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Full Measure: Chapter 1
by Bohdan Yuri
2007-06-18 12:41:19 |
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It was a spring day, hazing the brisk side of change. Josef Korn sat on a park bench waiting for his friend, Myron Melnyk. But Myron was late. It was so unlike him. Josef tried to distract his feelings by stretching his patience with measured motions, tossing peanuts to the grey squirrels.
Myron was Joseph's last remaining friend. The rest of the best had died off. Sure he still had some lady friends, a gentleman always does. But a man, he believed, needs to talk with other men, "to feel his place in history", and Myron provided that link.
It wasn't that Josef was difficult to like. On the contrary, he was a very amiable, sophisticated fellow; easy to get along with once he accepted your trust. But his standards were high, relics of another era; he'd always test you initially, to see if that trust was indeed genuine, flawless, and most of all unconditional, and acceptance demanded a perfect score. It was his measure of a man's worth, to do what had to be done: duty --- loyalty. It had been forty years since those shadows had accompanied him on the battlefield, black and white measures of the past.
But, unlike the battlefield, where life survived on trust, courage, and wisdom, civilian life, he felt, tested none of those qualities. The men that he'd worked with and managed at the warehouse before retiring ten years ago, they were of a different mold.
With Myron, though, he knew from the moment he saw him that this was a true man, the kind that accepted a challenge and threw back an even greater one.
Ten years ago, after a light brunch with Mrs. Morgan, his landlady, Josef was taking his usual Sunday stroll through the park, alone. As he approached the chess tables, he came upon a braggart of a man who'd proclaimed that before the war, he was a champion grand chess master in Prague. Many took up the challenge but they'd all lost. "Any more pretenders?" the Czech always asked with a champion’s display.
Josef had wished that his game was of a higher level, as he'd wanted to do battle; he’d craved a victory. Instead, he'd noticed a man, who'd been watching children stretching their sinews on monkey bars, approach the table and plainly sit across from the Czech. That man was Myron. Not a word was spoken. He took the first move, a knight.
Josef was mesmerized; he'd never seen such play. Each move was an unexpected pleasure: every attack, every defense was countered by Myron's daring strategy. Less than ten minutes and the king was toppled. Josef loved it. It was clean, and precise, and, he reminisced, much like Germany was before, in the beginning ---like blitzkrieg. The Czech stormed off, cursing, and carrying his defeat in his pockets.
Josef immediately told Myron how he'd admired his play, then asked, "Are you a chess master, world champion, maybe?"
"No, I am a simple conductor. Why, are you one?" Myron asked back, in an accent that baited.
"No, no," replied Josef. "I'm just a parlor player, nowhere near towards your game. Compared to your victory, my play would have been a lost skirmish, and in half the time. I just wanted to tell you....” Josef noticed a gesture of a smile in Myron's eyes, he allowed Myron to proceed.
"Pride can be a poor companion," Myron stated. Josef wondered whose pride. "But perhaps we can still play some day,” Myron offered. "We'll each play to our own fullest measure and see which one can learn the most from each other."
Josef, always anxious to advance any opportunity, blurted out, "How about next Sunday? I'm always here, at the park, every Sunday...” Myron nodded. And from that day on, they'd met every Sunday, at the same time 3 o'clock, rain or shine, to play chess, and to retrace the motions of their existence. The game became secondary to countless stories from flavourful memories. Myron had many tales to tell of people he'd met along the line and Josef, he told what he could... But, this time Myron was late.
A gust of wind echoed a sharp edge from winters’ past as Josef recounted the war and its tragedies. On the Russian front he'd seen many a man's spirit blown away, defeated. The reckless reaper was a cruel and heartless arbitrator, a collector of corpses, or what was left of them. Yet during the fighting, he remembered, death became a game of numbers as simple as black and white. --- Victory and defeat. It's only time that turns them into nightmares. He bit on his lower lip to mask the remorse. He suddenly wondered, maybe Myron was ill?
Last week Myron had complained about a burning sensation in his heart. And didn't he say that he was seeing a priest this morning? All these years, Josef thought to himself, not even knowing where Myron lived. "...I move a lot..." seemed like a satisfactory answer at the time. But, now...
Read the other chapters
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