel so happy to have stumbled upon such a treasure trove. I feel like Ali Baba in a cave of riches. So many games. So much training equipment. A mental gym, no less.

First I pull out that old family favourite, Monopoly, and choose my foes, Hat and Car.

I roll first and buy buy buy. I give my imagined opponents inferior strategies and trade properties at prices advantageous to myself. But even so I lose. The dice are against me, I couldn’t buy a roll in a bakery. Such a stupid game with so much luck involved. Such a stupid fucking game that I don’t even finish. I throw the board across the room and the paper dollars into the air. I tear up the Chance and Community Chest cards so I will never, ever have to play that stupid fucking game again.

I decide next to select a game that relies less on luck. I remove Scrabble from its dog-eared box, place the board gently on my bed and sense the excitement building again in my chest. I decide to make this a game for just two. (Not stacking the odds, you understand, merely improving them.)

I always play a tight and controlled game of Scrabble. Employing this strategy for myself only, as we near the end of the game I have surged almost a hundred points ahead. My crown awaits. And then . . . Which part of my brain despises me so? I see my hateful opponent has the letters IERGOAG. I sneer loudly when I realise these letters form an anagram of the word GEORGIA. Such a shame, I say to my opponent, that proper nouns aren’t allowed. Maybe down in Atlanta they’d give you the points for the sake of state pride. But up here in Yankee New York, well, what can I say, old friend? Rules are rules.

My imagination idly picks up the word GEORGIA and allows its letters to swim above the board. And then . . . Am I really so deserving of so much misfortune? I see a floating GEORGIA winding itself around the letter P (from my superbly played PRETZEL). Yes, I look on with horror as ARPEGGIO appears. A fifty-point bingo and a double-word score to boot.

I can barely type these words I feel such rage. I hurl away the Scrabble board where it can languish in hell with Monopoly.

And how does my luck improve next?

It does not improve, that’s exactly fucking how.

I unbox Operation and prepare to cure Cavity Sam of his diseases. I try to remove the wrench from his wrenched ankle and the pail to cure his water on the knee and the butterfly from his stomach. But every time the tweezers descend toward Sam, my fingers start trembling, very soon I twitch and . . .

Away, rapidly away, goes Operation, Chutes & Ladders, Backgammon . . .