By Aleksey Bashtavenko

Academic Composition

Gonzalo Alejandro Marcos was a figure of grandeur, an Argentine grandmaster of chess who had settled in the serene hills of Switzerland. His imposing frame, reminiscent of a well-fed bear, matched the robust flavor of his stories, which he shared with anyone willing to lend an ear. In the 1990s, Gonzalo was among the top five Argentine chess players, his name whispered with reverence in chess circles across the globe. He had traveled widely for tournaments, even competing in a World Cup held in the Kremlin in the early 2000s.

To his Swiss neighbors and colleagues, Gonzalo was the epitome of charm. Urbane, amicable, and generous, he seemed to have a story for every occasion and a laugh that could fill a room. He had an uncanny ability to make everyone feel like his closest friend. His tales of chess conquests, travels, and romantic escapades were legendary, painting him as a man who had truly lived.

Yet, for all his charisma, Gonzalo’s true nature was as enigmatic as the game he mastered. His student, Jann, a keen observer and budding chess talent, began to notice something peculiar about his mentor. There was a certain glibness to Gonzalo’s stories, a too-perfect polish that seemed almost rehearsed. Jann’s mind wandered to the film “Nine Queens,” where Ricardo Darin portrayed a master of deception, embodying the very essence of Viveza Criolla, the Argentine knack for clever trickery.

Jann’s suspicions grew when he began seeing patterns in Gonzalo’s behavior that mirrored those of Darin’s character. The grandmaster’s stories, while entertaining, often had subtle inconsistencies. His generosity came with invisible strings attached, and his jolly demeanor seemed to mask a calculating mind. Gonzalo’s ability to manipulate situations to his advantage, always with a smile, became increasingly apparent.

One crisp evening, Gonzalo invited Jann to his home for dinner and drinks. The chalet, nestled in the Swiss Alps, exuded warmth and sophistication. As they settled in, Gonzalo poured Jann a glass of Malbec, the rich aroma of the Argentine wine filling the room.

“To a great upcoming tournament,” Gonzalo toasted, his smile as broad as ever. They clinked glasses, the sound resonating in the cozy room.

As they sipped their wine, Gonzalo’s phone buzzed with a series of WhatsApp audios. He played them, unabashedly, while Jann sat across from him. The voice on the other end was that of a much younger woman, her tone laced with subtle reticence. She gently declined Gonzalo’s advances, despite mentioning her dire economic situation and his offers of financial assistance.

“I really appreciate your help, Gonzalo, but I can’t come tonight,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “It’s just…complicated.”

Gonzalo responded with a dismissive chuckle, ignoring her hesitations. He sent her a picture of the stunning sunset outside his apartment, accompanied by a message: “The only thing that could make this evening more beautiful is your presence.”

Jann felt a pang of discomfort as he observed the exchange. The woman’s reluctance was palpable, yet Gonzalo seemed impervious to it. Instead of taking the hint, he continued to court her with persistence that bordered on insensitivity.

Gonzalo turned his attention back to Jann, raising his glass once more. “To elegance,” he declared with a grin. “Yo creo que elegancia es importante.”

It was a rainy afternoon when Jann met Gonzalo for another chess study session. The two settled into Gonzalo’s study, surrounded by shelves filled with chess books and trophies from his illustrious career. The atmosphere was one of focused intensity, with the occasional sound of rain pattering against the windows.

Gonzalo set up a board, preparing to dissect a particularly complex game. As they began to analyze the positions, Gonzalo’s phone buzzed incessantly. He glanced at the screen, his expression shifting from concentration to visible annoyance.

“Gran abrazo, Ángel!” he muttered, hitting the send button with a touch more force than necessary. The pattern repeated several times throughout the session, each new message from his chess rivals met with the same exasperated retort. “Gran abrazo!” Gonzalo repeated, his tone dripping with sarcasm as he fired off the response.

Jann couldn’t contain his laughter any longer. “When you say ‘gran abrazo’, do you mean the bear hug that you want to give them before you quash them? You know what a bear does in anticipation of eating its prey?”

Gonzalo paused, his eyes locking onto Jann’s with a mixture of amusement and cunning. A smug, complacent grin spread across his face. “Diplomacia, siempre diplomacia,” he replied, his voice smooth and unperturbed.

Jann chuckled, shaking his head. “So, you see diplomacy as a means to disguise your true intentions? A way to keep your rivals at bay while you plan your next move?”

Gonzalo leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his ample stomach. “Exactly, Jann. In chess, as in life, it’s all about holding your cards close to your chest. Never show your true intentions. It never does you any good to argue with anyone.”

The lesson continued, but Jann’s mind kept returning to Gonzalo’s words. The grandmaster’s approach to both his rivals and his students was a calculated mix of charm and strategy. Jann started to wonder if Gonzalo’s dissimulation served him in life as well as it did in chess.

“That phrase is going to lose all meaning if you keep saying it,” Jann remarked, still smiling.

Gonzalo shrugged. “Let them think what they want. The important thing is to keep them guessing, to never let them see your true intentions.”

The week after their last encounter, Jann found himself once again in Gonzalo’s opulent chalet, this time for lunch. The table was set with a spread of deliciously cooked steak and pasta bolognaise. Gonzalo was in high spirits, regaling Jann with stories about history, culture, and his favorite topic, the legacy of Francoism in Spain. As they dug into their meal, a young woman named Claudia emerged from one of the bedrooms, her hair tousled from sleep.

Claudia’s disinterest in the ongoing conversation was palpable. She yawned, barely acknowledging their presence, and made a beeline for the coffee pot. Her attempts to distance herself from the intellectual discourse were almost theatrical. She scrolled through her phone, mumbled a few uninterested responses, and eventually retreated to another room, leaving Jann and Gonzalo to their discussion.

Minutes later, the doorbell rang, and Patricia, a refined woman of sophisticated demeanor, entered the scene. She was everything Claudia was not: poised, intelligent, and clearly belonging to the same socioeconomic class as Gonzalo. Patricia exuded an air of elegance and intellect that immediately drew Gonzalo’s attention.

Gonzalo’s demeanor shifted noticeably as he tried to impress Patricia. He spoke passionately about historical intricacies, weaving in anecdotes designed to highlight his own intelligence and worldliness. However, Patricia’s expression remained unimpressed. She was Uruguayan, and it was evident what she thought of Gonzalo’s clandestine maneuvering. Her eyes occasionally darted towards the room where Claudia had disappeared, a look of thinly veiled disdain crossing her face.

“Gran abrazo!” Gonzalo quipped at one point, attempting to share a lighthearted moment from his interactions with chess rivals, but Patricia merely raised an eyebrow, her disapproval apparent.

Jann watched the scene unfold, feeling like he was living through a bizarre reenactment of a scene from “The Sun Also Rises,” where Jake Barnes brought Georgette to a gathering of expat writers in Paris. The dissonance between Claudia’s disinterest, Patricia’s aloofness, and Gonzalo’s desperate attempts to juggle both women was almost comical.

Trying to salvage the situation, Gonzalo turned to Jann, attempting to draw him into the conversation. “Jann, why don’t you tell Patricia about our last game? The one where we analyzed Giri’s handling of the Winawer in detail.”

Jann obliged, recounting the intricacies of their recent study session, but he could see that Patricia’s mind was elsewhere. She nodded politely but was clearly more focused on the incongruity of the scene.

Finally, unable to maintain the facade any longer, Patricia stood up. “Thank you for the invitation, Gonzalo, but I think I should be going. It was… enlightening.”

Just then, Gonzalo’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen and saw it was his mother calling. With a mix of irritation and dutifulness, he answered, switching to rapid-fire Spanish.

“Mamá, ¿qué pasa?” Gonzalo listened intently as his mother’s voice chattered on the other end. Her tone was urgent, almost commanding. Jann caught snippets of the conversation, enough to piece together that Gonzalo’s mother was offering some unsolicited advice.

“¿Es una orden?” His voice carried an edge of sarcasm that made the awkwardness in the room palpable.

Jann couldn’t help but chuckle. “So, what did she suggest this time?”

Gonzalo rolled his eyes. “She wants me to kiss Patricia on the mouth.”

Claudia snorted, clearly amused by the absurdity of the situation. “Es una orden?” she mimicked, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

Gonzalo finally cracked a genuine smile, shaking his head. “Apparently so.”

The tension in the room eased slightly, the bizarre phone call serving as an unexpected icebreaker. Jann couldn’t help but marvel at the spectacle of Gonzalo’s life, where the line between personal and social dynamics was constantly blurred by the grandmaster’s penchant for drama and manipulation.

As Patricia left, Gonzalo slumped back into his chair, his façade of charm and sophistication momentarily cracked. Jann couldn’t help but feel a mix of amusement and pity for the grandmaster. Gonzalo’s world, so meticulously crafted, had once again been disrupted by the very people he sought to impress and manipulate.

Jann finished his lunch in relative silence, reflecting on the peculiar dynamics of Gonzalo’s life. The grandmaster’s attempts to balance his various personas and relationships were as intricate and challenging as the chess games he loved so much. And in both arenas, success was never guaranteed.

From that day on, Jann watched Gonzalo with a new perspective, appreciating the grandmaster’s art of subterfuge. He understood that Gonzalo’s charm and deception were two sides of the same coin, each essential to his persona. While his colleagues in Switzerland continued to be dazzled by Gonzalo’s tales, Jann saw the grandmaster for what he truly was: a living embodiment of the cunning and craftiness that defined his homeland.

As Jann reflected on Gonzalo’s life, he couldn’t help but marvel at the peculiar dichotomy that defined the grandmaster. Despite making a home for himself in multilingual Switzerland, Gonzalo showed little interest in truly engaging with the culture and way of life surrounding him. He spoke just enough French, German, and Italian to get by, but his interactions with the locals were superficial at best. He projected an image of opulence and largesse, yet Jann noticed that Gonzalo never seemed to dedicate any time or effort to the mysterious job he claimed to have. Described in the vaguest terms, it supposedly had something to do with intellectual property for videos, but Gonzalo never offered a more detailed explanation. It was as if the specifics of his profession were part of the grand illusion he maintained.

Jann pondered whether Gonzalo was the Great Gatsby of chess. He recalled the final passages from Fitzgerald’s illustrious novel, where Nick Carraway observed: “He will be worth five of them, Buchanans.” The story of the Great Gatsby was one of rapprochement, where Nick overcame his skepticism of Gatsby’s exhibitionist lifestyle to appreciate his authenticity and capacity for dreaming. Jann realized that Gonzalo was anything but that. Far from being a misunderstood idealist like Gatsby, Gonzalo revealed himself as a cynical and unprincipled opportunist.

During their next encounter, as Jann watched Gonzalo regale another group with his well-rehearsed stories, he couldn’t shake the image of the grandmaster as a manipulative tactician, always several steps ahead in a game of social chess. Gonzalo’s ability to navigate complex human dynamics with the same finesse he applied to the chessboard was impressive, but it also underscored his fundamentally opportunistic nature.

Gonzalo’s projected image of wealth and sophistication was, in many ways, a façade. His lack of genuine engagement with the culture and people of Switzerland mirrored his superficial relationships. He thrived on the admiration and envy of others, yet he never formed meaningful connections. The grandmaster’s life was a series of carefully orchestrated moves, each designed to maintain his advantage and uphold his carefully crafted persona.

Jann’s reflections deepened as he considered the parallels between Gonzalo and the fictional Gatsby. Both men were masters of illusion, yet Gatsby’s dreams had an undercurrent of sincerity and longing that Gonzalo’s lacked. Gatsby’s pursuit of an ideal, however misguided, was driven by a profound belief in the possibility of transformation. Gonzalo, on the other hand, seemed content with his deception, using his charm and cunning to manipulate those around him without any higher purpose.

The following month, Jann competed in an open section chess tournament with his coach, Gonzalo, and could not help but notice that he was the lowest rated Grandmaster in Switzerland, if not in the entirety of Europe. As Gonzalo once again proceeded to shake his head at Jann’s ill-conceived moves, Jann could not help but change the topic to a novel by Ernest Hemingway. When Gonzalo exasperatedly questioned the relevance of this remark, Jann calmly explained that it was a semi-autobiographical piece about Hemingway’s experiences as an expat in Europe.

Finally, relishing a rare moment where Gonzalo was left speechless and refrained from interrupting others, Jann pulled out his phone and showed Gonzalo a quote that emblematically represented his existential woes.

“You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”

For the first time in their entire time having known each other, Gonzalo listened attentively. The twinkle in his eye had almost turned into an introspective, faded stare long into the distant Alps.

Leaving the chalet that afternoon, Jann felt a sense of clarity. Gonzalo was not a tragic hero deserving of sympathy, but rather a player in a game where authenticity and integrity were mere pawns to be sacrificed. Jann could no longer view the grandmaster through the rose-colored lenses of admiration and respect. Instead, he saw Gonzalo for what he truly was: a living embodiment of Viveza Criolla.