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Back The Double Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
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  63. Acknowledgements

‘Most of our neighbours were immigrants. Hungarian émigrés like us, along with Russians and Armenians, and other foreigners whose origins I wasn’t aware of. I was a child. Everything was new, everything was strange. But I do remember, after a time, being happy.’ He briefly closed his eyes. ‘Except for one thing.’ Leaning over the board, Vidor deftly executed the en passant move to evade capture of his pawn. ‘In our haste to get away, I was forced to leave a treasured toy behind. A tin soldier, of no value to anyone but me. I wept, heartbroken, until my mother promised she’d buy me a new one as soon as we were settled.’

Gessen let this sink in before moving his bishop to the only possible square, though it was clear he was cornered. ‘It sounds like you made a lucky escape,’ he said, avoiding Vidor’s eye. ‘All of you safe and sound in a new city.’

Vidor sighed. ‘My parents were happy to find a place of refuge, and we made a good life for ourselves.’

A pleasant enough story, but Gessen didn’t believe it for a minute. Any kind of move involved a level of disquiet, ranging from mild to the traumatic. Even more so when a family, running for their lives, was forced to leave behind everything they knew and loved. He studied Vidor intently under lowered lids as he waited for him to expand on the story, but Vidor, having claimed Gessen’s king with a crow of triumph, had shut the door on that particular moment in his past.

* * *

A week later, six intensive sessions had come and gone, and Gessen’s desperation to crack the mystery of Vidor’s affliction was growing by the hour. With surprising skill – or was it cunning? – Vidor had stymied every effort to unpeel the layers of his life. Time for a new strategy. For today’s session, rather than meet with Vidor in the clinical setting of his office, Gessen invited him into the adjoining sitting room. The intimate atmosphere and sumptuous furnishings in the style of a London club might just coax Vidor out of the defensive posture of a patient and into the belief he was Gessen’s equal. Two men sitting by the fire, talking about their lives.

In the glow from the flames, the two leather armchairs gleamed like chestnuts. On the far wall, framed oil paintings of the Matterhorn and the Eiger, subtly lit, created an atmosphere of intimacy.