Gregor and the cotton blouse
When I write about people, I often use only the first names — to protect their identities. Sometime this does not work, because readers in the know quickly figure out who I am talking about. In this chapter I need to be especially cautious, since the main persons are quite famous. In the first part I will call the proponents Gregor and Helen and disguise the location and circumstances of the story. For obvious reasons.
I was at a chess tournament, staying in a beautiful sea-side hotel. Also there was a very nice colleague, Helen, a good friend with whom I have done numerous projects. We were filing daily reports. One evening, suddenly, there was a knock at my door, quite late in the evening. It was Helen. “There is someone prowling outside my room,” she said. I could see from her face that she was quite scared.
We went to her room, which was just a few doors away from mine. We were on the ground floor, and her room windows looked out to grassy dunes and the sea-shore. I stopped Helen from turning on the light, as she was about to do when we entered. Instead, I carefully drew back a bit of the curtain, so I could look outside. There I saw, just inches from me, the face of a person trying to squint through the glass. It was that of a prominent participant of the event — the star and the chief guest. I will call him Gregor. I believe he did not see me in the dark room. In any case, I released the curtain carefully and sat there discussing the situation with Helen.
By now she was quite terrified. She packed up her notebook and came over to my room. There we sat for a while, completing our reports. Then suddenly we heard a soft howling sound outside. Some animal? I can never resist, and went to the second door of my room, which opened to the grassy dunes. It was dark outside, and I saw a figure, dressed in black, approaching the door. My instincts told me to slam it shut, but before I could do so, I heard a voice that said: “It is me, Gregor.” And Gregor, who is a friend, walked into my room. He sat down on a chair and watched Helen and me for a few minutes silently.
Then he started a polite small-talk conversation. He did not look like he was going anywhere, and I noticed that Helen’s hands were trembling. So I suddenly said: “Helen, this is not working, we can’t see these pictures properly. Let’s try it on your other computer.” She looked at me in confusion (she didn’t have “another computer”), but then understood what I was doing. We all got up and went into the corridor, where I said “Bye, Gregor, we have to finish our articles...” and turned to the right — towards Helen’s room. Off we were, and he had no option but to turn left and head for his own room.
An hour later Helen and I returned to my room — there was no way she was willing to spend the night in her room. She slept on the second bed, fully dressed, in fact with her overcoat on, ready to jump up and leave the hotel at any moment.
The next morning I went out and looked around the grassy dune outside of Helen’s room. There was a clear path trampled down from the road to the window, and a circular patch of flattened grass where someone had walked around and sat on the ground. Incidentally, this all happened in winter, when it was freezing.
I began to understand: Gregor had walked from the street over the dune to the hotel courtyard and waited outside Helen’s window for her to appear, hoping to catch a glimpse. He had sat on the ground, and walked in a circle to keep warm.
That day, Helen went back home, ahead of schedule. I should mention (without revealing identities) that she is the daughter of a fairly prominent politician and needs security clearance and oversight when she is in a foreign country.
A few months later I met Helen again, and we spoke about what had happened. She is a very attractive young lady, with a bright demeanour, so I simply assumed that Gregor had been taken up by that. But she added a vital piece of information. On the day in question she had worn a blouse from her native country: a light cotton top, white in colour, embroidered with little flowers. Very pretty really. Gregor, who is from the same country as Helen, had seen her in the blouse all day. That was probably what had turned him on, driving him nuts. After discussing it with Helen, I am sure of that.
Picking up chicks
It was at a chess tournament, and a group of grandmasters were wondering what to do. It was a free day, and one of them had a suggestion: “Let’s go out and pick up some girls. I know a good place.” The others agreed and they set out.
So this grandmaster led them to the nearby park. There he sat down on one of the benches. The others joined him and wondered what next. But he just sat there, doing nothing. Can you think of the reason why?
This grandmaster, a very strong player, was from a city, in the eastern part of Russia. It was the center in the manufacture of clothing. About 80% of the people were women, who had moved in from all parts of the country to work in the factories. The way to “pick up chicks” for our GM friend was simply to sit in the park and wait. They come swarming around you. That is how it had been all his life.
Unfortunate for him: that is not how it worked outside his home town. He had to learn that through practical experience.
Learning a language to please
One more? I was at a chess tournament in Turkey. Playing in the open was a very pretty young girl. The top player in the main event was quite enraptured by her, invited her to coffee and walks along the beach. He even took her to an exhibition in a museum.
But there was one problem: the girl spoke no English, and the two had no language in common. So it was just smiling, pointing, holding hands. And at the end of the event there was a fond farewell.
A few years later there was a similar event, and our friend, the top GM, whom I will facetiously call Joe, was invited. And there she was, the Turkish beauty. Joe went up to her and said, quite fluently: “Hello, I have studied Turkish. Now we can talk, you and I!” She was quite stunned – he had clearly done this for her. She said: “I cannot believe you could learn such good Turkish, in just a few years.”
And then she continued: “Now let me introduce you to my husband, and our baby daughter.”
Too late, Joseph!