The Tiger's Cage (2009)
Pulchino travels constantly, a chemist, something to do with natural gas, discovering new deposits. (Are there deposits left to discover?) Time zones therefore preclude any kind of steady appointment. In fairness, so does my job as a freelance translator, which often has me discussing a book in the middle of the night with someone important enough to get me out of bed. Email would work, obviously, but it suggests an urgency that neither of us find conducive. So it has to be postal mail, even though he lives in the apartment directly upstairs.
We could choose not to play at all, or snatch a game here and there when we’re both around. But Pulchino is a steady and challenging opponent, and ten years of sharing months-long chess games has helped to counteract the increasing velocity of this insane age. At the very least, I have an impressive box of postcards from exotic cities. Pretoria. Tashkent. Lima. The global mail system is surprisingly robust, especially considering the last leg relies on Chicago, whose post office is as notorious as its politicians. (Pulchino is cheated. He has a collection of Chicago postcards, notable only because they leave our building, go to the post office, and then are returned to the same place, albeit one floor higher.)
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