Silence in the Hall

The Fifth Round

第5ラウンド

For thirty years Davit Kapanadze had been running chess tournaments, and in thirty years he had learned that you do not recognise a cheat by his moves, but by his hands. Someone with something to hide touches his face, his ear, his pocket; he gets up too often, and he comes back too quickly. Davit had fetched players out of toilets with telephones in the cisterns, he had confiscated a shoe with a vibration motor in its sole, and once, in Tbilisi, he had sent a grandfather out of the hall who was giving his grandson signals from the audience with a handkerchief. He was not proud of it. He was only thorough.

30年にわたり、ダヴィト・カパナーゼはチェストーナメントの審判を務めてきた。そしてその30年で彼が学んだのは、不正を行う者を見分けるのは指し手ではなく手つきだということだった。隠し事がある者は顔や耳、ポケットに触れる。席を立つ回数が多すぎ、戻ってくるのが早すぎるのだ。ダヴィトはトイレの貯水タンクに電話を隠していた選手を摘発したことがあったし、靴底に小型振動モーターを忍ばせた靴を押収したこともあった。またトビリシでは、客席からハンカチで孫に合図を送っていた祖父を会場から退場させたことさえあった。それを誇りに思っているわけではない。彼はただ几帳面なだけだった。

The Batumi Open was to be his last tournament. He had informed the federation in the spring, in a short letter without giving a reason, because he did not know himself exactly which one he should have given. He was sixty-three, his knees no longer liked the long days, and every Sunday his daughter called from Berlin to ask whether he did not finally want to do something else. What that was supposed to be, however, she could not tell him either.

バトゥミ・オープンが彼の最後の大会となるはずだった。春の段階で、彼は理由を添えずに短い手紙で連盟にその旨を伝えていた。自分でもどんな理由を挙げればよいのか、よく分かっていなかったからだ。彼は63歳で、彼の膝はもはや長時間の立ち仕事に耐えられなくなっていた。ベルリンにいる娘は毎週日曜日に電話をかけてきては、そろそろ別のことを始めてみたらどうかと尋ねてきた。もっとも、それが何であるべきかは彼女にも言えなかったのだが。