Section 4 Summary

"A Game of Chess"

The quote heading this section is from a poem by T.S. Eliot that comments on the playing of a game of chess while waiting for a significant event.

It's now March of 1973. Three months have passed since Catherine's encounter with the fortuneteller. Her travel arrangements have been made, she has completed her research, and her friends have had their goodbyes—except for one friend she's desperate to get in touch with but who's unavailable and who, as she says in narration, she'd be desperate to ask for help after events she's about to speak of. Later in the narrative, in Section 6, it becomes clear that the friend she's referring to is the reclusive mathematician and chess master Ladislaus Nim.

Before she leaves, Catherine fills her time with painting. Her work is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of...