Sixty-Four Squares and a Two-Hour Commute

The Board on the Upturned Crate

I learned chess from a man called Uncle Bheki who played on an upturned bread crate outside a spaza shop in Soshanguve. He used bottle caps for pawns because half his pieces had gone missing. I was nine. He beat me every day for a year, and every day he said the same thing as he set the caps back up: "Again. You are getting worse in a better way."

I am thirty-eight now. I coach chess to children in Alexandra, on Saturday mornings and three afternoons a week, in a community hall with a leaking roof and folding tables. I have eleven regulars, and around twenty on a good day. Some of them are very good. One of them, a quiet girl of twelve called Palesa, is better than I was at her age by a mile, and on a good day she is better than I am now, which I am trying to accept with grace.

For four years, I did all of this from Soshanguve.

Two Hours Each Way

If you do not know Gauteng, Soshanguve to Alexandra is a long way. On a good day, with the right connections, it was ninety minutes. On a normal day it was two hours. On a bad day, when a taxi broke down or there was a strike or it simply rained, it was longer, and I would arrive at the hall to find the children already sitting on the steps outside, waiting.

My day job is in a bookshop in Rosebank, which helped a little, but not much. I would leave home before six, work, take a taxi to Alex, coach until the light went, and then do the long trip home in the dark. I studied chess openings on my phone with one hand while hanging on to the rail with the other. I could recite the Sicilian Najdorf to the rhythm of the Ben Schoeman.

My mother said I was mad. My friends said I was mad. The children never said anything about it. They just assumed I would be there, which is exactly how it should be, and exactly why I could not stop.

Palesa's Question

What tipped it was a Saturday last winter when I was late, badly late, nearly an hour. There had been an accident on the highway and the taxi sat in traffic going nowhere while I watched the time on my phone and felt sick.

When I got to the hall, most of the children had gone home. Palesa was still there, alone on the steps with her board set up on her knees, playing both sides against herself. She did not complain. She just looked up and asked, "Coach, why do you live so far away?"

I did not have a good answer. I said something about my mother, about rent, about how I grew up there. She nodded and set up the pieces, and we played, and she beat me in twenty-six moves, and on the long ride home I kept thinking about her sitting on those steps.

Looking for the First Time

I had never lived anywhere except my mother's house. I did not know how renting worked, not properly. I did not know what was reasonable, what to ask, what to look out for. I went about it the way I would go about learning a new opening. I studied.

I spent weeks searching for apartments to rent Johannesburg on my lunch breaks at the bookshop, comparing prices and areas and how far each one would be from the hall in Alex and from work in Rosebank. I made a little table in a notebook, the same notebook I use to record the children's games. One page for the Caro-Kann. One page for monthly rentals. My handwriting is the same in both.

My colleague at the shop, a woman named Annelie who has rented all over the city, looked over my shoulder one day and said, "You're looking in the wrong places. You want to be right next to your hall, not just in the right direction." She drew me a little map on the back of a till slip, with Alex in the middle and the suburbs around it.

Kew, Which I Had Never Heard Of

I had never heard of Kew, honestly. I had driven past it a hundred times on the way to Alex without knowing the name. It sits right there, on the other side of the road, close enough to walk.

When I started reading listings for Kew apartments for rent, I sat in the back of the bookshop and actually laughed out loud, because I worked out that I could walk from my front door to the community hall in less time than it took me to get from my mother's house to the first taxi rank.

I went to see a few places on a Saturday afternoon after coaching, still carrying the bag with the boards in it. I think the people showing me around thought I was some kind of travelling salesman.

What I Looked For

I did not need much. I am one person with a lot of books and a lot of chess sets. I needed a bed, a kitchen I could cook pap in, decent security, and a table big enough to lay out two boards side by side for analysis. I needed to be able to afford it on a bookshop salary without my mother lending me money.

I also needed somewhere quiet, and this surprised me. For years I had done all my study in taxis and on buses, surrounded by noise. I had not realised how much I wanted to sit at a table in silence with a board in front of me and actually think.

The place I took is small. One bedroom, a little lounge, a kitchen along one wall, and a window that faces east, so the morning light comes across the table where the boards live. There is a security guard at the gate called Mr Mokoena who plays draughts and keeps threatening to learn chess so he can beat me. I have told him that is not how it works.

Telling My Mother

The hardest move was telling my mother.

She did not cry. She did not shout. She went into the kitchen and made tea, which is worse. When she came back she said, "So you are leaving me for those children," and I said, "No, Ma. I am leaving the taxi for those children." She almost smiled.

I go home every second Sunday now. I bring her groceries and we watch television together, and she complains about my cooking, which she has never tasted, and tells the neighbours I live in Joburg now like it is a different country.

Walking to the Hall

On my first Saturday living in Kew, I walked to the hall with the bag of boards over my shoulder, and I got there forty minutes early. I sat on the steps alone, where Palesa had sat, and watched the street wake up.

Things are different now in ways I did not expect. I can run an extra session on Wednesday evenings, because I do not have to leave at five to make the last good connection. Two of the older boys come to my flat on Sunday afternoons to go over their tournament games, and we sit at my east-facing table and argue about rook endings until their mothers phone. I sleep about an hour more a night than I used to.

Last month, eight of my children played at a junior tournament in Midrand. Palesa won her section. When they announced her name she did not jump or scream. She just turned around and looked for me in the crowd, and I was right there, because I had not had to take two taxis and a bus to get to her.

Again, In a Better Way

People sometimes ask me whether I miss Soshanguve. I do. I miss my mother's cooking, and I miss Uncle Bheki's crate, which is still outside the spaza shop though Uncle Bheki passed three years ago. When I visit, I sometimes stand there for a while.

But I have also learned something about moves. A good player does not stay where he is comfortable. He goes where the pieces need him.

A friend from the bookshop asked me last week whether I would recommend renting apartments in Johannesburg over living at home and commuting, for someone like her who works across town. I told her I could only speak for myself. For me it came down to one thing. I used to spend four hours a day getting to the board. Now I spend those four hours at it.

Uncle Bheki would have said I was getting worse in a better way.