"One night while waiting for my usual session, my attention was captured by the sight of a shape from a nurse coat's pocket hanging on the wall. All my senses were aroused. The object inside the pocket was a book. A book. It had been an eternity since I had held a book in my hand. Blood rushed to my head and my heart was beating frantically. The object that I could read, that would keep my thoughts and imagination working and that could save me from madness was right there, hung on the wall next to me. The huge male nurse who was looking after me got up and walked towards the coffee machine. My arm reached for the coat, plunged into the pocket, grabbed the book and hid the sacred object under my overall as fast as I could. When the nurse came back, my heart was beating so loudly that I was afraid he could hear it.
"During the session, my mind was all about the book. I secretly hoped that it had a lot of pages printed with small characters in a very thin paper so I would have that much to read. I hoped the book was about music, philosophy or literature, and even something I could not dare think of: Art. Stefania's passion.
"I waited impatiently till the session was over and the nurse took me back to the dormitory. Once in my bed, I took the book out and what wasn't my deception to discover that it was merely a collection of chess games played by grandmasters. I have never played chess in my life and wasn't at all attracted by the game.
"I became furious when I noticed that it was filled with diagrams and abstruse notations unknown to me. Moreover, what good could this book be to me without a chessboard. Yet, two weeks later, I began to understand the diagrams and was able to read the chess notations. I'd tried hard to figure in my mind a chessboard with its 32 pieces moving across the 64 black and white squares. But then, slowly, I was able to memorize the positions and could follow most of the games described in the book.
"Two years later, I didn't need the book anymore for I knew all the games by heart, and during the day time or in my dreams, I would play again and again, each and every game from the book. I found out that sometimes, there was not just one game playing inside my head, but 4, 10, 30 games at the same time and I could still easily follow each of the games without mixing a position or forgetting a piece. I was living among the greatest chess players of all time. All their names became familiar to me as if I had known them personally and I could see their faces, imagine their lives, and most of all, I was able to understand their thoughts. I could tell you how a Capablanca, a Lasker or a Tartakower would react to such or such position. I could tell you how an Alekhine would lure an opponent into an unavoidable checkmate.
"Those grandmasters became a part of me and in games where I played against myself, I could be alternatively two famous grandmasters with two different styles depending on whether I was playing with the white or the black pieces.
"The strange thing was that my head had no longer rooms for Stefania. Whenever I tried to conjure her face in my mind, a chessboard's image would immediately come up and supplant any other thoughts.
"I'd spent two more years in that state of mind when one day, after a change in the asylum's board of supervisors, the new director asked for a new assessment of the patients. They found out I had an IQ of 197.
"I was of course released with their apologies and had spent five years near Vienna teaching music in a public school after having sworn to myself that I would never think of chess again. Last month, I'd decided to take some vacation, bought a trip for South America and this afternoon, when I saw that your friend was going to make a fatal mistake, I just couldn't help intruding in your game. Again, I hope you will forgive me for my intrusion."
